5 ms·

All of these are just half-assed, incomplete attempts to solve problems that were already solved by private offices. You don't have to worry about a sick perso

by imgabe 6y ago

All of these are just half-assed, incomplete attempts to solve problems that were already solved by private offices. You don't have to worry about a sick person sitting 3 feet away from you if you have a private office. You don't need to wear a mask sitting at your desk all day if you have a private office. You don't need specialized "focus rooms" if you have private offices. You don't need specialized break-out rooms for small informal meetings if people have private offices. You don't need to call a robot to set up a balloon wall (which won't block sound anyway) every time you want to make a phone call if you have a private office. If you want people not to work from home, a private office gives them many of the advantages that make them more productive when working from home. Open office was never about collaboration, it was about cramming more people into less space and the fact that furniture depreciates faster than walls. But, it's not like Google couldn't afford private offices if they wanted to. Edit: keep adding more as I think of them. > Google is also trying to end the fight over the office temperature. This system allows every seat to have its own air diffuser to control the direction or amount of air blowing on them. This is insane. It's the same principle as having separate "driver" and "passenger" temperature controls in a car. You're all in the same box of air. The temperature is going to even out to the average. Maintaining comfort by constantly blowing a person's preferred temperature air on them - only to have it canceled out by the person next to them blowing a different temperature air - is an enormous waste of energy. You know what would give people actual control of the temperature in their space? You guessed it - private offices.

