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Death of the Office

• sergiotapia 7y ago
  Adapt or die unfortunately, companies with remote friendly cultures are weathering the storm much better than more traditional companies. I'm very proud of the leadership where I work; we pivoted so quickly and so effectively, it was a sight to behold. I do miss going to the offices once a week though, but that's because I like my coworkers.
  • varjag 7y ago
    Is there ever a business in life or death situation because of the wrong choice over offices/cubicles/remote/open plan? Those who appear to be struggling are doing so mostly due to disrupted customer demand, supply chain or business relationships.
    • whateveracct 7y ago
      And yet I've had a VPE with a FAANG pedigree tell me that "remote teams are a surefire path to mediocrity"
      • Nasrudith 7y ago
        I suspect they may have been spoiled by their hotspot location's selection bias (higher end talent isn't always in the expensive area with high pay but they would be more tempted to it), tried to pay comparable peanuts on remote talent and got relative monkeys or both.
      • Spartan-S63 7y ago
        I would conjecture this is the result of the FAANG culture and its historical lack of support for widespread remote work. It seems like it's the sort of comment that telegraphs, "this is the way we've always done it, why change it?"
      • dasil003 7y ago
        FAANG pedigree is not really applicable to remote work though. These companies scaled impressive engineering orgs for building the modern internet, but they are also now megacorps with all the same process and communication overhead, just a different flavor from the previous generation. I have no doubt that companies that are dedicated to the remote work can build a successful culture, and covid and the upcoming recession/depression will gave them a huge leg up.
      • notfromhere 7y ago
        Unless they were there when they grew rapidly, a FAANG pedigree isn’t worth anything. It’s easy to ride the wave when the money printing machine is already set up.
    • GrayTextIsTruth 7y ago
      I'm just leaving a company which has been experiencing stagnated growth for a couple of years and everyone I talk to says that the 100% remote strategy has played a role. My company just couldn't figure out how to get momentum or rally the troops and "light the fire" again. It wasn't just the remote, but the typical baggage people adopt with remote. For example, it made the mistake of adopting "work when you want" kind of attitude because that was always the norm with 100% companies, which is terrible for a VC funded startup. It set the tone of "what did you cook for lunch?", "oh wow, look at your view of the ocean in portugal" instead of kicking ass. Obviously not the only problem, but remote was definitely an extra layer of hurdles. A lot of problems would have been easier to address in a physical office. EDIT: the sibling post that says its a "path to mediocrity" is pretty spot on. But maybe you're fine with your company being a lifestyle company, a "good enough" company. That's fine for some people.
      • whateveracct 7y ago
        > It set the tone of "what did you cook for lunch?", "oh wow, look at your view of the ocean in portugal" instead of kicking ass. Sounds wonderful. If a move towards remote work makes it harder for those with capital to extract maximum value from their employees, all the better for society imo. I've seen a lot of propaganda on social media about how people should be excited to work _more_ (to 'kick ass') now that they don't have a commute lmao. The employer-employee relationship is inherently adversarial to some degree, and remote work clearly shifts power towards the employee and gives the employer less ability to monopolize people's lives. If your company needs people to drown in kool-aid to be successful, sorry! People seem to be slowly but surely leaving that capitalist hypnosis BS in the last decade.
        • GrayTextIsTruth 7y ago
          it sounds great, but I didn't mention why I'm leaving. Got laid off because the company is stagnating, been doing lay-offs since before the quarantine. Turns out a kick-ass culture is safer for job security since the market isn't going to give your company a break just because you want to chill. But i think you can have a high-energy culture but still be healthy, its just incredibly hard to figure out.
  • pugworthy 7y ago
    > but that's because I like my coworkers I feel like this is key even for remote work. Teams that didn't get along or who didn't like each other are going to continue to struggle in new (and worse) ways if working remote. If people didn't communicate well before, I doubt they are going to do any better now.
    • watwut 7y ago
      That depends. Distance from somebody you really really dislike can make it easier to work with that person. What you dont see can not annoy you and you can limit communication to written.
      • loco5niner 7y ago
        Yes! The "loud laugher" at my office... I'm no longer mad when I see her
  • 52-6F-62 7y ago
    I'm in a similar boat. Funny thing is, the work day actually works out better. I'm not commuting. I sleep longer. Our meetings are shorter and more efficient in general, though we still chit-chat. And we've even taken to multiple times a week game sessions for an hour out of the end of the day when we have time.
  • RandallBrown 7y ago
    Where I work has always been fully remote, so when this started it was business as usual. We expected a rough few months as people stopped buying things, but we've actually been able to increase sales a pretty considerable amount.
