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Over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs

nytimes.com

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Re: Over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs

#61

Post by jonas21 »

bitwize wrote: post #22

What the hell?! Give. Developers. Offices. With. Doors. It's conceptually simple, and will probably cost less than this novelty shit in the long run.

Some people like that, some people don't.

The worst physical office environment I've ever worked in was one where I had an individual office with a door. It was an interior office with no windows, effectively a large closet, and it was pretty depressing and alienating.

Maybe you could argue that you should give all developers offices with doors and exterior windows. But the dimensions of most buildings don't make that practical.

Re: Over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs

#62

Post by wskinner »

Reading between the lines of the article, I suspect most of these things will never be put into serious use at google, nor does anyone there expect them to. These are solutions looking for problems. My money is on office work looking much as it did before the pandemic, but a smaller percentage of work hours being spent in offices. It’s hard to imagine anyone preferring to work in the way the article describes compared to either full time in office or full time remote.

Re: Over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs

#64

Post by kazen44 »

ghaff wrote: post #26
dmitrygr wrote: post #8

If the shuttle buses are to be suspended, but they still expect people to come to work, it is a recipe for disaster. When I still worked there, about 60% of my co-workers took the shuttle from San Francisco. About 90% of those who did, did not own a car. Telling them they have to come to the office or quit is equivalent to firing them. I doubt anybody is going to buy a car AND sit an hour in traffic in the morning an…

Of course, the vast majority of employees in the tech sector manage to get by without shuttle buses, free cafeterias, etc.

the sillicon valley bubble of HN is sometimes hilarious.

the concept of a company providing shuttle bus service instead of just having proper public transport to bussiness parks is very weird when one thinks about it.

Re: Over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs

#65

Post by kazen44 »

wskinner wrote: post #62

Reading between the lines of the article, I suspect most of these things will never be put into serious use at google, nor does anyone there expect them to. These are solutions looking for problems. My money is on office work looking much as it did before the pandemic, but a smaller percentage of work hours being spent in offices. It’s hard to imagine anyone preferring to work in the way the article describes compare…

most of my peers seem to want to do a mix of both office work aswell as remote work. Mainly because wfh allows for deep focus without distraction, while working from the office is far easier in terms of collaboration.

Re: Over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs

#66

Post by ghaff »

Animats wrote: post #43
jdhn wrote: post #19

Why would I want to come back into the office if I have to wear a mask?

As soon as a coronavirus vaccine gets full FDA approval (expected soon for Moderna and Pfizer), companies should require immunization for employees. Then they can stop requiring masks. Every vaccine that has ever had serious side-effect problems has shown them in the first few months.[1] The FDA requires six months of data for full approval. Those six months have passed. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns…

While that's long been common in some situations (schools, military, healthcare, certain limited international travel), it hasn't been the case generally in the past. Put such a requirement in, with appropriate medical exceptions, and expect to fire a non-trivial portion of your workforce who can't work from home and/or need to physically meet with other employees/customers/partners. Not making a judgment but just observing the reality.

Re: Over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs

#67

Post by ghaff »

kazen44 wrote: post #64
ghaff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, the vast majority of employees in the tech sector manage to get by without shuttle buses, free cafeterias, etc.

the sillicon valley bubble of HN is sometimes hilarious. the concept of a company providing shuttle bus service instead of just having proper public transport to bussiness parks is very weird when one thinks about it.

Public transit, e.g. commuter rail, works well into a city with a public transit system. It works far less well into a distributed set of suburban/ex-urban industrial parks.

I can get into our small city office with a short drive and a longish train trip. I pretty much have to drive to our suburban office.

Re: Over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs

#68

Post by dragonwriter »

akomtu wrote: post #45
fasteddie31003 wrote: post #34

I want to see what statistics management are looking at where going into an office is better than the current WFH arraignment. Tech stocks are at all time highs with the current work situation. I'm personally never working full time in an office again. I can only see an office being good for junior engineers.

Real estate prices, probably. I remember google has something like 100B in assets. If it's necessary to make employees suffer to keep the RE prices up, they will.

This kind of requires everyone else to play along, otherwise the winner is the big, real-estate heavy corporations that keep doing their core business without bringing people back on campus, and convert surplus real estate to some other profit making venture (whether they run it themselves, or spin/sell it off.) As first mover advantage would be an issue here, it would be a pretty big gamble for Google to try to signal the rest of the market on this the way you suggest.

Re: Over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs

#69

Post by dundarious »

novok wrote: post #21

Those balloon walls seems the worst possible solution. Noisy, obnoxious, slow, fragile and doesn't create any sound privacy from whatever you will be talking about.

Is the need for ad-hoc, purely visual (not auditory) privacy even a common scenario? If so, how about some curtains? In the 90s, Twin Peaks taught me that drapes can be made whisper silent, unlike an electric air pump and possibly crinkling cellophane.

Re: Over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs

#70

Post by dragonwriter »

sagivo wrote: post #39

If top tech companies want to keep attracting top talent, they will have to let people choose where they want to work from. That means being open to remote. Instead of forcing hybrid models - invest in tools and processes that make working from everywhere more productive.

> If top tech companies want to keep attracting top talent, they will have to let people choose where they want to work from.

That’s what people said right up until the last time top tech management culture turned away from remote work.

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