In fairness, it might actually be. They have a lot of properties, yes, but is it so many that that can't just send a particularly skilled human around to design them?

Binpacking is np-hard but humans still do a very good job of playing Tetris. It is hard to imagine getting a positive return on automating something they (in the long run) will do a few times a year.

If I understand their business correctly, way more than a few times a year. I think they have problems of the kind

”there’s a team of 5 Monday to Wednesday, one of 7 Tuesday that also have a meeting room, one of 4 Tuesday to Friday, one of 3 for the next three weeks, one of 2 that have to sit side-by-side, …. Figure out who to place where, minimizing the times we have to tell customers to move desk, maximizing the ‘cohesion’ of desks assigned to each group. Oh, and do this knowing that the problem may change at any time”

And all of that, hopefully, in a building with a high occupancy rate, all the time.

> It is hard to imagine getting a positive return on automating something they (in the long run) will do a few times a year.

That's totally fair. I think they actually do some other types of more mundane optimization that are geared towards managing the properties. I think a number of the engineers also work on the learning platform for their education services.