Somehow we jave money to hire profs but nowhere to put them. Chair sent an email asking who would volunteer to share an office.
Reward is a teaching buyout. Tempting...
Office sharing?
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Somehow we jave money to hire profs but nowhere to put them. Chair sent an email asking who would volunteer to share an office.
Reward is a teaching buyout. Tempting...Depends on who you share with. As a visiting prof in my first place I shared with a professor that was basically emeritus. Only taught when he filled a class and occassionally came to workshops. It was less than ideal, but I would do it again if it took me from a 2-2 to a 3-0.
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I share an office. At first I thought it would be difficult and I was not at all used to working in non-solitude. However, I adapted very quickly and found it much easier than I would have imagined. Plus it gives you a nice excuse to work from home on days you don’t want to come in. Based on my experience, I would volunteer for a shared office in exchange for a course reduction in a heartbeat.
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Count yourself lucky OP: I was given a shared office (in the UK) with zero compensation. I just got an email one day saying this is happening and now there are four of us in the room. In addition to the buyout,
a] You should calibrate expectations that you aren't going to be on campus when you are focusing on research work if there is likely to be disturbance in your office. The worst situation is if, six months after moving into your shared office, the HoD decides that everyone needs to spend more time in the building (happened at our place).
b] This will only work well if you have a good home working environment. If you are in a one-bedroom London flat and your home desk is also your bed then I think it's a good reason to insist on a good setup on campus.
c] Where will you meet students if your officemate(s) are in the room? The department should have a good answer to this.
d] Of course, it makes a huge difference who your officemate(s) are. If they are on the phone all day, like to chit-chat, eat smelly or noisy food, dump their sweaty gym clothes everywhere, use a mechanical keyboard ... it's going to be a disaster. But if they plan to work at home all the time then you will de facto have your own office anyway.
e] Likewise, think about what sacrifices being a good officemate will impose on you and whether you will be happy with them. You might feel like you need to stop eating garlic for lunch at your desk, or ditch your precious cherry mx key switches. If you collaborate a lot with coauthors via Zoom then it may be inconvenient if you have to schedule around when other people will be in the office.
f] What fraction of the department will be forced to share, and what is their status in the department? If some people have a single office and some people share then sharing an office can become an implicit signal of low status in the department.
g] Reflect on how comfortable you will feel doing research with someone else around. It makes me quite self-conscious to be stuck on a problem with someone behind me who could be watching what I do.
h] Is it likely that everyone will have to share eventually? If so then it might make sense to take the shared office while you still have some bargaining power.
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On the Island of the Teurd I had to share office at one shaiithole. It was mostly groovey as my roomies were fine folk, except for one Dutch guy who was eating every day some sandwiches that smelled like he has put a piece of sh!t between two pieces of bread; the Dutch was also grumbling about all and everything all the time; having this Dutch id'io't in my office was a real bummer.
Then I moved to another shaiithole, where we did not even have offices; they called it "agile working space". This was horrible.