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I’ve done this before at my last F20. I heard the whole story from the beginning. Increased collaboration. Flexibility. Variety. But at no point did they level

by xkqd 5y ago

I’ve done this before at my last F20. I heard the whole story from the beginning. Increased collaboration. Flexibility. Variety. But at no point did they level with the staff that it was only about reducing costs. It was about maximizing space used, letting folks hot desk knowing that on any given day 15% of the workforce would be out. With that little fact, you could allocate 115% to a given building. Yep, we get it, we’re adults. Gotta keep the costs down for the shareholders. But hey instead let’s bullshit and lie to your workforce and pretend it’s actually about collaboration. So to be clear… You don’t feel possessive over a desk because you have no domain to link physical comfort too. No place to put your family photos on. No place to look forward to sitting down at, knowing that the only constant of the work day will be where you’re physically located. No place to call your own. You have no dominion. You have no place to call your own. You have no authority over the environment around you, that you’re going to sink thousands of hours in ever year. Yeah, I’m sure we’re get old and look back on this fondly.

fian 5y ago
At a previous job, I has an assigned desk and I was expected to work from the office unless I had good reason to work from home. I definitely had dominion over my desk. To the point I built my own sub-base to raise the normal sitting desk up to be a fixed standing desk. I bought my own drafting chair so I could stand or sit comfortably without needing to raise or lower the desk. So I have experience taking the authority over my environment a lot further than most. In that role I was a solo developer attached loosely to a team of engineers. I had a fixed set of collaborators ( though most of them in other countries and timezone) for over a decade. I had no need to adapt my working location based on who I was collaborating with over time. For my current employer, I will soon move to my fourth team and project in about 2.5 years. I regularly have a different set of collaborators to work with for short terms sub-projects. This means I often change where I locate at the office to better collaborate for the work at hand. So yeah, for me it is about collaboration. Re-locating for the short term doesn't come with negotiating anyone else's strong territorial claim over a desk. Sure it probably costs the company less to hot desk. My current employer, however, does truly embrace remote working and the majority of employees take advantage of that to not commute to the office every work day. Not much point maintaining a dedicated desk that you only occupy 2-3 days per week. Different employers may hot-desk but get remote working wrong or keep people in fixed projects for very long times. If my employer required clock in at my desk ready to work and clock off didn't include returning things to my locker it wouldn't be so great. I can appreciate hot-desking may not be so great for those cases.

by xkqd 5y ago

fian 5y ago

At a previous job, I has an assigned desk and I was expected to work from the office unless I had good reason to work from home. I definitely had dominion over my desk. To the point I built my own sub-base to raise the normal sitting desk up to be a fixed standing desk. I bought my own drafting chair so I could stand or sit comfortably without needing to raise or lower the desk. So I have experience taking the authority over my environment a lot further than most. In that role I was a solo developer attached loosely to a team of engineers. I had a fixed set of collaborators ( though most of them in other countries and timezone) for over a decade. I had no need to adapt my working location based on who I was collaborating with over time. For my current employer, I will soon move to my fourth team and project in about 2.5 years. I regularly have a different set of collaborators to work with for short terms sub-projects. This means I often change where I locate at the office to better collaborate for the work at hand. So yeah, for me it is about collaboration. Re-locating for the short term doesn't come with negotiating anyone else's strong territorial claim over a desk. Sure it probably costs the company less to hot desk. My current employer, however, does truly embrace remote working and the majority of employees take advantage of that to not commute to the office every work day. Not much point maintaining a dedicated desk that you only occupy 2-3 days per week. Different employers may hot-desk but get remote working wrong or keep people in fixed projects for very long times. If my employer required clock in at my desk ready to work and clock off didn't include returning things to my locker it wouldn't be so great. I can appreciate hot-desking may not be so great for those cases.