4 thoughts on “I’d like to dial it back”

  1. At least he has a view. The majority of his office staff probably doesn’t even have that!

    Worked for years surrounded by gray fabric walls. Now, most of my direct bosses did have windows in their private offices – windows that looked out over the cubicle farm…

    • They do it on purpose, driven by so called efficiency experts to “minimize distractions” and keep folks in their place.

      One upon a time, our unit was displaced from our WWII era building to a brand-new small building meant to last a few years while they refurbed (and quietly removed asbestos, most likely) and as compensation for being uprooted the landlord let us design the layout of our floor. We wanted drywall offices. Policy mandated cubicles even though they cost more.

      We shrugged.
      My boss and I went with a figure 8 layout with hardwall offices on one side for the bosses and nice two person cubicles on the rest of the perimeter for everybody else. Conference room, server room, utilities, secure computing, lunch room, and even a library/meeting room all on the inside. Since the group is old with a lot of corporate knowledge and documentation we used it as an excuse for 80″ partitions with two ayers of flipper box storage and a shared “ironing board” for impromtu meeting. Plenty of elbow room. Everyone had a window and everyone was happy.

      The second floor, by contrast, was designed by “experts”, not staff engineers. They did tbe exact opposite. All the staff was in a big bullpen with low cubicles and other than the management corner offices, the entire perimeter was storage and a conference room. Their crew was not amused when tbey saw out “luxuries”.

      The only glitch in the move was when we plugged in the servers and workstations.
      The building contractor had substituted our reality-based power requirements for standard clerical specs. “Those numbers can’t possibly be right.” Then they had to add an entire new set of wiring along the perimeter tripling the power capacity. Took a week of overtime. On their dime.

      We enjoyed that.

      My boss had a smug grin for weeks as visitors saw our new digs.
      It didn’t hurt that we had all new computing gear and productivity went up by a documented 10x. The central computing guys hated me but the big boss loved showing off to his boss.
      Fun times while it lasted.

      Oh. And being offsite we had more than enkugh parking just outside the entrances.

      • Sounds like a tech employee’s dream, Felix.

        My office in Casa PG is a bit more disorganized. Sometimes it’s a dream. At other times, it’s a nightmare.

        • It was.
          We got away with it for five years.
          Alas, the refurb of the old building was eventually finished, despite all the help from Cheop’s Law.

Comments are closed.