Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Bogus scarcities we've addressed at our office:

* Macbook power bricks (we were having arguments over them, because people would borrow them from other desks; now we have a stack of them).

* Macbook video dongles (same; note: it's not enough to just have one attached to every monitor, like the article says, because sometimes people need to take them out of the office)

* Whiteboards (everyone has one on their desk now)

* Hard disks (same deal; they're so cheap, we just buy new ones any time there's any storage issue, rather than have people scavenge for space on their existing drives)

* Books (everyone gets infinite free books, and to head off time-wasting discussions about who bought what book so they can borrow it, the policy is, you order the book & it's yours full stop; we have many copies of several key books in our office)

We're probably missing lots and lots of opportunities to trade small amounts of money for substantial amounts of time. What are other people buying? An obvious next example would be "soda", since people trek down to the convenience store to get bottles --- but I feel like stocking soda is also a bit unhealthy.

* In our conference tables, we have about a dozen Macbook magnetic plugs so we don't have to change out ours.

* Each TV in the conference room is hooked up to a computer, so you can quickly log in easily (and since pretty much everything is done via the web, we don't have to worry about hooking up our laptops).

* Whites boards are treated as RAM, not Storage. Your phones have cameras now, use them!

* Office supply stations are just filled with stuff. Lots of batteries, mice, keyboards, etc. It's rare we run out of stuff (to the point that I don't really know if it's happened).

* Also a big push to move everyone to laptops and Mac monitors, so we can easily move around.

--

At home, I'm less successful. Mostly, with a 1 year old and a 3 year old, anything we put down has the potential to move. That being said, some simple things:

* Having the laundry room be in the second floor.

* Keep the vacuum cleaner parts for the carpet on the 2nd floor.

* Toilet paper distributed to every bathroom. We also have baskets with additional rolls next to each toilet within easy reach. That way, even if the roll runs out, we have 3 or 4 right there.

Having the laundry room be in the second floor.

Hell yes! When I lived in Denver my bedroom was on the second floor and the laundry room was in the basement. I had always lived in coastal areas where basements were rare, so I didn't know what a PITA it would be. After 2 years of dealing with that, never again.

> Whites boards are treated as RAM, not Storage. Your phones have cameras now, use them!

This sounds like whiteboard space/time is a scarcity you haven't shown to be artificial. (I'm not saying your approach is wrong, just that it doesn't fit with the theme.)

It is a partial solution. There is no amount of conveniently accessible whiteboard space which will not fill up with "save" boxes if such a rule is not in place. Public whiteboards should have a simple "no saving state" rule.

Do you know anyone who has experimented with using SyncPad [1] on iPads to entirely eliminate whiteboards? I have been looking at iPads because the low-end models that would be used as dedicated whiteboards are about par in price with the Wacom tablet models that have a built-in screen. As I don't need all the fancy pressure sensors and such that artists need, iPads seem a more flexible device to use.

The only concern I have is working with wall-size diagrams on an iPad. There are many architectures and diagrams that have so many parts it simply just takes up a large amount of drawing space to hold it all.

These days, I make do with LiveScribe for my own notes and copy of what is going on at the whiteboard, and an accompanying snapshot of the whiteboard at the end of the meeting to attach to my LiveScribe notes.

[1] http://mysyncpad.com/

No, don't know anything about it. Altho we're talking about getting webcams and pointing them at the public whiteboards, and arduinoing up a "push button to save" device that will have the cam snapshot the board and email it appropriately. Slightly over-complicated, but more fun than just phonecams and therefore more likely to actually be done :)

"Keep the vacuum cleaner parts for the carpet on the 2nd floor."

In my experience, one vacuum cleaner per floor works way better. It gets rid of most of the "oh, it's on the per floor; I will do that later" cases.

Having the laundry room be in the second floor.

FYI, the main reason laundry rooms are usually in the basement is risk of flooding. In a basement with a concrete floor with a drain, flooding isn't much of a problem but on a higher floor it could cause very expensive damage to the surrounding space, the floor itself, and anything in the basement underneath.

I'm sure for some reason the tradeoff is in favour of the second-floor laundry room, but the basement laundry room certainly doesn't count as artificial.

I believe the building code says anything on a higher level needs the washing machine to be in a basin, with the basin connected to a drain. (At least that's what I've heard)

It's going to depend on which building code you're dealing with, of course, but that certainly sounds plausible.

I don't think I'd want to place any bets on how often that particular requirement actually gets satisfied, though.

We have that exact setup. A little basin around the washing machine, and a drain. Simple enough, really.

It's refreshing to read there are companies out there that 'get it.' Stuff like this has driven me nuts at my current company and it's one of my primary reasons for leaving soon.

As far as soda goes, just do like the government and tax it. Make water, juice, tea, and coffee free and charge a quarter for soda (or whatever combo you like). It's not expensive, but makes people pause before drinking it over one of the slightly healthier options.

Charging for soda sends the bad message that we want you to pay for soda, rather than "we don't want to make your simplest hydration option very unhealthy".

That's why you don't charge much. A nickel or dime...hell a penny. Just enough to make someone think, hey maybe I should drink something healthier. The best system would be to make the first and maybe second soda free and then nudge people to water or some other drink.

Or just put some chilled water next to the Coke. There's just so much Coke you can drink, but if people are going to get all hairshirted about it, it rankles.

You do realize that diet soda is far healthier than fruit juices, right?

[citation needed]

Honestly curious - this could impact my diet if true.

He's probably referring to the anti-carb/fructose people, see Lustig. Fructose alarmism is IMHO, BS. See here for more information: http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/02/19/a-retrospective-of-...

I view it a bit more simply. Find me a person who is fat because they ate too much fruit or drank too much real OJ. Obviously those things contain calories, but in an overall scheme of a persons diet, whole fruit in particular, is not adding to the obesity problem.

This is absolutely not true.

> Make water, juice, tea, and coffee free

Why is coffee in the "good" list?

Note that all of the "benefits" are achieved by cheap coffee....

The infinite free books plan is the greatest. Our book buying is by committee and is a bit slow (but comprehensive). You have commented earlier on it and I've been nagging to get it implemented ;)

At our office soda is free and always has been, to address your health concerns you could stock more light products and also more kinds, e.g. offer coke, diet coke and diet Fanta and don't restrict the assortment to soda: offer chilled water, juice and milk. Using this set up the consumption of sugary soda has gone down significantly in our office.

We've been making strides with this at the NY office too. We picked up maybe two dozen patch cables of various lengths, a bunch of USB cables, a stack of hubs, some keyboards, and things like that. Maybe a couple hundred bucks all in, to save tons of time. Just got a stack of servers in for a project and need to do some crazy network topology? No problem. This paid for itself in days at the most.

Unlimited books sounds amazing. Especially if the working environment is conductive to having time to read. Is there an internal shared library as well?

Yes, for such things as TAOCP 1-4.

my favorite: http://safaribooksonline.com

We have a couple of Safari accounts for the team, but nobody uses them. People like having books, I guess.

Zevia is one option. Diabetic safe, no sugar, natural sweetener from stevia extract. Amazon sells it.

Or you and your co-workers could invent something. Water, natural sweeteners, natural flavours. Make it a weekly event.

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