Tech
How This Tech Company Redesigned Its Office To Lure Workers Back
Software analytics company Snowflake won’t allow all its 2,700 employees to continue working from home permanently. CNBC went to Snowflake’s headquarters in San Mateo to check out some of the changes it’s making to get ready.
See how the redesign increases collaboration space after a year of employees working solo from home, reduces contact points, and makes areas more spread out and easier to clean. Snowflake also installed sensors to gather data on how people use desks and common areas.
There’s a sense of impermanence at the headquarters of data-analytics software company Snowflake in San Mateo, California.
The cafeteria is closed while the company figures out how to space out tables and chairs. Drawers for employees’ desks are piled up and waiting to be hauled off. Planters have yet to be filled with plants.
After leasing space from Medallia in 2019, Snowflake came up with a plan that could accommodate its fast-growing team, with help from M Moser Associates, which has also advised cloud companies DocuSign and Okta on workplace design. Then coronavirus cases popped up across the U.S. in March 2020, and Snowflake revised the plan so that employees could feel safe and productive in the office once it’s safe to return, said Warrick Taylor, Snowflake’s vice president of global workplace and real estate.
Rather than attempting to offload office space onto an already overwhelmed subleasing market, Snowflake is holding onto all of its property.
The company is in no rush to usher employees back to the office, finance chief Mike Scarpelli told analysts on a conference call in December. But whenever the date arrives, Taylor’s team of operations, infrastructure design and construction project management people have figured out how to update the office so employees can spend most of their time working with other people instead of toiling away alone. At the same time, the company made changes to help people feel safe while on site.
Bathroom doors feature thin strips of metal a few inches from the ground that people can use to swing doors open without touching them. Inside the bathrooms, people can wash their hands without putting their fingers on faucet handles.
In the cafeteria, people won’t be using tongs to grab salad from the salad bar. Employees will instead use an app to order meals and then pick it up at a specified station at a specified time. As a result, fewer people will be descending on the cafeteria at once.
That same app will eventually allow employees to reserve desks for the day as well.
Other desks will be assigned to individual staffers. Each desk is surrounded on three sides by a fabric-covered divider, which turns an open-office area into a cluster of almost-cubicles. These areas have far fewer desks than they would have if Snowflake had stuck to its pre-pandemic plan, Taylor said.
At the end of each day, employees will be required to remove their belongings from the surface of their desks and take them home or place them in dedicated lockers nearby. That way, cleaning crews can come by in the evening and sanitize desk surfaces. The plan was to place a chest of drawers below every desk, but after the pandemic, the company switched to giving employees lockers instead in hopes of reducing clutter.
The office lobby has fewer seats than in the original plan, and it’s designed to look more like a living room to make people feel more comfortable after the year of working from home. Snowflake also revamped the layout of the customer experience center where it will meet with clients. Conference rooms grew larger and seats around conference tables are now more spaced out.
Each employee going back to a Snowflake office will receive a personal marker and wipe for use with whiteboards, eliminating the need for sharing. They are among the giveaways included in a goodie bag emblazoned with a mask-clad polar bear.
There was one enhancement of the office that Warrick did not highlight during the tour. Snowflake installed sensors that will gather information on how people use desks and common areas, and the resulting data will help executives make decisions about how best to use its space in the future, a spokesperson told CNBC in an email.
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How This Tech Company Redesigned Its Office To Lure Workers Back
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@jeannie7744
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
These guys have a special check in lane at busy Newark airport called snowflake ❄️. Not sure if it's related. If so, insane special treatment.
@proudasiangirl576
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
All I can say is thank goodness that I don't work there. Nothing about their office set up is inviting. I think they'll end up losing good employees to other tech companies that offer the flexibility to work from home. WFH is now the new norm!
@lordsleepyhead
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
I really believe this guy is doing the absolute best he knows how to within the confines of capitalism, but jesus man come on. Why can't we even do so much as imagine a world beyond that. God damn.
@mroie
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Sounds like school are prison more then an work place
@mroie
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
What a waste money the company name sound like an scam.
I am sorry I can't take company name to serious.
