'No Evidence' Chance Meetings at the Office Boost Innovation (nytimes.com) 171
The New York Times reports:
When Yahoo banned working from home in 2013, the reason was one often cited in corporate America: Being in the office is essential for spontaneous collaboration and innovation. "It is critical that we are all present in our offices," wrote Jacqueline Reses, then a Yahoo executive, in a staff memo. "Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people and impromptu team meetings." Today, Ms. Reses, now chief executive of Post House Capital, an investment firm, has a different view. "Would I write that memo differently now?" she said. "Oh yeah." She still believes that collaboration can benefit from being together in person, but over the last year, people found new, better ways to work.
As the pandemic winds down in the United States, however, many bosses are sounding a note similar to Ms. Reses' in 2013. "Innovation isn't always a planned activity," said Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, about post-pandemic work. "It's bumping into each other over the course of the day and advancing an idea you just had." Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said working from home "doesn't work for spontaneous idea generation, it doesn't work for culture." Yet people who study the issue say there is no evidence that working in person is essential for creativity and collaboration. It may even hurt innovation, they say, because the demand for doing office work at a prescribed time and place is a big reason the American workplace has been inhospitable for many people...
"There's credibility behind the argument that if you put people in spaces where they are likely to collide with one another, they are likely to have a conversation," said Ethan S. Bernstein, who teaches at Harvard Business School and studies the topic. "But is that conversation likely to be helpful for innovation, creativity, useful at all for what an organization hopes people would talk about? There, there is almost no data whatsoever. All of this suggests to me that the idea of random serendipity being productive is more fairy tale than reality," he said....
Professor Bernstein found that contemporary open offices led to 70 percent fewer face-to-face interactions. People didn't find it helpful to have so many spontaneous conversations, so they wore headphones and avoided one another.
The chief people officer at real estate marketplace Zillow believes this always-in-the-office culture is what's ultimately lead to problems like long hours, the lack of representation, and burnout, according to the New York Times, which notes Zillow, Salesforce, and Ford are now reconfiguring their offices with fewer rows of desks and more places for informal gatherings.
"Some experts have suggested a new idea for the office: not as a headquarters people go to daily or weekly, but as a place people go sometimes, for group hangouts."
As the pandemic winds down in the United States, however, many bosses are sounding a note similar to Ms. Reses' in 2013. "Innovation isn't always a planned activity," said Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, about post-pandemic work. "It's bumping into each other over the course of the day and advancing an idea you just had." Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said working from home "doesn't work for spontaneous idea generation, it doesn't work for culture." Yet people who study the issue say there is no evidence that working in person is essential for creativity and collaboration. It may even hurt innovation, they say, because the demand for doing office work at a prescribed time and place is a big reason the American workplace has been inhospitable for many people...
"There's credibility behind the argument that if you put people in spaces where they are likely to collide with one another, they are likely to have a conversation," said Ethan S. Bernstein, who teaches at Harvard Business School and studies the topic. "But is that conversation likely to be helpful for innovation, creativity, useful at all for what an organization hopes people would talk about? There, there is almost no data whatsoever. All of this suggests to me that the idea of random serendipity being productive is more fairy tale than reality," he said....
Professor Bernstein found that contemporary open offices led to 70 percent fewer face-to-face interactions. People didn't find it helpful to have so many spontaneous conversations, so they wore headphones and avoided one another.
The chief people officer at real estate marketplace Zillow believes this always-in-the-office culture is what's ultimately lead to problems like long hours, the lack of representation, and burnout, according to the New York Times, which notes Zillow, Salesforce, and Ford are now reconfiguring their offices with fewer rows of desks and more places for informal gatherings.
"Some experts have suggested a new idea for the office: not as a headquarters people go to daily or weekly, but as a place people go sometimes, for group hangouts."
We're going back to the office (Score:5, Insightful)
So get back to the grind, peon. You've got real estate to value.
Re:We're going back to the office (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not working in a traditional office vs. working from home.
The biggest impediment to productivity, creativity and employee morale is management. Managers have to manage, otherwise, why do they exist? So, if you are a manager, you need to CYA, and that means meddling in everything that you possibly can so that you can take credit for everything that happens.
