
“Today we moved into our new Facebook building” - somerandomness
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10101999874192881
======
JohnBooty
I would literally switch jobs (and perhaps careers, if every company was like
this) if forced to work in an open office like this. I cannot work that way; I
can't focus.

I realize that I'm adding nothing constructive to this thread; I don't care.
Maybe some manager somewhere will see this and a hundred other anecdotal
opinions and think twice about open offices.

I am the opposite of a prima donna. _I just want to work._ I want to make
awesome stuff, keep my skills sharp and make the company some money.
Preferably lots of it.

I'd be fine with an office that's literally 5x5', a desk, a door, a wifi
connection, and some shared working areas for when it's time to collaborate.
Because yes, collaboration is crucial (and fun) but if I have to hunt all over
the damn building for a bit of quiet space (that might not even be avaiable)
when it's time to bear down and do some solo coding then this is not going to
work.

Hell, I'll even bring my own damn desk, chair, and laptop. Supplied my own
laptop to my last two jobs. No big deal. I'm an engineer; I get paid decently.
But I need a freaking _place_ to _focus_ for at _least_ half of any given
working week - and sometimes, for close to the entire week.

I don't need: famous guest speakers, catered food, fancy architecture,
anything. I wouldn't even care if the office was a poorly-insulated garage
that gets cold in the winter. I'll bring my own $20 space heater that will
heat a 5x5' office just fine.

What I can't have, if you want me to get any work done, is multiple
simultaneous conversations taking place five feet away from my head all day
long.

~~~
ryanSrich
This is why I only work remotely.

Too many tech companies are up their own asses with how hip and cool their
offices are. I just want to work when I want, how I want, and in an
environment of my own choosing. I 100% understand that collaboration needs to
take place at certain times and I really do enjoy the collaboration of remote
work with other employees. However the "collaboration" that takes place in
these types of offices is just wheel spinning and time wasting. It truly is
the art of not working. It's all about how you look in front of managers (who
are really only interested in asses in chairs and looking good to their
managers...the cycle of doing nothing continues).

I really prefer having all hands with other remote employees 6-10 times per
year where everyone is together in the same room. The meetings and
collaboration that comes out of these is much more meaningful. Time is of the
essence so we make it count.

~~~
VLM
"However the "collaboration" that takes place in these types of offices is
just wheel spinning and time wasting."

I enjoyed how you phrased that. I work at a giant multinational and yes yes I
know all about the stereotype that innovation only comes from the tiny little
startups on HN, but innovation flows both ways, like it or not, and over the
last decade one megacorp major cultural shift I've seen is collaboration only
happens in email because its documented and highly accountable. If you really
want to share opinions or idea or requirements or demands in a verifiable
documented backed up permanent fashion then you put it in email. You don't
have a "real" opinion until its written down and sent in email.

If you just want to talk about sports or the weather or gossip about
colleagues or lie to someones face about a due date or product change or a
spec, you exclusively do that verbally on the phone or in a meeting or text.
Non email based collaboration is seen as a fake waste of time, because, lets
face it, it is. If you're too much of a coward or crook to put your name to a
statement, then its not worth reading. If someone refuses to document what
they're saying in email or a bug ticket they are pretty much treated as liars
or ignored. Its an interesting cultural shift. I have one older boss (yeah
office space style I have a couple bosses, informally) who is all about the
"personal" nature of a phone call or meeting, but its always super
ineffective. He's still a nice guy and overall a good manager, but "old people
thinking" is holding him back compared to the other mgmt who have moved on
with the times.

It seems to work extremely well, especially with multi-office, multi-timezone,
multi-national, multi-company teams. (edited to add, and this factors into the
"scalability" mantra heard so often on HN... don't set yourself up to fail,
operate like a big company from the start) And violating the "new way" by only
communicating verbally or in meetings seems to dismally fail fairly often.

This large company innovation will probably spread to the smaller companies
sooner or later.

~~~
electronvolt
This is interesting to me, because I work at a large company and I've found it
to be orchestrated slightly differently. If you want/need something done here,
the fastest way is to set up a face to face appointment and put yourself in
someone else's calendar. If you don't, things will drag on for months of email
back and forth. If you do, things might last two hours, you'll probably leave
with a solid plan, and then usually someone sends a 'summary' email that lists
every commitment made in that meeting (which keeps everyone honest) along with
the dates people agreed to get them done by. If there's disputes about that,
they're then handled there, but if you seem to always get the wrong idea from
meetings (or always dispute what you said in them), it'd probably reflect
badly on you.

