221–230 of 409 posts
I guess there will be two classes of people at Apple. Those with their own office, and those without. Although it has its rough edges, I am becoming a big fan of Swift. I hope Chris Lattner has his own office.
Chris Lattner hasn't been at Apple since leaving for Tesla back in January (he has recently left Tesla, as well).
It's not as cramped or loud, but it is awkward and distracting. It's definitely not the end of the world. But if working in a coffee shop full of people you see every day does not work for you, this is an unproductive floor plan.
They had enough money that they could have built 10 different kinds of workspaces spread out in a building with five times the work space on the same property. Instead they built a hollow glass donut. Because: Steve Jobs.
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The problem with the Spolsky example is that Atlassian with their huge open-plan offices completely overshadowed Fog Creek in just a few short years.
In some ways. They did raise $60 million, too, which didn't hurt. I think we're doing just fine having a successful business on our own terms. For what it's worth, Atlassian's NYC headquarters is… our Fog Creek offices, complete with private offices for coders. More about that here: https://medium.com/make-better-software/apple-is-about-to-do... (Source: I'm the CEO of Fog Creek.)
https://www.atlassian.com/company/careers
so I'd be surprised if it hosts a signficant percentage of their development workforce. As far as I know their Sydney office is really the heart of their operation and it's very open plan.
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It's infuriating, as a technical pre-sales resource I get interrupted INCESSANTLY throughout the day by rabbit hole "quick questions" and calendar management. Some of my colleagues were moaning about the constant growth of our team and the fact we'll have to move to hotel desks, I reckon it's the best thing ever.
>>It's infuriating, as a technical pre-sales resource I get interrupted INCESSANTLY throughout the day by rabbit hole "quick questions" and calendar management. This was my old job. I don't miss it...
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I work remotely too and I often think about how much this has reduced my environmental footprint. It would be interesting to see some figures on how much of a positive impact it has.
I mostly work from my home, which is self-sufficient for water (rain tanks) and heating (firewood), produces its own electricity (solar), has its own septic, produces some of our fruit and veggies and all of our eggs, with virtually no food waste that is not fed to the animals and low amount of landfill waste (you really think about it when you take it to the tip yourself). I occasionally commute to the local coffee…
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#1.2C0...
I guess there will be two classes of people at Apple. Those with their own office, and those without. Although it has its rough edges, I am becoming a big fan of Swift. I hope Chris Lattner has his own office.
Chris Lattner hasn't been at Apple since leaving for Tesla back in January (he has recently left Tesla, as well).
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Nah, it's fine. If it gets noisy, put on headphones or go sit in a different place for a few hours. Individual offices can be awful and isolating. Cubes can be an acceptable compromise but it still kills a lot of spontaneous conversations. You gain a lot with open space plans: more interaction with coworkers, cultural gel and socializing. And of course, the company can cram more people in the same place.
As someone who has never worked from a private office or classical cubicle I tend to agree, but maybe I just haven’t had a chance to experience the productivity explosion that comes with those options. I think open office is fine so long as the density is not too high. Ive seen conditions where you are shoulder to shoulder with your co-workers, which seems awful. I have always had around ~8 square meters of space in…
Lower density low cubes are ok. Offices are great for managers, PMs or professionals like attorneys, engineers or accountants.
From my perspective, remote works if the culture is friendly to remote or conditions like traffic make commuting a misery for everyone. As a manager of managers, we historically have had a lot of problems with remote employees compared with people in the office.
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Nah, it's fine. If it gets noisy, put on headphones or go sit in a different place for a few hours. Individual offices can be awful and isolating. Cubes can be an acceptable compromise but it still kills a lot of spontaneous conversations. You gain a lot with open space plans: more interaction with coworkers, cultural gel and socializing. And of course, the company can cram more people in the same place.
"Nah, it's fine." Yeah, I don't see the problem either. In fact, I don't understand why companies don't just install long airplane style seating rows in their open office plans and have everyone work from laptops literally on their laps... that way we'd be able to cram even more people in the same space, and just think about all the useful socializing and spontaneous conversations that would occur as co-workers were…
Hook them into some sort of huge ferris wheel, saves on space and keeps attrition low.
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Nah, it's fine. If it gets noisy, put on headphones or go sit in a different place for a few hours. Individual offices can be awful and isolating. Cubes can be an acceptable compromise but it still kills a lot of spontaneous conversations. You gain a lot with open space plans: more interaction with coworkers, cultural gel and socializing. And of course, the company can cram more people in the same place.
I don't want to gel or socialize with my colleagues. I want to work with them. If we become friends, we can socialize outside of work. I'm not paid to chitchat or stand around eating birthday cake. I don't need to love people to work with them. For the most part, even as a systems architect, I don't even need to talk to them. A few emails, echats, and meetings are sufficient. This may sound harsh, when I heard they w…
As a sysadmin, I overhear a ton of stuff that people don't put into chats. I like being in the office and being able to hear what people are talking about in the workplace; it helps me do my job better.
Working in open office plans is simply awful. Personally I believe remote work, for any tech-enabled employer, makes the most sense. The impact on infrastructure by removing commuting alone could maybe help save the planet. And our collective sanity. Wouldn't it be nice to have ISPs that can provide an infrastructure that could actually support that? I think so. The hideous effects of cluster-fucking hundreds of thou…
No, it’s not simple. I am awfully bored of these “everything is simple, open offices are uniformly awful, everybody should be remote” arguments. Yes - this works for some people, in some workplaces. In other cases, it doesn’t work. I’m fine with my open office space, and I prefer working from an office - which is a bike ride away and better equipped than I am. How about instead we accept that there are almost certain…
You're a bike ride away from the office that you prefer? Fantastic job of deflection.
It's rather obvious that there are trade-offs, isn't it? It's pretty clear to me, at any rate, and there's nothing inherently wrong with providing an office. Shame on your words coming out of my mouth.
In relation to the expense of providing "office space" for several hundred the cost of a fat pipe is pretty darn cheap, were that it existed.
If you don't have the need to live where you work there are "simple" choices any given person can make that will make their lives easier, happier and, hopefully, more fruitful for both themselves and their employers.
And besides, having worked in offices (real ones), cubicles (and half-ones), bullpens and open spaces (including fields) I feel I am more than qualified to provide my own opinion on the matter without implying that my "simple" opinion is somehow not compatible with your own.
Open spaces suck to work in. It's that simple.