SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
When I was hired, my firm had its main office in the suburbs. I felt pretty good about the location and environment and purchased a house nearby. At that time, many employees and managers lived in the area. Since then, the firm has changed hands, and the original office space, as part of an ineffectual cost-saving move, has been reduced in half. Ineffectual because the new lease no longer included utilities. The "savings" were spent opening a new office in the city, and a bunch of young sales hires were made for a small bullpen type office. There are no cubicles in the city, and the few offices are reserved for a handful of lucky first movers. Now they are looking for cost savings again. The firm's plan is to shut down the office in suburbia because "having everyone in the same location inspires the best ideas."
Can someone point to some research (e.g., from HBR [Harvard Business Review] or similar) indicating that R&D teams may be best served by being in distraction-free environments separated from the gossip and hubbub of sales? Or that accommodating workers who want to be away from the city may save on labor expenses and employee turnover?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:15PM
I used to work at this company, called Zuora.
They were owned by mainland Chinese and had a development shop in Shanghai that wrote all the Java.
The Java code they were running spewed a mountain of errors, too much for any human to read.
The developers all had the root password - and there was a VPN directly from Shanghai into the heart of the company in Redwood Shores.
I still remember the root password. "zuora123" - they wouldn't let anyone change it. Seriously.
Of course, everyone was in one giant room. We sat at desks that were side-to-side with other desks and front-to-front with another row of desks just like ours.
I have no idea what the woman next to me did but it involved a lot of phone calls. I wore headphones.
But even headphones could not filter out the ship's bell that the Sales Department rang vigorously every time they made a sale. It was worse than working in a firehouse garage.
How people this stupid could be leaders of the free world is beyond me.