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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?

#451

Post by cm2187 »

wruza wrote: post #449
cm2187 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The in-ear headphones with a rubber membrane will be excellent to - isolate you from external noise - isolate your co workers from your music (a problem with most alternative designs of headphones) And if you listen to classical music, you are unlikely to suffer any hearing loss. And I find it to be perfect to focus on something in noisy environment (used them when I wanted to focus on something on a trading floor fo…

Is that because classical music is natural/harmonic? I often hear that but google previews say something suspicious. "classic music hearing loss" (sorry my phone browser copies google urls as plain text). As for me, having something in ears is already disturbing, especially for a long time. In my office we came to mostly-silence mode without even negotiating on that. That culture was accepted naturally after quick in…

From my point of view, classical music has a slower and more stable rhythm than a bunch of short pop songs, and is often in Italian rather than English (when there are any lyrics), which (since I do not speak Italian) ensures I do not get disturbed by someone talking in my ear. Also the general noise level of classical music is typically less than pop music.

Now everyone is different and I am sure some people find it more comfortable to focus while listening to heavy metal!

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

#452

Post by restalis »

exDM69 wrote: post #248
schiang wrote: post #34

Earlier 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…

I work in a team sized room and much rather would have my own quiet space. I happen to sit next to a "key person" who is constantly having (important) discussions with coworkers that I don't need to or want to hear. I'm really distraction and noise sensitive so I really prefer working from home when there's code to be written.

I say there is a problem within your team (like that "key person" not knowing what is or isn't productive in what he does) that you are hoping to solve through seclusion. Excluding such bad quirks, assuming everyone is acting reasonably (in a tolerant frame of reference), I would say team sized spaces strike a good balance between the peer interaction accessibility and the bad effects of crowd noise.

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

#453

Post by effie »

irrational wrote: post #392
largote wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Escalate to your manager, he should have a chat with her manager.

It's not that simple. She has been around a long time and even though she isn't a manager, seniority goes a long way at my company. My manager has mentioned it to her, but realistically that's as far as he can take it.

Ask for a place farther from her, perhaps switching with some other talkative colleague in a better spot. If manager rises eyebrows, argue that she is too loud and inconsiderate(unscrupulous) to other people. Even better if more colleagues share this view, make a move together.

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

#455

Post by gjolund »

zachrose wrote: post #415
colordrops wrote: post #62

While this may affect a developer's decision to work at Facebook, my first thought is that Joel is ignoring the gorilla in the room. The number one reason that people don't want to work at Facebook is their product and mission. As someone in the comments mentioned, SpaceX has very tight and open cubicles, but people there are paid _below_ market rates, and they are doing _very_ deep work, so Joel's argument doesn't h…

Why are SpaceX employees payed below market rates?

Because they want to work there.

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

#456

Post by geofft »

vonmoltke wrote: post #174
geofft wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a way to exacerbate Conway's law problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law . Most of the technical debt I try to fight off is based on my team doing something that makes sense for us based on what we're good at / what we think other teams want, but doesn't line up with what other teams want / what they think we can deliver; we end up essentially building abstraction layers around other tea…

It sounds like you are trying to compensate for a lack of systems engineering by changing the office layout. You shouldn't be relying on serendipitously overheard conversations for coordinating things like this.

Yeah, I am inclined to agree. However, part of systems engineering is figuring out where technical conversations happen. Apache has "if it didn't happen on the mailing list, it didn't happen" as a rule precisely because they want to avoid the unreliability of serendipitously overhearing conversations, precisely because that's important to how they engineer systems. I would be a fan of a system design / an office layout where everyone has a private room and all conversations default to happening in email or group chat, and in-person conversations (which are, on occasion, definitely needed!) require some activation energy.

However, lots of in-person offices like these serendipitous conversations, and that's often pitched as an advantage of open plan layouts. That's also pitched as an advantage of getting lunch together, team outings, etc. etc. If you're going to decide to use this advantage (which I think is okay, but suboptimal), you had better put some systems engineering thought into how you want to use this advantage.

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

#457

Post by geofft »

tmorton wrote: post #225
geofft wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a way to exacerbate Conway's law problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law . Most of the technical debt I try to fight off is based on my team doing something that makes sense for us based on what we're good at / what we think other teams want, but doesn't line up with what other teams want / what they think we can deliver; we end up essentially building abstraction layers around other tea…

I see Conway's Law as a statement about the world, not a class of problems. Team size is capped by human nature, and systems will develop to mirror team sizes. The only solution is to find lower-communication "seams" for both your team boundaries and your system boundaries. Abstraction layers around teams sounds like a good thing, as long as they abstraction layers make sense.

Abstraction layers around systems are a good thing. Teams have all sorts of weird properties, like a manager's willingness to focus on problems or recruit certain types of people. In an ideal world, teams and systems line up; in practice they don't, and Conway's Law is that the system design starts to conform to the team structure instead of vice versa.

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

#458

Post by gjolund »

webvictim wrote: post #322
languagehacker wrote: post #302

The only things I've heard about Facebook's office, from Facebook employees, is the constant, ongoing battle to keep people from playing noisy games during work hours. The ping pong table has become a battleground.

I used to work there and my team was unfortunate enough to get relocated to a set of desks near a ping pong table during a floor reshuffle. It was noisy, infuriating and a huge distraction. The ping pong noise itself was nothing compared to the shouting, cheering and the noise of the ball inevitably bouncing away across the floor with someone running after it every 30 seconds. A colleague put in a facilities ticket o…

"Losing its hacker soul"

Ugh, FB never had a "hacker soul". It is an abomination built on advertising and privacy invasion. It is the antithesis of the hacker ethos.

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

#459

Post by jedberg »

notyourwork wrote: post #414
jedberg wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I just found the magic pair, because with them in I can't even hear my baby cry.

Care to tell us what pair/

http://www.atomicfloyd.com/us/superdarts

But be warned, their customer support is terrible if you don't live in Europe.

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

#460

Post by jedberg »

samastur wrote: post #421
jedberg wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I just found the magic pair, because with them in I can't even hear my baby cry.

I am also interested in learning which headphones you use and added this comment to signal there's more of us that are interested.

http://www.atomicfloyd.com/us/superdarts

But be warned, their customer support is terrible if you don't live in Europe.

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