This sounds a bit like 42 floors. Whatever happened to them? Did they implode into a black hole with the weight of their own hype?
Why It’s So Hard to Actually Work in Shared Offices
91–100 of 316 posts
Re: Why It’s So Hard to Actually Work in Shared Offices
#92Is this some kind of coastal culture thing, to add all kinds of stupid, non-productive crap to your work environment?
Here in flyover country, you can rent an entire suite of multiple private offices in a strip of class B office-park units, including utilities, for less than what WeWork is apparently asking for just one private office. And that's without the insane brand-connected features like having beer kegs at work.
Out here, a foosball table in the office is a red flag. People working on laptops on couches is a red flag. An untidy kitchenette is a red flag. Conducting an interview at a noisy restaurant is a double-red flag. (TSB. I was eating there with my family.) An open office plan is a red flag, unless it is clear that situation is aspirationally temporary, as the company is trying for ramen-profitability. People drinking beer at work is a triple-red flag.
I have been in plenty of small-business service company or business incubator offices (for me, plenty = 2), and they looked just like regular large company offices, except the employees all worked for different companies and had the actual keys to their own lockable office. In one of them, instead of a data center in the secure area in the back of the building, there was a bio-chem lab. Neither were hard to work in, even in the rent-by-the-desk bullpen, because it was quiet. The tenants were mainly working from home and using the rented office only for customer contact, interviews, and the mailing address.
Re: Why It’s So Hard to Actually Work in Shared Offices
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drinking at work is one of the absolutely worst traits of tech. Not only is it totally unprofessional, but things like ‘Friday beers’ are actually presented by companies as a benefit, and you face major social and professional consequences for not participating. It’s obscene.
You show me any company with beer on tap, and I'll show you a company that I will run over if we are competing against each other.
Pretty much every movie production company ever, ad agencies, etc.. Not sure why tech thinks they invented this idea.
Re: Why It’s So Hard to Actually Work in Shared Offices
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I covet a law library style heads down quiet work zone. I’m not crazy about shared office, cafe tables. They have to be library style heavy, solid to dampen heavy typing, pencl tapping, regular jostling.
Have you tried working in an actual library? Most public libraries have WiFi these days.
I love libraries and my city has some truly beautiful ones. The problem with working there is that unless you work in a group you have to basically pack up your whole setup if you want to go to the bathroom or get a cup of coffee. The coworking space I'm at has physical access controls and the members/residents/inmates all know each other.
Re: Why It’s So Hard to Actually Work in Shared Offices
#95Because Hollywood and overzealous architectural design firms dont understand acoustics...many of them have only recently come to realize the hubris of their ideas. I once worked for a $web_company in a cubeless open office with hard flooring and lots of glass. It was so bad you could hear a fart in the bathroom from the kitchen. Developers routinely recommended brands of noise cancelling headphones. In the sysadmin p…
I would've hired a new executive instead.
Doing both is an option.
Re: Why It’s So Hard to Actually Work in Shared Offices
#96They want an office that matches their personality. And apparently, that means beer on tap and lots of it. The office looked like the lobby of a hipster hotel. Over the next few weeks, we showed up each day and tapped away on MacBook Airs to the sounds of Portuguese house music and old-school hip hop piped in through speakers. (“Rap is urban, and so is WeWork,” the company explains online. “But more profoundly, the c…
> If this is the future of tech work, then I guess I'd better find another career--perhaps gardening or wood-working? Exactly. I can't imagine working in an environment like that. You don't want to hear me playing Smooth by Neil Cicierega[1], and I don't want to hear you playing rap. A work environment is not the place to be playing music for everyone around you. Constant generic music is the worst part of retail, an…
There's only going to be one kind of music in my coworking space, bagpipe music https://open.spotify.com/track/1bUM4KAW0426M6uELs43lm?si=ihC... .
> Constant generic music is the worst part of retail, and that's saying something.
