
Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent - thejteam
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/googles-perks-amazing-employees-found-002550682.html
======
electrograv
Silicon Valley: Where highly paid ($100-$200k+) engineers sleep in cars to
save money on obscenely expensive rent.

Honestly, recently moving to Seattle has been refreshing to me in this regard.
I find Seattle tech industry pay no less than SF, plus no state income tax,
and for the same rent as SF you can practically live like a king/queen here.

I wonder how long the housing situation in SV can keep up until everything
collapses under its own weight?

~~~
zak_mc_kracken
Don't extrapolate based on one sensationalistic article.

Most engineers employed at Google (or any other company) in Silicon Valley
have enough to rent or even buy houses. Actually, a lot of other workers who
make one half (or even less) that salary manage as well.

People who choose to live in cars or on campus have something else going on
with them. It's not just about money, most of us will always choose to have
their own place, no matter how small, than living this kind of life.

I don't doubt what the Quora discussion describes happens, I'm just claiming
these are very few and far between exceptions.

~~~
bellerocky
As someone who lives and works in the bay area, you cannot buy a house with a
software engineer's salary, not unless it is a very poor neighborhood, in
which case you're contributing to gentrification, or you want to drive 2 hours
from Pleasanton. I say that as a software engineer home owner who bought a
house before the prices sky rocketed again in 2011. I wouldn't be able to
afford my own house right now.

~~~
paulhauggis
"in which case you're contributing to gentrification"

I guess keeping poor neighborhoods poor is a good think now?

~~~
scintill76
Yeah, I also don't understand how buying a house within one's own means is
gentrification. Is the definition of "afford" different between your "very
poor" neighbors and you, the "software engineer"?

~~~
scintill76
OK, I guess maybe the original point was that there are super-cheap and super-
expensive houses, and software engineers could afford something in between.
They have to choose a poor neighborhood where they are wealthier, or a
reasonably-priced but distant suburb.

------
kabdib
We had a contractor in Xbox who was let go. They snuck back into the building
and lived there for a number of weeks (not sure how many), pretending to work
and hanging out in our various couch areas during the day. [Someone quipped:
"Not much different than certain full-time employees."]

I've known a few people who lived in vans / RVs in the company parking lots.
(Ironically, the guy whose van had the ATARI vanity license plate was one of
the first to be let go in the crash of 1982).

A friend of mine lives in the Sierra mountains, and used to RV down to Silly
Valley for a week or two at a time. Really pretty convenient. Once he was
parked underneath the flight path for Moffet Field around the time that Air
Force One was scheduled to fly in, and the Secret Service politely asked him
to move his RV.

~~~
damon_c
Did you just imply that you worked at Atari in the early 80s and also on the
Xbox?

cool!

~~~
kissickas
You can click on a username to view someone's profile:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kabdib](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kabdib)

------
bsaul
Does anyone else feels like we're really getting towards the cyberpunk
universe ? with corporations that completely own the life of their employees
by providing them with everything, and a violent lawless and miserable outside
world.

And as always, it all started with the best intentions.

~~~
blazespin
Tech folks tend to live in their heads. Houses, etc, is just boring
distractions.

~~~
yummyfajitas
This. Currently all my stuff fits into two backpacks (a big backpacker one and
a small one for the laptop). The only thing I miss from my old stationary
lifestyle is a regular gym, sparring partners and a coach.

The only thing I don't understand about living in the googleplex is sex.
Logistics is everything - I remember once dealing with a month of involuntary
celibacy due to a bad living situation. NOT an experience I want to repeat. I
guess these folks just have much better game than I do.

~~~
vidarh
Most people go through much longer periods of celibacy than that on a regular
basis when outside of long term relationships. For most people, the singles
life is relatively sex-less. Presumably living on campus isn't a choice that
most people make in the first place when they are in long term relationships
and/or have regular options of companionship.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Just curious, what is "longer periods"? Is celibacy for a year really a
plausible outcome for most people in SF? And is it so likely that it makes
living in a car worthwhile? I'm honestly curious.