• gfxgirl 7y ago
  I hope some enterprising startups find ways to make work social because for me sitting at home with slack/chat/zoom is death. It may be less efficient but I like going to work precisely for the face to face time and camaraderie. Though I have been lucky to work more often than not work on projects I was passionate about with people I liked.
  • jjtheblunt 7y ago
    I think you're right, that you've had good luck; the opposite scenario is that I go to work and there are numerous friendly folks for whom work IS their social outlet, so it's a super incoherent environment.
• Nasrudith 7y ago
  Offices seem to fundamentally be an arms race in subversion of its own purpose for both good and ill. The quiet compared to say a factory floor was a feature which gets compromised for increased quantifiable benefits. Digitalization means the stacks of literal file cabinets and references aren't needed while. Focus and extended work are what they are meant to promote but the two concepts are at odd - either work only when most focused or work for an extended period with breaks ans interuptions. It is a very versatile compromise essentially which is ironically very unfocused. I suspect the cheapness of rent reduction may win over many companies to remote long term just as open offices and cubiciles seduced them in the past. It may give increased delays for certain tasks but lets face it - they had no problem with increased delays from travel before. I suspect we might see some increased very short term rentals for interviews and meetings in the future if the bottom line beats out the culture for a change.
• jasode 7y ago
  >And so, for all the threat faced by the office, there is also cause for optimism about its future. These days the “hyper-physical…is so cherished,” notes Heatherwick. [...], all those desks and all those people, all that bustle and time-wasting, have their benefits. Humans need offices. Online encounters may be keeping us alive as social beings right now, but work-related video meetings are too often transactional, awkward and unappealing. After the initial joy of peering into each other’s houses on Zoom, we are confronted with people’s heads looming even closer than we see them across the desk at work, and we gaze in horror – half of it self-awareness that we, too, must look awful – at thinning hair and double chins. We become freakish specimens rather than people. No Skype chat can replicate what Heatherwick calls the “chemistry of the unexpected” that you get in person. [...] Because what moves us is not sitting at our computer, it’s the relationship that we have with people.” Although I've been 100% remote for more than a decade and love the freedom and flexibility, I still don't think this COVID-19 crisis will kill offices and commuting as much as some workers hope for. Today's telecommuting technologies like videoconferencing, screen sharing, virtual whiteboards, etc are still not seamless and fluid enough. Therefore, some companies (especially young startups) that have high degree of collaboration will continue to work in offices to outcompete the companies that are 100% remote. Yes, onsite collaboration in offices is overstated but maybe productivity of working at home is overstated as well. As a random observation, I find it interesting that TV show writers' rooms (including weekly dramas and comedy skits) will all get into the same office to hash out a show. Why do they do that if remote tech like videoconferencing can replace in-person interaction?
  • mikestew 7y ago
    Why do they do that if remote tech like videoconferencing can replace in-person interaction? Because the screenwriter's boss is no different than yours: "butts in chairs, people. It's how collaboration happens!" Or inertia. Or enough other things that I'm not going to immediately leap to, "because it's the best way".
  • RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
    > As a random observation, I find it interesting that TV show writers' rooms (including weekly dramas and comedy skits) will all get into the same office to hash out a show. I believe some TV shows (SNL IIRC) are still being made with people working remotely.
• paulryanrogers 7y ago
  Since this article offers few sources for its claims, except cherry-picked anecdotes, here are some claims of my own: forced remote work will polarize opinions. Those of us who enjoy the perks will become further entrenched while those who can't stand the downsides will say it's proof WFH is the devil. My last full time office job began with a great, downtown location. But it became crowded as the company outgrew the space. Little annoyances like mandatory office music and shared desks made focused work more difficult. Of course management always gets their own offices, so they get control of their space with a choice to retreat when privacy or silence is needed. Hopefully the shared experience will break the cycle of talking past each other. Though I'm not holding my breath.
  • papeda 7y ago
    > mandatory office music What?
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • mike_ivanov 7y ago
      Yes, that. It's a thing.
    • trhway 7y ago
      back in the 199x i felt great coming into our small office with 30+ of 20-something guys like me crammed in coding and playing network Quake and the Rammstein blasting in the office over the Quake rocket explosions. Best productive years. These days even mere presence of 20-somethings on the team gives me headache :)
  • jasonpeacock 7y ago
    > forced remote work will polarize opinions. Forced office work already polarizes opinions. Many of us already say Work From Office is the devil. Why does my typing on a keyboard in the office bring more "value" than when I type on a keyboard at home?
• abraxas 7y ago
  At the very least I hope the open concept office design dies of coronavirus. It was a bad idea all along.
