The Pandemic May Mean the End of the Open-Floor Office

[gristy]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/health/coronavirus-office-makeover.html

Lots of paragraphs about how office configurations will change. But the last one really sums it up for me:

Moving to home offices “has worked really great,” said Susan Stick, general counsel at Evernote, a maker of digital note-taking programs with 282 employees. “You can’t put that genie back into the bottle.”

[ebbie15644]

1. Good, always hated them

[CentralMass]

14. Me too.

[lunasun]

15. Same !

[leftieNanner]

2. This would not be the time to invest in that kind of commercial real estate

Huge corporate offices are a thing of the past. So many bosses thought that their employees would slack off if they worked from home. Turns out they were wrong.

On edit: Does this mean that Jared's Mark of the Beast (666) building will become obsolete?

[Squinch]

6. Ohhhh! Good question!

[unblock]

3. the biggest effect may be the widespread acceptance of working from home

big offices where everyone is required to be present 5 solid days a week may be much less common as businesses realize that working from home can actually work better than they thought, and they can save money by paying for less real estate.

it may become more typical to have people only in the office 2-3 days a week, for example.

this could have huge ripple effects as corporate real estate prices sink followed by residential real estate prices, all of which is efficient for businesses but could really hurt our consumer-based economy.

[ProfessorGAC]

5. I Think Likewise

There are jobs that obviously require being there, even among the professional ranks.
A process engineer at a manufacturing site probably needs to be there at least 3 days a week, if not all 5.
QA people in nearly all industries would need to be there.
Logistics people, accounting, HR, etc. could probably be at the number you suggest.
Maybe only once, plus critical working meetings.
Meetings as updates, or informational are likely to become obsolete.

[zipplewrath]

16. Piece work

I spent the last 5 years of my career supervising people who had a greater and greater capacity to "work from home". Some could do it well, some could not. But furthermore, as productive as they might or might not be, what was inescapable was that those that were working from home were not getting "credit" for their work. Their bosses did, but they were not there for the "hallway meetings" and so their bosses got credit for what they were producing. I was constantly encouraged to try to breakdown various tasks into chunks that could be outsourced in some sense. It can be done to some extent, but the efficiency is poor. However, what is obvious is that if it becomes institutionalized, it is a way to outsource work to people/organizations that will charge the least for that work. By the way, Boeing tried this on a massive scale and it was a disaster on the design of the 787.

I'm sorry, but if you are part of a team, you can't behave as an individual. You have to be there when another member needs you. I'm not saying that it has to be 40 hours, but in the end, it's going to be much more than you want. There are times that an individual may be released to work from home to be able to concentrate on a very specific task and goal. But it may be for a much shorter period of time than they would like. I DO agree that the "bull pen" kind of office arrangement is totally counterproductive. I was always advocating that "individual contributors" needed and "individual space". Truth is, almost everyone needs "more space". Packing 6 people in a space, shoulder to shoulder, is not conducive to creative work. I'm not sure it is conducive to any kind of work.

Look, I've worked on projects where we all had to work together, at the same time, on the same physical thing, to get the work done. And believe me, it can be a very enjoyable thing. The best "team building" event I know of is getting sent to some remote location to accomplish a test of some sort over a period of days if not weeks. But the vast majority of work is doing what you do, and do well, for hours if not days on end with little to no interruption. Unfortunately, others need your knowledge, experience, and insight on a DAILY basis. We all need to balance that challenge. But I also will tell you that packing people into cubicles day after day with no "break" is not the right thing.

[el_bryanto]

19. Yep - I have to agree - I am having to fight to keep my office after we all go back into the office.

But I don't want to go back early to protect my office as I don't want to catch this disease.

Bryant

[Steelrolled]

23. I think it would really suck for new people out of college

For me those were great times as you became part of a new community, both work and social. I started in a place with a lot of other new people, and it really helped the transition from college. And there were some (not all) experienced people who were very generous with their time to help a newbie get started.


Edit for typo.

[unblock]

24. Indeed. We have had new hires start in the last few weeks

First day of work they go to the empty office and meet only our tech guy, who waves from 6 feet away and tells them to take the laptop that's been prepped and wrapped in plastic and sprayed and wiped down.

