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Comment by shaftway | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

Putting it all together - you want to work from your home office.

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.

I'm sad I can only upvote this once.

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...

Anecdotally I heard that Infinite Loop also made every point on the one central hallway into an accidental parabolic microphone -- you could hear basically every conversation in the hallway from any point in the building.

My impression is that Microsoft has done offices very well, but at the cost of locality with team members (since shuffling offices is a great deal more burdensome than shuffling an open floor plan).

> 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.

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.

This may be off-topic but over the years of working in a shared office with 3 others, I learned to distinguish whether they were coding, writing on their thesis, or just browsing.

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.

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.

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.

I mean, they don't need to. Their job isn't to make work more comfortable for the employees and/or make them more productive. It's slashing costs while still maintianing a facade of a desirable workplace.

That's why you see offices with giant empty slides in the lobby, treadmills with a laptop stand that are never used, hangout spaces your boss doesn't allow you to be in, et cetra. They're there to fool candidates and post posed pictures on the company website, nothing more.

Wow what a sad image of the corporation. I'm not about pretending massive businesses care about you (they don't) but not everything has to be a big facade to trick people.

I've worked in offices where people actually go to hang out spaces, and other useful places. Not everyone has a controlling boss like that, and most places that build these spaces likely don't have that sort of management.

Ug, managers love how these spaces look but they terrible to work in. I want my own setup in my own office that I can close the door and leave out books and papers and have sticky notes and the kind of keyboard and mouse I like and everything set to the right heights, and a computer I can leave all my programs up and just lock so its all ready for me the next day and so on and so on. Wilkinson can go suck it.

I'm always fascinated by this obsession with having right-brained people design environments for left brain people.

Don't get me wrong. It has plenty of upsides to it, but yes you get this other impractical aspect. I'm pretty sure this guy is the main reason open offices got so huge in my God, do we all hate them.

Also tired of these people who cash huge checks and then have regrets.

That quote sounds a lot like what “experts” thought offices should look like before the pandemic too.

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...

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