21–30 of 129 posts
* Cubicles are 'furniture' and therefore receive advantageous tax treatment (accelerated depreciation, increasing profits),
* Walls, not so much.My current company has every dev and most managers in the same room. 7 scrum teams, over 60 people in one room. It's madness and I can't fucking stand the noise.
You get written up for talking "excessively" during work hours because 3/4 the company can hear you when you try to collaborate. Peer programming is impossible.
I have no idea why idiotic management consultants are promoting whats basically a sweatshop environment.
The stupidest part of this is that my company just cut the walls down to a few feet. You can clearly see that the dividers between each team used to be full height walls. What a tragedy
[0] Really? That's what they're called now?
Also:
"This article was published inadvertently."
> We need to understand high-performance employees based on what they are tasked with and their core principles, not how much they produce, or even worse on standardized personality traits. So high performance employees are whoever thinks they're important enough to be one?
I am assuming it isn't people stacking shelves in a supermarket.
The obsession for open plan offices continues to amaze me. Companies that invest huge amounts in staffing and other strategic programmes don't seem to spend much time challenging the default suggestion that 'openness = collaboration'. This article mentions high performance employees - but most knowledge workers (designers, programmers etc.) that I know all struggle with open plan office environments irrespective of t…
Our company is currently relocating to new office, and they want an open office plan in the space. We will pack in tight, and our cube walls will all be 3.5 feet high. We have adjustable standing desks that will coming with us, so when standing we will towering over every one and I already know it's going to be awkward for me. The best part is our 5 person IT team will be right next to 25 people who work phones for c…
Because everyone likes to be the CoA.
> The best part is our 5 person IT team will be right next to 25 people who work phones for customer service.
Time to polish that resume.
Why do we think that we need only one kind of workspace that meets all of our criteria? Can't we have an office with a variety of different workspaces that we can move between as our needs change?
I guess that I fall into this characterization. Over my 36-year career, I've sat in solo offices with doors, shared offices, cubicles with progressively shorter walls, and wall-less high-density desk arrays. I've easily been twice as productive with a door as I am in a noisy environment -- all the other arrangements suck if there is even one inconsiderate human in the space making a phone call, moving a pound of mucu…
Why do we think that we need only one kind of workspace that meets all of our criteria? Can't we have an office with a variety of different workspaces that we can move between as our needs change?
https://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2017/03/20/mindful-softwar...
-supporting exactly what you are saying. This notion that we each have a static workspace seems archaic, and an ideal world is one where people work in varied situations according to need: Sometimes privacy and quiet is ideal, and sometimes noise and chaos is invigorating. As much as the private office/anti-open plan thing appears on here, it's amazing how often tech workers love working in cafes, libraries, or accelerators that are like open plan offices to a few magnitudes.