Jeremy Salles is the Senior Director of Facilities and Real Estate at Sony Interactive Entertainment, known to most as the company responsible for the PlayStation brand. Having previously worked in facilities management for UPS, eBay, and Cisco, he’s honed his skills in workplace services, property management, employee experience, and more. As a Bay Area local, Jeremy’s job has become increasingly unique as tech companies shift course to accommodate their newly-remote workforces.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- The perks and pitfalls of working in Seattle versus the Bay Area
- Jeremy Salles on remote workers challenging in-office norms and demanding better work-life balance
- Which jobs can and can’t be done remotely?
- Living in the transitional time when work-from-home becomes mainstream
- Greg Owens and Jeremy talk about the value of camaraderie and the struggle to work virtually with those you haven’t met in person
- Jeremy explains what tech companies should do with their excess office space
- Weighing the pros and cons of returning to working in-office
- Jeremy on starting as an engineer and accidentally becoming a facility manager
- Greg and Jeremy discuss the importance of art and beauty, even in technical fields
- How to break into the thankless industry of facilities management
- The universal value of having a thirst for learning
- How digital connections can ultimately lead to physical connections
In this episode…
What are tech companies planning to do with their properties in the aftermath of the pandemic-driven shift to remote work? Can and should higher-ups convince happy and comfortable remote workers to return to the office? Is workplace camaraderie soon to be a thing of the past?
Greg Owens starts a conversation on these topics and more with Jeremy Salles, Senior Director of Facilities and Real Estate at Sony Interactive Entertainment — better known as the providers of PlayStation. With a vast portfolio of facilities management experience spanning prestigious companies like Cisco and eBay combined with a steadfast heart for helping others, Jeremy weighs the pros and cons of remote workforces in tech.
In this episode of Watching Paint Dry, host Greg Owens is joined by Jeremy Salles, Senior Director of Facilities and Real Estate at Sony Interactive Entertainment. With Sony PlayStation locations worldwide, Jeremy travels often and offers unique insight into how facilities management trickles down to affect all workers in the tech field. He explains how remote work has changed the industry for better and worse, the role of camaraderie in a healthy workplace, and how you can get into his line of work.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Jeremy Salles on LinkedIn
- PlayStation
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Greg Owens 0:02
Hello everyone, this is Greg Owens with the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we are having these conversations with facilities managers, property owners, building owners, and the entire industry that supports this isn’t what is it? $3 trillion industry. I think that’s $3 trillion worldwide. In the facilities management industry, this podcast like all the podcasts here, Watching Paint Dry are sponsored by my company McCarthy painting. This company was started by my Uncle Fred McCarthy in 1969. Here in Orange County, and we do residential and commercial painting throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. We’ve been doing projects for Zooks and spin that’s the little electric cycles that are VC running around the city and that kind of stuff. It’s fun to be in those buildings. We’re also doing a bunch of work for a couple of other autonomous vehicle companies that want to remain autonomous which is interesting also, on our podcast today is Jeremy Salles, the Senior Director for facilities and real estate at Sony Interactive Entertainment, which my nephews would be really excited to know more about. They’re definitely big Sony fans. Welcome to the podcast.
Jeremy Salles 1:34
Yeah, thank you for having me on. Appreciate it. Sony Interactive Entertainment, more commonly known to people, I think, as Sony PlayStation so yeah, fun place to be.
Greg Owens 1:46
Isn’t Sony, like creating an entire like world online and, and competing. They were there before like Meta right? In a lot of ways.
Jeremy Salles 1:57
I think there’s a lot of interest in that space, in product development, and the next world or the next generation of gaming is going to take up a lot of that space in the virtual world.
Greg Owens 2:07
Yeah. And how have you been? It’s interesting times down. It feels good, because we’re into spring and the weather’s been amazing here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m assuming you’re in San Francisco Bay Area.
Jeremy Salles 2:21
I am yeah, I’m here in our San Mateo headquarter office. All right.
Greg Owens 2:25
Yeah. And how and how are you doing? Personally? Your family? Everybody is good.