AceJohnny2 6y ago
> But, it's not like Google couldn't afford private offices if they wanted to. Google employs in some of the most expensive real-estate in the world. It's hard and takes years to build more, larger office buildings.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  They could not do that.
- imgabe 6y ago
  They don't need to build brand new office buildings from the ground up. They can renovate existing spaces, lease new space and renovate. That could be done in 6 months, tops, if they really wanted to.
  - summerlight 6y ago
    AFAIK, it's what they're already doing; Google is one of the largest real estate purchaser in the bay area, consistently spending billions of dollars each year on office spaces. The problem is their growth of workforce has been consistently outpacing their real estate expansion. Probably Google can simply slowdown their speed of hiring, but this might be a deal breaker; office space already has been a major constraint for many team's headcount pre-COVID.
    - novok 6y ago
      A lot of office space has just opened up because of covid, it's a great opportunity to snatch it up.
  - jjav 6y ago
    > They don't need to build brand new office buildings from the ground up. Some (many? most?) of those buildings were private offices back in the day anyway, so definitely no new buildings needed.
- hoppyhoppy2 6y ago
  The point is that they could move toward a system with private offices if they wanted to. Sure, it might be hard and take years to make progress, but they do hard things all the time and are an established and rich-beyond-compare company with plenty of time and money -- and yet they haven't gone that route. Instead they're announcing their plans to use shared desks, chairs with built-in white-noise speakers, and balloon walls for office spaces as people return from working at home. Perhaps this is Phase I of their super-secret long-term plan to transition to private offices, but I somehow doubt it.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  I'd love to see giving employees an option for either permanent WFH or a private office, with the reduced in-office headcount being leveraged to make room for private offices.
notatoad 6y ago
not only are they half-assed incomplete attempts to solve problems solved by private offices, they ignore the excellent solution to the problem open-plan offices were meant to solve: using a small office space for a large staff. if you let people work from home if they want to, you need far less office space. so instead of trying to cram in a ton of workspaces, just let people who want to work from home do that, and use the space that frees up to give private offices to the people who want to work at the office.
- ghaff 6y ago
  At least hoteling spaces of some sort for people. Combined with conference spaces for when people want to come into the office to meet and work together.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > if you let people work from home if they want to, you need far less office space. Some companies made investments in properties, or signed multiyear leases, before the pandemic happened. I know of a couple that are itching to get people back to work in-person.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    I do not care that the company invested in office spaces. I’m paid to do work, and if I do worse work from an open plan office then demanding that I return to it because some executive is suffering from a sunk cost problem is genuinely stupid. That executive can mourn their losses privately and leave me alone do to the work I’m actually paid to do, thankyouverymuch.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      > I do not care that the company invested in office spaces Trust me, I do not care either. I'm just explaining the motivation some smaller employers have for getting employees back to the office, and hopefully those employees can see through it and advocate for their wellbeing.
  - 6y ago
pram 6y ago
I’ll take a regular cubicle at this point. The thought of returning to long rows of desks crammed right next to each other is causing some real psychological dread.
- geodel 6y ago
  Well the war on work from home is now peaking. We just had announcement to be back at office desk by June.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Just got that too. I’ve had an open “you’ll have to fire me first” position on the matter.
- tweetle_beetle 6y ago
  Funny how things change. Cubicles were the poster child for dystopian corporate office environments in the 90s. And "office landscapes" were a know humanistic take on open plan developed in 50s and 60s as a response to rows of desks in the open plan offices of the pre-war period [1]. I quite like the idea of the library model - all communal space is quiet by default with many small rooms for and hoc discussion. It would take serious will to introduce it in most offices though. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_landscape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_landscape
- jjav 6y ago
  It's sure is a sign of the horrors of open offices when cubicles, the original terrible workplace, is now the good old times we miss! But, agreed. Even cubicles (with at least 5ft walls), while terrible, are 1000x better than the dreadful open office.
HDMI_Cable 6y ago
Also, if you’re trying to have half (or fewer) people at the office, you can have the same office assigned to two people, making it just as efficient as an open-office.
- the_local_host 6y ago
  I suspect that would devolve into endless fights over cleanliness and storage of personal items.
  - kyleee 6y ago
    No doubt it would be a pain point
- stevesimmons 6y ago
  My first job had the best office arrangement of any company I have seen: two people offices. We were a strategy consulting firm. Everyone had the same skills (in theory), just different levels of experience. The office seating plan paired up a junior consultant with an experienced project leader. You'd both be at your own clients half the time. So in practice you mostly had a private office. But the other person was there enough of the time that: (a) you wouldn't get lonely; (b) you'd learn a lot about being an effective consultant by seeing how they worked and hearing their phone calls with clients (of course, treated as strictly confidential between the two of you); and (c) you'd get to know each other well and you'd feel comfortable asking dumb questions despite the hierarchy difference. (d) And also every 6 months, there was an "office move" where everyone except the partners (who had sole offices) got paired up with someone else and assigned a new two-person office. This was aligned with promotions and graduate intakes, rebalancing the junior/senior mix. (The office move also encouraged everyone to archive/throwaway notes from old projects, keeping the office tidy). The same thing would work in software development etc. I don't know why so many companies went to full-on open plan rather than this kind of half-way house. You get some of the space savings and none of the open plan or hot-desking disadvantages.
soheil 6y ago
Well you clearly identified the issue boiling down to cost but you keep insisting that the solution must still be private offices. If a private office costs 10x more would an employee’s increased contribution due to their surroundings also move up by 10x? I highly doubt it.
- zepto 6y ago
  Where does this 10x figure come from?
- imgabe 6y ago
  Obviously there's a point where it wouldn't be worth it, but there's also a point where the contortions you go through to not have private offices cost more than just having private offices. How much does it cost to design and develop, then build and maintain moveable wall robots? How much does it cost to employ a team of people to sit around and dream this stuff up? It's not cheap, I'm sure. It's not like private offices are some new, untested technology. Law firms, investment banks, hospitals, universities, all manage to give private offices to a majority of their professional level staff. It's clearly possible to do and it is not a 10x factor compared to open offices.
amai 6y ago
Wonderful comment! And all this is nothing new. It was already described in 1987 in Tom deMarcos famous book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Projects_and_Teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Project..., see also https://github.com/arkon108/book-reviews/blob/master/summaries/004-peopleware.md#the-office-environment https://github.com/arkon108/book-reviews/blob/master/summari... This book is a mandatory read for everyone in IT.
jjav 6y ago
> All of these are just half-assed, incomplete attempts to solve problems that were already solved by private offices. That's it right there. First 15+ years of my career always had private office. It's the perfect solution to everything you list and more. The last decade has been a nightmare of wandering around the buildings trying to find somewhere to work that doesn't have all the problems you list, occasionally succeeding mostly failing. Failing means I've had to work my full workday in the evening at home, since couldn't get anything done during the day in the cursed open office. Effectively working two jobs, getting paid once. In this respect the pandemic has been a blessing. Finally back to a private office, away from the physical office. The level of relief is life-changing.

