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CEOs Want Their Offices Back
131–140 of 409 posts
Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just like the cargo cult Agile pandemic peaked a few years ago, I suspect we're reaching peak open floor plans right now. The overall negative effects of an open floor plan for a significant fraction of engineers (though not all) is self-evident and backed up by reams of data stretching back nearly 40 years: http://iansommerville.com/software-engineering-book/web/work... TLDR: 100 square feet of personal space is opt…
>"Just like the cargo cult Agile pandemic peaked a few years ago, I suspect we're reaching peak open floor plans right now." Wait, that peaked? That hasn't been my perception. I'm curious where you are seeing that.
I'm not seeing anywhere near the $h!+storm of pointless standups I used to see every morning. I'm also seeing the return of the weekly status meeting. Give it time.
Then again, I'm someone who's threatened to enact the 6 mph standup meeting wherein the second anyone drops below 6 mph on foot, the meeting's over because how can we practice Agile if we aren't agile? That wasn't received well.
Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the life of me, I don't understand how "thousands of cubes" is somehow worse than "thousands of $15 Ikea tables". It's just a matter of fads and fashion. Cubicles are "so 90's", while crappy tables thrown together in a loud frat house romper room is "2000's". I understand that each generation has an impulse to differentiate themselves from the previous one. But in this specific case, it is absolutely a productivi…
> The purpose is for management to save money, period. Is saving money the real purpose, or the fig leaf for the actual purpose? If saving money is the real purpose, then Work From Home (WFH) drops putative facilities costs to zero . Forget shaving a square foot here or a tenth of a square meter there: send everyone to their home offices, drop it to zero, call it a day, and collect the bonus check on your way out. No…
Well yes, there are also elements of power and control. Management worries that employees will do less work if they are not present and under observation (sad truth: for the bottom 90% of employees, they're probably correct). And open floor plans, as the high-tech sweatshop model that they are, provide the lowest cost and maximum observation.
But to my point about the degree to which fads and fashion come into play... it's bizarre that so many peers either:
(1) argue in favor of open floor plans ("More collaborative! More fun! Not all old and stuffy like cubes!"), or
(2) argue in favor of work-from-home ("More productive! Less distractions! Not all old and stuffy like cubes!"), or
(3) both, from one sentence to the next.
Open floor plans and work from home are POLAR OPPOSITES. The only thing they have in common is that they're both "not cubes". So it's bizarre to me that there aren't more moderate voices calling for on-prem workplaces of higher quality.
Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was your role on the team? Did your team-members enjoy you turning around and interrupting them? Is it really that hard to get up and walk to another office so you don't disturb 8 other people with a question they don't care about? Walking around occasionally in the day is actually good for us. And two person offices are a mild improvement over cubicles, which are a significant improvement over open offices. But…
I was a team lead/solutions architect. > Did your team-members enjoy you turning around and interrupting them? I don't think it's fair to call all conversations "interruptions" and my co-workers were all very conscious of causing any unwanted interruptions. > Is it really that hard to get up and walk to another office so you don't disturb 8 other people with a question they don't care about? It wasn't, and I often di…
You don't consider that your position of authority affected a different dynamic than if you were a lower ranked individual contributor?
> As a side note, this workplace was comprised of mostly men and women under the age of 35 with quite a few right out of college.
I'm not sure how this is relevant. One might as easily conclude that these folks don't know any better due to youth and inexperience as that "it's just a different age and culture."
Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not here to defend it, but as a paying digital subscriber to WSJ (and other papers), this link is useful! WSJ signed me out (they often do), and to sign in again I have to re-enable JavaScript which means their site gets slower and the text bounces all over as things load. I'm happy to pay for quality content but news sites have to stop degrading the digital experience if they want me to keep forking over $30/mon…
All I want from these pay-walls is a instapaper-like experience, and that you cannot get that for $30? With $30 I can buy 130 kid's polio vaccines.
Right? It doesn't seem like too much to ask for.
Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty much every mechanical keyboard will be loud. I use a board with Cherry Red switches at work, and while it's much quieter than my board with Cherry Blue switches that I use at home, it is still louder than the rubber dome keyboard it replaced. It doesn't bother my coworkers, but I also have an actual cube, so there's at least a little bit of fabric-covered foam inbetween us.
If someone is complaining about Cherry Reds, I think they're asking for too much. Perhaps they should look for work in the library sciences.
Heh. I had a former cow-orker who hated by Topre board. I told him if he'd (a) keep his computer volume off and (b) not hold impromptu, non-work meetings as his desk at bar-volumes, I'd try to use a crappy board for him.
He was offended. I kept my board.
Again, the root problem is the veal-fattening pens.
Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am distracted by your loud keyboard. Frequently, I find myself wishing that you had a quiet keyboard like everyone else in the office. I am particularly irritated by the noise of your keyboard each morning when you write long emails or posts. When you are coding and there are frequent long breaks when you are thinking, it is not quite as distracting, but I still don't like it. I agree with you that open office plan…
"I am particularly irritated by the noise of your keyboard each morning when you write long emails or posts." My E-mails are pretty short :-). However, I don't enjoy you telling your coworkers about your weekend every Monday morning. Open offices are just stupid. They cause conflict where there shouldn't be.
In my parallel universe, you're also the one telling your coworkers about your weekend every Monday morning, but I agree with your point. :-)
> Open offices are just stupid. They cause conflict where there shouldn't be.
Yes.
I would kill someone for a walled office, even if there was a high risk of life imprisonment, as long as there was some assurance that the prison cell would have walls.
Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just like the cargo cult Agile pandemic peaked a few years ago, I suspect we're reaching peak open floor plans right now. The overall negative effects of an open floor plan for a significant fraction of engineers (though not all) is self-evident and backed up by reams of data stretching back nearly 40 years: http://iansommerville.com/software-engineering-book/web/work... TLDR: 100 square feet of personal space is opt…
>"Just like the cargo cult Agile pandemic peaked a few years ago, I suspect we're reaching peak open floor plans right now." Wait, that peaked? That hasn't been my perception. I'm curious where you are seeing that.
I haven't been seeing it, either. In fact, I dare say it is nearly impossible to find a software shop in my area that isn't knee-deep in some iteration of "Agile" management - usually some form of Scrum.
Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just like the cargo cult Agile pandemic peaked a few years ago, I suspect we're reaching peak open floor plans right now. The overall negative effects of an open floor plan for a significant fraction of engineers (though not all) is self-evident and backed up by reams of data stretching back nearly 40 years: http://iansommerville.com/software-engineering-book/web/work... TLDR: 100 square feet of personal space is opt…
Many large company will do but the large brunt of codetariat working for cash strapped business living and dying according to investors and customers will be keept in the open spaces: they looks cool in photos, convey a reassuring sense of "working bees" and sells well to visiting customers, so I fear the open plan it's here to stay.
HR is driven by data. To kill open floor plans, start citing the floor plan as the primary reason for leaving. If that becomes a theme, IMO open floor plans will become cancer. It just takes time.
Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was told my brown switches were horrendous :(
In most cases, it's the keys bottoming out rather the switches. Guy in our office with a membrane keyboard who smashes the keys into oblivion is far louder than the two mechanical keyboards in the same space.
By the way, I cannot type without bottoming out, and I suspect this is something many people simply cannot learn to do. My hands will just not cooperate. I use Topre switches, which are supposedly quite ideal for practicing this magical voodoo typing technique, and when pressing a key enough to activate it but not bottom out, I have about a 50-50 chance of not activating the key at all. It's not something that's ever going to get better with practice, and frankly, I'm not personally aware of any detrimental effects of my bad bottom-out typing.