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Rethinking office space

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Re: Rethinking office space

#41

Post by [deleted] »

btian wrote: post #14
Fomite wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can object to it if you want, but it's a well known phenomena - starting to build buildings is often a bad sign for the company's long-term future prospects. And since we're talking about companies peaking, the size of the company isn't particularly relevant. It is, of course, not a universal law, but lavish new office spaces are one of those things that don't seem to go well.

> it's a well known phenomena Do you have any data to back it up or did you just made it up?

[deleted]

Re: Rethinking office space

#42

Post by toast0 »

kansface wrote: post #20
revelation wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy, theres 10 minutes of inspiring (read: empty) talk and all of the renderings show completely empty buildings with just a bunch of floors that you can walk down one side and fall to your certain death. Also, America, no wonder your commute is long, theres a 10 lane highway surrounded by a bunch of single-family homes. If you want to put more people into the same space, what you usually do is go up in height…

Mountain View (all of Silicon Valley, really) has the bad habit of approving anything that brings in new jobs while simultaneously rejected housing commensurate to the number of jobs added. Many of the residents of the valley want their cities to remain de facto suburbs (designed for cars). Throw in prop 13, a substantial number of well paid transplants, and you have a recipe for the extreme cost of living in the Bay…

Honest question, how does prop 13 increase the cost of living?

Re: Rethinking office space

#43

Post by crandles »

cromwellian wrote: post #29

Google currently doesn't have space. MTV offices are packed, there's little space left to seat new employees, and no parking (pretty much have to rely on valet service) Google has only 3 options: 1. find existing buildings nearby, but this increases sprawl even more 2. move to another city or only open space in other cities 3. build new buildings on land holdings you already have #1 and #2 have the downsides of makin…

Option 4. Remote work. That would solve for packed offices, packed parking lots, overpriced real estate, long commutes, and more.

Re: Rethinking office space

#44

Post by bargl »

jasonkester wrote: post #35
habosa wrote: post #23

I work at Google in MTV and this is very exciting to me. I think the higher-ups at this company have the vision to pull this off, I hope I stay engaged here long enough to see it. The real concern (which Google can't fully solve) is housing. If you add 10k or 20k more employees in these beautiful new offices, where do they all live? I guess Google could build apartments too but that's not ideal, I don't want to live…

For what it's worth, MTV doesn't mean Mountain View to anybody who doesn't live or work in Mountain View. To everybody else it means MTV, making the things you say very confusing.

I was only confused for a second then I got it from the context of his comment.

Re: Rethinking office space

#45

Post by dilap »

jarjoura wrote: post #39
mankyd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, a long commute is one of the most highly correlated factors with regards to people's happiness: http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/06/perils-commu... You may be happier living at work than you realize, (yes, I joke, but not as much as you'd think).

So you're saying if Google really wants happy employees they should open more offices in downtown SF? :)

yes, obviously, & i'm surprised they haven't

Re: Rethinking office space

#46

Post by RyJones »

andyl wrote: post #7

Looks like want to cover big parts of mountain view with a see-thru tent, and turn north-of-101 into a new downtown. Life under the dome. I absolutely hate it.

Castro is nice enough but there are enough people to support another urban center. I'm with you on being skeptical of dome life.

Re: Rethinking office space

#47

Post by nostrademons »

jasonkester wrote: post #35
habosa wrote: post #23

I work at Google in MTV and this is very exciting to me. I think the higher-ups at this company have the vision to pull this off, I hope I stay engaged here long enough to see it. The real concern (which Google can't fully solve) is housing. If you add 10k or 20k more employees in these beautiful new offices, where do they all live? I guess Google could build apartments too but that's not ideal, I don't want to live…

For what it's worth, MTV doesn't mean Mountain View to anybody who doesn't live or work in Mountain View. To everybody else it means MTV, making the things you say very confusing.

That was one of the biggest culture-shocks for me when I arrived in the Bay Area. Everyone was like "So you'll be working in MTV?", a bunch of the local mailing lists were prefixed "mtv-", all the conference rooms were labeled "MTV-43-2-...", and I was like "What's this MTV....ohhhh, Mountain View". It's sorta like "The City" clearly means San Francisco to anyone living in the Bay Area, while it means New York City to anyone living in the Northeast.

Well, if enough people say it, it'll catch on. I'd bet that Google is rapidly becoming more important to most people than Music Television anyway.

Re: Rethinking office space

#48

Post by falsedan »

dsl wrote: post #19

I'm reminded of the San Francisco Federal Building. It was designed with many of the same goals to "bridge the indoors and outdoors" and do away with traditional concepts in favor of being green and environmental. It won many design awards, but later required massive retrofits to install traditional HVAC and ultimately was a complete failure.

The render on the blog post shows huge amounts of sunlight, curved geodesic, and the indoor path curving over the 'entrance', increasing the distance for someone on the inside to get out.

Re: Rethinking office space

#49

Post by toast0 »

mbrzusto wrote: post #37
toast0 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't any abandoned malls near the existing offices.

but there are all over the country. why not give people to option to live somewhere else?

Google management must feel there is a benefit to having their employees clustered into a small number of campuses. Maybe mountain view isn't the optimal place for that, but uprooting the campus and distributing it among failed shopping malls throughout the world or building a giant googleplex in Montana is probably not a good strategy to keep the bulk of their employees.

Re: Rethinking office space

#50

Post by davidcgl »

Fomite wrote: post #11
btian wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first time Google is developing an office complex from scratch and it's somehow "Edifice Complex"? Mind you this is a $400 billion company.

You can object to it if you want, but it's a well known phenomena - starting to build buildings is often a bad sign for the company's long-term future prospects. And since we're talking about companies peaking, the size of the company isn't particularly relevant. It is, of course, not a universal law, but lavish new office spaces are one of those things that don't seem to go well.

The BI article [1] you linked to only shows a correlation between a handful of companies' failure and their new buildings. They failed because of other factors; new buildings only accelerated their downfall.

If this is the norm we wouldn't even have Google (and FB, Apple, Microsoft, Apple, etc) campuses today.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/poorly-timed-headquarters-200...

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