Year-long celibacy is not super uncommon in India, but Indian culture is
explicitly set up to make sure women don't have sex until their parents get
them married off. I'm really shocked to hear that SF is that bad.

~~~
ahh
Why are you surprised to hear this? You're hardly the first person I'd expect
to not realize the social stigma most men in the tech industry face trying to
date; combine that with the supply/demand in the Bay and you should expect
that most men will struggle to date at all (really, anywhere on the west coast
except maybe LA.)

~~~
yummyfajitas
I've been to the bay area twice in my life. Most of my dating has been in
either NYC or (recently) Pune, India. I'm aware the dating situation out west
is unsatisfying, I just thought the issue was just that one might need to go
out every night instead of only fridays and maybe compromise a bit on quality.

The fact is SF has women and no parental supervision. How could it possibly be
this bad?

I'm honestly asking because I'm curious about the mechanics of it.

~~~
ahh
The mechanics are: you go to any bar and the ratio is about 10:1 on a _good_
night. All the girls are sick of seeing tech people and so will ask you what
you do, and when they hear "Google", "Facebook", "tech", "engineer", or
"programming", will walk away in disgust. (Literally. Hell, a friend went on a
Grouper where the girls found out he worked for Google and immediately decided
they'd rather wait the clock out on their phones than speak to him.)

There is no step 2, as far as I can tell. One of the many, many reasons I left
SF. (For Seattle, which is...marginally better, but not good by any measure,
in this aspect.)

------
VLM
Well, the author has clearly never car camped or worked operations before:

"It's not clear what the Googlers like Discoe did when they had to go to the
bathroom at night."

They went to the bathroom of course, just like you would in the day. Its not
like toilets are solar powered and don't work after dark. If you work there
and have an ID and walk past the guard at 2am and walk past leaving a couple
minutes later, they simply don't care. "He must have been called in to reboot
a server or something". Also although I am a morning person the world has no
shortage of night persons and my experience in a 300 person building is I
never heard of it being empty although it could happen, and at a 800 person
building I don't think we ever, not even on holidays at 3am, dropped below six
people.

------
Systemic33
Can't Google just setup dormitories? It's halfway on being it's own city, so
why not go all out and have cheap living quarters?

~~~
onion2k
And thus, Google becomes The Circle completely.

I'm being a bit flippant, but really the last thing Google employees (and
every other successful tech businesses to be fair) need is to be _more_
isolated in their ivory towers. Meeting people outside of the tech industry
keeps you grounded and stops you forgetting that there are vast numbers of
people who aren't so intelligent and happy with massive changes every couple
of years. If a tech is going to be inclusive and produce a better society in
to the future it's important that the people making things are integrated with
the rest of society.

~~~
notacoward
"Meeting people outside of the tech industry keeps you grounded"

But does _where you sleep_ affect that at all? Even where I am, many people
live in apartments or houses and yet have almost no social interaction outside
of high tech. I'm sure that's at least as true in Silicon Valley, with its
corporate citadels and meetups and apartment complexes that specifically court
techies with fast networks etc.

Civic/community/social engagment is driven by where you spend your time
_between work and sleep_ (assuming you have any). It's family, old friends,
neighbors, fellow sports team members or music fans or craft companions who
aren't all from the same few companies. You can interact with all of those
people even if you live in your car, whether that car is in the Google parking
lot or elsewhere. You can _fail_ to interact with them even if you live in a
real home.

The only way your choice of sleeping arrangements might matter is if the
security folks think it's odd when you come back from elsewhere and go
straight to your car without going into the building first. That's not a
normal commuter pattern, so it might pique their interest. On the other hand,
as one of the Quora commenters said, if you just show them your company ID
they don't care any more.

~~~
potatolicious
I see your point, but I'd still venture living on campus or in dormitories is
worse.

