It’s Friday, shipmates! Dig in to a beefy guide on creating an effective office space, consider a lucrative career pivot, and by all means, keep it classy. 

The Office is Dead, Long Live the Office

Much RTO discussion focuses on abstract -- even existential -- questions that organizations grapple with to keep their employees engaged. But, like, what about the actual offices? Fast Company has an omnibus guide to creating workplaces that employees enjoy, and most crucially, can actually work in: “If the pandemic proved what employees long suspected—that the office wasn’t necessarily necessary to their jobs—can the right office design convince them otherwise?” 

This guide collects perspectives from workers of all ages; CEOs who are implementing RTO (or not) policies; and architecture firms that created mockups of various office scenarios ranging from full-time in-office (employees can live … upstairs?), fully remote (prefabricated “gig houses” for nomadic workers), hybrid (“three-sided offices and pocket parks,” a design that sounds like a university library with more plants), and “Gen Z” (many choices and a very large screen). There’s a lot here -- including overviews of several U.S. metro areas and their optimal office locations, and tips for leveraging your advantage as a renter  – almost everything you need to redesign not just an office-return policy but an actual office space.

– Fast Company

Emily Post’s Rules of E-tiquette

We all know someone we wish we could send to Zoom finishing school. Maybe it’s the “you’re muted, you’re muted, you’re muted!!!” Groundhog Day experience you consistently have with them, or the godawful sight of an unmade bed in the distance, or their always-off camera and microphone that lead you pondering your place in the universe, but WaPo has some digital etiquette tips you should feel free to forward on. Starting with:

• Wear pants

Sure, it’ll be a relief to your colleagues if you have to jump up from your chair, but most importantly, you’ll have the sense of dignity that comes from being an adult who attends work events (even remotely) in, well, actual clothing. 

Like the encouragement to wear pants, your grandparents would have recognized most of these suggestions as basic courtesy. Save your snacking for a time when you’re off-camera. Sit still if possible, and don’t scan the area around your desk like a chicken looking for grubs. As far as we know, the ordinary rules of time still apply in virtual spaces, so please end your meeting on time. Pinkies up! 

– WSJ (gift)

Lost in Translation

In addition to spawning endless congressional hearings and think pieces, AI has produced a new kind of job: prompt engineer. (Was Robot Whisperer taken?) Prompt engineers finesse the prompts fed to AI LLMs, and if the salary listings on LinkedIn are accurate, make a killing doing so. 

Interested in speaking AI yourself? Journalist Joanna Stern took a course in Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT on Coursera, and she describes three techniques that will have you speaking GPT in no time. The persona prompt provides context for your AI pal by asking it to assume a particular role. (“Compose a plan for the most ergonomic arrangement of my kitchen tools from the perspective of chef José Andres.”) 

The new-information prompt acknowledges that – our fantasies to the contrary – bots often do not have all the information they need to answer our queries. Go ahead and introduce new data. (“My kitchen has three toasters, an air fryer, and a mid-century six-quart Crockpot. Compose a plan for the most ergonomic…”) 

The question-refinement prompt is less directive than conversational. Stumped for the right prompt? Ask the bot to suggest better questions. (“When I ask for help designing my kitchen, suggest better and more exact questions, like ‘given the variable that I use my Instant Pot once every six years and I’ve never been able to get the chili scent out of it, compose a plan for the most ergonomic…’”) 

Of course, you have to be prepared to hear reality: “Forgive my bluntness, but perhaps you’d be better off without a kitchen.” 

– Washington Post

ELSEWHERE ON THE INTERNETS

• Visualizing LLMs (Brendan Bycroft)

• 4.5 billion years in 1 hour (YouTube)

• Fixing new TVs (Practical Betterments)

• Your 2023 WebMD wrapped (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)

• A nuclear reactor simulator (volume up) (University of Manchester)

YESTERYEAR TECH OF THE WEEK

Imagine an “information superhighway” … (1994)

See ya next week, 

– The EiT crew at Status Hero 🫡