[HN Gopher] The business of gutting failed Bay Area tech companies
___________________________________________________________________
The business of gutting failed Bay Area tech companies
Author : adrianmonk
Score : 132 points
Date : 2024-11-11 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfgate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfgate.com)
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Seeing those privacy phone booths makes me so envious. Why must
| we have these open office hellscapes? Let me shut out the endless
| racket.
| sbarre wrote:
| Those things are fart boxes, and they get unusable by lunch
| time.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| And mad thermal.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| They're supposed to have fans in them.
| sbarre wrote:
| Some do have fans on top of them but they don't work that
| well because no one wants a noisy fan blasting in the
| office..
| ghaff wrote:
| Anyplace I've been with private offices pretty much had an
| open-door policy. If you weren't doing something that required
| privacy, you kept the door open or at some point someone would
| almost certainly comment.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| My place of work is like that, but I'm allowed to keep my
| door mostly closed because they keep the place at subarctic
| temperatures and I keep a heater running all day. Gotta keep
| the heat in!
| havblue wrote:
| I don't envy the prospect of talking to a future employer when
| you work in a public space. Every day, you frequently respond,
| "uhhh no thanks" or, "maybe... Hold on I'll call you back"
| while you step outside the room suspiciously.
| petesergeant wrote:
| I feel like any (edit: small) company not outfitting their
| offices largely from cast-offs like this is failing their
| fiduciary duty.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Every startup I've worked at has bought furniture through one
| of these businesses.
| ghaff wrote:
| For a small startup, possibly. As you grow, like many things,
| it doesn't really scale well once you have to start paying
| people full-time to manage the whole process.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Totally, After a certain point it gets silly to have a bunch
| of mismatched office furniture that is inevitably in various
| states of disrepair.
|
| You can save yourself heaps of money by buying used Macbooks
| off of e-bay for a startup, but it becomes a nightmare at
| scale when you get an IT department that needs to manage it
| all with uniform security updates, and lifecycles.
| mdaniel wrote:
| Buying them off eBay is one thing, but for my own money
| I've had just stellar success with Apple's Refurbished
| selection, which comes with a warranty and one can purchase
| Apple Care for them
| <https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished> Regrettably I
| don't know if they're compatible with Apple's MDM but I
| couldn't imagine why not
| ghaff wrote:
| For yourself, it's totally an individual decision based
| on your personal priorities and risk calculus. I'm a bit
| skeptical about purchasing refurb computer equipment in
| general because the support window is ticking down but
| certainly I have nothing against used and refurb goods
| for the home in general.
|
| For companies, there's a lot to be said for
| standardization though, for my last job, I just used my
| own phones and computer gear anyway so it was what I
| wanted and I controlled it (other than MDM latterly on
| the phone).
| duskwuff wrote:
| > Regrettably I don't know if they're compatible with
| Apple's MDM but I couldn't imagine why not
|
| I doubt they'll ship you pre-MDMed devices from the
| refurb store, but you should still be able to add them to
| your account manually:
|
| https://it-training.apple.com/tutorials/deployment/dm060/
| hengheng wrote:
| But by then you also aren't buying one chair at a time. Or
| you might just have a standard rate agreed with your favorite
| supplier, and you'll just give them a call every other month.
|
| Buying isn't that hard.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And you know the retail price is probably double or more what
| the original owner was paid when they liquidated them. I wonder
| if these places are willing to haggle on price.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The original owner is going to get paid a lot less than half.
| Liquidating things may get you 10 cents on the dollar.
|
| A typical estate valuation of the contents of a home is
| around $900.
|
| All the stuff you paid $$$ for in your home is worth next to
| nothing.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah I just meant the markup is on the resale of the used
| items.
|
| If the bankrupt startup had an office chair that they
| bought new for $1,000, they got paid maybe $100 for it in
| the liquidation, now the liquidator asks what? At least
| $200. That's 100% gross profit. Maybe $500? More?
|
| Seems there would be room to negotate deals especially if
| you're buying a whole office-load of furniture.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| That sounds high. The chair that I use in my WFH setup
| was around $800 new when I bought it at an office
| furniture liquidator for $75.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > That's 100% gross profit.
