Greg Owens 26:23
Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting, too, because a lot of people feel that like a company like Google does all this, like having in house restaurants, in house, coffee shops, ping pong, tennis, games, to play and all that just to keep the employees there longer, which is true, right, so that they can stay, they don’t have to actually leave the campus, they can stay stay there all day long. But the other part of it was that when they know when the research is clear on it, that if you play together with somebody, you have a different sort of relationship with that person. So if you enjoy basketball, and you just keep going to the basketball courts at Google and and you play basketball with the other people from different different parts of the company that come together, you’re now collaborating in that environment of something of shared of shared play, right. And it’s such a, it’s such a creative moment that’s possibly going to be missing. Man, maybe companies are trying to figure that out. Right. Like it’s having off sites and things like that. I know, a few are trying for sure.
Jeremy Salles 27:29
Yeah, I think in cute you’re spot on. And I don’t think it’s it’s the intention, it maybe had the effect of keeping people at work longer than they would have been otherwise. But But I believe that the the intent there was to drive culture, and to create these different venues for collaboration that mean a sort of removed, maybe a mental blocker of I’m here at work. And so I have to collaborate in this sort of way, and created space for creativity to exist in a different context than people are used to. And when you build that, because it’s culture that drives that interaction, it’s not the stuff. But the stuff can facilitate the the the collision that you want. And then there’s a balance there. I mean, I don’t think PlayStation is trying to be like Google and in terms of office amenities, and onsite restaurants and things like that, I don’t know a lot of companies are. But we’re, I mean, we’re, we’re a gaming company. So our offices are fun, they’re engaging. We have permission to be, you know, irreverent and silly. And we take full advantage of that. And so an interesting thing that I’ve noticed being here at PlayStation is a lot of the work that’s done here at PlayStation is very much individual heads down work, you know, the 8020 rule can apply, where 80% of the work that’s been done is its individual heads down, and maybe 20% Collaborative. But there’s a strong desire to be interacting with other people. And so the challenge from a facilities perspective is how can I create the the contexts for that type of social interaction to happen, that doesn’t distract completely from the heads down work that needs to happen in order for the company to be successful and deliver its product? Because I believe that facilitating that social engagement within the construct of the workplace is driving business product forward in a way that’s it’s really hard to quantify. I don’t know if you can, but there’s a role for facilities to play in managing the culture of a company. And I think there are very interesting opportunities for partnership with HR corporate function groups to figure out what is the right approach and then choose a path and navigate it and then take data and iterate and make Be pivot but take take up space in that conversation. I think too often, facilities and real estate departments take a too much of a perimeter seat in that discussion, and we really need to be front and center with the the other corporate functions that are that are driving the company culture forward and figuring out how to do that, because we have a place.
Greg Owens 30:26
Yeah, yeah, I can imagine right now, in major corporations with so many people not coming to the office, they’re they’re looking at like, Oh, why do we need these big buildings? And maybe we need to shrink space, right, which may or may not be the right decision will time will tell. And, and what in your experience right now? What kinds of things are you looking for in future sort of real estate? Or, like, you know, how do you see that developing? Because I’m assuming you are having these conversations, right? Looking down the road, like, well, do we need more space? Are we gonna cut back space? Are we gonna? Are we a lot of companies were doing work for change their spaces, all the environments have changed. There’s no more individual office, a lot of high tech companies, what for the most part, they’re all hot desks, right? Where they can, people can come and hold a desk for the day or the week or the month, that kind of thing. Right? What are you what are you seeing from your your area?