Management, especially the people at the top, hates that working from home has gone reasonably well and business hasn't collapsed, because it demonstrates just how completely worthless they really are.
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Re: We're going back to the office (Score:5, Funny)
Normal people like to talk in person with other people. They like to have sex with them too. They like to go to movie theaters with other people.
Hooray, I'm 33.33% normal!
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Yeah, but you're not allowed to do two out of three of those at work anymore, and really, you're not supposed to do the last one either, despite all the chitter chatter about it.
Indeed businesses like money. Commute, though (Score:5, Interesting)
> Yeah because a business owner likes to pay thousands of dollars in lease per month to keep the secret cabal of real estate investors happy. Who the fuck are you kidding? No business owner is going to pay some leasing company for office space if they do not need it.
Quite. Office space is expensive. That's why before the pandemic we saw companies trying to fit more workers into less space. The job I had at the time had no assigned desks, even for director level top managers. You took whichever desk was open. Because about 15% of people wouldn't be there on a given day, that let them cut their real estate cost by around 15%.
Btw, that company ALSO happens to own and manage more commercial real estate than any other company in the US. Even those who OWN the most office space in the country don't want it used by up by their own employees. They'd rather have their employees at home one day a week and rent out the third floor to a different company. (That's exactly what they did.)
If we're going to have a grown-up conversation about this, we need to talk about what's real. Commutes are real. A real pain in the butt. Employees who work from home can take less time dealing with the AC repair guy coming or whatever, because they can work while the AC guy works. There are advantages to working from home. These advantages to employees mean that people like me are willing to take a slightly lower salary for an at-home job than I would a "drive to the office" job. That's a savings for the company.
The cost of office space is a savings for the company if people work from home.
The lack of face to face communication is a drawback.
There are advantages and disadvantages of both options.
A lot of companies do some days at home and some at the office, to get the benefits of both.
Anyone who says that one option or the other is the best in every way is missing half the story.
Some people, like my boss, are better able to focus on work while they're at work. Maybe his family / home is distracting, maybe it's a frame-of-mind thing. I've always had a designated chair and desk that I only use for working, and I don't work on the couch, to keep the separate things separate in my mind.
For me, I focus better when working at home, in my SOC I've built over the years. At the office, I'm distracted thinking about it running over to 7-11 for a snack, or it's a little chilly in the office, or a little hot, or the guy two desks over is talking loudly on the phone. At home, I have my full kitchen right there all the time, so there's no distraction from being a bit hungry, or planning a 7-11 run now in case I get hungry later when I'll be too busy to go. The thermostat is just how I like it. I focus better when I'm at home. He focuses better when he's in his office. There isn't one option that's always beat for all workers.
Re:Indeed businesses like money. Commute, though (Score:4, Funny)
There are massive productivity gains to be had from working at home. The better work/life balance employees enjoy makes them more productive, less stressed. They tend to eat better and enjoy better health overall.
Companies should encourage it, and support workers by offering them office equipment like chairs and IT gear so they can do it more effectively.
Except most people aren't you. Can cause depressio (Score:2)
I'm happier and more productive working from "home" / my SOC. We essentially live downstairs, I have a rack of routers, switches, firewalls, and VM hosts upstairs, along with my large desk and three monitors. So it's clearly a workspace sitting atop my home.
My wife got a job specifically for the purpose of getting out of the house regularly and having face to face contact with other people.
One person who used to work for me would get a bit depressed when they worked from home a whole week solid. She also fe
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Yeah because a business owner likes to pay thousands of dollars in lease per month to keep the secret cabal of real estate investors happy.
Are you sure your company’s board or management didn’t have a few members in that secret cabal?
While WeWork is a bit too blatant in rent office from its own CEO, is it too much of a stretch of imagination to think that, if anyone in the board owned some office property, it wouldn’t be surprising to find the company “just happened” to be renting those offices?
Board members and management usually have a bit of spare money, will it be a surprise to find some of them invested in of
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That's not a chance encounter. A chance encounter is running into someone at the coffee machine.