I used to live in an apartment building Seattle that was immensely popular
with Amazonians and Microsofties. Social interaction there was _very_ limited
to high tech (to an annoying degree), but at least we ate at local places,
drank at local places, visited local grocery stores and barbers, etc.

So yeah, "insular techies" can't be fully solved by simply having people live
in regular apartments, but I'd argue dormitories or campus-living is strictly
worse.

~~~
notacoward
I guess the problem is that we define "living at" Google to mean sleeping
there. In many ways _eating there_ is more relevant. Someone who sleeps in a
car in the Google parking lot but eats elsewhere at least gets that modicum of
outside interaction. Someone who eats at Google before going to a real home
and flopping straight into bed does not.

Of course, companies like Google know this. The whole reason they provide the
meals is so that people's attention stays focused within Google instead of
elsewhere. That probably leads into a whole 'nother discussion of whether
meals at work are really a good thing, but I'll just leave it there for now.

------
awjr
I did this on a 6 month contract as an experiment over a mild winter in the UK
in 2011. You can pretty much do this anywhere.

Couple of tricks: 1) Get a small camper/van that can park in one car parking
space with a diesel heating system. Kitchen is irrelevant. Bed/toilet/heating
system/space to sit and type/space for clothes to hang.

2) You need a toilet but usually you time your bowel movements to only need to
use it as a urinal unless you decide to go for a crazy hot curry

3) Find a local sports centre (not gym) with a sauna. Go for a swim in the
morning, spend the evenings working out or hanging out in the sauna (you get
regulars).

4) Bank of leisure batteries in your van (to drive the heater and give your
laptop power), can give you the power to live for weeks inside your van.
Luckily I went home every weekend to recharge them. If you can't get a power
source connection (friend etc.), then consider covering your roof in solar
power cells.

5) Unlimited mobile data plan that allows tethering.

6) Clubs/Meetup/Work social groups (CRITICAL).

7) No it's not 'hot' to invite a girl back to your van in a car park.

8) Scout the areas and work out where to sleep. Sleeping on a road can mean
you get traffic buzzing you from 5am. Go find a really quiet road or lay by.
Use retail park car parks if they don't have security patrols. Remember you're
parking up at work during the day. You only really turn up after the gym at
8pm or later and leave by 8am.

9) It's quite liberating. Want to wake up next to the sea and go for a
swim....yes you can.

10) Be proud of what you are doing. The limited space you have frees you from
clutter.

11) Do crazy things...like continue to run an ebay magic card sales business
inside the van!

12) Cold is your enemy. When winter hit hard, the issue was the driver cabin
and the rear doors. Two cheap double duvets insulated the rest of the van from
those cold spaces.

13) Go stealth mode if possible. No windows on the sides of the van, roof
windows are perfect. You want somebody to think there is no one in the van.

14) Layout can be interesting, but I prefer bed at back on a removable
platform, storage under neath, rear door 'insulated'. Sliding door opens into
a space with bench and toilet under bench. Blackout curtains between driver
cabin and rear area. Lockable from the inside.

15) Always go for a van you can stand in.

16) Check your drinking laws. In the UK sleeping in the back of a van is legal
if drunk.

17) Going to repeat this. Scout out your area and work out great un-disturb-
able places. A quiet car park in the centre of town may have a lot of
pedestrians walking through it at 2am going back from clubs. Go for those
parks/spaces that are not natural through routes. You will get into a routine.
You'll end up parking in the same place on the same night of the week.

18) Be social. Get out of that space. Do not go back to the van and lock
yourself away and watch stuff on the internet. GET OUT.

[edit] This was the van: [https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-
xaf1/v/t1....](https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-
xaf1/v/t1.0-9/306924_10150370608981281_637005_n.jpg?oh=9ae9541b5afe125be1e09fea80599cb8&oe=54893FE7&__gda__=1419678336_1a6368d26d18e73834a30006f5138c8e)

Slightly on the big side, but it worked at the time. If I was going to do it
again, I would custom build. Height for me being 6'2 is always going to be an
issue. I would consider a normal height van but bending over all the time is
not my thing.