Jeremy Salles 31:28
So broad brushstroke, I think many technology companies are sitting on too much space, just just broadly speaking, because of how the employee interaction with the Office has fundamentally changed. But the back to, you know, what we talked about earlier, I think it’s going to take a good year and a half, two years to really understand what that means, permanently. We’re, we’re taking more of a wait and see approach to see how behavior changes, how attendance starts to materialize. I do think that they’re completely legitimate conversations being had around workspace configuration. How much space is dedicated to what type of functions within the office, how much of your space, and I think it is leaning more towards less individual space and more communal space, just in general, but the approach on the real estate portfolio is, is getting highly customized, unique to business unit and unique to geography, and unique to what that business is trying to accomplish over the next two, three years, or whatever the business cycle might look like. And so that’s where, whereas before, you might have had a sort of general operating parameters around a program for real estate with, you know, supply and demand equations and us being able to look at current headcount, future headcount and prescribing a model for what the real estate would need to be to support that. That’s still true. But the other side of that same coin is what is the value proposition of that real estate? And and do you, you know, are you making your decision based on the supply demand data, the scientific data? Are you making your decision more on the subjective through this objective lens of what is this property mean, to the business that we’ll be using it, and some businesses will decide, yeah, we’re sitting on too much space, but we’re not going to get rid of it, one, because we don’t know what the future is gonna hold. And that’s legitimately the case. So the other is that we think we’ll be able to repurpose a lot of that space to be more communal space to be more fun space for, for the company to leverage to drive culture. And there’s still a lot of unknowns. I know, I talked to one of our business units, who look, who think that they’re going to be more in the office, even coming out of the pandemic, because that’s their culture. That’s how they like to work together. Even though they still abide by that 8020 rule, with most of it being heads down, they like to be together, they’re in an office business group. And so for them, as I’m looking for a portfolio that fits their needs over the next three to five years, it’s got to include room for growth. I’ve got another business unit that has been really remote, like their entire group has been working remotely, and they kind of like it. And they aren’t really planning on coming back. And so that’s a situation where depending on the timing of the lease, we may sit on it for a little bit, see if anything changes and then drastically cut our our capacity in that area because the business is choosing to operate in a different way. So I think it’s going to be a highly customized approach business by business unit, metro by metro and an even relevant two are tied into business cycle in terms of what is their production timeline? And what does it look like when they’re in different elements of that production timeline.
Greg Owens 35:14
It’s true, like there’s a big product launch and the all hands in office, right. And
Jeremy Salles 35:20
I could very easily see, you know, a company that is saying, Hey, we can do most of this stuff remotely, but there’s going to be a stretch of time where we’ve all got to be together to get something done, those folks going out and getting, you know, a dedicated service office space on a three month agreement that allows them the the room to come together and be in one place physically with the basic tools that they would need to get something out the door, and then they can go back to, to working remotely.
Greg Owens 35:51
Yeah, like what you said earlier, too, is it’s not like before in any way they can dictate from the top down. And companies have tried this dictating like, Hey, we’re coming back to the offices on this date. Apple did this twice or three times, I think, friends that worked for Apple and, and it was like 60, or 70% of the employees were like, No, we’re not coming back on that date that you said become that right. And so a big, you know, Apple spent insane amounts of money on that facility right there in San Mateo. So there. That’s, that’s a big challenge, right? You can’t dictate that at the moment, too, because things could change drastically if we do go into a recession. And all of a sudden, there’s another mix of, you know, companies struggling, right. And then there, there could be more of a need of hands on all everybody come back to the office, we need to like, you know, get back to in person work hard get this thing afloat again. So it’s making money, right?
Jeremy Salles 36:55
And this, this goes back to the conversation about the whys. Like, what why do I need to be in and and I do think business leaders need to be prepared to articulate good answers, authentic answers to those questions. Because I think if they’re their authentic reasons for for a business unit leader to tell his team, I need you to come in a certain amount of days a week. People I think, are the most part reasonable and corporate context to be able to look at and go, Okay, that makes sense. I understand. I’ll come in. But if if you’re just mandating from the top with no good reason behind it. These these days, I think employees are encouraged to speak up and to and to ask these why questions, or to outright say like, I know, you’re mandating that, but I’m not going to do it. And I guess you’re just gonna have to fire me or if you are, I’m just going to go find a company that will support me working remotely. So
Greg Owens 38:03
they have that option right now with the way they economy’s going, especially if they’re, you know, they’re they they’re used to working on computers all day long programming and that kind of thing. It’s such a desire,
Jeremy Salles 38:14
they’re honest conversations to be had around, you know, look, no substitute for physical in person face to face interaction, collaboration, activation of work that we don’t know we need to do, because we haven’t talked about it or haven’t had an opportunity like there. There are honest discussions to be had around that. But But I think that that’s, that’s what’s needed in in from a leadership position is just authenticity, transparency, honest discussions around what role does the workplace have in driving the work product forward? And it’s that other is that other side of the coin that we were talking about, you know, the one side the traditional classical side being supply demand indicates we should have X amount of space to the other side being what is the value proposition the workplace proposes to the business? And I think that’s the side of the coin that people in the real estate and facilities industry are going to be asking over the next 10 to 20 years.
