Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

bizjournals.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 409 posts

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#211

Post by ThrustVectoring »

pteredactyl wrote: post #116
inetknght wrote: post #85

My company only has offices for upper management. Everyone else is at a table . Tables are arranged in groups of four. Now, I get it, some people like open office environments. Good for them. Me? Well, I've told many coworkers that I can't work from home because I wouldn't work from home. There are too many distractions at home, so I need to be at the office to be productive. But this open office? There are days wher…

Visual distraction is very real when trying to focus.

Visual distraction is the second worst, IMO, with noise in third.

Number 1 is vibration and physical movement. I've had a desk environment where two folks would be sitting on opposite sides of a wide table, so there's one shared and non-isolated surface that both people work on.

Every time my coworker would stand up, they'd brace themselves on the desk and shake the shit out of it, and I never learned to filter it out. Headphones don't help. Lots of big monitors don't help.

Or when the hardwood floor has enough flex that you can feel people walking near your desk. Ugh.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#212

Post by enraged_camel »

holografix wrote: post #194
khazhoux wrote: post #129

(if I may repost a comment I wrote here before...) We have an open floor plan, and it works like this: * Desk area is for getting work done. Everyone agrees on this. * We have "phone rooms" for small discussions. But we limit those usually to 1:1s or discussing office politics. * Try to limit all discussions at the desk area to 5 people or less. * If someone sighs loudly as they put on their headphones when you're ha…

It's infuriating, as a technical pre-sales resource I get interrupted INCESSANTLY throughout the day by rabbit hole "quick questions" and calendar management. Some of my colleagues were moaning about the constant growth of our team and the fact we'll have to move to hotel desks, I reckon it's the best thing ever.

>>It's infuriating, as a technical pre-sales resource I get interrupted INCESSANTLY throughout the day by rabbit hole "quick questions" and calendar management.

This was my old job. I don't miss it...

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#213

Post by hindsightbias »

sitkack wrote: post #206
hindsightbias wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noise cancelling headphones really don't seem to be tuned to 85-250 Hz (human voice) in my experience, so you don't have to actually talk louder.

I have a patent pending that uses ML to read lips combined with aggravated deep learning to generate specific noise canceling wave forms for people within visual range. It can also mask obnoxious follow on affectations like filler words and laughter out of visual range once it has locked onto a conversation. The next phase of research is for an inanity filter, predictions are that it will mute most of existence.

They have that nausea-inducing sound beam thing. I was wondering what a head-mounted version would weigh. Maybe integrate with an eye-tracker.

Or a decibel meter hooked up to some old hag librarian robot that rolled around shrieking "SSSSHHHHHHH!"

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#214

Post by ryan-allen »

aswanson wrote: post #176
TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you propose is the correct way of collecting these measurements?

Results. Delivery of requested work products on schedule with quality.

If you actually had solved this problem you'd be a trillionaire, alas.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#215

Post by ryan-allen »

pteredactyl wrote: post #116
inetknght wrote: post #85

My company only has offices for upper management. Everyone else is at a table . Tables are arranged in groups of four. Now, I get it, some people like open office environments. Good for them. Me? Well, I've told many coworkers that I can't work from home because I wouldn't work from home. There are too many distractions at home, so I need to be at the office to be productive. But this open office? There are days wher…

Visual distraction is very real when trying to focus.

True, this is why I work on a 43" screen in an open office. I can't see ANYTHING but screen!

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#216

Post by imron »

hota_mazi wrote: post #80
seorphates wrote: post #47

Working in open office plans is simply awful. Personally I believe remote work, for any tech-enabled employer, makes the most sense. The impact on infrastructure by removing commuting alone could maybe help save the planet. And our collective sanity. Wouldn't it be nice to have ISPs that can provide an infrastructure that could actually support that? I think so. The hideous effects of cluster-fucking hundreds of thou…

Nah, it's fine. If it gets noisy, put on headphones or go sit in a different place for a few hours. Individual offices can be awful and isolating. Cubes can be an acceptable compromise but it still kills a lot of spontaneous conversations. You gain a lot with open space plans: more interaction with coworkers, cultural gel and socializing. And of course, the company can cram more people in the same place.

> but it still kills a lot of spontaneous conversations.

Yes, I think that's the point.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#217

Post by nandemo »

manicdee wrote: post #161
notyourwork wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Engineers tend to be extroverted and won't hesitate to let you know if you're bothering them. Might be the first person to claim engineers are extroverted.

Engineers are also well known for being unable to effectively communicate sarcasm in written prose.

Nah, in this case it's good sarcasm, if someone doesn't get it they need to work on their sarcasm detector:

http://www.wikihow.com/Detect-Sarcasm-in-Writing

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#218

Post by fineline »

bamboozled wrote: post #118
seorphates wrote: post #47

Working in open office plans is simply awful. Personally I believe remote work, for any tech-enabled employer, makes the most sense. The impact on infrastructure by removing commuting alone could maybe help save the planet. And our collective sanity. Wouldn't it be nice to have ISPs that can provide an infrastructure that could actually support that? I think so. The hideous effects of cluster-fucking hundreds of thou…

I work remotely too and I often think about how much this has reduced my environmental footprint. It would be interesting to see some figures on how much of a positive impact it has.

I mostly work from my home, which is self-sufficient for water (rain tanks) and heating (firewood), produces its own electricity (solar), has its own septic, produces some of our fruit and veggies and all of our eggs, with virtually no food waste that is not fed to the animals and low amount of landfill waste (you really think about it when you take it to the tip yourself). I occasionally commute to the local coffee shop by bicycle, or drive to the beach, and work digital-nomad style on mobile internet.

Then I jump on a plane to my employer's office every few weeks.

I wonder how that stacks up?

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#219

Post by savanaly »

fullshark wrote: post #71
IBM wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WSJ story has some pictures of what it looks like [1]. There seems to be offices with doors, but they look like it seats about 20 people. There are also common areas with long tables between them. https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-UF776_0817CO_1... https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-UF775_0817CO_1... https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-UF777_0817CO_1... [1] https://www.wsj.com/art…

Looks like the ministry of information in a sci fi dystopia.

Honestly, given that it's an open floor plan, it looks nice to me.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#220

Post by moron4hire »

jotux wrote: post #208
moron4hire wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is enabled by the fact that, despite how hard we try, we don't actually know how to track productivity, say nothing about changes in it that can be traced back to organizational decisions, or have anything approaching a model of productivity so that we might start to have predictive capability for how decisions impact it. So lacking a real metric that means anything, we cling to the ones that don't and as long a…

We've known, at least since the 80s, the aproximate amount of space people need to work effectively. Chapter 9 of Peopleware [1] talks specifically about this: An excerpt: >Before drawing the plans for its new Santa Teresa facility, IBM violated all industry standards by carefully studying the work habits of those who would occupy the space. The study was designed by the architect Gerald McCue with the assistance of…

You and I both know that no MBA with delusions of grandeur is going to pay attention to Peopleware.
Post reply on HN