
Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan - V99
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/08/08/apple-park-employees-floor-plan-hq-spaceship-aapl.html
======
seorphates
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 thousands of people daily
just needs to stop. Tech companies are guilty. They're huge and, humbly
opined, are idiots for making it worse and not really needing to. Top that off
with an open floor destination and.. damn, work is beat.

~~~
hota_mazi
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.

~~~
majormajor
Sadly, I'm still looking for headphones that can be comfortably worn over my
ears + glasses for more than an hour at a time. In-ear ones have other comfort
issues.

~~~
jamie_ca
I expect this will depend a lot on your frames - if the arms on your glasses
are thick it'll be more inclined to squish into your head.

That said I'm really happy with my Logitech G930s - I usually use them wired
to keep the charge (the usb cord length is _very_ generous) but they're just
fine wireless too, and do a good job staying put if I'm moving around a bit.

My only complaint is that they seem to be sensitive to 2.4ghz interference,
which can kick them off the wireless connection. Since there's no wired
override (plugging in is purely for battery) this means plugging in can't save
you. Once I switched my devices at home to prefer 5ghz wifi, it went from 5-10
times an hour at its worst to once or twice a month (and I can maybe blame
that on the neighbours).

------
inetknght
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 where I am convinced I would do more work, be more productive,
and feel more satisfied if I worked from home.

I went and bought some noise cancelling headphones. They help, but definitely
not enough. My _table_ is by the main door. With a room of 40+ engineers,
there's constant distracting traffic. Some people make snide comments about my
choice of operating system, keyboard, language, editor, typing noise, attire,
whatever. Or to chat about the games that I missed last night, something
happened at the not-company-sponsored-happy-hour that I didn't get the invite
to, or something about lunch that, you know, you should have been there and if
only you wouldn't _leave the office for lunch_. Or about how your racing car
is in for the shop because, well, actually I don't even care why. It's just in
the shop (I know! you told me!) and you expect me to care about car parts too,
and shame on me for not knowing the difference between a maserati and a miata.

On the other hand, any time I mention to my boss that I'd like at least a
cubicle the response is "it's not going to happen". Thanks, boss! I'm glad
you've got my productivity concerns on your plate. I'm glad they can just, you
know, be heard. Not addressed, just heard. It's really helpful to be heard.
All day. It's real helpful to hear _everyone_ 's discussions while I'm trying
to do work.

Honestly, guys, if you like an open office environment, that's good for you.
Not everyone wants one and not everyone works well in one.

~~~
pteredactyl
Visual distraction is very real when trying to focus.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
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.

~~~
mathw
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 on!

Admittedly this is a German company I'm working with at the moment, but still,
the office is full of Brits.

Open plan is perfectly normal here, but I still hate it. Especially the ones
where they put really loud people near you (but you can't make a seating plan
based on how loudly people tend to talk), or when there are people whose jobs
involve loads of phone calls and who shout down their headsets, in the same
open plan space as a highly technical team who really need to concentrate and
occasionally have a quiet conversation with each other.

No one space works for everyone. It just doesn't. And that's not even taking
into account personal variations, as we've seen from these comments some
people like the open collaborative possibility and some feel the need to hide
away and bash the keyboard for hours at a time.

I have days when I want to do one, and days for the other, so I really don't
know what kind of office I'd like!

~~~
Jaruzel
> 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.

------
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.

~~~
bottlerocket
That jumped out at me as well, it's always the folks in a private office
touting the virtue of an open plan

------
loco5niner
Hopefully, more and more companies experience backlash from this. It is a
horrific mistake to add distracting elements to most programmers environments.
Even worse, in my open office plan, they put our very loud finance group right
next to us. Absolutely no thought of noise management was considered, except
for putting in horrible "white noise" generators that set off my tinnitus
Thankfully, my direct manager is understanding and let me turn off the one
directly over my head. And by directly over my head, I mean about 4 feet.

~~~
exergy
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 thousands of such developers.

~~~
6nf
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.

~~~
anildash
In some ways. They did raise $60 million, too, which didn't hurt. I think
we're doing just fine having a successful business on our own terms.

For what it's worth, Atlassian's NYC headquarters is… our Fog Creek offices,
complete with private offices for coders. More about that here:
[https://medium.com/make-better-software/apple-is-about-to-
do...](https://medium.com/make-better-software/apple-is-about-to-do-something-
their-programmers-definitely-dont-want-fc19f5f4487)

(Source: I'm the CEO of Fog Creek.)

~~~
6nf
The NYC 'headqarters' is not even on their list of locations

[https://www.atlassian.com/company/careers](https://www.atlassian.com/company/careers)

so I'd be surprised if it hosts a signficant percentage of their development
workforce. As far as I know their Sydney office is really the heart of their
operation and it's very open plan.

~~~
loco5niner
I don't think he is saying Atlassian HQ is _located_ at Fog Creek, but that
Atlassian HQ has a similar office plan as Fog Creek, "complete with private
offices for coders".

~~~
sencho
[https://www.businessinsider.com.au/atlassian-sydney-
office-2...](https://www.businessinsider.com.au/atlassian-sydney-
office-2017-7#)

------
nemo44x
It all seems so backwards. Instead of having collaborative working spaces with
private rooms for meetings, doesn't it make more sense to have private rooms
for working and collaborative meeting spaces?