Greg Owens 39:16
Right. It’s easy for me, we we need people on site to paint, right? Yeah. For now, maybe? remotely. 20 years, it could be drones doing it right. I used to literally and I’ve actually seen video footage of like a bulldozer with spray, you know, like, like spraying the side of a tilt up building. Right. Like it’s, it’s remotely doing it right. It’s coming down the road for sure. Right? Yeah. Uh, so part of this podcast alone to sort of highlight like how you found this career path that you so knowledgeable about, you’re very passionate about it. What was your or origin story in that?
Jeremy Salles 39:56
I said, I started as a mechanical engineer. I went to school for mechanical engineering but I never wanted to practice this as an engineer. I didn’t want to work on mechanical systems. I didn’t really want to build airplanes or bridges or, or gone, you know, double containment or anything like that. I just I just liked the material. Yeah. And I think I got that honest, my my dad was also a mechanical engineer, we studied the exact same stuff he went to work for for the oil industry and pipeline industry did pipeline logistics. I there was it was interesting, but not necessarily what I wanted to do. So I started after, after college at UBS. And I took a job as a plant engineer. It had, you know, had an engineer in the title. So I thought, Okay, well, I, there’s some fit there. And it was interesting to me. And really what it was was a glorified facility managers position, right, it was service contracts, keep the lights on, keep stuff stocked. Make sure it’s clean. First one and last one out, sort of sort of a job. And I loved it. I loved I loved the warehouses. I loved the potential, the warehouses, I loved all the material handling equipment, how stuff for was organized in the racks and building that sort of stuff. So I think that
Greg Owens 41:20
for me, a lot of fun for an engineering mind. Yeah, right. The order that UPS a company like UPS has to have of moving packages through a facility and getting to them to their destination, it’s got to make it an engineer like, this is cool.
Jeremy Salles 41:39
Yeah, I mean, it’s like the operations piece of engineering, it’s it is very, very cool. The industrial engineers would appreciate that. And after that, I sort of fell into a project management role with a consulting firm doing tenant improvement construction work. So I was doing work for Seagate technologies doing work for Interwoven, Luminous, did some work for AMD, building, building out office spaces, and doing relocation management. And then that that consulting firm actually put me out on site at eBay, to do something called space planning, which I had no idea what that was space planning, but they eBay needed somebody who could, who could work with spreadsheets, who, who knew how to do CAD, who understood, you know, spatial things, who could you could understand how to do you know, basic people puzzles, and who could clearly communicate, and so I was a good fit for the role. And I stayed at bay for over a decade, as a contractor for a couple of years. And then they brought me in house as an employee. And I just kept growing within eBay up on the the strategy and planning side of the house space planning, and then got into workplace systems a little bit, and then started doing real estate strength, energy. And I think the, you know, the real estate strategy piece, when I started doing that, that’s when things started to click for me in terms of like my place in this industry, it was the junction of art and science, that that really resonated with me. So did that did very well on that, loved it, and then moved to Cisco to take a role managing headquarters sort of looking after all of those functions. And then as I looked back on my career, I was sort of stepping through all the different verticals of the real estate and facilities industry, and it was preparing me for what was coming next. Because I had no clue what I was doing. And each of those stops, I had to learn everything on the job, but you know, started in facilities management, then did design and construction, and then did strategy and planning. And then did operations like facility operations, then saw, you know, oversaw the whole thing for about 5 million square feet. And in San Jose, and and then had the opportunity to come over here and leave the the PlayStation team. But I didn’t go to school for this, right? It was just, it was the brain training that facilitated a curiosity and how things were working and how things should work sort of the desire to problem solve and think critically about things. Asking the right questions, collecting data, and then that that junction of art and science being just really cool to do. I, sometimes I can’t, I can’t believe I get to do this for a living. Okay, I get to do this for a living. I get to, you know, look at the data that I love because I’m a bit of a geek about data and then understand how it will really manifest for a business and actually help a company like PlayStation, make, you know, video games and make entertainment Things for for the masses. It’s kind of surreal to think about this moment in time and the the years that I spent getting to this moment in time, so a lot of fun.
