
Facebook Designing New Campus - michael_fine
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10100483906554181&set=a.612287952871.2204760.4&type=1&theater
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fourspace
This will most certainly be interesting to watch. My visceral reaction to the
idea of one giant room was, "Wow. No thanks." I'm not personally the biggest
fan of Frank Gehry's work, either.

That said, I'm always a little bit excited when people push architectural
boundaries, especially when it comes to workspaces. Hopefully my friends at
Facebook will still be around when this is completed.

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holman
My visceral reaction to the idea of one giant room was "Rad". Love open floor
plans.

I'm really curious what the final interior plan will look like; presumably
it's not some huge airplane hanger of openness but some clever way of staying
open-while-interesting.

Like you, though, I'm just excited at the prospect of larger companies doing
something different. Should be fun to watch.

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troymc
They (Facebook) should really look at what research has found before they jump
feet-first into having an open floor plan. It's not like they've just invented
it!

Open floor plans were invented as a way to cram more people into less space,
thereby minimizing cost of office space per employee. They were _not_ invented
to improve productivity.

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underwater
Facebook offices have always been open plan. I personally like it. It can
occasionally been frustrating, but overall the benefits outweigh the negatives
for the way we work. I don't believe that it has ever been about minimizing
costs.

Many people work from home or camp out in a small meeting room if they want
privacy. There are also over ear head phones available for free all around the
campus.

~~~
troymc
Wikipedia has an article that links to a lot of the research on open plan
offices (and other configurations):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan>

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staunch
Every time I'm reminded of just how many programmers Facebook has it bothers
me that he missed such a cool opportunity. He gets programming better than
probably any BigCo tech CEO and yet he made the same damn mistake of hiring
thousands upon thousands of programmers instead of just getting the 10X
Programmers and having 1/10th as many while paying them 2x as much.

Imagine if the budget for this 5000 person building was spent to house 500
people. It could make Google's campuses look downright spartan. It would make
everything else a distant second choice for most people.

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nostrademons
I've wondered what it'd be like to have a company that capped its growth at
around 500 people, but made damn sure that those 500 were among the brightest
in the world. Would it be an innovation think tank? Or would they find that
those 500 brilliant people spend so much time doing drudge work that they
can't get any actual work done? Or would they just automate all the drudge
work away?

I imagine it might be a little like RenTech in the financial world, which
according to Wikipedia has only 275 employees and $23B in assets under
management, for roughly $100M/employee. Wonder how that would translate to an
organization focused around building actual products for people.

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carterschonwald
Theres also Valve Software (read their lovely handbook!
<http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf>). They (to my
knowledge) only hire folks who're at senior grade in terms of their skills.
Also Valve software just generally sounds like an amazing work environment.

aside/caveat: I'm aiming to create just such an organization (operationally
structured a la Valve) in terms of caliber of folks in NYC with WellPosed. I'm
settling for nothing less than having an organization dedicated to building
tools/products meant to make innovation happen faster on our wee world. I'm
starting with fixing machine learning / numerical computation, BUT _done
right, rather than automagic bullshit everyone in "big data" keeps jerking off
to the press :)_

It looks like I'll be able to get things off the ground sans investors too
(which is kinda key for what I want to do forever). Any NYC area senior grade
awesome folks who like work broadly deep across math, cs, engineering things
nicely and sane work expectations etc a la the organization referenced above,
shoot me an email and chat, Please

I'm working to create something special that I want to last forever, and I
need the most amazing people on the planet to make it happen :)

(pardon my reply turning self promoting, but I'm deadly serious about what i'm
doing, and its exactly that sort of place i'm aiming to create)

(also: your hypothetical lots of smart people not getting anything done is
called a circle jerk, not a business that could successfully recruit amazing
people and retain them.)

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spitfire
Ahem. Rather than automagic bullshit, could you just do machine learning which
handles multiple data-types.

That would be a big change for the ML crowd to have to deal with real world,
multiple typed, dirty data. Earthshattering, I know. (Yes, we've already
spoken by email. Best of luck on your adventures)

~~~
carterschonwald
I said the other folks are doing automagic BS, :-)

Yup, Thats one of the problems I'm solving "right" (or nearly so) in the basic
alpha as it gets in shape.

Thanks! Were you the unicorn email dude?

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dsr_
I wouldn't say that this is the worst possibly use of Facebook's money, but I
would rank it up there.

Building a new HQ is largely an exercise in vanity and boasting. There is
almost always an existing building that would serve just fine, otherwise.

