61–70 of 90 posts
Clickbait title because arstechnica is a garbage publication. Employees are expected to work 2 days a week out of the office, and will swap the desk with another employee. They will not sit at the same desk at the same time. Doing anything less is wasteful, and if Google was doing this before it was robbing investors.
Honestly, I'm surprised that we haven't yet seen companies move to "bunk cubicles", with one cubicle directly on top of the other.
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> arstechnica is a garbage publication. hmm... disagree. strongly. have you seen the quality of some publications? surely the line between garbage and not-garbage is lower than this. unless you are someone who considers something extremely political to be the only good publication or something; I hope not
I hate political stuff. I used to like arstechnica but it's degraded into what I am complaining about. The title of the article implies that people are crammed in desks next to each other by being purposefully vague.
maybe the headline put a different picture in your mind than what the article said, but the headline seems ok to me.
if you wrote the headline for that article, what would it say?
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I absolutely had lower productivity sharing a desk last time I was required to. The chair was always adjusted wrong. May as well just stay home. I'm not OCD but I've been seeing doctors for my back problems since I was 18 so frankly you're an ableist. Enjoy your health while you can.
Ableist because I didn't factor in that adjusting a chair is a horrific injustice? Can we just agree that that is ridiculous and absurd and comically dramatic? The ADA legally mandates that accommodations be made for people that need them and if you're not in that category you're being ridiculous and if you are this doesn't even apply to you.
Actually I'm going to lay into you for this. Do you have any fucking idea what its like to not be able to get an erection? Not to feel your legs, shoulders, or hips for days? To not be able to tell when you have to poop? And all it takes is a fucking $200 chair that they leave the fuck alone to be just fine? I don't need the goddamn ada. All I need is a little trial and error to get my spine aligned right so I can sit for 8 hours without "SUPRISE you cant feel your DICK" and then to have that chair left the fuck alone.
Dude you will be so fucked when you hit 60. You have no idea how much you will hate the world for the lack of consideration it shows you.
Clickbait title because arstechnica is a garbage publication. Employees are expected to work 2 days a week out of the office, and will swap the desk with another employee. They will not sit at the same desk at the same time. Doing anything less is wasteful, and if Google was doing this before it was robbing investors.
"Hot desk" aren't new, but not something from the calibre of Google.
This article sums it up:
https://medium.com/@pravse/the-maze-is-in-the-mouse-980c57cf...
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About 3 months ago I went full thin-client using similar internal tools. 90+% of my workflow is using terminals and editors that work brilliantly over an SSH tunnel. For the stuff that can't be done on a remote computer (flashing boards, physical hardware), I have a couple scripts that allow me to do that locally. The whole thing has turned out to be less work than the physical tower under my desk.
But we're not talking about the same thing here. I do also work 99% in the terminal, and SSH is perfectly okay. But my window manager is running locally. In a thin client/remote desktop setup the WM is running remotely. From my experience, this makes the mouse and keyboard ever so slightly laggy that's it's very annoying.
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> Doing anything less is wasteful, and if Google was doing this before it was robbing investors. Overton window keeps moving in the direction of fuck the employees to benefit the shareholders I guess. Having a personalized space used to not be considered a perk but table stacks for working at a company not too long ago. I get that the employees aren’t in office all week but that’s kinda on google for not having enoug…
Would you pay to rent a car for 5 days if you were only going to drive it for 2 days? You wouldn't, because you care about your own money. Why is it that we pretend like "shareholders" are these mythical beasts that are different than us? I have money in the stock market. You probably do as well. Why does your money suddenly become ok to waste if it's invested in a company? 5 days a week, yes, everyone gets their own…
I'm quite used to spending part of my paycheck on things like renting my own toilet, my own bathroom, kitchen with my own coffee maker and while it is used for a much larger part of the day my bedroom is only used I have no idea why we are doing this!
> Would you pay to rent a car for 5 days if you were only going to drive it for 2 days? You wouldn't, because you care about your own money.
No man! People actually BUY cars so that they can keep them all to themselves!
It gets more absurd I assure you. The justification for most of them is to drive to work!
I think investors know we are doing this with their money?
Honestly, I'm surprised that we haven't yet seen companies move to "bunk cubicles", with one cubicle directly on top of the other.
I'm waiting for "field work" where everyone just finds a spot in a giant tent.
Google has been getting steadily stingier with personal space for a long time. My last job there was at Crittenden, and the desks were next to each other with no dividers whatsoever. That was the worst of my twelve or so locations, by far. But this really takes the prize. Personal story: in the 1980's I had about a half hour interview with Eric Schmidt, at Sun (yes, that Eric Schmidt). The one thing I remember is, he…
> if you looked at the cost for private offices vs. cubicles, they were about the same, and that must be the case because the market will equilibrate ... How? That is, through what mechanism?
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I despise them. I'm convinced that they became "cool" purely for two reasons: 1.) Bosses loved the feeling of superiority they had by having their own office but everyone else is sitting out in the open where they can easily see them all and bother them at a moment's notice. 2.) Fresh out of college grads would see them and get this feeling of a cool, buzzing, hypersocial hive that made them feel all good inside.
Accountants love the cost — you can not only save money on construction costs, you can squeeze more bodies in there…