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Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

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Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#361

Post by Joeri »

Apple has insisted in presentations to the city of Cupertino that the open floor plan designs are conducive to collaboration between teams, per Bloomberg. But the high-level executives, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, are exempt from this collaborative environment and have offices on the fourth floor of the new building.

See, this is exactly what's wrong with open plan offices in most places. If a CEO honestly believes open plan is better for collaboration, then they need to eat their own dog food. That CEO needs to be sitting right in the middle of things. If they find they can't get anything done as a consequence of the collaboration they are in the right place to take action to fix that. And if they are able to achieve productive outcomes, they are also in the right place to argue against people who say it's not possible. Letting upper management avoid all the downsides of the open plan layout causes problems with it to fester and will bring overall worker satisfaction and productivity down. In short, it is bad management to treat management in a special way.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#362

Post by Klover »

sobani wrote: post #329
pstuart wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOC /s

You measure your output in lines per second?! It's clear you are more productive than me then.

/s is the way to say you're being sarcastic on Reddit. So they probably meant that lines of code measurements are popular, while they shouldn't be.

It's difficult keeping up with the internet lingo.

For what it's worth:

* You can simply see on Slack if the person is set to Away. In that case they're busy, so don't bother asking them any questions in a traditional open office plan.

* A better open office plan has a quiet room where people can collaborate in quiet. You can just send someone a message, asking them if you can ask them a question when they have time. You take your laptops with you into the quiet room. Then you keep the quiet in the office itself.

* A good manager knows what people are up to, and how they do it. It's part of their job. They also talk to employees face to face, individually, so they have better understandings on matters. If your manager is not a good manager, then no fancy metrics will help.

* Remote working is fine, and especially in the tech industry I find that there are more people willing to work remotely. I am fine with people wanting to work remotely, and everyone is abroad at times, or needs some time alone for deep focus. I do like to see everyone come together regularly, even just working together in quiet builds up a bond, and periodic informal tea & coffee on the work floor makes people a lot more open in approaching me and trying to test ideas together.

I do understand that commutes can be problematic for people in certain areas, and that some people really like peace and quiet during work hours. During job interviews, people try to see if you are a good fit for where you are going to be working (I can't speak for everyone of course), but it never hurts to ask if you can meet the team before signing a contract, if for some strange reason you weren't introduced already.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#363

Post by aembleton »

rsj_hn wrote: post #309
matthewmacleod wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s not simple. I am awfully bored of these “everything is simple, open offices are uniformly awful, everybody should be remote” arguments. Yes - this works for some people, in some workplaces. In other cases, it doesn’t work. I’m fine with my open office space, and I prefer working from an office - which is a bike ride away and better equipped than I am. How about instead we accept that there are almost certain…

If you are a developer who has to check in code, then you need a quiet place for focused work. You can try to argue that some developers don't need that, but those who can achieve peak concentration while context switching and talking to others are biological curiosities, if they exist at all. I haven't met anyone like that. Now most employees working in tech companies are not developers. There is a whole "developer…

How would pair programming work? Wouldn't that contribute to a noisy environment as the two developers talk to each other?

I don't like large open plan offices, but I think a small room just for my team (6 devs) would be helpful.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#364

Post by blub »

6nf wrote: post #90
exergy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuck, that sounds awful. It's hard for me to believe that there are techies who haven't ever heard of Peopleware, have never heard of Joel Spolsky and his FogBugz offices, and have never consulted even a single authority on what makes software developers productive. It's even harder to believe that those people are responsible for diverting giant sums of money towards making palatial office buildings that will house…

The problem with the Spolsky example is that Atlassian with their huge open-plan offices completely overshadowed Fog Creek in just a few short years.

Economic success is not a proxy for doing things properly. Many dysfunctional companies are very successful otherwise.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#365

Post by pjc50 »

dasmoth wrote: post #342
pjc50 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trade-off is the medium-sized office: a room containing up to six people who are all part of the same team. You get all the advantages of being able to talk to people, and none of the disadvantages of conversations drifting over from the rest of the office. And there's more of a chance that if your immediate co-workers are discussing something then it's actually relevant to you.

Noooo! You still get the chatter and it's harder to ignore if it's familiar people talking about semi-relevant stuff. Also, it cements the idea that things are done by teams, not individuals.

Things are done by teams. They are also done by individuals within those teams, but any given feature is likely to have quite a few fingerprints on it.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#366

Post by intoverflow2 »

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…

Speaking as a designer who works close with devs. I think a lot of people championing remote work who are remote workers themselves don't seem to realise how frustrating it is working with them.

Fumbling around getting them on call every meeting, having to have them ramble on about something wasting peoples time if they misunderstand something because they're not in the room and we're all too polite to just tell them to shut up and move on, having to take special time out of my work to go on a 10 minute call that could be sorted in 20 seconds standing behind sometimes desks.

It's a very engineer-centric idea that they can just solve everything remote but if you're building a product that relies on design and more human focused work it can be an absolute nightmare having to work with a remote engineer.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#367

Post by intoverflow2 »

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.

Environmental arguments are silly when living near the office will likely use public transport and remote workers are usually out in the countryside so will likely use 2 cars extensively compared to a city worker using public transport 100% of the time.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#368

Post by Jaruzel »

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…

> 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.

That's kinda on you. Discipline is something that can be learned. When I first started working from home almost full-time, I found it quite difficult to separate work life and home life - I deliberately set up an office space in my house that only had my work laptop, and work essentials. My home machine and all my fun toys were elsewhere in the house. By doing this, it helped me focus on just doing work related stuff - any time wasting I did do, was on par with what I would do in the office anyway (reading tech sites etc).

Over time, once I got into a routine, I reintroduced personal stuff/kit into my work space, and although my productivity took a bit of a drop, I also knew I could fully focus on work if I had to.

WFH is not for everyone, and nor are Open Plan offices. The thing is, as many have already said, you need to find what works for you... We're all different ("I'm not!") and employers should acknowledge that if they want to retain good talent.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#369

Post by Jaruzel »

mathw wrote: post #337
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ou…

Where I currently am (I'm a consultant, based mostly in various client offices), the floor has a lot of flex in it. When people walk past, I can feel it bouncing under my chair. We do have decent-sized desks, so the open plan isn't too bad. It's actually pretty good as these things go, although there are no kitchens in which one can make a proper cup of tea. No proper kitchens for tea-making. We're in England. Come o…

> No proper kitchens for tea-making.

It's because the insurance on offices without kitchens is cheaper. They save money, and we get wet mud in a plastic cup from a machine.

Re: Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan

#370

Post by [deleted] »

aembleton wrote: post #363
rsj_hn wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a developer who has to check in code, then you need a quiet place for focused work. You can try to argue that some developers don't need that, but those who can achieve peak concentration while context switching and talking to others are biological curiosities, if they exist at all. I haven't met anyone like that. Now most employees working in tech companies are not developers. There is a whole "developer…

How would pair programming work? Wouldn't that contribute to a noisy environment as the two developers talk to each other? I don't like large open plan offices, but I think a small room just for my team (6 devs) would be helpful.

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