Sounds like Charlie Munger was on to something with his windowless people storage silos college dorms.
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That’s a perfectly reasonable use for hot desks. When it’s your primary workspace, not so much.
They need all the help they can get sorting through all that sweet sweet biometric data.
There’s another problem with office buildings: especially if made in the outskirts or industrial areas, they’re low-quality prefab structures and it’s better to demolish and rebuid than try to convert to residential. Like malls, being prefab they’re easy to demolish and rebuild.
A trend I’ve seen is to build a mixed residential/commercial area, having a mall, possibly an open mall and condos built across the streetor even over the mall. I’ve seen a very interesting thing done, they made a mall and on the upper floors they designed from the start to have flats that could be used as offices or as apartments.
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In the UK, following Tory promises to build new houses, it has become less regulated to convert office blocks to residential.
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Yup. Pre pandemic we were completely office-based and hot dealing. There were days where I might not even start doing any actual work for 60 to 90 minutes because I was pissing about looking for a desk. And I’m supposed to have a permanent one, but some moron manager would give it away if I happened to be on a 10am start every damn time. I barely remember what my office looks like now, it’s great.
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Fair points to you and everyone else. Personally if I had the option of sharing a desk so I could WFH three days a week or coming into the office everyday…well I can bring my own keyboard and mouse if need be. I do get that it is somewhat industry specific. If you are a coder or spend exceedingly long times at the computer or have a need for a customized setup, sure it’s going to be a non-starter.
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Partial repurposing would be better than nothing. Remember we’re talking about a sunk cost they are complaining about. Instead of trying to maximise it, companies are making manifestly bad business decisions. They are bleeding top talent because they can’t get past previous mistakes.
Well I don’t think most companies have the ability to change that. A company with a ten year lease on their building can’t turn part of it into apartments. Even if the zoning allowed that, the lease doesn’t and it would cost a fortune. I’m not sure what you’re hoping they’ll do, exactly?
Obviously I don’t agree with forcing people back to the office to justify sunk cost. I quit a job two years ago for that exact reason. But I also see the difficult position these companies are in.
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Context:
And making decisions based on sunk cost is just as irrational in business as it is at a Blackjack table when you’re down half your chips. There’s nothing to think about if you know what your doing. Get the most out of it that you can and move on. That doesn’t include chasing away your talent pool over a bad decision five years ago.
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I’ve said repeatedly that I agree. I’m not taking that position that you are arguing against.
However the details matter. It’s easy to say they should repurpose the buildings, but when you try to actually do that, it’s immensely difficult and in any many scenarios impossible for a whole host of reasons.
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(Sorry, I have nothing of value to add)
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Then I apologize. I misunderstood what you meant by:
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don’t worry. vr headsets will give us all our customized workspaces. we can all commute to blank featureless open office, then plug in, and not have to see anyone at all
it’ll be the best of both worlds /s
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While that should be sarcasm, it hits very to close to reality.
Not the vr, but the going to the office and not seeing anyone at all. That feels like exactly what happens with forced return one day a week.
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More on Zoom’s AI fuckup:
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I’ve wondered about that myself. I keep hearing about businesses that provide some kind of web site template that users can fill in and/or, in this case, a data pipe between users, and a database on the back end, and they have 10,000 employees and are worth $500 billion. I don’t understand this at all. I don’t know what all those people are doing.
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