At work, I currently sit in an enclosed room that fits eight SWEs, all of whom are on my team. We have sliding glass doors on the room that we only use when we're having our stand-ups so as to not disturb the people outside the room. Incoming noise never seems to be a problem. All of the conversations I overhear are from my team members, and are thus relevant to me. I also have my back facing a wall. I consider this a near ideal working environment, even better than everyone having private offices, as that seriously hampers spontaneous discussion.
In another month we'll be moving out from our room into the general open office seating area, which I'm not looking forward to. It's not even the noise that bothers me, it's the raw animal insecurity of having things going on behind your back. I get horribly distracted in a big open area when people are moving around behind me, and I thus can't concentrate effectively. I also feel self-conscious about what others can see on my screen, and can never relax. I feel a low-level anxiety from it throughout the entire work day.
> raw animal insecurity of having things going on behind your back
Finally, someone else who gets it. When I've mentioned this, people tend to assume it's just about what's on your screen, but that's really not the heart of it.
I once was placed with my back to the entrance doors of the office, which frequently had people coming and going. HR and IT were both in arms when I rotated my desk around.
For me, a bigger problem is having movement in my field of vision (I can't read text next to animated ads either). And having to stare at another person is especially annoying. We had this at the university computer labs (users facing each other), and it looks like it's the same situation in the lead photo of the linked article.
I'm working from home, so I'm spared this, but my employer is also moving to a new building with an open office design. I'm guessing this is just case of architects/designers designing what they would want to use, rather than considering the needs of software engineers.
For whatever reason, things in my field of vision don't distract me nearly as much. So long as they're in front of me and I can see them with my peripheral vision, it's all good. Also, my monitor is big enough that when I'm looking at it I'm not seeing too much else anyway.
How do you end up staring at another person? My monitor would completely block the view of anyone else if they happened to be sitting across from me. Are you using laptops only?
This was the 90's. They were 21" Sun CRT monitors, but spaced far enough apart (and staggered on either side of the table, if I remember right), that you could see enough of the person across from you to be distracting to me. There were 4 workstations on each side of the table.
They were close enough together, however, that the power-on degaussing coil would induct into the neighboring monitor, causing a chain reaction down the entire table.
Its just the new silicon valley trend, I think. Somewhere, someone decided, this is what cool, hip, successful tech companies do, and now it seems to be popping up all over the place.
But yea, to me they tend to feel a bit like a college computer lab, or working in a loud library. Its nice sometimes, but not all the time, IMHO.
We had something similar at my last company, though teams were split up. 7-8 people to a room, open ceilings, open, large doorway, but with walls all the way up to the ceiling. There was one very large with room with an open floor plan and people would refuse to move into it, even though it meant they would get brand-new standing desks.
The company moved to a massive warehouse so they could give everyone more breathing space. It was basically a massive (30,000+ sq ft) open office. I thought it'd be much louder but the 40 ft high ceilings helped with that.
Personally, the pod/small team room situation was much better, especially as the main desktop support/IT guy. In the open office, my back was to a main aisle / circulation path and everyone could see how 'available' I was.
We had about 15-20 (out of 120) leave in the months prior to the move but I'm sure for a variety of reasons. I would take it with any grain of salt when seeing people start leaving when a company moves to a new building. Could be the new commute could just be the shake-up, though seemingly small, gives them a chance to assess where they are and what they want and look at new opportunities.
>> All of the conversations I overhear are from my team members, and are thus relevant to me.
That's a problem for me. When I know conversations are not relevant I can tune out. When I know the conversations may be relevant I can't tune out. This is fine if all I need to do is listen in on possibly-relevant conversations all day. But when I have to write code that requires deep thinking and concentration then all the conversations going on around me is a huge distraction and my productivity plummets.