|
| That's a typical margin for a reseller (and it's gross
| margin, not gross profit). Back in the 80s, I was
| horrified that the mail order houses demanded a wholesale
| price that was half of retail. But I learned that's how
| things work.
|
| Businesses have a _lot_ of expenses. People who start one
| often think if they buy X for $10, and sell it for $20,
| they 're counting the money they'll make. The reality is
| you gotta pay for everything else before you can count
| the profit.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Running a business is very expensive. Pay the employees
| (movers), a huge truck, fuel, a huge warehouse, HVAC to
| keep it decent inside, more employees (sales and
| business), advertising and marketing. If you consider all
| those costs, it's not such a bad markup.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Home goods are not a commodity to the buyer. Office
| furniture mostly is. You can't compare them like that.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Conversely, the demand for other people's home
| furnishings is pretty low. That's why estate sales are
| mostly held just to get rid of the stuff and not really
| to make any money.
| WalterBright wrote:
| An old friend of mine passed away recently. She had
| probably a hundred grand of stuff in expensive furniture,
| silverware, china and clothes and whatever.
|
| Her family organized an estate sale, and netted $5000,
| most of which was for a couple items.
|
| The rest went to goodwill.
|
| If you browse goodwill, most of it looks like estate
| stuff.
|
| All those collectors' items you have? They are worth
| nothing.
| sbarre wrote:
| In 2001 (or 02?) I remember visiting a clearance warehouse like
| this in Ottawa during the post-dot-com-boom crash and it was
| where all the west-end startups and network tech companies had
| dumped their furniture after either going completely out of
| business or emergency-downsizing.
|
| It was wild, I have a picture somewhere of a high-school-gym-
| sized room just filled corner-to-corner with plastic-wrapped
| Aeron chairs...
| BigGreenJorts wrote:
| That's incredible. I wonder if that business still exists.
| Quite a few tech companies starting and busting in Ottawa
| still.
| sbarre wrote:
| Sadly I don't remember the name of the business, but I'm sure
| something like it exists.. A quick web search doesn't show
| anything obvious of that scale or type though..
|
| I think what was so interesting about that place was the
| homogeneous nature of the available furniture, since "fancy
| office furniture for tech companies" wasn't quite a thing
| yet, so everything was either Herman Miller, Steelcase and
| maybe a few others..
|
| Hence the room full of hundreds of exactly the same chair..
|
| I feel like today you'd have more of a mix of stuff since so
| many other companies got in on the action (and
| uniqueness/variety is more highly valued socially).
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I am currently sitting in a dot-com crash Aeron chair that I
| got for a very good price 25 years ago, behind the IKEA Jerker
| desk I bought at the same time. They are the best purchases I
| have ever made.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| There are warehouses like this in all big cites, and are open
| (ish) to the public!
|
| I helped get some stuff for a small business earlier this year,
| and picked up an Aeron for myself while I was there. It was in a
| legitimately bad neighborhood and there were multiple layers of
| electronically controlled doors to go through, then you sign in
| and wait from someone to come down and get you, and you ride a
| massive freight elevator up to the floorspace.
| temporalparts wrote:
| Which one would you recommend for the greater Boston area?
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| They're about to get loaded with a bunch of furniture from
| all the biotech firms downsizing
| Teever wrote:
| Why are Boston biotech firms downsizing?
| alephnerd wrote:
| VC Funding dried up in the Life Sciences space by late
| 2021/early 2022 because there was too much investment
| during 2018-20 due to the "precision medicine" hype
| cycle.
|
| Same thing happened to cybersecurity in 2022-23 and will
| happen in the Generative AI space in a couple years.
|
| There are always expansions and contractions in each
| sector.
| K0balt wrote:
| Ooooh that's going to be some cool lab stuff!
| ghaff wrote:
| Don't know about Boston per se but I've bought some file
| cabinets from a place in downtown Worcester in the past.
| Might be Northeast Office Solutions.
| cushychicken wrote:
| I went to Brooks Bargain in Wilmington, MA, to get a used
| Aeron chair for about $500 if I remember right. They had a
| ton of different kinds of chairs to try on site. I went there
| torn between Aeron or SteelCase.
|
| I've heard good things about Granite State Office Furniture
| too, if you don't mind hoofing it up to Manchester NH.
| ghaff wrote:
| Steelcase vs. Aeron is mostly about preference for fabric
| vs. mesh. Though Hermann Miller also has other models that
| are basically stripped down Aerons or don't require as much
| personal adjustment.
| mikeevans wrote:
| Is there a way to find out where the nearest one is?