Re:We're going back to the office (Score:5, Insightful)
Most managers have been pulling 12 hr shifts to manage during the pandemic. In office they could go discuss the urgent issue with someone on the floor and if there are other issues people would walk up and discuss. Now to make sure that people are just not postponing discussing an issue they have to set up 15 min checkins with each team member. Sometimes it is productive and sometimes its not but they need to do it so that nothing gets missed. They could do their job in 8 hrs when people are clustered together.
Citation needed.
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Hmm, based on what I see on the company Slack, people very easily ask on specific groups channels for help if they are having problems with their code. No need for a manager to interrupt them for 15min chat. That chat was already taken care of by the morning daily scrum meeting.
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If I had anyone hitting me up every 15 minutes, I would just completely disconnect because I would loose so much in productivity. Sometimes it takes upwards of 15 minutes just to get into the groove when you are working with deep subjects.
Re:We're going back to the office (Score:4, Insightful)
"There Is No Evidence That Chance Meetings at the Office Boost Innovation "
File this under "No Shit Sherlock"
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"There Is No Evidence That Chance Meetings at the Office Boost Innovation "
Actually, the most importance evidence of them all is something that is saving the world right now: the chance encounter between Kati Kariko and Elliot Barnathan: [nytimes.com]:
One fateful day, the two scientists hovered over a dot-matrix printer in a narrow room at the end of a long hall. A gamma counter, needed to track the radioactive molecule, was attached to a printer. It began to spew data.
So yes, a chance encounter at the office is responsible for the most important vaccine of modern history.
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This is not evidence that companies should go to the bank with. Further, what if these two had just been given a formal introduction or had been encouraged to work together? Thank goodness that this meeting happened, but why did we have to wait for it to happen like this? What about all the other chance interactions that never happen and the opportunities that are lost?
That's the problem with this current thinking: it doesn't put people that should be talking to each other together deliberately. As long as
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Your linked article says that they were working together and the meeting was anything but chance. They were working to develop mRNA already and it seems they were waiting at the printer for the results of an experiment they had just performed together.
-1 bogus (Score:3)
Actually, the most importance evidence of them all is something that is saving the world right now: the chance encounter between Kati Kariko and Elliot Barnathan:
That's bogus. It wasn't a chance encounter at all, nor did the two of them achieve a breakthrough because of some information that passed between them.
If you read the article you'll see that it was two people already working on a project together, hovering over a printer waiting for the machinery to deliver the results of their latest experiment.
Re:We're going back to the office (Score:5, Insightful)
"There Is No Evidence That Chance Meetings at the Office Boost Innovation "
File this under "No Shit Sherlock"
Nah; file it under "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
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and they make the WFH decisions
Probably while they were on the back nine at the golf course.
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Yes, and many workers are voting with their feet and leaving office-bound jobs. The folks who sit on the boards of directors cannot do a damn thing about it.
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It's not just the real estate owners. Officer workers support a ton of local business. Restaurants. Coffee stores. Gas stations. Dry cleaners. Things that exist to support office workers.
Take away the need to have a whole bunch of office workers in the middle of the downtown area and you're going to kill downtown.
I'm expecting that our current "government solves everything" government to start pushing for government solutions to force everyone back into office buildings. It's going to happen because everyon
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Now this is going to be a biggie issue. I do envision quite a few small business's that cater to the breakfast/lunch crowds will major issues, and I'm not sure how to fix.
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The only innovation that was ever spurred... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think what might have happened is similar to this - I do miss the oddball discussions that happened next cube over, but it was almost never about business, just general chit chat and office gossip. It was easier to just join in than try to accomplish something - a whole pile of people being bothered anyways, so what's the difference?
And I admit, there were times we had the "random i
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Surely that points to open-plan offices being the problem.
Facebook COO on Remote Work: I said, "Not for us." (Score:2)
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg [twitter.com] (net worth: $1.9B): "You know I was not a believer in remote work...So, I believed that the only way you could be productive is to be in an office together...And so when people started talking about remote work before this [the pandemic], I said, 'Not for us.'"
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Wow, net worth $1.9B -- guess that opinion matters more than most then.
