6 ms·

I wonder if those personality differences get considered when they throw everyone into a single room with a few low cubicle walls. I wonder if the market gives

I wonder if those personality differences get considered when they throw everyone into a single room with a few low cubicle walls. I wonder if the market gives a shit about being fair to those who have personalities that thrive in said cubicles. Thirdly, I wonder if those who thrive in remote give a shit about being fair after having dealt with cubicle farms for so many years.

UncleOxidant 4y ago
> after having dealt with cubicle farms for so many years. Or worse, open floor plans.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  Yeah, until I started working from home I hadn't had walls for a decade.
  - gabereiser 4y ago
    Then how do they know you are working? (more importantly, how will they know they can interrupt you?)
  - mulmen 4y ago
    I had an office for a short time. We were moving to a new building and got to pick our seating arrangements by seniority. I was toward the end of the list but nobody had picked the lone office in our area so I did. My manager immediately had the walls torn down.
- ajaym0 4y ago
  Open floor plans can be a double edge sword buddy
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    Yes, exactly. When you sit right next to your business users and listen to their day-to-day activities or phone calls, it is priceless "ambient information". However, if you sit next to completely unrelated, but noisy team, it is hell! The trick is floor layout. The best companies in my experience obsess about floor layout to get relevant teams close!
    - UncleOxidant 4y ago
      In my experience as a software dev the "ambient information" that has tended to be most valuable was information about how the product was doing financially. I worked in an environment where we all had offices with doors and it was great but the "ambient information" I missed was that the sales of the product weren't going all that great and there were layoffs on the way. In a cube environment I think I would've heard a lot of chatter about layoffs coming weeks to months earlier. In this case I was pretty much blindsided.
km3r 4y ago
That's entirely unfair. The ability to do most of these jobs remote wasn't even really possible until a decade ago, and interia of in office work kept it that way for most existing enterprises. Yet still, plenty of startups in 2019 chose to be remote, and plenty chose to be in person. Also I would bet that the amount of people who prefer remote has gone up drastically since 2019, both due to exposure to it, and due to covid isolation shifting people's personalities.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  The ability to work remote has been around longer than that. I was working remotely in 2003/2004, 2007.. Most people didn't know remote was possible until 2019
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  It's not unfair when knowledge on the effects of these practices were public several decades ago and companies still insisted on optimizing for employee per square foot while giving their executives private offices. All remote work did was showcase people can in fact rebel against the status quo when the inertia associated is entirely self-inflicted.
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    Nice post! At my company, one of their locations has insufficient space for all employees. As a result, they introduced "hot desking". It is widely hated by all non-executive-level employees. Literally, you cannot keep anything at your desk. (Put it in a locker everyday that feels like high school!) The message received by non-execs: "You are not human; this is the matix; you are interchangable." Of course, none of the execs are forced to hot-desk their nice corner offices. (FYI: I have a terribly combative personality.) When I saw one of the execs after the plan what annouced, I casually asked: "Oh, what days are you WFH? I'll take your office." They almost fainted with fear.
- ghaff 4y ago
  >wasn't even really possible until a decade ago I think that's an overstatement. I've been more remote than not for close to 20 years and 90%+ remote for close to 10. That said, there is some point in time before which companies would have had to largely shrug and tell people that they had to stay in the office pandemic or not. (Which of course many jobs and professions basically had to anyway.)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
a2tech 4y ago
I wonder if those personalities include things like 'middle managerness' and 'desperate need for people to see me working'.
FalconSensei 4y ago
> levels of need of social interaction That's what your personal life is for. Related: https://archive.ph/Ji4nM https://archive.ph/Ji4nM (WSJ - Americans Are Breaking Up With Their Work Friends)
- goodpoint 4y ago
  Maybe in 1950 when only half of the population was working out of home. Now everybody goes to work and evenings and weekends are spent doing house chores. [And no, I don't want to go back to 1950 at all, don't get me wrong.]
- josephg 4y ago
  There are real benefits to having personal relationships with your colleagues at work. I started a job a few years ago and spent the first 4 weeks in the office in SF, then moved back to Australia. The relationships I established in that first month were invaluable for the first 6 months or so of my work there - lots of things were easier for me as a result because I knew who to message or connect on slack to get things done. After about 6 months those relationships faded to the point that I couldn't rely on those social connections any more. It was difficult knowing who to message when I needed something done outside my team; and they had no idea who I was any more. I don't think you need to be in the office every day, but I miss going to an office at all. Those casual social connections are crazy valuable. Zoom and slack don't give you the experience of sitting at a table with people over lunch and chatting. We dismiss those relationships at our peril.
upupandup 4y ago
Well said this is a refreshing take. All these please for going back to the office or being present in person seems aimed entirely to placate the people who for decades have exploited such environment to their favour. Chatting, small talk, being seen, all of which on top of the horrendeous open desk trend, only adds to the overhead for the rest of us who thrive in remote environments. Market has already listened and are going to favor the latter group and the remote environment is going to be here with us indefinitely. If for whatever reason you feel like going against this new market trend/correction, you stand to lose out. Companies who are demanding hybrid or return to office are unironically putting themselves in walls that will limit their competitiveness in the long run. Again this is what the market tells us, many companies are realizing they can save on expensive commercial rent/logistic overhead and hire more remote workers.
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
let the extroverts have their beloved office and introverts their home. anyone undecided can be "hybrid".

