I have no idea how this worked out, I only ever went to the office twice while I was still there, because I could guarantee my own home was secure but not a fucking “neighborhood”.
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There's the rub. People pushing for voice controlled computing probably only work from home, in hotel rooms or in the corner office
aug 29, 2025, 11:24 am • 1 0 • view
I feel like we can safely assume "poorly"
aug 29, 2025, 5:32 am • 8 0 • view
As most businesses fads do, not that the failure ever teaches any lessons.
aug 29, 2025, 5:36 am • 3 0 • view
I'm not sure we can call open offices a "fad" after nearly a century of bullpens and open plan offices existing
aug 29, 2025, 5:39 am • 4 0 • view
Oh, it’s a fad - a serial one that companies try every so often because nobody seems to remember that it almost never works out. They do it because they see a “successful startup” do it without realizing that it’s not what made the success. It’s basically business cargo culture.
aug 29, 2025, 5:54 am • 4 0 • view
I'm not sure we can call it a fad when it dominates most industries and is the terminal Entry Level Workspace solution for new hires and juniors, though. It doesn't go away.
aug 29, 2025, 5:56 am • 6 0 • view
When I say “serial fad,” I mean that it’s something that gets tried because an executive heard (or experienced) how it helped some other company but then fails and gets rolled back until the next executive tries it. This is opposed to something like stack ranking, which is just endemic bad practice.
aug 29, 2025, 6:04 am • 3 1 • view
It’s sort of like how the size of QA orgs are inversely correlated with the business cycle. A common serial fad is downsizing QA to “minimize costs,” which lasts until quality issues force an executive or board member out, and then build QA back up again and start the cycle anew.
aug 29, 2025, 6:04 am • 0 0 • view
I’ve never heard of it being rolled back though. That sounds nice
aug 29, 2025, 7:59 am • 1 0 • view
Oh, most places I’ve been, it gets rolled back at least partially. The most I’ve ever seen kept (except in call centers) is sort of a hybrid “partitioned by teams” concept where mid-level managers and above have offices. That’s as good as an admission that the concept usually doesn’t work.
aug 29, 2025, 1:27 pm • 1 0 • view
Probably installed a bunch of meeting rooms and phone booths and they were at ~100% occupancy all the time, making impromptu confidentiality impossible, etc.
aug 29, 2025, 5:41 am • 12 1 • view
We made a conference table out of counterfeit merch using my team’s share of the “office morale” budget and HR sat at that table when they fired my team. Or so I’m told. I didn’t get the courtesy of a call on the day they got rid of me. I found out when there was a meeting at 1pm I couldn’t access.
aug 29, 2025, 5:54 am • 24 0 • view
Well that was classy. Jesus
aug 29, 2025, 5:57 am • 8 0 • view
If ever anyone wonders why I seem angry at Bungie and/or Pete Parsons, there’s a big part of why.
aug 29, 2025, 6:03 am • 21 0 • view
If it’s not clear from context: the meeting was to tell people “hey, we did layoffs, a bunch of your colleagues are gone, please feel sorry for us”. Yes, it’s hard to be the person who ends someone’s job. I’ve had to do it in performance-based terms. It sucks. Sucks worse for the other guy though.
aug 29, 2025, 7:26 am • 13 0 • view
The expression of sympathy for this being hard would ordinarily go from me to the HR person who did the term. The HR person should NEVER ask for sympathy from the termed person’s ex-colleagues. That goes 100x for the CEO.
aug 29, 2025, 7:42 am • 15 0 • view
Fortunately he was able to console himself by buying a car that afternoon.
aug 29, 2025, 8:05 am • 13 0 • view
It makes me happy that so many threads can be wrapped back around to "hey you know how game companies are run by people who have no idea what they're doing? Fuck those guys". More people should talk about that.
aug 29, 2025, 11:42 am • 5 0 • view
Buying pointless cars, being a bad business person and not actually communicating with people.What a classy guy.
aug 29, 2025, 2:14 pm • 1 0 • view