There Are Several DIfferent Issues Involved Here (Score:4, Insightful)
Just "being in the office" is not the whole story. The conditions of work in the office matter a lot also - are their offices, cubes, bull-pens/corrals, rows of tables with people at maximum density and no barriers, what?
Reading about people wearing head phones and avoiding each other sound like the latter sorts of situations. Although I find remote work loses some things, casual conversations for example are not the same as sessions you have to scehdule, more often not having quiet space to think interferes more with innovation.
Re: There Are Several DIfferent Issues Involved He (Score:3)
This. There are way too many variables at play to say chance meetings don't boost innovation in any company. I can absolutely say that my productivity benefits from in person interaction outside of formal meetings. That's based upon progress I've made in the past year without in person interaction vs previous years with abundant interaction.
But almost everyone at my company has individual offices, so I can close the door if I want to focus. I can eat lunch alone if I want, or have lunch with the CEO and tal
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There are way too many variables at play to say chance meetings don't boost innovation in any company.
Note that they didn't say that. They said "there is no evidence chance meetings boost innovation."
Although there is definitely anecdotal evidence they boost innovation, so that is probably wrong as well. A lot of programmers nowadays aren't innovative, though. They do whatever the product manager says.
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Re: There Are Several DIfferent Issues Involved H (Score:2)
Oh for sure, our company is 65 employees and very shallow (5 levels between postdoc and CEO). The CEO is also a scientist and active in our laboratory research (typically from a software development side). The company is unique, but at least for us having off-the-cuff discussions with superiors (maybe not the CEO) is a low stress way to air new ideas, whether that's via lunch, bumping into them in the hallway, having beers with them, etc.
I'm right in the middle in terms of seniority, so I also see that "su
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Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Professor Bernstein apparently has not heard this.
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If the claim is that chance meetings are super productive and essential to the operation of a corporation, there should probably be some evidence. You can't prove a negative, so Professor Bernstein is on the right side of this: he's seen no evidence, and he's not the one that needs to be providing it.
There are some pretty bold claims that these serendipitous meetings are central to the functioning of teams or companies. That's what I keep getting told, anyway. If serendipity is an essential part of your wor
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Spontaneous collaboration and spontaneous innovation occur most readily face-to-face, and being co-located (in the office, as it were) is what fosters that. Working remotely hinders it. Also, apparently according to Bernstein, "contemporary offices" hinder it, but to me that
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We certainly agree on modern offices being shitty and unproductive.
A lot of my vitriol comes from literally being told by managers that run my company that work is mysteriously getting done in large amounts through these chance encounters, and it strikes me as very worrisome. I've honestly never seen any evidence of it. I *have* seen evidence of team layout mattering—I had one of my most productive times when I was seated with a designer and an animator to work on a game system. (In contrast to being
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Ah, the wee folk are all around ye, just hidden. No evidence? Why, of course not, they be hidden!
"Fairy tale" is a perfectly accurate name for something widely believed with no evidence supporting it.
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Casual conversations can be had online. Use virtual collaboration drop-in rooms, open all day in the calendar. We do that with voice & sometimes music enabled and it works just fine. You don't need to book a slot with someone just because you're physically distant from them.
One big benefit of working at Amdahl ... (Score:2)
the conditions of work in the office matter a lot also - are their offices, cubes, bull-pens/corrals, rows of tables with people at maximum density and no barriers, what?
One big benefit of working at Amdahl was that EVERYbody got a private room (with good sound-deadening walls and no distracting windows) and enough computer terminal to do their work.
Oh Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Am fascinated by this report -- and how wildly it differs from my own experience in software development both for a database vendor (internals) and in financial services. Chance encounters with executives were some of the most productive meetings because it was easy to focus on the issue at hand and get an agreement to move forwards. That the best spot was just outside the washroom probably helped. Being able to drop into someone else's office to discuss problems was the accepted norm.
But this sort of discussion became impossible when folks were migrated to cube city or worse -- open plan monitors on rows of tables. Memos and scheduled meetings are no substitute. But in the noisy open spaces that are the current fashion, offsite discussions over food or alcohol are probably the only real substitute. How anything can get done when thoughts are drowned out by the loud conversations of a bunch of far too close people seems miraculous. Sigh...