"The largest open floor plan in the world"? Oy. I hope they hire some good
acoustics folks before they finish the planning stages.

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kabdib
It's amusing to correlate "new campus" with "stock drop" in the history of
Silly Valley.

Atari, Apple, Sun, Cisco . . . these companies all had significant hard times
about the time they started large new sets of buildings.

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cpeterso
SGI built a new campus (now the Googleplex) in 1998, the same year they
announced they were switching from their own MIPS processors to Itanium and
shipping Windows NT workstations. In 2005, SGI was delisted from the NYSE.

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brandoncapecci
Reminds me a lot of this:

[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_gAOnHhen4zY/S9r-pZcS6bI/AAAAAAAAAA...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_gAOnHhen4zY/S9r-pZcS6bI/AAAAAAAAAA0/zvIvuyTfkZM/s1600/cafo.jpg)

Open floor plans don't make collaboration any easier. You still have to walk
over to the other person just now, you must also try and hear yourself think
over the hundreds of other people inside a hanger. This is the epitome the of
a cog in the machine work environment to maximize people per square foot. It's
degrading but in a way that's quite fitting for the way Facebook is going
right now.

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FaceKicker
I think I understand the reasoning behind open floor plans, but what's the
point of having everyone in a single mega-room? It's not like the two people
in opposite corners of the hangar will be able to communicate seamlessly just
because they're in the same "room"; they'll have to walk over to one another
just the same as they would if they had walls separating them.

(Of course being in the same room doesn't _hurt_ in that respect either, but
partitions have other advantages as well, e.g., aesthetics and noise.)

~~~
thinkingisfun
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon>

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jacques_chester
Honestly? It looks like a vision of hell.

If there's one thing Microsoft got right, it's that they read _Peopleware_ and
took it at least half seriously.

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lovskogen
Could you elaborate on the design?

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sudonim
Having worked with smaller teams in open plans, and now being in a coworking
space, I have to say, I don't like it. It's really easy to get distracted by
the smallest movement around you, or someone having a phone call, or two
people laughing. I don't think cube farms are necessarily the answer either,
but without serious consideration for noise dampening, the "one giant room"
will be a pretty big distraction.

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spitfire
Corporate accounts payable Nina speaking... Just a moment!

Corporate accounts payable Nina speaking... Just a moment!

Corporate accounts payable Nina speaking... Just a moment!

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ricardonunez
Some of Frank Gehry's designs definitely look like the Facebook stock.

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nickm12
I worked for a number of years in the MIT Stata Center, an office building
designed by Gehry. It was a trainwreck on so many levels. This article
(<http://www.fastcompany.com/641146/lost-funhouse> ) details the some of the
construction issues, but even if the building had been watertight, on budget,
and on time, the design itself made it difficult to work in.

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coecoventures
Indeed. The quality of design affects the quality of construction. The cost
per square foot is typically shocking and the Ghery definitely places form
over function. After visiting many buildings by Ghery, Hadid, Holl, and
Libeskind I've found them all to be lacking. If you prefer modern design with
refinement seek out Ando or Meier. There are plenty of others, as well, who
have much more talent.

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rdl
The Norman Foster buildings I've been in have been pretty good. Apple made the
right choice.

I wonder if there will be some amazing Chinese architects in the next decades,
given their pace of construction.

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coecoventures
Foster as well as Piano have some very refined work. Foster is at his best
when doing renovations and additions. He has a very delicate approach which is
handsome and actually celebrates and enhances the existing structure.

I'm still waiting for some great Chinese architects to step up. They aren't
given much room to flex their talents, however, due to the very brand
conscious nature of the consumer. For instance there is a recently completed
Ghery building here in Hong Kong with a flat on the 8th floor listed for $400
million Hong Kong Dollars, or roughly $51.5 million USD. Insane. But that's
what the market is after.

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caycep
Hope it holds up better than the MIT Strata Center...

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dredmorbius
Here's the design which would truly reflect the vision and dynamism of the
company:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon>

[http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/01/05/surveillan...](http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/01/05/surveillance-
entertainment-a-panopticon-in-the-clouds/)

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zerostar07
What's with the high voltage lines right next to the building? Or is it
something else?

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suyash
Old Sun campus too small for these guys already?

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heretohelp
My impression was that they were only using half of that campus and that was
when I visited somewhat recently. I'm not sure what the objective is here.

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bengl3rt
Where is this thing supposed to go? Are they designing to a particular site?

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blancarro
when a tech company builds a new campus, that's it. All downhill (further
downhill).

