In EU all those glass doors would have to have matt texture/stickers around eye level so you don't enter them by accident - I'm surprised in US there's no such requirement?
Apple Park employees revolt over having to work in open-plan offices
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Re: Apple Park employees revolt over having to work in open-plan offices
#12we had a web group to great fan fare had all new work area created for them, open ceilings, glass walled conference rooms, and open-plan in general. I am not sure if anyone like it. from lack of perceived "my space" to simple increase in noise. plus if the computer setups are not well planned out it just looks wrong. for me, it reminds me of one especially bad contract where we worked on school lunch room tables. fiv…
> people deride cubicles now Yeah, I don't understand where the hate comes from. I suspect it's just about using cubicles as symbols of corporate environment in general. Because from a floor-plan standpoint, they're a fucking great invention . It's a perfect compromise between the need to give everyone their personal space, and the need to fit in lots of people cost-effectively. Today, if a company offered me a cubic…
Cubicles were considered the worst of both worlds. No proper privacy because there is not enough sound blocking and the faux walls isolate people and prevent collaboration.
Re: Apple Park employees revolt over having to work in open-plan offices
#13I think it’s easy to reversed TOP floor for quiet working environment and noisy environment at lower level.
Looking at Singapore has an office look similar to Apple Park spaceship. Directors, professors and councillors are working in open space, I don’t see why not?
Re: Apple Park employees revolt over having to work in open-plan offices
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
> people deride cubicles now Yeah, I don't understand where the hate comes from. I suspect it's just about using cubicles as symbols of corporate environment in general. Because from a floor-plan standpoint, they're a fucking great invention . It's a perfect compromise between the need to give everyone their personal space, and the need to fit in lots of people cost-effectively. Today, if a company offered me a cubic…
Cubicles were considered the worst of both worlds. No proper privacy because there is not enough sound blocking and the faux walls isolate people and prevent collaboration.
I wonder why. I think they provide enough privacy for a workplace (as long as you're allowed to use headphones for extra sound blocking, and as long as the entry is to your side, not behind you) - the only way to get even more would be closed-door offices, but that takes much more floor space.
As for "collaboration", at this point I consider talking about it as a negative thing about a place. I mean, frankly, I know "collaborating" is fun and games, but at some point somebody has to sit down, focus, and write the fucking code.
Re: Apple Park employees revolt over having to work in open-plan offices
#15Where are they gonna go, though? The whole Valley has succumbed to this fad.
Re: Apple Park employees revolt over having to work in open-plan offices
#16Steve Jobs is said to have poured in a lot of thought on how the architecture of the building is supporting work. Steve also had some architectural experience from Pixar. On the macro level the alignment of the architecture with the organization as it was explained always made sense to me. On the micro level changing from offices to open floor is a huge change. How was that supposed to preserve and foster the enginee…
Who wants to get 3/4 of the way through the construction and admit your brand new building isn't big enough? Easier to just shove everyone in. Apple is usually a smart company, but it is always a large company, and large companies are prone to making broad one-size-fits-all mistakes.
> ...and admit your brand new building isn't big enough?
How do companies believe in ever-lasting growth and then not reflect that in their plans on usage of space? Feels like cognitive dissonance to me.
Re: Apple Park employees revolt over having to work in open-plan offices
#17> "Judging from the private feedback I've gotten from some Apple employees, I'm 100 per cent certain there's going to be some degree of attrition based on the open floor plans, where good employees are going to choose to leave because they don't want to work there," Gruber said. But where are they going to go? Is there a single company left that hasn't adopted the open floor plan ideology? If so, are they hiring beca…
This. I so strongly wish companies would start including their office arrangement in the job description. It would make it easier for me to avoid open-plan places, and it would let those who like them avoid offices/cubicles - thus making it more likely employees will feel good and thus work at peak productivity. It would also let the industry gather some real feedback about people's preferences. I don't really see a downside of including that info.
Re: Apple Park employees revolt over having to work in open-plan offices
#18In EU all those glass doors would have to have matt texture/stickers around eye level so you don't enter them by accident - I'm surprised in US there's no such requirement?
As someone who managed to crash into a glass wall by accident (someone was really good at cleaning them), I second the suggestion - such stickers are a good idea.
Re: Apple Park employees revolt over having to work in open-plan offices
#19I'm moving my office at work from a nice office next to the production office (noisy, people banging in and out all day) to a much bigger windowless space on the other site across the road just because of the noise . Boss keeps asking if I'm OK with no windows and I keep saying "Have you ever seen me with the blinds open?", It's amazing how even good managers don't get that for some of us a cave with fast internet is…
Yes, noise is a total productivity killer for me. I can't think, and thinking is most of my job! And what people designing offices never seem to understand is that noise is situational, relational.
Some of my best working experiences have been in open-plan space with shared tables. And some of my worst have too. The difference is whether the people around me share the same definitions of "signal" and "noise".
If the only people in earshot are my team, we quickly work out a shared sense of what's good to talk about in the team space.
But if the people in earshot are on different teams, it's a fucking nightmare. We have very different understandings of what "signal" is. E.g., to a recruiter or someone in sales, "signal" is loud, emotionally intense conversations. But to me that's the worst kind of noise. And there's little social context for negotiating shared use.
Re: Apple Park employees revolt over having to work in open-plan offices
#20we had a web group to great fan fare had all new work area created for them, open ceilings, glass walled conference rooms, and open-plan in general. I am not sure if anyone like it. from lack of perceived "my space" to simple increase in noise. plus if the computer setups are not well planned out it just looks wrong. for me, it reminds me of one especially bad contract where we worked on school lunch room tables. fiv…
I hate cubicles because it means the company is too cheap to build proper offices, so I end up working from home as soon as I can. Apparent now they are too cheap to provide desks and assign groups of people to planks. However, it turns out that they are sooooo cheap that they assign far too many people to each plank so then they can't even sit down and finally decide that people can work from home to help alleviate the space issue. This is great by me, but awful for anyone that doesn't do well working from home.