Facebook會議室太冷

Here is how it goes: a successful woman writes a book about being a successful woman and then other women write angry articles about her and it.

事情通常都是這樣發展的：一名成功女性寫了一本關於女性怎樣獲得成功的書，其他女性則就她本人和她的書撰寫憤怒的評論文章。

So I’ve been duly leafing through Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In trying to find material for my own angry column, only I can’t find anything to feel angry about – or to feel anything about at all. I was about to give up when I stumbled on a fact in an interview the author gave to The Times. It has nothing to do with women or success or leaning in or leaning back or even staying vertical. It’s that Mark Zuckerberg likes to keep the conference room at Facebook at a chilly 15C.

因此我認認真真地翻閱了謝樂爾·桑德伯格(Sheryl Sandberg)的《前傾》(Lean In)一書，試圖從中爲寫作一篇憤怒的專欄文章尋找素材，不過我無法找到任何讓我感到憤怒的內容——甚至連能讓我心有所感的內容都沒有。就在我準備放棄之時，我偶然看到了桑德伯格在接受《泰晤士報》(The Times)採訪時提到的一個情況。此事與女性、成功、前傾、後仰或者保持垂直都無任何關係。而是馬克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)喜歡將Facebook會議室的溫度保持在涼颼颼的攝氏15度。

Now here is something I can really get steamed up about. This single fact hints at all sorts of things about the way we work now. It tells us about the Young Turks of Silicon Valley. It tells us about men and women. It tells us about productivity and the lack of it. But, most fundamentally of all, it raises the question: what is the right temperature to work in? You would think that this was something easy to get right. Yet there is a mysterious law that says offices are invariably the wrong temperature: scorchingly hot in the winter, and arctic in the summer.

現在終於有了一件能讓我真正憤怒起來的事情了。這一簡單事實透露出了與我們當前工作方式有關的各種信息。它告訴了我們有關硅谷少壯派(Young Turks of Silicon Valley)、男人和女人的差異、工作效率高低之別等方面。但最基本的一點在於，它提出了一個問題：適合工作的最佳溫度是多少？你或許會認爲這是一個很容易解決的問題。但根據一條神祕的法則，辦公場所的溫度總是無法避免地令人不快：冬天熱得像在烤火，夏天則冷得像在北極。

Academics from Cornell have researched the matter and concluded that the magic number is 25C.

康奈爾大學(Cornell University)的學者們研究了這一問題，得出以下結論：攝氏25度纔是適合工作的最佳溫度。

They tested staff in an insurance office and found that at this temperature the number of mistakes made was minimised.

他們在一家保險公司的辦公室裏對其員工進行了測驗，發現在攝氏25度的環境下，工作中出現的差錯數量最少。

I find this impossible to believe. The temperature at my desk right now is 24.2C (a man from facilities paid me a visit with a thermometer). That’s a nice heat for watching the telly at home, but is far too cosy for work.

我認爲這一點讓人難以置信。目前我寫字檯前的溫度是攝氏24.2度（一位來自設備廠商的人在拜訪我時送了我一隻溫度計）。這個溫度對於在家看電視來說非常舒適，但對於工作來說則過於溫暖。

It’s true that so far today I have made no mistakes, but that is because I haven’t done any work either. The temperature is saying: relax! Take it easy! Check Twitter!

雖然今天到目前爲止我確實還未犯下任何差錯，但這是因爲我什麼工作也沒有做。這個溫度就好像是在告訴你：放鬆！不用着急！先刷一會兒推特(Twitter)！

The trouble with being too hot at work is that there is limited scope to adjust your clothing. When you are cold you can always put your coat on, whereas I took off my jacket the minute I got in, and would like to do the same with my woollen trousers, only decorum forbids it. Instead, at my elbow I have a little fan supplied by an entrepreneurial colleague who buys them in bulk for ·4 a go at a car boot sale. It is blowing at me coolingly as I write, though this solution comes with considerable cost to my hair: I end the day looking like Barry Manilow.

