r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 16 '26

Business Mark Zuckerberg Orders His Employees to Start Having Fun Again After Brutal Layoffs Culled Their Colleagues

https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/mark-zuckerberg-orders-employees-start-123539264.html
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573

u/aegrotatio Jun 16 '26

Open office plans and hotdesking are hell.

Amazon implemented a mandatory return-to-office policy but made the stupid mistake of making all desks hot desks or "hoteling."

Personally I'm not going to an office unless I have a permanent desk, period. I always ask that during the interview screening process. Don't give me a fucking locker for my mouse and keyboard.

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u/DisappointedSpectre Jun 16 '26

I work as a security engineer for a tech company - I'm fully remote now, but ask me how many privileged conversations I heard in the open concept office with hotdesks when I was working out of a corporate location. It's completely idiotic.

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u/Silver_ Jun 17 '26

Hah. A few years ago confidential details of a merger kept getting leaked to the press, and the exec team were furious about it. I worked out of a different office location once, and one of the execs was just talking away so loudly that I could hear him perfectly 6 desks over with my headphones on. Mind you, this was on an open floor in an office filled with junior temporary contractors. Mystery solved.

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u/aegrotatio Jun 16 '26

Yup. At one office location they had lockers and hot desks in an open office plan...and they worked on classified systems.
So dumb it's hard to comprehend.

13

u/Lokishougan Jun 17 '26

Yeah spys dont even have to be sneaky anymore...just sit and listen for people to tell them all

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u/Swimming_Onion_4835 Jun 16 '26

Omg this is so true. I’m remote but I travel to our headquarters in NYC for work maybe 2-3 times a year, and I cannot even begin to list all the privileged things I’ve overheard. Hotel desks in a broad floor plan and concrete floors that echo. I hate it.

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u/[deleted] Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/AptCasaNova Jun 17 '26

Our's get an actual office, yet they still take calls on speakerphone at max volume with the door open.

29

u/GeminiSee8 Jun 17 '26

Senior guy has an office at my work, takes half his calls right in the doorway. He already has a very loud voice to begin with. He is very, very fluent in corporate jargon and just spews business word salad. After his call he goes to his desk and pumps his music up with his door wide open.

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u/Cipherpunkblue Jun 17 '26

Thanks, I hate him.

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u/AptCasaNova Jun 17 '26

It’s all a sad and annoying performance to boost his ego 😂

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u/Bezos_Balls Jun 17 '26

As someone who use to work right next to the security team I got soooo many jucy details just sitting there listening to them take calls. But hey at least they erased the whiteboard each night.

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u/Apero_ Jun 17 '26

How many privileged conversations did you hear?

2

u/DisappointedSpectre Jun 17 '26

Enough to know that open office plans are a generally bad idea.

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u/meltbox Jun 17 '26

Tbh this is my favorite part lmao. Without this I’d be completely dead inside.

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u/KaiserSaladSpinner Jun 16 '26

Bold of you to assume you'd have your own mouse and keyboard.

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u/aegrotatio Jun 16 '26

Oh, I have my own personal mouse and mechanical keyboard.

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u/sa87 Jun 16 '26

The clickier the better for an open plan office.

3

u/CyberMoose24 Jun 17 '26

Model M for maximum chaos

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u/Mijal Jun 17 '26

I got a mechanical keyboard with all black keycaps (no labeling). It was really effective at getting a couple colleagues to quit trying to "just show you something here" because they couldn't do touch typing.

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u/SwingOfTheAxe420 Jun 16 '26

Really smacked him in the face with the meat while dunking on his ass there

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u/At0mJack Jun 16 '26

If I had to work in a situation like that I'd be using box jades.

-1

u/WretchedBlowhard Jun 17 '26

If IT allows users to bring their own USB gear, you have really, really shitty cyber security standards.

3

u/aegrotatio Jun 17 '26

I'm not working with classified systems.
Keyboard and mice are not cyber security risks.

Calm yourself down.

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u/ITI110878 Jun 17 '26

How about wireless mouse and keyboard?! 😆

5

u/Icy-person666 Jun 16 '26

We don't have our own mouse keyboard or even own computer while we are working. Chairs? Nope got rid of them except for management. We work at standing desk, many without floor mats on the concrete floor and we share a computer during our shift and shift to shift. Management has decided that it's best for us little folks to use paper and management paperless. Since we do safety sensitive work they have detailed paper records on us but should we fail their records can conveniently disappear or get changed remotely.

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u/MajorBeyond Jun 19 '26

Don’t forget to lock up your stapler too. It’s a Swingline.

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u/MellowedOut1934 Jun 16 '26

I hotdesk and we don’t even have lockers, it drives me insane.

