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Comment by lj3 | Hacker News Reader

What if they gave everybody a desk with wheels? Then you can wheel your desk with your tools wherever you want to work that day.

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I have trouble coding while people are looking at me. It is distracting and prevents me from getting in the zone. Unless I can wheel my desk into a private office it still sounds terrible.

You must work remotely.

The Valve approach eh?

Page 6: http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...

This is what Valve does

http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...

So in addition to hearing people chatter all day I have to hear them rolling desks around?

You'll also need movers on staff or on call for employees who can't move their own desks.

It's a cute idea, but making it OSHA-compliant sounds expensive.

Would it really not work to just be able to ask a coworker to help with your desk if you needed that? It seems like even having a small group of volunteers be on-call for such a thing wouldn't be much of a hassle, assuming the right pieces were in place (everything plugs in through 1 power plug, desk and chair only (mount storage to desk etc))

So now you are advocating increasing the social burden for any employee who has an (possibly unknown to you or coworkers) reason for not being able to move their desk.

This is something that it is worth being a little careful about,

My previous company (https://smarkets.com/about/careers/) had desks on wheels. It was cool but moderately pointless after we moved into team offices. Still - the brownian motion of desks as we formed pairs was quite interesting. (And occasionally seeing someone switch rooms attempting to control both a giant desk & a chair was hilarious)

I kind of miss the liberation of being able to just flip my desk 180 and stare out of the window when I needed to work on something though.

More realistic is a small (30cm square) table with drawers, which I think most people could move themselves.

Something like this. Sturdy, office-looking versions were common in my school:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0119UDUSI

This is getting fucking ridiculous, and may as well just tell folks they can work from wherever at that point.

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