Originally Posted by dlake02

Ah - sorry... Should have explained better. Here (HQ), everyone does have a nasty horrible cube. That appears to be "their" property. In our other offices, we have 80% hot-desking, at a loading of about 60% (in other words, if everyone came into the office, only 60% of hot-desking people would get a desk that day).

Often times here, I'll walk round the floor in the middle of the day where every cube is allocated and not be able to count more than 10 people on a floor of 250.

In London City, the 60% loading is hit somewhere between 0730 and 0800 EVERY day.

Originally Posted by Bluegrass Lass

What industry are you in then? Honestly, I've never heard of such a thing! How can anyone work, if they don't have a desk to work at? I can understand not having an assigned desk (sort of), but to come in to work and not actually have a desk to work at?! So if you were an unlucky one that didn't get a desk, what do you do? Stand all day? Go back home?

Originally Posted by Bluegrass Lass

What industry are you in then? Honestly, I've never heard of such a thing! How can anyone work, if they don't have a desk to work at? I can understand not having an assigned desk (sort of), but to come in to work and not actually have a desk to work at?! So if you were an unlucky one that didn't get a desk, what do you do? Stand all day? Go back home?

Originally Posted by N1cky

The Telecoms company I worked for in the UK had a similar thing. People who were 100% office based had an assigned desk, people working in finance for instance. The engineers and sales staff, who were out of the office for vast amounts of time had hot desks, first come first served.

Originally Posted by dlake02

Well, it is another semi-rant, but there are questions somewhere....

We've been here 18 months so far in Silicon Valley, and whilst the work that I do is interesting, engaging, challenging, etc, there are a number of aspects of what seems to be behaviour peculiar to the Bay Area that is starting to really p**s me off.

Now, I come from 20+ years working in and around The City (London) in what is really a 24/24h environment, and given the stereotypical view of "Americans" as hard-working, go-getters, I was expecting a very similar kind of culture here.

It has been a real shock, and I suspect that I am guilty of doing what all Brits do in thinking that one huge country is the same from coast-to-coast.

So, I'm interested in whether the aspects that really wind me up are winding other people up.

1) Trying to tie ANYONE down to an email, phone call, meeting time is impossible. Emails go unanswered, phone calls are constant voicemail. I started to think that this was just a "my company" thing, but we've noticed it with everything.... And often times the response is curt, bordering on rude - "k" instead of "OK." Top that with the fact that meetings/conf calls get canceled, re-arranged at VERY short notice.

2) Mondays and Fridays the office is empty. And by 5.30 EVERY evening. And not in that early. In our City office, unless you were in by 07.30 the chance of getting a desk was zero.

3) People moan at "Europeans" for taking long holidays, but then disappear for the occasional day/hour/week, or pop-up "working" from a hotel in Hawaii with his family. Is that work or holiday ? How can the two mix ? The only people that seem to work truly hard are the Latinos/Latinas. I've never seen anyone graft quite as much as the guys that tend the HOA land. Back-breaking, manual labour. But everyone moans about them as "immigrants !"

4) Shops may be open 24/7, but they really don't have much "stuff" in them. The expectation seems to be that they are where you go to look, but they you buy on-line. But, here's the rub - delivery is horrendously slow. Next-day delivery just doesn't seem to exist unless you pay a fortune for it. An example - I've just ordered a bag for my wife which is made in the US. In the UK, next-day delivery is free for the same item. In the US, delivery is free, but "order acceptance" can take 48 hours and delivery is 5 days ! There is NO next-day delivery option at all. And that is in a country where fuel is essentially free.

5) Everything just seems so slow. Cars drive slower, people walk slower. Waiting for pedestrians to amble across is painful. There appears to be no sense of urgency in anything. It's all very relaxing at the weekend, but during the week, when you just want to Get On and Get Stuff Done, it's annoying.

- Is this an East Coast/West Coast thing ? Would I find in different in NY, for example ?

- Given the sedentary pace of life here, how come this is a technological hot-bed ?

- Is my judgment being unfairly coloured by my workplace experiences ? That would also include my wife's workplace experiences (different company, still West Coast based).

- How do Brits from a similar background deal with this ?

Originally Posted by dlake02

We've been like it across the EU for about 10 years - here people seem wedded to their fix desk space.

Originally Posted by Michael

The only time I ran into something similar to that was in Japan but that was due to lack of office space in a very crowded city. Two engineers shared a small desk and didn't even have enough room for a desktop computer on the desk so had to go into the lab where there were hundreds of computers lined up against a wall where the engineers did their programming on any available computer.

In the marketing department, there were limited number of desks so everybody had removable cabinets that attached under the desk and they remove them when they went home at night. In the morning, they would grab their cabinet and roll it to the assigned desk. Their phone number is also assigned to that new desk in the morning.

Originally Posted by N1cky

I worked for a company that grew at a vast rate. I worked there for 10 years, I was employee number 98, when I left there were over 5,000 on the workforce. Hot desking worked well for us, as the engineering and sales departments could have desks for 100 people, and only 10 of them being used. It made financial sense to give that space to departments who needed perm desks and everyone else had to make do.

Everybody in the company had laptops, so getting a computer wasn't an issue. And on the rare occassions when the hot desks were all full, you could walk around and find a permanent who was out of the office so sit at that desk with your laptop.

I really don't understand companies who do it for office based employees though, it has to be very disruptive.

Originally Posted by dlake02

1) Trying to tie ANYONE down to an email, phone call, meeting time is impossible.

Originally Posted by dlake02

2) Mondays and Fridays the office is empty. And by 5.30 EVERY evening.

Originally Posted by dlake02

4) Shops may be open 24/7, but they really don't have much "stuff" in them.

Originally Posted by dlake02

5) Everything just seems so slow. Cars drive slower, people walk slower. Waiting for pedestrians to amble across is painful. There appears to be no sense of urgency in anything.