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Sun Discovers Dumb Terminals
Yahoo has a story about how Sun is practicing a sort of floating workforce - many employees have no permanent desks, they just come in and log on to a dumb terminal, err, thin client. Besides being a sneaky way to encourage employees to arrive ever earlier at work, it probably is cheaper to run the business off a few large Sun servers - at least for Sun.
They tried this a while back - get to work, go to a window, get your laptop and cell phone, head off to work in your 'office', the caf, outside, etc. They ditched it after finding it was hell to find anyone to have a meeting, which is still necessary no matter how much cyber you want to throw at a situation. One manager had a two-around rule - if he had to walk around the campus twice to find someone he needed, screw them - go on to something workable.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
they called it musical chairs
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
Scene: A staff meeting is in progress...
PHB With Diagram: We're taking away your cubicles. In the new system you'll sign up for whatever cube is open that day.
PHB: It's based on the model of public restrooms. But I call it "hotelling" because it increases my chances of getting tips.
PHB: Each cubicle will have a computer, a chair, and a roll of note paper ... take on and pass it around. [Hands out notepaper roll which looks like toilet paper roll.]
...but it pisses everyone off because I'm the only one doing it so I leave my crap everywhere.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
"'You come in early, you get a good a parking space, you get a good office.' Chief Executive Scott McNealy has summed up the iWork program. "
How early do I have to come in to get Scott's office?
I think this is the new way that companies will do their layoffs.
Take away 50 cubicles each day, and if there's no cubicle left for you when you get to work, well, you know what that means...
So let me get this straight...
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
The network may be the computer, but the network is not the stuff on my whiteboard, the pictures of my wife and son, my post-its, diagrams of various things tacked to my cube walls, and all the other little stuff that makes me bother to come in at all rather than work from home (where at least I have a door and a window).
I worked without a desk for a year on one job. I was a contractor and the building was full, so I sat at desks of people on vacation. Let me tell you, not having your own space sucks, blows and regurgitates.
If they tried to institute this where I work now, that printer that magically becomes my default because it's close to whatever cube the guy with the orange flashlights directs me to would be busy printing out copies of my resume.