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Private offices are nice. But real estate costs a lot of money. The company I work at would need 4x or more square footage in both San Francisco and New York to
by jitl 3y ago
Private offices are nice. But real estate costs a lot of money. The company I work at would need 4x or more square footage in both San Francisco and New York to give people shoebox offices. In SF, we’d need to find like 3 more empty office buildings near our current one, and I know there are no such buildings available. Until someone can make personal offices as dense as open offices, it’s going to be a very hard sell to Management.
As long as we’re pining after real estate, I’d love (to have the money for) a 2400sqft apartment instead of a 430sqft one, that would probably improve my life more than a private office. Also, why can’t I buy a starter home for $60,000 these days?
- shiroiushi 3y ago>Until someone can make personal offices as dense as open offices, They had decades ago: they're called "cubicles". The open office I sit in now is no more dense than the compact cubicle I had to sit in about 20 years ago. It was a lot quieter too.
- jitl 3y agoCubicles are not as dense as the open office plan we use. Our desks are about 1.8 office chairs wide, never seen a cubicle that small.
- shiroiushi 3y agoThat just sounds like hell. The densest cubicles I used (just before the open office fad took over) were, IIRC, 6 by 9 feet. The company previous had 9x9 cubicles but shrunk them to pack more people in. The 9x9 cubicles were actually quite nice as long as you didn't have a building column in the middle of yours.
- j45 3y agoDepth of desk is a consideration too
- AlbertCory 3y agoYour cost figures are highly questionable and probably exaggerated. In the first article I quoted a couple people who would deny them. Private office systems (all but universal before the advent of cubes everywhere) had open office-style areas in the middle of the floor, with offices around the perimeter. Please redo your calculations in light of that.
- jitl 3y agoI mean to give an office to everyone, not just to some amount of people who fit on the perimeter
- AlbertCory 3y agothat's your choice. "Equality" does not exist in a corporation.
- jitl 3y agoEven if we need just 2x the buildings, it still seems impossible to sell to management. Where are going to get a whole second building? Now people are going to need to commute for cross-team meetings. If they don’t have an office if their own to Zoom from - we’d probably need to convert all the meeting rooms to offices to squeeze into 2x buildings if we want to give 1/4 people offices. Floor / open area perimeter space is currently all meeting rooms.
- AlbertCory 3y agoYou keep making up numbers and changing your argument. Other people have studied this in detail, whereas you have some back-of-the-napkin thoughts.
- j45 3y agoPrivate offices can earn much more too with every hour of the work day The average square footage per person has also gone down with the latest boma guidelines And not to mention booking an office at work to hybrid work would probably get used more than a hotdesk.
- fragmede 3y agoBut with RTO people aren’t physically in the same place at the same time so if we have Monday, Tuesday people and Wednesday Thursday people they can coexist in the same office so we only need half as much space or to hold the same amount of people you get the side of the office to store, knickknacks, and and get the other half of this office to put all your bullshit. There’s awkward logistical problems to be dealt with but hey, I’d get a private office. One imagines a mechanized office with movable rooms that squish when not in use. Too many sci-fi movies ;)