Greg Owens 45:12
And I know you’re saying about the art of it too, because your place in time right now there is an art to it, right? Like, you know, in we were talking earlier about, like, your cities have taken a long time to realize that they have this unbelievably beautiful, like, beauty is so important to it, right? Like for some reason, they built the Embarcadero in front of the bay and blocked the water view. Right. But when I took that down and opened it all up and increased the value and increased everybody’s joy of that part of San Francisco. Yeah. And, and that beauty is so important, the art like to these to these projects, right? And then and that makes, we’re talking about like Google or somebody like that they are of those buildings and the art, the way it feels, makes you feel like you can then do your best work and do your best thinking that and create the things that these companies are creating.
Jeremy Salles 46:05
It’s it’s all connected to quality of output. For sure. And and I think that the pivot from the the classical view of managing a real estate portfolio to where we’re going, which is going to be more of the what what is the value proposition of the real estate portfolio is exciting for me, because that’s going to put more emphasis on the the art side of the equation. And then the science side, but you’re still gonna need both. But I think
Greg Owens 46:36
we, as you were saying, like when you have these smaller teams that are collaborating, and they’re saying, Hey, we were thinking, we’re going to need this kind of space, collaboration between facilities and that entire team, for them to be able to do their best work, right. And that’s fun niche building, or in a lot of ways or niche sort of space, it could be completely different than some of the other spaces for the company.
Jeremy Salles 47:01
Yep. And that’s I mean, you’ve described well, that the role of facilities there are our job is to come alongside the business and help the business achieve its goals. Yeah, through physical and virtual tools, and whatever else can can supplement the effort. And I think that people in the in the facilities, real estate industry that are going to be that are stuck more on the classical side of that coin, on the scientific side, are really going to struggle over the next five to 10 years to make the transition to a little bit more abstract, a little bit more subjective, a little bit more of the the feeling than the thinking that it’s going to be needed to complement the businesses going forward.
Greg Owens 47:46
Right, right. And I think part of that, you know, and like you said, we’ll, we’ll learn so much more in the next two years, and then in the next like five to 10 years, right about what doesn’t work, it does take time. And then case studies on this stuff always takes crazy amounts of time, right? If they even get done, because I know that they just started releasing some case studies of how the whole off open office atmosphere wasn’t so great for productivity in certain in certain buildings, right in certain companies. And so that was just coming out before COVID. You know, but that took a long time. This is big. This has been growing and growing and growing, where they got rid of individual office spaces, and collaborative spaces. Yeah. And so what would you tell somebody that’s interested in becoming facilities manager, like what steps here in the US to take to get into this industry or find out more?
Jeremy Salles 48:47
I think, well, you mentioned there, there may be actually undergraduate studies courses of study that that you could take and in facilities management to do that. There’s a lot available when I was in school,
Greg Owens 49:00
I only heard of that in Europe. I’m not sure if they’re here.
Jeremy Salles 49:03
I would say attend attend a conference. Go. There are some great rates for students to attend OSHA conferences, IFMA conferences, coordinate conferences, they happen in multiple metropolitan areas at different times of the year. There are local chapters for a lot of these things if you have an interest in this type of industry. Go and and and see what product is being discussed and see what the work being discussed. looks like. And don’t come into this industry. If you don’t like what you see and you don’t like what you hear. Because the one thing that I think is known but not really talked about a lot is this is a thankless industry. If we do our jobs well, at the end of the day, nobody says anything.
