Recently someone posted an office etiquette post on our intranet, citing all you should do or avoid so that your coworkers can work and focus comfortably. The person posting it probably though it was helpful, but it was just showing how an hell of a place offices have become since they went the open space route.
I’d like a good write-up. My current boss has this tendency to interrupt anyone when he is not doing something, let daily stand-ups go into 30-40 minutes, and ask everyone to gather for spontaneous group meetings regardless of their ability to contribute or how important their current task is. I’m not very good at phrasing this criticism positively, and while I have addressed some of them, little has happened. I try…
Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”
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Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Think of how much time is stolen from you in a daily commute > Not that much. OK, let's assume it's not 90 minutes but only 20 minutes a day. That compounds, and it's a lot of time I could spend on what really matters to me, not work. Why should I do it, if I have a choice? Time is the most precious thing we have. I will never come back to the office, period.
It’s 20 minutes where I catch up on the news get a bit of walking in from the home to the train station and generally wake up to arrive at the office ready to go.
ha 20 minutes. Some days I waited for the bus longer than that. I waited because in Sydney the bus is on-time about 15% of the time. If you miss it, you wait an extra hour.
Not sure where you live, that's got a 20 min commute, but most people either live in a concrete prison to reduce the commute, or spend 2 hours a day on a bus/train.
I do know this.. if you worked from home, you could get all that you've outlined, and likely spend a pile less on rent/mortgage. Others who work with you would also get to see their kids before bed.
Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s 20 minutes where I catch up on the news get a bit of walking in from the home to the train station and generally wake up to arrive at the office ready to go.
ha 20 minutes. Some days I waited for the bus longer than that. I waited because in Sydney the bus is on-time about 15% of the time. If you miss it, you wait an extra hour. Not sure where you live, that's got a 20 min commute, but most people either live in a concrete prison to reduce the commute, or spend 2 hours a day on a bus/train. I do know this.. if you worked from home, you could get all that you've outlined,…
Sydney sucks. I’m in Melbourne and the train leaves every 5 minutes, takes me about 20 minutes to get to the cbd about 7km away. Rent is pretty affordable too.
Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did, but the enforced boundary between work and home is very important to me.
You can enforce that boundary with a walk before and after work. Wake, coffee, walk, start work at 9. Finish at 5, put computer away, and walk for 15 min, your day is done.
I really wish I could be that organised.
Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”
#85Just remember ... the CEO role of a major company is radically different than any other job. What Marc calls "work", you and I can't relate too. He's spending a disporportionate amount of time talking to investors, talking to customers, talking to his Board. I wouldn't be surprised if he's traveling 100 business days a year as a result. Which if you're not at home because you're traveling for work, or if you are at h…
Yes, when he says he doesn’t work well in an office people here are reading he wants to work from home. In reality, he’s probably thinking he’d rather be on the road than stay in his SV ivory tower. Two stories about Benioff you might find interesting; when we were selling our startup there were two bidders on the table, Google and Salesforce. Google sent out minions, Larry and Sergey were only reachable via email/ca…
Thanks for sharing that story, really enjoyed reading it.
>> "He won with a lower bid than Google."
Off topic: why would a company every sell to a lower bidder? If you have any investors in the company (not bootstrapped), don't you have a fiduciary responsibility to always sell to the highest bidder.
Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is, but companies are too stubborn.
As soon as the accommodation strategy needs a refresh this changes. If you can reduce the office footprint you can save money. Bringing people in often means increasing the footprint post wfh. Wfh will win where it actually succeeds because it saves money. If it doesn't work then only companies that bring people in will succeed. My feeling is that about 75% of the non manual non hospitality economy will go WFH
I kinda feel like the comparison between an on-prem vs cloud. For the longest time, big, old companies clung onto their data center spaces. No new start-up would ever dream of that though. They would be cloud first from inception. It's probably going to be the same for new companies vs old ones.
Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, when he says he doesn’t work well in an office people here are reading he wants to work from home. In reality, he’s probably thinking he’d rather be on the road than stay in his SV ivory tower. Two stories about Benioff you might find interesting; when we were selling our startup there were two bidders on the table, Google and Salesforce. Google sent out minions, Larry and Sergey were only reachable via email/ca…
Thanks for sharing that story, really enjoyed reading it. >> "He won with a lower bid than Google." Off topic: why would a company every sell to a lower bidder? If you have any investors in the company (not bootstrapped), don't you have a fiduciary responsibility to always sell to the highest bidder.
Good question, not always; I suppose. The founders had quite a good share of stock which probably helped but ultimately it came down to vision.
My understanding was that Google didn’t really offer us a future plan, and the competitor they ended up acquiring (Wildfire) quickly disappeared — another fun little story is that Arielle Zuckerberg was working for Wildfire at the time, so she ended up at Google — while the Salesforce Marketing Cloud is stronger than ever after more acquisitions, even where the individual products disappeared.
All in all it still was extremely lucrative for founders and investors, the official number was $689m but there were also extra bonuses and employee retention incentives and such so the real number was higher.
I didn’t really gel with the FAANG style culture at the time so I left after I vested most of my stock, but I know some people made long careers out of it.
Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”
#88I am now back to a developer role, rather than being a manager (by my own choosing). I am much more productive (and actually communicate more with my colleagues (!)) when I work from home. Luckily my terms allow me to choose where I work from when by my-self.
Off topic, but I’ve been thinking about doing the same, I’ve seen other people at my level take pay cuts of only 10%~ going from management to IC while erasing meetings from their calendars
I’m kinda jealous, the only thing that is keeping me in management roles is the fantasy that the perfect company will come along with the right product, right growth stage but that is looking unlikely in this economy.
Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”
#89This is quite an editorialized title... it makes the CEO look like they have an extreme viewpoint, but in reality it sounded like the CEO had a pretty based and nuanced take: never enforce remote, and recognize that different kinds of work require more in office than others.
The only thing that I disagreed with was the "we don't want to lose our stars" mentality. Your mentality should not be about pushing people as far as you can until you have retention problems. Rather, it should be to inform people and provide them with opportunities to be productive in whatever way they prefer, and cut them lose if their output is not sufficient. Make decisions by outputs - not inputs.
Re: Marc Benioff: “I don’t work well in an office”
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stolen? You were paid for and took the job you knew was a certain distance and commute away from your home. I believe employees have to start to get used to being paid less when working remote. People who work in an office or factory have to be rewarded for this commute. Some jobs cannot be made remote. I assume a lot of people working remote also like the fact that they can do the laundry, clean the house, do some e…
I agree that some jobs can't be remote, but that doesn't apply to the majority of tech jobs (and therefore HN readers). Most of the people here (and at Salesforce) are paid, in theory at least, according to their skillset and the value they bring to a company. Why should that pay differ depending on where someone is sitting when they deliver said value?
I wasn't necessarily comparing a programmer working remote with a programmer working in the office.
I mainly tried to say that if we want to have people working in factories, working as nurses or doing office work that requires working as a team in person or meeting clients or what ever it might be then we have to start to pay them more compared to people who work from home.