I'd really like to see a first-principles approach to building work spaces that don't suck. I think it's important to maximize the workspace for the sorts of tasks that need to be done in person, while having enough space to accommodate non-ideal work that still needs to be done while physically at the office.
From my perspective as an employee in the tech sector, the greatest value adds to working in person are:
- Faster onboarding for new hires + mentorship in general.
- Better meetings for discussing big plans. Stand ups / check-ins aren't what I'm talking about here, more like "let's plan out this feature" or "what is our strategy for entering this new market?".
- Going over bugs / QA / odd testing results when the person who wrote the code != the person who found the problem, and both can meet. While bug-trackers convey info, I've found that getting to just sit down and look over code can make things much quicker.
I don't yearn to go to the office for deep work, or to answer emails, but if I'm going into an office for a "good" reason, then I might as well have space to do those things instead of having to travel elsewhere. I get that it's often a cost problem to make spaces for every employee to do deep work, which is why I'm very pro-don't-do-deep-work-at-the-office-when possible. Just pay your employees enough to afford a space where they can get that deep work done on days where they aren't being pulled into that meeting.
Comments
I'd really like to see a first-principles approach to building work spaces that don't suck. I think it's important to maximize the workspace for the sorts of tasks that need to be done in person, while having enough space to accommodate non-ideal work that still needs to be done while physically at the office.
From my perspective as an employee in the tech sector, the greatest value adds to working in person are:
- Faster onboarding for new hires + mentorship in general.
- Better meetings for discussing big plans. Stand ups / check-ins aren't what I'm talking about here, more like "let's plan out this feature" or "what is our strategy for entering this new market?".
- Going over bugs / QA / odd testing results when the person who wrote the code != the person who found the problem, and both can meet. While bug-trackers convey info, I've found that getting to just sit down and look over code can make things much quicker.
I don't yearn to go to the office for deep work, or to answer emails, but if I'm going into an office for a "good" reason, then I might as well have space to do those things instead of having to travel elsewhere. I get that it's often a cost problem to make spaces for every employee to do deep work, which is why I'm very pro-don't-do-deep-work-at-the-office-when possible. Just pay your employees enough to afford a space where they can get that deep work done on days where they aren't being pulled into that meeting.