The article sort of misses the point, I think. Yes, it is very interesting that there were bees in a tech office because there was noone there for a long time; but the more interesting part of...
The article sort of misses the point, I think. Yes, it is very interesting that there were bees in a tech office because there was noone there for a long time; but the more interesting part of this discussion to me is whether the office is needed. After all, if the bees were this successful in this colony, while the humans didn't need the office to operate, maybe we should consider how much space we are occupying that we shouldn't be?
How much flora and fauna is being squeezed out of the environment simply because we are taking over environments that we might not need?
I know this is only slightly related, but my team is fighting with my company about this. We have a part of our company that will need office space/server space and the ability to go in and...
I know this is only slightly related, but my team is fighting with my company about this.
We have a part of our company that will need office space/server space and the ability to go in and interact directly with hardware, at least occasionally, and that's fine. My team especially though hasn't been in the office since March and there literally hasn't been a single day I wish I was back in the office. Unfortunately because my company owns a lot of office real estate, they seem pretty set on getting us back there once vaccines have rolled back.
I wonder if the culture will eventually shift away from office spaces? I don't think it will ever happen quickly, but if a company that has a lot of realestate that could be repurposed, why...
I wonder if the culture will eventually shift away from office spaces? I don't think it will ever happen quickly, but if a company that has a lot of realestate that could be repurposed, why wouldn't they? If people want to work from home and there are no productivity drops, this unused realestate could become an opportunity for alternative income!
Imageine: the company outsources the management of the property and simply reaps the revenues, it could provide the workers with some nice bonuses for working from.
Although this still encourages companies building out properties they don't really need. Maybe if there was some kind of a buyback program from the government that repurposes these spaces into cheap homes or repurposes them otherwise?
This may be something that is good in the long term, but I think a lot of things will have to change before I'd consider it actually good for us as individuals. I've been working from home for...
This may be something that is good in the long term, but I think a lot of things will have to change before I'd consider it actually good for us as individuals.
I've been working from home for almost a year now, and my wife works mostly from home but has to go work in her lab a few hours a week.
When we bought our home, we did not shop for this sort of eventuality, and while we have a bedroom designated as an office, it honestly isn't big enough for two of us.
In order for this sort of thing to work out better, I think we'd need more space in homes to accommodate working space. And if you do that, what's the actual net change in actual space taken up? Home offices may end up actually taking more space due to the lack of economy of scale in designing buildings specifically for workspace.
I guess even if it's more or less a zero change in terms of space, there's at least less commuting waste.
Up front acknowledgement that this wont work for every job, wont work for every individual's work style, and won't work in every area without additional public infra, and also this won't work...
Up front acknowledgement that this wont work for every job, wont work for every individual's work style, and won't work in every area without additional public infra, and also this won't work during a global pandemic
There's more options though between "working in an office" and "working in my home office". Have no meetings for a couple hours and need a quiet place to work? I bet your local library has wifi and a bunch of tables set up that barely anyone uses. Some (albeit probably limited) have added soundproof rooms where you can take calls from, you just can't monopolize it for hours. Local coffee shops are the stereotypical place to go. I've had some productive summer days grabbing a sub from the sandwich shop, hopping on the train and going to the park and working on the wifi there basking in the sun. A couple book shops in the area have free wifi and let people work there (though that might be because of how many books we also buy from there...). Also, just because I feel like this is the natural extension of my suggestion so I just want to get ahead of it: Fuck WeWork. Fuck that parasitic scummy shitstain of a company all the way to hell and back. While I think there are a lot of good options for alternatives to the office/home options, I truly hope WeWork is obliterated out of the equation, the public mind, and existence.
Alas, I find that having a desk with multiple monitors is rather important for serious work these days, so just taking my laptop around doesn't really work that well. I'll go sit on the couch...
