Will Hot-Desking Kill Your Company? (forbes.com) 280
"If you hate your company, its employees and the shareholders then go ahead and introduce the latest management fad: Hot-desking," writes Forbes contributor Simon Constable. "It's a better way to destroy the firm than inviting Russian hackers to rob you blind.
"The bigger the company, the faster the damage will occur with hot-desking."
Hot-desking is a working arrangement where employees have no assigned desk. Each morning you get a workstation based on that old standby, first-come-first-served. If you show up at 5:30 a.m. then you'll likely have your pick. Later than 9 a.m., then probably you'll get what's left even if that means working apart from your colleagues. The theory behind this idea is that it provides companies with increased flexibility in managing office space. With some exceptions, the drawbacks vastly outweigh any benefits.
I know this having witnessed decades in corporate jobs, including a role at one employer that implemented such idiocy. It sends the message that employees don't matter. Employers frequently say their employees are their biggest asset. But when the company can't even be bothered to let you have a permanent desk, then the opposite message is sent.
He cites other more specific problems -- like the fact that no one can easily find anyone, making it harder to hold quick impromptu discussions or ask for help. And it also becomes harder to explain to employees why they can't just work from home.
The article concedes hot-desking "probably works just fine" for small companies with just a handful of employees. But "the bigger the firm the larger the inefficiency that is caused. A company of 50 people might see only minor problems from hot-desking, while one of 50,000 will likely see massive dysfunction throughout the institution..."
"If you see a public company introducing hot desks as a way to add flexibility or save money across the board, then be afraid for investors. Why? Because the profits quickly suffer in a dysfunctional company."
"The bigger the company, the faster the damage will occur with hot-desking."
Hot-desking is a working arrangement where employees have no assigned desk. Each morning you get a workstation based on that old standby, first-come-first-served. If you show up at 5:30 a.m. then you'll likely have your pick. Later than 9 a.m., then probably you'll get what's left even if that means working apart from your colleagues. The theory behind this idea is that it provides companies with increased flexibility in managing office space. With some exceptions, the drawbacks vastly outweigh any benefits.
I know this having witnessed decades in corporate jobs, including a role at one employer that implemented such idiocy. It sends the message that employees don't matter. Employers frequently say their employees are their biggest asset. But when the company can't even be bothered to let you have a permanent desk, then the opposite message is sent.
He cites other more specific problems -- like the fact that no one can easily find anyone, making it harder to hold quick impromptu discussions or ask for help. And it also becomes harder to explain to employees why they can't just work from home.
The article concedes hot-desking "probably works just fine" for small companies with just a handful of employees. But "the bigger the firm the larger the inefficiency that is caused. A company of 50 people might see only minor problems from hot-desking, while one of 50,000 will likely see massive dysfunction throughout the institution..."
"If you see a public company introducing hot desks as a way to add flexibility or save money across the board, then be afraid for investors. Why? Because the profits quickly suffer in a dysfunctional company."
I'd walk, seriously. (Score:2)
Dilbert knew it 25 years ago (Score:5, Funny)
https://dilbert.com/strip/1995... [dilbert.com]
Re:Dilbert knew it 25 years ago (Score:5, Informative)
It is pretty obvious that it is a massively bad idea. The problem is that the incentives for upper management and the selection criteria for people to get into it are utterly perverted. It is pretty much like complete incompetence on how to run a company is a requirement now and has been for a while.
It's not about employee productivity... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not about employee productivity... (Score:5, Informative)
... it is about reducing the office space costs. Period. Full stop. Oh for the days of old, when everyone had their own cubicle...
A lot depends on the nature of the work. Consulting firms where staff is on the road 80% of the time and working from home most of the rest of the time have used hot desking or hoteling as we called, for a long time. I've seen firms share a desk when two people work different days on a scheduled basis; it saves space and money without impacting your work as long as both parties follow some common sense rules. It makes no sense to waste money on space that is unused most of the time. Now, if you work in the office every day then it makes no sense to force people to find desks each time.
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... it is about reducing the office space costs.
No doubt. Has anyone ever claimed otherwise? I know open floorplans and cube farms are often sold as ways to increase collaboration but they too are often really about reducing floor space per person.
