I agree. These are all great reasons to not work there anymore. There are other workplaces that don’t operate like a plantation, and are happy to pluck googles best and brightest from the clutches of an unappreciative plantation owner. This biggest difference is Google employees are not enslaved, and can leave at will.

It’s clear google doesn’t want their working class to work there. Fantastic idea!

Charging employees $99/night for the pleasure of staying on the masters plantation is a stupid test, and the best way to pass is not to play.

While I get your point, here's the other issue with how this is framed.

The advertisement entices workers to make the jump, even for a short while, to its on-campus hotel, saying: “Just imagine no commute to the office in the morning and instead, you could have an extra hour of sleep and less friction,” CNBC reported. “Next, you could walk out of your room and quickly grab a delicious breakfast or get a workout in before work starts.” It adds that after the end of the work day, “you could enjoy a quiet evening on top of the rooftop deck or take in one of the fun local activities.”

I can imagine that, at least except for the rooftop deck. Working from home. Without having to pay $99/night.

They could avoid this whole thing by simply just not forcing people to go back to the office.

A kinder version of a company town is still a company town, in the same way high-paying wage labor is still wage labor.

This is not Google being charitable and caring about housing prices in the surrounding area. These are the people most able to work remotely; Google is bringing them back to their expensive office to justify its existence and saying "this time I'll be your landlord, too."

how is this shit upvoted? cool they're not as bad as they could be. doesn't make it a good idea.

they're gonna go the classic corporate route of attracting people to a new system with nice benefits and relatively reasonable prices, only to enshittify it once people are attached to it

I'm ... I just ... is this satire ?

So If you need to work overtime, now you also need to pay 99$ if you want to sleep a few hours before the next day?

I completely agree with this take. These developers, if they don't like Google's hybrid work policies can just change jobs?

Like, I'm happy for developers who can figure out how to work from home, and it sucks when their job changes so they can no longer do that. I hope they can fight for their rights so they can continue to work from home.

But let's be realistic: It's a hotel that is optional to stay at for $99 a night. This isn't at all like company script, and I'd much rather be the developer being asked to return to their office job than the housekeeper employed at Hotel Google figuring out how to pay rent in California. I'm not sure that people realize this but hotels take a lot of staff (housekeepers, front desk, laundry workers for sheets/towels). II'd hope that Google is paying them fair wages, but if I had a bet, they've contracted a hospitality company for this. Those workers are probably underpaid.

This kind of feels like what-a-bout-ism, but techy spaces like this seem laser-focused on what are basically white-collar worker problems. Comparing charging for a hotel to working in a coal mine for script is deeply out of touch.