Google to cut down on employee laptops, services and staplers for ‘multi-year’ savings

Key Points

• In a rare companywide memo from CFO Ruth Porat, Google kicked off “multi-year” employee service cuts.

• The company is also cutting back on laptops and equipment, according to more detailed internal documents viewed by CNBC.

Google’s finance chief Ruth Porat recently said in a rare companywide email that the company is making cuts to employee services.

“These are big, multi-year efforts,” Porat said in a Friday email titled: “Our company-wide OKR on durable savings.” Elements of the email were previously reported by the Wall Street Journal.

In separate documents viewed by CNBC, Google said it’s cutting back on fitness classes, staplers, tape, and the frequency of laptop replacements for employees.

One of the company’s important objectives for 2023 is to “deliver durable savings through improved velocity and efficiency.” Porat said in the email. “All PAs and Functions are working toward this,” she said, referring to product areas.

The latest cost-cutting measures come as Alphabet-owned Google continues its most severe era of cost cuts in its almost two decades as a public company. The company said in January that it was eliminating 12,000 jobs, representing about 6% of its workforce, to reckon with slowing sales growth following record headcount growth.

Cuts have shown up in other ways. The company declined to pay the remainder of laid-off employees’ maternity and medical leaves, CNBC previously reported.

In her recent email, Porat said the layoffs were “the hardest decisions we’ve had to make as a company.”

“This work is particularly vital because of our recent growth, the challenging economic environment, and our incredible investment opportunities to drive technology forward— particularly in AI,” Porat’s email said.

Porat referred to the year 2008 twice in her email.

“We’ve been here before,” Porat’s email stated. “Back in 2008, our expenses were growing faster than our revenue. We improved machine utilization, narrowed our real estate investments, tightened our belt on T&E budgets, cafes, micro kitchens and mobile phone usage, and removed the hybrid vehicle subsidiary.”

“Just as we did in 2008, we’ll be looking at data to identify other areas of spending that parents as effective as they should be, or that don’t scale to our size.”

In a statement to CNBC, a spokesperson said, “As we’ve publicly stated, we have a company goal to make durable savings through improved velocity and efficiency. As part of this, we’re making some practical changes to help us remain responsible stewards of our resources while continuing to offer industry-leading perks, benefits and amenities.”

Cutting down on desktop PCs and staplers

Among the equipment changes, Google is pausing refreshes for laptops, desktop PCs and monitors. It’s also “changing how often equipment is replaced,” according to internal documents viewed by CNBC.

Google employees who are not in engineering roles but require a new laptop will receive a Chromebook by default. Chromebooks are laptops made by Google and use a Google-based operating system called Chrome OS.

It’s a shift from the range of offerings, such as Apple MacBooks, that were previously available to employees. “It also provides the best opportunity across all of our managed devices to prevent external compromise,” one document about the laptop changes stated.

An employee can no longer expense mobile phones if one is available internally, the document also stated. Employees will need director “or above” approval if they need an accessory that costs more than $1,000 and isn’t available internally.

Under a section titled “Desktops and Workstations,” the company said CloudTop, the company’s internal virtual workstation, will be “the default desktop” for Googlers.

In February, CNBC reported Google asked its cloud employees and partners to share desks by alternating days and are expected to transition to relying on CloudTop for their workstations.

Google employees have also noticed some more extreme cutbacks to office supplies in recent weeks. Staplers and tape are no longer being provided to print stations companywide as “part of a cost effectiveness initiative,” according to a separate, internal facilities directive viewed by CNBC.

“We have been asked to pull all tape/dispensers through out the building,” a San Francisco facility directive stated. “If you need a stapler or tape, the receptionist desk has them to borrow.”

 A Google spokesperson said staplers and tape continue to be offered companywide but did not provide details.

‘We’ve baked too many muffins on a Monday’

Google’s also cutting some availability of employee services.

“We set a high bar for industry-leading perks, benefits and office amenities, and we will continue that into the future,” Porat’s email stated. “However, some programs need to evolve for how Google works today.”

“These are mostly minor adjustments,” stated a separate internal document from the company’s real estate and workplace team. The document said food, fitness, massage and transportation programs were designed for when Googlers were coming in five days a week.

“Now that most of us are in 3 days a week, we’ve noticed our supply/demand ratios are a bit out of sync: We’ve baked too many muffins on a Monday, seen GBuses run with just one passenger, and offered yoga classes on a Friday afternoon when folks are more likely to be working from home,” the document stated.

As a result, Google may close cafes on Mondays and Fridays and shut down some facilities that are “underutilized,” due to hybrid schedules, the document states.

As a part of the January U.S. layoffs, the company let go of more than two dozen on-site massage therapists.

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