My other issue with hot-desking is ergonomics. I have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor set up just the way my wrists and neck like it. I wouldn't expect anyone else to find my configuration especially comfortable. How would I deal with that, have a locker where I stash my keyboard and mouse overnight? And actual
Productivity (Score:4, Informative)
In descending order:
1- Office
2- Cubicle
3- everything else
Processes and leadership impact productivity the most. Seating arrangements are just bullshit solutions that don't make up for the lack of processes and leadership.
Parody From Snowcrash (Score:4, Interesting)
So literally the parody from Snowcrash about the way the caricatured residual federal government was inefficient (taking the desks on first come first serve).
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The conversation at the Oracle - Sun sellout went something like this:
Oracle: we'd like to buy your company, why should we?
Sun: Ummm...we got really good hardware...and...and...Java.
Oracle: Java? Whazzat?
Sun: (Sun's C-Suite dudes look at each other, then turn to Oracle): Java? It's big, really really big, the future of computing, it will put Microsoft in its place.
Oracle: So there's big money to be made on it?
Sun: Oh, yes, fer sure, big money, big money, yup, trust us.
Oracle: Okay, if you are sure.
Sun: (Sun
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Personal items? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Personal items? (Score:4, Interesting)
Lockers. Because your employer has the same level of respect for its workers as adults have for teenagers still in high school.
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On the plus side, if you don't have personal items, then you won't have to worry about clearing out your desk when you are laid off.
Oh wait... that's not a plus side...
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Currently working at a place like this. It just doesn't feel good.
Rationally, they provide a nicer (though smaller) desk and it's not like designating a desk would be any big obstacle for them to decide to lay someone off. I didn't do much with my desk area anyway.
It has an effect though, feels vaguely awkward all the time as not having a designated space just *feels* tenuous.
As to the cost savings, between people being in and out of meetings, vacations, people being out sick, working from home and basica
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It has an effect though, feels vaguely awkward all the time as not having a designated space just *feels* tenuous.
It is like taking a soldier's helmet away. The helmet makes them feel safer, gives them greater courage.
An office, or at least a desk, is territory. It makes people feel safer, like they belong there.
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my company allows people to telecommute regularly
This *would* be the way to make it palatable.
Unfortunately, at my place of work they don't like telecommuting as a general policy and when people started saying they would start telecommuting more due to hot-desking, they doubled down about everyone being physically present when they are working.
Of course it is very clear that there are two opposing wills at work, one driving for minimized office space cost and would all to happy to see people work from home, and traditional executives who refuse to have co
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Is that what "traditional executives" do in a hot-desk environment? Walk around all day trying to find the people that they used to able to find at their old assigned desks? "I have 10 butts in chairs, um, uh, reports. Can only find 9. I'll walk around the place again to see if I can find that last one.'' No wonder the hot-desk-adopting companies are doomed. [heh heh]
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In our case, we got an email from our executive to tell us all to at least sit in the same floor and wing of building. Basically all within sight of where he would be sitting.
At least he also has to find a seat. Out of about 10 floors of office space of employees, only one actually gets to have a designated office (the head of the site). I have no idea how they decided that *precisely* one person *needed* an office out of so many people.
But in general, there are a fair amount of interruptions from variou
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(Mastery requires many thousands of hours of being bored. Mediocre people say stupid shit like, "Only boring people get bored.")
The exceptional, though, don't see the repetitive as "boredom". they see it as "the more I practise, the luckier I get"
It depends... (Score:2)
I guess it could work as long as every employee has their own laptop and the "desk" are an eclectic collection of tables and chairs, sofas, bean bags, floor mats, white boards, etc... Which may be rearranged and moved about at will.
It's going to take a lot more floorspace than going with assigned desks but it could work quite well.
It's dangling the carrot (Score:3)
VDI required (Score:3)
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In places where they even think of hot desking, usually it is management who thinks workers are fungible. Mainstream Web apps for example, or Java programming. Things that really don't need much specialized equipment. You use 802.1x or maybe even internal VPN-ing to get the network secure, and the physical machines can be anywhere in the building.
Of course, wait until you get a network group that uses sticky MACs for "security", and managers into hot desking. Fun times ahead.