~~~
marssaxman
I've worked with plenty of people who seem to believe that. It's really
frustrating when someone derails an informative, productive, asynchronous
email discussion with "let's just have a meeting" or "here, let me just call
you" as though dropping everything and sitting around waiting for people to
finish their sentences will somehow make the underlying problems easier to
reason about.

I guess it must work for them, and I have gathered over the years that I must
be something of an outlier in my comfort with and preference for communication
via writing, but god I wish we could just cancel all meetings forever and just
solve things simply and quickly via email.

This is one of the reasons working for Microsoft was an exercise in misery.
People who haven't worked there have trouble believing me when I describe the
amount of time people there routinely waste in bullshit status meetings. It
was maddening.

------
kzhahou
People always talk about the terrible NOISE in open office plans.

For me, I hate the feeling of BEING WATCHED. It's just unnerving. There's
people all around me with low cube walls...

* I want to stare ahead as I focus - someone's looking at me.

* I have my big headphones on and am rocking to the music - someone's looking at me.

* I wanna put my head down on desk and think - someone's looking at me.

* I check gmail - someone's looking at me

* redit break - someone's looking at me

* I scrape off dry snot caused by the super-dry office air - someone's looking at me.

* I'm working - someone's looking at me

I just can't be in my own head when I'm so surrounded by people... always
there... always right. behind. me.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I second this. For me it's not even about being watched. It's that unnerving
feeling of presence of other people that often makes me unable to focus in
open-space setting at work. I had that since forever - even as a kid I aways
closed the door to my room. I'm usually the last person to leave the office
and when I see a cow-orker of mine staying late I start to feel irritated
(saying in my head "hey, this was supposed to be my time for focused work!").

Funny thing is - I'm not an antisocial person. I _love_ people. Just not when
I'm trying to focus on something. Then the very presence of others makes me
nervous.

And yes, when I'm focused, I like to talk to myself out loud, lie down on a
couch to think, rock to music and draw a lot (when designing something). All
those things look silly and I'm uncomfortable doing any of it when not alone.

~~~
pdkl95
Being around people usually engages various parts of the brain that are
involved in being aware of the local situation. Even if you're not interacting
to someone, some amount of monitoring happens to maintain the brain's model of
the local environment that we actually experience. This would include stuff
like tracing the locations of people/stuff in the room, checks of stuff like
body language or subtle social indicators, and probably a long list of other
tiny checks that we never really notice consciously.

The problem is that some of the areas of the brain that do that processing are
also used when handling other complex tasks such as programming. This
overloading of processing areas will vary from person to person, of course.

This problem is the main reason I could never work in an open office, and have
serious productivity problems even ion an office shared with only one other
person. It's not that they are interrupting constantly or otherwise
distracting in the commonly-used sense. If there are people around, I have to
be _aware_ of them, which wastes mental CPU time and introduces cache-flushing
context switches at annoying times.

------
moe
_a single room that fits thousands of people._

What a nightmare.

These "glass palace" offices may work for bankers or marketing teams. For
programmers you could just as well plant their desks into the middle of a
mall.

~~~
fsk
The offensive part is the people who say that open offices are MORE EFFICIENT
than a traditional office. I have a hard time believing that one.

Given how high programmer salaries are, the productivity loss due to open
offices is almost definitely more than the office space savings.

It seems like an introvert/extrovert thing. The introverts would prefer a
quiet working space (and they're usually the best workers), but extroverts
want the easy communication (and they're usually the bosses).

Even small team rooms of 4-10 people get annoying when the other person has a
smelly meal, has a cold, prefers a different temperature, or listens to music
on his headphones so loudly I can hear it.

One of my favorite jokes is when a job ad says "We provide headphones so you
can concentrate!" as a serious job perk. How about a quiet space?

~~~
logicallee
I love how $100 billion companies with a hair (~11%) shy pf a billion - a
_billion_ users, active, d-a-i-l-y and run by 9,199 employees (for a company
value of $1 million per empoyee down to every last employee including someone
taking out the trash, and likewise meaning each and every last employee has
whole army divisions, a _hundred_ thousand users, they account for --) -
suddenly doesn't know as much - to an OFFENSIVE extent - about productivity as
someone who has time to post 5 paragraphs about it. There is someonething
offensive here indeed.

* 3-4 month old figures: [http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/](http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/)

~~~
sgift
Congratulations, you just attributed luck to skill and established that when
you had luck you somehow have any idea what you are doing. Nokia was very big
once. Was.

