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Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

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Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#121

Post by r_smart »

schiang wrote: post #34
caleblloyd wrote: post #27

I worked for a year at IBM's RTP campus. Everyone had their own dimly lit cube with 5-foot walls, no natural daylight, and white noise playing over speakers to drown out conversation. The depressing undertone of the office was part of what pushed me to quit. My team at my present job works in an open setting with 8 people in the room and windows with natural daylight. It's quiet enough to focus but gives us the oppor…

Team sized rooms are definitely the way to go. You can avoid conversation from other teams that you don't care about. When there is a conversation in the room, it's probably related to what you're doing so it's not necessarily distracting you. I worked in a room with just my team and it worked out great. We were able to have discussions and draw stuff on white boards on the wall without distracting anyone else. It al…

>When there is a conversation in the room, it's probably related to what you're doing so it's not necessarily distracting you.

My rebuttal to this point is the amount of time my previous co-workers would spend discussing lawn care strategies.

Overall though, I agree with you. Team sized rooms are a livable compromise, and have some nice upsides while tamping down the downsides of a fully open office.

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#122

Post by redwards510 »

rdtsc wrote: post #57
caleblloyd wrote: post #27

I worked for a year at IBM's RTP campus. Everyone had their own dimly lit cube with 5-foot walls, no natural daylight, and white noise playing over speakers to drown out conversation. The depressing undertone of the office was part of what pushed me to quit. My team at my present job works in an open setting with 8 people in the room and windows with natural daylight. It's quiet enough to focus but gives us the oppor…

Heh. Except for no natural light, the 5-foot walls with white noise to drown out conversation actually doesn't seem bad.

Agreed! Our space has 3ft high cube walls and you hear every single conversation everyone has. It's incredibly distracting and I can no longer just throw headphones on to mask it. Now I find too much music distracting too.

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#123

Post by mightykan »

United857 wrote: post #59

(Disclosure: FB employee) Most of the problems about overhearing conversations, etc, can be dealt with by a nice pair of headphones. Here, it's universally accepted as the 'do not disturb' signal.

This is absolutely not a solution if you have tinnitus or a hearing damage or both.

Also this is an insane workaround. Think about what you’re suggesting: the environment that you’re working in, the place where you go to, intentionally, to focus and concentrate, is so filled with undesired and irrelevant noise, that in order to get your work done, you need to tune it out with headphones. How does that make sense?

These companies are constantly in search of the smartest people and yet they think they can get away with such obviously illogical lines. They have people who are best at identifying and fixing corner cases in very complex systems and yet they want these employees to ignore this completely illogical line of thinking? This is insulting and annoying.

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#124

Post by mizchief2 »

United857 wrote: post #59

(Disclosure: FB employee) Most of the problems about overhearing conversations, etc, can be dealt with by a nice pair of headphones. Here, it's universally accepted as the 'do not disturb' signal.

You would think. For me it seems every time I put them on some asshole wanders up and starts talking to me as if I can hear a single word they are saying.

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#125

Post by new_hackers »

ptomato wrote: post #103
thurn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer open offices. You get a pretty significant echo chamber effect on articles like this because people who don't like it turn out to comment. Personally, I have no difficulty with noise (I prefer working in coffee shops to at home), and being able to easily start a design discussion with 4 or 5 engineers when necessary is extremely valuable. I totally get why some people don't like it though.

> easily start a design discussion with 4 or 5 engineers or, rephrased, the ability to destroy 3 man-hours of productivity on a whim.

Hey, you guys check out that new restaurant down the street? Is it any good?

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#126

Post by bduerst »

jrockway wrote: post #105
bduerst wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The philosopher Michel Foucault actually cites the Panopticon alongside school, military, papal, and other work power structures as being efficient in human discipline. It arguably worked well for prison power structure too with regards to rehabilitation, until gang infiltration in the late 1960's changed the power status quo.

Is the idea to figure out who's not working and then Eliminate Them? Because I can do that without ever seeing a person in person.

>Is the idea to figure out who's not working and then Eliminate Them?

Not at all - Foucault looked at discipline in the sense of humans being molded to become skilled and efficient at work - observing everything from monks to boarding schools in an effort to analyze power structures for discipline.

With panopticon, the power model is the all seeing eye, which is necessary to scale to so many prison inmates. With the open office structure, the power structure is more with your work peers, which is more similar to the group/tribal type of power structure.

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#128

Post by new_hackers »

cousin_it wrote: post #48
fsloth wrote: post #9

Is there anyone here who likes open offices more than a floorplan divised into smaller rooms? I ask because I've worked in an open office setting as a developer for years (the place is otherwise nice) and thoroughly despise it as a workspace. Yet some people don't seem to mind it. I don't mind serendipity. The problem is I serendiptously overhear everyones discussion which is incredibly disruptive for deep work. Fact…

I'm a developer who recently moved from a large open space to a small quiet room with just a handful of people. To me it feels like a big downgrade. I loved the constant chatter in the open space, and I was much more aware of what the whole team is concerned with. I felt that it was very important for setting my work priorities right. Meetings and emails are much more restrictive than just sitting next to everyone wh…

We use chat for community discussions. MUCH easier to simply tune out

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#129

Post by [deleted] »

cousin_it wrote: post #48
fsloth wrote: post #9

Is there anyone here who likes open offices more than a floorplan divised into smaller rooms? I ask because I've worked in an open office setting as a developer for years (the place is otherwise nice) and thoroughly despise it as a workspace. Yet some people don't seem to mind it. I don't mind serendipity. The problem is I serendiptously overhear everyones discussion which is incredibly disruptive for deep work. Fact…

I'm a developer who recently moved from a large open space to a small quiet room with just a handful of people. To me it feels like a big downgrade. I loved the constant chatter in the open space, and I was much more aware of what the whole team is concerned with. I felt that it was very important for setting my work priorities right. Meetings and emails are much more restrictive than just sitting next to everyone wh…

[deleted]

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#130

Post by npongratz »

Declanomous wrote: post #44
throwaway2016a wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why we have them... we literally can't afford to give everyone (or anyone for that matter) a private office.

Epic Systems has a private office for each of their 9,000+ employees. Their campus is outside Madison, WI, so it's cheaper to do that there then it would be elsewhere. Private offices don't have to be large. I'm sure the money for private offices would appear if companies were sufficiently motivated to provide them.

I don't know if Epic is a private office nirvana for each of their employees, but to be fair, it does sound like the majority do have a private office. I only live in the area and hear stuff second- and third-hand, but I gather an increasing number of Epic employees are assigned to shared offices. The Boston Globe's glowing commentary on the campus concurs:

"Most employees have a private office; some share one with a colleague."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/07/28/epic-systems...

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