~~~
IBM
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-
UF776_0817CO_1000RV_20170711160556.jpg)

[https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-
UF775_0817CO_1...](https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-
UF775_0817CO_1000RV_20170711160538.jpg)

[https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-
UF777_0817CO_1...](https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-
UF777_0817CO_1000RV_20170711160614.jpg)

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-jony-ive-masterminded-
apple...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-jony-ive-masterminded-apples-new-
headquarters-1501063201)

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

~~~
phonon
Or a large airport business lounge.

------
hkmurakami
It's really kind of amazing to me how in 20 years we've gone from laughing at
the cacophonous, claustrophobic, diseases-transmission-inducing, open office
plans of other economic regions (ex: the traditional Japanese office
[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CadIFZ3h638/T7yGtzdxVDI/AAAAAAAABe...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CadIFZ3h638/T7yGtzdxVDI/AAAAAAAABeg/YhOhlNmYRDc/s1600/5367034132_e04df3f6fe_o.jpg),
or the Wall Street trading floor), to precisely emulating their layouts (with
better superficial aesthetic design), inheriting both their economic
efficiency and productivity inefficiencies.

I'll take a cube farm with 5 feet walls any day over an open office.

~~~
brudgers
Historically, a cube farm is an open office plan in architectural lingo. About
twenty years ago, there was a movement toward movable furniture and hotelling
and removing the cubical walls. For what it's worth cubicles were generally
considered an improvement on grid layouts of desks.

------
chmaynard
I worked at Apple during the years when the company designed and built its
first campus at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino. As I recall, Apple R&D employees
were considered stakeholders and participated in the design of the interior
spaces. Apple wisely decided to give each engineer a private office. There
were open areas near the offices with comfortable furniture and whiteboards
for engineers to meet and collaborate. I worked in one of these buildings from
2001-2007, and I can confirm that the work areas were beautifully designed and
ideal for fostering productive work. It's sad to hear that Apple apparently
abandoned this approach in its new campus.

~~~
doomlaser
Yes. The Infinite Loop space was designed really well, and each of the
buildings was somewhat different with some character.

------
aetherson
I am fairly close to someone who works at Apple. His team is avoiding the new
spaceship building. He mentioned wanting to keep his office, but that was just
one part of several different complaints, including just "it turns out that
the building isn't big enough for most of the people who work at the HQ in
Cupertino," and "My team would probably have to split up in awkward ways
because not everyone would be able to work in the spaceship (due to space
constraints)."

~~~
ClassyJacket
The building looks gigantic but most of it is empty space due to the donut
shape. I wonder if they plan to ever build in the middle.

------
nashashmi
Man, I remember in college when we would be working long hours in the library
on a computer lined up in a row of computers. Every one would be intensely
working on what they needed to. Sometimes two would work together. This was
especially true before presentations when we were trying to put our stuff
together. It was neat. It was collaborative. It was fun. And we were happy.

Open floor plan is reminiscent of those days, but it isn't working. And I
cannot figure out why. What's missing? Intensity? Work? Stress? Team building
therapy? Or just trust? Whatever it is I hope we figure it out.

~~~
dasmoth
The comments about library etiquette are on to something.

But I think it also helps that most of the other people in the library are
probably strangers, and if a couple of them are talking it's probably about
something quite different from what you're working on.

"Team" conversations that _might possibly_ be relevant to your stuff are the
worst distractions.

~~~
J_Sherz
Agreed - I liken it to my college experience: if you want to eat or drink
anything other than water, or talk to other people, you go to the coffee shop.

If you want to focus on your work and take breaks to do the rest you go to the
library.

I always chose the coffee shop, so open offices don't bother me hugely. The
caveat is that a good pair of headphones is a must.

------
sidlls
Open offices diminish workers to cattle status. Most work, even the kind many
developers would not think of as being so, in tech companies requires
thoughtfulness often and collaboration less often. I consider open office
plans to be disrespectful and an indicator of second-class status.

~~~
danpalmer
Another point of view would be that by having 'senior management' in the same
rooms, at the same desks in an open office, they are more human and there's
less of a perceived barrier between them and everyone else - which could be
seen as a positive.

~~~
whipoodle
Managers often end up commandeering a meeting room to get around not
technically having an office.

~~~
danpalmer
Sure, and I wouldn't want meetings taking place at desks anyway as that would
be disruptive, but having the CEO at a 'normal' desk like everyone else, and
having them there for any time they are doing tasks alone, I think humanises
them more.

------
minwcnt5
Headphones are a poor solution to the noise problem in open offices. I find it
uncomfortable to wear them for 8 hours at a time, and it means I can't
overhear the conversations I _do_ want to overhear. Sitting elsewhere only
works if I have a task I can do on a laptop; for serious development work I
need a lot of screen real estate. That solution also has the same problem as
headphones where I might miss important conversations because I'm too busy
hiding from noise created by people doing work completely unrelated to mine.

There's a pretty happy medium, 2-10 person offices (with 4-5 being the most
common size) with glass walls. Google used to have a lot of these before
completely open plans became en vogue, and it was very rare to hear
complaints. They allow frequent interaction with your most common
collaborators while blocking out conversations from distant teams. They reduce
visual distraction while still allowing in lots of natural light and inviting
conversation. Doors were usually left open, so it was pretty comfortable to
walk into another office and start up a conversation.

With the giant, open, chicken-farm style floorplans, people feel too self-
conscious about dozens of people overhearing to have small 2-3 person
conversations near their desks, which means more formal meetings with all the
associated overhead, and fewer impromptu questions like "hey does anyone know
of a tool to do X?" And then you're still more distracted anyway due to all
the typing, people walking by, large groups being loud when gathering to eat
lunch or go to a meeting together or whatever.

I only see two advantages of completely open floors: slightly cheaper (glass
offices can be made almost as dense, but not quite, and I guess the glass
partitions aren't free), and better circulation to dissipate bad odors more
quickly.

------
kevinburke
One solution to this problem would be for Apple employees to form a union and
collectively bargain for better working conditions. Probably just threatening
to do this would lead to significant concessions.

Any Apple employees interested in this should contact Maciej Ceglowski on
Signal at +1415-610-0231.

~~~
sooheon
Interesting you'd recommend him, I enjoy his writing but didn't know he had
expertise here. Any reason why?