It's really not bad at all. I'm not overly prone to distractions. Most of the time no one is talking (we're all engineers on the same team after all; it's not like we have salespeople on calls throughout the day). It's naturally pretty quiet most of the time, and I almost never feel the need to put on headphones to escape from the conversations that do occur, as they're all related to the team's work and thus something that might be useful to overhear.
This. On a prior job I was in a mixed team (me being the only engineer in the room, and a team lead) and it was like a dorm room or a cafe. No way to concentrate doing anything, but luckily it was a gov't shop so no one was expected to do much real work anyway.
Currently I'm a much more relaxed (in terms of HR rules and even IT rules) tech company but the work atmosphere is full zone in. Very little chatter, soft downtempo music plodding along all day long and people doing actual work all the time and ever so rarely some "clear our heads" banter.
Such a failure to learn. The US school system went through this with "open classrooms". Schools were built to support the idea of no walls between classrooms. For years, teachers trying to maintain sanity erected temporary dividers. These days, most of those schools have been rehabbed to include actual walls, or they've been demo'd. Such a waste.
Ugh, I went to a horrible elementary school like that, in the 70's, in rural VA. When my parents complained, she was told "these kids were destined for factory work, so the noise was not an issue". That shithole of a school is still there. I wonder if they added interior walls?
They pulled me out of 2nd grade and put me in private school where we had an orderly array of desks facing a black board. Had to start over again in 1st grade, since they were much ahead. The teacher kept our class in order; it was peaceful and quiet. I really excelled in that environment.
I went to one such school. Our walls were made from blackboards and the teachers had installed nets to catch the occasional paper plane and flying pencils.
They just built a new school like that near me, and my understanding is that many teachers didn’t want to work there because of it. I can’t believe they’re still trying that stuff.
That's a great point. All three schools I attended growing up were designed like that. The school district spent a lot of money on separating the rooms out again. Climate control never worked after that.
It would be a shame for Apple to divide up the pretty space with ugly cubicle walls.
Once you work remotely (and you have your own office, in your own house) you feel bad, terribly sorry for anyone that stays in an open office "cultured" tech company making 200k+ per year.
The quality of life and lack of freedom you exchange for the "next 100k" above and beyond a 100k base Salary is never worth it.
Time and health is your most precious resource and asset. And many are deluded into thinking it's ok to trade that for (what they mistakingly) thing is a lot of money (hint: it's not when taking taxes, commute and accomodation into account)
Don't assume that your own preferences apply to everyone.
I worked remotely for a few years, with my own dedicated room/office in my home, and am much happier now that I moved back to our company office even though it has an open-floor plan. I enjoy face-to-face contact with my coworkers, and the light level of noise really doesn't distract me from my work—if anything, the surrounding activity motivates me.
We don't all thrive in the same environments. The best you can do is find out what environment is best for you and then work for companies (or start your own) that provide this environment.
Edit: since you're also mentioning health and commuting, I bike 30-45 mins each way with most of it on a shoreline trail. It's a net positive for my health since I know I wouldn't exercise as much otherwise. If I had to commute 1 hour or more by car, then I would likely agree with you—I completely despise long car commutes and would rather work from home at this point.
The same for me, worked for almost 2 years remotely and thoroughly missed having co-workers, face-to-face communication and discussions. You lose a whole level of expressiveness being remote, doesn't matter what tools you try to use to mitigate that (video-conference doesn't cover having a whiteboard to draw and people interacting, virtual whiteboards are clunky to use with a trackpad/mouse, etc.).
The perfect situation for me would be to have an office where I can go to when I feel like or it's necessary and working from home whenever I can.
I also like pairing or mob-programming a lot and still haven't found a proper solution to do those remotely.
Using Zoom is totally fine for pair/mob programming, but if you want a collaborative IDE, Cloud9 offers this functionality, and everybody on the task can hop onto Zoom (or really anything) in order to facilitate the audio/video. People behave as though there is no way to do this because of their preference for doing it live (the "proper solution"). But this is absolutely possible and I would say actually better facilitated using these tools than everybody gathered 'round a single machine. Anybody can jump in at any moment and make a comment and a change and have it immediately propagated to everyone else's screen. No need for "Let me sit in the chair" or taking five minutes to nitpick over the minutiae of programming to convey an idea.