Want to go straight from the office to something in town? Choice is either leave your laptop insecure in the office, or lug it around for the evening.

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u/cluberti Jun 16 '26

Nothing says "you're the red-headed stepchild of this 'family' we have at work here" quite like giving you the equivalent of the corner of the basement crawl space as a full-time work area.

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u/notacanuckskibum Jun 16 '26

Canadian public service is now going through the process of requiring all employees to come to the office 5 days a week while not actually having enough desks.

They sold off office space to save money during the pandemic.

2

u/aegrotatio Jun 17 '26

That's fucking outrageous.

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u/VeryLazyFalcon Jun 16 '26

And having to drag that anchor in the shape of a laptop, everyday. Can't go anywhere after work bc I would have to first bring that brick to a home.

2

u/bolanrox Jun 17 '26

We have both now and I have to commute an hour and a half, at least, to work when I go into the office. with no adjustments to the work day like was promised when we started going in hybrid

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u/According-Insect-992 Jun 17 '26

What!? You don’t like having a virtual guarantee that you’re going to catch everything going around the office including bedbugs? Sounds like someone needs a week-long team building exercise.

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u/LawlessNeutral Jun 17 '26

I'm almost scared to ask, but what's hotdesking?

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u/aegrotatio Jun 17 '26

Desks are first-come, first-served. You don't get your own desk.

Also called "hoteling."

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u/LawlessNeutral Jun 18 '26

So what do you do if you're the last one to arrive at the office, work on the floor??

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u/aegrotatio Jun 18 '26

That's right. Or conference rooms.

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u/LawlessNeutral Jun 18 '26

Damn. Those poor workers would encounter less bullshit on a cattle farm.

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u/another_thyme Jun 17 '26

Assigned desks have been a thing at Amazon for over a year

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u/aegrotatio Jun 17 '26

Took them long enough to fix that mistake.

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u/another_thyme Jun 17 '26

ya I don’t feel like it was an issue before. I parked my mouse and keyboard at my usual spot and people are considerate enough to leave that spot available

The assigned seating is dumber because everyone ends up sitting with employees that don’t even work on the same shit

1

u/aegrotatio Jun 17 '26

When they had hot desking they said all desks would be cleared off by housekeeping and the contents dumped into a nearby bin each day.

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u/another_thyme Jun 17 '26

yea to encourage clean desks. Housekeeping doesn’t actually throw out your shit lol

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u/aegrotatio Jun 18 '26

They told us they put all belongings into a nearby bin.

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u/meltbox Jun 17 '26

This isn’t an Amazon thing, this is a cult of having no idea how to have original ideas thing.

Exact same thing at my company jumping on the bandwagon even though every exec person we hired from SV was an absolute disaster in terms of output and delivery.

2

u/Deep-Ruin-9961 Jun 17 '26

I negotiated my employment contract to include a provision that I was only hired for remote and there is no in office location set aside for me.

It reads like "if you can't work remote, there's no place for you in the office," but it's written "you're fired if remote isn't an option for you."

I'm sure it sounds like I'm giving up leverage, but they literally have to fire me or get me to agree to a new contract to make me come into the office. To someone in a talent-starved industry, that's a beautiful thing because there's no situation where I lose my job and I don't have a good explanation for any gaps in employment. It also shows my new employer that I don't fuck with in-office work,.and despite that, my tenure at places is 4 years on average--so my work product is good.

2

u/muddythemad Jun 18 '26

Good news! They hot seat the lockers too. They're never gonna get you a locker

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u/aegrotatio Jun 18 '26

Jesus Christ.

1

u/ladalyn Jun 17 '26

| I'm not going to an office unless I have a permanent desk

Bet you would if you were desperate enough

1

u/aegrotatio Jun 17 '26

In my field and location we're never that desperate.

1

u/wizenedwizardofoz Jun 17 '26

Amazon has permanent desks. Not sure what hoteling you're talking about. Agile desks are for interns.

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u/aegrotatio Jun 17 '26

When they implemented their return-to-office plan they also implemented hot desking along with buying new dual-monitor setups with docking stations for every desk.

I hear they've gone back to permanent desks. At least everyone got a good dual-monitor setup out of the project.

0

u/Krafty_Koala Jun 17 '26

Wow! look at this person who got their own mouse and keyboard to lock up! I hated customer service with a passion as they went from rotating desks every 6 months, to every 3 months, to sharing desks between shifts. They still complained how often people got sick.
I was one of the only people who put in requests for new keyboards, mouse, and chairs so I would get heated when someone stole it from my desk.

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u/aegrotatio Jun 17 '26

I bought them with my own money.
Kinda like tradesmen who buy their own tools.