American Block Redevelopment | 3 fl | U/C

[cherrypark]

Well, its a nice looking Tim's at least. Appreciate the night accent lighting they added; gives the building a bit of after hours life it didn't have before.

[ac3r]

Yeah the lights look good. One thing downtown Kitchener lacks is good lighting.

[Spokes]

Yes, the main floor is certainly brighter

[GtwoK]

Apparently vidyard has taken over some of the upper space in this building as a "collaboration space". Seems basically like a drop-in office

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vidyard_v...32928-n430

[Spokes]

Has vidyard gone mostly remote?

[Rainrider22]

Apparently vidyard has taken over some of the upper space in this building as a "collaboration space". Seems basically like a drop-in office

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vidyard_v...32928-n430

WOW,  absolutely beautiful !!  They did a great job.  I am very pleased to see what they did inside.  Thank you for sharing.

[westwardloo]

Awesome space! I wish I worked for one of these tech companies. This is the future of workspace in my opinion. Very flexible, allows teams to come in to work on a specific day to collaborate and brainstorm ideas. Provides a space to meet clients face to face. Gives the option to the employees to come in to get away from the home office from time to time, or for those younger employees that might be living in a studio apartment can use this as a permanent work space. I do think there might be a bit too much "open office", I know a lot of companies shifting away from this model as studies have shown it is not conducive to productivity. Having said that I 100% prefer my company provide a space like this form me to work in than to just say, "everyone is productive at home so there is no longer a need for an office" .... Cough cough Shopify Cough cough.

[Spokes]

Just watched the video, very very cool space. Many parts of it remind me of post-secondary common spaces

[neonjoe]

Makes perfect sense. Michael Litt who founded Vidyard is Stephen Litt of Vive's brother. They both grew up locally and actually attended the same Secondary School as I did.
Fun fact the founder of Wish.com was also a local, he was one of my classmates.

[tomh009]

Has vidyard gone mostly remote?

It appears so. He said they have 300 employees, and space for 75 people.

[westwardloo]

Has vidyard gone mostly remote?

It appears so. He said they have 300 employees, and space for 75 people.

I believe it was space for 75 people in the open floor office, looked like there was a room with "cubical" style work spaces. Plus the various board rooms and the large upstairs common space. I am sure there is room for more than 75 people to work in the office at one time.

[ac3r]

Am I alone in thinking people are getting way too comfortable by thinking working from home is the future of everything? This is a neoliberal capitalist society/world. Employers want to know what you are doing all the time. I honestly don't see this lasting, but maybe it's different for the code monkeys out there. There are still a lot of industries that will need to rely on office space, be it fields in engineering, conceptual software design, architecture, bioscience etc.

[Rainrider22]

I am in agreement with you ac3r. While it may work for some companies (insurance, they can have claims people work from home because it is measurable work), I think most businesses will want to get thier people back to the office. It may be a hybrid schedule, two people share a works space and alternate days worked in office versus home. For sure need to get people back to the office. I have friends working from home, they joke all the time about how great it is because so much less accountability...

[jeffster]

Am I alone in thinking people are getting way too comfortable by thinking working from home is the future of everything? This is a neoliberal capitalist society/world. Employers want to know what you are doing all the time. I honestly don't see this lasting, but maybe it's different for the code monkeys out there. There are still a lot of industries that will need to rely on office space, be it fields in engineering, conceptual software design, architecture, bioscience etc.

Yeah, there is only so much you can do on Zoom. I think people like 'working from home' because they can basically do what they need to do without much consequence.

To give you an example: my current place of employment is split --- some of use have to come in, and some don't. With that, one of the guys that comes in recently got a dog, and needs to take it for a walk, so he has to punch out at lunch, and punch back in when he gets back -- this is to ensure he's not taking too much time on his lunch break. OTOH, I have a co-worker that can work from home. They live around the corner from me -- and being that I have a 20 day work rotation, I am home during the day for 9 days out of 20. There has been a number of times when I leave to go shopping or take someone to an appointment, they're out there walking their dog at 9 am, 10 am, 11 am, 1 pm, whenever.

That's a divide and lack of equality between workers. Eventually companies will catch on, and require people to start coming in again.

[robdrimmie]

Anecdotally, most local tech companies that already had offices are following hybrid models. Many have revamped their existing space and worked out ways to support hoteling a little better, few have shut them down entirely.

A non-trivial percentage of developers do prefer working outside their homes, and in fact the majority of people who work in most tech companies stops being developers once there's some market traction. It takes a lot more people to sell, market and support software than it does to build it and in the same way that developers tend towards low extroversion, those roles tend towards high.