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Facebook Designing New Campus

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Re: Facebook Designing New Campus

#11

Post by drgath »

holman wrote: post #3
fourspace wrote: post #2

This will most certainly be interesting to watch. My visceral reaction to the idea of one giant room was, "Wow. No thanks." I'm not personally the biggest fan of Frank Gehry's work, either. That said, I'm always a little bit excited when people push architectural boundaries, especially when it comes to workspaces. Hopefully my friends at Facebook will still be around when this is completed.

My visceral reaction to the idea of one giant room was "Rad". Love open floor plans. I'm really curious what the final interior plan will look like; presumably it's not some huge airplane hanger of openness but some clever way of staying open-while-interesting. Like you, though, I'm just excited at the prospect of larger companies doing something different. Should be fun to watch.

I appreciate open floor plans too, but it seems like a little too much for me. Here's a hi-res photo of the model's floorplan (which I'm sure is just a sample). http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/facebook...

I'll reserve final judgement until it's built and we can see pictures/video.

Re: Facebook Designing New Campus

#12

Post by nostrademons »

staunch wrote: post #9

Every time I'm reminded of just how many programmers Facebook has it bothers me that he missed such a cool opportunity. He gets programming better than probably any BigCo tech CEO and yet he made the same damn mistake of hiring thousands upon thousands of programmers instead of just getting the 10X Programmers and having 1/10th as many while paying them 2x as much. Imagine if the budget for this 5000 person building…

I've wondered what it'd be like to have a company that capped its growth at around 500 people, but made damn sure that those 500 were among the brightest in the world. Would it be an innovation think tank? Or would they find that those 500 brilliant people spend so much time doing drudge work that they can't get any actual work done? Or would they just automate all the drudge work away?

I imagine it might be a little like RenTech in the financial world, which according to Wikipedia has only 275 employees and $23B in assets under management, for roughly $100M/employee. Wonder how that would translate to an organization focused around building actual products for people.

Re: Facebook Designing New Campus

#14

Post by aristus »

staunch wrote: post #9

Every time I'm reminded of just how many programmers Facebook has it bothers me that he missed such a cool opportunity. He gets programming better than probably any BigCo tech CEO and yet he made the same damn mistake of hiring thousands upon thousands of programmers instead of just getting the 10X Programmers and having 1/10th as many while paying them 2x as much. Imagine if the budget for this 5000 person building…

Not sure what you are complaining about here. :) Facebook has 1/4 the number of employees Yahoo has and less than 1/16 that of Google. It's smaller than my high school.

Re: Facebook Designing New Campus

#15

Post by evoxed »

nostrademons wrote: post #12
staunch wrote: post #9

Every time I'm reminded of just how many programmers Facebook has it bothers me that he missed such a cool opportunity. He gets programming better than probably any BigCo tech CEO and yet he made the same damn mistake of hiring thousands upon thousands of programmers instead of just getting the 10X Programmers and having 1/10th as many while paying them 2x as much. Imagine if the budget for this 5000 person building…

I've wondered what it'd be like to have a company that capped its growth at around 500 people, but made damn sure that those 500 were among the brightest in the world. Would it be an innovation think tank? Or would they find that those 500 brilliant people spend so much time doing drudge work that they can't get any actual work done? Or would they just automate all the drudge work away? I imagine it might be a little…

> Or would they find that those 500 brilliant people spend so much time doing drudge work that they can't get any actual work done?

[Maybe] Not if a couple of those brightest 500 have enough respect for and include amongst them a couple of the world's most dedicated and efficient administrative assistants.

Re: Facebook Designing New Campus

#17

Post by FaceKicker »

I think I understand the reasoning behind open floor plans, but what's the point of having everyone in a single mega-room? It's not like the two people in opposite corners of the hangar will be able to communicate seamlessly just because they're in the same "room"; they'll have to walk over to one another just the same as they would if they had walls separating them.

(Of course being in the same room doesn't hurt in that respect either, but partitions have other advantages as well, e.g., aesthetics and noise.)

Re: Facebook Designing New Campus

#18

Post by thinkingisfun »

FaceKicker wrote: post #17

I think I understand the reasoning behind open floor plans, but what's the point of having everyone in a single mega-room? It's not like the two people in opposite corners of the hangar will be able to communicate seamlessly just because they're in the same "room"; they'll have to walk over to one another just the same as they would if they had walls separating them. (Of course being in the same room doesn't hurt in…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

Re: Facebook Designing New Campus

#19

Post by brandoncapecci »

Reminds me a lot of this:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_gAOnHhen4zY/S9r-pZcS6bI/AAAAAAAAAA...

Open floor plans don't make collaboration any easier. You still have to walk over to the other person just now, you must also try and hear yourself think over the hundreds of other people inside a hanger. This is the epitome the of a cog in the machine work environment to maximize people per square foot. It's degrading but in a way that's quite fitting for the way Facebook is going right now.

Re: Facebook Designing New Campus

#20

Post by troymc »

holman wrote: post #3
fourspace wrote: post #2

This will most certainly be interesting to watch. My visceral reaction to the idea of one giant room was, "Wow. No thanks." I'm not personally the biggest fan of Frank Gehry's work, either. That said, I'm always a little bit excited when people push architectural boundaries, especially when it comes to workspaces. Hopefully my friends at Facebook will still be around when this is completed.

My visceral reaction to the idea of one giant room was "Rad". Love open floor plans. I'm really curious what the final interior plan will look like; presumably it's not some huge airplane hanger of openness but some clever way of staying open-while-interesting. Like you, though, I'm just excited at the prospect of larger companies doing something different. Should be fun to watch.

They (Facebook) should really look at what research has found before they jump feet-first into having an open floor plan. It's not like they've just invented it!

Open floor plans were invented as a way to cram more people into less space, thereby minimizing cost of office space per employee. They were not invented to improve productivity.

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