UncleOxidant 4y ago

> after having dealt with cubicle farms for so many years. Or worse, open floor plans.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
Yeah, until I started working from home I hadn't had walls for a decade.
- gabereiser 4y ago
  Then how do they know you are working? (more importantly, how will they know they can interrupt you?)
- mulmen 4y ago
  I had an office for a short time. We were moving to a new building and got to pick our seating arrangements by seniority. I was toward the end of the list but nobody had picked the lone office in our area so I did. My manager immediately had the walls torn down.
ajaym0 4y ago
Open floor plans can be a double edge sword buddy
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  Yes, exactly. When you sit right next to your business users and listen to their day-to-day activities or phone calls, it is priceless "ambient information". However, if you sit next to completely unrelated, but noisy team, it is hell! The trick is floor layout. The best companies in my experience obsess about floor layout to get relevant teams close!
  - UncleOxidant 4y ago
    In my experience as a software dev the "ambient information" that has tended to be most valuable was information about how the product was doing financially. I worked in an environment where we all had offices with doors and it was great but the "ambient information" I missed was that the sales of the product weren't going all that great and there were layoffs on the way. In a cube environment I think I would've heard a lot of chatter about layoffs coming weeks to months earlier. In this case I was pretty much blindsided.

km3r 4y ago

That's entirely unfair. The ability to do most of these jobs remote wasn't even really possible until a decade ago, and interia of in office work kept it that way for most existing enterprises. Yet still, plenty of startups in 2019 chose to be remote, and plenty chose to be in person. Also I would bet that the amount of people who prefer remote has gone up drastically since 2019, both due to exposure to it, and due to covid isolation shifting people's personalities.

ipaddr 4y ago
The ability to work remote has been around longer than that. I was working remotely in 2003/2004, 2007.. Most people didn't know remote was possible until 2019
BlargMcLarg 4y ago
It's not unfair when knowledge on the effects of these practices were public several decades ago and companies still insisted on optimizing for employee per square foot while giving their executives private offices. All remote work did was showcase people can in fact rebel against the status quo when the inertia associated is entirely self-inflicted.
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  Nice post! At my company, one of their locations has insufficient space for all employees. As a result, they introduced "hot desking". It is widely hated by all non-executive-level employees. Literally, you cannot keep anything at your desk. (Put it in a locker everyday that feels like high school!) The message received by non-execs: "You are not human; this is the matix; you are interchangable." Of course, none of the execs are forced to hot-desk their nice corner offices. (FYI: I have a terribly combative personality.) When I saw one of the execs after the plan what annouced, I casually asked: "Oh, what days are you WFH? I'll take your office." They almost fainted with fear.
ghaff 4y ago
>wasn't even really possible until a decade ago I think that's an overstatement. I've been more remote than not for close to 20 years and 90%+ remote for close to 10. That said, there is some point in time before which companies would have had to largely shrug and tell people that they had to stay in the office pandemic or not. (Which of course many jobs and professions basically had to anyway.)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

a2tech 4y ago

I wonder if those personalities include things like 'middle managerness' and 'desperate need for people to see me working'.

FalconSensei 4y ago

> levels of need of social interaction That's what your personal life is for. Related: https://archive.ph/Ji4nM https://archive.ph/Ji4nM (WSJ - Americans Are Breaking Up With Their Work Friends)

goodpoint 4y ago
Maybe in 1950 when only half of the population was working out of home. Now everybody goes to work and evenings and weekends are spent doing house chores. [And no, I don't want to go back to 1950 at all, don't get me wrong.]
josephg 4y ago
There are real benefits to having personal relationships with your colleagues at work. I started a job a few years ago and spent the first 4 weeks in the office in SF, then moved back to Australia. The relationships I established in that first month were invaluable for the first 6 months or so of my work there - lots of things were easier for me as a result because I knew who to message or connect on slack to get things done. After about 6 months those relationships faded to the point that I couldn't rely on those social connections any more. It was difficult knowing who to message when I needed something done outside my team; and they had no idea who I was any more. I don't think you need to be in the office every day, but I miss going to an office at all. Those casual social connections are crazy valuable. Zoom and slack don't give you the experience of sitting at a table with people over lunch and chatting. We dismiss those relationships at our peril.

upupandup 4y ago

Well said this is a refreshing take. All these please for going back to the office or being present in person seems aimed entirely to placate the people who for decades have exploited such environment to their favour. Chatting, small talk, being seen, all of which on top of the horrendeous open desk trend, only adds to the overhead for the rest of us who thrive in remote environments. Market has already listened and are going to favor the latter group and the remote environment is going to be here with us indefinitely. If for whatever reason you feel like going against this new market trend/correction, you stand to lose out. Companies who are demanding hybrid or return to office are unironically putting themselves in walls that will limit their competitiveness in the long run. Again this is what the market tells us, many companies are realizing they can save on expensive commercial rent/logistic overhead and hire more remote workers.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

let the extroverts have their beloved office and introverts their home. anyone undecided can be "hybrid".