“Crap crap crap,” I needed to find parking; I was running late for the 8 A.M. Jeep Wrangler mild hybrid thermal system meeting that I was leading. “There’s a spot! No, wait. There’s a Fiat 500 in it!” Eventually, after a long search, I parked my Jeep Cherokee XJ on the top of the full parking garage, then sprinted by the enormous, chock-full lot on the north side of the world’s second largest office building, the Chrysler Technical Center in Auburn Hills, Michigan. I stood in line at the turnstiles, swiped my card, and tried to avoid bumping into any of the khaki-wearing engineers whose hands wrapped around the extended batteries of their oversize laptops. This was my normal morning at the bustling “CTC” back when I worked there between 2013 and 2015. The energy was palpable; recent college graduates like myself were leading entire teams trying to build some of Chrysler’s greatest products ever. It was a golden era when every desk was filled, the microwave in the hallway had a line of folks waiting to heat up leftovers, and finding open offices for your cooling system meetings was a downright chore. Things aren’t like that anymore — not even close, as I just found when I stopped by my former workplace yesterday. It looked like a ghost town.
I think we all know deep down that the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world permanently. Some of us are a bit in denial, hoping that things return to how they once were. Perhaps the idea of such rapid and uncontrolled change scares us — instills in us a realization that the firm bedrock upon which we’d built our entire worldview is — and, really, always was — actually a fragile foundation endlessly teetering in unstable equilibrium.
These are the thoughts that shot through my head the other day as I drove past my former workplace, the Chrysler Tech Center — a 5.4 million square-foot headquarters meant to house some of the most talented automotive engineers, designers, businesspeople, and technicians on the planet. And entire car company under a single roof. It was hard to shake off the melancholy, even though I know that many people are happier working from home these days; mine wasn’t a particularly logical emotional reaction, but then, feelings rarely are.
I remember feeling similarly when I lived on the east side of Detroit and regularly drove through completely abandoned neighborhoods. Why was that so upsetting? The people in those homes hadn’t died, they’d just moved 25 miles north to the ‘burbs. They’re probably driving their Jeep Grand Cherokees to Whole Foods right now, doing just fine.
I think, on some level, it’s just nostalgia — humans’ bizarre illusion that things before were much better even when they really weren’t. Driving down the east side’s Schoenherr Road or through run-down Belle Isle, and thinking about how the once-booming neighborhoods and once-bustling park now sat derelict — there was just something sad about that, just as there was something sad about looking at the CTC and its empty parking lot. A fall from grace.
But I don’t think it was pure nostalgia, because I think part of what made me feel sad in both cases was knowing that the reasons for these exoduses involved immeasurable suffering. Racial conflict in one case, and a pandemic that has killed millions of people in the other. An empty building itself isn’t sad — buildings don’t have feelings — but the context that causes change is impossible to divorce from the change itself.
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I don’t mean to imply any sort of equivalency between Detroit’s plight and Chrysler’s workers now logging in on their computers remotely, nor do I want to make it seem like this even matters in the context of over 6 million people perishing from the earth, but it’s just something that’s on my mind: The Chrysler Technical Center in Auburn Hills will never be the same. It will almost certainly never be filled with 11,000 engineers, designers, marketers, PR professionals, and technicians. That experience that my friends and I share trying to figure out how to build cars, all together in that one high-energy building, is gone forever. Engineers will swing by Chrysler’s (err, Stellantis’s) facilities whenever they need to interact with hardware (i.e. testing and other physical assessments), or when they need to fill up their M-plate’s gas tank (free gas!), [Editor’s Note: Wait, you got free gas? – JT] but by and large, the Chrysler Technical Center will remain largely empty. Any attempt to force employees back into the office will almost certainly be met with resistance. People want to see their families more and deal with awful commutes less. I don’t think Chrysler wants to risk losing talent by requiring in-person attendance, so it’s no surprise that rumors have been swirling about Chrysler leasing out parts of the Tech Center as office space.
Anyway, back to my visit to the Tech Center; see this area at the very back of the enormous parking lot? This is where people who don’t drive Chrysler vehicles had to park, and then walk far in the cold Michigan winters. Yes, Chrysler punished you if you didn’t drive their cars; it’s pretty silly. Now instead of cool JDM machines and VW GTIs, there are literally zero cars there:
Here’s the big parking garage that was almost always full — there’s not a whole lot going on in there:
This is the main lot on the north side. At 3:30 on a Thursday, this place used to be packed:
And what do we have here? Looks like at least eight competitive vehicles in the Chrysler-only lot! This would not have stood pre-pandemic; it was a crime that I’m pretty sure was punishable by death — or at the very least, a month of solitary confinement in a 2007 Dodge Caliber. Or an hour in a climatic chamber.
