211–220 of 483 posts
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I always thought open offices became popular because it was literally the cheapest set up for facilities. For startups it worked because all you had to buy was desks. Somehow that got spun in to 'open offices are so sexy!' Open offices are horrible for productivity imo. Moved to a job with an office and it is so. much. better.
We need a job site that lists companies that provide your own office. I would only apply there.
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Cafes offer an odd sort of privacy since none of the conversations mean anything to you - effectively white noise - so they're easy to filter out. In an open office, every conversation may apply to you at any point during the conversation, requiring conscious effort to monitor and filter the conversation.
This. It's the otheredness of the conversations which happen at a cafe that makes it work. If you found yourself at a cafe sitting next to, say, the co-worker you can't stand, the director you've heard is trying to kill your project, an ex-partner and their new partner, I suspect the scene could get quite distracting rather quickly.
That's why you never date your co-worker. And if you couldn't help it and fell in love then you should quit your job first and ask him/her on date later.
(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.
How about just an appropriate workplace for the job, like 99% of all other jobs, even some of the lowest paid ones?
Have a bit of self respect and respect for your craft.
It's also very easy to "accidentally" put more people into a very large room than it would be allowed by working regulations. There's at least one large Silicon Valley company who likes to do that. The working conditions can be quite miserable. You can call it an open office that amplifies communication in the team, so noone will notice that they're almost piling up vertically. And the problem is not just noise. Too…
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Natural light is one of the most important aspects of an office to me. A few years ago I actually turned down an offer because I realized I'd be sitting in an interior team-sized room with no windows and just a door to a hallway, again with no windows. I would have been giving up a seat next to huge windows with light flooding into the room. I just knew that I'd end up depressed in those working conditions and decide…
No natural light is pretty much illegal in most civilized countries. This is why office buildings in most of Western Europe aren't as massive and square as in countries like the US.
I really think natural light should be required for all. I went to a high school in Texas literally modeled after a prison. No windows, no natural light anywhere in the entire building. Built in 1979. What is wrong with these people?
I took my SATs at a high school classroom with a huge windows looking out to a forest setting... It was incredible
This Is Why You Shouldn't Interrupt a Programmer: http://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-...
Most dev's don't go back to step 1 when interrupted. They go to checking out hacker news :)
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Simple supply and demand analysis shows that goods command higher prices when supply is lower.
And indeed the supply of good engineers is low. If Facebook insists on hiring only them, then it makes sense that they're paying more on average.
I believe supply and demand with market rates is a much bigger factor on the average Facebook engineer salary than the quality of the engineer. For one, we are only dealing with a discrepancy on the order of 40-50%. Is a good engineer only 40-50% better than an average engineer?
Make no mistake: this was an outcome of the effort to save money by not having to provide real offices to real adults.
It was fantastic.
Now, I'm at FB... and I wouldn't work on a team in the new "warehouse" building. It's terrible over there, frankly.