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Just do a web search for "office furniture liquidator" and
| include your nearest big city.
|
| You are probably going to want the least flashy of the
| results, as all that flash comes at an expense ;)
|
| I know that there are at least 2 good ones in Chicago and
| another that sells used hotel furniture (which I am not sure
| that I would willingly go into, but apparently there is a
| market for such things...).
|
| These places are very much business-focused; it's not like
| walking into an IKEA. You'll probably have to get buzzed in
| through many doors and then sign in, where you'll be asked
| for both your name and business. If you don't have a business
| they aren't going to throw you out or anything, but probably
| ask you to write something like "<First Name><Last Name> LLC"
| so they can put you in their system. You probably have to get
| escorted to the sales floor but are free to wander around.
| You have to pay in full for what you want, up front, but will
| get issued an invoice and bill of sale as if you are a
| business (from their point of view, they aren't selling
| anything to you, they are selling to the business you are
| representing).
| avgDev wrote:
| Please share the names!
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| These opportunities exist due to an inefficient illiquid
| market, widely sharing them will ruin that.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I don't think this is really true. Kitchen supply is an
| example with stores that are open to regular people and
| there are still deals compared to consumer cookware.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| There is of course quite a range between totally illiquid
| and totally liquid.
|
| My best finds for second hand goods were found by
| intentionally searching obscure marketplaces. Telling a
| few ppl on HN probably wouldn't make much of a
| difference, making a viral TikTok video about it might.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If you go to a restaurant equipment liquidator you can
| find some good heavy-duty pots and pans, they likely
| won't be "attractive" as restaurant kitchens don't care
| about that. Be aware that most of the cooking equipment
| and appliances won't be usable in your home kitchen
| because your electrical circuits won't be adequate.
|
| You can pick up beverage glasses and cups, plates,
| silverware.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I'm not sure if that is the case, but if it were that's
| not really my problem :)
|
| This is the place I generally use, but simply because it
| is most convenient for where I live (it's about 3 blocks
| south of I-290 at the Cicero Ave exit)
|
| https://www.officefurniturecenter.com
| E39M5S62 wrote:
| Nice, thanks for the link. I'm in the western exurbs, so
| I'll have to make the trek on in!
| AstroJetson wrote:
| There is an awesome one in Wilmington DE, its the goto for
| startups. Very sketchy warehouse off of 12th street (if you
| pass the prison, you've gone too far). But lots of clean
| stuff, like the last of office stuff from DuPont clearing
| out all their locations.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Try craigslist... search for office chair or desk.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| "cubicle" may be better... and "workrite" or similar
| gosub100 wrote:
| To add to this, you're searching CL for those terms so that
| it brings up a liquidator with a brick and mortar store.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Hibid has some of the auctions.
| rozenmd wrote:
| plenty of businesses like this operate online too - had my
| aeron shipped from a Parisian startup liquidator
| nowahe wrote:
| Do you happen to have the name of the place you found it ?
| I'm in France, and I wasn't really able to find anything with
| a quick google search
| kjellsbells wrote:
| My french google-fu isnt great but bureau and restockage
| seem to turn up a few, eg buroways.fr
| motohagiography wrote:
| biodegradable office furniture should be more of a thing. open
| source furniture design for an office and having staff contribute
| to building it could influence the culture in a positive way.
| myfavoritetings wrote:
| I encourage you to try sitting in a wooden chair for 8 hours a
| day every day and reconsider
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Up until say 70 years ago, wooden chairs were probably the
| norm everywhere.
| gampleman wrote:
| I do! I genuinely find it much more comfortable than any
| office chair I ever had.