Look at these prime parking spots right near the entrance — these would be full back in the day, and folks would be walking around this area, some trying to avoid being attacked by Canada Geese (each year, Chrysler’s HR team sent out an email warning employees about the aggressive Canada Geese on the property).
The south entrance on the other side of the building had a few more cars in the lot, since this is where the engine/vehicle testing happens. Plus, that’s where the thermal simulation team hangs out, and trust me: Those are some hard-working folks. Still, the lot was mostly empty:
Obviously, what I’m describing here doesn’t just apply to Chrysler. I stopped by Ford’s HQ a few months back, and saw that the company was apparently using the employee parking lot as a staging yard for new vehicles. Just look at this sea of new Fords:
A huge part of of many our lives — where and how we work — has changed forever. Offices all around the world have become ghost towns, and the big, energetic workplace is, in many cases, gone forever. And while there’s a nostalgic aspect to this that makes me a bit sad, the dominant feelings as I stood there in an empty lot of the second largest office building on earth (second to the Pentagon) — where I’d once worked — were: 1. This world can pivot in an instant, and whatever control I thought I had over that was an illusion and 2. Socially, this is a huge change.
I already talked about the first point involving “control.” I think many of us have struggled with this post-pandemic. The second one is something we have to come to grips with, too: In some ways, the world has become less social. I’ve been working online for the past seven years, and before the pandemic I began thinking about changing that — about returning to a real office. There’s just no substitute for in-person human interaction, and now, during a large part of our day, many of us won’t get that. To me, that daily interaction that I used to have with scores of people at the Chrysler Technical Center had a lot of inherent value. It wasn’t just that I was around people during those eight hours a day, it was that being with them tended to facilitate the growth of friendships outside of work. Even after I left Chrysler, I still hung out with the friends I’d made there, and they regularly introduced me to many new people whom they’d met at the office. Since the pandemic, I don’t see that same level of interaction — folks don’t seem to be hanging out with their coworkers like before. What once represented a great opportunity to build relationships has shriveled.
None of this is a complaint, and certainly, many folks (especially those with families and sweet houses) are loving this new setup, and I think that’s great. I just wanted to talk about what it was like to travel back to that Tech Center, because standing there in that lot and seeing tumbleweeds blow across the once-thriving workplace was a powerful reminder of just how capricious this world can be.
This nostalgia that we feel is borne from the world we grew up on. Remote work confuses and scares us, the same way laptops, smartphones and tablets scared our elders 🙂
Maybe our generation (or me, at least) still feel uncomfortable at Zoom/Teams/Whatever because we learned to rely on social cues from the office to get things done. Removing that and replacing with virtual meetings robbed us of many work tools that we took for granted.
If the shift to remote work lasts long enough, maybe future generations will learn to navigate this new normal better, and the ripple effects of this change could be interesting – they will learn how to socialize, interact and get things done on this environment in ways that we can’t.
Thanks for the reflection, David – it really captures the ambivalence many feel about the state of work in America day. Come for the automotive content, stay for the critical thinking on post-pandemic office culture!
I’m thrilled that after a lot of dithering my company opted to let nearly everyone work out their own in person or remote schedule. I still miss the fitness center, and am just drowning in unlistened podcasts, but no 3 hours of commuting or paying for the train or parking or gas or lunch is a massive benefit. Three work itself is the same here or there and nuisance meetings are generally down from pre-pandemic levels still.
The only thing that’s a real bummer is while we finally have a few new hires, training them over zoom is painful.
Dave:
You hit on a lot of issues here.
Let me start by saying, from from actual conversations, that companies want everyone back in the office. Real face to face collaboration leads to innovation leads to progress.
As an old, I just don’t get the real isolation that has been replaced with “virtual” interaction. Human intercourse in a real thing. Yes, you don’t necessarily like everyone you interact with, but that hasn’t changed since grade school. You deal with it.
As a builder, I saw companies build bump outs into hallways just for informal bullshit sessions because human intercourse is always a good thing. You’re collaborating even when you don’t think you are. Even stopping off for a couple after work on Friday is collaboration.
I haven’t been able to work remotely, nor have my colleagues. We have to actually accomplish things every day. That said, we understand the mindset of the WFH lovers.
Wouldn’t it be nice to roll out of bed whenever, pull on your boxers (or not), log in and have a couple of coffees. I’d probably do that, too.
