How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle • Hacker News Board

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle

#51

Post by city41 » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 9:38 PM UTC

sbuttgereit wrote: post #44

city41 wrote: post #19

I've worked at companies that had completely open spaces, individual offices for everyone, and cubicles. By far my favorite is cubicles. I hate open offices and will actively avoid them. They are noisy, distracting, stressful, and not conducive to productivity. They are conducive to collaboration though. Offices are stifling. They put too many barriers between talking to people, and I found everyone tended to rely on…

I have seen very workable open office spaces. The key seems to be room size. I consulted to Gateway Computer Company back in the 90's and I would work in their Poway, CA offices which were open office format. It actually wasn't bad there because the space was essentially a large warehouse with very high ceilings (more than a couple of storeys high as I recall). The nearby sound and noise wasn't directly reflected bac…

I think personality has a lot to do with it. At the open office job I had, most people loved it.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle

#52

Post by alkonaut » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 10:31 PM UTC

I can completely relate to the first two points: I shifted from my own office to working remotely (same job, same colleagues, which makes it a nice experiment) and I find it no easier to do the actual job ,although it's a lot easier to fit 8h of work into the day without the commute.

I do miss physical meetings. Not "meetings" but discussions about work problems happening at the coffee machine. You know how you describe a problem to a coworker at the coffee machine and often figure it out as you talk, before you even get an answer? That doesn't happen to me at home. I can explain to a rubber duck but it just stares at me and the insight never comes (neither from it nor from me).

I also feel "invisible" at times, which I'm sure is partly just perceived, but that doesn't help.

I think the ideal setup is working from home 3-4 days a week, and commuting 1-2 days. As for the office itself, I think open/cube/office is mostly a matter of taste. Offices with doors that open to a shared space is great, did that a long time with good results. If you commute 1 day a week just to get social, open plan is fine (or even better because more social).

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle

#53

Post by webosdude » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 10:43 PM UTC

Grishnakh wrote: post #48

stronglikedan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like my office, and I don't feel that it adds any additional barriers over a cubicle, unless I want it to. I like initiating communication with chat or email, with the option of an impromptu face-to-face meeting if necessary, or the option of being able to defer that meeting when I need to focus. I keep my door open when I don't mind a visitor (like a cubicle), but I can close my door to indicate to people that I a…

>I didn't have that choice with a cubicle, because anyone could walk up at any time and cause me to shift that focus. This isn't true of all cubicles. I used to work at a very large microprocessor manufacturer and before they "compressed" the cubicles, the cubicles were 9x9. Someone had to physically come into your cubicle to get your attention (or pop their head over the wall, but only 6-foot+ people could do that).…

This reminds me of Intel where I worked for sometime :)

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle

#54

Post by Grishnakh » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 10:48 PM UTC

Grishnakh wrote: post #27

forrestbrazeal wrote: post #5

I also think the type of cube makes a difference. I currently work in a cube with high walls (at least 12 inches higher than my head when seated) and somehow the psychological effect of that is much better than a low cube where you're staring in someone else's face all the time.

The "low cube" you describe, to me, doesn't even qualify as a "cubicle". That's an "open work area" as far as I'm concerned.

I'd like to add to this that I had a setup like this not long ago, and it was awful. I got stuck in a "cubicle" with low walls right next to a busy corridor, so I had to look at every single person who walked by me in the face (in one direction at least). It was extremely distracting and annoying.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle

#55

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 10:56 PM UTC

stronglikedan wrote: post #37

city41 wrote: post #19

I've worked at companies that had completely open spaces, individual offices for everyone, and cubicles. By far my favorite is cubicles. I hate open offices and will actively avoid them. They are noisy, distracting, stressful, and not conducive to productivity. They are conducive to collaboration though. Offices are stifling. They put too many barriers between talking to people, and I found everyone tended to rely on…

I like my office, and I don't feel that it adds any additional barriers over a cubicle, unless I want it to. I like initiating communication with chat or email, with the option of an impromptu face-to-face meeting if necessary, or the option of being able to defer that meeting when I need to focus. I keep my door open when I don't mind a visitor (like a cubicle), but I can close my door to indicate to people that I a…

[deleted]

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle

#56

Post by kazagistar » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 10:57 PM UTC

sosborn wrote: post #45

cuddlybacon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who respect themselves.