And getting away from the front-of-house area saturated by muzak doesn't promise much relief, because in the employees-only areas of any blue-collar workplace it's a near-certainty you'll find an FM boombox playing absolutely the worst top-40 station within range. There was a NYT article from a few months ago saying 'employers are starting to play music for their staff, what do we think of this?', basically an enormous shibboleth announcing that none of the people involved had ever worked for minimum wage in their lives.
Re: Why It’s So Hard to Actually Work in Shared Offices
#97There's a bias toward the negative in writing, which I think comes from the fact that people write as an attempt to solve problems. So you're always going to see more negative reporting on shared offices than positive. But I'm old enough to remember when private offices were still common, and there was a lot of negative writing about those too. As someone about to enter the software industry, I was very concerned tha…
This is 100% the truth. I don’t know why it’s so hard to recognize different people have different working preferences, there’s no absolute correct arrangement. HN (rightfully) shoots down “anecdata”, but on this issue everyone’s fine with a sample size of 1? don’t just shout your preferences at everyone else, it turns these threads into useless repetitive noise.
Probably because research dating back to 1980s (see Peopleware) shows that shared offices are objectively less productive and result in less happy workforce?
Re: Why It’s So Hard to Actually Work in Shared Offices
#98I "work" in an open office type space. My ears are filled with people on the phone or just talking about work they could do. In my peripheral vision is a colleague and various other movements. I'm here to do only very simple work because I can't think very deeply. Any serious work is done at home where I am many times more productive. For some work this type of setup might be fine, but for anything resembling enginee…
I've worked as a software engineer for over a decade and most of that time was spent in open office spaces. I am most productive in that environment.
I don't doubt that you are more productive in a different environment, but it's a pretty big leap to assume that every engineer is going to be productive in the same environment. Different people work different ways, and the answer is to find a workspace that suits you, not try to apply the work environment that works for you to the entire industry.
Re: Why It’s So Hard to Actually Work in Shared Offices
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. How does this happen? It's a common space, so it's nobody's. Especially in an environment like that, a collection of separated individuals
My office has multiple kitchens that are always pretty clean. Everyone washes what they use and clean up after themselves. I don’t see why it should be different anywhere else. Some people just aren’t good at being responsible.
I've had this problem in almost every office I've worked at. It shouldn't be different but for whatever reason, people seem to think it beneath them. I often wondered what state some of my co-worker's houses were in.
Re: Why It’s So Hard to Actually Work in Shared Offices
#100I work in a shared office / coworking space. We have 3 desks in a large open plan office with a kitchen area. It's about 10 feet from my desk. Most of the time it's just me from our company as the other devs work from home or work out the main office. My experience of working in this shared space: * It's noisy. I mean really noisy, noise cancelling headphones are a must. Like I said the kitchen area is near my desk,…
Anecdotal reply, hot-desking at WW in central London.
* Some days noisy, some days very quiet. I have great headphones, but find myself more productive than when I worked at home. People are noisy, but generally the 'hum' is a sensible level, and it's only really irritating if someone is on Skype and conversing without headphones in (I'm not sure why that's more annoying that overhearing a face to face conversation, but it definitely is).
* Conversation is what you make it. I'm on first name terms with lots of people here, it's easy to make small talk, exchange a name, then intro someone to someone else. Before long, most regular faces know most regular faces.
* The one thing I missed most working at home was water-cooler chat. I go out of my way now to offer tea / coffee, ask about people's lives, whatever - I can have headphones on for 95% of the day, but that 5% is important. I didn't know anyone here before I joined.
* Our kitchen area is tidy 90% of the time. People are pretty good about cleaning up after themselves, the WW staff are generally very good, and if something is awful, asking it to be sorted is usually pretty painless.
I think generally I'm very pro WW. There are some annoyances; it's usually people drinking and drink-chatting too early. But I don't begrudge it and the building is big enough to go work somewhere quiet. Definitely far more productive than WFH.