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At my former employer where they went partially to hot desking, all of the engineering work was already done in VMs in the datacenter and every employee was issued a laptop for the office apps. You were effectively required to take the laptop home with you since there weren't many secure locations to leave them. (The cafeterias had some metal lockers with small laptop-sized compartments. The wooden lockers for people personal effects were not considered secure for this purpose.) The printer queues were also
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I suppose you could issue everyone a laptop,
In the software development world, that's already happened. In fact, unless you're running heavy duty engineering or modelling apps, it's already happened.
I think the last time I wanted a real desktop computer was probably a decade ago. Docking station, sure, but I much prefer taking my computer and work environment with me.
Re: VDI required (Score:5, Funny)
Ever heard of this modern invention called the âoelaptopâ?
No, I haven't. Is that some kind of new device from Greece?
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Ever heard of this modern invention called the [corrupted Unicode]laptop[corrupted Unicode]? It is like a computer
It's somewhat like a computer, except that it has a tiny single screen, a keyboard that's too big to be like N900 used two-thumbed and too small for typing with full hands, can't be really extended, costs 3x as much for mediocre performance, fails often, requires battery replacement every a couple years (if it's replaceable at all), and so on. I find it better to use something like Gemini PDA that can be held in a pocket rather than a backpack or car trunk when on the go, and an actual computer for regular
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What about combined with WFH? (Score:2)
If you combine this with work from home then is it viable? You have desks that serve a portion of the employees at site and then any are free to work from home part time and when they come into the office they grab a hot desk. Add on some general coffee bar and other common areas to fill it out along with conference rooms and breakout rooms.
Ya, sure. (Score:5, Insightful)
Employers frequently say their employees are their biggest asset.
Rules to live by at work: You need to start looking for another job ...
Laptop keyboards kill productivity (Score:3)
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Laptop keyboards kill productivity. Being productive requires a desktop with at least two monitors.
One group of programmers at my previous job had 2, sometimes 3, 24" monitors each.
Invariably, one monitor only displayed Outlook full-screen. Huge waste of money/space, if you ask me.
Somehow, I've always manged to be highly productive with only one monitor -- and Emacs.
Agreed on the laptop keyboards though.
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One monitor, emacs, and dozens of xterms.
I originally started using emacs in the 90s because I could do "New frame on display..." and give it the LAN address of my laptop's X11 server. This is great because then when I show the same buffer in both frames, I can live-edit in both, save in either one, keystrokes appear in both at the same time. So I could pace back and forth and type on whichever keyboard was closer when I had an idea.
But even just with one monitor, it is very effective for editing multiple f
Re: Laptop keyboards kill productivity (Score:2, Interesting)
The utility of dual monitors depends on multiple factors. Personally I prefer dual 16:9 1080P wide screens to be oriented vertically for coding, particularly SQL. As long as the bezel is thin enough to not be disruptive it works quite well.
For most spreadsheeting or other tasks which require referencing one document while inputing information into another document, or monitoring progress bars and ping -t windows, two 4:3 1600x1200 screens, or a minimum of two 4:3 1280x1024 screens is highly functional.
16:9
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One group of programmers at my previous job had 2, sometimes 3, 24" monitors each.
Invariably, one monitor only displayed Outlook full-screen. Huge waste of money/space, if you ask me.
A classic blunder it not to realize that equipment is cheap and people are expensive.
Cost of a monitor - under $300 depreciated over 3 years - so $100 a year. Total compensation (including health care, PTO, bonuses, training, etc.) of a programmer. At least $60K. Amount of money earned due a 1% increase in efficiency? $600/year. So with very pessimistic assumptions, that monitor has completely paid for itself after 2 months and is earning money after that. And that's assuming replacing every three ye
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Laptop keyboards kill productivity. Being productive requires a desktop with at least two monitors.
My thinkpad has a full keyboard with 10-key pad, and HDMI out.
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I'm glad I'm not a defense contractor.
I don't use the software they ship, so I don't consider them much of a threat.
Re: Laptop keyboards kill productivity (Score:2)
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Flat, tilted, slight curve to keys, smooth throw. Small sacrifices in key positions. Easy to type on.
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Laptop keyboards kill productivity. Being productive requires a desktop with at least two monitors.
Or one enormous monitor.
Two years back, we were moving offices. Space was a little tight to management decided to make part of the new floor an open office concept area. Most everyone hated the idea and wanted cubes. In a mild effort to bribe people to the open office area, we also happened to get a deal on 42" 4k monitors and every open office desk got one.