Jeremy Salles 2:31
Thanks for asking. Yeah, I’m doing really well. So I have married to have a half to two children got a three year old boy and a 15 month old girl. So we have our hands full at home. But everybody is happy and healthy. I’m enjoying my time here at PlayStation and it is a wonderful time of year. I can tell you I was just in Seattle yesterday and you know, caught it on one of the days that make you want to move to Seattle, then they kind of forget that the rest of the days of the year. Not exactly like that. But it was beautiful, partly cloudy, great weather walking around touring buildings. just reminded me of one of the many reasons why I love doing this job is you get to get out and actually look at property and look at things and think about how it could work for the business that might be using it. It’s it’s fun.
Greg Owens 3:24
Yeah, that’s that’s, that’s awesome. A Seattle has a way of hooking you like that, right? Like you show up there for one of those unbelievable amazing days you start thinking about this is pretty nice. And it’s cheaper than the Bay Area. And it’s absolutely beautiful. But then you find if you’re there for a little bit longer, it rains like 400 days a year or
Jeremy Salles 3:46
Something like that. Yes.
Greg Owens 3:47
I really got 400 inches of yours or that
Jeremy Salles 3:51
they flew you sounded like someone from Seattle there they would probably 20 Yeah, rains 400 days a year here.
Greg Owens 3:56
Right? It just, it’s just dealing with it never ends. Right. But it’s a beautiful, it is a beautiful city. And it’s amazing. I do. Um, and you know, I was just talking to some friends from Seattle though. And they still how was the downtown area, I heard that they can still be a bit rough in some areas like San Francisco and other major cities.
Jeremy Salles 4:16
It can be. But we walked about five miles yesterday through the west end of Seattle, on down towards the the stadium where the Seahawks play and mariners play all along the waterfront side, which is it’s going to be a stunning development over the next five to seven years. There used to be a double decker freeway there that is then taken down and when it once has been taken down all of those buildings that were up against the waterfront, but on the east side of that freeway, now all of a sudden have views
Greg Owens 4:54
and the Embarcadero right like that. Yeah. And so the double decker before the earthquake that took that down.
Jeremy Salles 5:03
Exact same circumstance, it’s it’s enhancing the property values of all of those buildings and making that area much more attractive in the project that Seattle are doing. We’ll end up with a beautifully landscaped area leading down to the waterfront space. And so it’s it’s an exciting time to be up in that area. You know, we feel very safe walking around. I’ve been to San Francisco recently. And I will tell you, my personal opinion is that Seattle’s in better shape in terms of crime and people you might not want to meet on the street when you’re walking around. It was it was a good time.
Greg Owens 5:44
Yeah, it’s gotten sad. In San Francisco, we we’ve had two bands stolen in like the last 30 days, right. And I’ve been painting since I was 16 years old and two vans stolen in 30 years. Well said in the last 30 days that we were having to like, put kill switches on our vans put cages around the catalytic converters like weld cages on, because it’s just so painful right now, especially with the supply chain and everything. We can’t even like replace those vans with new vans as easily as we once could. It’s it’s nearly like it’s incredibly challenging to find anything worth worth the money right now. And, yes, we’re going through all of this extra sort of work, because the crimes escalated. Yeah.
Jeremy Salles 6:38
And a good situation in San Francisco right now.
Greg Owens 6:41
Right? Right. And I know for me, like, even like, if I have my back anything, I don’t leave anything in the car, right? I’d rather leave it open and let them go rubbish through it, then it’d be smashed in. And then we have to get the windows fixed and, you know, fix other things, right? Where’s where we’re where do you guys have buildings around the Bay Area? Or is it is it focused mainly in the Silicon Valley area?
Jeremy Salles 7:08
Well, PlayStation has 56 locations worldwide. So we’re in the we have four regions where most companies think operate in three regions, we have an Americas region, a European region, and Asia PAC region. And then a Japan is specifically to Japan, I think there’s just a lot of activity being Sony, being Japanese company, a lot of uniqueness to the Japan region, which distinguishes it even from the Asia PAC region. Within the majority of the square footage, majority of the headcount is actually right here in California. We have our headquarters here in San Mateo, major office space up in San Francisco, major offices down in the San Diego region, and then a lot of our studios are in the LA area. And then we have in studios up in Seattle, obviously. And studios and sales offices distributed in and around the rest of the globe.
