The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work • Hacker News Board

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#71

Post by ChrisNorstrom » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 1:52 PM UTC

levosmetalo wrote: post #31

If someone tried to bring dog to my office, next thing I will do would be to ask permission to work from home. If that doesn't work, I'd look up for another job. If that doesn't work, I'd buy rats and cocroaches, and bring them to work with me as "pets". But, there's no way I'm going to sit in the office full of "nice dogs" and pretend that doesn't affect me. EDIT: Just to clarify, I am not allergic to dogs and yes,…

I'm with you. Dogs are NOT people, and when dog owners think they are, they place their dogs happiness above actual people. We had someone that brought in 1 dog, it was a Border Collie and it was peaceful and still a distraction. I'd immediately put in my 2 week notice if I had to put up with more than 1, no joke. I go to work to work not babysit, smell, or listen to barking dogs. Even if they were quiet just having something roaming around from desk to desk with those jingly dog collars that sound like eternal Christmas is annoying. Some people have no respect for silence anymore. It's bad enough many offices have an "open space" setting which disrupts thinking, pisses off and stresses employees, and lowers productivity, the last thing I need a bunch of dogs walking around, making noises, watching me eat my lunch, begging for food, needing to be let out, farting, smelling like dog pop after coming back in, smelling like wet dog after a rain, etc. Combine that with my distraction of cute things and I won't be able to get any work done.

Who is the company taking care of? Dogs or Humans? From all my unfortunate experience having to put up with my immediate neighbor's dogs, dogs in my neighborhood, and dogs at work, I've noticed a certain percentage of dog owners are the dog equivalent of a "crazy cat lady". They think "dogs are people", should have access to every place humans do, should bark all they want, and usually value a dog's happiness over the happiness of real human beings.

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#72

Post by qwerta » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 1:53 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #60

qwerta wrote: post #16

If this is not spoof, it illustrates well how startup turns into corporation. They could allow occasional work from home. No instead they create The Dog Policy, the Dog Agreement and The Dog Tribunal Management. If someone has allergy or wants to bring his baby, they introduce another 10 agreements. In my previous job colleague was bringing dog sometimes, I just asked him to keep it away from me (have serious allergy…

> They could allow occasional work from home. They do, the post was written by somebody working from home. And their business is manufacture and retail of microcontrollers boards and breakout boards. Most of the job is either R&D creating electronics (require expensive, usually shared, physical equipment) and handling the production and sale of their manufactured equipment which requires being on-site. > No instead t…

I worked for hardware manufacturer. Lab was pretty restrictive, not even coffee or headphones allowed. I can not imagine dogs in this environment.

Reading all those problems I think dog ban would be better alternative, especially if they allow work from home.

But if it suits them, I guess they can attract lot of talent from dog fanatics.

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#73

Post by lportion » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 1:54 PM UTC

pawelkomarnicki wrote: post #7

At my current job I bring my dog to the office every day and there are no issues whatsoever, but I have some personal rules when it comes to bring my dog to work: - no dog if there are allergic people around, - no barking, - no wandering around, - DEFINITELY no pee and poo in the building, - CLEANING outside the company building, - I am responsible for the dog's actions. Disclaimer: my dog is trained by me and really…

I think that if you bring a dog into work then it should be allowed to display it's opinion of Agile methodologies.

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#74

Post by lotyrin » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 1:57 PM UTC

popopje wrote: post #20

I occasionally have to visit offices where a single dog is brought in - they always smell strongly of dog, and often the dog will come and "greet" me. I'm not particularly keen on either of these aspects and as such it really puts me off visiting. I would certainly put that high on the list when considering taking a job in such an environment.

I had other reasons to quit the job where they started bringing their dog in, but wouldn't have needed any.

The idea of having these huge animals that can't communicate what they want and try to assess relative position in their idea of a social hierarchy with me by getting aggressive just makes me ill, so adding another species that unlike those higher primates has nothing to contribute to my projects, can't communicate at all or solve their own nutrition or excretion, and use physical instead of verbal aggression for social survey is way out.

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#75

Post by ScottWhigham » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 1:59 PM UTC

jbb555 wrote: post #23

yetfeo wrote: post #2

How do dog friendly work places deal with employees that are allergic to dogs?

I'm not allergic to dogs I just hate them. This is totally unacceptable behavour by an employer. If this is true I'd want nothing further to do with that company.

This is totally unacceptable behavour by an employer.

To you. To someone else, it is laudable behavior. Not everyone has the same views you or I do, and that's okay. We just take our business elsewhere and life goes on. No need to get too worked up about a business (owner) who runs the business the way they see fit (within the law).