Alas, I find that having a desk with multiple monitors is rather important for serious work these days, so just taking my laptop around doesn't really work that well. I'll go sit on the couch sometimes if I'm just in a meeting, but most of my job involves looking at a ton of text, which is inhibited by a lack of screen real estate.
Fair! I totally agree with you! I love my multiple-monitor set up at my desk, it makes debugging dns issues so much easier when I have the space to look at everything I need at once. One of the...
Fair! I totally agree with you! I love my multiple-monitor set up at my desk, it makes debugging dns issues so much easier when I have the space to look at everything I need at once. One of the drawbacks of having a partner who works in HR and remotely is that it means they have a lot of calls they need to take in private so I got a trial by fire learning how to make the most of my laptop screen space. I still don’t prefer it to multi monitors, but if there is a couple hours chunk of time where they are in calls, I might as well enjoy it :)
Yeah, I get it. My wife has a lot of meetings in the morning so I tend to work out of the bedroom/living room in the morning reading emails and whatnot. Maybe I could experiment with using airplay...
Yeah, I get it. My wife has a lot of meetings in the morning so I tend to work out of the bedroom/living room in the morning reading emails and whatnot. Maybe I could experiment with using airplay to my TV for code, although I'd probably also want to bring my nice keyboard down, and the more stuff I have to move around the more annoying it is. I finally bought a new USB-C charger to put under the coffee table so I can stop having to bring my charger down.
That is an interesting point! How do you feel about repurposing spaces? Such as living room to daytime office, with a closet/storage space dedicating to putting all work related items away at the...
That is an interesting point!
How do you feel about repurposing spaces? Such as living room to daytime office, with a closet/storage space dedicating to putting all work related items away at the end of the day?
I'm not sure what it would take to get convertible desks and the like all set up. Certainly nothing is at a great height to work on in my living room, and especially if I want to have my...
I'm not sure what it would take to get convertible desks and the like all set up. Certainly nothing is at a great height to work on in my living room, and especially if I want to have my multi-monitor set up (currently 15" laptop screen and 2x24" monitors) the setup/teardown would probably be prohibitive.
But honestly, I also like having a purposeful working space. When I'm done with work, I can just leave and have a physical separation that helps enforce a mental separation. It's just unfortunate that my work space is also my hobby space, which has led to a reduction in my time spent working on hobbies. At the end of the day I just don't want to be in that room anymore. Might be I could move my (musical) keyboard downstairs instead; although I do a lot of my stuff with synthesizers on my desktop computer, so it'd probably be just for practicing songs or something.
I totally undesrtand and agree. I spend most of my day in the living room and switching between work and life is becoming harder every day and my productivity in both is slowly falling. I wish...
I totally undesrtand and agree. I spend most of my day in the living room and switching between work and life is becoming harder every day and my productivity in both is slowly falling.
The article sort of misses the point, I think. Yes, it is very interesting that there were bees in a tech office because there was noone there for a long time; but the more interesting part of this discussion to me is whether the office is needed. After all, if the bees were this successful in this colony, while the humans didn't need the office to operate, maybe we should consider how much space we are occupying that we shouldn't be?
How much flora and fauna is being squeezed out of the environment simply because we are taking over environments that we might not need?
That is great news!
I know this is only slightly related, but my team is fighting with my company about this.
We have a part of our company that will need office space/server space and the ability to go in and interact directly with hardware, at least occasionally, and that's fine. My team especially though hasn't been in the office since March and there literally hasn't been a single day I wish I was back in the office. Unfortunately because my company owns a lot of office real estate, they seem pretty set on getting us back there once vaccines have rolled back.
I wonder if the culture will eventually shift away from office spaces? I don't think it will ever happen quickly, but if a company that has a lot of realestate that could be repurposed, why wouldn't they? If people want to work from home and there are no productivity drops, this unused realestate could become an opportunity for alternative income!
Imageine: the company outsources the management of the property and simply reaps the revenues, it could provide the workers with some nice bonuses for working from.
