While Google announced grand plans to grow its Boulder presence earlier this year, the tech giant won't be welcoming new employees back to its offices anytime soon.
The company will have its employees work from home until July 2021, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The move impacts 200,000 full-time and contract workers throughout Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
Google’s work from home decision is among several in the tech industry in recent weeks as much of the U.S. has failed to stop the rampant spread of the Covid-19. Google first announced its work from home plan in early March, when it planned to have employees at home for a month.
That turned out to be optimistic. And Google, like many of tech’s largest employers, has largely had employees at home ever since. It had been anticipating opening offices in January prior to its latest reported decision.
This news comes after Google announced in February that it planned to invest more than $10 billion in U.S. offices and data centers this year, including in Boulder.
At the time, the company said it planned to invest in California, Washington, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas — 10 of the 26 states where it has a presence.
In a blog post, CEO Sundar Pichai laid out Google's potential plans for Colorado.
"In Colorado, we have the capacity to double our workforce over the next few years, in part by expanding our presence in Boulder," he wrote on Feb. 26.
Google employed about 1,300 people in Colorado at the time of the announcement, according to the Denver Business Journal, and had been growing steadily in Boulder.
The third building on its 300,000 square foot main campus at 2930 Pearl St. was expected to open this spring and was designed to house 1,500 employees, according to BizWest.
While the latest news will keep many employees at their home offices for the remainder of this year and some of next, Google is currently hiring for 35 jobs in Boulder, across engineering, sales and business strategy.