------
some1else
Here's an article with a bunch of sizzling Instagram shots from people who got
to take the first look:
[http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/web/news/a14830/face...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/web/news/a14830/facebook-
mpk20-headquarters-frank-gehry/)

I'm really impressed by how non-gimmicky this Gehry building looks on the
outside, and it seems like they really did a good job designing whatever space
isn't consumed by the open plan.

~~~
BryantD
No pictures of day to day work space, alas.

~~~
NeutronBoy
I saw this one from Chris Marra

[https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204715357418943](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204715357418943)

~~~
j-c-m
Ah, that is Zuckberg and Schrep embracing the open floor plan by commandeering
a conference room for a small two person meeting.

~~~
NeutronBoy
'Open floor plan' doesn't mean there's no leeway if you want to have a private
discussion, or a meeting with more than 2-3 people for more than 5 minutes.

------
jack-r-abbit
I'm not going to get into the debate of open floor plans vs individual offices
since most people already have their opinions and I see pros & cons to both.
That debate aside, I think that roof top green space is absolutely awesome. I
would love to see more of those being built into new buildings.

~~~
chrischen
The fact that there is even a debate means not everyone likes it, therefore,
it shouldn't be forced on everyone.

~~~
bluthru
So we should get rid of building codes, too?

~~~
chrischen
Workplace setup is almost strictly a matter of preference.

~~~
bluthru
It's not about a workplace setup, it's about responsible energy production.

------
option
Having worked as researcher/dev in both private office and open space setup, I
am absolutely convinced that private offices are way more productive than open
office setup for researchers and developers. Most, if not all, of my
colleagues feel the same. In fact, I don't think I will ever accept an offer
from a mature company (not startup) which houses its developers in open space.

~~~
vlunkr
For me, open office + headphones = private office. At a vastly reduced cost. I
know that doesn't work for everyone though.

~~~
jquery
It also equals hearing loss, but that doesn't show up on the company balance
sheets.

~~~
therealdrag0
Closed cans or IEMs allow you to have very little (or no) audio volume while
still blocking outside noise.

~~~
moe
And both tend to get very uncomfortable when worn for extended periods of
time.

~~~
therealdrag0
Totally agree. I think offices should be default with optional communal areas,
not the opposite (communal offices with limited private work rooms).

------
cc439
I believe that this whole "open office" concept is driven by the idea that an
observed worker is a "productive" worker and that it's actually true to a
certain extent. Sure, you may be less productive in an open office when you're
actually bearing down on something but the management is assured that you're
doing something work related within the boundaries of the company's cultural
definition of "productive".

It's an old-school, assembly line style of thinking. An open floorplan gives
the impression of vulnerability, you won't goof off on HN or reddit when you
know somebody _could_ be looking. A loss in crunchtime productivity may be
worth it if the employees would otherwise spend 2 hours a day wasting time
privately. The culture determines the amount of time spent socializing in
plain view but the open office completely kills any attempt to spend company
time on non-work activities in private.

I work outside the tech bubble but even with my limited experience, I know
that the more company provided distractions (a 9 acre park, free snacks in the
breakroom, etc), the less you'll be allowed to actually do anything _but_
work.

------
gdilla
It's like we're going back to the industrial golden age where all a companies
workers would get subsidized cookiecutter housing and certain amenities close
to the plant. You never have to leave your employer bubble now.

The conditions have never been better to work remotely, yet I guess another
way to eliminate commutes is to make your workplace so livable you never leave
(much). :)

~~~
shard972
Just like a foxcon!

------
phildougherty
I've worked in offices with cubes, in co-working spaces, remotely (for a long
time), and now in an open plan with around 200 people.. I have never been more
productive than the time I worked remotely. The constant distractions in an
open plan are bad enough with 200, I can't even imagine how it is with
thousands.

~~~
monk_e_boy
I don't like people looking at my screens. I've never had a problem with the
quality or quantity of my work, but as soon as someone see youtube open
blasting out music. Hackernews, reddit, facebook all open, someone soon
complains. That's just how I work.

I think of it like a sausage factory, the boss loves the product but doesn't
want to know how it's made. Leave me to work in my own way.

------
Osmium
> Our goal was to create the perfect engineering space for our teams to work
> together. [...] To do this, _we designed the largest open floor plan in the
> world_ — a single room that fits thousands of people.

Almost reads like an Onion article. I'm sure that they thought this through
though before spending so much money.

------
robotmlg
I never thought I'd see the phrase "a single room that fits thousands of
people" in a description of an office building...

~~~
jonknee
Especially as a positive attribute...

