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Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

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Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#181

Post by jonhohle »

btbuildem wrote: post #131
Zetice wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all of this results in an office layout revolution that includes many individual offices opening into shared team spaces, I am 100% here for it.

It won't. The push for open-plan spaces was motivated by cost-cutting. Layouts with many closed offices would cost far more to build, and take up more square footage to host the same number of employees. At a time where savvy businesses have dropped their commercial leases / gone full remote, and the more conservative / less accepting of change ones are left holding the bag, I would not expect anyone to make big inve…

There have been many studies that have shown that decreased worker productivity and increased sick leave negate any cost savings from open floor plans. Their only benefit is that the my look cool, especially when recruiting junior employees.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90285582/everyone-hates-open-pla...

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#182

Post by bratgpttamer »

nkozyra wrote: post #28
SnowProblem wrote: post #12

What companies today give software engineers offices? Microsoft's used to be fantastic in 00s and early 10s but they also were moving to open spaces when I left so not sure the state today.

Honestly, trying to fix the problems of: 1) expensive office space and 2) people not coming into the office with 3) more _expensive_ office space is just the kind of McKinsey-level thinking we should expect.

If HOAs increase property values, maybe we can convince our overlords that an Office Workers' Association for planning these renovations will help save them from Numbers Go Down in the commercial real estate market.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#183

Post by [deleted] »

steveBK123 wrote: post #129
steveBK123 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. Sure, these guys might go into the office but they do so from their pied-a-terre / 3rd home / whatever within a 5 minute chauffeured drive. They do this while maintaining a nearby suburban/exurban estate and maybe a lake/beach/ski houses where they spend th…

My favorite story on this thread is that during the hybrid period, GS CEO threw a fit when out in the Hamptons because some analyst (fairly junior role almost at the bottom) had the balls to go introduce themselves during a workday lunch at a restaurant. He couldn't articulate a specific, valid complaint like "I was out at a client lunch and they were goofing off" or "I was on a vacation day while they were supposed…

[deleted]

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#184

Post by Cthulhu_ »

btbuildem wrote: post #131
Zetice wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all of this results in an office layout revolution that includes many individual offices opening into shared team spaces, I am 100% here for it.

It won't. The push for open-plan spaces was motivated by cost-cutting. Layouts with many closed offices would cost far more to build, and take up more square footage to host the same number of employees. At a time where savvy businesses have dropped their commercial leases / gone full remote, and the more conservative / less accepting of change ones are left holding the bag, I would not expect anyone to make big inve…

See, "shared team spaces" aren't too bad; most development work I've done has been in teams of 2 - 8 people in a SCRUM setting, for that kind of work I think small team sized office spaces are ideal.

I've also worked in a big open space where, while all five teams worked on the same product, each individual team had their own section. But for that one, you could hear the next desk block over talk about football and another block talk about what THEY're working on, which is highly distracting.

Another one was an open office across three floors with a central auditorium (that is, big open central space cutting across all floors), which in theory would be bad but they had enough noise padding and ceiling-high walls / whiteboards between the blocks to not be an issue.

Another one was one where we were asked for input; they initially wanted to make it an open space, but we convinced them to divide it up into rooms instead. They ended up being rooms with glass walls, some matt glass, but that was enough for team privacy and limited noise.

My current spot has a mostly open plan space, but they have heaps of noise padding; felted panels on walls and dividers, in between rows of desks, and desks arranged in groups of 6-8. It's manageable, although unfortunately the walkways are in between the desks so people passing by having conversations is annoying, and the meeting rooms' noise insulation is inadequate. That said, we're only there two days a week so it's manageable.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#185

Post by kjkjadksj »

layer8 wrote: post #159
downrightmike wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans have only been working in offices since the industrial revolution, before that it was nearly all WFH. WFH is our natural state.

This wasn’t true for any kind of collaborative work requiring physical presence.

