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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

#391

Post by zild3d »

prawn wrote: post #336
Clubber wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if a company offered an open office plan with the option to remote full time, you might be the only person in the office. :)

I own/run a co-working space which is almost entirely open plan. Many people here elect to work in this sort of environment rather than at home. People use headphones if they need to focus. Personally, at home I am too easily distracted - I can pick through the fridge or cupboards, or read news sites forever. At the office, my screen is visible and as such I'm more likely to stay focused. I vastly prefer the incident…

isn't a factor that the "open office" subscription costs typically an order of magnitude less than the private office?

(thinking of wework)

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#392

Post by idlewords »

kevinburke wrote: post #292
sooheon wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting you'd recommend him, I enjoy his writing but didn't know he had expertise here. Any reason why? Also isn't "unionizing" a quick way to get a black mark in Silicon Valley? I vaguely remember Michael O. Church was essentially exiled just for accusations of unionizing.

Maciej (and others) believe the best way to get your company to stop doing things you may not like: - keeping user history around forever - donating more from the company PAC to Republicans than Democrats - keeping engineers in open plan offices - providing services to election campaigns of anti-immigrant politicians - not paying the same amount of money to men and women for the same work - provide less-than-livable…

Forming a union is a big step. You can fight for these things through concerted collective action, and still enjoy most of the protections of labor law (especially against retaliation). The point is to organize so that a large group of employees is speaking with a single voice about the workplace issues that matter most.

I urge anyone interested in learning more to contact me or coworker.org, who have experience running successful employee campaigns, and understand the tech world well.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#393

Post by uhhhhhhh »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #153
uhhhhhhh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds horrible. Also extroverted vs assertive, I would lean towards engineers are assertive but not extroverted. There is a whole lot more to extroverted that isn't included in speaking your mind, and that speaks directly to why open floor plans can be horrible for many introverted people. * A person working without headphones on, signifies that it's ok to tap them on the shoulder to ask them a question. * A pe…

I'm fairly certain entire post is sarcasm, including extroverted engineers, headphones making it OK to keep yelling, and quiet/meeting rooms being used for unproductive purposes :)

I thought so, but at the same time I've seen not sarcastic approaches to open office plans that aren't that far off.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#394

Post by synicalx »

bumblebeard wrote: post #338
synicalx wrote: post #262

We're going one step better at my work with our new/future office, "Activity Based Working". All the trappings of "open plan" but with even more features to make Government work more soul-crushing and complicated. One office, with desks for 80% of the staff (because the other 20% need to take the hint and resign). Each desk only has one monitor, keyboard, and a mouse. If you've got certain ergonomic requirements, or…

That sounds infuriating. Have you started looking for another job yet? I know I would.

I'm hanging on until I can officially pad my resume with all the office-move stuff (network redesign being a big one), but the second another job comes up after that I'm out there.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#395

Post by loco5niner »

6nf wrote: post #223
anildash wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

The NYC 'headqarters' is not even on their list of locations 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.

I don't think he is saying Atlassian HQ is _located_ at Fog Creek, but that Atlassian HQ has a similar office plan as Fog Creek, "complete with private offices for coders".

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#396

Post by Avernar »

IBM wrote: post #189
Avernar wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like an Apple store. Bet it's going to be as noisy as one.

The WSJ story says the offices are soundproof: >A section of workspace in the circular, Norman Foster–designed building is finally move-in-ready: sliding-glass doors on the soundproof offices, a giant European white oak collaboration table, adjustable-height desks, and floors with aluminum-covered hinged panels, hiding cables and wires, and brushed-steel grating for air diffusion. >The first prototype was ready in th…

That would be nice if people had private offices but it looks like a dozen or so to each enclosed area.

Sounds like (pun intended) that they've made it more like a concert hall. Instead of white noise with all the reflections you get to hear everyone in your jail block, er, work area nice and clearly.

I personally find that hearing a clear conversation beside me to be a bigger distraction as I tend to "lock on" to it instead of thinking of the problem at hand. So your damned either way, loud but more noise like or quieter but more distracting.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#397

Post by prawn »

Clubber wrote: post #373
prawn wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own/run a co-working space which is almost entirely open plan. Many people here elect to work in this sort of environment rather than at home. People use headphones if they need to focus. Personally, at home I am too easily distracted - I can pick through the fridge or cupboards, or read news sites forever. At the office, my screen is visible and as such I'm more likely to stay focused. I vastly prefer the incident…

Out of curiosity, what percent of them are developers?

3-5 are programming. Others are architects, marketers, etc.

In a previous iteration of the same space, there would've been anything up to 75% programmers but the bulk of them bought and moved to another open-plan office.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#398

Post by bartvk »

majormajor wrote: post #101
hota_mazi wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sadly, I'm still looking for headphones that can be comfortably worn over my ears + glasses for more than an hour at a time. In-ear ones have other comfort issues.

Yep, I also have this problem. The only (wired) headphones that are big enough to fully circumvent your ears and thus comfortably sit for an hour or more, is the Sennheiser HD 558. Unfortunately, it's wired.

There doesn't seem to be a bluetooth alternative. The newer Sennheiser models like the 4.50 are not as big as the HD 558. There's a dongle-based wireless headphone, the Logitech G533 which is big enough. It's meant more for gaming, and looks like it. It may only work on Windows, though.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#399

Post by madeofpalk »

rsj_hn wrote: post #309
matthewmacleod wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you are a developer who has to check in code, then you need a quiet place for focused work. You can try to argue that some developers don't need that, but those who can achieve peak concentration while context switching and talking to others are biological curiosities, if they exist at all. I haven't met anyone like that. Now most employees working in tech companies are not developers. There is a whole "developer…

> If you are a developer who has to check in code, then you need a quiet place for focused work

Don't talk on behalf of me.

Maybe because I'm relatively younger and I've mainly worked in open-plan offices, but I have zero problems with them. I'm not so easily distracted that simply having someone else's presence is enough to throw me off. When I need to buckle down and get some 'serious developing' going on, I just put on some headphones and listen to The Social Network soundtrack. I am more productive by having my colleges around me so I can easily pair-program or pair-design.

The point still remains: everyone is different and what works for one person won't work for everyone (I for one could never work remotely for any serious period of time). Again, we need to make sure we're building office spaces that can adopt to these different people and the ways they work.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#400

Post by danpalmer »

whipoodle wrote: post #375
danpalmer wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another point of view would be that by having 'senior management' in the same rooms, at the same desks in an open office, they are more human and there's less of a perceived barrier between them and everyone else - which could be seen as a positive.

Managers often end up commandeering a meeting room to get around not technically having an office.

Sure, and I wouldn't want meetings taking place at desks anyway as that would be disruptive, but having the CEO at a 'normal' desk like everyone else, and having them there for any time they are doing tasks alone, I think humanises them more.
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