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The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

sparkfun.com

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Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#51

Post by nicholassmith »

jbb555 wrote: post #22

I presume this is a spoof. Nobody would want to work in a place with animals wandering around. It's really not an acceptable working environment.

Aside from zoo keepers. I imagine they're happy working in a place with animals wandering round.

Ridiculous example yes, but your acceptable working environment and someone else's working environment can be very, very different. Clearly having animals wandering around works well for SparkFun, as they seem to be on the ball with their business.

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#52

Post by qwerta »

raverbashing wrote: post #48
qwerta wrote: post #16

If this is not spoof, it illustrates well how startup turns into corporation. They could allow occasional work from home. No instead they create The Dog Policy, the Dog Agreement and The Dog Tribunal Management. If someone has allergy or wants to bring his baby, they introduce another 10 agreements. In my previous job colleague was bringing dog sometimes, I just asked him to keep it away from me (have serious allergy…

Well, I can understand why SparkFun might limit work from home: 1 - They're a hardware company. You can't take most of the equipment home 2 - EDA software is usually very expensive (and sometimes hardware demanding), so you can't just install it in a laptop

Thats not really an excuse. VNC+VPN is around for decades.

I worked for hardware manufacturer which produced 50+ pound UPS units. They do Arduino boards.

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#53

Post by VLM »

jbb555 wrote: post #22

I presume this is a spoof. Nobody would want to work in a place with animals wandering around. It's really not an acceptable working environment.

I work with a mostly blind woman and her seeing-eye German Shepard service dog. Amazing dog. All the puritan whining about dogs assumes its a standard issue frat boy bringing in his basset hound, but the puritanism melts away like ice from a blowtorch when its the blind lady instead of some frat boy antics.

All the stories about poop everywhere and people getting bitten and fighting amongst the rabble remind me of when my kids were toddlers. I wonder if I could bring in my kids, as long as the poop ended up in a bag and they don't bite too many people.

It seems more than a little ridiculous. Instead of "working" for 12 hours a day but spending half of it Fing around with your dog, why not work 8 hours and go home and play with your dog at home? Or if you're only "working" for eight hours but spending half of it playing with dogs, why not honestly work part time? Or why not just work at home, or flex time it to the max, or whatever? It just seems the most complicated possible solution to a simple problem.

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#54

Post by edvinbesic »

levosmetalo wrote: post #31

If someone tried to bring dog to my office, next thing I will do would be to ask permission to work from home. If that doesn't work, I'd look up for another job. If that doesn't work, I'd buy rats and cocroaches, and bring them to work with me as "pets". But, there's no way I'm going to sit in the office full of "nice dogs" and pretend that doesn't affect me. EDIT: Just to clarify, I am not allergic to dogs and yes,…

Yeah, because passive aggressive people who do things out of spite are great in a workplace. Instead of bringing roaches as your pets or rage-quitting maybe you can take it up with HR first, or god forbid your coworkers, especially if the reason is allergies (you didn't specify)?

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#55

Post by gaius »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #25
yetfeo wrote: post #2

How do dog friendly work places deal with employees that are allergic to dogs?

I was wondering if this would be legal (I'm in the UK). Obviously they don't have an issue but we have pretty strict equality rules and I'm not sure culture would be a valid excuse to allow such exclusion.

Muslims find dogs offensive, so I doubt you could get away with it.

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#56

Post by frost_knight »

pawelkomarnicki wrote: post #7

At my current job I bring my dog to the office every day and there are no issues whatsoever, but I have some personal rules when it comes to bring my dog to work: - no dog if there are allergic people around, - no barking, - no wandering around, - DEFINITELY no pee and poo in the building, - CLEANING outside the company building, - I am responsible for the dog's actions. Disclaimer: my dog is trained by me and really…

I'm involved in rabbit rescue and have 7 at home. Once in a while if I'm taking them to the vet I'll bring them to work with me in carriers. Coworkers come from all around to fuss over them, and the rabbits love it. They're closely supervised and used to being handled.