------
dismal2
Not being snide, but I REALLY do want to see a picture of a work desk (imagine
it would be one of those standing/sitting electronic ones) and a chair and a
computer! Or is that confidential info?

~~~
myhf
[http://i.imgur.com/20rCfSM.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/20rCfSM.jpg)

~~~
kzhahou
Humor prohibited.

------
moron4hire
Reminds me of the episode of "Better Off Ted" where they invent an itchy chair
and it increases productivity because workers can't get too comfortable. In
focus group testing, they find a maximum limit of uncomfortableness before
people start jumping out of windows.

I keep thinking the latest announcement of "gigantic open floor plan" is going
to be that stroke too far. But I have also learned to be disappointed.

~~~
shostack
That show was truly prescient in many ways. Man do I miss it.

------
bbarn
My least and most favorite topic rears it's head again. The open floor plan.
Here's what I've come to think is about perfect:

The open floor plan, with +-3 hour start/end time to your 8 hour work day
(from say, 8:30-5), with optional hour lunch (paid or unpaid depending on
policy/culture).

Think about it.. there are definitely collaboration benefits to be had with
the open floorplan. The contrast to that is always the "engineer needs alone
time" bit. I get it, I work well both ways, but as others have said, you can't
do all of either all of the time. That's where true flexibility in working
schedule comes in.

Like your quiet time? Come in at 6 and leave at 3. Or come in at 11, and leave
at 7. The bulk of the office will tend to come in near the societal norm of
9-5, especially those who like the collaborative bit the most, and that leaves
you the ends to pick from. Entire office likes to get together for group hour
long lunches? Skip it and work. The idea is, if you honestly can't fit the
work you need to do into blocks of time at the ends or middle of the day when
the office naturally quiets down, you've got a bigger problem than the
distractions of the office. The idea that you must have 8 hours of quiet or
near quiet to do your job means you're not that good at doing your job, or
your job role is too demanding for a reasonable person to do. If it's truly
the case, you're likely SO good at what you do someone's noticed and you're
getting what you want already.

~~~
staticfish
Why should people that would like some quiet time (which is needed for all of
us) have to come in at non-standard hours. That sucks.

I think the bigger issue is how we've all been duped into how the open-plan
offices "work" from MBA dicks.

~~~
bbarn
The "MBA dicks" didn't start this, we did, like it or not. All the agile,
write stuff on sticky-notes, stand up meetings did this, not managers looking
to cut costs. They may have benefited, embraced an idea, and exploited it, for
sure, but this didn't come from higher up.

The problem is, they do work - for a lot of people. Things are getting done,
at the biggest companies (case in point, the original article). People can
complain and I'm right there with you - I love my quiet, but you have to
adapt, and an engineer that can't adapt isn't much of an engineer, in my
opinion. There's an army of people who can adapt working at these "god
forsaken hideous open offices" which must then be "gender discriminating
experienced engineers" when they can't work like it's 1990 anymore.

This is the new reality. We don't have to write COBOL or VB or Pascal anymore,
we don't have to wear suits, and most of us are paid really well, taken very
seriously as a profession and in high demand.

That comes with a little bit of give for all that take.

------
crashoverdrive
The funniest thing about all of these "office design" photos that I see of big
companies.

"Where does the actual work get done?" Why are those photos never included.

------
kamaal
I currently work with people across the world, Indians, Chinese, French and
people from various other nationalities. This open office thing makes it just
worst. The most annoying thing I have come to face until now is the part where
people from the same country start aggregating in groups over the floor
talking in their own native languages. Constant chatter over simplest and
silliest of the issues, previous night's dinner, pranks they played with their
room mates and what not.

Over a period of I've noticed the best way to handle has been to just tune
out. I mean just be completely irresponsive to anything happening around you.
Unfortunately I've been told many times by my manager that certain cultures
can consider as being rude.

Its almost like the office is now a community center for people to just gather
around and chat.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
The fact they're not speaking English is not relevant, so I think this just
boils down to "having to hear other languages makes me uncomfortable". If you
just didn't want to have distracting talking happen around you, then you would
not have included the bit about the languages. Simply from a distraction
standpoint, foreign languages that sound nothing like English are probably
better, since you lose your ability to eavesdrop.

~~~
hellbanTHIS
It would make collaboration tough though. The whole point of open office plans
is to improve communication (actually it's so the boss can look over your
shoulder, but I digress).

------
crashoverdrive
What I find most strange about all of the photos of office design for "big
companies"

Where does the actual work get done? Why are those pictures never included?

~~~
spcoll
> What I find most strange about all of the photos of office design for "big
> companies"

> The funniest thing about all of these "office design" photos that I see of
> big companies.

Are you A/B testing your comments?