Humans are basically lazy, and upper management understands that. I talk to people in that stratum on a regular basis. While they’re tolerating the status quo for now, they really want their teams back together face to face.
Virtually is no way to live your life.
Nah. Your viewpoints are outdated. The ability to work anywhere, at any time, and ping anyone, whenever, is fine. I socialize via teams very well and ask about people’s weekends and interests and stuff. I don’t want to go back, and if they force me I’ll just find another job. They will bleed talent if they try that.
Think about it…
You have your device… work from home.. check email as you drive.. walk around head down…
When is there WORK time… and GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM WORK TIME…
That seperation.. is the problem.
I was at a Jerb for quite a long time, till I finally couldnt take anymore of the constant foooey.
Went back to check out the vartious locations.. everything is gone. People are gone. Property is gone. There were people.. who been in the Company a looong ass time, gone. When I intially left, I felt like I had just hit a brick.. cause everything you knew… was gone. Then ya stand back.. and ya feel empty.
P.S
I remember.. when Lee Iacocca was being given a retirement award. he was about 85 or so. Id guess he was sitting in the middle of the CTC with a ton of other Chrysler types. Then they turned around.. and took his company car from him.
Shit..
Im just thankful I still take a ton of pictures on my device, only way ya gonna remember stuff. Take pics.
Wow. I remember visiting there… just after your tenure for a supplier event. (I was the poor schmuck responsible for managing the supply chain for MOPAR glass.)
I was in awe the entire time and distinctly remember going to a seminar by myself before expecting to meet the rest of my team for lunch in the cafeteria that was larger than our entire HQ, only to find out that they were actually over in the other *larger* cafeteria.
That’s still less eerie than a job I had in the mid 80s where I working at an empty IBM building (Shippan Point in Stamford Ct.) The offices, art on the walls and some of the furniture was there but the only people on site were a couple of guards in a large complex.
More recently my tiny company’s office and infrastructure is shrinking. We went from most of our building to 1/3 of the space after going remote and just moved to a new smaller office with several hotel desks and a few permanent stations. This is apparently cheaper because there’s a glut of space right now. The other striking thing is the collapse of our IT infrastructure from two full size racks and a co-lo site to a single server as our stuff is mostly cloud hosted now.
On the plus side we now do our socializing over MS Teams so the remote workers feel more connected.
I’m also curious about unused space, as we have more of it. In my old neighborhood we actually had two examples, an office building converted to a public library and a Tektronix campus turned into schools.
I currently work at CPG, and the feelings are pretty much the same for me.
Of course, there’s a lot of benefits to working from home that I enjoy. I don’t miss my commute, I don’t miss always having to pack or buy lunch, and so on. But those small day to day interactions with coworkers have been a big loss for me. Even the conversations that are one step above “living the dream” could make my day just that little bit better.
CPG still has cars in the parking lot because there are so many technicians and mechanics working there, but the front office is a ghost town. This spring we were forced to clean out our desks – unless you spent 3 days a week there, you had to move all your stuff out so they could transition to a shared office space model. I found test data and trip plans from the 1990s, old brochures, and even some AMC binders in the trash. There’s no changes in the cubicle layout, it’s now just completely devoid of any signs that people with a personality would work there. No unsactioned posters of cars, no random broken test parts as desk ornaments, no octane rating above the coffee machine – no coffee machines or fridges at all in fact. It looks like a stock photo of a 90’s office.
30 year FCA retiree here with some thoughts.
I still get the latest 411 on what’s going on 5 years out from retirement. One thing I can tell you is things are dramatically better for management employees due to some personnel changes at the top of the organozation.
Things like summer hours where no meetings are scheduled for Friday afternoons are a 180 from what it was like 5 short years ago. I would make the argument that work.from home has been an absolute win from a productivity and employee retention stamdpoint.
Occasionally, I kinda wish I had stayed and waited out the Reid Bigland regime and stayed.If Auburn Hills is a shell of its former self, it absolutely worth it.
Dear Mr Tracy – if that’s even your real name.
I am not surprised a so-called “journalist” like yourself hasn’t done his research. The Jeep pictured in the image above (“Young Engineer Looking To Rent Garage Space”) is NOT a Jeep Cherokee XJ, as you imply. The exceptionally rare Jeep XJ was the product of a short-lived collaboration with Jaguar – each company bringing their nations’ traditional strength, combining American build quality with British build quality.
