employees

Six 'employees' stories March 2013 - October 2015

Management material? This 23-year old Google employee sleeps in a 128 sq ft truck in the parking lot

Jordan Kahn Oct 20 2015 - 9:50 am PT

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Business Insider profiled 23-year-old Googler Brandon S. who decided to forgo the usual high-priced San Francisco apartment and instead move into the back of a 128 square foot truck in the company’s parking lot.

The idea started to formulate while Brandon — who asked to withhold his last name and photo to maintain his privacy on campus — was interning at Google last summer and living in the cheapest corporate housing offered: two bedrooms and four people for about $65 a night (roughly $2,000 a month), he explains to Business Insider.

He didn’t do much to pimp out the back of the $10,000, 16FT Ford truck with a modest setup consisting mostly of a bed and storage (and no power), but it has enabled Brandon to save around 90% of his income, while Google and security apparently have no issues with the living arrangements:

“I don’t actually own anything that needs to be plugged in,” he explains on his blog. “The truck has a few built-in overhead lights, and I have a motion-sensitive, battery-powered lamp I use at night. I have a small battery pack that I charge up at work every few days, and I use that to charge my headphones and cell phone at night. My work laptop will last the night on a charge, and then I charge it at work.”

Here’s a look at the inside of the truck:

Brandon is blogging about the experience on his site Thoughts from Inside the Box.

Google shuffling engineers on Glass project, ‘new team’ developing next version under leadership change

Stephen Hall Feb 20 2015 - 9:54 am PT

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A lot of movement has been happening on the Glass team this month in Mountain View. In January, the project graduated out of the company’s Google[x] experimental projects lab and into the hands of ex-iPod-head Tony Fadell—although still being lead more directly by Google’s Head of Glass Ivy Ross. But with this change, it appears as if Google is doing—as is fairly common at the company—a bit of shuffling in the engineers who are working on the project…

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Court rejects earlier $324 million anti-poaching settlement between Google, Intel, Apple, and Adobe

Mike Beasley Aug 8 2014 - 12:48 pm PT

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Image via <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-01/tech-hubris-the-silicon-valley-antitrust-hiring-conspiracy#p2" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a>

A judge has rejected a settlement that was reached earlier this year between employees of Google, Intel, Apple, and Adobe and their respective companies, CNBC reported today. According to reports from the courtroom, Judge Lucy Koh ruled that the settlement was not high enough and should actually be $380 million.

The lawsuit was brought against the tech giants in question by current and former employees who believed (correctly) that their employers had created agreements to avoid attempting to hire engineers from one another. The idea was that if no competitors were making offers, each company was free to pay its employees whatever it wanted without having to worry about them jumping ship for a better offer.

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Friends & family of Motorola employees get up to $50 off Moto X & Moto G

Jordan Kahn Jan 24 2014 - 8:47 am PT

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Friends-with-moto

Motorola has launched a new program for employees that allows them to offer friends and family discounts of up to $50 on the Moto X and Moto G. AndroidPolice detailed the “Friends with Moto” program that lets Motorola employees send coupon codes to friends and family for $50 off the Moto X, $40 off the 16GB Moto G, or $30 off the 8GB Moto G. The discounts are for the off-contract devices available through Motorola’s online store and require friends and family to fill out a short form (pictured above). After the form is completed the Motorola employee will get a coupon code they can forward to the person to use at checkout. The discounts bring the off-contract price of the Moto X down to $349 and the Moto G down to $149/$159.
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Google gives employees choice of free Nexus 5 or 7 as holiday gift

Jordan Kahn Dec 6 2013 - 8:15 am PT

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Nexus-5-Nexus-7-Christmas-gift-2013

Much like it has in recent years by offering employees their choice from a selection of devices as a Christmas/holiday gift, we’ve learned from several sources that this year Google will continue the tradition. Rather than the choice of Chromebook, a Motorola phone or the Nexus 7 tablet like it offered last year, this year the company will offer an option between the Nexus 5 and new Nexus 7.

Backing up our info is the screenshot below showing a family member of a Google employee mentioning the gift:
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Google begins cutting an additional 10 percent of Motorola workforce, around 1,200 employees

Jordan Kahn Mar 8 2013 - 6:36 am PT

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Google-Motorola We heard in October that Google had plans to further reduce Motorola’s workforce after cutting around 20 percent, or roughly 4,000 jobs, in August. The Wall Street Journal reported today on an email from Google that confirmed the company is beginning to cut around 1,200 employees (a little over 10 percent of its current total headcount):

Motorola MSI -0.74% staffers were informed by the company via email this week that “while we’re very optimistic about the new products in our pipeline, we still face challenges.” The company email added that “our costs are too high, we’re operating in markets where we’re not competitive and we’re losing money.”

As for where the cuts might take place, we previously reported that Motorola, which was unprofitable for 14 of its last 16 quarters, planned to reduce its operations in Asia and India, but today’s report said the layoffs would hit workers in the United States, China, and India. Google also warned that further restructuring might be necessary and significant costs could be involved.

In a recent piece from The Wall Street Journal highlighting Google executives’ fear that Samsung is gaining too much dominance, Android chief Andy Rubin said the purchase of Motorola was “a kind of insurance policy against a manufacturer such as Samsung gaining too much power over Android.”