[HN Gopher] Why Googleplex Architect Says Luxury On-Site Perks A...
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Why Googleplex Architect Says Luxury On-Site Perks Are 'Dangerous'
Author : jpm_sd
Score : 20 points
Date : 2022-01-25 18:25 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kqed.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kqed.org)
| musicale wrote:
| > keeping you stuck in this liminal work-like state for as long
| as possible
|
| Pretty much. It's obviously for the benefit of the company
| because they wouldn't do it otherwise.
|
| Still I appreciate the perks since you're expected to overwork
| anyway.
| southerntofu wrote:
| TL;DR
|
| > "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."
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Is it me or does it sound a little more than cultish?
| closeparen wrote:
| Do Mountain View and Sunnyvale and Cupertino want, or would
| they even allow, more and busier strip malls?
|
| I see these perks as fundamentally trying to make the suburban
| office park experience tolerable to younger workers, who would
| otherwise get this stuff from the city. I work for a more urban
| company and we don't do any of this crap except lunch. We don't
| need to; it's down the street.
| atlgator wrote:
| Amazon is slowly creating their own nation state, where you can
| grow up in their ecosystem, live in their housing, attend their
| schools, train through their job training programs, and work your
| entire career for them.
| shaftway wrote:
| > 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.
|
| But not an environment where it's easy to get work done.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| I like moving into a shared space for a group conversation,
| yes.
|
| But mainly, I want an office with a door that closes. I want my
| own keyboard, which I have selected for its ergonomic
| properties. I want my own mouse, again, selected for its
| ergonomic properties. I want my own chair, which I have
| selected and adjusted for its ergonomic properties. I want to
| put pictures of my kids on the walls. I want to leave physical
| notes to myself. And have reference books nearby. I want a
| plant.
|
| I do not want a soul-less hotel-style "business workstation."
| And I especially don't want one in an open floor plan with
| everyone talking over everyone else.
|
| Get it through your thick, stupid skulls.
| musicale wrote:
| Infinite Loop[1] >> Apple Park[2]
|
| "It was a gigantic shift in the way we worked, because we
| went from being in cubes to, all of a sudden, literally every
| person had an office." -Greg "Joz" Jozwiak
|
| [1] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-infinite-loop-oral-
| history...
|
| [2] https://www.dezeen.com/2017/08/10/apple-park-campus-
| employee...
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Putting it all together - you want to work from your home
| office.
| throwaheyy wrote:
| Where did they say "home office"?
|
| I want all the above, along with face time with co-workers
| and a half hour commute separating it from home.
| [deleted]
| midrus wrote:
| I'm sad I can only upvote this once.
| musicale wrote:
| > I want my own keyboard, which I have selected for its
| ergonomic properties.
|
| ^This. I enjoy using a nice electromechanical keyboard, but
| the noise from typing (even on a model with quieter/damped
| key switches) is incompatible with a shared/open plan office
| space.
|
| But the greatest reasons are privacy, a sense of spatial
| ownership, and freedom from distraction and interruptions.
| mst wrote:
| I can zone other people and their keyboards out just fine
| but yes.
|
| Though my colleagues have noted previously that they find
| the level of volume coming from my keyboard to be less a
| distraction and more a useful indicator of how
| interruptable I am that I don't need to deliberately
| update.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| You get the sense that this architect has not talked to very
| many of the people who would be spending a third of their life
| in the space he envisions. I'd take a grey cube farm over this
| any day of the week.
| mc32 wrote:
| How do cozy nooks and unassigned workstations implement EH&S?
| We know sofas and couches lead to poor posture which results in
| muscle and skeletal discomfort among other things... But nooks
| and even unassigned workstations may not be ideal in terms of
| ergonomics...
| voisin wrote:
| That quote sounds a lot like what "experts" thought offices
| should look like before the pandemic too.
| Arainach wrote:
| Indeed. My employer had hot desking for a while during lockdown
| for people who chose to voluntarily come into the office so
| they could space people out. I tried it solo, I tried it
| booking a pod as a small team of 4-8, and I _hated_ it. If they
| tried to make it permanent (they 're not, they've moved back to
| assigned desks), I would quit in a heartbeat.
|
| Working in a random area from a laptop is an ergonomic
| nightmare. I want a specific keyboard, specific mouse, and
| specific monitors. I don't want a tiny laptop screen plugged
| into a dock with the same generic Dell equipment that comes
| with every machine, and I don't want to have to lug in my own
| equipment every single time I come to the office.
|
| It's also nice to have a spot that's "mine" for the most
| minimal of personal touches - I can leave my headphones there,
| I can have post it notes on the monitor reminding me of things,
| I could even have a _picture_ if I wanted.
| mst wrote:
| Also, a set of drawers with sufficient ramen and wasabi
| peanuts in it that if I'm mid hack and need carbs that can be
| fixed on autopilot while continuing to focus on the actual
| problem.
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| I for one love them, it makes my life so much easier
| trzy wrote:
| The SV "campus culture" is a contributing factor to the area's
| overall social dullness. The downsides of this are not
| immediately apparent but there is an opportunity cost to eating
| all your dinners with the same group of (mostly) guys and salad
| bar take-home scavengers.
|
| One thing I liked at Apple is that at 4pm, almost everyone went
| home (many commuted via the company bus). A coworker of mine
| who had moved from Apple to Google and back to Apple preferred
| Apple because people there have more "fire in their belly" and
| a bias toward getting things done rather than availing
| themselves of benefits and treating work as a retirement home.
| 0x500x79 wrote:
| I worked at a bit campus with lots of perks. It felt more like
| college than work. Especially with how people stayed for dinner
| and the campus was busy from 7AM to 10PM. I can see how this
| could be dangerous.
|
| I really felt like the campus made people feel like it was more
| like college which led to some bad behaviors, IME.
| irrational wrote:
| > The office is the fermenting ground for people growing into
| successful adults.
|
| This makes me scream in my head. Do we really believe this?
| Should we really believe this? Have there been no successful
| adults who were not fermented in an office?
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| Google fermented in a garage at first, right?
| zepto wrote:
| From the point of the corporate hierarchy, by definition you
| are not successful if you do not have an executive rank.
| Therefore only those who have been fermented in the vat, can be
| considered successful.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Once you are in the workplace shouldn't you already be an adult
| by that point?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his
| salary depends upon his not understanding it."
|
| This article is an interview with an architect who designs
| offices for large corporations. He has to believe this,
| otherwise he's out of a job.
| mc32 wrote:
| Very much like time manager sessions, collaboration sessions
| and other assigned trainings. the majority of that imparted
| is fluff. Occasionally you get a nugget, but by and large,
| it's not for these nuggets that these people become "experts"
| in a particular domain but rather they are perpetuating their
| parasitic relationship with companies.
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