Inside Amazon's Mini Rainforest Work Space Spheres (cnbc.com)

Amazon's indoor rainforest-like office space opened today after being in development for seven years. CNBC reports of what can be found inside the Spheres: The Spheres' three glass domes house some 40,000 plants of 400 species. Amazon, famous for its demanding work culture, hopes the Spheres' lush environs will let employees reflect and have chance encounters, spawning new products or plans. The space is more like a greenhouse than a typical office. Instead of enclosed conference rooms or desks, there are walkways and unconventional meeting spaces with chairs. Amazon has invested $3.7 billion on buildings and infrastructure in Seattle from 2010 to summer 2017, a figure that has public officials competing for its "HQ2" salivating. Amazon has said it expects to invest more than $5 billion in construction of HQ2 and to create as many as 50,000 jobs. The Spheres, designed by architecture firm NBBJ, will become part of Amazon's guided campus tours. Members of the public can also visit an exhibit at the Spheres by appointment starting Tuesday.

Comments

working in the Amazon jungle

[Anonymous Coward]

it's literal now.

Huh

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine how much more productive and happy their workers would be if they'd invested $3.7 billion in the salaries of workers in Seattle.

Re:Huh

[bobbied]

Just imagine how much more productive and happy their workers would be if they'd invested $3.7 billion in the salaries of workers in Seattle.

Or, just dumped Seattle and went to the Midwest with that $3.7 Billion where labor is cheaper and the standard of living easier to maintain.

So I've got to ask, when you say "invest" in salaries of workers you mean give them raises right? The problem with handing out $3.7 Billion all in one year is that you have just increased your baseline costs unless you just hand out a one time bonus. One time bonuses are only have a short term benefit on employee's good feelings towards the company. Give them a few months and the benefit is all gone.

So Amazon spent $3.7 Billion on a hopefully better facility to improve the working environment. It might be that this has a longer term effect on how the employees feel about work and it might be just as effective as handing out cash.

Re:Huh

[Dorianny]

You can get cheap unskilled labor in the Midwest. The educated, experienced labor force you need to run a multi-national is hard to find there. The lower taxes and cheaper living in those states come with the trade-off of lower spending on education, infrastructure and cultural institutions all of which are very important to the highly sought out employees companies like Amazon need. Most companies that look into moving into cheaper states end up scraping their plans once they figure out that most of their core employees are unwilling to move to the proposed locations even with generous incentives

Re:Huh

[bobbied]

The Midwest is just fly over country to you I guess... Have you even been here? Of course not.

What breathtaking ignorance you have...This is why we make jokes about the idiot liberals on the coasts who think they are better than everybody else, only we do so in private and with obvious sarcasm and just don't blurt out such nonsense as facts. I was raised in the mid west and have spent time on both coasts. There are smart and stupid people every place I've ever lived, in roughly the same mix. I do find arrogance in abundance on the coasts though.

Shall I give you a list of the companies who are moving to my Midwest state or the ones who abandoned the likes of California for humble Texas? Naw... You wouldn't believe stupid little me because you don't think intelligent people live in the Midwest.

Re:Huh

[Locke2005]

The college towns in Texas like Austin might be an exception -- and Austin is where I predict Amazon's HQ2 is going. Austin is Portland's sister city; they have the same motto, "Keep Portland Weird" and "Keep Austin Weird". I think the assumption is that if you locate where the cost of business is the lowest, the talent will relocate there to work for you -- and be unable to find any competing jobs (See Grass Valley Group for their employee retention strategy; they initially located literally in the middle of a cow pasture in the mountains east of Sacramento. Nope, you couldn't commute to any other tech jobs from there, they were the only player in town!)

Re:Huh

[sexconker]

Surely, THIS will be the bubble that lasts!

-Dorianny, Expert Slashdotter

Re:Huh

[bobbied]

LOL... https://www.thehtgroup.com/ht-...

Read it and weep my coastal friend.. BTW this article is not discussing everything. Amazon is looking at the Dallas area for it's second regional headquarters and there are a pile of companies who may not be moving their head quarters to north texas, but are sure expanding their operations here. I got to ask, why do you think all this is going on here? Yea, we are all just poor stupid folks with southern drawls and cowboy boots...

Feel free to stay where you are though.. With an attitude like yours, you won't fit in all that well here and we have a tendency to shoot folk we don't like.