To my amazement, I realized there is such a thing as too much monitor acreage. But I finally have a monitor large enough that I don't want to put every
The early bird (Score:5, Funny)
If I show up before the CEO can I take his office?
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I suspect this is really the point. Its another way to separate the low and high status employees without paying more.
Look at the Apple spaceship . Clearly there was not attempt whatsoever to save money on that $5B monument - and it is almost all open office. At least in that case it clearly has nothing to do with cost savings .
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The Silicon Engineering group at Apple refused to move into the spaceship building.
This is the norm for call centers (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean like in university? (Score:2)
I've been to many many lectures in a university classroom and there's never been an assigned desk or seat for them. On the first day people will pick a favored spot. On the second day they might find a friend to sit next to. On the third day people might shift a bit for a better view or some such. By the second week of class, to the last week of the semester months later, people will sit in the same seat most every time.
"Hot desking" will die very rapidly unless there is some kind of management dictate
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Only if you went to a university where the size of the assigned classrooms were 90% of the class enrollment.
Cost savings (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure my employer is trying to do something like this so they can have 700 employees, but only pay for the overhead of a facility with 500 desks. If the employees can spend an average of 2/7 of their time working from home then it can work out.
There is a certain logic if there is a lot of employees working from home regularly and they are all happy with that arrangement. But aside from the practical inconveniences, it sends a message to workers that they are not being respected enough to be provided with the appropriate tools with which to do their jobs. It also hints that the company doesn't care about workers feeling attached to their workplace.
Also while working from home can have some nice advantages, not everyone is cut out for it.
Re: Cost savings (Score:2)
It's not that bad? (Score:3)
My employer, a large and growing tech (hardware) company has been rolling out hot-desking during the last three years or so. From my own experience, it's not that bad, really, especially considering that the workforce is already scattered over several campuses and any new office space will lead to more sprawl.
Essential to make it work:
(1) everyone is assigned a specific area along with other people in the same or closely related projects. Although you may not sit next to your team mates, they won't be far away.
(2) We get a lot of small meeting rooms (for 2-4 people) for ad-hoc meetings and conference calls without disturbing desk workers. The number of people, desks, and meeting rooms is balanced so that you're rarely bumped, while nor 'wasting' resources. And there is a good coffee area for socializing, to compensate for not sitting next to your team mates.
(3) People need to agree about etiquette: no long phone calls or loud conversations at the desks. Empty your desk when you aren't there, both overnight and when you go into a meeting.
So, why it doesn't feel so bad? We came from a situation where usually less than 50% of the desks (open-plan office) were occupied, while all meeting rooms were fully booked three weeks in advance and what you could book was often at 10 minutes walking distance. And half of the desks that were occupied had noisy at-desk meetings. It was much more hectic.
The boss of our department (150 people) also gave up his private office, which was good for morale. Unfortunately, he moved on and his successor claimed an office on his first day. Sigh.
What is 95% of people are present? (Score:2)
If there is a time overlap that is nearly universal, say 2pm such that 95% of people are on campus. Then you might as well spring for the extra 5% of desk space. In tech companies that don't have a significant night shift operations I think it would be unusual for there to be a real-world savings to this scheme. I've seen this hot-desk thing done before for certain groups of employees, like managers don't get an assigned desk because it's assumed they will be going to and from various meetings for most of t
Hotdesking new? Maybe 30 years ago (Score:2)
the latest management fad: Hot-desking,
Latest fad? Seriously? IBM were doing this in 1994 and it was hateful then, too.
Oh hell no... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've already had my fill of open-plan offices. I never thought I'd pine for cubicle walls, but DAMN open-plan is awful. For a senior, lead, or higher job at a top-tier company like Apple or Google; I'd be willing to endure open-plan again. But otherwise, I'm at the point in my career where I can be choosy. And I plan to choose not to work in open-plan settings again, unless I land a gig at a truly elite company. (And even then, I know Apple, at least, hasn't fully drank that kool-aid and still has many teams with quiet and productive cubes, and sometimes even private offices, even for people at the IC level.
Hot desking? Not a chance. No thanks. Not even for Apple, Google, AirB&B, Facebook, et al. Bye Felicia.
