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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

#181

Post by closeparen »

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.

If there's one thing I've learned in the tech industry it's that no matter how much you think your work is worth, real estate is worth more.

We're not getting private offices any more than we're getting family homes. Both are understandable expectations given our nominal wages, but they are also gross misapprehensions of our place in the pecking order. You may be able to afford all the cars and iPhones and vacations in the world, but that will never hold a candle to land. Land owns you.

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

#182

Post by closeparen »

Nimitz14 wrote: post #165
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about having a private office precludes seeing coworkers. In the heady days of my long-lost youth when I still had an office, I stepped outside of it when I wanted to see my coworkers and went back inside and locked the door when I didn't.

And you were likely much less efficient because of less interaction with your more knowledgeable colleagues. You don't know what you don't know.

Efficiency is an attribute of doing the work. If you're always interacting then you're never doing the work; neither efficiency nor inefficiency can exist at all.

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

#183

Post by closeparen »

908B64B197 wrote: post #10

There's a good alternative to the open floor plans everyone is building: noise insulated "pods" with 10~12 devs and a meeting room.

In my experience meeting rooms are always fully booked months in advance by the sort of people who have meetings for a living. Rather than having a constant flow of these people in and out of the pod, leave the meeting room outside the pod.

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

#184

Post by closeparen »

losvedir wrote: post #135
okareaman wrote: post #58

> The company will encourage — but not mandate — that employees be vaccinated I wouldn't want to spend a good part of the day indoors with people who aren't vaccinated

If you're vaccinated, why not?

Decent change of picking up an asymptomatic infection and carrying it home to your children, who will remain unvaccinated for the foreseeable future.

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

#185

Post by jjav »

imgabe wrote: post #93

All of these are just half-assed, incomplete attempts to solve problems that were already solved by private offices. You don't have to worry about a sick person sitting 3 feet away from you if you have a private office. You don't need to wear a mask sitting at your desk all day if you have a private office. You don't need specialized "focus rooms" if you have private offices. You don't need specialized break-out room…

> All of these are just half-assed, incomplete attempts to solve problems that were already solved by private offices.

That's it right there. First 15+ years of my career always had private office. It's the perfect solution to everything you list and more.

The last decade has been a nightmare of wandering around the buildings trying to find somewhere to work that doesn't have all the problems you list, occasionally succeeding mostly failing. Failing means I've had to work my full workday in the evening at home, since couldn't get anything done during the day in the cursed open office. Effectively working two jobs, getting paid once.

In this respect the pandemic has been a blessing. Finally back to a private office, away from the physical office. The level of relief is life-changing.

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

#186

Post by jjav »

pram wrote: post #105
imgabe wrote: post #93

All of these are just half-assed, incomplete attempts to solve problems that were already solved by private offices. You don't have to worry about a sick person sitting 3 feet away from you if you have a private office. You don't need to wear a mask sitting at your desk all day if you have a private office. You don't need specialized "focus rooms" if you have private offices. You don't need specialized break-out room…

I’ll take a regular cubicle at this point. The thought of returning to long rows of desks crammed right next to each other is causing some real psychological dread.

It's sure is a sign of the horrors of open offices when cubicles, the original terrible workplace, is now the good old times we miss!

But, agreed. Even cubicles (with at least 5ft walls), while terrible, are 1000x better than the dreadful open office.

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

#187

Post by jjav »

imgabe wrote: post #111
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, it's not like Google couldn't afford private offices if they wanted to. Google employs in some of the most expensive real-estate in the world. It's hard and takes years to build more, larger office buildings.

They don't need to build brand new office buildings from the ground up. They can renovate existing spaces, lease new space and renovate. That could be done in 6 months, tops, if they really wanted to.

> They don't need to build brand new office buildings from the ground up.

Some (many? most?) of those buildings were private offices back in the day anyway, so definitely no new buildings needed.

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

#188

Post by jeffbee »

olliej wrote: post #152
jeffbee wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were all nostalgic for the half-height cubes of Google SF after it was all converted to no-height non-cubes, just desks on the floor (and they kept making the desks narrower, an inch at a time!).

when did that happen? while I was there I had a "wall" around two sides of my desk but was in a pod (?) of four

When I got moved from SPE-2 to -6, I went from a four-desk half-height team cube to just rows of desks in the open. That would have been 2012 I guess.

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

#189

Post by asperous »

ghaff wrote: post #66
Animats wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ob…

I doubt that high of a percentage is so paranoid or stubborn that they would quit over it. My guess is almost everyone will either get vaccinated or a medical exception, and then just complain about it in the office.
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