辦公場所溫度過高所造成的問題是，你在着裝方面的調整空間有限。當你感到冷時你總是可以把大衣穿上，而我則一走進辦公室就把外套脫了，並且還很希望能把我的羊毛褲一起脫掉，只不過着裝禮儀禁止我這麼做。我在身旁擺放了一臺小型電扇，這是一位富有企業家精神的同事供應的，他在一個跳蚤市場上以每臺4英鎊的價格買入了不少。當我寫作時這臺電扇就向我吹來陣陣涼風，不過這一解決措施使我在髮型方面付出了不小的代價——當我結束一天的工作時，看起來活像是巴瑞·曼尼洛(Barry Manilow)。

Cold focuses the mind. I did the best work I’ve ever done in my parents’ unheated thatched cottage when I was revising for my finals, crouched over an electric fan heater wearing about 10 jumpers. When you are that uncomfortable you don’t mess about. Cold is particularly useful in meeting rooms as it eliminates the desire to bang on pointlessly. The best board meeting I’ve attended was in a room where the heating was on the blink and we all put on overcoats and things moved along briskly.

低溫能使人精神集中。我有生以來做事效率最高的一段時間是在父母沒有暖氣的茅草屋裏複習期末考試時；當時我穿着大約10件衣服仍然冷得蜷伏在一臺電熱取暖扇上。當你處在那種不舒服的環境下時，你不會瞎胡鬧。在會議室裏低溫尤其實用，因爲它能使人打消毫無意義的大放厥詞的念頭。我所參加過的最好的一次董事會議是在一個暖氣出了故障的房間裏舉行的，我們都穿上了厚外套，議程推進得格外輕快順利。

Mr Zuckerberg is right about cold, even if 15C is a little extreme (it’s 1C below the legal minimum in the UK). However, his decision to impose discomfort on others is more controversial. In doing this he is exhibiting the very latest in management fashion from San Francisco: what I call dotcom dogmatism. He is second only to Yahoo’s Marrisa Meyer – who recently told all staff to stop loafing about in Starbucks and to come to Yahoo’s offices instead.

扎克伯格正確地認識到了低溫的好處，不過攝氏15度確實有點極端（這比英國的法定最低溫還低了一度）。但更加引人爭議的是，他的決定使其他人被迫處於不適的環境之下。扎克伯格的這一舉動展現出了來自舊金山的最新管理潮流——我將其稱爲是“互聯網教條主義”。他在這方面僅次於雅虎(Yahoo)的梅里莎·梅爾(Marissa Mayer)——梅爾近期要求所有手下員工停止在星巴克(Starbucks)遊蕩，回到雅虎的辦公室上班。

It is as if these companies, having spent years competing to be like cool friends to their employees, have finally realised that chilling – at least metaphorically – doesn’t work. So they’ve gone to the other extreme and it’s: get your asses into the office. And then freeze them off once they get there.

給人的感覺是，這些曾花多年時間爭取成爲員工之友的公司終於明白，光“酷”是沒有用的——這裏的“酷”與溫度無關。因此它們走向了另一個極端：要求員工到辦公室工作，而且員工一到那裏就把他們凍成冰棍。

In opting for arctic meeting rooms Mr Zuckerberg is presenting a dictatorial face not just to staff but to Facebook’s guests. The home team are forewarned and so can be warm in the hoodies favoured by the boss himself, while guests are left shivering and at a disadvantage. I last witnessed this technique decades ago in the office of the late Lord Weinstock, head of GEC, who used to let visitors sit in almost total darkness while he enjoyed a pool of light at his desk. The chill also has implications for the battle between the sexes. Women feel the cold worse than men as more of their blood goes to protecting their organs – a biological difference that shows men and women were never designed to share offices, let alone beds. At 15C Mr Zuckerberg puts himself at a distinct advantage to Ms Sandberg and Facebook’s other women. So now I think I get what “leaning in” is really all about. If women are that cold, they need to huddle together to keep warm.

通過讓會議室保持寒冷，扎克伯格不僅向Facebook的員工，也向來訪的賓客展現出了獨裁者的一面。公司內部人員都已預先得到警告，因此可以穿上扎克伯格自己也非常喜歡的帽衫保暖，而來賓們則被凍得瑟瑟發抖，處於劣勢。我上一次見識到這種手段還是幾十年前在現已去世的溫斯托克勳爵(Lord Weinstock)辦公室。溫斯托克勳爵曾任英國GEC公司首席執行官，他喜歡讓來賓待在近乎完全黑暗的環境中，而他自己則可以沐浴在辦公桌前的燈光下。低溫也涉及性別之爭。女性比男性更不耐寒，因爲她們的血液更多流向保護機體器官——這一生理差異表明男性和女性從來就不適合共享工作空間，更不用說共享一張牀了。在攝氏15度的環境下，扎克伯格使自己處在較桑德伯格以及Facebook的其他女性員工更具優勢的地位。因此我覺得自己領會到了“前傾”的真正含義——如果女性感到寒冷，她們需要擠在一起保持溫暖。