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> No designated desks I hate hot desking. I know it's very subjective but when I come into an office for eight hours a day, five days a week, I like to persona
by davb 9y ago
> No designated desks
I hate hot desking. I know it's very subjective but when I come into an office for eight hours a day, five days a week, I like to personalise my workspace. I don't drive, I take public transport and walk, and hate carting my laptop and charger around with me. I want my own space, with meeting rooms and collaboration spaces for when I need those things.
I may be alone in saying so, but I'd happily take a modest drop in pay for a private office.
- cm2187 9y agoYou are not alone!
- thesmallestcat 9y agoDon't give them any ideas, or things will go the other way: Want an external monitor? That'll be $50/month. Access to the supply closet is $10/month.
- maxaf 9y agoI'm afraid it's too late.
- strictnein 9y agoI've brought my own monitor into work before. Was about to do it with my current role until they finally got me a decent one.
- sundvor 9y agoI have my own personal U3415W for my Visual Studio programming. I have brought it up in interviews, if any issues to my bringing it in. (At home I have the Acer X34 Predator. The Dell came first; when I realised how good it was for programming I knew I needed one at work.)
- bsder 9y agoWhy a 1440 vertical pixel monitor? Real 4K monitors are effectively the same price and have a lot more pixels. And you can get them in 27", 32" and 34" sizes. Sure, I understand why the manufacturers want these odd kinds of resolutions so that they can take defective panels and carve them up differently. However, why would the users want these instead of more resolution? What am I missing?
- wtallis 9y ago1440 vertical pixels in a 34" 21:9 monitor means you usually don't have to worry about whether your software can adapt to a non-standard DPI. At about 109 DPI, it's the same as a typical 27" 16:9 panel, just with more pixels off to the side. The density is a bit higher than the typical ~94 DPI of a 24" 16:10 display, but the difference can be tolerated by most users. Jumping up to 140 DPI (32" 4k 16:9) is enough that you either need exceptionally good vision, or you need to compensate through software scaling adjustments or major ergonomic changes.
- jamie_ca 9y ago27" iMac has been 2560×1440 from 2009 until they went retina in 2014 (and they're now double in both dimensions, so same logical resolution). At arm's length, on a 27" screen, 1440p is very practical. Getting more screen space than 1080p is what bumped me from 21-24" screens, and it fills my vision enough that if I jumped to 4k I'd either be moving my head back and forth with a 40" screen, dealing with even smaller UI elements, or wrestling with OS scaling.
- cm2187 9y agoHow about a 42inch 4K monitor (Philips BDM4350UC). In term of screen real estate it is fantastic.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoIn terms of PPI, not so great.
- reificator 9y agoI bring my own keyboard and mouse. I've considered monitors as well but those provided work well enough for my needs right now.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoI've been using my own mechanical keyboards forever. You make a lot of friends with a model M in an open office (suffice it to say, use quieter switches now).
- cm2187 9y agoI would be happy to pay out of my own pocket for a better hardware than the POS I am forced to work with. All the machines are connected with 100Mbit, and we only just switched from Windows XP...
- CamelCaseName 9y agoIs it like that for security purposes or are you working with legacy software? Apart from those two issues, the loss of productivity should so obviously outweigh any possible savings. There must be some explanation.
- cm2187 9y agoWell, it's a large company with lots of in-house software, so that's the official reason for the delayed roll out of Windows 7. But I think it has more to do with bureaucracy and inefficiency. For not bringing my own hardware, security (it's a bank).
- drunkenmonkey 9y ago> XP > delayed roll out of Windows 7 Is your bank located in Kazakhstan?
- cm2187 9y agoNo but I am sure we source our hardware from flea markets in Kazakhstan!
- rhinoceraptor 9y agoI wouldn’t be surprised if POS stands for Point Of Sale, but I’m guessing that’s not the case.
- h3h4 9y agoThey won't hesitate doing that, after all whole open workspace movement is a cost cutting method on the pretext of increasing collaboration.
- RandomOpinion 9y agoI've happily brought equipment purchased at my own expense to work. It amortizes down to very little over the lifetime of the hardware (even a $1600 workstation laptop amounts to roughly $0.25 per hour over 3 years at 40 hours a week) and makes work so much more efficient (always a plus at performance review time) and just plain more pleasant.
- drdeadringer 9y ago> I've happily brought equipment purchased at my own expense to work. How do you make sure that everyone understand that that equipment belongs to you and not The Company? I'm currently resorting to printed labels of my name or initials, but I can't help but consider that that's a tissue defence.
- bcoates 9y agoThe Company should be putting a property tag on everything that is theirs, or at least recording serial numbers.