And for the life of me, I just don't fathom how anyone even thinks these stupid trends are a good idea in the first place! Sure, I get that there's a small initial savings in not buying office equipment. But considering engineers' salaries in this day and age; what's a few hundred bucks worth of cubicle walls versus the lost productivity from being constantly distracted by every goddamn noise that carries because there're no goddamned barriers? How the fuck has no one bothered to run the numbers on that?
A quick googling tells me that a typical office cubicle runs $500-1500. So, they are a bit pricer than I first thought. But hell... that's enough to run some back-of-envelope numbers. And if that extra little bit of privacy and quiet reduces distraction enough to increase productivity by just 10% (And I am definitely distracted more than 10% of the time in an open office.); those cube walls would more than pay for themselves in less than a month.
And hot desking? Fuck. That. Shit. I'll re-learn how to skate, and be the oldest goddamned Kourier in the burbclaves first.
Ok. Rant off. But Damn...
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A “cheap” cubicle is closer to $2k, and they can easily go to $5k. The bigger cost though is usually rent— 150SF/person and $3-4.5/SF/Month is $5-8k per year per person. When you start talking about really expensive areas, rent can easily become 10% of direct salary. Then add in the utilization factor of each desk, and it starts to seem like potential waste.
The question really is if the savings negatively impact other aspects, and that really comes down to the culture and cause of poor s
A surprising problem: where are the chairs? (Score:5, Funny)
A former employer converted the location where I was assigned to hot-desking during a renovation. A surprising problem was missing chairs. When two people wanted to collaborate on something they would grab the nearest free chair, but never put it back. If you came in after 9am you could probably get a free desk in the general vicinity of your assigned location but you'd spend another 30 minutes hunting around the building for a chair. The additional ad-hoc meeting rooms were stripped bare.
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So basically someone figured out how to get chairs out without security noticing and stole hundreds of chairs.
Re:A surprising problem: where are the chairs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Another possibility is that from time to time a chair gets broken. It doesn't belong to anyone and no one really owns the chair, and it's easy to just grab one from somewhere else. Thus the broken chair just gets pushed out back now there's one less chair in the office. After some attrition now you have less chairs than desks/people.
Good (Score:3)
In another couple of decades they'll realize that for most jobs that employ hot desking employees don't even need to show up. Those jobs can be done much better straight from home, from the permanent desk in one's home office, bypassing stressful commute, and without putting on the pants.
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Right, and for a different company, mayhap with some kind of clue.
Personal hygiene (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you can figure out how this is related to the story.
Always a failure (Score:5, Interesting)
Blue-collar bum, here. My ex-employer did this in their warehouse, but with forklifts and lift trucks. Some machines traveled at 8 MPH, some at 6, and some at 4. Our productivity was judged by a computer system that timed us by our travel time, so if you got stuck with a slow machine on a given day, you could kiss your numbers goodbye. You'd be screwed just based on what shift you worked, as we all came in at different times.
People would regularly fight over which machine to use, how batteries were charged, and people would even intentionally sabotage machines in clever ways so they could keep the good ones all to themselves. Eventually, people were skipping breaks or eating their lunches on the floor (illegal in our line of business as a medical supplier) so they could squat on the good machines. It was chaos.
This was just part of the problem, but it's clear why the company went from $38/share when I left about 3 years ago, to under $3/share today. Too bad the managers all got their golden parachutes and everyone else got pink slips.
Got to get to the next circle of Hell (Score:2)
To advance to the next circle of Hell, just combine hotdesking with open area. After that, then why not go all the way? Surgically remove those lazy brains and sew them straight to the mainframe. As a bonus, you get to sell the left over organs to China to supply the organ tourism market! Wharton-worthy I say.
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And how was attrition at Ross Perot's company-that-shall-not-be-named?
You get sick a lot (Score:4, Insightful)
My god snowcrash is upon us (Score:5, Insightful)
The ADA considerations would be a disaster.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Even in prison, you get assigned a single cell (Score:3)
the only single upside I could think of is that unless the company also forces location tracking,t the constant interruptions of people walking into your office to ask a "quick" question or ten, or who want a favor they don't want documented in email would be greatly reduced,
If I was in a hot-desk organization, I'd look for the quietest, darkest, most difficult to find spots, come in to work as early as possible, and leave as early as was possible, while looking for a new job,
Join the Navy (Score:2)
Ever been on a Navy sub? They have sixty bunks for a crew of 90. All male crew and no gay stuff allowed.
