A list of hills I think are worth dying on.

Don’t negotiate with terrorist

Metaphorically and literally. Having scenarios in which you’ll succumb to blackmail increases the chance of that happening. Just precommit and the world will be better off.

Permanent office hot desking

I understand why leadership teams reach for hot desking and hoteling. On a utilization chart it looks tidy. Fewer desks, better ratios, less wasted space.

However, when a firm switches to hoteling while also pushing more in-office time it is making a trade. The savings are visible while the costs are not. Those costs show up as lost focus, extra friction, and higher risk of losing the people who already carry the hardest work.

Why hoteling appeals to management

The appeal is not mysterious.

• Reducing assigned desks can shrink the footprint or delay the next lease.
• Staffing moves around, and unassigned seating absorbs that variability.
• One standard model across offices is easy to explain and manage.
• Empty desks feel wasteful when viewed through a spreadsheet.

The costs that never make it into the slide deck

Hoteling shifts time, attention, and coordination work onto billable staff. That burden lands in places that are hard to measure and therefore easy to dismiss.

I think that dynamic of ‘shift costs to be hard to measure’ explains most of the gap between company actions and employee aggravation. (See ‘Seeing Like a State’ and general legibility issue for management)

1) Setup turns into recurring overhead

A stable desk means you get to work, sit down, and work. Hoteling turns that into a sequence of small tasks:

• find a usable seat
• get monitors, keyboard, and network to behave
• locate a place for calls, unless you get lucky with an office
• (And then everything else you normally do, like login, get coffee, etc)

Each step looks trivial; but not in aggregate across a company.

2) Continuity resets every morning

A fixed desk supports continuity. Ergonomics stay consistent. Work in progress can stay where it is. The setup does not need to be rebuilt from memory every day. Something as simple as a sticky note reminder is no longer supported.

Hoteling adds a daily rebuild tax. You feel it most during uneven, spiky weeks, when the work already demands more context switching than usual.

Due to the amount of travel I do, I have had to live this when visiting other offices/locations. I am simply less effective and efficient on those days… but I pay that ‘tax’ because some part of that trip is worth more.

3) Calls and confidentiality get harder by default

Client work involves conversations that should not happen in open areas. If the office does not have quiet rooms that are genuinely easy to use, hoteling nudges people toward:

• awkward call locations
• delayed conversations
• defensive calendar blocking and room hoarding

4) Bureaucracy creeps in, even when nobody wants it

I am used to environments that value:

• clear, lightweight norms
• written decisions and information people can actually find
• trust and self-sufficiency

Hoteling often adds a second layer of process on top of that:

• reservation systems
• recurring disputes over the few good desks
• clean-desk rules without enough storage
• daily micro-coordination about where everyone ended up

The non-negotiable part for me: migraines with aphasia

I get migraines, sometimes with aphasia. In that context, a private office gives me:

• immediate access to medication and a few support items like water or a jacket
• a predictable place to recover for 20 to 60 minutes without negotiating for space
• fewer triggers from noise, lighting shifts, and constant movement

The usual hoteling workarounds sound fine in theory and break down in practice.

• Lockers only help if they are close and easy to reach, and if I am not already impaired when I need them. Often I stay on a call as long as I can, which is shorter in a hotel office.
• “Just find a room” fails when rooms are booked, scattered, or treated as scarce prizes.
• When aphasia shows up, the environment needs fewer steps, not more.

Another concrete cost: I do not carry a bag or laptop daily

I keep a computer at home and I do not haul my work laptop back and forth. That choice removes friction from my day. Hoteling breaks that pattern.

• Without a stable workstation, I have to carry a laptop and bag every day.
• That adds weight, clutter, and more things to track and secure.
• It also raises the rate of small, real failures: missing adapters, forgotten headsets, dead dongles.

None of these are dramatic. They are just a constant papercuts.

Why this is a hill worth holding

A stable desk sends a signal. It says the organization values:

• focus as a limited resource
• continuity as part of quality
• the real shape of billable client work
• accessibility and hardware needs that do not fit a single office template

When that signal flips to “you will adapt,” the message is clear in a different way.