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Comment by stevenhubertron | Hacker News Reader

I don’t hate working in an office. I hate working in an “open plan” office where someone is always interrupting my work.

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Same. Seems not too long before people started really hating offices, offices started being designed to make you hate them. Open offices, no walls, 'island concept' which sounds all fun and tropical until you learn it just means you no longer even have your own desk.

If companies want people back in offices, make them enticing. Have perks! Imagine everyone getting their own room, with a nice desk and maybe small couch and mini fridge. Having a shared personal assistant to take care of some things, work related or not. Heck, even something as small as a free daycare would be a huge motivator.

If you want people back, start treating them like people and not cattle.

I agree with everything you said but how is "free daycare" something small? Daycare costs thousands of dollars and the regulations and licensure are (rightfully) a very high bar. I would see free daycare as a huge perk and I don't even have kids.

You're right, its impact is not small at all. My wife pretty much stayed out of the labor market because day care costs so much.

I guess I was thinking the work involved seemed relatively small compared to redesigning whole offices- just carve out a couple areas and hire some caretakers. But I'm pretty ignorant of the laws, regulations, and needs as you pointed out, so that's probably not small at all either.

You get economies of scale with larger companies. The regulations are usually 1 worker per x kids, if I recall and not much more than that. It's not that strict at all. Of course if you had daycare at your company you could have a large room or a wing with a playroom and all that. It's pennies on the dollar to retain good talent, if you actually want to force people back in the office.

My wishlist is:

1. Kill the panopticon (open offices) 2. Employers should bear the cost of ALL commuting

The panopticon is truly dystopian, and whenever I’m in one, the hair on the back of my neck never lays flat. I feel watched (because I am) and it isn’t pleasant.

Forcing employers to bear the costs of commuting would really up-end things. We’d all be working from home really damned quickly, and I suspect there’d be massive gains for the environment, climate change, etc.

You think removing a massive cost of ownership will reduce America's useage of large SUVs and pickups?

It’ll definitely reduce usage in people’s commutes, which is all I’m really claiming.

But no, that guy with the raised truck, rolling coal? Hell no, he’s gonna die before you take his toy away.

Edit: tbh, I think if corps are footing the bill for commuting, it’ll be mass transit for 95% of us. Your employer won’t buy you a Ford F350 superduty to get to work. Maybe you’re gonna get a Honda Fit. Maybe. More likely a bus pass.

> offices started being designed to make you hate them

Indeed. I didn't mind at all going to the office the first many years of my career, where I always had a private office with a closing door.

But with open offices, I'll do everything I can to never be there.

Free daycare could get me back in an office. That would be a huge financial perk.

its funny, when working at Intel, one of the things people bitched about was the cubicles. (1998)

I hate open offices, but having worked in all formats, open offices are bad for mental health.

When working on MPK West for FB, they built an open office to house 3,000 employees with only 5 offices (with escape hatches) for the c-suite.

Cubicles suck compared to private offices, but they're miles better than open offices.

I used to share an office with another engineer, and one thing that we both preferred was t keep the lights off in our office (we had a window office and the ambient light was beneficial.

Lighting is SUPER important, and when youre in an pen office layout you have no control over your lighting.

For this reason alone, one should hate open office layouts.

If companies want to lure employees back into the office, they should give them offices of their own.

If you were to prefer working in an office, you can find a local office space that meets your tastes.

Or if you like open office, you could go that direction too.

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