131–140 of 373 posts
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Don't give them any ideas, or things will go the other way: Want an external monitor? That'll be $50/month. Access to the supply closet is $10/month.
I would be happy to pay out of my own pocket for a better hardware than the POS I am forced to work with. All the machines are connected with 100Mbit, and we only just switched from Windows XP...
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What about cubicles?
I would honestly rather change careers than work in a cubicle. They give me a feeling of deep existential dread. Do some actually prefer them?
If they can call cubicles "farms" (echoing sharecropping, drudgery), then we could just as easily and aptly call open office layouts "sardine cans" with all the earned baggage that comes with.
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What about cubicles?
I would honestly rather change careers than work in a cubicle. They give me a feeling of deep existential dread. Do some actually prefer them?
What a stupid clickbait headline. Obviously it's not dead. Research that shows it's terrible has been around longer than open offices have been popular. If management cared about the evidence they wouldn't have done it in the first place. Let me fix their conclusion with the cheapest, most employee friendly way to solve the problem. > Luckily, the solution is fairly simple— allow everyone to work remote.
If you want me to work remote full time, I need a raise to cover the cost of getting an apartment or house equivalent to my own but with an additional room to turn into a dedicated private office. Otherwise, I'll take an appropriately designed office.
That said, whether it's worth it depends on how you value your time. Not sitting in traffic an hour each day ~20 days/month, if you value your time at even $30/hr (entry-level contractor in midwest, say), it should cover the cost of the extra space.
If not, well, you also have to factor in being able to use your own kitchen and especially bathroom. Ever since working from home for the previous few years, it's so awkward now having to go shit and piss in grungy toilets a foot away from my coworkers and managers. Would definitely pay some big money to avoid that.
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I've brought my own monitor into work before. Was about to do it with my current role until they finally got me a decent one.
I have my own personal U3415W for my Visual Studio programming. I have brought it up in interviews, if any issues to my bringing it in. (At home I have the Acer X34 Predator. The Dell came first; when I realised how good it was for programming I knew I needed one at work.)
Real 4K monitors are effectively the same price and have a lot more pixels. And you can get them in 27", 32" and 34" sizes.
Sure, I understand why the manufacturers want these odd kinds of resolutions so that they can take defective panels and carve them up differently.
However, why would the users want these instead of more resolution? What am I missing?
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I've happily brought equipment purchased at my own expense to work. It amortizes down to very little over the lifetime of the hardware (even a $1600 workstation laptop amounts to roughly $0.25 per hour over 3 years at 40 hours a week) and makes work so much more efficient (always a plus at performance review time) and just plain more pleasant.
> I've happily brought equipment purchased at my own expense to work. How do you make sure that everyone understand that that equipment belongs to you and not The Company? I'm currently resorting to printed labels of my name or initials, but I can't help but consider that that's a tissue defence.
For BYOD laptops/PCs, keep the receipt (which will usually include the serial number) and store a photocopy at the office in a place where you can easily keep track of it. If it's something shipped direct from the manufacturer, keep the box with the shipping label on it as additional evidence. You can also let your manager know that you have equipment that you personally own on-premises and give him an itemized list with serial numbers. For small items like mice, keyboards, etc., they're generally not worth enough to lose sleep over if lost.
Beyond that, the general rule of never bringing anything to work you're not willing to lose applies. Just like any other kind of BYOD device, your employer is not going to reimburse you if your personal hardware is stolen or accidentally damaged, so take appropriate precautions.
Lastly, make sure that you secure _and_ backup data on your hardware at least as well as your IT team does for company issued hardware. Your manager is not going to be at all sympathetic if you lose work due to a hardware failure on your BYOD device or due to malware.
> No designated desks I hate hot desking. I know it's very subjective but when I come into an office for eight hours a day, five days a week, I like to personalise my workspace. I don't drive, I take public transport and walk, and hate carting my laptop and charger around with me. I want my own space, with meeting rooms and collaboration spaces for when I need those things. I may be alone in saying so, but I'd happil…
But a private office is very very expensive. People might think I'm trolling but I honestly think that until "engineer > real estate" there will be no real progress. All this talk about "open space", "hot desks", etc. is because costs of private office space just does not make sense to any CTO or CEO.
> No designated desks I hate hot desking. I know it's very subjective but when I come into an office for eight hours a day, five days a week, I like to personalise my workspace. I don't drive, I take public transport and walk, and hate carting my laptop and charger around with me. I want my own space, with meeting rooms and collaboration spaces for when I need those things. I may be alone in saying so, but I'd happil…
What if they gave everybody a desk with wheels? Then you can wheel your desk with your tools wherever you want to work that day.
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I've happily brought equipment purchased at my own expense to work. It amortizes down to very little over the lifetime of the hardware (even a $1600 workstation laptop amounts to roughly $0.25 per hour over 3 years at 40 hours a week) and makes work so much more efficient (always a plus at performance review time) and just plain more pleasant.
> I've happily brought equipment purchased at my own expense to work. How do you make sure that everyone understand that that equipment belongs to you and not The Company? I'm currently resorting to printed labels of my name or initials, but I can't help but consider that that's a tissue defence.
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This is why cubicles are a thing though right? Obviously it doesn't have as much in terms of sound dampening effects but the cost nearly isn't as high and there's a psychological effect Though... cubicles do make it so that you're working in a "pit". So people... start wanting to remove the barriers..... and we end up in open office plans again. Hard to figure out how a smaller company can manage this (since private…
Back in days, each engineer in Microsoft had a private office. Oracle too... Good days...