Greg Owens 49:54
That is so true. That is so true. Right? If you if they don’t know that The building in any way, they never say anything, but if they do notice the environment of the building, then they’re like a, you know, it’s too hot in my office. Some are just term hazard in the hallway or
Jeremy Salles 50:15
some enterprise customers are very, very good and very kind at pointing things out and noticing things and giving compliments and saying, Look, I know that you don’t get recognized for this type of stuff. And, and I want to say thank you. And leaders in the in the industry, need to be more, more willing to give encouragement, give credit to their team track accomplishments, and advertise for their teams, because it is a thankless type of role. But But my point is, for anyone who’s entertaining this sort of profession is check your own your own internal motivations. Because if you’re motivated by accolades, or if you’re motivated by the external sort of gratification that comes in, this may not be the industry for you. But if you find yourself having more of a servant’s disposition, of just really being energized and passionate about helping people and helping other people, then you might find a good fit, you know, I’d say, if you’re if you’re the type of person that likes to solve, likes to solve puzzles, or likes a good problem likes a good challenge. And you’d have the disposition of wanting to help others. That’s the That’s the ideal character of someone who’s going to do well in this sort of industry, regardless of your skill set, most of what we do can be trained, but it’s that it’s that customer service disposition, and that sort of natural curiosity that really override most of the the mitigating factors of success within this industry. When I interview people, I’m looking for really two things, I’m looking for a genuine curiosity that would manifest itself in really good critical thinking, and, and a willingness to navigate ambiguity. Because everything is about to change. And we don’t really know what it’s going to look like. Those are the two main things that I
Greg Owens 52:07
look for. Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. There’s, there’s also that thirst for learning in there too, right? Because it’s such a really, you could go in so many different directions and just keep absorbing more and more and more, and then you might not touch that that again, for a chunk of time. Right. But then you’re moving on to something new that you need to learn a tremendous amount, right?
Jeremy Salles 52:27
I mean, you’re you’re you’re right on. And I would consider that thirst for learning to be table stakes for anybody looking for any job anywhere. If you don’t have that. You’re a lot of trouble. Yeah. Well,
Greg Owens 52:38
I think there’s certain jobs, you could do that, that appears that way to me. Oh, man, yeah. So this has been wonderful. How can people find out more about you would be LinkedIn be the best place to message you or check in? If they Yeah,
Jeremy Salles 52:56
you can, you can follow me on LinkedIn. I don’t, don’t post a lot. But you’re more than welcome to connect with me and ask questions. And I do respond to people who ask questions on on LinkedIn. You can also just follow PlayStation. See what PlayStation is doing? We’re gonna be having a lot of fun over the next several years. So watch
Greg Owens 53:16
what’s coming out of that, you know, and we talked about this earlier of, you can look at the gaming industry, because you know, that we my nephew plays all these games. He’s like, 11 years old, right? He meets all these friends online, that he’s never met in person, but then there is a desire to actually meet up with him. Maybe he’s having these conversations with my brother and my sister in law about like, hey, so I’ve got these couple of friends and these other states, and I really, you know, and he’s excited about it. Right. And he’s really, you know, at first you think he’s just total introvert. But no, he’s, he’s found his tribe through these games. Right. And it’s, it’s, it’s wonderful to see, right?
Jeremy Salles 54:00
Yeah. Well, even in the the movie came out. It was like, Ready Player One. I don’t know if you saw it is. So it the the under like, one of the themes of that that movie was that people wanted to connect in real life. Yeah. And it was the sort of taboo thing that you weren’t supposed to do. But but it was the the thing that everyone seemed to really want was was that that real life connection?
Greg Owens 54:27
Yeah, it’s so true. That’s so true. Well, thank you so much. It’s been wonderful to have you on the Watching Paint Dry podcast, and have a great, great weekend and wonderful summer coming up.
Jeremy Salles 54:41
Thank you very much. I’m enjoying the time. All right. Thank you.