Demolishing the silo

The SMH discusses the exodus of companies to the suburbs from the cities. To say I'm sceptical about this is an understatement, moving offices away from transport hubs to car dependent suburbs strikes me as a big step backwards. Even more so given the steady rises in oil prices.

But along with the usual management justifications for the bean counters bright ideas the SMH article claims a new one; moving from a high rise office to a "campus" will destroy "siloing".

It's funny they mention siloing in an article about Optus. The worst case of Siloing I came across was when I was trying to connect a client to the Optus Exchange server.

I just needed the password to connect, so we rang the Optus support desk. No dice, she was using a Dell and the only people on that day were Mac support techs. She's have to call back two days later when the PC guy was in.

We got the password by ringing back a few minutes later and pretending she was on a Mac.

If the bean counters think spending millions on moving to the suburbs and losing half their staff is the way to defeat that sort of mentality, then I wish them the best.