71–80 of 83 posts
This is my office [1]. Pardon the crappy photo quality. All employees at SmugMug get a space like this with a door. They aren't totally enclosed offices per se...the front wall is a metal mesh covered with giant gorgeous photos on the outside, and they stop about 1' short of the ceiling, so they might not meet your headphone requirement, but in general things are quiet. One of my walls has whiteboard paint covering i…
This is my office [1]. Pardon the crappy photo quality. All employees at SmugMug get a space like this with a door. They aren't totally enclosed offices per se...the front wall is a metal mesh covered with giant gorgeous photos on the outside, and they stop about 1' short of the ceiling, so they might not meet your headphone requirement, but in general things are quiet. One of my walls has whiteboard paint covering i…
Where are you located? I don't see your address anywhere on your site.
This is my office [1]. Pardon the crappy photo quality. All employees at SmugMug get a space like this with a door. They aren't totally enclosed offices per se...the front wall is a metal mesh covered with giant gorgeous photos on the outside, and they stop about 1' short of the ceiling, so they might not meet your headphone requirement, but in general things are quiet. One of my walls has whiteboard paint covering i…
Where are you located? I don't see your address anywhere on your site.
Anyway, we're a quick walk from the Mountain View Caltrain stop on Evelyn[1]. We also have a parking lot and bike storage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i think i've heard of the ideal of commons + private/quiet space too, if i recall that option is mentioned in peopleware too. (anecdote: i am currently sitting in low cubicles in the middle of a huge open plan space, with a couple of neighbouring developers, we're surrounded by about two rings of people whose jobs involve talking all day. this is okay for days that descend into endless meetings / firefighting, but pr…
My company has pretty much everyone in "pods". It's a suite per team with a conference room off the hallway, surrounded by offices with doors around the room. There's a TV in each pod with an HDMI cable in conference table for presentations, meetings, or pair/group hack sessions. The doors unfortunately aren't the best at blocking loud conversations, but it's still better than trying to concentrate in a loud cubicle…
I've worked in places where teams have created "war rooms", basically a commandeered conference room where everyone hunkers down around the table and gets the project done (this was when I worked on a mechanical device and we needed to mess with parts and tools).
The benefit of the pod to me is that you can make the closable offices way smaller (desk, small table, couple of chairs) when the doors are open the offices become part of the larger project room. The entire project room can also be closed off for noise, privacy, meetings, stealth, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Microsoft in 1990s was one of the few companies that deliberately provided private offices with a door for every programmer. However, that ideology later morphed into putting 2 or more developers to share one room and then relocating a large group onto open floor plans[1]. It shows that even a company that originally prided itself on private offices eventually deviated towards open offices. (They still have lots of…
>but it's hardly a glowing recommendation for open offices. To be clear, I'm not "recommending" open offices. Microsoft still has private offices and I believe it's still the majority configuration of their Seattle campus (MS employee can chime in to confirm this.) >We're talking about private offices for engineers who are on the maker schedule, where interruptions are harmful. The Intel programmers don't have privat…
Why is wearing headphones not an option? Just curious.
I'm glad we have lots of small meeting rooms around. When the vibe is energetic or distracting (e.g. Party/large gathering) and I need to focus I grab a room.
Sometimes the rooms are booked but often that means the open-plan area is less noisy.
Also I wfh 1-2 days a week as needed.
Maybe I am just imaging it, but for me, background music interferes with deep sustained thinking. I don't understand how people think playing music in the background at home or at work does anything positive for intellectual activity. Open offices have a similar effect on me, and not infrequently I've been exposed to both at the same time.
A fun fact is that Jon von Neumann felt otherwise. From Wikipedia: Von Neumann did some of his best work in noisy, chaotic environments, and once admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. He never used it, preferring the couple's living room with its television playing loudly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any reason why you recommend against active noise cancellation? My Bose QC25s are still my favorite purchase, combining both over-ear passive cancellation & active noise cancellation. I even use them when working solo, and was so freaked out when one pair broke that I bought a second backup pair - Bose replaced the broken pair free of charge though. [I realize the OP mentioned that headphones were not an option thoug…
I personally find active headphones uncomfortable. Large studio headphones are designed for long term use.
Maybe I am just imaging it, but for me, background music interferes with deep sustained thinking. I don't understand how people think playing music in the background at home or at work does anything positive for intellectual activity. Open offices have a similar effect on me, and not infrequently I've been exposed to both at the same time.
A fun fact is that Jon von Neumann felt otherwise. From Wikipedia: Von Neumann did some of his best work in noisy, chaotic environments, and once admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. He never used it, preferring the couple's living room with its television playing loudly.
Why is wearing headphones not an option? Just curious.
Headphones and earbuds are very painful for me after like 10 minutes. This is at a very low volume - there's just something about putting sound that close to my ear that hurts.