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A Look Inside Apple’s New Campus

wired.com

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Re: A Look Inside Apple’s New Campus

#291

Post by valuearb »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #68
tuna-piano wrote: post #21

Beautiful building. I wonder though - for those who read the article and have worked in both suburban environments and urban ones - would you rather work in the amazing Apple spaceship in the suburbs, or a normal office building in a city-center? For me, I think I'd still prefer a short commute and the density of stuff that comes with being downtown.

I'd rather work from home, and have done for decades. I'm not convinced it's a beautiful building. It's a very careful building, trying to be a temple and - IMO - failing. What's missing? Randomness. Playfulness. Quirkiness. Fun. Colour. Warmth. Individuality. Art. At Pixar, everyone was encouraged to personalise their work space in a creative way. I can't imagine that happening here, because it would be a mortal wou…

You missed the part where elevators have automated squirt guns they spray you with if you only choose to go a single floor. Playful enough?

Re: A Look Inside Apple’s New Campus

#292

Post by [deleted] »

valuearb wrote: post #220

“It’s an obsolete model that doesn’t address the work conditions of the future,” says Louise Mozingo, an urban design professor at UC Berkeley." Everyone should note that Louise Mozingo has criticized the Apple campus from not having large open floor plans where employees can stare at each other across narrow tables and "collaborate" by yelling to one another over their co-workers heads. She simply doesn't get how so…

[deleted]

Re: A Look Inside Apple’s New Campus

#293

Post by Markoff »

nemo44x wrote: post #143
pplonski86 wrote: post #3

12000 people in one building - wow!

Consider the World Trade Center had about 50,000 people working in it before 9/11. But 12,000 is about on scale with the entire Sears Tower (Willis Tower) in Chicago.

now i am not sure which of these two buildings it's more boring, box or circle?

Re: A Look Inside Apple’s New Campus

#294

Post by valuearb »

Markoff wrote: post #269
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather work from home, and have done for decades. I'm not convinced it's a beautiful building. It's a very careful building, trying to be a temple and - IMO - failing. What's missing? Randomness. Playfulness. Quirkiness. Fun. Colour. Warmth. Individuality. Art. At Pixar, everyone was encouraged to personalise their work space in a creative way. I can't imagine that happening here, because it would be a mortal wou…

yep, it looks really awful like something from 80s almost in par with commie architecture, these guys wasting money apparently never heard of Zaha Hadid and likes common, it's just massive boring circle, even Pentagon building is more original, there are only two things making this building interesting - size, Apple HQ make it ten times smaller and put there unknown company and nobody would bother to read about it

They spent the money and effort on making it functional so that employees can best enjoy their time there.

Zaha Hadid designs beautiful but dysfunctional buildings.

Re: A Look Inside Apple’s New Campus

#295

Post by throwaway91111 »

Markoff wrote: post #251
valuearb wrote: post #220

“It’s an obsolete model that doesn’t address the work conditions of the future,” says Louise Mozingo, an urban design professor at UC Berkeley." Everyone should note that Louise Mozingo has criticized the Apple campus from not having large open floor plans where employees can stare at each other across narrow tables and "collaborate" by yelling to one another over their co-workers heads. She simply doesn't get how so…

increase of 0.5% for one person offices compared to cubicles sound highly unlikely, i don't think you can replace 2*2m cubicle with same size closed office for 0.5% increase in cost

Frankly even cubicles would be more welcome than the open office tech companies seem to love. I'd kill for any noise and visual distraction reduction.

Re: A Look Inside Apple’s New Campus

#296

Post by jdavis703 »

pchristensen wrote: post #249
macNchz wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the linked article re Cupertino: > For a fast-food restaurant, the city demands one space for every three seats; for a bowling alley, seven spaces per lane plus one for every worker. I've read a bunch of articles about the negative externalities of minimum parking requirements, but haven't really seen one explore the why behind these rules. What does it matter to the city if a bowling alley doesn't have enough p…

So the customers of the popular bowling alley don't park in the parking lot of the neighboring businesses. It's forcing every business to play nice with their neighbors, rather than free-ride off of them. Most mall parking lots are sized for the demand of the busiest day of the Christmas shopping season, and are consequently underused for most of the year.