- RandomOpinion 9y ago> How do you make sure that everyone understand that that equipment belongs to you and not The Company? For BYOD laptops/PCs, keep the receipt (which will usually include the serial number) and store a photocopy at the office in a place where you can easily keep track of it. If it's something shipped direct from the manufacturer, keep the box with the shipping label on it as additional evidence. You can also let your manager know that you have equipment that you personally own on-premises and give him an itemized list with serial numbers. For small items like mice, keyboards, etc., they're generally not worth enough to lose sleep over if lost. Beyond that, the general rule of never bringing anything to work you're not willing to lose applies. Just like any other kind of BYOD device, your employer is not going to reimburse you if your personal hardware is stolen or accidentally damaged, so take appropriate precautions. Lastly, make sure that you secure _and_ backup data on your hardware at least as well as your IT team does for company issued hardware. Your manager is not going to be at all sympathetic if you lose work due to a hardware failure on your BYOD device or due to malware.
- lj3 9y agoWhat if they gave everybody a desk with wheels? Then you can wheel your desk with your tools wherever you want to work that day.
- MaxLeiter 9y agoThis is what Valve does http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...
- reefoctopus 9y agoI have trouble coding while people are looking at me. It is distracting and prevents me from getting in the zone. Unless I can wheel my desk into a private office it still sounds terrible.
- fiatjaf 9y agoYou must work remotely.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- reificator 9y agoThe Valve approach eh? Page 6: http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...
- giaour 9y agoYou'll also need movers on staff or on call for employees who can't move their own desks. It's a cute idea, but making it OSHA-compliant sounds expensive.
- 9y ago
- h3h4 9y agoI agree with your points if hot desking is forced on you, but I won't mind it being an optional thing(in addition to private office), can definitely use occasional change of environment to fight boredom.
- Sophistifunk 9y agoDefinitely. I've consistently told recruiters I'm not interested when I hear there's hot-desking involved, and even (politely) declined mid-interview once when I didn't know up-front it was a thing at that particular company. If your teams have no need to be together physically, then THEY HAVE NO NEED TO COME INTO THE OFFICE.
- flukus 9y agoI can't imagine working somewhere without my cheat sheets on the wall, stress ball, notepads, printed docs and books adorning my work space.
- vacri 9y agoA colleague had another problem with hot desks - a visitor would arrive at his floor and ask "Is Bob here?" => "I don't know". Without hot desks, you know where Bob sits and have a good chance of finding him. With hot desks, the visitor now has to work to find Bob, as does the person receiving the visitor.
- concede_pluto 9y agoIf a face-to-face conversation is important, one of us will spend two minutes finding a good time and booking a meeting. If it's an emergency, my team has a pagerduty rotation. Showing up at my desk is not the best way to do anything.
- hota_mazi 9y agoThat's adding a lot of paperwork and process for something that should be done in a few minutes. You're excessively reducing productivity if you require each face to face to require a meeting booking.
- lazerwalker 9y agoI think both sides here have a point. One argument: For many kinds of knowledge work, unnecessary unplanned distractions are a huge drain on productivity. Tapping someone on the shoulder is far more damaging than sending them a message they can reply to asynchronously, even if you're defining expected response time in minutes rather than hours. If there's something that really does require face-to-face time, great, plan a meeting. Another argument: face-to-face communication is so much higher bandwidth than voice or text chat that it's worth prioritizing. Tapping someone on the shoulder and hashing something out over two minutes can save an hour of online back-and-forth. Both of these are totally true! It's really about how an individual, and a team, work together best. To me, the frustration is that most modern team environments tend to implicitly choose the latter value system without it being a conscious choice.
- concede_pluto 9y ago
- dantiberian 9y agoOne option I’ve seen with hot desking is to give employees a permanent storage locker/cube that they can leave things like laptops in.
- tradersam 9y agoWe do that at my office, but I'd much rather just have my own desk.
- Roritharr 9y agoWe've recently moved into new offices in Frankfurt/Germany and being the CTO of our 40 Person Startup gave me an in-depth look at all the calculations involved. It's simply horrible how expensive it would be to give private offices even to >3 people in our company. I've fought tooth and nail to keep everyone in small team offices(< 5 people) and even sacrificed my own STO to gain an extra room for this, allowing our company to make the best possible use of the new (relatively lavish) space. We've got two small rooms set aside as flex-desks(complete with 2 4K Monitors & Gigabit Ethernet via a TB3 Dock) to give everyone the possibility to work in a 1 person office when its critical, but that combined with our lax home-office rules is more of a best we can do approach than a real solution to the office plan/distraction problem. The problem stems from there being simply no officespaces available that have a default layout that permits many small rooms while retaining quick access to group/meeting and social areas. This seems to be a result of different design goals of other professions that need to maximise for the most amount of butts in seat per square meter, without factoring in the losses that distractions can cause. If you want to redraw the floorplan, you have to sign rental contracts upwards of 5 years, something no sensible startup would do and even if, the whole investment is relatively large and needs a lot of focus from the company management to ensure its worthwhile. The expensive part is not the additional room the company would need to rent for each employee, it's the amount of empty space(hallways and large rooms) a company would need to rent to have more small rooms available up front.
