
Don’t Get Too Comfortable at That Desk - SREinSF
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/business/the-office-gets-remade-again.html
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silenceplease
I just want a fucking office. I don't want to listen to my coworker with
volume control issues. I don't want to hear every last word wrung out on a
video chat. I don't want to hear every loud presentation. I want four goddamn
walls and a door and a minute alone with my thoughts. I'm begging; no,
PLEADING for it. I promise, you can have as much of my labor and productivity
as you want if you just give me some fucking peace and quiet.

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freedomben
Hahahaha, you basically said what I came here to say.

Being old enough to have lived the "old school" days of actually having walls,
I've never liked the "open office" concept. I wonder if it wasn't management's
version of how JavaScript devs are always super quick to adopt the next
framework. In this case management had to be the adoption hipsters jumping on
the latest bandwagon. That or the cynical part of me thinks perhaps management
buys in because it gives them more visibility and control into what people are
doing, not for "collaboration" and things like that...

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closeparen
What if we had mandatory “flexible living space” arrangements for the
executives behind this? You know, Millennials aren’t into houses, cars, having
children, or owning stuff these days anyway. Isn’t it so much better to have
the flexibility and freedom of choice to decide each night whether you will
sleep under a bridge, in a tent camp, or on a park bench? Think of the
synergistic efficiencies. The idea of each person having a fixed apartment is
so outmoded.

If an employer has so much contempt for you that they don’t think you even
rate a permanent slot on a workbench, kick them in the shins and run far, far
away.

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DerekL
How much money do these new office layouts save?

Office space in Santa Clara County is about $34/sq. ft./year, though it's been
increasing at a rate of 16% per year. The article says offices have, on
average, about 150 sq. ft. per person. So that's $5100 per year per worker. It
was about 225 sq. ft. in 2010, so an extra $2550 per year.

The average software engineer salary in the area is about $125k per year. (The
actual cost is more, because of benefits and taxes.) So these new offices only
cost 4% of the salary, compared to 6%.

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jlgaddis
From a beancounter's perspective, that's a pretty easy, quantifiable savings.
The change in developer productivity as a result probably isn't nearly as easy
to measure.

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freedomben
I've tried the "roving" lifestyle and I have to say, dual monitors are hugely
helpful when developing. We took a downgrade by losing offices for open
spaces. I hope we don't take another downgrade by losing our desks too.

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BoorishBears
For a few years I used a 34" ultrawide next to a 27" monitor (they're exactly
the same height).

Recently I switched to a single 38" ultrawide (a xr382cqk) and I've taken down
the second monitor.

Windows and OS X both have good enough tiling that I can use the single
monitor without the distraction of bezels, and there's much less ceremony to
hooking up one monitor

I think the same thing would work with a ~40" TV, and I e seen people do it, I
just prefer the space efficiency of the ultrawide

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epalmer
I have a 32inch single monitor and that is good enough for me. I'm ADD and
dyslexic and more would overload me. I'm on Mac so I have desktops setup. I
hate open spaces. I have an office now and my team of two share a
collaborative space and respect each other's need for quiet. Our FE devs work
in a big open space and hate it.

At my last employer I was a roaming employee. No desk. Just a file drawer. I
was not a dev then. But I hated it. I had to wander 4 buildings to find space
to work. I hated it.

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mark_l_watson
Having tiny rooms to get peace and quiet for head-down work time is important
but most people don’t need to use them often. For 20 years I have worked from
a home office, except now I work in an open style office at Capital One and a
few years ago I also worked in an open office at Google.

My way of dealing with open offices is to start work very early in the morning
so I always get a large block of time for quiet head-down work each day. It
also helps to roam around, find a quiet place to sit for a while, and not
always work at my desk.

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dmh2000
In the first photo, the 'isolation room' kind of looks like an 'office'. I
suppose the difference is that it doesn't belong to a particular worker?

I got claustrophobia chills from the phone booth model.