| ghaff wrote:
| I do have an Aeron in my office. But since I largely stopped
| having video calls I confess I mostly work at my
| kitchen/dining room table in a wooden chair.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| I use a wooden chair for my home office and I find it more
| comfortable than office chairs, although it may not be a fair
| comparison since I spend most of the time squatting on it.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Have you forgotten what primary and secondary school was
| like?
| stemlord wrote:
| > having staff contribute to building it could influence the
| culture in a positive way
|
| I _hate_ this idea. That is not my job
| motohagiography wrote:
| as mentioned, it could influence the culture in a positive
| way.
| ponector wrote:
| You can always opt out for a simple wooden chair instead of
| aeron. Just plain wood, no plastic, no fabric.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| My home office chair is what might be called a "jury chair."
| Simple wood armchair, similar to these:
|
| https://www.kpetersen.com/jurychairs.htm
|
| Solid, easy to clean, nothing really to break or wear out or
| fail, and reminds you to get up and walk around every so
| often :)
| abeppu wrote:
| I think making your tech company staff make furniture is about
| as sensible as if the people who make furniture were also
| building their own software.
|
| But as to open source furniture design ... I thought furniture
| was basically in the same position as fashion, where you can
| protect trademarks etc and particular patentable innovations,
| but that designs in general are not protected.
| RyanHamilton wrote:
| Tell that to Bezos https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nB25pTM7Ytw
| WalterBright wrote:
| I worked briefly for a startup. The new guys all were handed
| parts and were expected to build their own computer. It was
| fun.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > open source furniture design for an office and having staff
| contribute to building it could influence the culture in a
| positive way.
|
| Found Ron Swanson's hackernews account.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| At the expense of your insurance premiums and general staff
| whininess.
| waynecochran wrote:
| Man sfgate is a scummy web site. Traps you so back button does
| not work and litters the page w obnoxious ads. Note to self,
| don't follow sfgate links.
| esprehn wrote:
| The back button trapping is something browsers should fix.
| Chrome has so far refused to do so which is frustrating.
| rsynnott wrote:
| 2579 CE: The 97th AI Winter has just begun. The migration of the
| office furniture back to its warehouses begins, to await a new
| dawn when someone tries to make metaverses happen again in a year
| or so. 5% of the planet's usable land area now warehouses startup
| office furniture. No-one has made new office furniture for 300
| years; no-one even knows how. Not even the chatbots know how.
|
| (Slightly) more seriously, I wonder how much repeat business they
| get. Have some items been in and out multiple times? Do they keep
| a database of the history of each item? In the future, will there
| be a collector's market for Aerons with interesting pedigrees?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Whether or not they track it there's zero chance the long term
| employees haven't identified some cursed items that are
| correlated with failure.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| > John noticed a mark under the faded asset tag. Pulling it
| back, he found strange runes under the adhesive. As he ran
| his finger over it, he could see the runes glow in the
| darkened warehouse.
| malux85 wrote:
| > The runes burned with what looked like fire, but were
| cold to the touch. John felt a growing attraction to the
| chair, it MUST be his, he MUST keep it, it came to him! His
| all, his ... PRECIOUS.
| vel0city wrote:
| This reminds me of a GoPro I borrowed from a friend.
|
| He got a new GoPro and mounted it on his bicycle. That first
| trip he took with it he was hit by a car.
|
| As he was recovering, I borrowed it for a motorcycle trip I
| was about to go on. Mounted it on the bike, and ended up
| lowsiding on a mountain pass. I'm sure it was the GoPro and
| not my fault at all.
|
| There were only two recordings that GoPro ever recorded and
| both ended in injuries for the rider. I don't think it was
| ever used again.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I worked at a startup in the UK and the dev team started with
| second hand (but very new) MacBook Pros from a recently-
| deceased startup.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >to await a new dawn when someone tries to make metaverses
| happen again
|
| Japan is still trying to make metaverse a thing.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| > when someone tries to make metaverses happen again
|
| While web3/metaverse as a branding concept flopped, the
| incumbents (roblox, fortnite, minecraft, gta creator mode) are
| growing strong with roblox leading the pack
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Back in the day this was called Second Life
| K0balt wrote:
| Strange name, really, considering that people that inhabit
| metaverse realities by and large (of course there are
| outliers and corner cases) have no primary life. Should be
| called mylife or reallife or getalife or something more
| like that.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Way ahead of you on that joke. "Get a First Life" (2007):
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20070124113808/http://www.get
| afi...
