Hacker News Reader

Comment by that_guy_iain | Hacker News Reader

They can and will buy desks.

When people say “no desk” what they mean is “no space in the building to allocate a desk”.

When people say "no space in the building to allocate a desk” they mean "No space to neatly put a desk." Companies have often shown repeatedly they can force desks into rooms when needed.

Anyways, they can and will buy office space to put the desks when needed.

Lol. I can confirm that a motivated company can Tetris a lot more desks into a room than you’d expect. My first job… ah, memories.

LAN parties have been fitting a surprising number of people onto 8' folding tables for decades.

An even duct tape them to places.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/kvgtok/lan_party_ga...

OTOH LAN parties do not generally persist long enough to need to worry about fire codes etc.

I don't know how we didn't trip all the breakers. Running a crapload of CRTs, and multiple 500+ watt power supplies on one circuit?! Plus 2 projectors? I wonder how hot that breaker panel got lol.

Putting someone in a hallway might technically meet the requirement of having a desk, but not the spirit of having a desk.

And while I know everyone is into breaking regulations, both fire codes (for density and exit corridors) and OSHA (for number of employees per toilet) limit the number of desks in an office.

Enter: Open plan offices!

I love how now they are justifiably out of fashion when just a few years ago only staid companies had cubicles or offices!

A wild COVID variant has appeared!

Don’t be silly, covid is over. Pay no attention to the 3,250 people hospitalized per day, or the 280 deaths, behind the curtain!

Disruption!

what about occupancy/fire code limits?

Elon will plead to the fire marshal to arrest only him, and force his workers to come in anyways

As if Musk would fall on his own sword let alone anyone else's. To much wasted time to be able to poke fun of Bezos or make some other bone headed tweet.

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-to-county-health-officials-arr...

Fire codes and occupancy limits are set by how many people can evacuate the building in a set amount of time. I worked at a place in an antique building and they had to limit how many classrooms were allowed in the building because they had to stay under these limits. Also, yearly, there were fire drills where they'd verify they could get everyone out.

So in tesla's case, they'd just fire all the people who leave their desks in a fire?

I once spent a summer internship working at desk and computer they put in the nook next to soda and chip vending machines. Got to say hi to everyone at snack time.

Oh man I'd definitely buy large headphones and a baseball cap with a huuuge bill!

And am I the only person who has been in a startup going through a "two people per desk" period when growing rapidly?

Nope.

And the desks were doors on sawhorses.

I wish! Our desks were made out of tinfoil and old ramen boxes.

Luxury. We used less senior employees as desks.

I had to walk uphill both ways to my desk. With my smaller co-workers on my back.

Sounds like a luxury still, I got to the "elbows touching" stage. You couldn't put a hand between my screen and the screens of my coworkers. For quiet time I'd go to the kitchen table...

Summer was a challenge because the A/C couldn't keep up at all.

Are we considering Tesla a startup now?

For a time, the Niantic office in Bellevue was a tiny room with four desks and five people. The manager would sit on a swivel chair in the middle and try to work on a laptop on his knee.

Later we upgraded to a room with twelve people in it where you had to ask at least two other people to stand up and move their chairs out of the way if you needed to get up for any reason.

Tesla, the 15 year old "startup".

The Fremont factory has like a square mile of unused space. Not defending or apologizing, but they can find the room. That being said it’s not uncommon for Elon to declare shit that’s totally unreasonable and impossible and then leave it to other people to and something work.

This is Tesla, office workers will soon find themselves working in a tent.

Why not WFT: Work From (a) Tesla? Of course, it would have to be, "at the office," (read, parking lot) otherwise the worker would get fired.

And since the Teslas are self driving, they can just roam the public roads while people work, an endless TS (Tesla Stream) cycling between two superchargers.

I remember when we were going to have FSD in 1 year, 10 years ago.

You mean they can ride through the office building, pass the managers desk, who can check the work.

Have a Manager Booth halfway between the two charging stations for checkins, in addition to video calls. Biobreaks (exercise, waste removal, nutrition ingestion) can happen during charging if the Teslas remain unmodified.

I just realized that the Tesla could eject the worker a couple miles before the charging station, calculating the workout and charge duration so that the employee would have to run at the correct rate to retrieve their car before it was done charging. The vehicle could self clean while empty on the way to the charging station.

I can't think of any downsides to this.

Exciting times for the future of work!

We wondered how the open office plan could get worse. Now, we wonder no more!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_Plenty_of_Room_at_th...

Why isn't the manager station at the charging station?

That actually is a really good idea, they'll figure out problems real quick that way. Very very good idea.

EDIT: If your job in Tesla is on the line proposing working out of a Tesla is your best bet to save it.

I fully expected to see this in SF eventually. Wifi equipped buses set up like coffee shops that drive around SF all day. Cheaper than commercial real estate, at the time. I'm sure COVID has changed the calculus considerably.

They do this with billboards. It's somehow cost effective to have a big truck that is nothing but a rolling billboard drive around the city all day. By definition that means that it's cheaper or somehow better than a fixed billboard on real estate.

Tbh I wouldn't mind "working" out of a tent for a few weeks if the "office" was located in a natural area and the whole affair was more of a company-sponsored camping "workation" where half the day was spent doing outdoor activities.

What if the tent was in a parking lot in Fremont during fire season

I hear Austin is lovely this time of year.

I’m kitting out my truck with solar and batteries now that starlink has roaming and rv pricing so I can literally drive up mountains and camp by glacier lakes while working.

Musk should dig a pit. A pit. An office in a pit. In the the ground. In a pit. Pit office. Office pit. Yes. In a pit.

HR: "Remember when we said that working at Tesla was intense? Well it's actually in tents"

they'll buy big cafeteria-style tables and eliminate individual desks

The ones that fold up to stack against the walls when the cafeteria needs to be used as the theater? The ones with the built in round, blue plastic seats? If not, you're thinking too nice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com