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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

#371

Post by karaterobot »

screwturner68 wrote: post #320
kjkjadksj wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See if I lived five minutes walk from work, I’d want to be in the office even less. Why sit there between meetings if I am five minutes from my home? Why bag a lunch when my kitchen is down the block? I’d probably show face at the obligate meetings then just go home for the day if I could.

I lived 5 minutes away from work for a few years, I could see my office window from my apartment window. Going into the office wasn't a big deal, it was just a 5 minute walk. I really didn't care about going home for lunch because we had a cafeteria and I'd eat lunch or go get snack with my friends and there were probably 20 restaurants within a 10 minute walk so I had better options than a PB&J. It was much more of…

When I lived close to my office, I found the office became an extension of my home. I don't mean that I took my work home with me, or worked longer hours. I mean that I found myself crossing the street and going into my office on weekends, to work on personal projects, or sometimes just to watch movies or play video games on my laptop. The office started to function like a second living room. It was weird and did not last long, but it was sort of nice. Occasionally someone would be there, working on the weekend, and they all thought I was a really dedicated employee because I was always there too.

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

#372

Post by eloisant »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #278

At some point many years in the future, more lives will have been saved due to WFH trends (pollution, accidents, etc.) than were taken prematurely by COVID. Fascinating silver lining.

COVID didn't create WFH, it merely accelerated its spread.

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

#373

Post by johnaspden »

Oh God, yes! I'm old enough to remember when people thought it was important to have quiet and privacy to think.

I used to love my job. All my life I've loved programming, and I used to love being able to solve other people's problems for them by doing the thing I love.

And I used to love being surrounded by other people who were interested in the same things as me, all collaborating on a project to make something useful.

The open-plan curse killed it for me. For years I've done as little paid work as I can get away with because I hate trying to think in an open-plan horror so much. It's like having my brain in a blender.

I still program, and think, a lot, but I only do it for other people when I need the money.

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

#374

Post by bko »

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…

Why are you pretending this analyst is the same or even should have the same affordances as the CEO? You might be shocked to find out the CEO even gets paid more!

Most people come up through the ranks and you can bet the CEO was one time an analyst with a demanding boss. After decades of work he made it to boss. You see this everywhere where you move up the ranks and things get better. That's the apprentice deal for all of history.

Part of his compensation is relative flexibility although I'm almost certain c suite often work a lot more and have higher demands than junior employees.

If you're very valuable to the firm (e.g. CEO) you can get away with more stuff. It's the natural order of things. I don't really see any other way around it apart from a dehumanizing process to treat everyone exactly the same regardless of capabilities

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

#375

Post by steveBK123 »

thegaulofthem wrote: post #351
FredPret wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything is a class dynamic. “Analyst at GS hanging out in the Hamptons” doesn’t scream working class. The CEO and analyst are both upper class, just different levels of power and seniority. That CEO is just a power-tripping asshole.

They may both be richer than you (they’re certainly richer than I), but they’re definitely not of the same class.

Yes, even well paid worker bees are still worker bees.

The queen bee who owns a share of the hive, decides how many bees to hire/fire, where they work, when they work, what % of the honey to share with the worker bees, etc.. now thats a different class.

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

#376

Post by ElFitz »

FredPret wrote: post #318
flandish wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This example is a stark reminder that the complaints are most often not about details but about class . The CEO was upset others were allowed to perform as if they were of the same class. It’s always class when one boils it down, imho.

Not everything is a class dynamic. “Analyst at GS hanging out in the Hamptons” doesn’t scream working class. The CEO and analyst are both upper class, just different levels of power and seniority. That CEO is just a power-tripping asshole.

A 150k-250k analyst isn’t upper class. Nor is it really middle-class (although that would depend on the cost of living).

It’s that weird in-between, where one still needs to earn a living and make even more money for someone else.

A 25M / year CEO is far past "earning a living" and really only works because they want to.

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

#377

Post by pessimizer »

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…

> The push for open-plan spaces was motivated by cost-cutting.

I think that it was just as motivated by the way you can walk a potential investor (or a worried current investor) through them, and make grand gestures with your arm indicating all of the busy beavers working on making things happen. Then the group can be walked from rockstar ninja to rockstar ninja, looking over shoulders at unintelligible screens, while having smoke blown up their asses.

An open-plan office is primarily a theatrically staged office. 20 years ago I was paid as a temp to sit in one and type random numbers into a noisy electric printing calculator while a random spreadsheet was on the screen. After a few hours, a small group walked in, led by a man who was obviously giving a presentation, with wide gestures of his arms. They were in the room for two or three minutes before being led out. Twenty minutes after they left the room, we were mostly dismissed, except for the younger guys (like me) who were offered a few hours more work moving boxes.

The end of free money might make open plan offices more popular among a certain type of company.

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

#378

Post by lampshades »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #212
ibejoeb wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people with families, or even just DINKS, would opt for private offices. Unless you've got a giant home with private space, working at the same time and while your home life goes on around you is pretty bad.

My home isn't huge, just a raised ranch. But I was able to build a soundproofed office in a corner of my basement and it's worked like a charm.

How were you able to soundproof it? I have an office (upstairs) that I would love to soundproof so that I don't have to wear my headphones all day.

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

#379

Post by ibejoeb »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #353
ibejoeb wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people with families, or even just DINKS, would opt for private offices. Unless you've got a giant home with private space, working at the same time and while your home life goes on around you is pretty bad.

I've only got a small home. We finally turned the smallest bedroom into an office for me and the wife. It's great, and much more comfortable than commuting to an open plan noisy office. I have more desk space and nicer equipment at home.

Do you both use the office at the same time? Is it used a working office or more like a meeting room for when you need privacy?

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

#380

Post by ghaff »

steveBK123 wrote: post #294
lotsofpulp wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, also the typical career cycle in HCOL areas is you are 22 and live in a dumpy apartment with roommates but close to work. You maybe couple up with someone by 30 and get a nicer place a bit further, but still within a 20-40min transit commute. Finally you maybe decide to start a family by 40, and move out to somewhere 40-60min commute, if not further. I found this to be a depressing quality of life trajectory m…

Yup. The few that stayed in the city were funded in one way or another..

Of all the people in my grad school class who got jobs in NYC finance after graduation, I can think of maybe one couple who stayed in the city after getting married/having kids.
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