Greg Owens 8:13
Right. Right. And and what’s your your primary role is facility side or real estate in general? Like finding and leasing out buildings and that side?
Jeremy Salles 8:25
Yes, yeah. Well yeah, so I am the head of real estate and facilities for various site and site I do manage the all of the the real estate strategy side, the design and construction side. And then facility operations and all of the sourcing and governance internally to move, work from one group to another, get approvals done, get execution going. So I’m overseeing all of it. My remit within the the s ie portfolio is for the Americas, right now to have a counterpart operating in Europe. And we don’t have anybody operating in Asia. And Japan, as I mentioned is completely unique, so we don’t even need to go into
Greg Owens 9:12
that. Yeah, Japan is unique. Have you been to Japan?
Jeremy Salles 9:18
I have not it’s on my list.
Greg Owens 9:20
Oh, damn. Yeah, I’ve done I do a martial art that brings me over there. It hasn’t brought me over there a long time but it’s a it’s definitely unique. Kendo? I do Aikido Aikido it’s a like it’s a little bit like jiu jitsu and Judo kind of base. Yeah. The what have you noticed? Like, change it why like, well, one is like, are you guys back into your office full time at your facilities? Because I noticed like, we’re still a lot of buildings we’re doing painting for they’re still at like 20% right like and very, very sort of schedules coming and going right now actually, nobody really knows what the schedule of coming and going is. But but the buildings are at 20%.
Jeremy Salles 10:10
We started back on a voluntary basis in middle of January, with no more bad restrictions anybody could come in, we do have a requirement around vaccination for our employees, we’re trying to keep ourselves from getting into a situation that no one wants to be in with becoming a super spreader or becoming the place where somebody has a very, very bad reaction to the virus. And then it’s tied back to well, they got it when they were in a plane, the PlayStation office. But we’ve been back since January, voluntarily. And our occupancy has been, you know, right around or attendance has been right around 10 to 15%. Generally speaking, we are launching what we’re calling flex modes, April 11. So coming up here soon. And within that flex modes paradigm, we’re just trying to develop a common language that employees can use to explain to one another and set expert expectations with one another for how and when they might be leveraging office space. So it’s and I think a lot of companies are doing similar things, if they’ve got a they’ve got a remote archetype, they’ve got a I’m going to be here all the time archetype. They’ve got a, you know, I’m, I’m only going to be here when I’m collaborating with others. And then there’s, you know, somewhere in between that, you know, on site to collaborate and on site full time, where, you know, they may be dropping in a day or two a week, or a few days a month, more than just collaboration, but less than than a full time person. So we launched that April 11, anticipating an uptick in attendance across the board when we do launch that. But look, it’s it’s a strange time to be in this industry, because everything has changed over the last two years, with how employees interact with their workspace. And I don’t think anybody really knows what it’s going to look like going forward. And personally, I think it’s going to take 18 months, maybe even two years, for us to understand how behaviors have changed on a permanent basis. I think there’ll be a lot of ups and downs ebbs and flows during over the next year and a half, two years, while people navigate what their future interaction is going to look like. You see a lot of people changing, changing companies changing jobs, looking for the right fit. Many people, you know, moved out of metropolitan areas during the last two years, and now they’re looking for employers that offer more remote work or more flexible. So I do think that the times have changed from where from when employers could say to employees, I need you in the office five days a week, just because, right? I think now, employees are going to have more courage to challenge those norms. And just and ask the very simple questions to their employer like, Well, why? And what’s the reason that I need to be here five days a week, or maybe even six days a week? What would it may be? And so employers are going to have to be prepared to articulate the why. And I think there are very good Y’s out there to be talked about, but in general, and I’ve told this to my team is my team has asked me, you know, what do you expect of us when when we get back and, and I’ve told them, I’m not going to prescribe what your work week looks like, I’m going to treat you the way that I would want to be treated. I’m not going to micromanage this process for us. We’re all learning what it looks like for us to interact with the workplace again. And I think that we’re all professional and adult enough to know when the work that we need to do requires us to be on site. And when it doesn’t. That’s very,
Greg Owens 14:28
that’s very well said and very practical, right? Because there is so much unknown still. Right. And yeah, they’ll have new behaviors in there sort of like work life balance, or make decisions like I’m not going to commute two hours a day to the office, no reason for it, and to go to like five meetings that I could have done over zoom. Right. Yeah, really. That’s really very, you know, and then also like looking at those definitely, I think cases where They have to come into the office, right. And I think you expect some of your people like in facilities that they sort of have to have eyes on a situation at that time, right and need to go in. But as long as they take care of it, you’re not. You’re not concerned how they get the work done.
