All company meeting to discuss plans to move office, and they want to change all of the devs to hot-desking?!

Would be interested in your guys experiences if any of you have done it, but I feel I'd be affected a lot as I only work 3-4 days a week.

I literally stood up and left the meeting, saying I'd quit if they did it. I'm far more comfortable and productive with my setup and space. Knowing my co-workers they might think I'm saying it for drama but I think I actually would leave, despite everything else being fine (except HR!).

Now obviously you *have* to leave if they implement it or you are the office bitch.

If I came in and there were no seats, I'd find an empty lap to sit in. That way I'm making new friends and get to try pair programming.

But, on reflection, there's no way I'd work for a company that had hot-desking. Tells me I'm less important than floor space. Fuck that.

Management and HR should try out the concept first, but those fuckers need "private space" for "confidential personnel meetings".

@Franboo Yeah we have laptops with external monitors/keyboards etc. at the moment, but they're always ours and so some of us have slightly different hardware/software depending on our main role.

They're talking about just having generic machines now, which I can kinda understand from a company view but would be annoying as hell for me.

It's also that my physical workspace is setup how I need it too, and I know I can just come back to it and it'll be there. I think it's going to affect me even more as I only do 3-4 days a week.

@platypus I'm pro sitting on laps, but against pair programming!

@nate To be honest, so am I. But, I feel that if I didn't at least *pretend* to pair program, it would be awkward.

@Franboo I guess it's difficult to say until it's implemented and how many desks there are, but they have said they expect desks to be cleared of personal belongings. Perhaps everyone can decide to ignore it, but I think management want to appear "modern" in a new office.

Good luck making the management change their strategic decision because of a complaining developer....

Keep us updated.

@matste Oh, I don't have that expectation at all.

Yeah, "modern". Like the crap that is "modern art" or "modern architecture".

You know what, "modern" in this sense means that all the good ideas have been tried out, and then they try also the shitty ideas.

I worked in a hot-desking office. They made exceptions for people all the time, especially us devs as we had desktop machines.

It created so many headaches though, as you could never find the colleague you were looking for.

There were kiosks dedicated to finding people in the building.

@Brolls Being difficult to find is a positive that I hadn't though of!

Hotdesking when you all have the same equipment is not to bad, as its more a plug in to docking station and good to go...

However what I hate most at my current situation is the open work space, give me a private office of heck, even à cubicle, and you'll see my productivity increase by a shitton!

I need my focus! And that is so easily lost in an open workfloor

where I work there are only desks with monitors. Everybody got a either a dell laptop or a macbook 13". And we use Google Gsuite.

I like it because it means it isn't a necessity to be in the office. Doing video conferencing in underwear in a rundown hostel in Milan and dining real italian pizza while getting paid is awesome. 😎

I've moved desks 3 times in 3 years and I hated each move. I've got a windows desktop with one monitor, and imac with an additional monitor and occasionally a laptop. Plus my desk toys so moving and setting up in a new spot is terrible for me.

@Lasagna Who really knows! My guess it's some attempt to be "modern" moving into a new building. It cooould be logistical (space) but I doubt it.

We started with hot-desking a couple of months ago. All seats have the same chair, and there's a monitor and docking station.
(Almost - see below) all have personal laptops.
Front-End developers and Art Directors (who use Macs - and need specific monitors) have fixed seats.

The company has four sections, and each section has their own area. But you are actually free to take a seat anywhere.
We also have three project group areas, with 6 seats each, where members in a client team - but from different sections - can sit together and work.

It actually works great!

The reasoning behind it was simple - about 15% of our staff (not the same 15% from week to week) are working on-site as consultants - so we would have a lot of empty seats if all would have their own seat.

@nate honestly it was so bad. People got to memorising each other’s employee number because it made looking for people at the kiosk easier.