> (hint: it's not when taking taxes, commute and accomodation into account)
this is important to keep in mind. the people who are the true high earners are making 500k+, sometimes married to someone else who also does. the real outliers make millions. they are the ones buying multi-$million houses in the bay area, LA, NY, etc. it's not mysterious overseas chinese and arab buyers. it's high earning americans taking home 30, 40 thousand dollars a month or who struck it big with equity.
it's a scam. don't fall for it. if you want to make millions, go for it, but don't commit slow suicide over the marginal difference in a high-tax state.
furthermore, 200k is NOT a stepping stone between 100k and 500k. that's not how it works for the vast majority of people, i.e. people who are not gifted at management and corporate politics. if you're in the true high earner range, you did a LOT of stuff to get there, such as medical school, law school, or similar, or busted your ass starting your own company years ago, or were simply granted some kind of employee stock which you had very little control over (good for you, not so good for anyone else on a normal salary).
As a software engineer, a moderate amount of luck (passing the bar at Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.) combined with an aggressive stance toward your comp can absolutely take you from the $100k to $500k+ range. You will have to work for it, AND you'll have to ask for it, but it can be done.
I am the typical "leaned to program as a kid in the 80s/90s" engineer. Knew C when starting college, went to a state school for a bachelor's and master's[0], had a mediocre programming job immediately after. I joined Amazon at $100k base ($120k total) in my mid-20s. Left that after my signing bonus penalty expired for one of the other big players at 28 for $220k. Our stock has done well, but I've also made it clear to my managers that comp matters more to me than most other things when it comes to my job, and my refresh equity grants have been generous. Four and a half years later, my total compensation is just over $500k/year, and accelerating (my career has also gone well -- more luck there).
I work hard, but mostly within a 40-50 hour week (I WORK during those hours, though -- no visits to social media, no ping pong breaks, and I take my meals alone). I spend my nights and weekends with my family, and enjoy never having to budget despite somewhat extravagant spending.
I don't think I'm atypical for my peers at work. There are a lot of similar stories at the big players, so I'd say that $200k can be a step on the way to $500k+, although almost certainly not to millions (unless you save and invest well, plus even more luck).
[0]: Skip the MS. I stayed on because my undergraduate GPA was absolutely terrible.
i sincerely congratulate you, but my point stands ("or were simply granted some kind of employee stock"); that $500k is with generous equity compensation, and you are one of the lucky few who was able to get it, thereby probably doubling your compensation from a base salary of 200-something.
the vast majority of people do not get that kind of stock, the ones who are conned into over-working for their low-six figure jobs (you clearly do not suffer from this, and have avoided being dumb with your time and compensation).
My argument isn't that it didn't take equity to get there, but that it's not intractable through "ordinary work". The big tech companies are essentially always hiring, and they're not the only ones offering marketable equity as part of the comp package. Yes, the performance of that equity can (and does) vary, but unless they're a company with Amazon's "total compensation philosophy" you benefit from the ups and the downs don't hurt too badly.
Between them FAMG employ hundreds of thousands of engineers, they're always hiring more, and within them comp in excess of $500k isn't rare (it's certainly not the median, but I suspect it's below the top quartile), hence my assertion that $200k can certainly be a stepping stone, if you're willing to put up with the BigCo open offices, reorgs, politics, etc. You seemed to be arguing that those tradeoffs aren't worth it as the $200k is very unlikely to translate into much more. I'm arguing the likelihood is higher than you were giving credit for, but perhaps we weight the concrete value of FAMG equity comp differently.
there are probably tens of millions of engineers in the world, a small percentage of whom work for FAMG. yeah, no kidding, you'll make a ton of money if you work there get equity compensation. you don't say!
