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Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

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Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#271

Post by Clubber »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #211
pteredactyl wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visual distraction is very real when trying to focus.

Visual distraction is the second worst, IMO, with noise in third. Number 1 is vibration and physical movement. I've had a desk environment where two folks would be sitting on opposite sides of a wide table, so there's one shared and non-isolated surface that both people work on. Every time my coworker would stand up, they'd brace themselves on the desk and shake the shit out of it, and I never learned to filter it ou…

I worked with a twitchy guy in the same office. It was horrible. He would constantly be pumping his foot on the floor, vibrating the entire room. After I asked him to stop a few times, he got out of the habit, but damn, it is distracting.

Then of course some PM would swing by and talk to him about stocks or something silly. The PM didn't have anything better to do.

We were also right by the break room, so people would constantly be chatting.

I think you should just put developers and only developers on a floor. Everyone else who needs to chit chat and only has to attend meetings can go on another floor.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#272

Post by notyourwork »

TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #152
notyourwork wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If employees are measured correctly, it is impossible to slack off. In engineering, measuring hours is silly, measuring output and throughput is what determines performance.

And what do you propose is the correct way of collecting these measurements?

I think by defining a set of metrics and company principles that employees can measure themselves against. Furthermore, by taking into account peer evaluations which reflect on how valuable you are to your team.

An example might help demonstrate my thoughts: Last year I worked on a new UI for customers and went through 7 failed experiments. Does this mean that I suck at my job or that our designer dreamed up a failed interface or the business never should have started this initiate? The designer designed what the business gave a green light to, I wrote the code to put this in front of customers. Are we all failures or is one of us a failure? My opinion (at least in this situation) is none of us failed.

Why? Because the business justified the project based on a need customer's were showing from data they collected and evaluation of the market. The designer created something that after a handful of iterations was green lit for an engineer to build. I was measured in terms of how difficult iterations were. For example, did it take an entire re-write to go from experiment x to x+1 or did you as an engineer anticipate some possible future directions that project could go which made iterations more easy to integrate into existing code.

Some of this is subjective, some is objective, but your peers (team, stakeholders, and adjacent teams) all have an ability to measure and provide feedback to you.

Different jobs require different types of assessments but I focused directly on software engineering since I have best frame of reference.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#273

Post by Practicality »

booleandilemma wrote: post #210

My company has an open office plan and I feel like the area directly behind my chair was designated as the company's unofficial meeting space, but no one ever told me.

Oh man. About 10 feet behind my chair is where another department likes to have their meetings. And for whatever reason, they also like to stand there and swap gossip about all the employees.

I mean seriously. I DO NOT need to know any of those things. Especially while I am trying to work. Please go away. Of course they talk really loudly too.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#274

Post by notyourwork »

Clubber wrote: post #269
TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you propose is the correct way of collecting these measurements?

I mean you know who is good in your team don't you? It doesn't have to be on a spreadsheet, qualitative results still count.

I generally agree but without some set of metrics/principles to measure against it can become a contest of favorites easily.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#275

Post by Clubber »

knorker wrote: post #46

I recently watched the movie Office Space. Oh, such a wonderful working environment. To have the privacy and isolation from distractions and interruptions that a cubicle gives. What I wouldn't give to work in such a great office space.

It's funny that the work environment became worse than Mike Judge imagined it would be in Office Space. Wait till that happens to Idiocracy!

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#276

Post by Clubber »

maxxxxx wrote: post #14

It seems a lot of managers live in that phantasy world where people do nothing but collaborate. Do they really think that code gets written that way?

Managers mark their value by how many meetings they attend. If their calendar is booked all the time (even with pointless meetings) it's because they are valuable.

Developers mark their value by what they create. Unfortunately people tend to think everyone is like them. In this example, managers tend to think since their value is through constant collaboration, they think everyone is valued in the same metric.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#278

Post by Clubber »

notyourwork wrote: post #274
Clubber wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean you know who is good in your team don't you? It doesn't have to be on a spreadsheet, qualitative results still count.

I generally agree but without some set of metrics/principles to measure against it can become a contest of favorites easily.

>it can become a contest of favorites easily.

I'm afraid that is unavoidable. Any metric you track can and will be gamed before the first collection period.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#279

Post by jjoonathan »

hindsightbias wrote: post #213
sitkack wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a patent pending that uses ML to read lips combined with aggravated deep learning to generate specific noise canceling wave forms for people within visual range. It can also mask obnoxious follow on affectations like filler words and laughter out of visual range once it has locked onto a conversation. The next phase of research is for an inanity filter, predictions are that it will mute most of existence.

They have that nausea-inducing sound beam thing. I was wondering what a head-mounted version would weigh. Maybe integrate with an eye-tracker. Or a decibel meter hooked up to some old hag librarian robot that rolled around shrieking "SSSSHHHHHHH!"

Here's a classic from when Silicon Valley made actual silicon: the Widlar Hassler

http://www.analogzoo.com/2015/01/building-the-widlar-hassler...

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