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Does your office have a library?

jonpauluritis.com

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Re: Does your office have a library?

#131

Post by tablespoon »

Arainach wrote: post #15

It depends on how abstract you consider a "library". My employer does have a library of physical books, but they're almost never used. On the other hand they have an enormous amount of digital internal data - Wikis, API docs, design docs, Stack Overflow-esque Q&A, and more - that's well indexed and can be collectively searched via one query. Those assets are used constantly every day by everyone (and even moreso if y…

> On the other hand they have an enormous amount of digital internal data - Wikis, API docs, design docs, Stack Overflow-esque Q&A, and more - that's well indexed and can be collectively searched via one query. Those assets are used constantly every day by everyone (and even moreso if you consider code search part of your library).

My company essentially deletes all that. They migrate from intranet portal to intranet portal periodically, and each migration is advertised as an opportunity to "clean up" all that documentation that hasn't been recently updated about legacy systems that we still need to run.

The people who run the portal are technically in HR or something like that, and I think they have know idea how it's actually used, and mentally model it as a place for announcements.

Re: Does your office have a library?

#132

Post by yellow_lead »

chillfox wrote: post #118
scrlk wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy for bean counters to measure the cost savings of open plan layouts (e.g. higher utilization of office space). I wonder if anyone has tried to measure the productivity loss of open plan vs private offices, which might tilt it back towards private offices. There is no substitute for having a door to close to isolate noise, and being able to do some intensive work.

My last job was in an open plan office with a constant noise level of 70db, peaking into 80db several times an hour. After about a year of it I noticed that it was affecting me mentally in a really bad way. I would get super irritated at people for small insignificant things, be as adversarial/hostile as possible and try to turn every discussion into an argument, I saw slights everywhere, and everyone was stupid. Onc…

I thought this comment was going towards you finding a high CO2 concentration in your office, but this makes sense too.

Re: Does your office have a library?

#133

Post by ivolimmen »

Well we don't have an office so a library would be difficult to have. My employer does offer the ability to reimburst any bought book. They also offer a Safari subscription. I personally don't need it; I use "the web". I do miss the old days when we had MSDN a huge collection of books. Later (90s?) we had the MSDN lokally installed. I also remember when you bought a computer you got books with it. Getting to know the operating systems. MS-DOS came with a nice manual for GWBASIC. The book made me interested in programming. Since we now get nothing with it I does not inspire as much as well...

Re: Does your office have a library?

#136

Post by fhd2 »

jedberg wrote: post #52

Lots of good questions in this, but to answer the question in the title: When I started working corporate in 1999, every engineer had their own library of tech books. We would all share books with each other. You could tell how senior someone was by how big their book collection was. At once point, one of our senior people got laid off. Since the books were bought by the company he had to leave them all behind. Us ju…

Did you really not miss anything from the physical books? I tend to buy the most highly recommended books for areas I'm interested in, and the quality of explanation and structure routinely beats anything I can find about the topic online. And that's not niche knowledge, goes for undergrad level maths and physics even.

Re: Does your office have a library?

#137

Post by yellow_lead »

wonderwonder wrote: post #68

"What would you take a pay cut for? What would you work on for free that makes money for someone else?" I thought about this and my first response was nothing. But then considered what if my kid had a disease and a company was working on the cure. I would take a pay cut or work for them for free to attempt to expedite the cure. If I'm willing to do that for my kid then would I be willing to do that for other kids? Pr…

I also indefinitely borrowed design patterns from my previous company

Re: Does your office have a library?

#138

Post by vasco »

scruple wrote: post #120
jedberg wrote: post #52

Lots of good questions in this, but to answer the question in the title: When I started working corporate in 1999, every engineer had their own library of tech books. We would all share books with each other. You could tell how senior someone was by how big their book collection was. At once point, one of our senior people got laid off. Since the books were bought by the company he had to leave them all behind. Us ju…

I keep 4 shelves of technical books on my bookshelf behind my home office desk. Some are "old," from the 70s. Many were thrifted. And then I have, I don't know, about 300+ pounds of (mostly) technical books in storage boxes in the garage. For technical stuff I prefer to have both physical and digital copies of some books. For non-technical, I tend to go fully digital (except reference material, like my D&D books). I…

> I've actually been accused of "only knowing" this or that because I "read a lot." Well, no shit, and if others bothered themselves with it they'd learn cool shit, too!

So much this. I can't get smarter, I was born with the brain I was born with, but I can easily fill up time reading and remembering all kinds of crap someone else won't put the time for.

Re: Does your office have a library?

#139

Post by ironmagma »

rqtwteye wrote: post #104
jedberg wrote: post #52

Lots of good questions in this, but to answer the question in the title: When I started working corporate in 1999, every engineer had their own library of tech books. We would all share books with each other. You could tell how senior someone was by how big their book collection was. At once point, one of our senior people got laid off. Since the books were bought by the company he had to leave them all behind. Us ju…

"I have to say, I do sometimes miss learning tech stuff from books. While it's all online and in theory up to date, there is something to be said for the curated experience of a book." I miss the times when you could read K&R, one of Stroustroup's books and an STL book and you pretty much knew most of what there was to know.

That was never most of what there was to know. Lambda calculus was invented before computers.
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