~~~
golgappi
This seems tempting. But i can't live without gaming on a big screen :(

~~~
awjr
I was heavily into SWOTOR at the time and that was a driver for an increase in
my battery capacity, but honestly, the place I worked at was pretty chilled
and I could sit and play after work if I wanted (on my laptop).

There is nothing to prevent you having one wall of your van being a white
projector screen. You just need to consider how you power such an environment
for a night of gaming.

TBH it's not that unfeasible to have a projector mounted on the roof and a
pull down screen.....one worth thinking about.

------
raverbashing
This is not "a perk". This is homelessness plain and simple.

(Tech) People glamorize campus life but at least in campus you have a bed,
clubs, parties and other interaction opportunities, etc

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
In most other jobs, if you could not afford to make rent, or had other
commitments that drained your income, you could not find the resources at work
to even attempt this.

If they are lenient on this sort of thing, you could use this for other
purposes. You decide to move and your leases don't quite line up, saving money
to buy a house (as mentioned in the article)...

I would certainly classify this as a perk.

~~~
krschultz
Really?

I worked at McDonalds in high school. One of the other guys there (in my
estimation, one of the smartest) was homeless. He was about 17 years old, and
had run away from home. We were in NJ, I believe he was from the Carolinas. He
used to work FT at McDonalds, and then I would spend most of the rest of his
waking time at the library or a QuikCheck in town. I wasn't totally clear on
where he slept, but I believe he mixed sleeping outside with crashing on
another guys couch that worked at McDonalds. I don't know what happened to
him, but I hoped things worked out. I moved on to another job and never talked
to him again.

I would have had absolutely no idea he was homeless before he told me. It was
an eye opening experience for me.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
OK, I will be more specific: In most jobs, you cannot choose to be homeless
and still live in middle class conditions.

------
lablurker
I did this for a couple of months at my university, having failed to secure
accommodation at the end of a rental period. Slept variously in an electron
microscopy suite, a darkroom, and a rarely used bathroom. Wasn't too bad,
though there was the omnipresent fear of campus security twigging on. As this
was in London I saved quite a decent wad of cash in rent. Wouldn't do it again
though unless I was particularly desperate.

~~~
kabdib
A friend and ex-cow-orker of mine had a nice little space in the ceiling tiles
in one of CMU's machine rooms (probably late 1970s). He had a bed, a microwave
oven and some other creature comforts.

------
cafard
I knew a programmer who did this in Baltimore, a much less expensive city,
particularly then. In his case, it was probably the domestic uncertainty
brought on by late-onset adolescence--he was forty or so and divorced. Even
allowing for the expenses that brought on, he could probably have afforded to
rent a rowhouse in a safe-enough neighborhood, but I think he couldn't quite
focus on that.

------
BGyss
I can speak to this happening at a major visual effects facility in the Los
Angeles area. There was one developer (a guy who developed Academy Award-
winning volumetric rendering software) who was able to live out of a mobile
home parked in the main parking lot. This was around '99-01 or so - they're no
longer in the same location and I'm sure the current ownership would throw a
fit if someone tried it today. You could pretty much get away with anything at
Venice Beach in the 90s.

------
skynetv2
If you have to resort to living in your car while working at Google or other
such big companies, there is something wrong with the way one looks at life.
Unless there are exigent circumstances, like you were bankrupt for whatever
reason, or you are a fresh grad with nothing but time on your hands, this is
not ok.

work is not everything. there is life to be had

~~~
avz
I think one should spend their time on whatever one is passionate about. It
seems some people have jobs which are so interesting and engaging that they
are essentially aligned with their passions. I think it's great!