You work it out.
Warnings and evidence won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
You can roll out all the evidence you want that hot-desking is terrible shit that destroys your employees and it won't matter. Management doesn't care.
We already know this, because hot desking is just Open Office 2.0 - all the evidence for 50 years has also shown that open office is terrible and kills productivity and morale (if you're above about a dozen people) and management's ignored all that too. Because it's cheaper (at least on paper).
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We can thank bearded hipsters from SV for setting this awful trend. Open office concept and hot desking combined - when you die and go to hell it will be actually relaxing by comparison.
So does Regus now have a lot of business in SV or elsewhere? Where nobody knows where to find someone from one day to the next? And where one can only reach another by the cellphone, which could just as easily be tied up talking to the spouse?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm just waiting for the even nexter trend: open, hot, standing desks that you hold in your hands.
No, that would be silly - you wouldn't be able to hold the desk and use the mouse and keyboard at the same time. The revolutionary solution is to hang the computer stand from your neck, kind of like that [wp.com]. This way, with your arms free to be productive, you won't need a chair or a desk at all - you'll be able to work huddled in a corner or walking around the halls of this ultramodern office.
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In addition to the open office concept and hot desking... make those open and hot desks also be STANDING DESKS! Muahahahahah! Maybe even with a treadmill underneath!
I’m just waiting for the even nexter trend: open, hot, standing desks that you hold in your hands. Basically the “NO Desk”!
Which is the "here's your company laptop. Now go and do your work in the local coffee shop" type view.
Re:We can thank bearded hipsters from SV (Score:5, Insightful)
They may have helped set the trend but apparently it originated from Ernst and Young whose sales people would be on the road mostly and wouldn't need a centralized desk very often: https://www.citeman.com/5308-a... [citeman.com]
The term seems to have been borrowed from the Navy, i.e., hot bunking where space is at a premium on ships and subs.
Now it seems to have caught imagination of bean counters and other MBA vermin. It's sort of like some company that shall go unnamed coming in and convincing your management that everything needs to be done in the cloud, or using Office (oops, named them), etc. and thus causing the organization to eventually curl up and die from being Pooperpointed to death. It shows the company doesn't respect the employees.
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No, developers and engineers have never advocated this. Corporate upper management on the other hand loves this. The reason is that it reduces costs. No bottom rank employee cares about costs, they just want everyone around them to be quiet so that they can get their work done.
Re:We can thank bearded hipsters from SV (Score:5, Insightful)
Only thing I can think of is if the company is working w/ a rental space service like Regus, and have a certain number of seats. The total number of employees in the company slightly exceeds that, but there's always the possibility of someone every other day working from home. So to avoid going to the next bracket, they have the arrangement of a smaller office w/ fewer desks, and do this hot-desking arrangement, and save on the rent.
Never mind what happens to the rest of their productivity
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I have seen hot-desking used most often in departments where people are out off the office a lot. A sales department may have half their people out on sales calls on a typical day. So they can they can get by with a lot fewer desks if they hot-desk.
But for developers or admin people it makes no sense. The cost of the floor space is negligible compared to their salary, so the focus should be on making them as productive as possible.
In addition to my computer, I have a few dozen books, pens, stapler, a few
Re:We can thank bearded hipsters from SV (Score:4, Informative)
There is nothing new about this. Companies have tried this - and failed - many times over the last 20+ years.
Works well for us (surprisingly). Choice vs assign (Score:4, Interesting)
I was a bit surprised how well it works at my company.
What the benefit comes down to is choosing where you want to sit vs being assigned based on symbolism of the heirarchy. As the new guy, I was able to choose a window desk on the 17th floor that I probably wouldn't have been assigned. That's a benefit to employees directly.
Many of us work in the office two or three days per week, in expensive office space. I come in Tuesday and Thursday. I recently found out that someone else sits there M,W,F. So the company cuts office space cost in half.
My boss' boss would typically be assigned a corner office (two walls windows); he prefers to be in a dark interior corner.
Note I said I sit one place, my boss' boss sits at one place. As it happens, the guy who shows up at 6AM always sits the same place - the place he likes. I've never seen "my" desk taken, because everybody who showed up before me sat at "their" desk, the one where they always sit.
