Back to the office?
I miss my office space. Not a nasty, dirty, poorly lighted space combed with metal and plastic and filled with the smell of carpet cleaner and drip coffee, nor an airy, dry open space with no particular spot to sit down, untidy long desks, and a cloud of hum from subdued chats and rustling snack wraps. I miss my office designed for technological supremacy in the middle of Silicon Valley and that means comfort.
The line of directors’ cubicles was positioned along the glass wall facing the flower bed. Inside each cubicle corner were two extra-wide screens, a camera, Bose headphones, and an ergonomic keyboard. Teams occupied nearby cubicle spaces, divided by a gangway. A large meeting room was set up for presentations and teleconferencing, with a smart camera focusing on the speaker. Another small meeting room in the opposite corner had similar equipment and could accommodate up to ten people. The kitchen area provided boxes of fresh California fruits, nuts, candies, energy bars, and instant noodles. The coffee machine offered espresso and various types of freshly ground coffee.
Beyond the flower bed, there were blooming shrubs, magnolias, palms, yuccas, and ample parking under the cover of solar panels with a buzzing box on the side. Charging stations were provided for electric vehicles to alleviate driver’s battery anxiety in traffic on the way home.
Unfortunately, I started missing this office on the first week of my official return to the office. A typical day would start at five or six a.m. with the engineering team contracted from the opposite side of the globe. Naturally, it would happen before breakfast by connecting from home. Then the East Coast would light up the calendar with panned and ad hoc communication. After a meeting or two with partners and stakeholders, you may have a meeting with the VP of business development at Central Time and a quick chat with the project manager at Mountain Time. Finally, the System Architect, Director of Bioinformatics, and a few key scientists to whom you talk often are in California and you have the entire afternoon to schedule a meeting if you need to discuss something. Alas, most of the people are in the same time zone, but still hundreds of miles away in different parts of California and some can be as far as Seattle, WA.
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Most group meetings are scheduled before noon to accommodate people in the other time zones. Some may connect from the office, but what’s the point if half of the participants are online-only? Of course, large and important meetings are booked in advance and take place in a meeting room (at least for those who are on-site). For small and routine meetings there are still meeting rooms, but they are contested. Therefore, in the big room, there are always a few online meetings going on right in the cubicles, sometimes between people separated by an arm-length. Together with a few offline chatters, it creates a buzz that your noise-canceling Bose can easily take care of. The side effect of canceling the external noise is natural: people don’t hear their own voices and tend to speak twice as loud as they would normally do in a face-to-face conversation. This is not how you want to discuss sensitive matters concerning cybersecurity, HIPAA-regulated patient data, or intellectual property. Therefore, all those conversations are advised to be conducted in a controlled environment, i.e. from home rather than shared office space.
Finally, way into the afternoon, after all important meetings, timely emails, and quick chats, it’s time to get in the car and drive to work. Traffic on 101 has a phenomenal ability to congeal in both directions anytime throughout the day. After less than an hour you arrive at the office, sweet office. You can shake hands and say goodbye to the last colleagues leaving and pick up one of the last boxes of stale free lunch. ?Enjoy the sunset views through the glass wall and get to do some hands-on coding. Finish the slide deck for the online meeting tomorrow. It’s nice and quiet in the empty building, but you must stand up once in a few minutes to reactivate motion-sensing light control. Good for circulation too. There is no point driving back home before the evening traffic subsides. Wait, why did I drive from my home office, which is currently just as empty? Was it for the free leftover lunch and espresso after 5 pm?
I often hear people regarding the office as a magical place for sacred rituals, talking about returning to office as if it was an absolute virtue bringing the world of business to a better time of proper theology and geometry. Others talk about the office as if it were a prison hulk with a promise of disciplinary action for the failed escape. In reality, the office is nothing but a business facility. Like all other facilities and tools (a computer or a stapler) it has (or should have) a purpose and a cost structure. If you have RTI for equipment and KPI for the personnel you should be able to measure the impact of having an office and manning the stations vs. working from home office. Figure it out and maximize the desired outcomes in profit, valuation, investment, or any other endpoint. A good office, a cheap office, or a home office are only different instruments to achieve your goals, provided you know them and are capable of charting the course. I still miss my luxurious office...
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