Many years ago I read an IBM study on software productivity as a function of team separation -- and at that time it had been found that once people were no longer on the same floor, intrateam productivity fell off appreciably. That probably explains a lot.
Glad I don't have to work in this brave new world...
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"to drop into someone else's office to discuss problems was the accepted norm." argh!
OTOH, people had their own offices.
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If those chance encounters were the most productive, you might want to change how you develop software. I mean, you don't want to leave your productivity to chance.
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I was thinking this. There's a lot riding on that first word, "chance."
When I have an idea I want to discuss with a colleague I text, suggest a zoom call, and pour a gin and tonic. I don't recall ever stumbling into some random person in the hallway, striking up a random conversation, and the two of us exclaiming "eureka!" at each other ten minutes later.
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I was thinking this. There's a lot riding on that first word, "chance."
When I have an idea I want to discuss with a colleague I text, suggest a zoom call, and pour a gin and tonic. I don't recall ever stumbling into some random person in the hallway, striking up a random conversation, and the two of us exclaiming "eureka!" at each other ten minutes later.
This is more prevalent in useless people who aimlessly wonder hallways all day, they get their "productivity" done by having someone they can say they were talking to, then sometimes bullshit their way into an idea for another team to work on while explaining what they were doing all month to their boss.
Re:Oh Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
What you've described is a failure of process. If it was hard to focus on the issue at hand and get an agreement to move forward in a formal meeting, that was a problem to be solved, and the solution shouldn't have been out of a sitcom. Engineering chance encounters at the washroom door to get your boss to listen to you is no way to run a business.
And dropping in at someone's office was a way to get stuff done, and was an accepted norm? That's not serendipity! That's you being aware that something needs fixing and making sure that it gets looked at. That's the opposite of luck!
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This 100%.
"If it weren't for chance meetings we wouldn't get shit done." WTF is that?
Process is king. Document it, use it, and continually refine it. If you're not doing that you're living on borrowed time as a business.
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"Many years ago I read an IBM study on software productivity as a function of team separation -- and at that time it had been found that once people were no longer on the same floor, intrateam productivity fell off appreciably. That probably explains a lot."
Yet IBM bought Red Hat for $34 billion USD who has distributed teams spread across the entire world. At the time it was the largest software acquisition in history. I work on Ceph and we've had a widely distributed remote team since Inktank was created
Absence of evidence... (Score:2)
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You can't prove a negative. The onus is on the people making the claim that these chance meetings are significant, and overall good.
Work from home or home from work? (Score:4, Funny)
I tried working from home but I got fired because it turns out nobody wants to come to my house for their big mac and fries.
requirements, not innovation (Score:3)
The gains I've had from constant interactions in the office aren't innovation (new ideas) really, but rather a better sense of what the requirements are. I can solve lots of problems on my own, but interaction in the office tilts me towards solving the right problems.
I have picked up useful innovations from others over the years, but those tend to show up in email or formal meetings anyhow and get quickly discarded because they aren't a good solution at time ... the trick with them is to remember them years later when the requirements have changed, or when something that was blocking it has been solved. Working in the office wouldn't help with those much.
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We still get plenty of good ideas from our video calls, or by ourselves, That is not the problem. A shortage of ideas never was the problem. Innovation is about experimenting with those ideas, and see what sticks. You don't need an office for that. What you do need is employees who are empowered to try new things, which means bypassing normal project management, QA, other processes, maybe even procurement or other compliance departments... but in a controlled and structured manner.
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The gains I've had from constant interactions in the office aren't innovation (new ideas) really, but rather a better sense of what the requirements are.
So, you were able to disguise a defective process by someone randomly saying "Oh, it needs to do X too".
That's not a good thing.
I've been saying this for the whole pandemic (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad some other people that think about this stuff are saying it too. I'm just some rando on /. that hates the office.
I've heard about this theoretical water-cooler serendipity for years, and not only have I never been a part of it, I've never met anyone that was a part of it. At best, I've met people that CLAIM to have SEEN it. It's real "my aunt's second-cousin's roommate's friend" type stuff.