Well then the next door business can either charge for parking and offer free parking validation after you buy something, or just have a tow truck waiting to tow people who park and don't enter the premises.

Re: A Look Inside Apple’s New Campus

#297

Post by pklausler »

valuearb wrote: post #220

“It’s an obsolete model that doesn’t address the work conditions of the future,” says Louise Mozingo, an urban design professor at UC Berkeley." Everyone should note that Louise Mozingo has criticized the Apple campus from not having large open floor plans where employees can stare at each other across narrow tables and "collaborate" by yelling to one another over their co-workers heads. She simply doesn't get how so…

As I sit here, wearing 3M landscaping crew earmuffs over Bluetooth AirPod earphones, trying to concentrate in my "modern collaborative" workplace full of Tupperware percussionists, permanently hacking coughers, and endless mindless sports conversations, I kind of want to meet this "urban design professor" who thinks this was all a good idea and find out what kind of office she sits in.

Re: A Look Inside Apple’s New Campus

#298

Post by valuearb »

accountyaccount wrote: post #266
valuearb wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Child care is a competitive business that can almost always be provided better and cheaper elsewhere. So it's much better to use stipends to subsidize employee child care. Having child care is also an expensive distraction and liability for management. Do you want to deal with employee complaints over childcare hours, personnel, facilities, etc, or do you want to spend your time thinking about how to better sell prod…

This is all a bunch of weird handwringing... >Child care is a competitive business that can almost always be provided better and cheaper elsewhere. So it's much better to use stipends to subsidize employee child care. Child care facilities aim for profit like any other business, and a corporate add-on doesn't need to seek profitability (and even if they did, assuming it's on-site the operational overhead is ultimatel…

Making something non-profit doesn't make it efficient. If your business is child-care, it's your job to know the cheapest/best way to comply with regs, build child-care locations to meet market demands, hire child-care staff, enforce appropriate rules and procedures, etc, etc, etc.

Running a software company doesn't give you any of those skills. Someone specializing in the business of child-care should be able to wipe the floor with anything your software company puts up in it's spare time.

Children are a distraction, I know. But having the management of the company involved in making decisions about how your kids are being cared for is a distraction from their core duties. By definition they are going to be slightly worse at sales, marketing, development, etc because they have to spend time on childcare.

Having childcare only benefits a few employees for a few years of their lives. There is nothing wrong with having company childcare, I'm playing the devils advocate a bit here, but there is also nothing wrong with saying the outside world will be better at serving this need and just offering a stipend to help parents with the cost.

Re: A Look Inside Apple’s New Campus

#299

Post by detritus »

abakker wrote: post #183

I do some small amount of woodworking on the side of my main job, and as a result I have a large envelope CNC router in my garage. I occasionally post ads for craigslist looking for odd jobs. About a year ago, I was approached via craigslist by a contractor working on this campus to help make some plywood parts for concrete forms that they couldn't figure out how to mark and measure on site with a jigsaw. They were t…

Oh now that's a lovely-looking machine! I love the way your width/x axis stepper is handled.

Did you build her yourself?

Re: A Look Inside Apple’s New Campus

#300

Post by ChuckMcM »

One of the more interesting things to watch over the years in the Bay Area was the construction of the 'signature' headquarters for tech companies. It has been interesting because there is a grand history of companies building these edifices to themselves, and then dying. Commonly cited examples are Sun (currently occupied by Facebook), SGI (currently occupied by Google), and Tandem (occupied by Ebay). A number of people also thought that of Apple at its One Infinite Loop HQ in Cupertino and subsequent fall from grace under a series of CEOs. So far Apple had dodged that bullet :-).

Driving past it over the last few years, I try to imagine 50, 100, or maybe 500 years in the future. Will it still be an amazing building or will it be Cupertino's Coliseum ?

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