Then they take it home and get all their training via zoom/Skype/teams.

We've had collaborative, brainstorming session online.

Pretty surreal.

[genxlib]

4. Good riddance

The only down side in my mind is the possible end to assigned spaces.

If people are going to work partly home, then two people will end up sharing the same office desk. Otherwise, you still need the same amount of office space as before.

Fortunately, I think I am senior enough to stake a claim on my office. Maybe I need a flag.

[meadowlander]

7. Not a moment too soon.

I can get done in three or four hours at home what might have taken me two days at the office with the constant interruptions.

It's been brilliant for my mental health as well to have peace and quiet and be able to get little household chores done on my lunch break so I stay on top of them.

I could very happily shift to four days at home, one day in the office (to set up meetings that absolutely have to be in person and use the photocopier).

[Luz]

8. I feel for all the office janitors. Another shrinking occupation.

[shanti]

13. There will always be janitors

Working at night, when there are no office workers solves that.

[Luz]

17. When there are no office workers, there is no need for a

janitor. My bldg had 2 full time and 2 part time. Now it's 2 part time. Most of the tenants now work from home. Commercial office space is on it's way out, so yeah, there will be a thinning of employees.

[RhodeIslandOne]

9. For all the people throwing parties in this thread....

....some people see the office as an oasis from bad home life.

Both the other residents of the house and those who go to the office.

[Skittles]

11. agreed

and I have always preferred to keep my home and work lives separate.

[MyNameGoesHere]

10. Thank God.

Studies have shown the idea of making people more collaborative is horseshit. It was all a scam to sell people on the idea of less is worth paying more for.

[shanti]

12. Understood

but the virus can make its way through the AC ducts, so how does one protect against that?

[Amishman]

20. high intensity UV lights within the ducts

already available but not cheap to install or operate. Also may require modifications to the air circulation system to make sure the air isn't passing through the UV area too quickly

Open office needs to die. The claim is always that younger workers prefer it - We don't. It makes it hard to focus and avoid distraction. Give us full cubes (and only a few per room), or entire offices. Have separate collaboration spaces available for when we do need to work together. But noooo, that's expensive....

No one likes it other than middle management psychos who are obsessed with cracking the whip. A few years back I had a contract job where I was doing a lot of data analysis (I was brought in to fix their botched system implementation). I had some department director call me out saying that I seem to spend a lot of time just sitting there staring off into space, implying I wasn't working hard. I told him that it is called 'thinking' and since they brought be in as an analyst, they should expect me to do quite a bit of it. Thank God that was only a 3 month gig, I laughed when the project manager offered me an extension.

[themaguffin]

18. I was just thinking about this week. A decade+ of remaking offices and now this

I know some like, but I never had a problem with the 90s era cube layout. At least people, had a semblance of a space of their own and the cube walls would be helpful now.

[Initech]

21. They'll be back when there's a vaccine.

None of this is permanent. This is only because of the virus.

[Steelrolled]

22. Always way too much extrapolation in news reports.

People love to take current events and predict vast long term effects. Sometimes that works, most often it doesn't. I still think about the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is 2020 now.

[gristy]

25. More on this today in the NY Times

Millions of Americans are taking part in an unprecedented experiment in working from home. Many are happier, more efficient and want to hang onto the benefits when the pandemic ends.

For Jeff Anderson, 61, working from home during the coronavirus pandemic has been a respite from office politics and the chatter around the copy machine.

But as the push to reopen the country’s economy intensifies, so do feelings of dread at the idea of returning to the office, said Mr. Anderson, a self-described introvert and anthropology professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y.

“Just walking from the parking lot to my office I feel like I could be sick,” he said. “It’s that bad.”

In wanting to work alone, Mr. Anderson is not alone. People other than introverts view a return to the office with sadness and anxiety, and not just because they still risk getting infected. A Gallup poll found a majority of American adults working from home would prefer to continue doing so “as much as possible” after the pandemic.

more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/business/pandemic-work-from-home-coronavirus.html