Re:Huh

[demonlapin]

Eh, it's not like more money always produces better education results - if it did, DC would be the top district in the country. Private school in Atlanta or Dallas has the advantage of only being required while the kid is a student - your high property taxes in the better NYC suburbs are there forever. If you have a large family, you're definitely better off in metro NYC, but if you have two kids? Probably a wash. And both Atlanta and Dallas have big airports with cheap fares. It's more fun to grow up on the Upper East Side, of course, if you have the money for that, but when you're comparing Morristown and Plano... the advantages start to look a lot more sparse.

Re:Huh

[luis_a_espinal]

Most end up moving there anyway. Look at how many companies have huge presence in Georgia, Florida and Texas...not exactly states known for their spending on education.

Back in the 90s, when companies needed a much bigger semi-skilled white collar labor force, they'd move their back-office functions to places like Atlanta or Dallas. Taxes are cheap, and land/houses are cheap if you're willing to drive a lot. And the executives are happy wherever they end up. They can build whatever housing they want, and certainly don't use the public school system to educate their kids. I was asked to move to Florida for a relocation once, and even the real estate agent trying to sell me a house said I'd have to put my kids in private school if I wanted a New York-equivalent education. Later on, people I kept in touch with who did make the move confirmed this was true. It's the trade off for cheap houses and low taxes -- long car commutes and expensive private school tuition.

Georgia, Texas and Florida are very diverse states where you can't compare their metropolitan areas with their towns in the middle of nowhere. They are countries in their own right.

I suggest you read "The New Geography of Jobs" by Enrico Moretti. It will disabuse you and anyone else of the notion that companies that rely on knowledge workers can, should and/or will relocate from where they are. The notions is pretty freaking bollocks.

One Upmanship

[Thelasko]

This kind of crap is going on everywhere. Here in the Midwest, companies are changing their offices because, "It's the trend on the west coast."

My company bought new office furniture five years ago because "the trend" was to move to smaller desks. Some of the furniture in the collaborative work spaces now has a thick layer of dust because it's gone unused.

Now we're getting a new office layout this year. No more assigned desk! Sit where ever you want. How is that supposed to work?

No desks available? Sit down on the loveseat. (Seriously, this is an office. Not a dorm!) If you don't like the loveseat, there will be an area with different levels, like bleachers, or that episode from Seinfeld.

I just want a comfortable chair to sit on, a place to put my stuff, HVAC, a fridge, a microwave, and a restroom. Half the time that stuff doesn't work.

Re:One Upmanship

[networkBoy]

money was the primary reason, but the open plan office is the runner up as to why I'm leaving my current job.

Re:One Upmanship

[Locke2005]

In my experience, a lot of companies mistake "motion" for "progress". Apparently they have a perverse incentive to keep changing things despite a lack of evidence indicating that the change is worth the cost. In general, any "improvement" makes operation less efficient in the short term. If you constantly keep after people enough to use the new system, in theory the productivity climbs back above the point it was at before you changed things. But human nature being what it is, humans are inherently resistant to change and there are enumerable ways for people to sabotage new systems and make sure they don't work.

Top of Dotcom Bubble 2.0

[ErichTheRed]

When companies start showing off fancy real estate, or initiating a Hunger Games style race to the bottom for cities to be their next headquarters, it's a good sign the next bubble is coming to an end. Sun moved to a fancy new campus and were shortly bought by Oracle. There was an article a few momths ago about how Microsoft is building tree houses for their employees to work in. This is the second tech bubble I've lived through and the end always seems to be a new trend in office design.

I guess I'm old school. but I really don't like collaborative brightly colored preschool workspaces. I want a comfortable private workspace with decent temperature control and access to decent coffee/snacks. Even when I was younger I couldn't understand why people would voluntarily work crazy hours if an employer gave them a "fun" office environment.

The problem with the current office trend is that it's not easily undo-able. You can't easily go back from people crammed around cafeteria tables to even semi-private spaces without showing that it has a direct effect on productivity.

Re:Top of Dotcom Bubble 2.0

[John.Banister]

So, you're saying "... and the end always seems to be ... " when you've got a previous experience of one instance and a claim that this is the second?

unconventional meeting spaces with chairs

[Deadstick]

WTF?

A pretty place

[MrKaos]

To be a slave.