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A couple of thoughts, 1. My company has been building new buildings that would add 3,000,000+ square feet of office space to the campus this year. I think they

A couple of thoughts, 1. My company has been building new buildings that would add 3,000,000+ square feet of office space to the campus this year. I think they will probably nix working from home when this is all over just so they don't look dumb for building all that new office space. 2. My company has been leaning heavily into not just open office space, but what they call freestyle office space. They only allocate enough desk space for 50-75% of the people working in the building with the assumption that people will be in meetings or elsewhere for enough of the day to make it work out. You do not have an assigned desk and are not allowed to sit at a certain desk for more than 2 hours. (Yes, many/most of us think this is the height of stupidity - it's like being back in college and everyone is working in the library and you have to have a backpack to carry all your stuff from place to place). Of course, this whole seating arrangement is a nightmare in a social distancing situation. What they are saying now is that when we go back you can sit at a desk the whole day, but every other desk must be empty. So, intead of having enough desks for 50-75% of people, there will only be enough for 25-37.5% of people. Clearly they are going to have to allow working from home to continue for a certain percentage of people. I'm honestly not sure how they is all going to shake out.

Finnucane 7y ago
I think if I were working at a place like that and I had any choice in the matter, working from home would definitely be my preference. As it is, I work at a small publishing company and have my own little office, which I would like to get back to someday, but working from home has not been so bad. I think I've been a little more productive just because of fewer interruptions. The only really bad part is not really having a choice: you can't go to the office, or much of anywhere else, really, even if you want to.
deminature 7y ago
This is called 'hot desking' at companies near me, and is vaguely demeaning to employees insofar as it means they no longer even have dedicated space to call their own and are forced to be desk nomads at their own company. It's also presented as a positive offering flexibility, when it largely seems designed to cut floorspace costs for business which seems deceitful. Hopefully, COVID kills this idea entirely.
lame-robot-hoax 7y ago
How does this work if you need to use dual monitors or something? You just go to one of the desks with two monitors, plug in, do what you need to do, and then leave once you don’t need two monitors?
- irrational 7y ago
  Their solution is to provide very very wide monitors that the computer can be setup to see as 2 monitors so the 1 monitor is effectively split into 2. Not ideal (especially for someone like me who has 2 monitors, but keeps both of them vertical instead of horizontal), but better than nothing. However, they haven't actually moved any IT people into this kind of seating arrangement. I think it won't really work for a bunch of developers who are in their seats for the majority of the day.

Finnucane 7y ago

I think if I were working at a place like that and I had any choice in the matter, working from home would definitely be my preference. As it is, I work at a small publishing company and have my own little office, which I would like to get back to someday, but working from home has not been so bad. I think I've been a little more productive just because of fewer interruptions. The only really bad part is not really having a choice: you can't go to the office, or much of anywhere else, really, even if you want to.

deminature 7y ago

This is called 'hot desking' at companies near me, and is vaguely demeaning to employees insofar as it means they no longer even have dedicated space to call their own and are forced to be desk nomads at their own company. It's also presented as a positive offering flexibility, when it largely seems designed to cut floorspace costs for business which seems deceitful. Hopefully, COVID kills this idea entirely.

lame-robot-hoax 7y ago

How does this work if you need to use dual monitors or something? You just go to one of the desks with two monitors, plug in, do what you need to do, and then leave once you don’t need two monitors?

irrational 7y ago
Their solution is to provide very very wide monitors that the computer can be setup to see as 2 monitors so the 1 monitor is effectively split into 2. Not ideal (especially for someone like me who has 2 monitors, but keeps both of them vertical instead of horizontal), but better than nothing. However, they haven't actually moved any IT people into this kind of seating arrangement. I think it won't really work for a bunch of developers who are in their seats for the majority of the day.