Am I the only one who actually likes open offices? I like the vibrant feeling and never have any problems with distractions. I just put my headphones on and zone in.
Let me take you through my dream office
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Re: Let me take you through my dream office
#62LOTs of things I like about this office layout. What I would add, black out blinds on all outer facing windows. I don't see a refrigerator or a coffee machine/water/drinks. What I don't like. I would say rather then a white board, do a white wall. Is the TV screen really needed? Its so easy to just teleconference on your monitor. Stand-up room needs to white board space for sure! Maybe use a projector instead of a th…
Okay you have my interest. Could you expand on why you would like to see desktops with laptops for a VM? Would the laptop borrowing happen on a night by night basis? Wouldn't you expect some employees to always take the laptops home. Genuinely curious as to why you think this would be better. (more cost effective, better office env, etc.)
Not the OP, but:
> Wouldn't you expect some employees to always take the laptops home
Maybe, but there's two issues here - they're either taking them for personal use, or they're taking them to do (additional) work on. In the majority of cases, you probably don't want to encourage either of these (in the same way you wouldn't encourage someone to stay in the office till 3 am).
There's probably a group (on-call, not always in the office, etc etc.) who would be better served by a docking station but speaking from the experience of working at a place where everyone gets a laptop, there's a significant majority who have either never or very rarely needed to take a computer out of the office in years but took the more expensive/more difficult to repair/more likely to fail hit anyway.
Re: Let me take you through my dream office
#63Am I the only one who actually likes open offices? I like the vibrant feeling and never have any problems with distractions. I just put my headphones on and zone in.
Me too. The vibrancy makes me feel less lethargic.
Re: Let me take you through my dream office
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be interested to hear what hardware you will buy. What's your ideal hardware? Just a MBP or something more interesting?
Was offered a tricked out iMac or similar but I'm a linux user through and through so I'll self-build. Current plan is Ryzen 1700(possibly X)/32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, board supports 4 slots so can upgrade if needed) (going to need a lot of virtualisation capability to handle dealing with multiple legacy systems, windows for interop and 8 cores with 16 threads at that price is a hard match from Intel), 500GB SSD with 1TB WD…
That sounds like a great dev build and a really wonderful job/company/work environment. Hope that everything turns out well for you.
Re: Let me take you through my dream office
#65Nice designs - I like them and would certainly consider some of those ideas in any future office fitout of mine. However, I am unsure about those walls just inside the doorways that act as a buffer. Why not just have a door (with a glass window, the wall with the door doesn't already have a window)? That way, the team working in the room can simply close the door when they do not want to be disturbed, or open it when…
I wanted to have a little visual blocker, too. Just a glass door is not enough. Visitors can peek through the windows to see if a person is available. And I would add a red / green LED to the door knob which signals if you are free to enter. The wall inside also serves as a stand for the (heavy) flatscreen and has a coat hanger. I think it adds a nice cosy touch to the office, you you come in an e.g. take off your sh…
Fair enough. The fact that the wall has multiple purposes is pretty neat. The concept is growing on my now.
Re: Let me take you through my dream office
#66Good effort! Although you can't please everyone. I think you should mention cost. The rectangle is about 20m x 16m = 320m2 or about 10,7m2/person. And the ceiling is about 3.5m.
Yes, right. I have no idea what typical offices have per person?
I currently py about £500 per month per head for serviced office space. Very small, though, with six of us and could easily grow to 8 or 9 in the space so the cost drops.
Re: Let me take you through my dream office
#67As a technologist working at a company that helps businesses design & build office space, one item I notice always lacking in conversations about office space is growth. The article brushes off growth by suggesting you just open a new office when you've grown. This suggestion lacks understanding of how growth happens. It's rarely an instant doubling of headcount. Most organic growth creeps up. So let me invade your "…
so true
Re: Let me take you through my dream office
#68Am I the only one who actually likes open offices? I like the vibrant feeling and never have any problems with distractions. I just put my headphones on and zone in.
I've worked in places with open offices that have a no-headphone policy, so I was pretty scuppered in this regard.
Re: Let me take you through my dream office
#69Am I the only one who actually likes open offices? I like the vibrant feeling and never have any problems with distractions. I just put my headphones on and zone in.
You may well be :)
Personally, I find it extremely difficult to concentrate with music playing. It may be because I'm a musician, but (with a couple of exceptions) it just draws my attention from whatever it is I'm doing.
Re: Let me take you through my dream office
#70Architect here. Distraction is an issue for us as well. My ideal office would be along these lines too. Mostly it's just construction and rental cost that prevents it; open plan offices use much less floor space and are simpler for things like HVAC and fire evacuation. If you want to change this to an enclosed layout you need to reconfigure all these systems. Most office space is built speculatively by developers and…
Yes, that is exactly my point. We have shitty offices, because they are build to suit the real estate market not productivity. But there are examples which are horrible by design, and not because the property value was important: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/30... (first pic)
The employer's financial cost of the lost productivity of an average developer in an open space office is much lower than developers like to think, and much, much lower than the cost of the office with private rooms. By placing people in the open space, companies pay almost three times less in office rental costs (https://www.mikhanov.com/2015/06/08/open-plan-offices-creati...).
In other words, unless you're Sebastian Thrun, Chris Lattner, Lars Rasmussen, Cliff Click or Guido van Rossum, your company doesn't care (and rightly so) about your lost productivity because it just simply doesn't matter.
Gentlemen whose names listed above, I am certain, can have any office they want.