This suggests an interesting asymmetry that could make a lot of people very wealthy. Either they don't want it, they aren't skilled enough for it, they've found another way to achieve it, they don't believe it, or our recruiting sucks.
there are literally thousands of technology companies you have never, ever, ever heard of, in the < $100 million revenue range. those are run by smart technical people who do not play nicely with others (i.e. wouldn't last an HOUR at google, even if they COULD get through the interview, which many couldn't, because FAMG interviewing process sucks), but are competent and rich.
who do you think is buying all your cloud computing services?
That's an inspiring story. Do you advertise yourself as a generalist or a specialist? When it comes to the actual role, how important do you feel is raw engineering ability versus managerial and political skills?
My work at Amazon was building services with Java and Spring Framework. I got that job based solely on general "algorithms and code on a white board" skills. My resume at the time was a scatter shot of some past Java work (Amazon doesn't really care) and some iOS stuff back in the early days of the app store.
I wanted to do something more systems focused, which prompted my departure. I am a capable systems programmer -- not sure why, systems stuff just "click" for me, but honestly I feel most of the value I bring to the table is as a generalist with at least "toy" experience doing a lot of other things. Particularly building systems software, work higher up in the stack helps with understanding what various workloads actually care about.
I like to think I'm one of those T-shaped people Valve describes.
I am not a manager (I'm an engineering lead). I'm ok at corporate politics -- I suspect a lot of people think I'm a pain in the ass, but I get quiet email's thanking me for being a pain in the ass from other people. Mostly I'd say my career/comp has benefitted from a optimizing for the reality of my job versus what I think I should have to optimize for. What's obviously valuable to me isn't necessarily obviously valuable to others. The ability to explain the value of my (and my team's) work so that others can recognize it is part of the job. This is particularly true as I advance -- a pre-launch executive review is basically an annual self evaluation with more on the line. The same metrics-driven approach works for both. Advancing past line-engineer in the big five means shipping successful products, and shipping means convincing executives with broad responsibility and limited context. If you don't do it, how can you be sure someone else will?
So, all of the above? Politics will probably take you further faster. Management (unless you're bad at it) is almost universally acknowledged to be an easier path to career advancement than being an individual contributor. I like being an engineer, though, so basically I optimize for how little of the other two I can do to maximizing the "useful" engineering I do (where "useful" is defined as engineering that ships, delivers value to customers, and ships in a product I can be proud of -- that last one is more important to me than comp, but I'd never let my boss know that).
How much of the first 100k do you save for retirement? Because the “next” 100k can all be saved and invested. I would rather retire 2-3x sooner than work forever from home.
My thought exactly, nature of many organizations changed when they moved to new fancy offices. Being in crammed offices, sharing and collaborating with your colleagues makes things special.
I'm moving my office at work from a nice office next to the production office (noisy, people banging in and out all day) to a much bigger windowless space on the other site across the road just because of the noise.
Boss keeps asking if I'm OK with no windows and I keep saying "Have you ever seen me with the blinds open?", It's amazing how even good managers don't get that for some of us a cave with fast internet is the best environment.
Yes, noise is a total productivity killer for me. I can't think, and thinking is most of my job! And what people designing offices never seem to understand is that noise is situational, relational.
Some of my best working experiences have been in open-plan space with shared tables. And some of my worst have too. The difference is whether the people around me share the same definitions of "signal" and "noise".
If the only people in earshot are my team, we quickly work out a shared sense of what's good to talk about in the team space.
But if the people in earshot are on different teams, it's a fucking nightmare. We have very different understandings of what "signal" is. E.g., to a recruiter or someone in sales, "signal" is loud, emotionally intense conversations. But to me that's the worst kind of noise. And there's little social context for negotiating shared use.
Apple is one of my favorite companies. I just absolutely love what they're doing and have done in terms of personal privacy.
I'm really disheartened that they've moved to an open office layout. It's a surefire way to lose huge amounts of productivity from their engineers.