~~~
crashoverdrive
Ack! No. I was mobile and it pinged me to login after generating the comment,
then brought me to a blank screen. I'd thought I lost my comment.

That's a good idea though..If only I had the time

------
kosma
I'm genuinely worried about people with sensory oversensitivity problems.
Personally I shudder to even _think_ about spending time in a building like
that one; those uneven lines painted in the common rooms, bright orange walls,
breathtaking vertical spaces - I mean, sure, they do look impressive in
photographs, but what about employees who get nauseous and/or dizzy just from
_looking_ at that kind of architecture all day long? This may sound silly, but
considering how a significant portion of the IT workforce comes from the
intersection of extreme introversion and Asperger's, this should be a genuine
concern for any equal opportunity employee, especially in that sector.

------
deeviant
Pretty soon, offices will be filled with chairs the fit two and three-person
keyboards.

I don't even want to think about how the whole "open office" philosophy will
influence future restroom design.

~~~
tomjakubowski
Okay, this is not really on-topic at all. But someone has finally given me the
opening to rant about the state of public restroom design :-)

I spend a lot of time working out of cafes, both for my job and when I'm
working on some personal project. ~4-8 hours a day in a cafe plus a coffee
every 90 minutes or so and plenty of water means I have a lot of experience
with coffee shop public restrooms. And almost all of them are terribly
designed.

The worst problem, common to almost all cafes, is that a place with a capacity
of ~40 people or so will have two single-user _gendered_ restrooms. By this I
mean there is a label or picture on each door indicating "Male" or "Female".
This is a problem for a number of reasons, including that it creates issues
for trans and genderqueer people, but also that it inevitably creates
situations where there is a queue for one restroom (because of a user who is
taking their time, for whatever reason) while the other is empty. Of course,
someone could jump out of the queue and use the empty restroom, but there's a
social norm that we generally must abide that forbids this.

Another inefficiency is that faucets for washing up tend to be locked in the
same single-user room as toilets. This causes backups when a person needs to
use the faucet but someone else is using the toilet or vice versa. Plenty of
people just pop into a single-user restroom to adjust their hair or wash their
hands or whatever.

In something like 9 years of working consistently out of cafes, I've seen just
two that have what I consider to be well-designed restroom facilities: the
Starbucks at Main & Olympic in Santa Monica, CA, USA and Sightglass Coffee in
SoMa, San Franciso, CA, USA. Each have an open, shared sink area with a glut
of faucets and two to four single-user toilets behind locked doors opening out
into it. I've never seen a line for the restrooms at these cafes, although I
don't know if that's because of good design or because no one wants to use
such weird restrooms ;-)

~~~
geofft
Where are you based? San Francisco "strongly urges" single-occupancy restrooms
to be unisex. I've worked out of a fair number of SF cafes and I think this is
noticeably less of a problem there than in other cities.

[http://sf-hrc.org/compliance-guidelines-prohibit-gender-iden...](http://sf-
hrc.org/compliance-guidelines-prohibit-gender-identity-discrimination)

~~~
tomjakubowski
I'm based out of Santa Monica and Los Angeles. Sightglass is the only large
cafe I've been to in San Francisco. I'm glad to hear this is the norm up
there!

Here in Southern California, West Hollywood recently passed a similar
ordinance that prohibits gendered single-user restrooms in public spaces and
businesses.

[http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-weho-gender-
neut...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-weho-gender-neutral-
restroom-20150113-story.html)

------
eellpp
Besides the productivity aspect, its a reflection of single dimensional focus
of Zuckerberg. If facebook continues to be a platform of social collaboration
between people, then the team building it has to live it as well. Given that
the developers spend major part of their day at office, this idea would be
unconsciously forced into them every day. They would be more social and
collaborative in presence of other human beings (or will learn to be). This is
what facebook is about.

------
jonknee
A 9 acre open work space sounds awful. With Facebook's money and Gehry's
skills it's sad that a big box store and surface parking lot is what came out
in the end.

------
ableal
Everytime I see this kind of "new building" news, I'm reminded of the genial
"Plans and Plants" chapter of the Parkinson's Law book (by C. Northcote
Parkinson, natch).

Worth a look. I've seen it in action up close.

~~~
TaylorGood
Fascinating; starts on page 25..

[http://sas2.elte.hu/tg/ptorv/Parkinson-s-
Law.pdf](http://sas2.elte.hu/tg/ptorv/Parkinson-s-Law.pdf)

------
avelis
On the general discussion of open vs closed work space:

IMO there are four types of mutually exclusive workspaces in a tech office
setting: Open collaboration, library time, telephone booths, and small to
large general assembly.