Also isn't "unionizing" a quick way to get a black mark in Silicon Valley? I
vaguely remember Michael O. Church was essentially exiled just for accusations
of unionizing.

~~~
kevinburke
Maciej (and others) believe the best way to get your company to stop doing
things you may not like:

\- keeping user history around forever

\- donating more from the company PAC to Republicans than Democrats

\- keeping engineers in open plan offices

\- providing services to election campaigns of anti-immigrant politicians

\- not paying the same amount of money to men and women for the same work

\- provide less-than-livable wages to cafeteria staff

Is to form a union and strike or negotiate for more worker-friendly policies.

Notably no one is suggesting striking for higher engineering wages, just the
avoidance of bad policy and a say in the company's future direction.

As to your second point, I can't speak to that, other than to say it's illegal
to retaliate against someone for discussing or organizing to form a union.

~~~
idlewords
Forming a union is a big step. You can fight for these things through
concerted collective action, and still enjoy most of the protections of labor
law (especially against retaliation). The point is to organize so that a large
group of employees is speaking with a single voice about the workplace issues
that matter most.

I urge anyone interested in learning more to contact me or coworker.org, who
have experience running successful employee campaigns, and understand the tech
world well.

------
knorker
I recently watched the movie Office Space.

Oh, such a wonderful working environment. To have the privacy and isolation
from distractions and interruptions that a cubicle gives. What I wouldn't give
to work in such a great office space.

~~~
Clubber
It's funny that the work environment became worse than Mike Judge imagined it
would be in Office Space. Wait till that happens to Idiocracy!

------
chank
My company recently switched to an open floor plan. It's done nothing but
increase distractions and office gossip. Everyone I know tries to get away
from their desk as often as possible. Ducking into side rooms, attempting to
work from home, and just plain using any excuse to escape the zoo.

Management loves open plans because it's the cheapest seating arrangement.
They claim that it will increase collaboration while exempting themselves from
having to deal with the environment. The truth is that just being able to see
someone without walking over to their desk isn't going to magically make you
communicate with them more or make your output higher. Some people like open
floor plans but it's been my experience most people don't and just grin and
bear it while slowly dying inside.

~~~
paulsutter
It's worse than that, managers like open plan because they can "feel the
energy" of people working, subconsciously they want to see all the work being
done, and to know who leaves and arrives when.

And notice how managers always arrange to have their screens hidden from
others view, while most people feel a constant sense that someone is looking
at their screen.

------
borplk
> open floor plan designs are conducive to collaboration between teams

This is just an overused cover-up story to avoid stating the real reasons
which is cutting costs and monitoring employees.

They use "collaboration" so that you can't voice your opposition to it easily.

If you do that they will beat you with the "not a team player" and "not a
culture fit" sticks.

Then in reality unhappy employees sit next to each other with noise cancelling
headphones whose job has been unnecessarily harder than it already is because
now a part of their mental focus and capacity is actively going towards
ignoring distractions.

------
synicalx
We're going one step better at my work with our new/future office, "Activity
Based Working". All the trappings of "open plan" but with even more features
to make Government work more soul-crushing and complicated.

One office, with desks for 80% of the staff (because the other 20% need to
take the hint and resign). Each desk only has one monitor, keyboard, and a
mouse. If you've got certain ergonomic requirements, or need a colour accurate
monitor, or a large monitor, or several monitors then you're just a naysayer
who is obviously not productive enough to understand the ways of the future.

No one 'has' a desk, instead you grab your laptop out of your locker each
morning and go find one. Or you might be allocated a desk via a morning
raffle, not sure on this one yet. At the end of each day you clean every
surface with alcohol wipes, which you then queue up to place in the singular
bin that services the 300ish staff. Anyone who sits at the same desk twice
will have to complete "Activity Based Working" training, in much the same way
intoxicated road users may attend a DUI class.

There will also be no car parks for staff, who are being encouraged to use
public transport. The fact that this public transport doesn't actually exist
yet is just a "growth opportunity", but who's growth we're referring to here
is not yet clear.

This might all sound like a joke, but the sad thing is it's 100% serious.
Literally all of the above has been set in stone by minister that our
department reports to.

~~~
bumblebeard
That sounds infuriating. Have you started looking for another job yet? I know
I would.

~~~
synicalx
I'm hanging on until I can officially pad my resume with all the office-move
stuff (network redesign being a big one), but the second another job comes up
after that I'm out there.

------
pimmen
"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."

Because private offices offers control over your working environment; if you
need to collaborate, use a conference room, if you need a quick discussion,
call them up on Slack.

I'm not going to touch wether or not the CEO has earned the best working
environment, but let's bring attention to the fact that the CEO is promoting
less control over your working environment for his employees and claim open-
office plans offers all kinds of benefits, while the C-level management
chooses to opt out. Either that's very noble of them to sacrifice all the
benefits of open-office, or they're being a bit disingenuous about why almost
everyone else gets an open-office plan.

------
a3n
In (almost) all open office environments, people above a certain level have
private offices.

Why?

Why don't they want to be as productive and collaborative as their reports?
Conference rooms and phone rooms are just as available to them as they are to
the rest. They can probably even afford much better head phones than the rest.

