121–130 of 130 posts
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While at Skype - open offices were a thing - someone thought it was beneficial to have people testing A/V as well as video standup areas (dispersed teams) in the same areas people were trying to get work done.
And yet I wonder why Skype is still totally unusable
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> Full tin foil hat time, if remote work was the norm the entire commercial real estate sector would collapse. They just need to slightly change focus. People still need a place to work even if remote. Instead of trying to rent out that 20Ksqft building to some corporation, start renting out individual private offices within that building to people nearby who need a place to work remotely that's not their couch. I've…
Just curious, do you pay for this small office out of your pocket or does your employer subsidize it? Or are you self-employed?
But the office payment is less than what I was spending in fuel having to commute, so in that sense I'm still saving money compared to pre-pandemic commute life.
I don't think there is anything else more illogical in modern society than waking up in building A, hopping in a car and fighting traffic for an hour to get to building B just to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours (perhaps with a few minimally productive meetings here and there), then commute back to building A 8 hours later. Building B sits empty for 16 hours a day while Building A sits empty for 10 with both be…
The point is to keep local economies alive. It's not about us, it's about the guy who delivers lunch, or the girl who owns the bagel shop. However, offices are straight up abelist , if you have mobility issues it's absurdly hard to commute. Commuting isn't really needed here, if I was in a wheelchair I'd take this to court. Full tin foil hat time, if remote work was the norm the entire commercial real estate sector w…
What seems to be happening is that local economies in smaller cities are booming, because people no longer commute to the bigger city. So it's more a shift.
It is less the death of the office and more the death of work. We just haven’t come to admit that. Death of work and “cold” relationships and the retreat to home, emotional connection, nurturing, caring. Once employers know it’s more about that and less about work then we will see things turn around.
Rather than calling it the death of work, you could instead think of it as a change in the nature of our relationship to work. I am all for going into the office often, as I think complex collaborative projects need face-time to have a tight feedback cycle. But I'm also ok with it not being good or necessary for everyone.
I don't think there is anything else more illogical in modern society than waking up in building A, hopping in a car and fighting traffic for an hour to get to building B just to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours (perhaps with a few minimally productive meetings here and there), then commute back to building A 8 hours later. Building B sits empty for 16 hours a day while Building A sits empty for 10 with both be…
I have a friend what has a company with ~20 employees. During COVID they all went WFH. After 12 months or so they announced they'd stay WFH forever and closed the office. 9 months later the president and office manager got new office. They realized they were more productive together than separated, more productive at a dedicated work space than at home with all the distractions, family, kids. They were also happier t…
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It's not about us, it's about the guy who delivers lunch, or the girl who owns the bagel shop. Isn’t that just an instance of the broken window parable? There’s nothing to prevent the bagel shop locating adjacent to a residential area instead of an office park - then society sees the benefit of WFH and tasty round breads.
Correct, but where's all that trillion dollar commercial real estate going ? Cities don't have much of a reason to exist, at least not in their current form, with WFH.
Ideally, people should be able to live where they want to. If that is in a city, great, otherwise they can live elsewhere and work from home. I don't see any great benefit in forcing people to live where they do not want to be.
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I used to work in San Francisco and after buying a house on Bainbridge Island, I now work in an office around the Westlake Center. It really isn't that bad mate. After living around the world (central Europe, SE Asia), Los Angeles, the mid west, I can say that people who complain about smells and the homeless are incredibly sheltered. I find they tell on themselves when they complain about seeing homeless people when…
My solution, at that time, was to stop walking beyond the terminal exit then hailing an Uber to pick me up. That tunnel under the highway was bad. It's perfectly fair to complain whilst having empathy for people. The lack of solutions or even enforcement is a problem, and I voted with my feet to live away from it.