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Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

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Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#101

Post by moandcompany »

russellbeattie wrote: post #29

Though I think Google's Bay View campus is gorgeous and probably a lovely place to work, I can't imagine it's a particularly efficient use of the space it takes up. I could be wrong though as I've never been inside. I'll give credit to Google for not building another box full of cubicles, but it seems like it was meant to compete with Apple's spaceship in terms of impressive design, rather than somewhere for thousand…

It seems like the general sentiment from people assigned to Bay View campus hate it, and the campus is an example of form over function as an actual office for doing work.

Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#102

Post by shrimpx »

Insanity wrote: post #31

It seems like each day there's an article lately about reasons _not_ to work at Google. Sad to see how they went from an enviable place to work to a place to avoid these past years. (Although internally, things might be better than it looks from the outside of course)

They seem to have gone from firing people to making people want to quit.

Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#105

Post by scarface74 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #65
shmatt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd work from a toilet stall for a Google L6 comp band I doubt any Googlers actually care about this stuff

I'm a Googler who very much cares about having my own desk. I hate WFH because I find it to be miserable, strongly prefer WFO, and this would make WFO miserable too. I'm not gonna be miserable for 8 hours every day for any amount of money.

How is WFH miserable and if it is, it’s your home, can’t you make it more comfortable?

Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#106

Post by c4mpute »

malkia wrote: post #82

I don't remember when I've read this anecdote, I think was about Sun and X11 (or the equivalent), where employees can use the first free deskt they see and they can login from that "dumb" terminal to their actual machine (Could've been some other company, not Sun) - wonder if anyone remembers it (was it mentioned here on hny?)

X-Terminals were a thing before SUN, but SUN had very nice ThinClients called SunRay that could "HotDesk". Your session was tied to a smartcard, as soon as you plugged that in, your session appeared on that workplace. Pull the Smartcard, go somewhere else, plug it in, there was your session. Very cool and almost instant, as opposed to the supposed "alternative" our windows guys suggested, which was smartcard login to an rdesktop server, which took ages. The wire protocol wasn't really X11, but rather something VNC-like. The server software however could talk to either X11 or windows (with some horrible adapter software).

Edit: links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_terminal

Edit3: ancient demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-nzjdOj1w

Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#108

Post by octacat »

brailsafe wrote: post #81
pram wrote: post #35

Remember how all those Gen X movies depicted cubicles as the embodiment of the soul crushing rat race. If only we still had it that good!

Damn idk which I'd rather have. Some cube farms are next-level depressing. When I was younger, I think part of what made the prospect of moving out of my hometown more compelling was the fact that a giant mega-insurance company ended up being the main endpoint for CS grads. I got to visit once and it was _not_ pretty. Tightly enclosed cubes with tall aging white walls, one source of sunlight if that. They must of rea…

There are so many other options besides a football size open space (hello, facebook) and corpo cubicles. For example, each agile team could perfectly fit in a small room + shared areas. And put a couple extra desks for monads like managers.

Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#109

Post by jefftk »

benatkin wrote: post #77
lasereyes136 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snow Crash for those that don't know: https://a.co/d/fXWqXr7

Long unsightly url after redirection but doesn't appear to be an affiliate link.

If you want to make a short Amazon link manually the only thing you need is the /dp/ID. So in this case, https://amazon.com/dp/B00005NZJA
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