Even in the Pixar situation that everyone likes to talk about, the collisions aren't purely by chance, they're engineered into the layout of the building. The funnel lots of people together and encourage them to spend time with each other.
But putting that aside, it is still the case that if you're relying on 1-in-a-million chance meetings to be successful, you're doing it wrong. Problems that get solved at the water cooler are problems that shouldn't have existed in the first place. If your animator needs a bug fixed, the programmer should've known about it from official channels, not by eavesdropping on conversations while getting a cup of coffee. If your idea for innovation is "meh, it sorts itself out if you just throw people at it randomly" you're probably not getting very much value out of your employees.
Communication is a *deliberate process*. If you want people to come up with ideas, make the environment welcoming to ideas. Let people take chances, give them time and space to think. Having two chatterboxes yammering to each other doesn't make anything happen.
If you like working at the office, that's great. You don't actually need any other justification than that. Stop with the cockamamie idea that it's the best place for everyone to do work or be creative.
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Oh sweet child, I'm a programmer for a large game studio. I work with game designers and artists and I make all sorts of creative decisions and suggestions all the time. I've had a career for 20 years exactly because I believe that you need to talk to these people and find out what they want and what would make their lives better to do their creative work. I come up with novel solutions for problems that have never existed before because the gameplay they want to try has never been done in our engine before
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Sure, kid. Whatever helps you sleep at night. :)
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You seem very invested in trying to make me think that I'm an un-creative drone that is only good at programming computers. You don't know me or any hobby artistic or intellectual pursuits that I have. I also don't think that I'm particularly self-important; I don't hold myself in higher regard than blue collar workers, but I do work hard and enjoy what I do, and this story is about office work--a thing that I've been thinking about for the whole pandemic. I've spent 20 years in an office; one would fully e
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My lunch crew was very influential (Score:5, Interesting)
Now accidental meetings over lunch may not be documented, but certainly established groups that met for lunch provided substantial opportunities for discussion and innovation.
The lunch discussions with my group at MITRE was always very interesting and wide ranging. Among other things, we came up with a lot of the concepts that eventually ended up in ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010-2011 (see http://www.iso-architecture.or... [iso-architecture.org] Another time one guy did a napkin calculation showing that (in 1994) one should not bother deleting files smaller than 10kb, because the cost of storage was less than the cost of your time to review and delete the file. I really miss working with that group of people!
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Unless you had to touch, taste, or smell each other for those regularly scheduled substantial opportunities for discussion and innovation to bear fruit, those established lunch groups would have been just as effective with video chat from the comfort of your favorite home environment.
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Nope. For the last 7 years I worked from home, so I have -substantial- experience with that kind of an environment. During that time, we had frequent in-person meetings (and I knew several of my co-workers from previous work.) We did just fine collaborating on the job itself. But we didn't get the free discussions that my lunch group had. THAT is what is missing. It's not necessarily the ability to do the work itself, it's the random chat that turns into an idea and that gets fleshed out over lunch, t
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So you're saying you were productive while not being in the office and randomly bumping into people? Amazing.
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No, that's not what I said. What I said was that "lunch with my coworkers" was very valuable, and is different from 'bumping into random strangers'.
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I don't really see the distinction, honestly. It appears we're agreeing on the point that "randomly bumping into people" isn't the be all and end all though.
What is "Innovation"? (Score:2)
Idea generation and creativity certainly doesn't require to be in an office setting. For most businesses, "Innovation" is making sure everyone is strategically aligned to get ahead of the competition with new products and service offerings. The best way to clearly make sure everyone is on the same page could differ between organizations, but you need to make sure the initiatives are clearly communicated and executed. I personally think having something in writing and sending it to everyone is the best wa
Not a good poster child (Score:5, Insightful)
When Yahoo banned working from home in 2013, the reason was one often cited in corporate America...
Yahoo should not be used as an example of how to do anything right.
