Working from home is the only way I could manage to have a private office. The problem with this debate is that there isn't much room for middle ground; those that advocate open spaces tend to also believe I the necessity for open spaces to inspire productivity, despite little to no evidence to support this claim, and without full team commitment to open spaces it will result in a communication bifurcation as those in the open space will opt for vocal to their immediate vicinity as often as they use team chart services or knock on an office door.
Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
261–270 of 483 posts
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#262(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.
If the employer provides super comfortable noise-cancelling headphones I would agree. Personally, listening to music all day gives me a headache and podcasts are too distracting. And I don't need these headphones for anything else (otherwise, I'd already have a pair!) I wonder what would come of it if I requested some.
Maybe I am difficult but I simply don't want to have to wear headphones the whole day.
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#263I noticed from that VR video that Zuckerberg gives himself a large, glass-enclosed office, while everyone outside appeared to be working at rows of desks.
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#264I worked at a company where there was a combination of team rooms and offices... but all the walls were glass. You had the benefit of being able to see if Julie was at her desk so you could go ask her a question, but not hear Bob next door arguing with his wife again. 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.
Haha I used to be at Microsoft in a building like you described: a combination of open space with offices and break-out areas. They're trying to renovate all their buildings to follow this hybrid approach as they did with building 16 which is just incredibly gorgeous (https://news.microsoft.com/stories/b16/).
Now I'm at a startup in the bay are that adopted the generic open-space/warehouse design and although I'm happy with the move career-wise, I really do miss being able to concentrate...
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#265I recall during my first visit to HP Labs as a grad student. Walking into the office off of Page Mill Road, passing reception and being on an elevated platform looking over a sea of cubes. Creeped me out.
I've worked at places with cubes and bullpens, open offices with a mix of engineering and sales (sucked), open offices that were poorly designed (sucked), and now I work at home full time (unless traveling or at a coffee shop).
I much prefer having the freedom to pick the level of noise I subject myself to. Open offices were generally annoying because you became anti-social anyways by putting in headphones.
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#266This 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 :)
Yup. Sitting here in an open plan work area reading about open plan work areas on HN. Maybe once everyone goes home I can get some work done.
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#267> Facebook is paying 40-50 percent more than other places, which is usually a sign developers don’t want to work there.
Weren't they paying this much more before they moved to the giant office?
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Being able to easily start a design discussion with 4 or 5 engineers" means "easily break 4 or 5 engineers out of their flow" along with "easily create a distraction for the other 15 engineers within earshot of the easily-started discussion". I'm fine with coffee shops over home (and did the same in college), but coffeeshop noise is "white noise" -- whirring espresso grinders, a blur of conversations between people…
Maybe it depends on the domain. "Flow state" makes sense for something like a startup where single coders are writing huge diffs on their own. I work on a huge codebase where "figuring out what code to write" occupies dramatically more of our time than "writing code".
What is your definition of "huge diffs"? For me, the process of reading some library documentation, reading existing code, and producing, say, 50-100 lines of quality code to require enough concentration that it's hard to focus in an open environment without losing my train of thought.
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Not sure how that is a rebuttal unless you work for a lawn care company.
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#270I think the perfect office has 5-8 occupants that work on related/the same subject. That way, you can still communicate if needed, still have calm times where you can concentrate and don't have to fear you have so sit in a 2-3 people office where there is a certain possibility you don't like the other 1-2 and thus don't like coming to work. I had everything from 2 to hundreds of colleagues at an office, but I liked going to work best when the office was occupied by 5-8.