One day during an important meeting the CIO picked Earl out of his carrier, a tiny 2-pound grey netherland dwarf who knows he's cute and rides it for all it's worth. She spent the whole meeting with him in her lap -- Earl probably thought we were all there for him.

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#57

Post by Ntrails »

levosmetalo wrote: post #31

If someone tried to bring dog to my office, next thing I will do would be to ask permission to work from home. If that doesn't work, I'd look up for another job. If that doesn't work, I'd buy rats and cocroaches, and bring them to work with me as "pets". But, there's no way I'm going to sit in the office full of "nice dogs" and pretend that doesn't affect me. EDIT: Just to clarify, I am not allergic to dogs and yes,…

Do you dislike dogs? Are you allergic? I get that you are saying you don't want to work in an office with dogs and would find it unacceptable, but explaining why would be helpful!

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#58

Post by VLM »

ama729 wrote: post #34
timjahn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems silly to have a dog if you're just going to leave it at home for 10-11 hours a day, 5 days a week.

Honest question, would you feel the same way if you replace dog by baby in your sentence? Edit: Hopefully, "at home" would then mean "at the daycare", otherwise it's a bit irresponsible...

Yes, but I realize this is horribly politically incorrect because everyone has a right to reproduce, even if its at everyone elses cost. It seems especially if its at everyone elses cost.

In another post I bring up the excellent point that the proper solution to the 11 hours in the office problem isn't making the 11 hours more bearable by Fing off for several hours per day, but perhaps only spending 8 hours in the office per day. Or less.

My wife did half days at home for almost a decade while the kids were little. They trusted her to work at home during an emergency at 3am, so leaving work in the afternoon to pick up the kids at school then working at home from 3pm till 6 or whatever was no big stretch of the imagination, even for "big corp" "dilbertian" management. This is obviously only applicable to cubie/desk jobs not manual labor.

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#59

Post by TeMPOraL »

yen223 wrote: post #47
TeMPOraL wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but I'm not thinking about deserving and making workers feel good; though I'm all for it in every industry, in some this is a requirement rather than perk. You can treat people like slaves (and many do) in grocery stores or internet bookshops with little negative impact on productivity or profitability, but I wouldn't want to see or use code written by people in similar conditions.

I don't want to be operated on by a stressed-out doctor who's at the end of a 36-hour shift either. If your only concern was profitability, there are a huge number of engineering companies who achieved success despite, or perhaps because of, encouraging long hours and driving their employees to the ground. That's why profitability is not my only concern.

> I don't want to be operated on by a stressed-out doctor who's at the end of a 36-hour shift either.

Good point.

> That's why profitability is not my only concern.

It isn't mine either; I wanted to point out that even in the most selfish, profit-focused world imaginable, there'd still be an argument for blurring work and play for at least some types of jobs.

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#60

Post by masklinn »

qwerta wrote: post #16

If this is not spoof, it illustrates well how startup turns into corporation. They could allow occasional work from home. No instead they create The Dog Policy, the Dog Agreement and The Dog Tribunal Management. If someone has allergy or wants to bring his baby, they introduce another 10 agreements. In my previous job colleague was bringing dog sometimes, I just asked him to keep it away from me (have serious allergy…

> They could allow occasional work from home.

They do, the post was written by somebody working from home.

And their business is manufacture and retail of microcontrollers boards and breakout boards. Most of the job is either R&D creating electronics (require expensive, usually shared, physical equipment) and handling the production and sale of their manufactured equipment which requires being on-site.

> No instead they create The Dog Policy, the Dog Agreement and The Dog Tribunal Management.

That makes sense. When you've got 5 people and 2 dogs you can handle it informally, when you have 150 people and 45 dogs you need a bit more structure to it. Reading the timeline, the alternatives were basically implementing a solid framework or banning dogs altogether.

> In my previous job colleague was bringing dog sometimes

It was one colleague doing it sometimes. Not a third of your colleagues doing it regularly.

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