That's not really fair. Some people enjoy working like that, some people find that the salary they are making (and enjoying) require those kind of hours, etc.

> (and enjoying)

... when?

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle

#57

Post by famousactress » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 11:03 PM UTC

“There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That’s crazy.” -Steve Jobs

The amount of evidence that exists contrary to this statement is staggering. Don't know who this Steve guy is, but he seems like a real dip-shit.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle

#58

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 11:04 PM UTC

carlivar wrote: post #34

Chathamization wrote: post #31

In an earlier job, we moved from a cubicle office to an open office. The open office was supposedly there to facilitate group work. But we were soon told that since everyone could hear and see what we were doing, we were no longer supposed to meet and talk with colleagues at our desks as we had been doing (too distracting for others).

Companies rarely say what it really is: cost savings. Not only can you cram more people per square foot, cubicle walls cost money.

In fact it's saving X from area A, where increasing the costs of area B by Y, where X is orders of magnitude smaller than Y, but the manager of B can still claim a bonus for the savings.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle

#59

Post by shostack » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 11:13 PM UTC

kdamken wrote: post #33

kfk wrote: post #21

The thing is: who leaves at 5pm? It's 8:15pm and I am still here (OK, I work in an office, but still). I think working from home you can get free time simply being more productive. I know I would do that. At work, you have to be there, even just to wait that your boss is finished with task A, so that he can finalize task B with you. Then you have the commute, mine is 90 minutes per day. Bottom line: I don't have time…

Did you get in at noon? Why would you work somewhere that requires those kinds of hours? With a 90 minute commute on top of that? Not trying to be condescending, it's just that those kinds of things would be a huge motivator for me to find another job. I found a place 15 minutes from my house, and everyone in the office is gone by 5, sometimes earlier on Fridays. I hope you find a better job soon.

Not everyone has a great work situation.

The general HN sentiment is one of finite work hours, great work conditions and great pay or people quit. In an ideal world, I love that notion. Many people here are fortunate enough to have the leverage granted by the current job market to insist on those things (or quit and walk into another better paying job the next day).

Unfortunately, for those that are not engineers, or don't live somewhere with incredibly high job demand, many people take what they can get and suffer. The alternative is often losing your mortgage, not being able to pay for college, etc.

There may also be other factors keeping them at that employer (particularly if they are in a rural area and there literally aren't any other options closer).

So as much as I agree with you in spirit, the pragmatic part of me is wondering what will happen to people with this attitude when the economy shifts, and suddenly the job market isn't so hot anymore.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle

#60

Post by brazzledazzle » Tue, Jan 05, 2016, 11:54 PM UTC

bobby_9x wrote: post #20

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #15

The emphasis on "face time" is just laziness. Laziness is, however, inevitable. I say that; I've done more good with a five minute hallway discussion ( in terms of heading off an "oh heck no" idea ) than any other technique. but the entire "we need to socialize in order to be successful" thing is sorta mind-numbing. The word that comes after "social" is "engineering."

Communication without face-to-face time is still difficult in many ways. A couple of years ago I worked remotely as a software developer. The boss would only give me tasks through email/JIRA and we would have standup meetings daily. Almost every time I was assigned a task, I would be given an extremely vague description. Now normally, this is what we need to deal with as developers, but I could barely get an idea of…

I've dealt with something similar but the manager in that case was a "hunt and peck" typist. Once I saw him typing it all came together. I wouldn't like typing either if it took me several seconds per letter.