Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

One day offices will be a thing of the past

virgin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 94 posts

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

#81

Post by invalidOrTaken »

csallen wrote: post #16
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).

As an aside: working from your friend's can be a blast. If you're recently freelancing/starting up and loneliness is hitting you, working from the house of a friend (who is also working from home, obviously) can REALLY take the edge off.

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

#82

Post by jwwest »

Working Remotely != Working from home. Often when I'm working remotely, I'm either in a coffee shop or a co-working location, vary rarely at home. I don't like driving, so being able to control when and where I drive is huge.

The big issue is that of being able to control my own environment. If it's too hot, I can work someplace where it's not, same if it's too loud. When you require everyone to work in one shared area, this control disappears and you're often left to the whims of either the weak common denominator, the highest paid person, or the loudest (ie the small thin woman that keeps the office incredibly hot)

If you want dedicated employees, don't run a shitty company.

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

#83

Post by pfraze »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #76
sologoub wrote: post #54

I recently had a friendly debate about this with a friend (ex-Yahoo of the golden years). The interesting thing is that a distributed organization, such as Yahoo or Google, or pretty much any multi-national, telecommuting is already in their work practices - whenever you have to coordinate across office locations, you are effectively telecommuting to that office. However, that's not the interesting part of the conver…

Conceptually I agree with you, but the challenge is that there are signals transmitted between people in the same room that don't come through electronics well. I'm talking about all of the non-verbal signals that feed back into your visual cortex without you even realizing it. Things that inspire you to follow someone, or realize they aren't understanding you, or that you are offending them, or that they don't thems…

That's true, but the constraints and nature of the medium open up new avenues of expression. We're not likely to catch subtle facial expressions-- or, for that matter, smells and touch-- for a long time, but we'll gain incredible new powers in the mean-time.

I'm thinking gesture capture (hands and body) and words/sounds in a virtual environment. You can fluidly interpret those inputs into sights and sounds which illustrate ideas. It won't be intimate in a physical sense, but it will be extremely expressive, and that's what the office needs.

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

#84

Post by [deleted] »

OmarIsmail wrote: post #58
sologoub wrote: post #54

I recently had a friendly debate about this with a friend (ex-Yahoo of the golden years). The interesting thing is that a distributed organization, such as Yahoo or Google, or pretty much any multi-national, telecommuting is already in their work practices - whenever you have to coordinate across office locations, you are effectively telecommuting to that office. However, that's not the interesting part of the conver…

In my opinion we're actually a lot closer to it than most people may realize. I think virtual-offices are going to be a reality in 3-5 years. This will be driven by a few key technologies that are coming out in that timeframe: Oculus Rift - fully immersive digital environment Leapmotion/Kinect - natural UI for interacting in 3D Google Fiber - high-speed bandwidth networks Modern GPUs - can already produce movie-level…

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

randomdata wrote: post #67
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…

It wasn't much more than century ago when the majority of the population did work from home (on the farm). It really has only been decades that the office has been the primary place of business. To see working patterns shift back to "the farm", so to speak, doesn't seem unreasonable at all in my mind. It probably will not completely eliminate the office, but we could see only, say, 10-20% of the population still work…

One interesting question is did they actually like being alone on the farm? Or were they doing it because it was the only option? Pretty much everywhere you look, kids are leaving farms for cities. Cities offer more options. Now, a lot of them do go back, but it's often a decade or more later when they're settled down with families.

Perhaps we will never shift to mostly working alone simply because we're basically herd animals.

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

#86

Post by georgemcbay »

OmarIsmail wrote: post #58
sologoub wrote: post #54

I recently had a friendly debate about this with a friend (ex-Yahoo of the golden years). The interesting thing is that a distributed organization, such as Yahoo or Google, or pretty much any multi-national, telecommuting is already in their work practices - whenever you have to coordinate across office locations, you are effectively telecommuting to that office. However, that's not the interesting part of the conver…

In my opinion we're actually a lot closer to it than most people may realize. I think virtual-offices are going to be a reality in 3-5 years. This will be driven by a few key technologies that are coming out in that timeframe: Oculus Rift - fully immersive digital environment Leapmotion/Kinect - natural UI for interacting in 3D Google Fiber - high-speed bandwidth networks Modern GPUs - can already produce movie-level…

I agree with you that this is certainly going to happen soon-ish, but 3-5 years is wildly optimistic, particularly when it comes to the Leapmotion/Kinect (which are cool, but a long way away from resulting in realistic 3D interaction) and Google Fiber (only applies if we all move to Kansas City -- I know Google plans to roll this out to other markets, but in 3-5 years I wouldn't expect significant progress, maybe 1 or 2 other metro areas max).

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

#87

Post by talmand »

pionar wrote: post #37
talmand wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the same argument that is often heard against home-schooling, the lack of socialization with other kids. What such people tend to not realize, or ignore, is that there are opportunities for kids to get socialization other than through school. True, it requires some effort on the parent's part but that doesn't mean they are not there. If you work remote then there are avenues for socialization outside of an off…

The problem, though, is that there's no "forced" interaction with others outside your own interests/background. When I was in school, I was a white kid from a white neighborhood in a school that was 50% black. Had I been homeschooled, even if I had interactions outside of home, I would not have been exposed to the diversity of cultures. I feel this will lead to a form of tribalism.

I would say that "forcing" interaction is not a correct way of attempting socialization because if a child is forced to do something that they do not wish to participate in, then the outcome is often less than optimum.

I went to high school in the Deep South, it was more or less evenly balanced between black and white. Tribalism was in effect in this "forced" environment, granted this is going to be different from area to area. The black friends that I had were because we shared a common interest/background.

But again, if a parent wants to "force" such an interaction upon their child that is homeschooled, then chances are there would be ways of achieving that with after school programs. My local YMCA didn't turn away black children at the door for example.

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

#89

Post by stretchwithme »

talmand wrote: post #24
csallen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That's the same argument that is often heard against home-schooling, the lack of socialization with other kids. What such people tend to not realize, or ignore, is that there are opportunities for kids to get socialization other than through school. True, it requires some effort on the parent's part but that doesn't mean they are not there. If you work remote then there are avenues for socialization outside of an off…

As if children never had friends before schools were invented.

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

#90

Post by stretchwithme »

talmand wrote: post #87
pionar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem, though, is that there's no "forced" interaction with others outside your own interests/background. When I was in school, I was a white kid from a white neighborhood in a school that was 50% black. Had I been homeschooled, even if I had interactions outside of home, I would not have been exposed to the diversity of cultures. I feel this will lead to a form of tribalism.

I would say that "forcing" interaction is not a correct way of attempting socialization because if a child is forced to do something that they do not wish to participate in, then the outcome is often less than optimum. I went to high school in the Deep South, it was more or less evenly balanced between black and white. Tribalism was in effect in this "forced" environment, granted this is going to be different from ar…

Coercion is not the way to teach kids we should deal with everybody with respect for their rights. Respecting everybody's choices is far more consistent with that purpose.

I'd rather kids develop their own ability to choose than to force them to make what I think are the right choices.

To believe force is the answer is to ignore the role of force in setting up segregation to begin with. Separate facilities that the oppressed are forced to finance, for example.

People adopt beliefs that fly in the face of reason BECAUSE of threats of violence and actual violence. Thou will be going to hell unless you believe. I will be harassing daily until you profess the same beliefs I do. That's how many parents of haters operate.

Post reply on HN