------
fishnchips
Perhaps behemoths like Google could literally build company towns in the
vicinity of their campuses with heavily subsidised rents. I'm not even being
sarcastic here - I live in Ireland and until recently worked as an engineer
for Google in Dublin. With 3k+ folks there - most young and single and not
much into commuting - a few square miles around the campus is just a 'Google
ghetto'. Some folks even happily connect to the office wifi using various
contraptions. The only difference between that and a 'company town' is higher
rents. I'd imagine that would work even better in SV where rents are
outrageous as compared to Dublin, IE.

With regards to the original article I can testify to knowing a guy on the MTV
campus who did that for a little while. To be fair his manager eventually got
involved and told him to find either an apartment or a new job.

~~~
geebee
They want to, but mountain view and other peninsula districts have generally
resisted new housing at the scale needed to accommodate the tech workforce.

[http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2012-12-18/corporat...](http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2012-12-18/corporate-
campus-embraces-urbanization)

~~~
fishnchips
One reason NOT to do it would be that it puts workers with families or those
who need something different than a 'standard corporate housing unit' at a
disadvantage - if single professionals can get subsidised housing it
effectively increases their take-home salary.

------
ryanpardieck
The author William Vollmann comically wrote about doing this at a San
Francisco (I think?) software shop when he was young and writing his first
novel. Living off of vendor-machine candy bars, dodging the janitor, etc ...
Probably my favorite parts were how he confessed having no bloody clue what he
was doing when faced with the thing he was being paid to do: write code ...

As with any fiction author, the details are probably exaggerated, and he
particularly tends toward a certain kind of luxuriant self-deprecation, so,
pinch of salt and all ...

I believe the dueling meta-narrators of his first book, You Bright and Risen
Angels, were also programmers, or something like that. It's been a long time
since I read it, but I remember Electric Emily's origin story and the parts
where the programmer-narrators fucked with the "source code" of the narrative
being my favorite parts.

------
skizm
I guess I'm wondering if Google actually cares. Seems like if they think it
will help employee productivity to let them hangout at work 24/7 then seems
like a win for everyone. Maybe they formalize it and set up a few bunk beds
with lockers or something. Doesn't seem out of the question.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I guess they are officially disapproving but turn a blind eye as long as it's
not a common occurence. _Unofficially_ letting someone live at work every now
and then is helpful for everyone, but if they tried to formalize it, then a
lot more people would like to save on rent like that and all the benefits for
the company could quickly disappear.

~~~
UrMomReadsHN
Not to mention legal issues, liability, zoning, and insurance and all of that
stuff.

------
ck2
Heh I came up with this idea at another large company decades ago in another
city.

Unfortunately they were in no way tolerant of it and when security eventually
caught on they reported me to my manager and that was the end of that.

Google sounds far more laid back but I suspect if too many people do it, the
loophole will come to an end.

------
api_or_ipa
Honestly, not that surprised. I basically live at my co-working space.
Showers, lots of comfy desks, couches and bean bag chairs, well equipped
kitchen (gotta buy your ingredients though), well heated, even at night.

Apparently someone lived there for a couple months before someone found out.

------
mithras
maybe change the link to the quora thread?

The article adds literally nothing.

[http://www.quora.com/Which-Googler-holds-the-record-for-
livi...](http://www.quora.com/Which-Googler-holds-the-record-for-living-at-
Google-HQ)

~~~
Systemic33
In any normal case i'd agree, but Quora is just a straight out terrible place
to share stuff because it's essentially a paywall. (paying with money or a
registration doesn't really make a difference for this situation).

~~~
tehwebguy
Woah it seems that it no longer requires a registration to see all of the
answers. Not sure when this changed.

~~~
roywiggins
I think it changed when Google started enforcing that sites can't present
different content to Googlebot (to show up in results) then live users (to try
and make them register once they click through).

------
luckydude
I did this for a while when I was working at Sun but it wasn't to avoid rent
(I paid rent) it was to avoid my commute. When I was in full on work mode I
viewed the commute as too much of a time drain (I lived in San Francisco, Sun
was in Mountain View, 30 minutes without traffic, closer to an hour with. Each
way. Blech.)

