
Death of the Office - eplanit
https://www.1843magazine.com/features/death-of-the-office
======
munificent
I don't like that most of these articles present a binary choice: always work
from home or always work from the office.

I've learned two things in the past couple of months:

* I really enjoy being at home when doing task work. I can play music without headphones. I can tweak my surroundings to be just the way I like them. I can meander down and see the wife and kids for lunch. Talk a walk around my neighborhood. (I would be able to run an errand or to, normally, but...)

* I hate being at home when doing design or collaborative work. Videoconferencing is better than nothing, but the latency makes me want to claw my eyes out. And I just deeply miss the conviviality and warmth of sharing a physical space with my team.

But I don't need either the former or the latter every day. What I'd really
like is a team that worked together a couple of days a week, and from home a
couple of days.

~~~
cactus2093
The obvious problem is this is the most expensive of all solutions. You still
need an office space for everyone (you can't really get a smaller office and
stagger days that people go in, because the whole point is camaraderie and
collaboration. Maybe you could do this across organizations? Sales mon/wed,
product and engineering tues/thurs).

Plus everyone needs to still live within commuting distance to the office, and
also have a productive work space at home, which is a huge luxury in a place
like SF to have an extra room for an office.

~~~
ReactiveJelly
What if I invited my coworkers to hang out at my home office?

~~~
munificent
I'm actually considering doing exactly this. Before too long, I'll be at a
point where I really need to collaborate with one member of my team and I
can't imagine doing it over VC. We usually spend an hour or two at a
whiteboard sketching things out.

It might be easiest to simply take turns driving to each other's house.

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paulryanrogers
Since this article offers few sources for its claims, except cherry-picked
anecdotes, here are some claims of my own: forced remote work will polarize
opinions. Those of us who enjoy the perks will become further entrenched while
those who can't stand the downsides will say it's proof WFH is the devil.

My last full time office job began with a great, downtown location. But it
became crowded as the company outgrew the space. Little annoyances like
mandatory office music and shared desks made focused work more difficult. Of
course management always gets their own offices, so they get control of their
space with a choice to retreat when privacy or silence is needed.

Hopefully the shared experience will break the cycle of talking past each
other. Though I'm not holding my breath.

~~~
papeda
> mandatory office music

What?

~~~
trhway
back in the 199x i felt great coming into our small office with 30+ of
20-something guys like me crammed in coding and playing network Quake and the
Rammstein blasting in the office over the Quake rocket explosions. Best
productive years. These days even mere presence of 20-somethings on the team
gives me headache :)

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abraxas
At the very least I hope the open concept office design dies of coronavirus.
It was a bad idea all along.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
I think workers have to push for killing off the open office by bringing it up
as a health and safety concern while COVID-19 is still at the forefront
everyone's consciousness. There will never be a better opportunity; bring it
up as a question at corporate/divisional meetings and provide feedback
wherever reasonably possible.

~~~
Izkata
It doesn't sound like ours is going away, but I did recently find out they're
removing half the docks so people can spread out more and planning on funding
WFH setups for off-days (which will increase to handle the reduced seats).

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gfxgirl
I hope some enterprising startups find ways to make work social because for me
sitting at home with slack/chat/zoom is death.

It may be less efficient but I like going to work precisely for the face to
face time and camaraderie. Though I have been lucky to work more often than
not work on projects I was passionate about with people I liked.

~~~
jjtheblunt
I think you're right, that you've had good luck; the opposite scenario is that
I go to work and there are numerous friendly folks for whom work IS their
social outlet, so it's a super incoherent environment.

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sergiotapia
Adapt or die unfortunately, companies with remote friendly cultures are
weathering the storm much better than more traditional companies. I'm very
proud of the leadership where I work; we pivoted so quickly and so
effectively, it was a sight to behold.

I do miss going to the offices once a week though, but that's because I like
my coworkers.

~~~
varjag
Is there ever a business in life or death situation because of the wrong
choice over offices/cubicles/remote/open plan?

Those who appear to be struggling are doing so mostly due to disrupted
customer demand, supply chain or business relationships.

~~~
whateveracct
And yet I've had a VPE with a FAANG pedigree tell me that "remote teams are a
surefire path to mediocrity"

~~~
dasil003
FAANG pedigree is not really applicable to remote work though. These companies
scaled impressive engineering orgs for building the modern internet, but they
are also now megacorps with all the same process and communication overhead,
just a different flavor from the previous generation. I have no doubt that
companies that are dedicated to the remote work can build a successful
culture, and covid and the upcoming recession/depression will gave them a huge
leg up.

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jasode
_> And so, for all the threat faced by the office, there is also cause for
optimism about its future. These days the “hyper-physical…is so cherished,”
notes Heatherwick. [...], all those desks and all those people, all that
bustle and time-wasting, have their benefits.

