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“Today we moved into our new Facebook building”

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Re: “Today we moved into our new Facebook building”

#441

Post by michaelochurch »

strangetimes wrote: post #435
michaelochurch wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is also fairly easily mitigated with methodologies like Scrum where you are frequently touching base with other team members. Seriously, FUCK THAT SCRUM SHIT . A daily status meeting isn't that bad, but "you can only work on it if it's in the backlog" and "sprints" and backlog grooming meetings and this brand of aggressive micromanagement that has revived itself in the name of "Agile"... all of that nonsense…

I actually believe that Scrum is a way to avoid micromanagement. There's no way of getting around the fact that the people who pay you want to see steady progress toward the thing they're paying you to do. One 15-minute meeting each morning to assuage that concern is a reasonable solution to me.

You're talking about standup, not Scrum. It's a common conflation to call a status meeting a "Scrum meeting".

Status reporting, if the overhead is around 3% (e.g. 15 minutes per day, or a one-hour weekly meeting) isn't so bad. I think it's actually good if it defuses the suspicions ("what does he do?") that, unchecked, can devolve into political behavior.

Scrum involves a lot more, like user stories and an explicit disallowance of working on things not in the backlog. By the book, you have to leave written records of what you did in insulting detail. It's horrible stuff. But I agree: 15 minutes per day for an all-team status meeting isn't that bad, and can be better than the alternative if that alternative is a culture of suspicion and resentment.

Re: “Today we moved into our new Facebook building”

#442

Post by michaelochurch »

wutbrodo wrote: post #438
michaelochurch wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of reasons to use open-plan offices, not all disreputable, as I explained here: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/open-plan-of... That said, a common reason for it is back-door age discrimination. Plenty of companies use open-plan offices without such an intent (they "look" busy, which pays off in marketing, and they're cheap) but the open-plan fetishism is all about "culture fit", me…

> There are a number of reasons to use open-plan offices, not all disreputable, as I explained here: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/open-plan-of... . That said, a common reason for it is back-door age discrimination. Wait, what? How do open office plans put women, older folks, and lower-income folks at a disadvantage?

Open-plan offices require you to trust strangers in a way that most people aren't comfortable with. Being visible to someone while working (i.e. doing an activity where your income depends as much on how you are perceived while doing it as on what you actually do) is a form of mandated trust of others.

It doesn't come naturally to people whose life experiences involve violations of trust, embarrassing illnesses, or physical danger. (With age, the percentage of people who have such experiences increases, and approaches 100%.) You have to still have that sense of immortality to be OK in an open-plan office.

Also, having children makes people less trusting of strangers, for obvious biological reasons. Having a helpless being that you must protect at all costs makes people less OK with the blind trust in strangers you're supposed to have if you want to fit in to the "I'm at one with everyone, man!" California culture.

Older people are also not able to take as much abuse of their fight-or-flight systems, and pregnancy has a similar effect on women.

Re: “Today we moved into our new Facebook building”

#443

Post by crashoverdrive »

spcoll wrote: post #87
crashoverdrive wrote: post #86

What I find most strange about all of the photos of office design for "big companies" Where does the actual work get done? Why are those pictures never included?

> What I find most strange about all of the photos of office design for "big companies" > The funniest thing about all of these "office design" photos that I see of big companies. Are you A/B testing your comments?

Ack! No. I was mobile and it pinged me to login after generating the comment, then brought me to a blank screen. I'd thought I lost my comment.

That's a good idea though..If only I had the time

Re: “Today we moved into our new Facebook building”

#444

Post by jack-r-abbit »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #84
deeviant wrote: post #6

Pretty soon, offices will be filled with chairs the fit two and three-person keyboards. I don't even want to think about how the whole "open office" philosophy will influence future restroom design.

Okay, this is not really on-topic at all. But someone has finally given me the opening to rant about the state of public restroom design :-) I spend a lot of time working out of cafes, both for my job and when I'm working on some personal project. ~4-8 hours a day in a cafe plus a coffee every 90 minutes or so and plenty of water means I have a lot of experience with coffee shop public restrooms. And almost all of th…

I agree. I've seen a few places in Berkeley that have a common mirror/sink area in the middle of 4-5 uni-sex toilet closets. Great design.

Re: “Today we moved into our new Facebook building”

#445

Post by oe »

itsybitsycoder wrote: post #426
sukilot wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no manager in a scrum. There are only the developers and a product owner to communicate customer priorities.

Maybe that's how it works if you are doing it "right". But nobody ever seems to do Agile "right". If Agile is so hard to do right, and breaks down so badly when it's done wrong in a small way (like letting your manager in the scrum), then isn't that in itself a problem with Agile?

I don't see a problem in a manager participating. But what would the manager do if backlog is handled by the PO and work load by the dev team? I think any process would break down if a manager decides to fly solo and push extra work outside the framework, for example.

Re: “Today we moved into our new Facebook building”

#446

Post by geebee »

eru wrote: post #174
Touche wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Given how high programmer salaries are This myth persists huh.

Ever seen what normal people make? It's a pittance in comparison.

According to us news best jobs, in San Francisco, the median salary for a dental hygienist is $112,970. For a software developer, it is $114,400, and for a registered nurse, it is $126,670. Numbers are pulled from BLS data (check their methods page).

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-b...

Doctors and Lawyers, of course, earn far more.

Re: “Today we moved into our new Facebook building”

#447

Post by itsybitsycoder »

teacup50 wrote: post #223
JohnBooty wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be fine with this, actually. As long as there was someplace quiet and private to go when needed. I wouldn't mind if these spaces were just booths you could grab when needed. As long as there were enough to go around.

How do I use a high-powered desktop with triple heads if I have to grab a booth on demand? I need focus and fast compile times, not a damn booth.

At my workplace pretty much everything is on the network. All the important stuff and a lot of the personal, non-important stuff sits on a file server somewhere. It wouldn't be a huge jump for us to put everything on the network and make the machines dumb terminals. If you did that, you could just put high-powered desktops in each of the booths.

Re: “Today we moved into our new Facebook building”

#448

Post by itsybitsycoder »

sgift wrote: post #288
eru wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever seen what normal people make? It's a pittance in comparison.

That depends on who is your measure for normal in comparison to programmers: Lawyers? Doctors? Waiters? Cleaners? After that is decided we can check whether you or the GP post is more correct.

And what area you live in, too.

Re: “Today we moved into our new Facebook building”

#449

Post by dismal2 »

dismal2 wrote: post #100

Not being snide, but I REALLY do want to see a picture of a work desk (imagine it would be one of those standing/sitting electronic ones) and a chair and a computer! Or is that confidential info?

I found one! https://instagram.com/p/03riqAsW_e/embed/?v=4

Re: “Today we moved into our new Facebook building”

#450

Post by pyre »

sukilot wrote: post #420
pyre wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The offensive part is the people who say that open offices are MORE EFFICIENT than a traditional office. To be fair, I don't think everyone that uses the term "open office" is thinking "auditorium with 1000+ people." Attempting to extrapolate anything conclusions taken from open office environments of 4-10 people out to 1000+ people seems insane.

4-10 is team room, please don't confuse the conversation by calling it an open office. Don't be overly literal in mincing, let words have useful meaning.

Even if this is the case, I don't think anyone has ever stated that an auditorium of 1000+ people is an "open office" either.
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