I Miss Working in the Crappiest Places

I think he makes a few very good points, though the title and main story seem geared more towards making people not agree with him.

I couldn't agree more with him on the points that immediately stood out for me.

For him and his co-workers a short commute is one of the top deciders for what makes a great office. And we're talking DEC Alpha times here for the 'bad traffic' he cites. That's a big one for me too. I wouldn't mind going to an office if I can reach it in 5 minutes from the school (which is already a commute on its own). I wouldn't mind an older building if you give me more space than a desk that barely fits one monitor, the laptop and maybe a few inches behind my chair (OK I'm exaggerating a bit but look at WeWork: when two people sit at their desks on opposite sides of a wall, i.e. their chairs are 'facing' each other, there's not enough space to fit another chair through between them). I can do without the creepy crawly infestation he mentions. That'd be a killer.

I don't want to live in a condo tower. I don't want everyone to commute to the same place ("downtown") for work in the morning and back out in the evening. That creates total grid lock chaos. I don't want millions of people crammed into a small area. That breeds a lot of problems on so many levels. If you ask me, the whole "densification" thing going on everywhere is not making things better.

Conveying a sense of "what we're doing matters more than hitting all the HR buzzword bingo boxes" has got to be valuable.

Giving engineers old mill machinery to play with sounds like a great idea to me. Not only is it snacks for the mind, its cheap assuming you can fudge the insurance... Hire an insurance agent and start your own "insurance company," that's usually viable until the first really bad accident.