I’ve been working seven days a goddamn week since COVID, and I come in, and—where is everybody else?
I remember when my employer was acquired from another company. Executives were on the 4th floor. After the acquisition they were gone and the 4th floor was open. I went up and found that the offices were palatial, private bathrooms, they had a bar, a lounge area... let alone all the personal assistants to do things for them. They had good parking spaces, lunch brought in for them, and so on.
I had a cube with a wall that they wouldn't fix, no window (I was about half a dozen cubes from a window in the middle of a room), no natural light, my cube was along a busy cube hallway where everyone looked into my cube as they walked down the hall.
So yeah it's different going in as an IC rather than executive, comparing them is hilariously narrow sighted.
Having said that after they left, the 4th floor was the best place to go to the bathroom. So I got that for a little while.
This is fascinating to me, having been at a few companies with market caps north of $50B in the tech space. The senior exec's office space aren't fundamentally different from anyone else's. I wonder if it's an old-money vs. new-money industry thing.
This was an older company. It was one of those "IBM satellite companies" (that's what I called them before they used that term for something else). It did business with a lot of IBM customers providing services and hardware that IBM didn't choose to do so, but did so with their blessing and cooperation.
Expensify's CEO ran an experiment opening up an office to the public with a free open bar and daily champagne saberings and still couldn't get people to show up more than once
I don't think amenities make or break WFH for the average person, the commute and the fact you're not home period probably rank a lot higher
I don’t really care one way or the other if there’s good reason for fancy offices, I am more so noting how being in the office is different depending on your office (if you even have one).
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His call.
I will say this:
I remember when my employer was acquired from another company. Executives were on the 4th floor. After the acquisition they were gone and the 4th floor was open. I went up and found that the offices were palatial, private bathrooms, they had a bar, a lounge area... let alone all the personal assistants to do things for them. They had good parking spaces, lunch brought in for them, and so on.
I had a cube with a wall that they wouldn't fix, no window (I was about half a dozen cubes from a window in the middle of a room), no natural light, my cube was along a busy cube hallway where everyone looked into my cube as they walked down the hall.
So yeah it's different going in as an IC rather than executive, comparing them is hilariously narrow sighted.
Having said that after they left, the 4th floor was the best place to go to the bathroom. So I got that for a little while.
This is fascinating to me, having been at a few companies with market caps north of $50B in the tech space. The senior exec's office space aren't fundamentally different from anyone else's. I wonder if it's an old-money vs. new-money industry thing.
This was an older company. It was one of those "IBM satellite companies" (that's what I called them before they used that term for something else). It did business with a lot of IBM customers providing services and hardware that IBM didn't choose to do so, but did so with their blessing and cooperation.
Very much an old company style.
Expensify's CEO ran an experiment opening up an office to the public with a free open bar and daily champagne saberings and still couldn't get people to show up more than once
I don't think amenities make or break WFH for the average person, the commute and the fact you're not home period probably rank a lot higher
To play devil's advocate here:
- most of that space is for entertaining/selling to other execs
- the execs that work up there aren't actually there most of the year (they travel A LOT, like A LOT A LOT)
- execs, per my understanding, are basically on-call, with a few exceptions
i agree that old-school rank-and-file workspaces are spartan and depressing
I don’t really care one way or the other if there’s good reason for fancy offices, I am more so noting how being in the office is different depending on your office (if you even have one).