I just don't see enough of a difference to justify it.

~~~
Veratyr
I don't really buy it but a potential reason is that people above a certain
level have a business need for a private space.

Say you need to be on the phone all day talking about privileged information
like the upcoming earnings call or a major business deal. Even at lower levels
than that, maybe someone wants to come to you in private with a complaint or
maybe you need to tell someone they're underperforming. You could do these
things in meeting rooms like everyone else but if you're doing it 75% of the
time you're working, you may as well have a private meeting room (i.e.
office).

There's also security. People with higher privileges have more sensitive
information that needs to be better protected. Yes workstations should be
encrypted and confidential paper documents shouldn't be laying around the
office but defence in depth is a thing.

Efficiency is another concern. The time of people at a certain level is
extremely valuable and it can be wasted on suboptimal collaboration. Their
time needs to be planned very carefully.

And finally, it's just a perk.

------
nupertino
I wonder if anyone will make a claim about necessary workplace accommodations
under the Americans with Disabilities Act for ADD/ADHD. I already take
medication which makes it _almost_ OK for me to share an office - a recent
change for me after 20 years. But I'm still freaked out by someone literally 3
feet away from me. My social anxiety and borderline asperger's really make me
seize up until I can be alone in the late afternoon / evening.

When I had my own office, I was able to do things like coordinate health care,
talk to my wife, and eventually the divorce lawyers, but with the knowledge
that I could close my door and have privacy - now I have to escape to a
staircase to have a private conversation.

Plus, I'm terribly annoying to be around. From my mechanical clicky keyboard
to a desk overflowing with artifacts and fidgets of various ilk, sharing a
workspace means subjecting everyone else to my idiosyncrasies, mumblings and
offensive body oder.

------
pasbesoin
Apple has the money to afford whatever it wants. If it's like any other place
I've seen, I expect there's longstanding communication of one or another sort
from high performers that they want distraction-free environments.

From what I've observed of such high performers, they are _not_ anti-social
nor anti-collaborative, nor are they "crippled" in either respect. Rather,
many of them are the _most capable_ in these areas, because they actually _pay
attention_ and focus on _getting things done_ \-- and done as well as time and
resources allow.

The fact that Apple, like many workplaces I've observed, chooses to ignore
this and push a paradigm that _increases_ their stress and _decreases_ their
effectiveness and efficiency?

Well, as I learned in my own experience, over the years: This is just a
fundamental level of dis-respect.

I don't know anything about Apple work internals, specifically; the last time
I intersected with those peripherally was in the early '90's.

But when you blatantly disregard what employees tell you -- and in this case,
"professional" employees who have a high degree of training and awareness
about the tooling they need, including their work environments, to be most
effective. Well, that's just disrespect.

And employers who persistently engage in such, deserve what they get. I hope
-- because at some point, this counter-productive... "ideology" needs to die.

P.S. Those employees that _want_ cubicles or open-space? Fine, give it to
them. I don't want to dictate environment, either way.

Trust your employees to select what works best for them.

And measure the results. Objectively, not in the typical performance review ex
post facto rationalization and justification.

In my own experience, top performers cautiously (politics) leapt at the chance
to work from home and otherwise gain undistracted blocks of time to adequately
focus on complex problems and program management.

Those who embraced the cycle of endless meetings, interruptions -- including
environmental -- and superficially-addressed delegation? They faced the same
problems, month after month, cycle after cycle.

------
brudgers
Good architecture does not come from curved glass and 1mm joints between
materials. It comes from human habitability. Why build a building that makes
people unhappy? It seems to miss the point.

~~~
dilemma
Hubris, narcissism, God complex.

------
norea-armozel
I'll never understand the fascination with firms repeatedly going for the open
office plan. I remember seeing pictures from the early 20th century where such
offices existed full of people typing away. I don't know how they handled the
noise or the fact they couldn't isolate themselves to do their work whether it
was repetitive or novel in nature. It just seems like firms think of labor as
a singular mechanical process and not as something that's done in an irregular
and discoordinated fashion (as I've seen in my personal experience from
working in factories and currently working in software development). I really
think managerial practices need to update with the facts instead of forcing
the facts to fit with their expectations.

------
skc
Every article I've read about this building in the past has gone to great
pains to point out the artistry, elegance and taste that was applied in
building it.

I now find it highly amusing that at Apple, form over function won out yet
again.

------
maxxxxx
It seems a lot of managers live in that phantasy world where people do nothing
but collaborate. Do they really think that code gets written that way?

~~~
Clubber
Managers mark their value by how many meetings they attend. If their calendar
is booked all the time (even with pointless meetings) it's because they are
valuable.

Developers mark their value by what they create. Unfortunately people tend to
think everyone is like them. In this example, managers tend to think since
their value is through constant collaboration, they think everyone is valued
in the same metric.

------
LyalinDotCom
from the story ... "Prominent Apple podcaster and blogger John Gruber passed
along rumors that some high-level Apple staffers are unsatisfied with the
company’s open floor plan — which has many company engineers working at long
tables with co-workers, instead of in cubicles or offices."

wow, "long tables" for lots of devs to work at, what can go wrong right? and i
thought Microsoft open space had its issues, this sounds much worse.

When do people focus again?

------
aphextron
Everything Old Is New Again
[https://cdn.thinglink.me/api/image/866329202121506819/1240/1...](https://cdn.thinglink.me/api/image/866329202121506819/1240/10/scaletowidth)

~~~
borplk
At least in those days they didn't pretend like that was a beautiful thing.

Now we have these charlatans who not only want to push these concepts. But
also want everyone to acknowledge just how great they are.

And not to mention the proponents are never seen working in one for a single
day.

It's only good for the peasants.

------
oddity
Surely, they'll all realize that it takes courage to embrace the office layout
of the future?

