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One day offices will be a thing of the past

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Re: One day offices will be a thing of the past

#11

Post by jbattle »

c1u wrote: post #3

Yep, partially due to technology but I also think in 30 years almost everyone will be a freelancer and "jobs" as we know them today will be very very rare.

I can't imagine the pain of having to assemble a team of freelancers every three-nine months for the next iteration on some product/project. Unless the freelancers are utterly interchangeable, which is a pretty awful vision (people think they are cogs now?). When you want to organize a team you'd spend 25% of your time just assembling a team. The freelancers themselves would also spend tons of time waiting for a team to be ready to go. Probably the norm would be for freelancers to have multiple projects going at a time, so any project would only get some percentage of each individual's time & attention, requiring larger teams or slower cycles, each of which requiring more overhead on communications and coordination.

The obvious alternative is to maintain a group of people that have developed a good working relationship together for a longer period of time. Of course people would come and go occasionally due to other opportunities & changing needs for skills. But wait - that sounds an awful lot like what we already have.

Re: One day offices will be a thing of the past

#12

Post by rdl »

I'd far prefer to work in a well configured space, vs. itinerant coffeeshops. But that might be personal space vs. a business, and wouldn't have much in common with most offices I've ever seen. (I'd like a big hw lab space, smallish but comfortable private office, and various areas on a campus or large building which are either dedicated to a specific task or just interesting.)

Maybe closer to a university's layout for a professor or postdoc than most commercial offices.

Re: One day offices will be a thing of the past

#14

Post by citricsquid » 

    Choice empowers people and makes for a more content workforce.
...

    people are going to look back and wonder why offices ever existed
The choice employees make is always going to be to work from home? Surely forced attendance at an office every day 9 - 5 will be looked back on as something that should never have existed, but offices disappearing completely seems unlikely.

Re: One day offices will be a thing of the past

#15

Post by c1u »

jbattle wrote: post #11
c1u wrote: post #3

Yep, partially due to technology but I also think in 30 years almost everyone will be a freelancer and "jobs" as we know them today will be very very rare.

I can't imagine the pain of having to assemble a team of freelancers every three-nine months for the next iteration on some product/project. Unless the freelancers are utterly interchangeable, which is a pretty awful vision (people think they are cogs now?). When you want to organize a team you'd spend 25% of your time just assembling a team. The freelancers themselves would also spend tons of time waiting for a team…

All good critiques of freelancing today. "Freelancing" in 2043 will be very different.

Of course no one knows the future (maybe lifetime union jobs will be back in 30 years?) but I just feel this is the way the wind is blowing. But then again maybe it's just where I'm standing.

Re: One day offices will be a thing of the past

#16

Post by csallen »

diego wrote: post #8

In general, predicting that something that has been around for centuries will be gone in decades is a bad bet. I wonder if Richard Branson has ever spent long periods of time working alone. I spent six months working remotely in 2004. What led me to start my company in 2005 was not the desire to make money; I had enough back then. I really missed the in-person interaction with other hackers. I was living in Buenos Ai…

Hypothetically speaking, in a society in which "offices were a thing of the past", a problem so common as loneliness would likely be solved in a multitude of ways. Perhaps by changes in social conventions (e.g. friends working from each other's places) or by entrepreneurs directly attacking the problem (e.g. more coffee shops with fast internet, better tools for being social from home, etc).

Re: One day offices will be a thing of the past

#17

Post by untog »

citricsquid wrote: post #14

Choice empowers people and makes for a more content workforce. ... people are going to look back and wonder why offices ever existed The choice employees make is always going to be to work from home? Surely forced attendance at an office every day 9 - 5 will be looked back on as something that should never have existed, but offices disappearing completely seems unlikely.

Agreed. I enjoy working in an office environment. My ideal would maybe be four days in the office instead of five, but I wouldn't want to go without it entirely.

Re: One day offices will be a thing of the past

#18

Post by highrisein »

If the work gets done and deadlines are met working from home should not cause any problems.We have technology to support working remotely but the real issue is that human interaction gets lost if we move towards this trend. This debate depends on the industry you work for its not a black or white issue.

Re: One day offices will be a thing of the past

#20

Post by icebraining »

mgkimsal wrote: post #4
c1u wrote: post #3

Yep, partially due to technology but I also think in 30 years almost everyone will be a freelancer and "jobs" as we know them today will be very very rare.

Not without some serious legislative and financial changes - the deck is stacked very much in favor of 'companies' (and generally larger ones at that) than smaller ones, and certainly not in favor of freelancers.

Big in number of employees or capital? I wonder if you could have a fully outsourced company, where a mesh of algorithms would allocate capital to hire freelances, adquire resources, etc. I suppose it'd be hard to create new products and services, but you could always automate the acquisition of startups ;)
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