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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

#711

Post by dahwolf »

A recent internal company poll/discussion about the design of the new office building revealed a pretty hard split: talkers and workers.

All the manager types, HR, comms...people that spent all day talking, they all want more "collaboration" rooms.

All the other types, people actually doing tasks, want more "concentration rooms".

The collaboration people don't like that. There can't be too many concentration rooms and attendance is max 2 hours per day.

It's all so pathetic. It's truly baffling how in our society that ordinarily aggressively optimizes for costs and efficiency, businesses really believe that employees should collaborate MORE.

The entire fucking problem is that there's TOO MUCH of it. Endless meetings, emails and chat with very little to show for it. How can you stand by and piss away all your money on buildings nobody wants to be at to do absolutely nothing of actual value for most of the day?

Make it make sense.

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

#712

Post by wetpaws »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #704

Give each one an office? There's little difference with WFH except the commute, which in general is not a plus. The thing is, if you only talk about the annoyances of an open office, there's no comparison possible. There's one type of office plan that i find horrible though. Cubicles: the combination of annoyances from noise and feeling isolated, without the benifits of immediate feedback and more ad hoc communicatio…

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

#713

Post by HardlyCurious »

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…

Lots of empty / underutilized offices right now. So costs should be down, which might rip the equation. Recruiting is still a challenge for top positions, an office might be a nice way to attract talent on the cheap.

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

#714

Post by HDThoreaun »

dahwolf wrote: post #711

A recent internal company poll/discussion about the design of the new office building revealed a pretty hard split: talkers and workers. All the manager types, HR, comms...people that spent all day talking, they all want more "collaboration" rooms. All the other types, people actually doing tasks, want more "concentration rooms". The collaboration people don't like that. There can't be too many concentration rooms an…

A lot of contempt for non engineers in this comment. HR, comms, and managers are also doing tasks. Collaborative tasks are just as legitimate as solo engineering ones.

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

#715

Post by hughesjj »

notfromhere wrote: post #695
wonderwonder wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! It's like Musk demanding everyone comes into the office while he is only in the office at individual companies 1 or 2 times a week. CEO of Tesla, a publicly traded company spends all his time in the privately held offices of Twitter. Can other of his company employees work multiple jobs including their own personal company? If the answer is no then it's 100% a class thing

The funniest bit to me is that Musk owning and working as the CEO of multiple companies is admitting that CEOs don’t actually do much tangible work.

It's even funnier when the companies he has the least day to day involvement in operate better.

Musk buying Twitter was the best thing to happen to the work culture of Tesla employees.

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

#716

Post by hughesjj »

jselysianeagle wrote: post #699
red-iron-pine wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

upper middle class is the common term. or to use an older one: petit bourgeoisie

"petit bourgeoisie" used to mean "lower middle class".

The middle class is gone now so that's kind of fitting. I like the term "working class" as in "I need to work to survive". It covers a huge breadth of the population but that's better anyway imo

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

#717

Post by fjfuvucucuc »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #411
lmkg wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your employer should actually pay you more to WFH. Aside from saving them rent on the office space, you should be able to expense several office-supply things that they would have provided previously. Office chair and desk, internet bill (pro-rated by usage), maybe printer ink.

>Aside from saving them rent on the office space, you should be able to expense several office-supply things that they would have provided previously. Office chair and desk, internet bill (pro-rated by usage), maybe printer ink. Let's not get carried away. Back then you were paying for your own transportation costs and your commute time. Which is more valuable? Commuting to work every day to enjoy free office supplie…

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

#718

Post by mensetmanusman »

LambdaComplex wrote: post #606
whateverman23 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm almost certain c suite often work a lot more and have higher demands than junior employees. Lmao. I'm no where near C-Suite but I've also never worked as hard as I did as an intern/junior engineer. Moving up often means working less hard. > I don't really see any other way around it apart from a dehumanizing process to treat everyone exactly the same regardless of capabilities This post is about WFH, not treati…

Yeah, Elon Musk is currently CEO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla, owner/CTO of Twitter, and owner of The Boring Company. It is incredibly hard to believe that the C-Suite works hard when someone is able to multitask like that. Tesla is even a public company--the shareholders could have him removed if he was doing a bad job!

Visionary leaders that can also attract talent and delegate well are force multipliers. Hard work doesn’t mean it’s not easy for some and almost incredibly fast to accomplish for others.

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

#719

Post by switch007 »

Our company waxes lyrical about the “amazing offices” and the “investment” in them. Yet the desks are next to each other and so cramped you have to be careful rolling back your chair when you stand up else you might hit someone else’s chair.

Zero effort was put in to make desks less distracting. Only some desks are height adjustable. Chairs are cheap.

They were hoping all the “fun” stuff would lure people back. It didn’t work. Because while fun stuff is nice, if work doesn’t happen, we get fired, so the working area has to be good too

Same old same old. All that changed was the language to describe the offices and the “experience”

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

#720

Post by whateverman23 »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #718
LambdaComplex wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Elon Musk is currently CEO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla, owner/CTO of Twitter, and owner of The Boring Company. It is incredibly hard to believe that the C-Suite works hard when someone is able to multitask like that. Tesla is even a public company--the shareholders could have him removed if he was doing a bad job!

Visionary leaders that can also attract talent and delegate well are force multipliers. Hard work doesn’t mean it’s not easy for some and almost incredibly fast to accomplish for others.

We're not talking about impact. We're talking about the claim that "c suite often work a lot more". That claim is hard to substantiate.
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