https://www.npr.org/2022/01/22/1073975824/architect-behind-googleplex-now-says-its-dangerous-to-work-at-such-a-posh-office

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Architect behind Googleplex now says it's 'dangerous' to work at such
a posh office Clive Wilkinson says it's really not a good thing for
employees to work at a place that has catered meals, private parks,
massage tables and a laundromat ... because why would you ever leave?

Business

Architect behind Googleplex now says it's 'dangerous' to work at such
a posh office

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January 22, 20229:23 AM ET
Bobby Allyn

Bobby Allyn

Twitter

Architect behind Googleplex now says it's 'dangerous' to work at such
a posh office

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[clive-wilk]
Enlarge this image

Architect Clive Wilkinson's design for the famed Googleplex set a
high bar for other Silicon Valley companies eager to keep employees
at home in the office. Jessica Pons for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Jessica Pons for NPR

Architect Clive Wilkinson's design for the famed Googleplex set a
high bar for other Silicon Valley companies eager to keep employees
at home in the office.

Jessica Pons for NPR

For more than three decades, Clive Wilkinson has been among the most
sought-after office designers in the world. He has planned spaces for
the likes of Microsoft, Disney, Intuit and other companies seeking
unorthodox approaches to work life.

But he now has regrets about what is perhaps his most famous work:
Googleplex, the tech giant's posh headquarters in Mountain View,
Calif.

Wilkinson helped lay out Google's campus after winning its design
competition in 2004, leading him to work directly with Google
co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

"Larry and Sergey said at the time, 'We don't really have any
reference point but the Stanford campus model,' " said Wilkinson.

In Mountain View, what emerged was a maze of well-lit nooks,
bleachers and clubhouse rooms to encourage collaboration. The office
would also become famous for its amenities: Gourmet meals. Fitness
classes. Organic gardens. Massage rooms. Laundry services. Private
parks. Volleyball courts. Swimming pools. And so on.

[ap13598639]
Enlarge this image

While Wilkinson suggests companies rethink extravagant amenities, he
does think outdoor spaces should be part of any layout. Marcio Jose
Sanchez/AP hide caption

toggle caption
Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

While Wilkinson suggests companies rethink extravagant amenities, he
does think outdoor spaces should be part of any layout.

Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

But looking back, Wilkinson thinks Google's luxurious on-site perks
have made workers too dependent on the company, a situation he calls
"dangerous."

"This notion that you can provide everything that would support a
worker's life on campus might appear to be extremely generous and
supportive," he said. "But it also has a whole range of potentially
negative impacts."

Wilkinson spoke in an interview at his glass-enclosed hillside home
in West Los Angeles, which some have compared to a "spaceship on
stilts." His comments on Google's campus came during an extensive
conversation with NPR about how the pandemic may forever reshape
office life and what it could mean for workers.

While Silicon Valley has long been known for offering unusual
amenities to its workers, Google's offerings set a high bar. Other
tech giants began to roll out their own free meals, nature trails and
private transportation services in efforts to attract and retain
talent. But Wilkinson said as companies plan to bring workers back
into the office, such arrangements should be reconsidered.

He said blurring the line between work and non-work keeps employees
tethered to the office, benefiting the employer most of all. That, he
argues, may seem to keep workers happy but can quickly spark burnout.

"Work-life balance cannot be achieved by spending all your life on a
work campus. It's not real. It's not really engaging with the world
in the way most people do," he said. "It also drains the immediate
neighborhoods of being able to have a commercial reality."

Employees have no reason to leave campus to explore local cafes,
restaurants or grocery stores because everything is handed to them.
To Wilkinson, overly coddling workers like this is "fundamentally
unhealthy."

That, he said, "hasn't been recognized as one of the dangerous side
effects."

If an employer is trying to foster creativity, "you don't want an
overly comfortable workplace. You shouldn't have sleep pods
everywhere," he said. "Creative work doesn't happen in a condition of
luxury. If you have that much luxury, you naturally want to fall
asleep."