Jeremy Salles 15:15
That’s right. And I’m more interested in the product, I’m more interested in the the quality and timeliness of our product delivery, which is its workplace services, right. So it’s the service delivery model. And you said it, there are some people, some roles within our industry, whose work product will require them to be on site five days a week inherently in what they do. On site technicians cannot turn a wrench remotely, they actually have to be in the office to do that stuff.
Greg Owens 15:50
Yet.
Jeremy Salles 15:53
There’s no reason why one of the more like knowledge worker type of positions, whose job is to maybe process sets of data and perform analysis on it to give us an idea of what our utilization is looking like, or potentially work on CAD drawings, or look at floor plans and interact with a few customers, there’s not as much of a requirement there. I I’m coming into the office a couple of days a week, I clearly I manage more than just the one office that I come into. But I like to be in the office, I like to see my team here I like to interact with people in person, that’s part of what energizes me and funnels more creative energy into what I’m doing next. So that that’s but that’s a personal choice that I’m making, I could probably do this job. Nearly 100% remotely given the, the wide array the wide range of portfolio that I manage. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be going to sites once in a while to check in on, you know, the quality of the service delivery.
Greg Owens 17:06
Yeah, and, you know, I’m very, very similar now that way, I mean, I actually enjoy going and visiting sites, right, like it, I like seeing it, feeling it, figuring it out. Right. And, and having that experience or sort of feeling. We did some zoom things where we would walk through zoom and things like that, which we can do, but it’s not as fulfilling, right, I get energized from and I actually get energized from like the drive to the facility, you know, because I do some of my best thinking in the car. And so, and having sort of that things are moving and moving around. Whereas if I’m just here at the house, it’s not as it’s not as fulfilling, but then I but I understand that like because there’s other people we haven’t met our offices that can work from home and be there all day long and are enjoying this experience.
Jeremy Salles 17:58
Yeah, I’m, I think the jury’s still out on what the long term impact is, even for individuals who are lean more introverted and have a preference for for staying home or for for doing their work solo i I’ll be interested to see what the data looks like in a couple of years, three, three, even five years later on employee morale. mobility within the company, promote ability within the company. And that’s not to say that, you know, that I think he should be on site all the time, in order to be promoted, I just think that there is no substitute for face to face interaction, no matter how good the technology gets. And there’s some relationship building that lacks something, some some substantive thing, when it’s done purely over a screen. So I agree with you, there’s something energizing there for me, I lean a little bit extroverted. So that, that works for me. And I want to add to I did take for granted the time in the car, or the the time traveling home at the end of the day, or the time traveling to work the end of the day that I did a lot of thinking during that time. And at the end of the day, a lot of decompressing during that time. And so for the you know, a couple of years that we were forced to be in our homes. It was this, you know, you end of the workday and you come right inside. And there’s no there’s no transition period. And for a while I was getting very frustrated and not, not not being the best husband best father that I that I thought I couldn’t be in that period of time and it. It sort of dawned on me for a moment that I just needed to take 15-20 minutes at the end of my day actually plug it into my calendar and, and decompress from the work before making the transition to home. It’s something I could completely taken for granted that was happening organically in the, in the transportation from work to home or home to work. Yeah, for me,
Greg Owens 20:18
I don’t think there’s enough studies done on that, like on this the transition of between skill sets even right, because like you’re talking about two different skill sets, you’re in sort of a mind of getting work done to then being a partner and a family member. Right. And that’s a different skill set. And there needs to I know that like, we have project vendors or salespeople we also have, they also do in field work, and I’ve known this for a very long time, it’s a super hard thing to do is go and do like, three or four interactions with people and, and be doing project management and talking and talking through a project and then actually transitioning to field work and doing physical labor. Right. And with that, it’s complex. And then it takes like 45 minutes to get your brain into that it’s going to be, you know, people say, Well, why why isn’t this project getting done faster? Like, they’re just, you know, why isn’t why is there a slowness here? And it’s like, well, they need to transition for doing other things all day, and then they came to this project.
