Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by throwa5678911 1562 days ago
When I worked at GS in London in 2019, they were moving out of three different (and rather nice) buildings into a single (and rather depressing) office. During the time that construction took place the presence in London had grown significantly, resulting in there being too many people for the available space.

So some teams were told that a certain number of people had to work from home several days a week, and everyone in Engineering was hot-desking... so you might not be sat with people you are working with. Couple that with the fact that most people are working mainly with people in other regions (or just on other floors - it's a big building) over Zoom, and it's hard to see much distinction between in-office and remote.
1 comments
foxyv 1562 days ago
I had to hot desk once, the hot desk area was placed in a dark and windowless area next to the break room and was shoulder to shoulder. Also it was about 75 meters from my co-workers. Luckily no-one else bothered using it so I didn't have to sit with someone else 10 cm away from my elbow. But it was still pretty demoralizing.

The constant break room noise was horrible. The smells from people microwaving Erdrich horrors mixed with the scent of fried foods. I was so far from everyone that no-one would bother visiting or even know I was at the office unless I wandered over and said hi. It seems inevitable that hot desks are always placed in the most horrible locations.

Whoever came up with the concept of "Hot-Desking" should be launched on the next solar probe as heat shielding.

link
GauntletWizard 1561 days ago
I've had a great experience with hot desking, where every team in my building at Google had a hot desk at the end of the row. This allowed every team to have one person in from out of town all the time, and when you had more than one, it was likely that one of the other teams within spitting distance had a spare desk. Those desks got like 75% utilization, which was pretty impressive.

Basically anything else? Terrible.

link
boeingUH60 1561 days ago
> Whoever came up with the concept of "Hot-Desking" should be launched on the next solar probe as heat shielding.

Haha, this is the funniest way I’ve seen someone express rage in a really, really long time :)

link