I had two VW vans parked next to each other, one was set up as a "bedroom",
the other was set up as the "living room" and was also my daily driver. It
worked pretty well if you don't count social life (I didn't have one).

------
oftenwrong
I lived in an office for a few months once. I did not have a car, so I was
actually staying inside. It was not worth the savings. Especially since the
rent in that city was _far_ lower than in the places discussed in the article.
No bed. Worrying about security (even though I made friends with the main
night-shift guard). Worrying about people finding out. Worrying about people
finding my caches of possessions. Etcetera. Not worth the stress.

------
tsuyoshi
As an executive at a nonprofit, I was renting an apartment several blocks from
my office. The apartment building was purchased by a developer who proceeded
to convert them to condos. I was offered some money (I think $1500 or so) to
end my lease early. I was planning on leaving the country in a few months
anyway, so I took the money, and just moved all my belongings into my office.

I stored my clothes in an otherwise-unused filing cabinet, took showers at a
gym a few blocks away, and slept on the floor, with just a blanket and pillow.
The biggest problem was laundry; the nearest laundromat was pretty far away
and I didn't have a car. I ended up strapping a sack full of clothes to the
back of my bicycle and riding a couple miles to the laundromat every weekend.

I had a private room with a door that closed, but everyone at the office knew
what I was doing. The only conceit was that I claimed that it was only
temporary until I could find the right place to move into; in reality I found
it so convenient and cheap that I stayed for over a year (until I did, in
fact, leave the country). One Friday night, I even had a friend stay over; he
slept on a couch in someone else's room.

Our organization rented a suite in a larger building, and every morning when I
woke up and went to the restroom, I saw other people seemingly doing the same
thing. One guy even went to the restroom every morning in a bathrobe. From
about 6-7AM it reminded me a truck stop restroom, with people brushing their
teeth and giving themselves sponge-baths at the sink. There are zoning laws
that prohibit people from sleeping in offices, but I think the property
manager didn't really care as long as everyone was reasonably discreet.

There were a few significant disadvantages. First, there was no kitchen. I had
an electric kettle that I used to cook ramen, which I would add eggs and
canned meat and vegatables to, but that was about it, except for eating out.
There were plenty of nice restaurants nearby, and I had plenty of extra money
from not paying rent, so it was not a huge problem.

Second, personal mail. The US Postal Service has a policy of not forwarding
mail, addressed to an individual at a commercial address, to a residential
address. This meant that when I forwarded my mail from my apartment to my
office, I couldn't later forward my mail from my office to somewhere else.

Third, the gym was not open on holidays. On Thanksgiving and Christmas, I went
to my parents' house anyway, so I just took a shower there. But for other
holidays like Labor Day and Independence Day, I had to do without a shower.

I would do it again. Actually, I would even consider just renting an office
instead of an apartment to live in. Generally speaking, office space is
cheaper, easier to rent, and more centrally located than housing. These days
though, I'm married, and my wife would not be so enthusiastic.

~~~
MrMember
>Second, personal mail. The US Postal Service has a policy of not forwarding
mail, addressed to an individual at a commercial address, to a residential
address. This meant that when I forwarded my mail from my apartment to my
office, I couldn't later forward my mail from my office to somewhere else.

You could get around this by renting a PO box for the duration of your 'stay'
at your office.

------
dreamweapon
Must be kind of hard to bring a date home to... a car in some corporate
parking lot, with the windows blacked out.

But I guess for Googlers, that's not such a high priority.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Rent a room in a nice hotel for a night and generally aim for dates that will
appreciate the pragmatic approach to spending living in a van demonstrates :).

~~~
paulhauggis
If you are a Google engineer, you can afford to rent an apartment. Living out
of your car/van making that kind of money is silly.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The original comments suggested that those Googlers were saving money to buy
things like a house, etc. It's a very pragmatic attitude from my POV. Earning
a lot of money only to spend most of it on housing anyway seems kind of
defeating the whole purpose of earning a lot of money.