Jeremy Salles 21:27
I do think there’s more that needs to be studied there. And I don’t know if we’ll have the time to study it. But I think it’s a really fascinating time to be in this industry. And I am looking forward, you know, 10-20 years from now, I do think that people will be writing papers about this time and what it did. And then
Greg Owens 21:50
interesting, right, like a whole bunch of different studies will come out about what it did psychologically, mentally by like, you know, which companies succeeded through this right, like really flourished and which companies didn’t, right, and the numbers will show that.
Jeremy Salles 22:08
I mean, similar to, you know, the digital transformation that the internet brought on, right. I mean, it’s there were some companies that adapted and some that that didn’t. The whole the classic Blockbuster Netflix, right. Sears Amazon, I mean, Sears was Amazon, before Amazon, it was just done through a catalog, right? You can order just about anything through a Sears catalog. And if you go back and look at it, really, they would have just put that online, they probably would have done very well. So yet, I do think this is a pivotal moment in time. And I’ve used that to encourage team members who have been discouraged during this time to remind them that you’re living in a moment in history that is going to be talked about for for for a good chunk of time. And you get to live through it. And so while it’s difficult to no one says that it’s going to be easy, have some perspective that you’re getting first hand experience that readers Two decades later are going to be intrigued about and and maybe even interested to have lived in that to a degree, maybe minus all the scariness of potentially dying from from a deadly disease, or nuclear war. Yeah, then there’s that. But so I do think that there’s something else to be said about this whole dynamic of work being done remotely versus work being done in the office. And it’s more from an enterprise angle. But business leaders that I’ve been talking to have been saying similar things, they’re the trade offs seem to be, you know, efficiency going up in the work from home environment where predefined tasks are done very well. On time, even early collaboration on predefined tasks hasn’t suffered a whole lot. They people have been able to, for the most part, get their product releases out if you’re on the software side, get get your stuff built if you’re on the hardware side, in a in a virtual or hybrid type of environment. But the trade off has been that a lot of us have been running on relational fumes, if you will, or you know a reservoir of relational rapport with colleagues. It’s it’s easier to go into the pandemic and spend 18 months 24 months working virtually with someone with whom you’ve worked in person for a good amount of time before you got there. It’s a lot harder to do that with someone that you’re starting virtually with and continuing virtually with because you’re missing some of the substance that builds a relationship would you know we were talking about earlier there just being no substitute for that person to person interaction in real physical space. But that that trade off also exists when it comes to spontaneous creativity in the workplace where work that would have mattered infested itself because of an organic collision that happens in the office. Because, you know, Susie runs into Stephanie, and they get to talking about a project that they’re doing. And all of a sudden, here comes, here comes Sam walking up and hearing it and and Sam’s working on something that is relevant to what Susie and Stephanie are working on analysis, and they’ve got this new project that is spun up. That doesn’t happen in the virtual hybrid world. Right. And that’s been missing from the enterprise for the past two years. And so one of the one of the questions that I have coming out is, you know, how will what will creativity look like over the next three to five years from companies that we’re used to seeing just sort of accelerate in this new technology space? And is it going to be there? Or is there going to be a huge catch up, that’s going to have to happen, because we haven’t had that organic interaction that spun up this sort of organic creativity and manifested this work that it wasn’t predefined work wasn’t even on anybody’s radar that the company should be doing this work. But it just so happened that during an organic collision, this thing showed up and became relevant. And now it became something and now it’s going to happen. Yeah, that’s, that’s an interesting trade off in the whole work from home work in the office paradigm conversation.