Well to be fair, peasants helping eachother to raise a barn is technically working from home. This idea of commuting has only been possible with a means to move labor from one region to another versus having cottage industries ran out of the home. That came with the horsedrawn streetcar.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#186

Post by pc86 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #69
mytailorisrich wrote: post #30

People who like WFH will never want to return to the office unless perhaps the office is a 5 minute walk from home (they may be forced to, but they won't want to). For many people the time and cost savings of avoiding a daily commute cannot be offset by a nicer office. Those who are happy to return to the office in general are those who do not like WFH and prefer more contacts and a change of scenery. A nicer office…

My vaguely populist take is that the pandemic, WFH/remote and hybrid gave the mass white collar class a taste of what the C-suite has had for years.. flexibility. Sure, these guys might go into the office but they do so from their pied-a-terre / 3rd home / whatever within a 5 minute chauffeured drive. They do this while maintaining a nearby suburban/exurban estate and maybe a lake/beach/ski houses where they spend th…

I think the boiled frog is a perfect analogy. I grew up always assuming there would be a long commute. I couldn't afford to move out of my parents house for almost a year out of school in my first job (2008 making less than $30k/yr) so I spent 7 or 8 months driving an hour each way. I'm too young to remember but my dad spent the first few years of my life and several before that commuting 2 hours one way. Spending at least 30 minutes each way driving was just assumed.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#187

Post by steveBK123 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #155
steveBK123 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open floorplans are especially problematic if your team handles any mix of development & operational tasks. Wall Street tech it's pretty typical to do your own SRE/L3 and honestly even L2/L1. Everything from business user "hey how do I.." customer service questions down to "the server is on fire, alerts are coming in .. ". Open floorplans mean even if you have an agreed PagerDuty type rotation, everyone gets sucked i…

Is that a bad thing? Since we started WFH, I’ve heard a lot of stories of oncalls spending an hour on things that could have been handled in 5 seconds if the right person had gotten sucked in on the way back from coffee. “Oh, I recognize this bug from two years ago, here’s what you gotta do.” “That customer’s symptoms are impossible, ask for more details on how they’re doing suchandsuch because they must be leaving s…

Well it depends on your tradeoff decision between SLAs & Development productivity.

If you hire explicit 20% staff to do operational tasks, and also wall off a fixed rotating 5% of your dev team to assist them.. then you've made a conscious decision on resource allocation of 25%. If the other 95% of the dev team is getting interrupted every 30minutes by "questions" then your operational staff/rotation is not resulting in better runbooks, etc.

If you want better SLA and your operational staffing is not sufficient, then you should see your SLA breach, make staffing/process changes, etc.

When development just papers over these issues you end up with great operational metrics and bad development metrics, so then everyone can be even more upset at dev!

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#188

Post by yboris »

I can not return to an office -- I moved to rural Michigan where I enjoy nature and a quieter pace of life -- 100% WFH.

All these articles from media controlled by capitalists hellbent on shaming workers and insisting the problem lies with employees rather than employers at every turn. Fuck them.

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#189

Post by pipeline_peak »

goodpoint wrote: post #127
kzrdude wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating out is a net positive for me. I get better, more varied food and feel better if a professional does the cooking. It's not worth saving money on what I eat - it's so important for health.

There is nothing healthy in eating out.

Sweetgreens, Cava, Mezeh, Chipotle

Obviously don't get queso dip or soda, etc

Re: Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office

#190

Post by rabuse »

commonlisp94 wrote: post #147
mrbgty wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will the company stay in business without workers? They'll have no choice...

They have plenty of choices, including: - visa workers who have no bargaining power. - younger people who are mobile - moving offices to other places There have been a few recent posts about struggling to find jobs... every time it turns out they are only applying to online listings for remote jobs, and have high standards. That's not a situation you're likely to stand out in. I just don't see how global remote work…

The younger generation is much less willing to work under conditions they disagree with.
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