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At the same time, it is "a difficult one to pull apart," he said.
"Because once you made all those offers to your employees, how do you
pull back from that situation?"

Authors Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen talked to Wilkinson
about his new perspective on Googleplex in their new book Out of
Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home.

"There's a way that something that was built with good intentions can
be slightly corrupted," Warzel told NPR. "It's not a terrible thing
for employees to get nice perks, but what is it in service of? Making
you a better worker? Or making sure your needs are met? Or keeping
you stuck in this liminal work-like state for as long as possible."

That said, plenty of Google's some 144,000 employees appear to be
just fine with the on-site luxuries their employer provides. Surveys
routinely place Google at the top of lists for worker happiness and
satisfaction with how much employees are paid. When the pandemic
forced Googlers off campus, it appears it dented worker morale, and
the company is responding with new cash bonuses.

Google, which did not respond to a request for comment, is planning a
new multi-billion-dollar campus in San Jose and another massive site
in Mountain View.

The office is not dead, Wilkinson argues

When COVID-19 hit, some 2.5 million square feet of office space
Wilkinson's firm was working on was canceled or delayed. But he
becomes defiant when asked whether the pandemic has killed the
office.

"It's ridiculous to say the office is dead," said Wilkinson, "The
office is the fermenting ground for people growing into successful
adults. How would that ever be dead?"

[clive-wilk]

Some have compared the glass-enclosed hillside home that Wilkinson
built for himself in West Los Angeles to a "spaceship on stilts."
Jessica Pons for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Jessica Pons for NPR

Studies suggest remote work will outlast the pandemic. But most
companies in a new U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey said they also
plan to maintain their office spaces. Wilkinson's corporate clients
are now returning. He says most of them are not ready to forgo the
office. They are, however, eager for a facelift, one that makes sense
in a hybrid work environment.

To a certain degree, he said, companies are winging it.

"People don't know how much space they need anymore, so I think an
awful lot of large companies are waiting to see what everybody else
does," Wilkinson said.

No one wants a depressingly empty office, something he calls "one of
the biggest problems in the new workplace."

He adds: "When you go in there, specifically because of hybrid
working, is the place going to feel that it's underpowered and it's
running on empty?"

And so he suspects, happily, that the pandemic has wiped out one
particular type of office: the cubicle farm.

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"Cubicles are like human chicken farming. They have always been bad
for anything other than kind of factory farming kind of approach to
the office," he said. "Put people in tiny little footprint because it
takes less money than an enclosed office and we can kind of keep an
eye on them."

Out with the old office, in with the 'boutique hotel' feel

If jammed-together desks are out and Wilkinson cautions against
swanky amenities a la Google, what does the post-pandemic workplace
resemble?

Wilkinson envisions big, open spaces with couches and cozy nooks as
work stations that are not assigned to any single employee. An
environment where it's easy to hang out and chat.

"You might think you're walking into the lounge of a boutique hotel,"
Wilkinson said. "It's an amazingly effective work environment, even
though there's no conventional kind of office furnishing or anything
like that."

He has noticed something else about the pandemic-era office plans he
is now working on: companies are investing in outdoor spaces. Go
ahead, answer your emails in the shade.

"Because now it's seen as being healthy," he said. "Health itself has
suddenly become one of the top criteria about where you work."

He said the future office will be a balancing act. It needs to be
more attractive than working from home, yet not so attractive that
workers don't want to go home.

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But not even the most seasoned corporate architect can predict the
answer to the question at the center of it all: How many workers
really want to return to the office, and how often do they want to be
there?

"We're having very interesting conversations with a lot of clients
right now about, 'Does the office need to be a bunch of project
rooms? Does it need to be one huge cafeteria?' " he said. "We're now
building a lot of Zoom rooms, which is something we never did
before."

  * Clive Wilkinson

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