by imgabe 6y ago

AceJohnny2 6y ago

> But, it's not like Google couldn't afford private offices if they wanted to. Google employs in some of the most expensive real-estate in the world. It's hard and takes years to build more, larger office buildings.

ashtonkem 6y ago
They could not do that.
imgabe 6y ago
They don't need to build brand new office buildings from the ground up. They can renovate existing spaces, lease new space and renovate. That could be done in 6 months, tops, if they really wanted to.
- summerlight 6y ago
  AFAIK, it's what they're already doing; Google is one of the largest real estate purchaser in the bay area, consistently spending billions of dollars each year on office spaces. The problem is their growth of workforce has been consistently outpacing their real estate expansion. Probably Google can simply slowdown their speed of hiring, but this might be a deal breaker; office space already has been a major constraint for many team's headcount pre-COVID.
  - novok 6y ago
    A lot of office space has just opened up because of covid, it's a great opportunity to snatch it up.
- jjav 6y ago
  > They don't need to build brand new office buildings from the ground up. Some (many? most?) of those buildings were private offices back in the day anyway, so definitely no new buildings needed.
hoppyhoppy2 6y ago
The point is that they could move toward a system with private offices if they wanted to. Sure, it might be hard and take years to make progress, but they do hard things all the time and are an established and rich-beyond-compare company with plenty of time and money -- and yet they haven't gone that route. Instead they're announcing their plans to use shared desks, chairs with built-in white-noise speakers, and balloon walls for office spaces as people return from working at home. Perhaps this is Phase I of their super-secret long-term plan to transition to private offices, but I somehow doubt it.
saalweachter 6y ago
I'd love to see giving employees an option for either permanent WFH or a private office, with the reduced in-office headcount being leveraged to make room for private offices.

notatoad 6y ago

not only are they half-assed incomplete attempts to solve problems solved by private offices, they ignore the excellent solution to the problem open-plan offices were meant to solve: using a small office space for a large staff. if you let people work from home if they want to, you need far less office space. so instead of trying to cram in a ton of workspaces, just let people who want to work from home do that, and use the space that frees up to give private offices to the people who want to work at the office.

ghaff 6y ago
At least hoteling spaces of some sort for people. Combined with conference spaces for when people want to come into the office to meet and work together.
heavyset_go 6y ago
> if you let people work from home if they want to, you need far less office space. Some companies made investments in properties, or signed multiyear leases, before the pandemic happened. I know of a couple that are itching to get people back to work in-person.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  I do not care that the company invested in office spaces. I’m paid to do work, and if I do worse work from an open plan office then demanding that I return to it because some executive is suffering from a sunk cost problem is genuinely stupid. That executive can mourn their losses privately and leave me alone do to the work I’m actually paid to do, thankyouverymuch.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    > I do not care that the company invested in office spaces Trust me, I do not care either. I'm just explaining the motivation some smaller employers have for getting employees back to the office, and hopefully those employees can see through it and advocate for their wellbeing.
- 6y ago

pram 6y ago

I’ll take a regular cubicle at this point. The thought of returning to long rows of desks crammed right next to each other is causing some real psychological dread.