The Jeep pictured on this flyer is, as you can see from the 5-slot grille (an iconic Jeep styling feature), a much more common Jeep RJ, or Real Jeep, made by the millions during World War 2 to serve the needs of women and the elderly on the home front. It is not valuable enough to retain or service, and you may certainly discard any you have, here with me.
Hopefully next time you internet “experts” will do your “research” and get to the “bottom” of “things” before passing yourself off as a journalist in public.
Sincerely,
*Just *Every *Effing *Person
After whatever it’s been- 2 1/2 years, our company has had about 60% change in personnel, mostly growth and some attrition. I haven’t met in person most of them (and I’m one of the old timers).
I’m mostly surprised about how tall people are when you finally meet them after seeing them without legs for 2 years.
We are all just monkeys with genetically programmed social interaction needs. The drive for face-to-face contact and genuine emotional interactions with other members of our tribe are physical needs. We evolved that way for survival. Despite whatever anyone tells you about this 21st Century egotistic technological self-flagellation ‘work-from-home’ thing we are all engaged in for economic reasons. Once the Facebook and Twitter people successfully excise our social behaviors from those virtual economic activities though, then the truly schizoid nature of this frighteningly maladaptive existence we have created for ourselves will become glaringly obvious.
King Crimson was prescient in 1969.
“We are all just monkeys with genetically programmed social interaction needs. The drive for face-to-face contact and genuine emotional interactions with other members of our tribe are physical needs.”
For some perhaps. There are also the folks who were miserable being forced to work daily in an office (yes “forced” as WFH was never a real option and generally one has to earn to survive). The folks for whom “The Office” and “Office Space” were practically documentaries. People whom given the opportunity would jump at a lucrative career as a lighthouse keeper if such a thing existed (e.g. remove the money factor). The best most of those folks can get, if they are VERY lucky, is to work just long enough to find a spouse that can support them and then gleefully leave the misery of the office forever. Or win the lottery. Or inherent a lifetime of monies. I know few people whom would continue to work their jobs if they had other means.
goddamit Dr. 9, I have had this song stuck in my head since last night and now, you post this. For the same reasons
I’ve visited CTC a handful of times…super weird building. Interesting note is that it was designed to double as a shopping mall! If you’ve ever been inside you see it instantly.
The German lighting site mentions it here: https://jalopnik.com/chrysler-hq-designed-to-convert-into-shopping-mall-5240347
The only reason why I still go into the office is because I literally live 5 minutes away. Also, it’s summer and free A/C sounds pretty good to me. If the drive were any longer, I’d probably never go in. And when it cools off and I can open my windows again, I’ll be staying home much more often.
Personally i think it’s good it’s become more difficult to make friends through work. If you desire social interaction outside of work and family you’ll have to venture out and meet new people elsewhere, hopefully exposing you to more viewpoints and experiences than you would have otherwise. I’m never going back to an office, what your describe as “energetic” to me has always felt depressing, oppressive and draining.
When you said 490,000 square-foot headquarters, I was a bit confused about the second-largest claim: there’s plenty of million square foot skyscrapers around. But at 490,000 square meters, it’s about 10x bigger. My stupid pedantic-ness aside, great article.
I’ve been sharing a similar experience with my friends and family.
My company is in a large, two-tower corporate center. A few companies lease out entire floors but most floors lease office spaces of various sizes. My last day in the office was Friday, March 13th 2020. I didn’t return for over a year. When I went back in, the campus was dead.
Pre-Covid, the garage was filled by 8:00am and I parked four levels up with all the other car folks who didn’t want their sheetmetal dinged. Upon return, I had my choice of spots and was able to park by my lonesome on the second level.
Pre-Covid, the cafeteria had six food stations which were swamped by noon. They had about 10 employees on staff. Seating was hard to come by. When I came back, it was down to one food station, two employees and no one ate down there.
Pre-Covid, there was a constantly flow of people in and out of the building and you were guaranteed to share the elevator with at least two people. After Covid, the halls and common areas seem way too spacious.
Pre-Covid, the floor I worked on housed five different companies. When I returned, my company moved down to floors which left one organization on our original floor.
Here’s the thing though, over two years later and nothing has changed. Yes, there are a few more cars in the garage but it’s not even close to what it used to be. Walking the empty halls and grabbing food from the cafeteria is depressing. It really hit me when we hired a new person and I gave her a tour of the facilities and reflected on what it used to be like. Of course, I’m taking a nostalgic view of it. I don’t miss waiting for 15 minutes just to order food. I don’t miss waiting for the next elevator. I certainly don’t miss the nearly 3 hour daily commute from the city in the suburbs. We’ll see what happens but I agree, it will never be the same.