Jokes aside, this was a problem five years in the making, and as far as I can
tell there was no secrecy about the plan. I'm surprised the complaints are
only coming now.

~~~
mncharity
And it's such a privilege to participate in the dialog between architecture
and society.

(MIT dean of architecture on why inflicting a Frank Gehry building on CSAIL
was worthwhile.)

------
cordite
I've worked in both, and both have their benefits. However, my evaluation of
open office may be biased because we also use slack.

Regarding open office plans: Focus does suffer in an open layout. Creativity
does suffer too. In the face of a fire in production, an open office creates a
low friction environment for task distribution to handle it. A factor that
makes up for this is that we can work from home one day a week. I find these
times to allow me to be most creative for planning long term solutions.
Occasional remote work is possible and effective thanks to several
technologies including Slack.

Regarding individual or paired offices: focus is easy to accomplish, and it is
easier to be creative. It can be quiet, but it sure feels lonely when my team
members take 3-6 minutes to walk to. Unfortunately, meetings, ad-hoc visits,
and email were the communication methods here. Remote work was near impossible
and impractical with just email for peer involved processes. This was also in
a very corp-legacy environment and my ability to make an impact was
unsatisfying. So I feel my creativity was often wasted and unvalued.

Overall, I think I like what I have now, which is mostly open office, but
still occasional time for individual creativity.

------
Animats
_Bench seating, work tables and open cubicles._

Apple? Famous for not letting their developers talk to people outside the
project?

~~~
oddity
Oh, upper management is even more paranoid than that. It's what made this such
a strange move for the company.

~~~
tyingq
Does it maybe work like the Pentagon, where you can't just randomly enter any
area?

------
tarikjn
I knew this was going to happen when I saw some of the office picture/renders
a few months back.

Highly relevant article:
[http://timharford.com/2017/02/what_makes_the_perfect_office/](http://timharford.com/2017/02/what_makes_the_perfect_office/)

And for a bit of history about cubicles, their first incarnation was actually
a developer's dream: [https://www.wired.com/2014/04/how-offices-accidentally-
becam...](https://www.wired.com/2014/04/how-offices-accidentally-became-
hellish-cubicle-farms/)

------
mmanfrin
I hope they win, open offices are the stupidest thing since cubicles.

~~~
falcolas
And yet I would personally prefer cubicles to an open office plan. At least
cubicles provide visual interruptions, reduce the overall noise, and provide a
space for you to personalize.

~~~
mmanfrin
I totally agree. Every argument I've heard against cubicles were actually
arguments against poor lighting and lack of windows -- a well lit, green,
many-windowed office that had cubicles would be much more preferable to open
office plans.

------
jansho
They should do more huts instead.

[https://officesnapshots.com/2012/07/16/pixar-headquarters-
an...](https://officesnapshots.com/2012/07/16/pixar-headquarters-and-the-
legacy-of-steve-jobs/)

~~~
stevesearer
Office Snapshots here.

Direct links to those "hut" images for those interested (many of you). The
above link goes to to the entire gallery of images:

[https://officesnapshots.com/photos/16797/](https://officesnapshots.com/photos/16797/)

[https://officesnapshots.com/photos/16765/](https://officesnapshots.com/photos/16765/)

------
booleandilemma
My company has an open office plan and I feel like the area directly behind my
chair was designated as the company's unofficial meeting space, but no one
ever told me.

~~~
Practicality
Oh man. About 10 feet behind my chair is where another department likes to
have their meetings. And for whatever reason, they also like to stand there
and swap gossip about all the employees.

I mean seriously. I DO NOT need to know any of those things. Especially while
I am trying to work. Please go away. Of course they talk really loudly too.

------
peterwwillis
Ever walked into a Starbucks with those long communal tables and 10 people on
laptops, with two people having a conversation, and others walking past every
now and then? And you go to get your coffee and turn around, and now you're
looking in the direction of 12 people, some of whom look up from what they're
doing because they wonder what you're looking at. You go find a place to sit,
set down your coffee, get out your laptop, and log in - only for Frank, the
retired cab driver who is a regular here, to immediately strike up a
conversation with you about "those fuckin' contractors who won't get shit done
on my addition".

It's not as cramped or loud, but it is awkward and distracting. It's
definitely not the end of the world. But if working in a coffee shop full of
people you see every day does not work for you, this is an unproductive floor
plan.

They had enough money that they could have built 10 different kinds of
workspaces spread out in a building with five times the work space on the same
property. Instead they built a hollow glass donut. Because: Steve Jobs.

------
carapace
I will take $20,000 off of my pay if you will give me my own office with a
door I can close.

~~~
abawany
Don't give them any ideas. The whole open office dumpster-fire has probably
been a cover to further reduce software engineer salaries. Edit: added
probably.

~~~
astrange
Since when has anyone reduced software engineer salaries?

~~~
abawany
One way I can think of is this (slightly applies to me): when my large company
with generous benefits and RSUs went to the open office plan, it (amongst
other reasons) caused me to leave. They were likely able to hire more junior
staff to backfill (as was their practice) netting them a net reduction in
wages.

------
mschuster91
I'm happy about German regulations. This would not fly for long in any company
with a Betriebsrat ("work council" is apparently the English word) once noise
levels get broken.

~~~
DocTomoe
I'm sitting in an German open-office setup right now. There is nothing in the
regulations to forbid these (and most of these Arbeitsschutzgesetze only are
applicable to industrial settings).

------
bipson
Everybody arguing for open office plans and stating that they or "some people"
thrive in such environments should finally come around to read Peopleware [1].

Although they might base some statements on assumptions I do not fully agree
with all the time, and before reading I was had not decided if I was strictly
for or against open office plans, their conclusion is spot on: _open plans do
not foster collaboration or communication_. They may cause a constant buzz and
_seem_ productive, but nobody will be smart, creative or productive in that
environment, compared to a silent, uninterrupted workplace.

All you multitaskers and procrastinators (including me): You are lying to
yourself.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-
Teams-...](https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-
Teams-3rd/dp/0321934113)

~~~
bipson
I might add: I honestly do think we thinkers, developers, programmers,
researchers, etc. do not talk enough and communication and exchange is
important.

That being said, the open office plan is not the solution to that, it will
kill every possibility of focus, and make the lives of people seeking it
miserable - because there _needs_ to be communication, but it should not
interrupt everyone especially if not actively participating.

