Figure 2.1 shows a typical Google job-ad. It advertises a variety of jobs such as software engineer, designer, business strategist, marketing, sales support, policy and privacy manager, etc. in Googleplex, the company headquartered in Mountain View, California. Google in this ad lauds itself for proving worker “[o]nsite benefits like fitness and wellness centers”, “a group cooking class”, “coffee tasting”, riding “a gBike to one of our cafés”. The business philosophy is that “taking care of Googlers is good for us all”. The point is that these benefits that promise fun, relaxation and entertainment are “onsite”: They keep Googlers at the Google premises and turn leisure time into labour time. When workers attend yoga and fitness classes, cooking classes, cafés etc. at the workplace, then the reproduction of their labour-power takes place at the workplace so that there is no clear spatial and temporal demarcation of labour time and relaxation. The three images in the job ad symbolise the blurring of space and time at Google: coding, chatting with colleagues in a café, and relaxation in a garden are presented as integral parts of work at Google. Googlers do not leave the workplace for leisure time but stay at the Google workplace. The blurring boundaries between workspace and playground and between work time and leisure time result in an increase of unpaid labour-time. For Google workers, lifetime becomes Google time and value-creating labour-time. What Google means by saying that “taking care of Googlers is good for us all” is that providing a playful work environment is a method of exploitation by absolute surplusvalue production that is good for Google’s profits.
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Theorists