These four, while briefly explained, highlight their purpose for optimal
productivity in the day to day workflow.

Specifically, library time would be an open space for work but with an implied
quiet noise level. In contrast open collaboration is similar but without the
noise level restriction. Both spaces would live in separate areas not near
each other for understood respect in work style.

Just my 2 cents. :-)

------
AVTizzle
On a positive note:

>>On the roof is a 9-acre park with walking trails and many outdoor spaces to
sit and work.

That's awesome.

------
ulfw
Oh look it looks like every other boring Valley building that caters to the
<25 yr old crowd only.

------
jordigh
But will it still have the iconic

    
    
        H|A
        -+-
        C|K
    

entrance that the old building had?

------
skatenerd
My gripe with open plan offices is that I spend a lot of the day overhearing a
bunch of shit I have zero interest in.

I used to work at a consulting company, and I'd be in an open plan office with
5 other teams, working on 5 other projects. Everyone was working through
engineering decisions that were unrelated to my own.

If everyone's on the same team, at least, there is some saving grace to the
open plan office - you overhear stuff that you might be able to contribute to.

------
serve_yay
I wonder how you get around the giant room, and how its space is demarcated.
How do you meet up with someone else who is in a faraway part of the room?

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Probably the same way people do it at companies that occupy several separate
buildings in a complex. You walk.

~~~
serve_yay
I'm asking how you know where to walk to. Sheesh.

~~~
chmullig
Facebook has Wayfinders that provide an interactive touch screen map all over
campus. Type in a name and it shows you where they are, relative to where you
are. Super handy.

~~~
serve_yay
Ooh, nice!

------
mathattack
I think the type of office space needs to meet the group's work. If solitary
quiet work is required, you need either lots of quiet spots or a liberal
telecommuting policy. If you need lots of communication, open is fine.

I'm surprised that open works there, but Zuckerberg is a developer and has
hired most of the senior team. They must have data that it works for them.

~~~
nerfhammer
> Facebook's engineering director Jocelyn Goldfein spoke about open office
> plans during her recent talk at Stanford. She explicitly stated that it
> decreases her team's productivity, but that it was embraced because it
> promotes "openness" which is a core value at Facebook.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5768771](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5768771)

~~~
mathattack
It takes courage to fess up to that!

------
rsuelzer
Hasn't this been open for a long time? I was there a few months ago and it was
so bizarre. Like being at Disney Land or on a movie set, everything was
perfect. I got pretty creeped out after spending the day there, that being
said I could probably get used to working there, but could never deal with an
open office.

------
h43k3r
I also hate open office plans. Everyone needs a little bit of privacy if not
much during their work.

I won't feel good if my manager/co-worker comes to my desk at the time when I
was just switching to some music on youtube. It can give a wrong impression of
you even when you know you were not doing the wrong thing.

------
MCRed
I will never work in an open office plan. It's one of the items on my "prima
donna" list. Despite the name I'm pretty serious, and while some of this list
represents things that others might not be able to avoid, or even agree with
because they are personal preferences, all of the items are the result of bad
experiences or missteps I've experienced directly at a job in the past.

I know some may object to these. That's ok, this is my list. I'll answer
questions though and I'm open to suggestions.

Here's my list, developed over 25 years working for companies, mostly
startups:

Never work...

0\. where you're not getting equity along with a paycheck, or where you can't
ask the CFO how many shares are outstanding on a fully diluted basis, and get
an answer, during your interview.

1\. for a manager who is not an engineer, unless you're the CTO.

2\. Think twice working for any "tech" company where the CEO is not an
engineer, or technically proficient. (Tim Cook is technically proficient, Jeff
Bezos is not.)

3\. in an open office plan.

4\. for a company that shows disrespect for employees in other ways. Companies
try to hide so you have to look close.

5\. for a company that uses cult behavior, eg: "magic phrases" like Amazon's
"Today is Day One!!", or that has a management book that all employees are
supposed to read (if said book is of the pop-management variety)

6\. for a company that doesn't provide you a convenient parking space at their
expense (you should be working remote anyway!)

7\. for a company that doesn't provide flex hours. Flex needs to really mean
flex. Midnight to 8AM is an acceptable work schedule.

8\. for any company with standup meetings, or other pointless meetings. (yeah
yeah, all of the previous "SCRUM" teams have been "doing it wrong", so that
just means nobodies doing it "right")

9\. on a team where mandatory meetings happen more than twice a year

10\. for a company that employs stack ranking, in any form.

11\. for less than 3 weeks of vacation a year

12\. for a "starter" salary that will be "made up later", unless this is a
startup and you're getting a significant chunk of equity- eg: shares valued at
most recent round of investment, or a $1M valuation if no investment, EXCEEDS
the lost income.

12\. for equity with a vesting schedule with an initial cliff longer than 90
days, (30 days is appropriate)

13\. for equity with a vesting schedule over 4 years (and only 4 for > %5
equity)

14\. for a company that has taken money from dishonest or unethical VCs (I
know a lot of the bad ones but check "the funded" for reviews)

15\. for a company that doesn't hire ops engineers, but expects developers to
be "on call"

16\. for a company that has a lot of restrictions about vacation and doesn't
treat it as real (eg: you don't get all your days when you leave, bad PTO
policies, etc)

17\. in any office without adequate bathrooms, this includes any buildings
where people are packed like sardines. combine the gender ratio of tech
companies with more than %100 occupancy and the bathrooms are insufficient

18\. in any setup with less than a dual thunderbolt display, or single 35"4k
monitory.

19\. on windows on a regular basis

20\. where my development machine can't be a Mac