------
zitterbewegung
I have heard that open office plans are justified by decreased cost. Does it
make sense that they would build a 5 billion dollar office with open floor
plans? I suppose given that large price tag there would be motivation to cut
costs that way other than the fact that the open office plan as a fad still
exists.

~~~
wmf
Maybe the justification is density, not cost. The floor space of the spaceship
was finalized years ago and maybe Apple is trying to shoehorn more employees
into that space.

------
icanhackit
John Kullmann, who ported OSX from PPC to x86, was able to work from home. I
wonder if it's set up so that when you need to get shit done you work from
home and when you need to collaborate you visit the spaceship?

Or perhaps only the superstar engineers get to pull that kind of thing.

~~~
mrpippy
As I remember, that was a special-case arrangement for some kind of family
reason (and after he had worked in Cupertino for several years). There are
current Apple engineers with the arrangement you describe though, I know of at
least one on Twitter.

------
jmull
Open office spaces is something that will be laughed at in the future.

------
meddlepal
In the future when I do my next job hunt I'm giving serious extra
consideration to any company with private offices or high wall cubes even if
the comp is worse. Open office plans suck. It's time these companies start
being penalized

------
auggierose
I guess there will be two classes of people at Apple. Those with their own
office, and those without. Although it has its rough edges, I am becoming a
big fan of Swift. I hope Chris Lattner has his own office.

~~~
jnbiche
Chris Lattner hasn't been at Apple since leaving for Tesla back in January (he
has recently left Tesla, as well).

~~~
auggierose
Just read up on the whole thing. Yes, I remember now that he went to Tesla. I
think it is unusual for a programming language guy to do machine learning. Not
surprised it didn't work out.

------
mathattack
I'm ok with an open office, but my job is to be interupted. It's less good for
deep thinking jobs, or heavy phone call jobs. Our engineers don't seem to mind
though, maybe they just plug in their headsets?

Joel Spolsky wrote about this [1] though his main citation is experience at
Microsoft.

I do have to admit Open Floors are a shift for a company focused on secrecy.

[1] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/12/29/the-new-fog-
creek-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/12/29/the-new-fog-creek-
office/)

~~~
pilsetnieks
> Our engineers don't seem to mind though

Eventually you just seem to attract the people who can tolerate such
conditions, or who are happy to keep up the pretense.

------
cylinder
I'm sure Jony Ive's office is nice and quiet.

~~~
astrange
The new building is based on his ID lab.

[https://www.cultofmac.com/303396/design-studio-behind-
iron-c...](https://www.cultofmac.com/303396/design-studio-behind-iron-
curtain/)

------
Someone
IMO, it is all in the execution. Open offices can be terrible, but they also
can be good, just like private offices.

There's a huge difference between a few dozen desks in a bare concrete hall
without any dividers between desks or a few dozen desks in a room with sound-
dampening dividers between desks and lots of sound proofing on the walls and
ceilings.

I work in an open office, and barely hear it when people three meters away
make a phone call.

------
Bonge
The open office arrangement works for some industries but for others, each
company would need to evaluate how specialized their workforce is to choose a
suitable arrangement.

I would prefer a glass office with the freedom to have it closed much of the
day without any "judgement".

I am developer with an office now, but if i close the door I seem to be
keeping people off, and not "social" or "accommodating". Leaving the door open
exposes me to a lot of distractions (noise, visual-people walking etc, people
just stopping by or spying on me) which are unhealthy and reduce my
productivity. I have since learnt to ignore as much distractions as I can.

Working previously in an audit firm, the open space worked well, because there
is constant collaboration with multiple audit colleagues and all tasks
complement each other hence the need to constantly keep tabs. But in
development,if I have my specs or requirements , I don't need to keep in touch
unless when giving updates, requesting for a resource, asking fr help or
something else that is really pressing.

------
siculars
"Gruber continued, “When he [Srouji] was shown the floor plans, he was more or
less just 'F--- that, f--- you, f--- this, this is bulls---.' And they built
his team their own building, off to the side on the campus … My understanding
is that that building was built because Srouji was like, 'F--— this, my team
isn't working like this.’”"

Ya, what that guy said ^^.

------
tradesmanhelix
My main disappointment with most businesses that implement open office plans
has been the lack of choice. Everyone (except management) is expected to work
in the open environment regardless of personal preference or the negative way
such a setup impacts them.

I personally struggle to be productive in an open office environment, but time
has proven that there's very little that I as a non-managerial employee can do
about it. I've tried:

\- Using noise-cancelling headphones. They kind of work, but I don't want to
listen to music all the time (hurts your hearing after too long of exposure)
nor do I want to wear them all day (uncomfortable for 8+ hours).

\- Moving to quieter locations around the office. Yes things are quieter, but
my assigned desk is set up the way I like it - HD monitor, RSI-preventing
keyboard + mouse, my Varidesk, etc. If I move to a different location, I lose
all of the above and my productivity and happiness suffer.

\- Asking for changes (i.e., 1/2 height cubicles). "We'll see," or, "We can't
afford that" were the two responses our team got from management despite
numerous requests from multiple employees.

In the end, I decided to lobby against open offices the only way I could - by
voting with my feet. I quit my job, making sure to share my dissatisfaction
with the work environment during my exit interview. I now enjoy a fully-remote
development position where I can work from the comfort of my home office.

However, I know there are only so many such jobs and that they're not ideal
for everyone, so I come back to my original point: The fact that the vast
majority of businesses don't make at least some sort of effort to provide
their employees with options for their work environment that will allow them
to do their best work is sad. Doing so just seems like common sense, which I
guess is really not all that common after all, especially when it comes to
open offices.

