June 25, 2022 at 1:16 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Shared Work Spaces: Hell, Heaven, Both?
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June 26, 2022 at 8:57 pm
Ohhh... no extended comment from me... none of it would pass HR. Let's just say that "I'm lovin' the lockdown" and seriously enjoy working remotely on all fronts.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
June 27, 2022 at 7:59 am
I love shared spaces. For example, I share my home office with my cat.
June 27, 2022 at 8:15 am
Like Jeff I love working remotely and I now find it very difficult to concentrate and do any individual work in an office environment. With the return to office working, I think our team has it about right. We gather in the office for one day each week to do team things - planning the workload, jobs that need two of us etc. and work from home the other four days.
It's not a commercial shared workplace but that in-between economising version - hot-desking - which has many of the same problems without the commercial incentive to get it right. Not enough docking stations for laptops, finding the desk you've booked only has VGA screens when you only have HDMI on your laptop, missing or non-functional chairs...
We calculated that it took us half a man day total last week to get the team of four set up and working in the office so that was lost production. The other lost production of being in the office is going to physical meetings - get coat, pick up laptop, walk or even drive to meeting room (often in different building or location), find room, get set up and reverse it all at the end. Generally that's another half hour of productivity. Whereas on Teams it is just connect and talk without moving from the desk.
Humans are sociable beings and need that human contact and some things need to be done in person. As with everything its's about balance and what is right for your team. If you can't get together in company office space then it has to be whatever is available.
But business security is also important and the glass walls don't help that!
June 28, 2022 at 4:16 pm
Just getting to see the people I depend on at work, talk with them, look them in the eye as we talk (and really in the eye, not looking either at my camera or at their face, online meetings are not the same, no matter what you say), are marvelous experiences.
True, they are not the same. One is far better than the other and I'll bet I'm not in the majority in thinking about which is better than which. However, in a tech crowd, I'll likely find more kindred spirits than in any other group where interpersonal communications are just as important.
Related to shared workspaces, given the new hygiene practices discovered with COVID; I am very surprised anywhere is doing shared spaces at all; it's a lot, I'm just surprised by it. In my non-shared workspace, I'm in basically a diorama with one glass wall and glass door. I'm usually behind a 3 monitor wall so it's not quite as open as other "fishbowl" experiences. The glass wall of my office serves as one of two sides of a hallway where the other wall is a series of solid laminate wood doors. It's nice that I don't have any neighbors across the hall to make accidental eye contact with all day. For some in this setup isolation and loneliness would set in... for me, my interpersonal interactions have been virtual for so much of my career that it doesn't really affect me.
The occasional passerby will distract me but usually not long enough to make my thought or concentration clouds pop. That type of distraction comes in the form of drop ins. When people "swing by" your office for a quick question or a topic etc. they don't destroy your train of thought on purpose, they're not being rude or inconsiderate it's just a side effect of the drop in. In a remote environment we get to decide when it's appropriate to allow a chat, slack post, phone call etc. to divert our attention. In the office environment, when someone comes by they demand your attention no matter the costs to your concentration or momentum. Again, not rudely or inconsiderately it's just how that works and is the biggest reason I prefer remote. I'm not anti-social, well not very anti-social, I am a little controlling especially around time management and remote work allows me better control of the distractions and I've never had an issue forming close team bonds with a remote team.
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June 28, 2022 at 6:19 pm
Shared work spaces are an abomination.
Trying to figure out the world of SQL as marketing consultant for SQL Solutions Group https://sqlsolutionsgroup.com/
June 30, 2022 at 6:05 pm
As engineers, we shouldn't view the world in the context of good and evil. Everything (and everyone) is a collection of attributes, each of which are good or bad for specific use cases. Just choose what works for a specific situation.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
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