Open office layouts are a travesty. They make literally no fucking sense. As engineers we're expected to maintain abstractions in our minds which can span hundreds if not thousands of lines of code.
So why would you put us in the middle of a fucking zoo?
I can hear sports TV while I try to work. I can hear my friends/coworkers shoot the shit about the new South Park or Game of Thrones episode while I work. I can hear people talk about their weekend plans while I work. I can hear my coworkers planning projects I'm not involved in as I work.
And here I am, expectected, as a full stack engineer, to abstract complex data flows while all of this is going on.
To produce, while all of this is going on.
And do not forget that even if every single person was a deaf mute, their mere presence can knock me out of the zone.
I remember college. I remember working on projects and losing track of time. Because back then I had a room where I could work without distraction. Boy, how wonderful, to be so absorbed as to forget how much time has passed.
I literally have never felt that in an open office layout. It sucks. I love what I do. Why take that pleasure away from us?
I work in cubicles but the noise is also driving me crazy. There is always some conversation going on somewhere. In the office I am having more and more trouble holding on to a complex thought and in the evening I am totally exhausted. On the other hand working from home feels like paradise. It's quiet and I can look out the window when I need a break.
Because of the office environment I am now looking for a new job, either remote or an office. Open space has turned work from being interesting to plain misery and exhaustion for me.
I know this may sound like a poor substitute to private corporate space, but I can't praise enough the combination of noise reducing earplugs and active noise cancelling over earphones.
This combo plus somafm and a pomodoro timer app can instantly boost my productivity
Some folks cannot wear those without discomfort or dizziness. I tried them out an fell into that category (I have some ear issues) which is damn annoying because my brother loves them for airplane rides.
Right now, I am in an office with my back to a window that looks out to insulation[1]. I'm pretty comfortable programming away.
1) they added a building expansion where my outside view was and we haven't gotten around to replacing the window with a shelf. I think I might add a moonscape, grain field, or some historical reservation appropriate image.
I'm going more for freaking out the students than any up-up feel of a window.
Truthfully, I rather like not having a window behind me. I see several posters in this discussion who sound like that is preferable. Maybe we have a paranoid streak our just don't like people looking over our shoulders. The fact I handle some confidential information also makes me happier to not have a large viewing port behind me. Plus, I suppose I've seen one too many horror films and already had a "only idiots in horror films do that" moment.
Wearing earplugs for long periods of time is seriously uncomfortable, plus it doesn't do good things for your ears (it can cause wax plugs to build up).
I'm only willing to wear them when I'm really desperate for sleep and I'm in a loud place, or to prevent hearing damage. Neither is an everyday occurrence.
Have you looked into custom fitted earplugs? They're expensive^, but they're so much more comfortable than the foam guys.
I got a pair of Etymotic musician's earplugs to wear to concerts last year--they have a flat 15dB reducing filter, so music still sounds good without damaging my hearing. I can swap out those filters for simple plugs, and it's done wonders for my focus at work.
^)$150 is a lot for earplugs, but if you wear them to work, it wouldn't take long to justify. If you wear them to concerts too, it's not bad at all.
Yes, those are a great place to start, but after wearing silicone tri-tip earplugs for about five years, I sprang for in-ear molds. tri-tips are more than good enough to block out noise, but they're much less comfortable, especially if you wear them for hours on end.
If they aren't comfortable enough for you to wear all day, it's not that expensive. I mean, some people pay about that much for a keyboard, and a good desk chair is far more expensive.
That said... thank you for sharing that store! More people should know about musician's earplugs and enjoy live music without tinnitus.
I really enjoy live music, but after attending a rock show I temporarily developedtinnitus so bad it disrupted my sleep for 3 days. I had taken wonderful care of my hearing up to that point and it really bothered me that I might have permanently damaged by ears. I found the original Etymotic earplugs and bought multiple sets. I'd have new spares on me at shows that I would sell for cost. I'd give them to friends I went to shows with. Music is such a precious gift, it pains me that musicans are the first to lose it. Nearly any of these tri-tip earplugs will offer great protection and sound fidelity.
