<story><title>Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/dropbox-letting-all-employees-work-from-home-permanently-2020-10</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>derefr</author><text>&amp;gt; collaborative work in &amp;quot;studios&amp;quot;, basically reimagining the offices into collaborative&amp;#x2F;convening spaces that you go into from ~once&amp;#x2F;week to once a quarter depending on team&amp;#x2F;role.&lt;p&gt;I’m forgetting their name for them, but IBM has been doing this for decades now. They buy up office space in every major city, and then, rather than permanently stationing any teams there, essentially make all such spaces into private-access coworking spaces.&lt;p&gt;In these IBM offices, there’s cubicles, hot desks, and meeting rooms, all set up with runs of Intranet-accessible Ethernet + wi-fi + softphones; and you can either just drop in to work, or freely reserve any amount of these from the office’s concierge for days&amp;#x2F;weeks&amp;#x2F;months at a time — for yourself, or for your entire team, if you’ve brought your whole team with you to another city&amp;#x2F;country to do a high-touch customer deployment or something.&lt;p&gt;At least in the office I went to (Burnaby BC), it was almost entirely empty most of the time. So there was plenty of spare “capacity” in this network for any random need a team or individual might have.&lt;p&gt;It’s a very nice model. Slap an API on it and you could call it “elastic office-space IaaS.” :)</text></item><item><author>dhouston</author><text>To be clear (if you only read the headline :)), not entirely remote. Solo work at home, collaborative work in &amp;quot;studios&amp;quot;, basically reimagining the offices into collaborative&amp;#x2F;convening spaces that you go into from ~once&amp;#x2F;week to once a quarter depending on team&amp;#x2F;role.&lt;p&gt;Remote-only cuts out the in-person experience entirely, which is problematic for building teams and culture; and ad hoc &amp;quot;WFH whenever you feel like it&amp;quot; gets a sort of worst-of-both-worlds situation where you neither get the same kind of flexibility nor the sense of community you typically get from an office (since a large percentage of the team isn&amp;#x27;t there on any given day, and folks that come in the office less tend to be at a disadvantage in terms of visibility &amp;amp; recognition).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>koboll</author><text>&amp;gt;They buy up office space in every major city, and then, rather than permanently stationing any teams there, essentially make all such spaces into private-access coworking spaces.&lt;p&gt;Well, this makes sense, since IBM is effectively a consulting firm now. This is how all consulting firms operate -- there are tons of these all over the place in DC.</text></comment>
<story><title>Dropbox Converts to Permanent WFH</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/dropbox-letting-all-employees-work-from-home-permanently-2020-10</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>derefr</author><text>&amp;gt; collaborative work in &amp;quot;studios&amp;quot;, basically reimagining the offices into collaborative&amp;#x2F;convening spaces that you go into from ~once&amp;#x2F;week to once a quarter depending on team&amp;#x2F;role.&lt;p&gt;I’m forgetting their name for them, but IBM has been doing this for decades now. They buy up office space in every major city, and then, rather than permanently stationing any teams there, essentially make all such spaces into private-access coworking spaces.&lt;p&gt;In these IBM offices, there’s cubicles, hot desks, and meeting rooms, all set up with runs of Intranet-accessible Ethernet + wi-fi + softphones; and you can either just drop in to work, or freely reserve any amount of these from the office’s concierge for days&amp;#x2F;weeks&amp;#x2F;months at a time — for yourself, or for your entire team, if you’ve brought your whole team with you to another city&amp;#x2F;country to do a high-touch customer deployment or something.&lt;p&gt;At least in the office I went to (Burnaby BC), it was almost entirely empty most of the time. So there was plenty of spare “capacity” in this network for any random need a team or individual might have.&lt;p&gt;It’s a very nice model. Slap an API on it and you could call it “elastic office-space IaaS.” :)</text></item><item><author>dhouston</author><text>To be clear (if you only read the headline :)), not entirely remote. Solo work at home, collaborative work in &amp;quot;studios&amp;quot;, basically reimagining the offices into collaborative&amp;#x2F;convening spaces that you go into from ~once&amp;#x2F;week to once a quarter depending on team&amp;#x2F;role.&lt;p&gt;Remote-only cuts out the in-person experience entirely, which is problematic for building teams and culture; and ad hoc &amp;quot;WFH whenever you feel like it&amp;quot; gets a sort of worst-of-both-worlds situation where you neither get the same kind of flexibility nor the sense of community you typically get from an office (since a large percentage of the team isn&amp;#x27;t there on any given day, and folks that come in the office less tend to be at a disadvantage in terms of visibility &amp;amp; recognition).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ViViDboarder</author><text>IBM calls it hotelling. You can book a desk and check in at any office.</text></comment>