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Somehow when people say "the metaverse", they mean something
| like those games, but boring.
|
| I am aware that statement is essentially a joke, but it seems
| to be true.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > office furniture
|
| What's an "office"?
| djbusby wrote:
| It's a area you sit in to do work things.
| simonw wrote:
| When I did YC back in 2011 their Mountain View office was just
| down the street from Desk Depot, who were in the same line of
| business as this article.
|
| We bought a desk and two chairs from there and it was
| _fascinating_. The warehouse was basically a condensed history of
| Silicon Valley office trends - we asked about Aeron chairs and
| the chap showed us his collection ordered by year.
|
| He'd say things like "that corner's Yahoo!, over there is Sun
| Microsystems". He also had an excellent cat.
|
| It looks like Desk Depot is still in business today:
| https://deskdepot.net/
| bearjaws wrote:
| I've participated in a Chapter 10 bankruptcy sale at the software
| side.
|
| Had to determine how to best part out a website (travel focused)
| that had a hotel inventory + flight planner that up-and-coming
| travel websites wanted to leverage to end their reliance on
| Expedia.
| jakub_g wrote:
| Tell us more! Was it a "highest bidder wins" thing, or just
| finding anyone interested was hard enough? Did you reach out to
| potential buyers or they came by themselves?
| bearjaws wrote:
| Yeah it did come down to highest bidders. I am not sure how
| they were found, since it was a bankruptsy with many debtors
| involved, there was a few consultant companies involved so I
| figured it was them.
|
| We essentially took questions and generated a informational
| "guide" for the buyers, mainly what assets could be sold off
| individually (think things like domains, images, review data)
| vs systems which mainly came down to marketing site vs
| inventory management software.
|
| Tech wise we dug into details like dev/test environments,
| tech debt, potential challenges with integration into another
| company. Mainly worked to setup the whole environment from
| scratch, which was a mess due to being mid migration to cloud
| + terraform from on prem.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I knew it would be about Aeron chairs when I saw the title.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Is this a PR piece? Skimming the article doesn't reveal anything
| remarkable about the business.
|
| The $20 million business "that could only exist in the bay area"
| seems to exist pretty much everywhere outside of it since
| companies giving up offices is actually also a thing in the rest
| of the world.
| Washuu wrote:
| There is a company in the big cities here called
| ohuisubasutazu(Office Busters) that sells used office
| furniture. I got an amazing chair from them for about 40% of
| the retail price.
| foobarchu wrote:
| They even say in the article it's the biggest one "west of the
| Mississippi", implying larger ones exist on the East Coast well
| away from the bay area.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| These kinds of stores are great. I'm sitting on the legacy of
| some old tech company right now, actually. I paid $250 for this
| very fancy office chair. I don't care if it's pre-sat!
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Do not touch used office furniture . Failure is contagious ..
| rizenfrmtheash wrote:
| I bought my home office chair and under-desk cabinet from
| abettersource. Easy to work with. Equipment worked great. Prices
| were great. Very large variety too. Only thing was I had to load
| it myself into my car and I was lucky to have a hatchback big
| enough for it.
| w10-1 wrote:
| Pretty sensationalist title for used furniture arbitrage.
|
| I was hoping for some insight on capture and disposition of IP.
|
| I would think failing gracefully involves reaching out to
| competitors (and customers and suppliers) for "mergers" so
| investors get some of the value of the company -- without somehow
| signaling that you're giving up (and can no longer be relied
| upon). What's the state of the art in that respect? It seems like
| a fantastically tricky process, which would mean high value for
| skilled practitioners.
|
| (OTW (ahem) valuable employee stock goes to zero.)
| kev009 wrote:
| Every major metropolitan area has something like this because the
| market for used office furniture is ubiquitous and not limited to
| a small geography of tech companies. If you need some sturdy
| training tables for projects or some metal bookshelves they can
| be had for next to nothing at these places.
|
| The one thing that has become a bit harder to find are lab and
| assembly workbenches. That stuff used to similarly cheap 20 years
| ago.