Although this still encourages companies building out properties they don't really need. Maybe if there was some kind of a buyback program from the government that repurposes these spaces into cheap homes or repurposes them otherwise?
This may be something that is good in the long term, but I think a lot of things will have to change before I'd consider it actually good for us as individuals.
I've been working from home for almost a year now, and my wife works mostly from home but has to go work in her lab a few hours a week.
When we bought our home, we did not shop for this sort of eventuality, and while we have a bedroom designated as an office, it honestly isn't big enough for two of us.
In order for this sort of thing to work out better, I think we'd need more space in homes to accommodate working space. And if you do that, what's the actual net change in actual space taken up? Home offices may end up actually taking more space due to the lack of economy of scale in designing buildings specifically for workspace.
I guess even if it's more or less a zero change in terms of space, there's at least less commuting waste.
Up front acknowledgement that this wont work for every job, wont work for every individual's work style, and won't work in every area without additional public infra, and also this won't work during a global pandemic
There's more options though between "working in an office" and "working in my home office". Have no meetings for a couple hours and need a quiet place to work? I bet your local library has wifi and a bunch of tables set up that barely anyone uses. Some (albeit probably limited) have added soundproof rooms where you can take calls from, you just can't monopolize it for hours. Local coffee shops are the stereotypical place to go. I've had some productive summer days grabbing a sub from the sandwich shop, hopping on the train and going to the park and working on the wifi there basking in the sun. A couple book shops in the area have free wifi and let people work there (though that might be because of how many books we also buy from there...). Also, just because I feel like this is the natural extension of my suggestion so I just want to get ahead of it: Fuck WeWork. Fuck that parasitic scummy shitstain of a company all the way to hell and back. While I think there are a lot of good options for alternatives to the office/home options, I truly hope WeWork is obliterated out of the equation, the public mind, and existence.
Alas, I find that having a desk with multiple monitors is rather important for serious work these days, so just taking my laptop around doesn't really work that well. I'll go sit on the couch sometimes if I'm just in a meeting, but most of my job involves looking at a ton of text, which is inhibited by a lack of screen real estate.
Fair! I totally agree with you! I love my multiple-monitor set up at my desk, it makes debugging dns issues so much easier when I have the space to look at everything I need at once. One of the drawbacks of having a partner who works in HR and remotely is that it means they have a lot of calls they need to take in private so I got a trial by fire learning how to make the most of my laptop screen space. I still don’t prefer it to multi monitors, but if there is a couple hours chunk of time where they are in calls, I might as well enjoy it :)
Yeah, I get it. My wife has a lot of meetings in the morning so I tend to work out of the bedroom/living room in the morning reading emails and whatnot. Maybe I could experiment with using airplay to my TV for code, although I'd probably also want to bring my nice keyboard down, and the more stuff I have to move around the more annoying it is. I finally bought a new USB-C charger to put under the coffee table so I can stop having to bring my charger down.
That is an interesting point!
How do you feel about repurposing spaces? Such as living room to daytime office, with a closet/storage space dedicating to putting all work related items away at the end of the day?
I'm not sure what it would take to get convertible desks and the like all set up. Certainly nothing is at a great height to work on in my living room, and especially if I want to have my multi-monitor set up (currently 15" laptop screen and 2x24" monitors) the setup/teardown would probably be prohibitive.
But honestly, I also like having a purposeful working space. When I'm done with work, I can just leave and have a physical separation that helps enforce a mental separation. It's just unfortunate that my work space is also my hobby space, which has led to a reduction in my time spent working on hobbies. At the end of the day I just don't want to be in that room anymore. Might be I could move my (musical) keyboard downstairs instead; although I do a lot of my stuff with synthesizers on my desktop computer, so it'd probably be just for practicing songs or something.
I totally undesrtand and agree. I spend most of my day in the living room and switching between work and life is becoming harder every day and my productivity in both is slowly falling.
I wish there was an easy solution to this.