  • trhway 7y ago
    I wouldn't hope. According to the 2nd law things are moving only in one direction - from-bad-to-worse. When it comes to post-lockdown offices what so far i've seen discussed is adding some transparent mini-walls between desks - kind of smallish transparent mini-cubicles. Like everybody being inside a small personal aquarium so to say. Thus you'd have the worst hybrid of open office and cubicles.
    • thelean12 7y ago
      Why transparency? Sounds more expensive and needing more cleaning to not look ugly. Just put up normal dividers, which exist in many many forms already.
      • itronitron 7y ago
        Transparent dividers have the benefit of showing just how much they are working, as the saliva, mucus, and food particles accumulate.
      • trhway 7y ago
        Beside butts-in-the seat visibility, the other main achievement of open office - the high density - coupled with opaque walls would make for claustrophobic work stations (think voting booths) while transparent walls would allow to increase the density even more. Historically such density increases have been taking a decade or two. Thanks to corona we're going to jump straight into it.
  • ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    I think workers have to push for killing off the open office by bringing it up as a health and safety concern while COVID-19 is still at the forefront everyone's consciousness. There will never be a better opportunity; bring it up as a question at corporate/divisional meetings and provide feedback wherever reasonably possible.
• munificent 7y ago
  I don't like that most of these articles present a binary choice: always work from home or always work from the office. I've learned two things in the past couple of months: * I really enjoy being at home when doing task work. I can play music without headphones. I can tweak my surroundings to be just the way I like them. I can meander down and see the wife and kids for lunch. Talk a walk around my neighborhood. (I would be able to run an errand or to, normally, but...) * I hate being at home when doing design or collaborative work. Videoconferencing is better than nothing, but the latency makes me want to claw my eyes out. And I just deeply miss the conviviality and warmth of sharing a physical space with my team. But I don't need either the former or the latter every day. What I'd really like is a team that worked together a couple of days a week, and from home a couple of days.
  • cactus2093 7y ago
    The obvious problem is this is the most expensive of all solutions. You still need an office space for everyone (you can't really get a smaller office and stagger days that people go in, because the whole point is camaraderie and collaboration. Maybe you could do this across organizations? Sales mon/wed, product and engineering tues/thurs). Plus everyone needs to still live within commuting distance to the office, and also have a productive work space at home, which is a huge luxury in a place like SF to have an extra room for an office.
    • ReactiveJelly 7y ago
      What if I invited my coworkers to hang out at my home office?
      • munificent 6y ago
        I'm actually considering doing exactly this. Before too long, I'll be at a point where I really need to collaborate with one member of my team and I can't imagine doing it over VC. We usually spend an hour or two at a whiteboard sketching things out. It might be easiest to simply take turns driving to each other's house.
    • 7y ago
• chrisbrandow 7y ago
  It is a shame that the author didn't say more (anything?) about the positive sides of the office related to social bonds. I miss seeing my coworkers face to face. I am tired of the weird conversational dynamics that arise from minor delays in transmission. I miss a number of things that are directly related to being physically present.
• code4tee 7y ago
  The office isn’t dead, but it is also clear that the office won’t come back to levels we saw before. Commercial real estate is very expensive. In many companies the biggest expense after salaries is the cost of their office space. That cost is going to be challenged very heavily moving forward. Many companies that were against work from home because “it won’t work for our company” have been in near 100% WFM mode for a while now. After some initial stumbles most haven’t imploded and many quite like the new model. I suspect that hybrid will become the new norm and that many fewer people will spend every workday at the office. That in turn drastically reduces the square footage required by many companies. The implications of all this for the commercial real estate market are quite severe. Expect to see developers quickly try to pivot some of their commercial space into residential ASAP before they find themselves sitting on empty floors with plunging value.
• jandrewrogers 7y ago
  One interesting aspect of making everyone WFH is that it is effectively moving the cost of office space from the employer to the employee. Most homes are not designed or setup to be virtual offices for two employees, because most people never really considered it when they acquired their current living space, which is the reality many people are working within now. If this becomes the new normal, it will change the way people think about what their home is used for. In many cases, it implies an increase in needed living space, which comes at a cost.
  • empath75 7y ago
    Yeah, but you can move somewhere that has cheaper land.
• strategarius 7y ago
  I was working from home for the last 5 years, and really miss office environment. I definitely would not come back to 9-to-5, but I desperately need one day for collaboration in person, I miss socialization and coffee breaks with colleagues, and my home turned into office long time ago, whereas it should be my "fortress" of relaxation and quality time with the family. I seriously considered moving all operations to coworking, but COVID-19 stopped me for a while