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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

Google floor plans were ridiculously dense. I don’t have hard numbers on my fingertips but I recall that the sf business press systematically underestimated the number of employees in San Francisco based on industry average floor space per employee that was far too high. They constantly moved us from one floor to another always with smaller desks.

As for question B, Moffett Place alone was 1.9 million square feet, so shedding 1.4 million square feet is not that big of a deal. It’s about what the press reported them acquiring in 2019.

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I was in what amazon called double high density once. one guy had to duck under anoterh guys desk to get to his. so basically against fire code. the better way i've seen it there was where you will not quite bump into the person behind you if you push back. I was only in that once. usually I had an extra foot. I'm in low density right now it's good. Amazon never gave us smaller desks, they were always door desks. That would have gotten us more dense tho.

that's got nothing on what my animation co-workers dealt with in movies where they were just far enough not to bump elbows on the perimiter of a sound stage / mocap area. Worse they had a 2nd row of other coders above you on grating. They didn't let women on the upper deck due to look ups.

An entire door? Luxury!

I honestly can not tell if this is real or if everyone in this thread is laying too thick...

I never had a desk at google that was anywhere near as big as half a door.

Don't you have fire departments in USA?

In Italy they can be called, or just randomly do an inspection and they can just say "this entire building is closed until you adhere to regulations".

I work in sweden now and this doesn't seem to be a thing either. Lots of things that in italy would get you shut down happen here. For example doors requiring 2 hands to be opened from the inside. In Italy they have to be hands free doors.

they do, thats why I said fire code.

Here they show up, say fix this shit. and come back and check a week or 2 later.

They came by and we moved around the same time.... the inspections are generally scheduled.

It was only that crazy for about 3 weeks. longer and they would have probbably had a different fix.

> the inspections are generally scheduled.

Found your problem right there.

It's usually short notice from what I know but yes... but also you gotta have the person with the keys around to let people in. They still find tons of stuff. They also freak out about dumb stuff like a sheet of paper taped to the window.

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