------
deathanatos
> _Apple has insisted in presentations to the city of Cupertino that the open
> floor plan designs are conducive to collaboration between teams_

Oh, please. A trip to Wikipedia would have told you that[1]:

> _A systematic survey of research upon the effects of open-plan offices found
> […] high levels of noise, stress, conflict, high blood pressure and a high
> staff turnover. The noise level in open-plan offices greatly reduces
> productivity, which drops to one third relative to what it would be in quiet
> rooms._

> _Open-plan offices have frequently been found to reduce the confidential or
> private conversations which employees engage in, and to reduce job
> satisfaction, concentration and performance, whilst increasing auditory and
> visual distractions._

Further, open office plans spread disease more readily[2]:

> _elevated risks [for disease] were found among employees in all three
> traditional open-plan offices_

An open office floor plan robs you of the ability to control the noise level
in the environment. There is literally no way for me to convince enough of my
coworkers that they should:

* Either take their phone with them, or silence it if leaving it at your desk.

* Stop having meetings in the aisle immediately next to my desk.

* If you're going to video conference in the meeting rooms, and have the other end at full volume, close the damn door. If you don't know enough about video conferencing to understand what a feedback loop is, and want to spend the first 10 minutes of the meeting generating them, _close the damn door_. Stop looking at me like I'm rude when I close the door for you.¹

Calling people out gets a typical "oh, sorry", but not an actual change in
behavior.

 _Maybe_ it encourages me to talk to the team nearby. _Maybe._ But is it worth
the losses? No. (The team next to me is sales. They're not bad people, but
they are fairly noisy. (And I'm sure they'd say the same of us, in fact!))

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan)

[2]:
[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00140139.2013.871...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00140139.2013.871064)

------
jacobr
We have screen walls (~2 meters) around teams of 2-4 people. I think 2-4
people is a decent compromise, you get friction-less cooperation with the
people you work with but you don't get to overhear 20 different conversations
about what someone did on their weekend.

I am still bothered by other people's conversations across the screen-walls
though, and I prefer to not listen to music all day.

Our CEO is sympathetic to the issue with open offices and maybe if we move to
another place it will have a different layout, but converting an open office
to separate rooms is not that easy. Does anyone have any suggestions when
management would actually accept taking measures to avoid the negatives of
open office plans?

Are there 4m high screen walls, with doors..?

------
MikeTLive
they screwed up my award winning office design. common section down the middle
with individual offices on opposite walls, large enough for pair programming,
one end of the alcove has windows above shelves, other end has multimedia.
offices to be used as small conference rooms and manager offices, without
windows, are in a perpendicular central hallway. i designed this over 10 years
ago and a virtually identical design was used for my company's buildout the
following year. no one is assigned to the common central table. offices can
have the door open or closed depending on the occupant need/desire to be heads
down or passively participate with others. each alcove houses a functional
team

------
nottorp
Hmm. In a field like software development, where the good people work wherever
they want, this means they will lose their best staff.

Time to take a look at current desktop Linux again :)

------
chewrocca
I worked at a place that had the floor to almost ceiling cubicles. It was nice
and quiet. Then we went to the open floor plan. Then the Nerf guns arrived.

------
eecc
As a freelancer I'm looking forward to the day my customers will accept that
I'm just as effective (actually more so) sitting in my own shared office space
located just a short commute from home rather than their own desk and office,
alas a grueling journey away.

I guess they don't trust us children doing the work we are assigned and want
to smell us sweating away at their stinky enterprise codebases

------
marze
Apple is famous for pixel perfect prototyping, of numerous possible solutions,
before choosing.

Did they prototype and test various office layouts? If not, why not?

~~~
Digory
The WSJ article said Apple prototyped one work area, and then multiplied it
across the available space.

"Hav­ing set­tled on an over­all shape, the team then broke it down into
smaller parts. “One of the ad­van­tages of this ring is the rep­e­ti­tion of a
num­ber of seg-ments,” says Ive. “We could put enor­mous care and at­ten­tion
to de­tail into what is es­sen­tially a slice that is then re­peated. So
there’s tremen­dous prag­ma­tism in the build­ing.” The ring would be made up
of pods—units of work­space—built around a cen­tral area, like a spoke
point­ing to­ward the cen­ter of the ring, and a row of cus­tomizable seat­ing
within each site: 80 pods per floor, 320 in to­tal, but only one to
pro­to­type and get right."

~~~
marze
Prototyping one version seems un-Apple. I would have expected them to have
prototyped many office layout options, had people work in them for six months
each and rate them or otherwise measure quality.

------
dsfyu404ed
One of the perks of working in defense is the office buildings you wind up in
are usually either all offices or a series of very small cube farms because
the building organization needs to be capable of supporting teams working with
materials of various levels of sensitivity. Even for unclassified work most
stuff is "don't share this if you don't need to".

------
jorts
Putting on headphones and listening to white noise like rainfall blocks out
just about everything for me. I don't like open floor plans due to noise when
I'm not wearing headphones, but with them on it's fine. When I don't put my
headphones on it allows me to engage with my team when I am not hyper focused
on something.

------
molestrangler
This is only a rumour, I would wait for some photos to appear to confirm this.

Anyone got any recent images now people have started moving in?

~~~
galonk
The reaction from the troops is a rumour. The fact that almost everyone has to
work in open space is not. It's well documented fact.

------
peeters
> bench seating

Wait long tables is one thing, but what on earth does bench seating mean? Like
it's one long picnic table?

~~~
stevesearer
"Benching" refers to a style of desk system that connects into a row.

Example from Steelcase:
[https://www.steelcase.com/products/benching/frameone/](https://www.steelcase.com/products/benching/frameone/)

------
b34r
God I hate open office layouts. The only job I've ever had with a proper cube
was a marketing agency, and it was glorious.

My team recently got little flags for our desks that explicitly say "open for
business" and "busy, come back later"... but even with those people still
bother you!