~~~
ctvo
Really? All of this is on your list? If I asked for 3 mandatory meetings a
year you're NEVER going to work at my company?

How do you go through life being so rigid on such relatively trivial issues?

~~~
jordigh
Yeah, no kidding. I started thinking, "What makes you so fucking cool and
unique to deserve all of this? Have you seen what people in India have to put
up with to get a tech job? Why do you consider yourself better than them?"

~~~
nilkn
That's not a very convincing line of reasoning at all. It's just the classic
"there are starving children in Africa" slippery slope argument. What happened
to striving for better? There's nothing wrong with that.

Worse, it seems to unfairly distort things as well. On what basis have you
concluded that this person thinks he's better than people from India?

And I think except for a few bullet points he's not asking for much that isn't
pretty normal in the US. My first job out of college satisfied bullet points

1,2,3,4,5,6,8,10,11,12A,14,15,16,17,18,19,20.

I left out most of the equity-based ones simply because the company didn't do
equity. I left off 7 even though we had very flexible hours. They just weren't
so flexible that you could work at night.

~~~
jordigh
That's not what a slippery slope argument is. I am not arguing that some event
must follow inevitably from the other without presenting an argument for why
this follows.

Anyway, what bugs me so much is the entitlement. Sure, maybe you can find a
job like that. But what makes you think that you deserve it?

And yes, there is a problem with being entitled. The world is already too full
of selfish assholes. I really would not want to work with someone who is
looking for so many reasons to be unhappy with a job.

~~~
nilkn
I suppose I really don't understand your argument. You're suggesting that
someone in a position to strive for more shouldn't do so because there are
other people who aren't in such a position?

If nobody tries to raise the standard, then it will never be raised. Based on
his other posts, this guy is the CTO of a small startup. Maybe in a year or
two he'll be hiring and providing these benefits to others. How's that a bad
thing?

I understand being turned off by entitlement. But, really, calling the guy
who's advocating for better environments for workers and employees an asshole
seems backwards. If we're going to call anyone an asshole, surely it would be
the people fighting in the opposite direction.

I think you're taking for granted the centuries of work that it's taken to get
even to where we are now. Read about what working conditions were like a
century ago or more. Go read about the horrors of being a chimney sweep. We
don't have to endure that sort of treatment anymore because people were
entitled and whiny and constantly strove for better conditions. Let's do the
same for those who will follow us another 200 years from now.

Also, whoever is going on a downvote spree on everyone here, I invite you to
simply enter the discussion instead. I've downvoted nobody.

~~~
ctvo
The problem with the list is the attitude. I would rather not work with people
who have lists like this.

I'm not a special snowflake. I like solving problems and doing meaningful work
that contributes to the well being of others in some way. Those are my only
requirements. Everything else is flexible.

And the list reads like a tour rider
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider_%28theater%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider_%28theater%29)),
not some attempt at advancing worker's rights.

~~~
nilkn
I completely understand where you're coming from. I've had a coworker like
that before and it can be a real downer to be around someone who just seems
like nothing is ever quite good enough.

I guess I was trying to give the person the benefit of the doubt and not
assume that he's like that on the job. Maybe he is. But he also might just be
picky about where he works but great once he's made a decision. I guess I
don't see the point of worrying about which way it is because it doesn't
matter -- his point is only to list red flags about companies that he's built
from experience, and I see value in sharing that with others.

------
msane
So what is this giant open space going to look like when people begin to work
VR displays primarily? When most people work with opaque glasses silent and
staring off...