Wage slave mentality (Score:3)
Most people taking in public spaces of offices arenâ(TM)t talking about work. They are talking about things outside of work - TV, weekends, evening activities, complaining about their relationships, etc. it all turns into a big distraction for those trying to do actual work, especially in an open concept office where you can hear your coworker talking to the insurance company about a car accident. Only a manager who feels the need to micromanage others needs people in the office (for most roles), and these statements from JP Morgan, etc are just attempts to put lipstick on that pig. Yes, there are people who need to work physically in the same location. But most employees donâ(TM)t, and itâ(TM)s a waste of material.
"no chance" i give a crap. I enjoy the office. (Score:3)
I'm not a traditional engineer; I came into it by happy accident, a good recommendation from a friend, and a lot of stubborn work. I am happy to be the "dumbest guy in the room" because almost all of my coworkers, down to a person, is very smart, very passionate about their work, and enjoys talking about it and teaching others about what they're up to. I love hearing about the projects their teams are working on around the coffee machine. I absorb everything I can during work happy hours. It makes me a better engineer, but go get bent if it doesn't fit on your stupid measurement spreadsheet.
Those kinds of interactions simply don't work over Zoom.
Culture (Score:2)
I really do feel sorry for a lot of you (Score:3)
Every job I worked at, there were people I enjoyed spending time with and learning from/exchanging ideas. Sometimes I was the 'padawan', sometimes I was the 'jedi'. But usually it was peer-to-peer. Some jobs had more interesting co-workers than others. And only my last job, a relatively short consulting gig, did I go out on my own for lunch.
Those of you who get no benefit from talking to your co-workers either work in an abysmal environment, or are sufficiently anti-social to not benefit from your environment. Of course, for some of you, that's probably not a decidable question :-(
Re:I really do feel sorry for a lot of you (Score:5, Insightful)
Those of you who get no benefit from talking to your co-workers either work in an abysmal environment...
Working location and coworker communication are two completely separate, unrelated factors. Working in a common office, any common office, is an abysmal environment by definition. The only way it can be anything else is if EVERYONE is always respectfully quite and appropriately separated with real walls and a door. And even then, it still sucks being away from family for most waking hours (a family-friendly office is a rhetorical fantasy of micromanagers).
Being in a common office has absolutely nothing to do with benefiting from talking to coworkers. The most productive conversations my coworkers, boss, and I had with solving software problems were handled over video conference with screen sharing. Even if we were in common meatspace, it's far less efficient to all gather over a common monitor than to share the screen over video conference. Plus, recording the debugging session for future reference is something we can decide to do on a whim without breaking anyone's concentration.
Look at open source (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of open source projects are developed entirely online by people who have never met in person. For those communities, working from home isn't something new. It's what they've always done.
How do open source projects rate on creativity and innovation? I'd say, very well. Better than a lot of companies.
... 'No Evidence'? (Score:2)
"Serendipity" BS (Score:2)
Innovation (Score:2)
No evidence that working from home reduces innovat (Score:3)
With such difficult to measure things, the chances are that you won't get enough valid data to prove your point. If you formulate your null-hypothesis differently, then the headline would becom: "No evidence that working from home reduces innovation".
People (even the scientists involved!) often confuse: "No statistically significant difference" with "no significant difference".
The first is: We were unable to measure accurately enough to see a difference, while the second is we were able to measure accurately, but measured no difference.
Bring back the suggestions box (Score:3)
Not only does that allow collaboration and improvement, but it gives a view on how popular those ideas would be, too.
It doesn't matter whether those ideas are for a new product or changing the colour of the company logo. They would all get an airing and they would all get equal access and participation from management and other staff.
Let it play out (Score:2)
If there's one thing I've learned in life it's that there's too many differentiating factors.
Let a whole bunch of people try stuff out and see which one wins. Again, because there's so many factors and differences in each situation. If something is really a 'no-brainer', it's proven over a long period of time and people will just adopt it.
I personally wouldn't take a job today that forced me to to come in everyday. I'm at a good stage in my career that I can do that. On that other hand, I do like going in o
Correct (Score:2)
I worked 9 years in a research lab that was specifically designed to boost cross-specialty innovation. None ever happened. People usually have work they need to get done, and really can't afford to be lollygagging around hoping for serendipity.