------
signa11
'peopleware' by demarco and lister, goes over this and lot of other issues in
great detail. imho, it should be required reading for s/w managers at the very
least.

edit-001 : added author info for the book.

------
zz9815
I wonder how many Apple employees will be fired for speaking their minds (or
writing 10 page documents) about how much they hate open office designs...

------
BrainInAJar
They should rebel collectively, through a union perhaps

------
danso
OT, but is there a good book on the history of offices, at least in American
workplaces? What existed before cubicles?

~~~
awad
Don't have a good book but a quick search led me to this Wired post:
[https://www.wired.com/2009/03/pl-design-5/](https://www.wired.com/2009/03/pl-
design-5/)

Anecdotally, when I think back to images from the early century, I'm led to
believe that open plan with higher level employees in private offices is
actually the historical norm. While the actual nature of work of course has
changed, I'm not so sure that everyone having their own private office has
ever been a reality other than a select few employers.

------
romanovcode
Well I would also be pissed if I had an office and then was told to give that
up.

------
wdb
If you do open office plans then everyone should do it including the
executives

------
diogenescynic
Good. I wish this happened more often. I would be much more productive with a
little more privacy. Open floor plans are awful.

------
khazhoux
(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 having a discussion right behind them, then that is their signal to you to keep talking loudly, as their noise-canceling headphones will eliminate any trace of your conversation.

* You can usually carry a conversation at your desk at any volume, because other engineers will let you know if you're being too loud. Engineers tend to be extroverted and won't hesitate to let you know if you're bothering them.

* When someone first sits at their desk, it's polite to immediately engage them in a 30-minute conversation about their weekend or what they did last night. It eases their transition into work.

* A person working without headphones on, signifies that it's ok to tap them on the shoulder to ask them a question.

* A person working WITH headphones on, signifies that it's ok to tap them on the shoulder to ask them a question.

* If someone usually works off in quiet parts of the building, one should always remind them "you're never at your desk" with an accusatory tone.

~~~
andrewfong
You can improve upon this by giving everyone VR headsets to shut out visual
noise. You'll still need to come into the office though. Face time is
important.

~~~
inetknght
Ironically I have a Vive at home and it would be _one_ of the reasons I'd
never get much work done

~~~
jaggederest
Mostly, in my experience, the struggles of working from home are precisely the
opposite of that, in basically every way - people half-jokingly half-enviously
chuckle about how many video games you're playing, because that's what THEY
imagine they'd do if they worked from home, and they've never actually put
themselves in the position to find out.

------
1_2__4
Every single company does this now and it's a fucking nightmare. They'll give
you a million useless and stupid perks, but they won't give you a fucking
place to actually do work. It's infuriating beyond words.

------
pinaceae
Not everyone at Apple is a coder. Not every job is the same.

Note how designers and architects work in teams, in open work spaces.

I have seen communication in a PM group go to shits because of a move from an
open layout to a walled cubicle garden. PMs were avoidig their cubes, sitting
in the cafeteria as they enjoyed the "coffee shop hum".

Reality, as always, is nuanced.

------
Cozumel
Investing in everything but the people who work there.

~~~
pinewurst
I don't think that was the intent.

My guess is that this was planned in an era (sadly now) where open space is
portrayed as the "cool" way to work.

~~~
Spooky23
I'm sure Jony Ive has an office.

~~~
maxxxxx
Yes. Once I see all the big shots sitting elbow by elbow at a long table the
whole day I will revise my opinion about open offices.

~~~
pilsetnieks
Musk and Zuckerberg "sit" among the peasants. It makes for a good photo op but
in reality they have to spend very little time at their desk. At that level,
they probably spend most of their time in meetings, and even when not, it's
not like anyone would chastise them for behaving inconsiderately to other
people in the office, or taking over a conference room as their impromptu
office.

~~~
borplk
Same with Jack from Twitter. At that point it's just an empty gesture.

------
masterleep
Open offices are a direct manifestation of Satan's plan.

------
smegel
> instead of in cubicles

Wait, I thought cubicles _were_ open plan, in comparison to offices? This
sounds like super-exposed office planning.

~~~
borplk
Open offices is even-cheaper cubicles.

------
dogruck
When was the first "rebellion against an office plan"? Can anybody link a
report from the early 1900s? The 80s?

------
homosaphien1
I might be in the minority but I HATE cubicle farms and love open office
design. Just give every a sound cancellation headphone if they complain. To me
cubical farms are depressing.

~~~
exergy
There are many of us who code in spurts, and spend the rest of the time
goofing off on Reddit or hacker news. At the same time, we'd prefer not to get
judged on what percentage of time we have Facebook open on our monitors, and
more on the work we do. But when everyone can see what you're doing, it's hard
to get rid of the nagging feeling that you're being watched.

~~~
intoverflow2
It's not really goofing off, I absolutely work in several focused spurts
during the day. Which is also why I'm never that fussed about turning up on
time because I never do any real work in the morning anyway.

Can't dig it out now but John Cleese did a good talk on creativity explaining
why this works and how brains solve problems in the background which is why
inspiration hits in the shower and on the train. By alternating between
focusing then procrastinating and ignoring work you can force a decent cadence
of creativity into your work.

------
lowbloodsugar
The "I don't like open spaces, so therefore my team doesn't" is the same
failure as "I don't like an office, so my team doesn't get offices".

Developers are humans, and not all humans have the same preference. I
_personally_ prefer to work in an enclosed space that includes all my team.
Open spaces suck for me. A closed office with just me in it also sucks, for
me. If anyone on my team is more productive in an office, I'll do my best to
get them an office.

There are two fundamental problems that always show up on this issue:

1\. Believing that "I am human. My preference is X. Therefore X is the
preference of all humans", and

2\. "Office as a signal of seniority".

If a team can get past both of those, they should be good.

