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Is the open office layout dead?

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Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#211

Post by stctgion »

daxfohl wrote: post #134
kemitche wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want me to work remote full time, I need a raise to cover the cost of getting an apartment or house equivalent to my own but with an additional room to turn into a dedicated private office. Otherwise, I'll take an appropriately designed office.

I agree there's a need to separate work and life. I really struggled with WFH until I got some designated space to do it. I'd imagine that's not uncommon. That said, whether it's worth it depends on how you value your time. Not sitting in traffic an hour each day ~20 days/month, if you value your time at even $30/hr (entry-level contractor in midwest, say), it should cover the cost of the extra space. If not, well, y…

Within a month of engineering moving into a office previously used by management they had removed the luxury toilet paper

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#212

Post by bdowling »

The open office layout won't be dead in the U.S. until tax laws offer accelerated depreciation for building office walls. Right now the depreciation schedule for commercial building construction is something like 39 years, meaning that expenses incurred this year to renovate an office won't be recouped for almost four decades. Meanwhile, cubicles are considered furniture, which has a depreciation schedule of 7 years. (Note: I didn't look up the actual numbers, so I might be off a little.)

If companies got the same tax benefits for building walls that they do for buying cubicles, we'd see more walls, since everyone knows they're better for productivity and office harmony.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#213

Post by daxfohl »

stctgion wrote: post #211
daxfohl wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree there's a need to separate work and life. I really struggled with WFH until I got some designated space to do it. I'd imagine that's not uncommon. That said, whether it's worth it depends on how you value your time. Not sitting in traffic an hour each day ~20 days/month, if you value your time at even $30/hr (entry-level contractor in midwest, say), it should cover the cost of the extra space. If not, well, y…

Within a month of engineering moving into a office previously used by management they had removed the luxury toilet paper

I was going to try to say something witty, but as the saying goes, reality is stranger than fiction. Picture executives hording it for themselves. http://clark.com/shopping-retail/high-quality-toilet-paper-c...

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#214

Post by dingo_bat »

concede_pluto wrote: post #2

It's been over a decade since I had so much as a semi-private office (shared with just one quiet teammate) so I have to say the death of the open office is exaggerated. And all of their workarounds assume a laptop could ever substitute for a desktop with an ergonomic keyboard and a large screen. It's amazing that the escalating competition in pay and perks never seem to include space to get into the zone.

A laptop is a great substitute for a desktop if you have a dock. I just place my laptop on the dock, it clicks into place and I have a couple of big screens, a full size keyboard and a mouse on my desk. No different than a desktop.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#216

Post by gaius »

northwest65 wrote: post #175
throwaway0255 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I would really encourage you to move on the interviewing as soon as you can. I was in your position, desperately unhappy with the working conditions, and now I'm in a small quiet office with 4 to 5 other people and I have never been happier in my work. In the meantime, get yourself a set of Bose Quiet Comfort 35s. An absolutely life changing piece of equipment for me at least. If nothing else you will comfortable enj…

Are they robust enough for everyday use? The Sony equivalent is plagued with problems I've read in reviews.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#217

Post by gaius »

jsmeaton wrote: post #174
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's simply horrible how expensive it would be to give private offices even to >3 people in our company How do you quantify the loss in productivity and quality that could be associated with a noisy work environment?

Opex vs capex

So much corporate nonsense makes perfect sense once you are aware of this

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#218

Post by lexicality »

lj3 wrote: post #21
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…

What if they gave everybody a desk with wheels? Then you can wheel your desk with your tools wherever you want to work that day.

My previous company (https://smarkets.com/about/careers/) had desks on wheels. It was cool but moderately pointless after we moved into team offices. Still - the brownian motion of desks as we formed pairs was quite interesting. (And occasionally seeing someone switch rooms attempting to control both a giant desk & a chair was hilarious)

I kind of miss the liberation of being able to just flip my desk 180 and stare out of the window when I needed to work on something though.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#219

Post by trhway »

Roritharr wrote: post #64
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…

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.

100 square feet per year is $7K/year in SF. It is pennies compare to how open office kills productivity. People who haven't worked in offices or even good cubes may probably don't even know what good programmer productivity looks like or feels like :)

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#220

Post by ng12 »

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 will take a cube farm over rows of Ikea desks any day.
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