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Let me take you through my dream office

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Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#121

Post by xorblurb »

smikhanov wrote: post #70
tckr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is exactly my point. We have shitty offices, because they are build to suit the real estate market not productivity. But there are examples which are horrible by design, and not because the property value was important: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/30... (first pic)

The employer's financial cost of the lost productivity of an average developer in an open space office is much lower than developers like to think, and much, much lower than the cost of the office with private rooms. By placing people in the open space, companies pay almost three times less in office rental costs ( https://www.mikhanov.com/2015/06/08/open-plan-offices-creati... ). In other words, unless you're Sebast…

Linked post entry is complete bullshit:

1. the author's estimate for non-commoditized software development is ridiculously low (0.1%)

2. even then, those 0.1% are at the risk of not getting private/shared offices. Do you want that for people working on medical devices or other fun critical stuff now embedded in your everyday life? Well, too late. They are working in shitty environment right now, I know that because I'm one of them. Maybe one of the reason they are, is because a "manager" read that kind of blog post which comfort them to be happy to do absurd economies.

3. you can have shared office room with multiple people per room. Even somehow big shared office room, if some trade-off are needed (although around 10 people should be a real max, otherwise above that there is no real difference with a big open-office floor.

4. if you want to do an economic analysis, even if the surface hypothetically needs to triple (which I don't believe for a sec, see above), you need to compare lost revenue per developer (or other interesting figures in case of not yet profitable) -- and think about non-linear factors -- to the cost of extra space renting (mostly linear). "Pay[ing] almost three times less in office rental costs" (which again, I don't believe) is not a business goal.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#122

Post by xyzzy4 »

Domenic_S wrote: post #33

You have to have meeting rooms. People always say you don't, but you always do. Where do you do sprint planning? Project brainstorming? Private meetings (with actual privacy needed, like reviews)?

Why do you need sprint planning? Just always work on things that are high priority.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#123

Post by xorblurb »

Domenic_S wrote: post #33

You have to have meeting rooms. People always say you don't, but you always do. Where do you do sprint planning? Project brainstorming? Private meetings (with actual privacy needed, like reviews)?

> Where do you do sprint planning?

A church seems appropriate to practice that kind of cult.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#124

Post by preordained »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #30
preordained wrote: post #25

This is a nice thought exercise...but that this is often treated like one of the great tribulations of our time as developers...it's a bit pathetic. I'm not saying things can't be better, but as a working people, we're not exactly oppressed.

How could you take the time to complain about this article while there are children starving in Yemen? Being given the choice to read someone's thoughts on improving people's lives isn't exactly oppressing you.

It's an issue developers, or hacker news, harps on all the time. You would think we are working in some unregulated third world factory conditions. Most of us work in a comfortable office with plenty of amenities. Yes, the open trend is less conducive to work we do. Noted. I just feel fixating on this stuff and (IMO) exaggerating how vile and terrible the average working conditions for us are makes us look needy and entitled as a community. My .02

I'm just honestly disturbed how much this "issue" seems to resonate with hacker news. I could leave well enough alone, but I had an opinion I wanted to share.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#125

Post by zhte415 »

noir_lord wrote: post #111
ensiferum wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"some" developers? I'd guess that's in fact "most". In my experience the only people who like open office are those whose job is to talk all day long. Sales guys, visionaires, busy bodies etc. Everyone else just suffers.

I said some because if I had said all or implied all I'd have gotten lots of "but I love open offices" responses and they do exist.

Indeed they do, I'm one of them.

But with a huge caveat:

I can largely turn off other sensory input. Some is nice: a breeze through the window, a buzz of others around, nice light and open plan but not vast open plan; no one is no more than 4 desks away from a window (a proper window that can be opened and that has some kind of view). And cubicles shouldn't have huge walls; can see the face or top of the head of the person next to you.

Also: Lots of small meeting rooms dotted around with almost assured availability of one at little notice. It could be for a sensitive call, impromptu conversation, or just to sit in the dark working something out.

I couldn't survive normally in one, nor in the other. However I default at open plan. If others want to default the other way, that's good too. There should be options.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#126

Post by imgabe »

I like the concept of the shared 3-person offices. I think that's a good size. As someone who works professionally designing offices (as an engineer, but working with architects and interior designers) let me bring up a few practical considerations.

