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My favorite environment is a 5-10 person office, no more than 5 miles from everyone’s home. I know how to make that work in a startup, but its premise doesn’t

My favorite environment is a 5-10 person office, no more than 5 miles from everyone’s home. I know how to make that work in a startup, but its premise doesn’t scale beyond a pizza box. Has anyone figured out a better way that works at 100 people? One idea I’m curious about is pods. Could you build a small team who all live close enough together? Could they coordinate remotely with the mothership? The default seems to be to just embrace remote. Or issue a RTO as a ‘polite’ way to decimate the team and reduce burn.

ghaff 2y ago
So what happens when someone wants to change teams for whatever reason? Or they're presented with a new opportunity? On the other side of the city--or in a different city. Do they have to move?
- gdiamos 2y ago
  There are clear flaws. I haven’t figured it out. Being able to form and disband teams dynamically is an advantage. That does seem to favor a big enough pool of people in the same place. Or relying on remote for projects spanning pods.
mxuribe 2y ago
I actually would not mind a slightly bigger org - like even up to 100 or so...but everything else you noted i'm 100% in agreement with. I'll call this the "village way"...because what you noted - to me at least - seems like how villages, small towns, whatever you want to call them had to exist a hundred years ago or so...like, not just before digital, but i mean, even when base telecom was not a common thing....so i would imagine most folks in a town/village worked for one of a few extremely local workplaces. I'm not saying having only very few employers in an area is good, since that would be giving a central group way too miuch power. But, yeah, i kinda yearn for a sort of village approach. And, yes, it could also mean that the "local pod" is everyone in the local area working together in one place, but remotely coordinating with a mothership as you put it. That all sounds pretty decent! But, this approach is not something that powers-that-be would even begin to support...even though, i betcha, this approach would have tons of people actually invested in the success of the org because of the good that it represents in allowing people to earn a living without making commutes and such that much more difficult. I know that if my employers supoorted this sort of model, i would not only work karder, but actually give more of a damn, and really care to have the org succeed. Basically, i would contribute far more to the org. But, nah, the bosses just want to squeeze the lemons, and not care how they get their juice produced. ;-)
travisb 2y ago
At 100 people, every desk-job company is already a remote company, even if they don't know it yet. Travel distance between desks has already become so large that many people won't do it for small things. For decades now those situations would be handled by a phone call or email. Meeting in the coffee room to chat becomes rare because schedules and tastes (eg. office coffee versus off-site coffee, bagged lunches versus going out) differ. Also there's too many people and too much churn to really get to know anybody. Arranging meeting times becomes difficult outside smaller 5-10 person units so asynchronous communication becomes predominant. What I've seen work is not trying to co-locate a full team at all. Doing so only leads to silos and hiring difficulties. Instead have small offices which people from a small geographic area use. Those people will be on different teams and in different departments -- which is good for inter-team communication and synergy. This is exactly what offices normally miss because teams are co-located resulting in a relatively high 'distance' to build a rapport between teams.
ghosty141 2y ago
At my previous job I worked in a room with ~6 people, now it's a small open plan office and I hate it. I just can't focus with all the talking, noise, meetings etc. it's awful, especially with the contrast of our 2 work-from-home days per week. Funnily enough our team lead works in a 2 person office... hmm.

ghaff 2y ago

So what happens when someone wants to change teams for whatever reason? Or they're presented with a new opportunity? On the other side of the city--or in a different city. Do they have to move?

gdiamos 2y ago
There are clear flaws. I haven’t figured it out. Being able to form and disband teams dynamically is an advantage. That does seem to favor a big enough pool of people in the same place. Or relying on remote for projects spanning pods.

mxuribe 2y ago

I actually would not mind a slightly bigger org - like even up to 100 or so...but everything else you noted i'm 100% in agreement with. I'll call this the "village way"...because what you noted - to me at least - seems like how villages, small towns, whatever you want to call them had to exist a hundred years ago or so...like, not just before digital, but i mean, even when base telecom was not a common thing....so i would imagine most folks in a town/village worked for one of a few extremely local workplaces. I'm not saying having only very few employers in an area is good, since that would be giving a central group way too miuch power. But, yeah, i kinda yearn for a sort of village approach. And, yes, it could also mean that the "local pod" is everyone in the local area working together in one place, but remotely coordinating with a mothership as you put it. That all sounds pretty decent! But, this approach is not something that powers-that-be would even begin to support...even though, i betcha, this approach would have tons of people actually invested in the success of the org because of the good that it represents in allowing people to earn a living without making commutes and such that much more difficult. I know that if my employers supoorted this sort of model, i would not only work karder, but actually give more of a damn, and really care to have the org succeed. Basically, i would contribute far more to the org. But, nah, the bosses just want to squeeze the lemons, and not care how they get their juice produced. ;-)

travisb 2y ago

At 100 people, every desk-job company is already a remote company, even if they don't know it yet. Travel distance between desks has already become so large that many people won't do it for small things. For decades now those situations would be handled by a phone call or email. Meeting in the coffee room to chat becomes rare because schedules and tastes (eg. office coffee versus off-site coffee, bagged lunches versus going out) differ. Also there's too many people and too much churn to really get to know anybody. Arranging meeting times becomes difficult outside smaller 5-10 person units so asynchronous communication becomes predominant. What I've seen work is not trying to co-locate a full team at all. Doing so only leads to silos and hiring difficulties. Instead have small offices which people from a small geographic area use. Those people will be on different teams and in different departments -- which is good for inter-team communication and synergy. This is exactly what offices normally miss because teams are co-located resulting in a relatively high 'distance' to build a rapport between teams.

ghosty141 2y ago

At my previous job I worked in a room with ~6 people, now it's a small open plan office and I hate it. I just can't focus with all the talking, noise, meetings etc. it's awful, especially with the contrast of our 2 work-from-home days per week. Funnily enough our team lead works in a 2 person office... hmm.