Yep, the places and people (and . . . cars!) who represent personal growth in our lives cast quite a spell . . . It’s usually good to draw meaning from them as long as we don’t idolize. So, good on you for reflecting!
World’s Second Largest Office Building? The wikipedia page for the renaissance center puts it at 515,800 m2 vs. 490,000 for the Chrysler tech center. True, it has a hotel and a little bit of retail, but I still think of it as an office building. Either way, that building has way more floor space than I would have guessed.
There’s also the Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre, but I’m assuming the rankings I’m finding account for it and the Ren Cen having hotels and all sorts of non-office stuff.
The picture of the parking lot with maybe 20 cars in it was very sad to me. “If we park in the designated spots, everything is normal.”
The grass appears greener in other people’s backyards and you miss the asphalt.
This is one is a pre-covid take on what was already happening, the pandemic just drastically sped things up.
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home
Just as a reminder, there are *tons* of jobs where the whole work-from-home thing has not, will not, and cannot happen. Anything that requires you to physically do a thing, whether that be slicing up a ham, building a road, or putting in a catheter, requires you to show up in person to do it. I can’t put solar panels on your house remotely, and the guys who work the warehouse can’t load up my truck from their home offices. If you crave a job that gets you out of the house and mixing it up with other meat tubes, they exist. Some of them even pay quite well indeed. Work doesn’t have to be all screens and keyboards.
Fax.
David, I appreciate this article a lot, because you’re not really making any sort of judgement or point, other than observations, analogies, and perspectives. It’s definitely a strange time for sure. My profession is industrial design, and I’ve been working at a major powersports company with about 4,000 people working there per day, pre pandemic.
In the beginning, we kept trying to socialize with Zoom and whatnot, but it just never felt the same as being in person. I also didn’t necessarily text the same people I was friends with IN the office, so those relationships were put on hold as well.
My experience through this pandemic has been exceptionally challenging, as my partner is immunocompromised and could possibly die from Covid, which means I’ve also had to limit exposure to actual friends, family, etc. Even with the vaccinations, people still spread covid and refuse to wear masks, so I’m largely on house arrest for 2.5 years now.
Recently, despite cases being higher than last year, mainstream media and corporate america has decided covid is over, and not a big deal anymore, and that might be true if you don’t have any immunocompromised people in your life. Work made a demand that we adopt to a hybrid strategy, being in 3 days a week. I told my manager that isn’t happening; there’s no precautions being taken anywhere and cases are literally like 2-3x higher than last year with super limited testing, the real numbers probably being easily double what is actually being reported. So for now, I’m still at home, but that’s not true for the rest of the staff.
Other than the people who live 5 minutes away, there’s been resistance as people have been doing their jobs for 2 years now, fully remote, and not wasting 5-8 hours driving a boring commute every week. I hear complaints from my coworkers who go into work, that they just sit in a cubicle and join Teams meetings all day, just like they did at home, only now they are more tired, the food sucks, and the office is depressing. Pandora’s box has been opened, and the boomers in charger of things want to get back to the way things were before, and I’m really worried if they press it we’re going to start losing a lot of talent.
I went into the office the other day for some prototype evaluations and caught up with a few people, but zero masks, zero fucks given about spreading it, and yeah…the building seems about 1/3 as packed as it used to be. There’s so many benefits to WFH that aren’t even related to the office itself. So many long walks to the car in winter, vs none at all? That is a massive perk. In the end, adapt or die. Talent will flock to companies that provide good compensation and work from home, reducing the need for a boring, soul sucking commute. If my commute was a twisty backroads in the mountains, I’d want to go into work a lot more often. Cheers.
I used to produce a monthly live-to-tape news program for GM techs at the Ren Cen. During the pandemic, after GM allowed “essential” people back into the Ren Cen, it was so eerie to be there. It used to be filled with people walking around, going to meetings, eating or hanging out in the food court or GM World area, and just visiting. I was there about 8 months ago and hardly anyone was there to speak of. I stopped by the offices of the studio crew, no one was there. I like working from home, but informal chats with co-workers or just stopping by when you’re in the building is kind of a thing of the past.
I worked on the voice and data network planning for CTC when it was just a brown field. I worked in what today is SRT. Heady times; Chrysler owned both Lamborghini and Gulfstream; and DiamondStar was building some interesting cars.
The bankers/financiers (Sumitomo Bank, IIRC) wanted a building and site that could be easily repurposed in the event that, um, that Chrysler, um, yeah that … again.
Oh the irony of the planners wanting the ability to easily adapt it to be a mega shopping mall.