Humans need offices. Online encounters may be keeping us alive as social
beings right now, but work-related video meetings are too often transactional,
awkward and unappealing. After the initial joy of peering into each other’s
houses on Zoom, we are confronted with people’s heads looming even closer than
we see them across the desk at work, and we gaze in horror – half of it self-
awareness that we, too, must look awful – at thinning hair and double chins.
We become freakish specimens rather than people. No Skype chat can replicate
what Heatherwick calls the “chemistry of the unexpected” that you get in
person. [...] Because what moves us is not sitting at our computer, it’s the
relationship that we have with people.”_

Although I've been 100% remote for more than a decade and love the freedom and
flexibility, I still don't think this COVID-19 crisis will kill offices and
commuting as much as some workers hope for.

Today's telecommuting technologies like videoconferencing, screen sharing,
virtual whiteboards, etc are still not seamless and fluid enough.

Therefore, some companies (especially young startups) that have high degree of
collaboration will continue to work in offices to outcompete the companies
that are 100% remote.

Yes, onsite collaboration in offices is overstated but maybe productivity of
working at home is overstated as well. As a random observation, I find it
interesting that TV show writers' rooms (including weekly dramas and comedy
skits) will all get into the same office to hash out a show. Why do they do
that if remote tech like videoconferencing can replace in-person interaction?

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> As a random observation, I find it interesting that TV show writers' rooms
> (including weekly dramas and comedy skits) will all get into the same office
> to hash out a show.

I believe some TV shows (SNL IIRC) are still being made with people working
remotely.

~~~
jasode
_> I believe some TV shows (SNL IIRC) are still being made with people working
remotely._

I think you're saying the current COVID is making producers and writers
_adapt_ to the lockdown situation because they have to, and therefore they
have to work _remotely_. Yes, I understand that.

I think once the coronavirus scare is behind us, those writers will
_willingly_ go back to being in the same _physical room_ to hash out the
dialogue for a show.

If you look at the "writers room" from the SNL documentary[0], you wonder why
all those writers and stars are in the same room when they could just use
videoconferencing for the "table read". They're all younger generation with
money so using technology such as laptops with webcams probably isn't the
barrier. I think it's because most writers _want_ to be in the writers room
and videoconferencing is still not a good enough substitute for a physical
presence. That's why they suffer the miserable Los Angeles traffic to show up
in that room.

[0] deep link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu3LyygiSJM&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu3LyygiSJM&feature=youtu.be&t=26m15s)

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code4tee
The office isn’t dead, but it is also clear that the office won’t come back to
levels we saw before.

Commercial real estate is very expensive. In many companies the biggest
expense after salaries is the cost of their office space. That cost is going
to be challenged very heavily moving forward. Many companies that were against
work from home because “it won’t work for our company” have been in near 100%
WFM mode for a while now. After some initial stumbles most haven’t imploded
and many quite like the new model.

I suspect that hybrid will become the new norm and that many fewer people will
spend every workday at the office. That in turn drastically reduces the square
footage required by many companies.

The implications of all this for the commercial real estate market are quite
severe. Expect to see developers quickly try to pivot some of their commercial
space into residential ASAP before they find themselves sitting on empty
floors with plunging value.

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jandrewrogers
One interesting aspect of making everyone WFH is that it is effectively moving
the cost of office space from the employer to the employee. Most homes are not
designed or setup to be virtual offices for two employees, because most people
never really considered it when they acquired their current living space,
which is the reality many people are working within now.

If this becomes the new normal, it will change the way people think about what
their home is used for. In many cases, it implies an increase in needed living
space, which comes at a cost.

~~~
empath75
Yeah, but you can move somewhere that has cheaper land.

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Nasrudith
Offices seem to fundamentally be an arms race in subversion of its own purpose
for both good and ill. The quiet compared to say a factory floor was a feature
which gets compromised for increased quantifiable benefits. Digitalization
means the stacks of literal file cabinets and references aren't needed while.
Focus and extended work are what they are meant to promote but the two
concepts are at odd - either work only when most focused or work for an
extended period with breaks ans interuptions. It is a very versatile
compromise essentially which is ironically very unfocused.

I suspect the cheapness of rent reduction may win over many companies to
remote long term just as open offices and cubiciles seduced them in the past.
It may give increased delays for certain tasks but lets face it - they had no
problem with increased delays from travel before.

I suspect we might see some increased very short term rentals for interviews
and meetings in the future if the bottom line beats out the culture for a
change.

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strategarius
I was working from home for the last 5 years, and really miss office
environment. I definitely would not come back to 9-to-5, but I desperately
need one day for collaboration in person, I miss socialization and coffee
breaks with colleagues, and my home turned into office long time ago, whereas
it should be my "fortress" of relaxation and quality time with the family. I
seriously considered moving all operations to coworking, but COVID-19 stopped
me for a while

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chrisbrandow
It is a shame that the author didn't say more (anything?) about the positive
sides of the office related to social bonds. I miss seeing my coworkers face
to face. I am tired of the weird conversational dynamics that arise from minor
delays in transmission. I miss a number of things that are directly related to
being physically present.