geodel 6y ago
Well the war on work from home is now peaking. We just had announcement to be back at office desk by June.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Just got that too. I’ve had an open “you’ll have to fire me first” position on the matter.
tweetle_beetle 6y ago
Funny how things change. Cubicles were the poster child for dystopian corporate office environments in the 90s. And "office landscapes" were a know humanistic take on open plan developed in 50s and 60s as a response to rows of desks in the open plan offices of the pre-war period [1]. I quite like the idea of the library model - all communal space is quiet by default with many small rooms for and hoc discussion. It would take serious will to introduce it in most offices though. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_landscape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_landscape
jjav 6y ago
It's sure is a sign of the horrors of open offices when cubicles, the original terrible workplace, is now the good old times we miss! But, agreed. Even cubicles (with at least 5ft walls), while terrible, are 1000x better than the dreadful open office.

HDMI_Cable 6y ago

Also, if you’re trying to have half (or fewer) people at the office, you can have the same office assigned to two people, making it just as efficient as an open-office.

the_local_host 6y ago
I suspect that would devolve into endless fights over cleanliness and storage of personal items.
- kyleee 6y ago
  No doubt it would be a pain point
stevesimmons 6y ago
My first job had the best office arrangement of any company I have seen: two people offices. We were a strategy consulting firm. Everyone had the same skills (in theory), just different levels of experience. The office seating plan paired up a junior consultant with an experienced project leader. You'd both be at your own clients half the time. So in practice you mostly had a private office. But the other person was there enough of the time that: (a) you wouldn't get lonely; (b) you'd learn a lot about being an effective consultant by seeing how they worked and hearing their phone calls with clients (of course, treated as strictly confidential between the two of you); and (c) you'd get to know each other well and you'd feel comfortable asking dumb questions despite the hierarchy difference. (d) And also every 6 months, there was an "office move" where everyone except the partners (who had sole offices) got paired up with someone else and assigned a new two-person office. This was aligned with promotions and graduate intakes, rebalancing the junior/senior mix. (The office move also encouraged everyone to archive/throwaway notes from old projects, keeping the office tidy). The same thing would work in software development etc. I don't know why so many companies went to full-on open plan rather than this kind of half-way house. You get some of the space savings and none of the open plan or hot-desking disadvantages.

soheil 6y ago

Well you clearly identified the issue boiling down to cost but you keep insisting that the solution must still be private offices. If a private office costs 10x more would an employee’s increased contribution due to their surroundings also move up by 10x? I highly doubt it.

zepto 6y ago
Where does this 10x figure come from?
imgabe 6y ago
Obviously there's a point where it wouldn't be worth it, but there's also a point where the contortions you go through to not have private offices cost more than just having private offices. How much does it cost to design and develop, then build and maintain moveable wall robots? How much does it cost to employ a team of people to sit around and dream this stuff up? It's not cheap, I'm sure. It's not like private offices are some new, untested technology. Law firms, investment banks, hospitals, universities, all manage to give private offices to a majority of their professional level staff. It's clearly possible to do and it is not a 10x factor compared to open offices.

amai 6y ago

Wonderful comment! And all this is nothing new. It was already described in 1987 in Tom deMarcos famous book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Projects_and_Teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Project..., see also https://github.com/arkon108/book-reviews/blob/master/summaries/004-peopleware.md#the-office-environment https://github.com/arkon108/book-reviews/blob/master/summari... This book is a mandatory read for everyone in IT.

jjav 6y ago

> All of these are just half-assed, incomplete attempts to solve problems that were already solved by private offices. That's it right there. First 15+ years of my career always had private office. It's the perfect solution to everything you list and more. The last decade has been a nightmare of wandering around the buildings trying to find somewhere to work that doesn't have all the problems you list, occasionally succeeding mostly failing. Failing means I've had to work my full workday in the evening at home, since couldn't get anything done during the day in the cursed open office. Effectively working two jobs, getting paid once. In this respect the pandemic has been a blessing. Finally back to a private office, away from the physical office. The level of relief is life-changing.