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Is the open office layout dead?

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Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#191

Post by sumanthvepa »

RandomOpinion wrote: post #136
drdeadringer wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've happily brought equipment purchased at my own expense to work. How do you make sure that everyone understand that that equipment belongs to you and not The Company? I'm currently resorting to printed labels of my name or initials, but I can't help but consider that that's a tissue defence.

> How do you make sure that everyone understand that that equipment belongs to you and not The Company? For BYOD laptops/PCs, keep the receipt (which will usually include the serial number) and store a photocopy at the office in a place where you can easily keep track of it. If it's something shipped direct from the manufacturer, keep the box with the shipping label on it as additional evidence. You can also let your…

In the companies I've worked in, they did not permit personal computers in the office (they were okay with mice/monitors etc.) The logic was that it posed too great a security risk. In one instance for a high profile project I wasn't allowed to even enter the office area with my phone (to prevent people from taking screenshots)

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#192

Post by djsumdog »

RandomOpinion wrote: post #136
drdeadringer wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've happily brought equipment purchased at my own expense to work. How do you make sure that everyone understand that that equipment belongs to you and not The Company? I'm currently resorting to printed labels of my name or initials, but I can't help but consider that that's a tissue defence.

> How do you make sure that everyone understand that that equipment belongs to you and not The Company? For BYOD laptops/PCs, keep the receipt (which will usually include the serial number) and store a photocopy at the office in a place where you can easily keep track of it. If it's something shipped direct from the manufacturer, keep the box with the shipping label on it as additional evidence. You can also let your…

I've always brought my own headphones or mechanical keyboards and they're pretty obviously not-company. I've never purchased any actual machines though. If I need equipment, I get the shop or contracting/staffing company to buy it. No reason to spend money on that stuff. We're not auto mechanics.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#193

Post by 1_2__4 »

throwaway0255 wrote: post #166
Roritharr wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've recently moved into new offices in Frankfurt/Germany and being the CTO of our 40 Person Startup gave me an in-depth look at all the calculations involved. It's simply horrible how expensive it would be to give private offices even to >3 people in our company. I've fought tooth and nail to keep everyone in small team offices( We've got two small rooms set aside as flex-desks(complete with 2 4K Monitors & Gigabit…

> It's simply horrible how expensive it would be to give private offices even to >3 people in our company. And how much does it cost to have your entire engineering team audibly and visually distracted and annoyed 100% of the time? Environmental factors that decrease engineer productivity may not show up on a balance sheet, but the cost is massive. Can you get an engineer an office for less than $40k/year? Then it's…

That 1/3rd stuff is my life exactly. I've basically stopped trying to get serious work done at the office - it's for meetings and that's it. The rest I have to wait until nighttime when I'm nowhere near peak performance and my productivity overall is easily 1/3 less than it would be if I could work in the office

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#194

Post by irq11 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #141
rayiner wrote: post #123

I've never understood the price issue. Class A in midtown Manhattan is $80 per square foot. That's $8,000 per year for a developer that probably makes well over six figures. Put two in an office that's only $4,000 per year. I really don't buy it considering how much money companies spend on office space. Like why he hell would you have offices in Greenwich Village ( http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-new-york-of…

Have you ever had a bathroom remodeled? Construction sucks and is both a time and money sink. You can literally have a crew show up and build a big cube farm in 1-5 days. It's really the same argument as "why would anyone pay outrageous fees to Amazon for slow, shitty VMs?". The answer is that when you factor in the cost of a data center facility and the people to build and run it, it turns out that AWS is a good dea…

I know for a fact that dropbox, and all other large tech companies, spend a fortune on office buildouts. Offices don't add significant construction expense; it's purely a matter of how many people you can cram in per square foot.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#195

Post by zeep »

tlogan wrote: post #128
davb wrote: post #7

> No designated desks I hate hot desking. I know it's very subjective but when I come into an office for eight hours a day, five days a week, I like to personalise my workspace. I don't drive, I take public transport and walk, and hate carting my laptop and charger around with me. I want my own space, with meeting rooms and collaboration spaces for when I need those things. I may be alone in saying so, but I'd happil…

But a private office is very very expensive. People might think I'm trolling but I honestly think that until "engineer > real estate" there will be no real progress. All this talk about "open space", "hot desks", etc. is because costs of private office space just does not make sense to any CTO or CEO.

Why not let them work from home and save even more then?

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#196

Post by george_ciobanu »

davb wrote: post #7

> No designated desks I hate hot desking. I know it's very subjective but when I come into an office for eight hours a day, five days a week, I like to personalise my workspace. I don't drive, I take public transport and walk, and hate carting my laptop and charger around with me. I want my own space, with meeting rooms and collaboration spaces for when I need those things. I may be alone in saying so, but I'd happil…

See Joel Spolski's floor design.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#197

Post by paulsutter »

rayiner wrote: post #123

I've never understood the price issue. Class A in midtown Manhattan is $80 per square foot. That's $8,000 per year for a developer that probably makes well over six figures. Put two in an office that's only $4,000 per year. I really don't buy it considering how much money companies spend on office space. Like why he hell would you have offices in Greenwich Village ( http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-new-york-of…

Law firms are relatively static sized, sign leases of epic duration, and can thus remodel. Startups need to move once a year because they're growing and they keep filling up their space. When you move once a year you're really looking for a sublet, probably already furnished, and choosing from what's on the market.

So at the core, the cause of open floor plans is too many open floor plans. And the more people that switch their space to offices, the more spaces will be available on the market for 1 year sublets. But that's not what's available now, anywhere.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#198

Post by cortesoft »

emerged wrote: post #111
LambdaComplex wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about cubicles?

I would honestly rather change careers than work in a cubicle. They give me a feeling of deep existential dread. Do some actually prefer them?

Which part about it do you dislike? I have a feeling it is some association you have with cubicles, and not the cubicles themselves.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#199

Post by cortesoft »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #79
davb wrote: post #7

> No designated desks I hate hot desking. I know it's very subjective but when I come into an office for eight hours a day, five days a week, I like to personalise my workspace. I don't drive, I take public transport and walk, and hate carting my laptop and charger around with me. I want my own space, with meeting rooms and collaboration spaces for when I need those things. I may be alone in saying so, but I'd happil…

It's funny, I work in a coworking space, and we technically have hot desks, but everyone always ends up sitting in the same place every day. It really throws me if someone takes my seat, usually it's someone new, who hasn't figured out the seating plan yet. It's almost like high school, where you don't have a designated lunch table, but you always sit at the same table. Or at least that's what the movies show, we did…

Humans are creatures of habit.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#200

Post by bassman9000 »

mindcrime wrote: post #143

> No designated desks If the day comes that my $DAYJOB employer goes this route, that's the exact day I quit. Hot desking is some of the most idiotic, brain-dead stupid shit I can imagine. I have desk drawers for a reason... so I don't have to lug around every single item I use at my desk, everywhere I go. Not to mention the books on my desk, which I am definitely not hauling back and forth every day.

No designated desks is the Agile of floor planning. Everyone's the same, anyone can do the same job, you can hotswap spaces and people as you replace hard drives.
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