[mikestew]

Surely I can't be the only HN reader that thought, "I can't remember the last time I touched a stapler." Frankly, I think the headline writer threw staplers in there just for the sizzle. If I might so boldly suggest reading TFA, staplers are just one example of other things that made a lot of sense. Yoga classes on a Friday afternoon when a lot of folks WFH (or not at all on a Friday afternoon)? Handing out multi-core full-blown laptops to non-technical roles that could just as easily get by with a Chromebook? Buses running with one passenger? Get a company Google's size, and that stuff starts to add up to real money.

So, yeah, Google is swirling the toilet because someone has to walk to the receptionist's desk once a year to get a piece of tape or borrow a stapler. I'd be more worried about a company that just hands out shit that no one uses, without ever once asking if anyone actually uses it.

[yamtaddle]

> Handing out multi-core full-blown laptops to non-technical roles that could just as easily get by with a Chromebook?

I have, over and over, seen companies burn the cost of a decent laptop at a rate between one per quarter and one per month per employee because they try to cheap out and the shitware they force on their workers runs like crap on anything that's not fairly powerful, wasting hours per week per employee.

Whole divisions at some larger companies lose incredible amounts of money every year over reluctance to give the mere worker-drones nice hardware.

[seanmcdirmid]

My non-technical wife is always pegging her corporate computer running Adobe Creative Suite. I joke with her that she can use it as a heater in winter. Me? The programmer...I barely ever hear my fan.

[phist_mcgee]

I hope she gives the computer a kiss first.

[seanmcdirmid]

Hopefully my comment was understood as pegging all her laptop CPU cores at 100%.

[midoridensha]

It sounds like the problem isn't the hardware, it's the shitty, bloated software.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I think this kinda misses the point. Any one, or even most, of these cutbacks can be seen as reasonable - the details are almost unimportant. It's just that whenever (and I mean like 100% of the time) I've seen this focus on cost cutting minutia (and by "focus" I don't mean there was a board meeting about it, just that it had reason to bubble up to a widely-distributed memo), it's the beginning of the end for the company: they've jumped the shark from the "innovation" stage of a company to purely the "financialization" stage.

Now, one could argue that Google has been going down this path for a while, but I still think it's a sad sign. What I think is even sadder is that I haven't seen anything come out of Google in the past couple years that clearly and clear-headedly addresses some of their well-known cultural problems (that are often discussed on HN). For example, if Google senior management said they were totally overhauling their "promotion-oriented development" style, or that they were finally deciding on a better way to handle "Killed by Google" products so that customers aren't scared to try their new stuff in the first place, or that they were becoming more forthcoming in their roadmap visibility, I'd be thrilled. But instead we get the oldest-of-old-school "cost cutting will continue until morale improves" MBA spiel.

[taeric]

Not wrong, but the same question goes to the internal memo. Why mention staples? Even if you are ramping down on purchasing them, you just stop buying them. You don't mention it.

And if you are worried about google handing out things nobody uses.... I have really bad news for you. :D

[mikestew]

And if you are worried about google handing out things nobody uses.... I have really bad news for you.

As one who used to have enough Microsoft-branded shirts to wear one to work everyday for a month and not repeat myself, I'm under no illusion that a large corporation doesn't hand out a lot of useless junk. :-)

[rmason]

My first thought when I saw this story was Milton in the movie Office Space. Google is coming for your stapler!

[Gigachad]

I’ve seen employees who treat MacBooks like they were $5 note books which they repeatedly drop or spill drinks on and say “oh well, the company will get me another one”

[rwmj]

How do you attach multiple pages together? I use a stapler about as often as I use a printer, which is to say about once every month or two.

[mikestew]

Fine, you get a stapler. In five years at my current company, I don't know that I've even (literally) touched the one I was given. You could have mine, assuming I could even find it. It's probably right next to that tape dispenser and the stack of sticky notes that are still in the cellophane.

[marcosdumay]

What share of your salary does a stapler cost?

When working on the office, it makes perfect sense to buy plenty of them so everybody would have one nearby (at the same cabinet as the perforator, folders, printer paper, extra sticky notes, pens, and whatever else).

When working at home, I'd guess it's used exactly never, so yes, it doesn't make sense to buy them.

Does everybody at Google work at home?

Anyway, the stapler is the most interesting part of the headline. How much did it cost to decide to stop buying them? Does it save enough to pay the decision-making?

[ghaff]

Or a paper clip or a binder clip. But, yeah, although I do print more than one a month is not something I do on anything like a daily basis.

[strus]

I don't remember the last time I've printed anything at work, apart from my notice.

[yashg]

When I joined a new job about 7 years back I was given a brand new stapler, a roll of tape and other office supplies on the joining day. When I left 4 years later I hadn't even finished one cartridge of stapler lins. Tape was unused as well. A company of Google's size must be wasting a non trivial amount of money on things nobody uses as frequently anymore.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

At my company there is a room full of office supplies - called the supply room. If you need something you go and get it there. It has all the usual things. If they run low, they buy more. If things aren't running low, they don't buy more. As a new employee you are told where this is and you get what you need when you need it. If you don't need it, you don't take it. Seems like a pretty sensible system.

[dwaltrip]

The cost of those items is incredible trivial compared to the salary they paid you.

There is a sort of quirk here that causes people to focus on things like this, even if they are overwhelmingly insubstantial.

Wasting physical objects feels bad. Something about the physicality of it. Whereas salary is more abstract and intangible - we experience it as numbers changing on a screen. Important numbers that greatly affect our lives, but the visceral impact of this is more removed.

Reducing waste is good, obviously. But in a cost-saving effort, basic office supplies are a completely useless thing to focus on.

[midoridensha]

I can get a stapler and a tape dispenser (a really nice heavy one) for 110 yen each at my local Daiso. That's USD$0.83 each, at retail prices.

[anotheruser13]

It's $1.50-2.00 each for those items at Daiso in the US.

[notatoad]

let's assume they're assigning a stapler to every single employee, at $15 per stapler, and a stapler has an average life of 10 years. at their current 190k headcount, they're spending ~275k per year on staplers.

that definitely seems like the sort of expense a company should review from time to time. assume that tape is a similar expense, the person who changes the policy from "we give you a stapler and tape whether you want it or not" to "if you want a stapler just come and get one" has saved the company 2-3x their annual salary. i'm sure there's plenty of staff at google who are less effective than that.

[joshuamorton]

275k/year is less than one FTE, even given your favorable estimates of a really fancy stapler given to everyone when they walk in the door. (Bulk mediocre staplers are like $3, but a 10 year estimate is high, so we'll take it).

Presume an employee proposes this change. Some additional people have to approve and implement this new policy, updating documentation training and budgets and adding it to some inventory system and now you've spent in total, weeks or months of collective effort to maybe come out ahead but maybe just break even.