(co?)incidentally that could make such a room _almost_ bearable as a work
environment, personally...

~~~
normloman
When you enter the metaverse, you'll arrive in a virtual open office, and
you'll see / hear / all your coworkers working in the same virtual room.

~~~
msane
Yes but how will I smell them?? hmm app idea. There could be places like
that... one could be in several spaces, like chatrooms/channels. Most lobbies
on the internet are filled with noobs and cat memes though...

------
chatmasta
Literally, a walled garden.

I guess it fits well with the platform attitude. Employees are just another
component of the platform. Make them happy, keep them at work longer hours,
derive more value from them.

------
edandersen
Remember folks that if you are in open plan offices, most of the time they
pump _white noise_ through speakers in the ceiling to prevent sound travel.
Think about that for a second.

------
BadassFractal
Would be interesting to hear feedback from folks actually working in that
building in a good 6 months, let us know how it turns out.

------
cowpig
Facebook HQ moves to a different building: the third most interesting or
important thing happening in the world right now.

------
Fiahil
How did they put a 9-acre park on the roof?

~~~
notatoad
they made a building that covers 9 acres and put dirt and grass and trees on
top of it.

~~~
Fiahil
Yes, obviously, but how is it possible for the building to withstand the
weight of the dirt, grass and trees?

~~~
pkaye
If you design for 100 story buildings, you can design for a few story building
with dirt on top.

~~~
zaroth
It's fixing the leaks in 20 years that's the problem. But I guess the building
just has to outlast the company...

~~~
notatoad
Nah, we've gotten pretty good at sealing concrete. You put enough tar and
landscaping fabric under there, it'll last a while.

------
zhte415
Can the windows be opened?

Opening a window is very important for a lot of people, including myself.

------
jkjfffifkfll
Call it what you want, Zuck. It's still a giant warehouse sweatshop. I work in
an open office now. Never. Again. Fuck that. Could you imagine the sound of a
hundred conversations going on, at once? "Wear headphones." Thanks, but I'd
rather not damage my hearing. Where is OSHA when you need them. This is a
factory and you need hearing protectors. Not headphones. 85 dBA. If you can't
hear a person four feet away for most of the day, your employer is breaking
the law.

------
freeasinfree
Coming soon, company-owned archologies[0] so you never have to leave your dot-
com bubble.

[0]
[http://simcity.wikia.com/wiki/Arcology](http://simcity.wikia.com/wiki/Arcology)

~~~
tdicola
Don't worry, Google is working on it:
[http://singularityhub.com/2015/03/11/googles-new-
headquarter...](http://singularityhub.com/2015/03/11/googles-new-headquarters-
to-be-a-chrysalis-of-glass-fabric-and-movable-office-space/)

------
michaelochurch
I'm surprised that I'm the only one to mention the (in this case, young,
preening, "hip" and twinkish) elephant in the room behind this open-plan
nonsense. _Age discrimination_. In a Daniel Day-Lewis _There Will Be Blood_
voice, "Aaaaagggge discrimination, Eli, you boy!"

Companies use these horrible office layouts for a number of reasons, and not
all are so distasteful: everyone else is doing it, they're cheap, and they
take good pictures for marketing because they "look busy". But, when you get
to the core of it and the leadership behind this open-plan fetishism, it's all
about age discrimination.

Life changes make people less able to handle the chronic visibility
(especially from behind) that these offices inflict. For women, pregnancy will
do the trick. Men tend to like open-plan offices less after having children as
well, because when you have kids you no longer perceive the world as free of
danger, due to having a biological imperative to protect another creature, and
you stop believing in the "nothing to hide" bullshit that convinces people to
accept such invasions into their privacy. But even in childless people, the
ability to handle the needless stress inflicted by open-plan offices seems to
decline around age 30.

There's also a stress that comes from incoherent noise when it comes from all
angles. This is something that scuba divers are aware of, because of the way
water plays with sound. It can exacerbate the "blue orb phenomenon" that can
cause an open-water freak-out (which sounds, presumably unintentionally,
similar to an open-office panic attack).

This is especially bad for technology. The cruelty of software's age
discrimination is that it takes 10-20 years just to be good at this stuff.
People are pressured to leave the industry long before their prime.

Oh, and there's a 1 to 2 percent per year chance, even in healthy people, that
you get a life-altering anxiety or panic disorder if you do knowledge work in
an open-plan office. (They aren't as bad for less cognitively intense tasks.)
That doesn't show up in the marketing materials, and the casualty rate is low
enough that few people talk about it, but it's a factor as well.