------
ellysetaylor21
Yes, highly paid employees do deliberately go homeless in the Bay Area. This
isn't unique to Google. If you own the right vehicle, sleep in it.

~~~
mtbcoder
I wouldn't be surprised if there were ordinances in place to
discourage/prohibit that though.

~~~
poopsintub
It seems like every Wal-Mart has a sign now for this. I imagine their big
empty parking lots might have received decent use a few years back.

~~~
maxerickson
_While we do not offer electrical service or accommodations typically
necessary for RV customers, Walmart values RV travelers and considers them
among our best customers. Consequently, we do permit RV parking on our store
parking lots as we are able. Permission to park is extended by individual
store managers, based on availability of parking space and local laws. Please
contact management in each store to ensure accommodations before parking your
RV_

from: [http://corporate.walmart.com/frequently-asked-
questions](http://corporate.walmart.com/frequently-asked-questions)

------
joeguilmette
I currently live in a van. It's a 1996 Plymouth Voyager. The back is converted
into a bed with storage. I absolutely love it.

Currently in bed in Brooklyn!

------
sounds
It sounds like Google will be making some rapid changes to their security
policy.

Part of me feels bad for the guys who just got ratted out. Homelessness is a
pretty disorienting thing.

Part of me feels like this is just another way of saying that there's a bay
area housing shortage...

~~~
johan_larson
I doubt they'll do anything. Google management seems to be pretty leery of
rocking the boat where the perks are concerned. As long as living on campus is
a rare thing -- and it _is_ \-- they'll turn a blind eye.

It's well known that Google's free meals policy is widely abused. At the end
of day, you'll see lots of people getting on the bus home with their dinners,
sure. But it gets a lot worse; some people bring home enough food to feed
their whole families over the weekends. Management knows about it, and doesn't
do anything.

~~~
sounds
Inevitably if you're generous with enough people, someone will try to take
advantage of you. At what point do you stop being generous?

It's nice to know that management at Google isn't blind to what's going on. I
suppose they'll find a clever way to curtail anything that gets really out of
hand.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, if they find that someone abuses company perks, they can just take them
to a meeting and politely explain them that they can either play fair or say
goodbye to their job. It's not neccessary to throw the baby out with the
bathwater.

------
piratebroadcast
I lived in a coworking center for about 6 months. Slept on a couch in a dark
room, got up at 7am and showered before anyone else got there. Wasn't too bad,
really.

------
panzerboy
Why secretly? I mean, Google should seriously offer this as a perk. In this
way, you have your employees 100% of their time on campus.

------
Zigurd
Supposedly some pilots live in RVs at LAX.

------
codingbinary
Shouldn't the pay be good at Google? Or what are the rents over there? (Sorry,
German here)

------
quicksilver03
And at the same time Yahoo doesn't want employees working from home...

------
jesstucker
I remember reading a similar article about yahoo employees some years ago.

------
jacquesm
Not so secret any more.

------
lakeeffect
They offer everything else, why not offer barracks?

------
guard-of-terra
Moscow University main building has cafes, shops, dormitories and even a
barber's shop. I've heard rumors that some students spent months without
leaving the building.

On campus this should be even easier, come on.

~~~
twistedpair
At MIT, it's a badge of honor how many days you spend during finals living in
the library, studying all day, every day. Students literally move into the
library and live there. There was even a student that secretly built his own
dorm room in the steam tunnels. It's on the unofficial tour as the "Tomb of
the Unknown Tool".

~~~
jessaustin
Having worked in Cambridge steam tunnels during the winter, I suspect the
"room" wasn't actually all that close to any steam pipes, because otherwise
they would have found his (her?) corpse.

------
bitJericho
"It's not clear what the Googlers like Discoe did when they had to go to the
bathroom at night."

Can #1 and can #2?