1. Accessibility. Offices have to comply with the Americans with Disabilities act. This includes requirements determining how wide passageways have to be. So having a wall immediately in front of a door as you enter a room is problematic. You need enough space between the wall and the door for a person in a wheelchair to enter and turn around. This creates a lot of wasted space compared to not having the wall there. Likewise the study corrals in the quite space room are way too close together, the bathroom doesn't have a handicapped stall, if you have showers, one or more of the shower stalls will also need to be accessible.

2. I'm not sure how well the unisex bathroom would fly. There are code requirements for number of toilets / urinals required based on occupancy. Usually it ends up cheaper to separate the bathrooms since some of the requirements for men can be addressed with urinals, which are going to be cheaper.

3. There's a reason most offices don't have a stove. Once you put a stove in a pantry it becomes a kitchen - a commercial kitchen. This brings a host of other requirements for automatic fire suppression over the stove. Exhaust hoods over the range. Makeup air to replace the air pushed out by the range hood. Grease traps, all sorts of things. Not that it can't be done, it's just expensive and most companies will not pay for it.

4. Space requirements - the design is very space inefficient. While it's nice to have a big room shared by 3 people, it's going to cost a lot in terms of rent. Offices are leased in terms of $/sf. Every extra square foot that isn't being used is costing you money. The main reason companies like open offices is that they can cram a lot of people into a minimum amount of space. This would be really nice and a wonderful place to work, but it will cost a fortune.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#127

Post by BatFastard »

tolien wrote: post #62
bigzen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay you have my interest. Could you expand on why you would like to see desktops with laptops for a VM? Would the laptop borrowing happen on a night by night basis? Wouldn't you expect some employees to always take the laptops home. Genuinely curious as to why you think this would be better. (more cost effective, better office env, etc.)

Not the OP, but: > Wouldn't you expect some employees to always take the laptops home Maybe, but there's two issues here - they're either taking them for personal use, or they're taking them to do (additional) work on. In the majority of cases, you probably don't want to encourage either of these (in the same way you wouldn't encourage someone to stay in the office till 3 am). There's probably a group (on-call, not a…

Desktops over laptops for numerous reasons. Lower initial cost, better GPU (I work in graphics), ability to add more memory, ergonomic keyboards, ergonomics in general, lower lifetime costs (I still using some 17 year old computers, with upgraded processors, memory, hard-disks).

And I agree with tolien on keeping work at work in general (and everything else he said). You need a few laptops for people to take to clients and demos (depends on your business).

VM's make it incredibly easy to restore/set-up any kind environment quickly. And with everything in the cloud, you have almost instant access to code and docs.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#128

Post by madcaptenor »

mynameishere wrote: post #8

Traditional closed offices, conference rooms for group work, and multiple non-shared unisex bathrooms (exactly like the kind in a typical house--how innovative!) That's the perfect office, and I know because I've worked in it and every other variation.

Replace "closed offices" with "bedrooms" and "conference rooms" with "living room", "dining room", etc. and this sounds an awful lot like an actual house.

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#129

Post by throwaway41597 »

chillydawg wrote: post #66
tckr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, right. I have no idea what typical offices have per person?

I currently py about £500 per month per head for serviced office space. Very small, though, with six of us and could easily grow to 8 or 9 in the space so the cost drops.

And how many square meters ? Do you find it enough ?

Re: Let me take you through my dream office

#130

Post by cmahler7 »

mgkimsal wrote: post #103
ensiferum wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"some" developers? I'd guess that's in fact "most". In my experience the only people who like open office are those whose job is to talk all day long. Sales guys, visionaires, busy bodies etc. Everyone else just suffers.

This evergreen topic comes up enough that there will always be multiple sides to this topic. I've gone so far in past threads to imply that other devs were "wrong" about being more productive in open office plans, and got bashed for that. "Don't tell me how I'm more productive", etc. There may never actually be hard data on this, because it's, at core, likely very hard to measure, but I'd love to read some research/f…

there is data on the subject and it is simply not possible to be more productive in an open office with distractions. It's impossible with the way our brains work
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