Plus just cheaper and less stressed to stay at home no office politics are long ride to work are nosy people around you
@CincinnatusPublish
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
You know what I don't have to do when I work from home? Open the bathroom door with my foot or wear a mask all damn day!
There is nothing here that would entice me to go back to an office.
@businesscat4435
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Can't wait to catch covid from my colleague sitting practically on my lap. You can't even make your desk comfortable or usable for a human adult. This looks like middle school and I hated middle school. It's all so insulting. If I worked for them and saw this, I would quit out of disgust.
@joshuabrewer1002
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
People aren’t going to want to work like this. People want to “go back to normal”… Let the past few years die and move on slowly.
@laurenconrad1799
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Good luck keeping workers. You’re now an unattractive company and your candidate pool is limited to the immediate area, unlike remote companies who have the whole country to choose candidates from.
@ColoradoAvs
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
I believe this is called rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. They failed to address any core issues and wasted money improving things that employees don't care about and won't make them want to come back into the office.
@teng029
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
i give it less than a year before all these rules go out the door..
@AndyHurleysChicklet7
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Lockers to store and take your equipment for the day, small divided desk spaces, time slots for lunch, "goodie bag" with sanitizer and a marker… so it's elementary school
@denzilpink5399
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
It would have been interesting to hear what they expect to achieve with their employees in the office that they were not achieving working remotely.
@dijoxx
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Corporate cringe
@shush2000
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Why are they requiring masks if the returning workers are going to be vaccinated?! Why can these companies not understand that people just want their workplace to make things easier to work, not fancier or more difficult?!!!
@singularityraptor4022
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
CNBC desperate for content huh 😂😂
@anthonyk1461
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Redesigned? LMFAO, as what, every other millennial office space known to man? 🙄 You are reaching here CNBC. None of this nonsense is 'luring' workers back. Most people who work in the tech field, unless they are having to deal with hardware problems 24/7 know that telecommuting, and remote work is a far better option. 🤣🤣🤣
@manedurphy
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Who actually thought that these changes were appealing? All of the money they waste by creating these workspaces is money that they could invest in their employees so that they can buy a home and create workspaces that work best for them.
@te1ephraq
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
I love working in the office because of lunch-time soccer, corporate bicycles to get to the field and corporate showers after. Still working from home, but rumors said shower rooms are closed ((( Someone would have to hurt if they are not opened.
@ImRayzer24
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
There goes that house you bought in another state. Companies starting to call back there employees.
@amjds1341
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Lol good luck convincing these folks to get back to office now. Cat is out of the box now.
@mw01720
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Snowflake? This has to be a joke right? This has to be straight from the onion 😂
@tj8870
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
God I am so happy this company is called "Snowflake" lol. It is so perfect! LOL Omg everything about this company really fits well with "Snowflake". Would I want to work there? No, but I can really appreciate the irony of the universe.
@kaleem9185
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
People are coming back to offices? 😂😂
@louielamlouie
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
That's stupid. A complete waste of resources. That's why their stock price goes south.
@greganderson1137
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Like working from home?
We got rid of all the reasons you would WANT to come back:
-in-person collaboration
-sharing a meal together
You know it’s fitting this company is called ❄️ because they’re catering to the paranoid. If everybody who’s been vaccinated who wants it, and we’ve reached heard immunity, how about meeting the need of what at-home CAN’T give?
@kishenr1419
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Anybody here because of Josh fluke!? 😂
@tucosalamanca4478
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Only boomers want to go back to the office
@jeffreywolf5235
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
I would never work at a place like that first off my back will be screaming after about five minutes of sitting in one of those hard-ass chairs
@ol2510
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
my 5 year old nephew would love this office
@ping33434
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Looks like school lol
@jelanibobcombe4493
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
The abject submarine algorithmically delay because baseball developmentally hang throughout a minor period. tremendous, naughty cupcake
@pratyushchoudhary8201
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Eww
@bharghavatri9487
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
Irony Warren Buffett also invested in this company ❤️
@sjoormen1
December 31, 2023 at 10:16 pm
This is depressing. Unproductive.