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#76

Post by michaelt » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 2:05 PM UTC

qwerta wrote: post #52

raverbashing wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I can understand why SparkFun might limit work from home: 1 - They're a hardware company. You can't take most of the equipment home 2 - EDA software is usually very expensive (and sometimes hardware demanding), so you can't just install it in a laptop

Thats not really an excuse. VNC+VPN is around for decades. I worked for hardware manufacturer which produced 50+ pound UPS units. They do Arduino boards.

The other week I tried running EDA software (Altium) over Remote Desktop.

When trying to do any interactive PCB layout, there was substantial lag in redrawing the traces as I moved them, making it borderline unusable. I put up with it as I only had a small amount of work to do, but I certainly wouldn't expect anyone to use it in a serious business environment.

And I had a gigabit ethernet link with the 'remote' computer a yard away. I dread to think what the performance would be like over a slower link.

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#77

Post by aaronem » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 2:11 PM UTC

yen223 wrote: post #35

TeMPOraL wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand that in certain companies (with sky-high margins or money to burn) the line between work and play gets blurred more and more, but that's in stark contrast to the rest of the economy. I think that the blurring of the line between work and play is a Good Thing in some sectors, namely engineering/tech/creative jobs. Creativity comes out of playtime, not worktime.

I think the blurring of the line is good for all sectors. Let's not assume that people who aren't in tech somehow don't deserve to have the same perks.

Wouldn't work where I work; I'm not sure whether having a dog running around in the sequencing lab would be worse for the dog (in a facility some of whose areas are rated BSL-3) or the lab (where contaminants are generally regarded as a Bad Thing), but I can't see it being a good thing for either. Kind of a shame, I think; it'd be nice to have pups around, at least in the office areas. But I just don't see it working. (I try not to be biased by the fact that, the first and so far only time someone brought a dog into an office where I worked, it promptly waddled over and pissed on my shoes.)

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#78

Post by raverbashing » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 2:14 PM UTC

qwerta wrote: post #52

raverbashing wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I can understand why SparkFun might limit work from home: 1 - They're a hardware company. You can't take most of the equipment home 2 - EDA software is usually very expensive (and sometimes hardware demanding), so you can't just install it in a laptop

Thats not really an excuse. VNC+VPN is around for decades. I worked for hardware manufacturer which produced 50+ pound UPS units. They do Arduino boards.

"I worked for hardware manufacturer which produced 50+ pound UPS units. They do Arduino boards. "

What does the weight of the UPS has to do with the circuit complexity? Nothing. Arduino is probably more complex.

If you used it though a VPN great, but it doesn't mean it will work with more modern systems (which could be hardware accelerated) and displaying lots of traces)

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#79

Post by kamaal » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 2:23 PM UTC

>>Some serious incidents took place during this time, like bites.

This is serious. Whatever love you might have for your pet, but if its get around to directly harming some one, that's simply just not acceptable. Animals are animals, you need to take responsibility for their actions if you own one.

I have extreme fear of dogs since a dog chased me till fell and bruised whole of my left arm, my friend's brother had a dog bite after a chase and suffered from serious health issues post that. Of the things that I fear the most is dogs in a pack. In a pack dogs exhibit hunting behavior.

Plus asking for a workplace where pets can be bought in is just going to far, What has this industry come down? In other professions there are people with kids who would do anything to get day care at work.

Re: The problems SparkFun has letting people bring dogs into work

#80

Post by elohesra » Tue, Jan 28, 2014, 2:27 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #53

jbb555 wrote: post #22

I presume this is a spoof. Nobody would want to work in a place with animals wandering around. It's really not an acceptable working environment.

I work with a mostly blind woman and her seeing-eye German Shepard service dog. Amazing dog. All the puritan whining about dogs assumes its a standard issue frat boy bringing in his basset hound, but the puritanism melts away like ice from a blowtorch when its the blind lady instead of some frat boy antics. All the stories about poop everywhere and people getting bitten and fighting amongst the rabble remind me of wh…

>All the puritan whining about dogs assumes its a standard issue frat boy bringing in his basset hound, but the puritanism melts away like ice from a blowtorch when its the blind lady instead of some frat boy antics.

Well yeah, for obvious reasons:

1) It's not a luxury for the blind person to bring her dog into work, it's a necessity.

2) It's not her pet, it's a service animal, and she will presumably treat it like a service animal (i.e. no cutesy excusing any bad behaviour, no doggy-talking all day long etc).

3) Seeing-eye dogs go through a tremendous amount of training to make them basically not act like dogs, so that they won't be hyper, and won't randomly bark, and won't randomly crap on the floor. Pets go through bare minimum training (if that) to make sure they don't savage a human.

Surely you can see why the analogy between a service animal and a pet isn't apt? It's like calling a Democrat hypocritical for disliking domestic firearms usage, yet allowing military firearms usage; sure the object in question is nominally the same, but the context and effects are entirely different, and it's really the context and effects that the speaker is objecting to.