- mgkimsal 9y ago> This seems to be a result of different design goals of other professions that need to maximise for the most amount of butts in seat per square meter, without factoring in the losses that distractions can cause. Many other professions factor in distractions in their office space set up. I don't think I've been to a decent attorney or CPA office setup where they were in a shared space or hotdesk situation. Offices layouts can definitely be built for this approach - perhaps you're just noting that nothing's available? Or nothing's available at a price management wants to pay? > If you want to redraw the floorplan, you have to sign rental contracts upwards of 5 years, something no sensible startup would do ... If it was a nicely done space, I've little doubt the space owner would have trouble leasing it out again, either to one large org, or to smaller orgs who all want private space. I run a coworking space, and most people who contact me are still really just looking for individual office space.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoIt's funny, I work in a coworking space, and we technically have hot desks, but everyone always ends up sitting in the same place every day. It really throws me if someone takes my seat, usually it's someone new, who hasn't figured out the seating plan yet. It's almost like high school, where you don't have a designated lunch table, but you always sit at the same table. Or at least that's what the movies show, we didn't have a cafeteria.
- dgcoffman 9y agoHad the same experience working a consulting job one time. Awful, dirty rows of terrible monitors and keyboards, fluorescent lighting, chintzy chairs. Hotdesking sends to me the pretty degrading message that people are entirely fungible (probably also called "resources" at these places). I'm opposed to it. And yes, everyone just sat in the same spot everyday.
- cortesoft 9y agoHumans are creatures of habit.
- mmagin 9y agoMe too. In my first job out of college I worked for Sun (2002-2005). After we were moved to consolidate real estate, most of us were forced into hot desking. On one hand we were in a building which was built during their all-employees-are-given-offices era, so you'd usually be in an office, but having just a locker for storage sucked. Also, once I ended up being reorg-ed so my boss and half my team were 2500 miles away, there was little motivation for me to go into the office, which for someone early in their career who could use good mentoring and doesn't have the good sense to ask for it enough, sucks.
- morgante 9y ago> I may be alone in saying so, but I'd happily take a modest drop in pay for a private office. My friend felt this so strongly that he actually rents a private office (that he pays for himself) right next to his employer's office.
- Aeolun 9y agoI've considered doing the same thing. Offices are not ridiculously expensive, and it's really pleasant to be able to control the AC yourself :/
- tlogan 9y agoBut a private office is very very expensive. People might think I'm trolling but I honestly think that until "engineer > real estate" there will be no real progress. All this talk about "open space", "hot desks", etc. is because costs of private office space just does not make sense to any CTO or CEO.
- rtpg 9y agoThis is why cubicles are a thing though right? Obviously it doesn't have as much in terms of sound dampening effects but the cost nearly isn't as high and there's a psychological effect Though... cubicles do make it so that you're working in a "pit". So people... start wanting to remove the barriers..... and we end up in open office plans again. Hard to figure out how a smaller company can manage this (since private offices _are_ expensive)
- tlogan 9y agoBack in days, each engineer in Microsoft had a private office. Oracle too... Good days...
- daxfohl 9y agoSome buildings in Microsoft still do. In my building, most people SDE2 level and up has their own, and below that most seem two-to-an-office (there are counterexamples on both sides though, as well as a number of empty offices). Oddly they're refurbing existing buildings to remove the private offices though. It doesn't seem like a space problem, nor a money problem. Apparently there's just a desire to get rid of them for who knows what reason, spending a lot of money and morale (employees have to relocate to temp offices in downtown Bellevue for a year while they refurb a building on campus) to do so.
- pacaro 9y agoWhen I was moved from single offices to open plan (Microsoft 2012) we were told that we had asked for it(!) But the architecture firm who designed the space did give a really good walk through of how they designed the space. All their stupid decisions had justifications. One tidbit that fell out of that was that they couldn't put more people on a floor with open plan because the width of emergency stairwells dictates the floor occupancy rating. So we lost offices, whiteboards, bookshelves, couches, and privacy. There didn't seem to be much gain
- sqldba 9y ago> I don't drive, I take public transport and walk, and hate carting my laptop and charger around with me. A lot of us drive but it doesn't stop having to lug a laptop into the office because you're always on some kind of on call roster for emergencies. That said that most places that hot desk will also have docks, so, no charger at least.
- mathw 9y agoIf only that were true...
- george_ciobanu 9y agoSee Joel Spolski's floor design.
- tome 9y agoLink? There are some articles by Joel about offices but nothing that seems like "floor design".
- spinningarrow 9y agoI definitely get the point about personalising (it's not for me, but I know many people like it), but having to cart your laptop + charger can easily be solved with lockers. The place I currently work at does hot desks, but everyone has lockers for their personal belongings and things they don't want to lug around which, so far, has been striking a happy balance.
- Aeolun 9y agoYou have to set it up every day though? I hate having to plug in everything after every time I take my laptop out somewhere. I'd much rather have a fixed computer that just stays there.