Occasionally I'll be working closely with a different group for a day or a week. I may occasionally go over and sit with that group. I don't see people do that much, but Inhave a unique role that involves working with various groups.
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Wow!! We found one who likes it and hasn't yet been screwed by it. There, there, grasshopper, your time is coming.
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So, what you're saying is it works well in a small group with sufficient desk provision. Which is exactly the edge case that the article presents as a possible condition where it may just work (but not necessarily).
Your desk seems to be more shared that being a hotdesk; for many places with people who work part time, that's a common occurrence, and just efficient. It's still not "hotdeskting".
Where there are desks free in other departments, that _still_ not hotdesking to go and sit with them. That's just
Maybe 300 people. We have just enough desks (Score:2)
> So, what you're saying is it works well in a small group with sufficient desk provision. Which is exactly the edge case that the article presents as a possible condition where it may just work (but not necessarily).
We might be 300 people.
What might be different from some companies where it doesn't work well is that we have just enough desks for the security team to sit in the area where they normally do, the identify management team to sit in their normal area, etc.
So your desk isn't reserved, but sinc
Re: (Score:3)
What the benefit comes down to is choosing where you want to sit vs being assigned based on symbolism of the heirarchy.
What you've just described is to now arbitrarily favour people who prefer to work early than work late. The only reason you like it is that you're one of those people.
Good point, but actually I'm last (Score:3)
You have a point, though actually I'm generally the second-last to arrive. I try to arrive a few minutes before my boss.
My boss and I, last to arrive, are also the first to leave*. Meaning we use the desks for the shortest time, so it would be fair if we "got stuck with" one without a nice view out the windows or whatever.
* Hmm, maybe being last to arrive and first to leave might not be a good idea. My grand-boss also sits with us and sees that.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the point is to make sure, for this hypothetical 100 person company, that you have 50 good desks, and 50 objectively worst desks. So that every day your employees come in earlier and earlier trying to get one of the good desks.
Re: (Score:3)
The reality is that for the hypothetical 100 person company you have 5 good desks and 85 shitty desks and if you the 91st person to come in you are SOL.
Re:We can thank bearded hipsters from SV (Score:4, Informative)
The idea is that you have 70 desks and 100 employees, and expect many of those employees to not turn up to the office.
It works well for sales guys (for example) who are mostly out of the office anyway, no point giving each of them a desk that will be unused 80% of the time.
For everyone else though, its a really really stupid idea. On the same level as "clean desk policy" and "developers placed right between the helpdesk and marketing"
Cost reduction (Score:2)
The logic is cost reduction via rental space.
You may have 100 "seats" but not like the original cubical size. You will have 50-60 desk seats with enough space for two monitors, laptop, and side items. 10-20 seats that only have space for one monitor. Another 10 will be in "collaboration" areas where the intent is to talk to people and share a desk (informal conference - room). And like 25 lunch/eating seats.
Traditionally, there aren't any informal meeting spots, and lunch areas don't count toward seating
Re: (Score:2)
At my former employer, the physical facilities group pulled the badge-in data and found that on average only 80% of the workforce came into a work building at any point during the day. So they underprovision by 10% and credit themselves with the cost savings.
Re: (Score:2)
I worked at a place in the 1990s where they tried it. It sucked because we didn't have laptops and the desktops didn't all have the same software installed.
Re: (Score:2)
For any serious development work, it doesn't.
For call centers and anything that uses common tools and terminals, it works fine, since the tools process doesn't change from one system to another, with hardware and configuration identical. Of course, this is only basic work, as the most one is doing is either using a remote terminal, or is entering stuff via Internet Explorer ~6, something that is barely impacted.
What doesn't work is having a non-hot desk a
Re: (Score:2)
I had a '73 that had an alarm that sounded like a Sonalert on steroids that went off if I put more than 2-3 of my textbooks on the passenger seat when I drove to class. I had to buckle the damned things in.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with this answer and Quoted it in another question headline.
However I have worked in a company that did this in 2010 and it was absolute fucking hell.
Also, telemarketers have been doing this shit for decades.
Re:Roossian haxx0rz outmatched! (Score:5, Insightful)
When MBA's take over...
To keep profit rates rising perpetually even when a company's market stops growing, MBAs move in with 'cost cutting' that slowly guts the company until it critically fails.
Re: (Score:3)
The official job title is PHB.