91–98 of 98 posts
It's kind of the degenerate transition point between open-plan and a traditional office.
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Did you read the part about 'Library Rules'? It's a cultural leap, but that would make all the difference. Christ, I'm sitting in an open plan office right now with two telephone conversations going on in my right ear. Thank the hardware overlords for headphones ...
But its fun to talk in the halls! Or debug something verbally with someone at your computer. This is the worst of both worlds. All the drawbacks of a large open space and none of the communication benefits.
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That office plan, and 'Library Rules', are particularly stupid in a world of lack of thought. That is, it's worse than just not thinking about it at all. 3-5 people in the office at any given day? Just build offices, christ. One of the founders must have had a particular itch to scratch is all, and it has cost the company money so that they could have the worst of all worlds The 'Library Rules' are dumb because one o…
I mostly work remote these days but "library rules" in anything but a limited area is silly. If I'm in the office, I have phone calls to participate in and people I want to chat with. If I want to have an extended conversation with someone, I'll (try to) find an alcove but there is zero point to my being in the office if I have to go somewhere private every time I open my mouth.
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Posting a follow-up rather than editing: I also wonder if open-plan offices are a symptom of the increasing centralization of tech companies. These days people seem to think the first step of starting a tech company is to move to the Bay Area. If we were founding companies in Redding, Rochester, Yakima, Grand Rapids, or Albuquerque, could we afford to give everyone an office with a real door for the same price as a S…
In all fairness though, DEC and DG were part of the Route 128 cluster of computer companies. They were just mostly scattered in small towns around the region (as were their manufacturing and other smaller offices) because being located in a city was not really something that tech companies did at the time. [ADDED: AFAIK all of these companies mostly used the typical for the time mix of high cubicles and offices for m…
> In all fairness though...
"In all fairness" to what? What is this referring to?
Because it's cheap. Less walls to build, more employees packed on to a floor. Do you lose more money than you're saving due to decreased productivity? Maybe. But that's hard to prove, and "This office proposal is $X million cheaper because we can lease three fewer floors" is very straightforward.
My illogical hope is that one day we'll have the ability to run "simulations" in parallel universes so we actually can prove that option X was better in the long term than option Y.
It would certainly explain the preponderance of open offices...
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In all fairness though, DEC and DG were part of the Route 128 cluster of computer companies. They were just mostly scattered in small towns around the region (as were their manufacturing and other smaller offices) because being located in a city was not really something that tech companies did at the time. [ADDED: AFAIK all of these companies mostly used the typical for the time mix of high cubicles and offices for m…
I don't understand this comment: > In all fairness though... "In all fairness" to what? What is this referring to?
My employer has the opposite of an open office plan after moving from our old location to our current one a few years ago. Tech support has a cubicle layout, but they are big cubes and assigned to each person. There's no sharing even across shifts. In other departments, each team has a "pod". You enter through a swinging door from the hallway into the pod. Inside, you find a conference room with conference table, whi…
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You're lucky. I automated my deployments and test analysis, which were the most time consuming tasks (sequential process, with few quirks along the way) as a developer. This gave me reliably 30-40 minute forced breaks. Soon I got notices that there were complaints that I do not conform to the office norms, and that apparently I "sleep instead of working", and people "ask if they can work like I do" (never got any fur…
If you automate your job, DONT show it. Use it and hide it, unless your job is explicitly automation engineer or thereabouts. Most places don't value the work you saved via automation. It's the company's gain; it shouldn't be yours! And shame on you for not cranking the gear next to your computer keeping it working! /s Remember, the appearance of work matters more than actual work for almost every employee.