Google To Remote Workers: Come Back To Office Or Resign

Google is tightening its return-to-office policy, telling definite distant labor to either adopt a hybrid activity exemplary aliases hole to time off nan company, a move that underscores nan tech giant's ongoing cost-cutting measures and intensified attraction connected artificial intelligence.

As first reported by CNBC, soul documents uncover that teams wrong Google's Technical Services and People Operations (HR) divisions person issued caller directives to distant staff, including immoderate who were antecedently granted imperishable work-from-home status. These labor must now study to a beingness agency astatine slightest 3 days a week aliases judge voluntary exit packages. Those surviving wrong 50 miles of a Google agency are expected to comply by June aliases look imaginable occupation loss.

The alteration is not a company-wide instruction but is being implemented astatine nan squad level. "As we’ve said before, in-person collaboration is an important portion of really we innovate and lick analyzable problems," Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini told CNBC. "To support this, immoderate teams person asked distant labor that unrecorded adjacent an agency to return to in-person activity 3 days a week."

The caller argumentation reflects a broader inclination crossed nan tech industry, wherever companies that erstwhile championed distant activity during nan pandemic are now reverting to pre-2020 agency norms. Google’s shift, successful particular, comes amid a bid of organisational restructures and layoffs aimed astatine reallocating resources to AI initiatives. In early 2025, Google offered voluntary buyouts to immoderate full-time US employees, continuing a activity of occupation cuts that began successful 2023.

By nan extremity of past year, Google’s workforce had shrunk to astir 183,000 employees, down from astir 190,000 2 years earlier. The company’s activity has made it clear that it views beingness agency beingness arsenic basal for maintaining its competitory separator successful AI. In a memo seen by CNBC, Google co-founder Sergey Brin suggested that AI labor should beryllium successful nan agency daily, noting that 60 hours per week was nan "sweet spot of productivity."

The pandemic-era elasticity of moving from anywhere, erstwhile hailed by executives crossed Silicon Valley, now appears to beryllium firmly successful nan rearview mirror. As Google repurposes its workforce and operational strategy to align pinch its AI ambitions, nan once-celebrated work-from-home civilization continues to fade.

Published on: Apr 25, 2025 3:46 PM IST