Re: (Score:2)
You sounds like a low-wage social butterfly whose work doesn't ever require concentration or much education. Meanwhile, some of us have to design and care for infrastructure worth billions of dollars and need time for deep thinking.
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People who actually use their brains need time to think, and schedule meetings with others to make efficient use of their time. You must be a social butterfly who waltzes into other people's offices and wastes their time with your chickenshit prattle imagining it's more important than their work.
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And I think you're full of shit. "Solution architects" by and large aren't worth a fucking title, and the "fucking up of projects" sounds a lot more like a failure of management than that of those charged with implementing it.
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You sound like an Asperger putz who is full of yourself. I earn multiple 6 figures as a solution architect. I've worked on designing and implementing the actual billion dollar projects that you brag about maintaining. You and your 'deep thinking' are the cunts who fuck up projects because your thinking doesn't ever consider what other people in an organization need. Nice try.
Well, you should be happy with remote work so the engineers won't "fuck up projects" anymore. You can design your billion dollar projects all on your own unimpeded by those Asperger putzes.
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Nah, we don't like working from the office because it is loud, crowded, hard to focus and usually offers inferior tools (slow network, crap monitors) and stupid rules (clean desk, no assigned desk, don't eat at desk). That's on top of the pointless daily commute frustration and being unable to plan anything during your day because your at the fucking office.
We interact just fine, and we get the fucking job done in less time. You do need to fucking listen to us however when we tell you about obstacles, stup
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Upvote this person.
Current company had an open floor plan when I joined. But desks were spaced far enough apart & we had carpet and acoustic ceiling. OK, I thought, I can deal with this. I don't like it, but I can deal.
5 years ago, they moved us in town (longer - 1.5 hrs, more costly - commuter rail - commute) to a rehabbed industrial building. Rows of tables, no carpet, no acoustic ceiling. Place is an echo chamber than amplifies *every* sound. People on either side of you, narrow passage and conferenc
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What they think is slowing them down is actually speeding them up because they are forced to deliver what is actually required. And I don't give a fuck what any antisocial work from home, ignore messages cunt thinks of this.
Wow. Just wow. Let me ask you a question. Has the thought ever occurred to you that perhaps the reason people seem like antisocial cunts, is because of your winning personality?
The problem is they often don't listen to what others want done and build things the way they want, and because they avoid interactions, others don't find out that what they built isn't fit for purpose till it's too late.
Well let me just say, every time I've seen projects opened up, it went "too many cooks in the kitchen" fast. And the vast majority of input people like to "offer" is usually trash at any rate. The actual knowledgeable people that I would stop in the hallway to listen to, they're usually being stopped in the hallway by those who
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Most of the people who 'waltz into your office' probably do so because you don't read emails, don't respond to meeting requests to go over reviews, feedback on design, etc.
No because they want to pop off something outside of the established procedure for projects. Usually after some unrelated story about their weekend that I don't care about. If they have something, coming to me ain't telling the team. It's telling me and hoping I do it without running it by my PM first to see if that's been an approved change. I read my emails just like everyone else. Do my meetings just like everyone else. The folks waltzing in are the entitled ones thinking they've got some breakthro
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If you run into one asshole in the office, there's an asshole in the office.
If everyone in the office is an asshole, there's an asshole in the office. And it's you.
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I work with lots of colleagues who work remotely...
People get their work done, i can see the results of their work and don't need to look over their shoulder constantly to make sure they're working.
People still socialise, we have various online forums for communication - not all of which is work related, we have occasional in person meetups, and everyone has their own circle of friends whom they socialise with outside of work including neighbors, ex colleagues, random people etc.
The idea that you can only s
Re: (Score:2)
What you're seeing is that:
1) For some people working from home works better, you're seeing that with the 20% who improved efficiency without any intervention.
2) For others it doesn't, although at least some of that was likely down to other pandemic related factors such as a lack of childcare.
3) It takes time to get used to a new way of working, and that once appropriate training and support has been given there is no loss of productivity, and even benefits to productivity.
4) Remote working saves money, whi