|
| Another fun one is the usually poorly named "electronics
| recycler" - the kind of stuff rolling through these can be
| astounding, and they usually have people earning minimum or close
| to minimum wage dealing with it all - which yields strange
| pricing (some great deals, some preposterous) and a lot of stuff
| just getting dismantled/crushed/shipped overseas.
| kjs3 wrote:
| _The one thing that has become a bit harder to find are lab and
| assembly workbenches._
|
| I bought a 6' and 12' assembly benches, complete with overhead
| lights, when Hayes Micro went under 30 years ago or so. Paid
| less than us$200 for them. Still going strong in my shop.
| paddy_m wrote:
| University surplus stores are always fun to browse. Lab
| equipment, machine tools, great stuff.
| mNovak wrote:
| These are great for vintage lab gear too. In college I got an
| old flammable chemicals cabinet, which we refinished into a
| liquor cabinet.
| notmycomputer wrote:
| Weird Stuff, Halted, Alltronics and Excess Solutions sold the
| electronics + misc. When I'd feel like I needed some
| inspiration, I'd often go and pick up some weird obscure failed
| (or prototype) project. Once I found a floppy disk carrier that
| belonged to a fellow employee (based on the handwritten label)
| from my first job, 20 years earlier.
|
| Excess Solutions also sold more of the furniture stuff,
| workbenches, and, strangely, hotel surplus blankets, lighting
| fixtures and wall coverings. My $20 living room couch came from
| there - I think it was originally from Ikea but it's still
| pretty solid. The fabric is faded with a particular stripe and
| I imagine had spent it's previous life in the lobby of some
| software company where the sunlight would find it's way through
| some half broken blinds to mark the passage of time by fading
| this couch.
|
| Weird Stuff I know didn't have their lease renewed by the
| property owner (google) and most of it's stock was scrapped as
| waste.
| Animats wrote:
| Been to one of those warehouses, back when it was Consolidated
| Office Distributors, Inc. in San Jose. BetterSource seems to have
| acquired them around 2005. One building filled an entire city
| block. I went there to furnish a shop, entered through the wrong
| door, and spent half an hour wandering around before I found the
| sales office. This was in the heyday of the Aeron chair and the
| carpet-faced cubicle wall. They had huge supplies of both.
|
| Picked out desks, chairs, wastebaskets, shop tables, storage
| cabinets, shelving, a flammable-materials cabinet, etc. They
| delivered everything the next day. It's the place to go when
| you're starting up.
| beambot wrote:
| The better website for Bay Area _tech_ company dissolution is
| https://svdisposition.com/ which gets actual high-tech
| equipment...
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| Years ago I was hired to do IT for a company that had just
| massacred like half its workforce. And when I say "just" I mean
| most of the people I interviewed with were gone when I got there
| - it happened just a few weeks after I interviewed.
|
| It was so, so surreal. For one thing they decided to consolidate
| on the second floor of a two story building, so to get to work
| each day you had to head through the dark and empty part of the
| building. And it was just like everyone just got up one day and
| left, at least for a month or two u til we could get all the
| equipment and stuff off the desks and into storage.
|
| Storage was what had been the gym (or was going to be? Not clear
| to me), and I just remember rows and rows of tower computers and
| monitors awaiting a company to come and take it all off our
| hands.
|
| They had also bought a ton of expensive networking gear (Cisco
| routers and switches) that they now no longer needed, they just
| sat in boxes in the server room.
|
| Labs still entirely stocked with gear and computers, meeting
| rooms with whiteboards still filled with meeting notes, it was
| all so unreal, almost post-apocalyptic.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| I once did some work for a business that operated in this field.
| I'll never forget the owner. He had done very well over the years
| and drove a Ferrari - an extremely rare sight in the industrial
| area. He spent all day selling very high end second hand and new
| office furniture to discerning clients - large contracts for
| whole buildings sometimes. But in his own office he sat on the
| very cheapest office chair that money can buy. One that he
| wouldn't have been able to source from any of his suppliers.
| Never could figure out if it was a contrived statement, or not.
| lippihom wrote:
| Checked out one of these in Alameda a few years back. Expansive
| warehouse - was fascinating to spend a few hours walking around.
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