On the other hand, you can get amazingly well fit ear buds for a hundred or so, and the stuff the doctor uses to irritate your ears costs like $8 over the counter....
My biggest gripe is I can't combine it with over the ear stuff for too long cus it presses my glasses against my head too hard.
It looks like it used to banned for NASA astronauts. That's the best I can find in a few minutes. It's hard for me to imagine an issue for commercial space travel.
You aren't allowed to go into space if you've had laser eye surgery, as there's too much risk of retinal detachment and other unpleasantness in low pressure atmospheres. Hell, you can have issues climbing really tall mountains if you've had Lasik.
It says here that, "As of September 2007, the refractive surgical procedures of the eye, PRK and LASIK, are now allowed, providing at least 1 year has passed since the date of the procedure with no permanent adverse after effects. For those applicants under final consideration, an operative report on the surgical procedure will be requested." https://astronauts.nasa.gov/content/faq.htm
This is true and I think the main reason people don't like windmills in their view. One cannot really relax when there is that kind of movement, especially in your peripheral vision. Millions of years of our ancestors being eaten by predators made certain of that.
Yes. A few years ago I invested in the Bose QuietComfort product. I slap them on at the mere hint of a distant conversation or sound that will break my train of thought.
Our company is setting to renovate their offices. I guess I'll know whether it's time to start polishing my resume when they announce what the new configuration will look like.
if expensive and entitled employees leave and cheap one remains, it's a win in their books. Just like the salary collusion crime helped them keep salaries down in place of not being able to hire the best way from their competitors.
> I just absolutely love what they're doing and have done in terms of personal privacy.
Pffft. They're doing it to hurt their enemies, not to help their customers.
Apple is the worst company for those who love freedom and they're not on your side. I can't wait until their time is over and the damage that they have done to our industry has been reversed.
Steve Jobs is said to have poured in a lot of thought on how the architecture of the building is supporting work. Steve also had some architectural experience from Pixar. On the macro level the alignment of the architecture with the organization as it was explained always made sense to me.
On the micro level changing from offices to open floor is a huge change. How was that supposed to preserve and foster the engineering culture? Apple is the company where walls and secrets are not accident but carefully designed. I could imagine a part of the organization going to open floor but the whole building?
For all the loving of open offices, I've never seen an exec that works in an open area themselves. I heard about one, but never saw it with my own eyes.
On my previous job I sat right next to VP of product but she would often use the office of the SVP who is not around most of the time.
Open space office with more than 50 people on each floor, it was very interesting for a while(as you can see how $2B business is run in one picture) but it was one of the primary reasons I quit.
Beyond the ongoing noice and distractions, it doesn't allow you to have cycles of work and thought. Well, I actually would have them but it feels weird to be the guy who stares at random things and people for prolonged time :)
i worked next to a billionaire software co-founder for 4 years, right in the pit with all of us (open office). i found it unbelievably awesome - humanizing, motivating, and egalitarian.
Just do what Amazon is doing, and build another one. Not enough room? Erect another skyscraper.
And another one. Then a third.
And then when you start facing the prospect of your employees getting lynched by locals who are furious about their rent, ask some other cities if they might have room.
My prediction for the future: Amazon's internal transfer process is extremely smooth. Seattle is not gonna weather the opening of this second HQ well, once it gets up and running. But the point is, you gotta keep moving forwards - it's always day 1, right?
When I had my internship at Amazon it was mostly cubicles. It's actually quite annoying and I had to have my earphones to get work done. Is it any different now?
> "Judging from the private feedback I've gotten from some Apple employees, I'm 100 per cent certain there's going to be some degree of attrition based on the open floor plans, where good employees are going to choose to leave because they don't want to work there," Gruber said.
But where are they going to go? Is there a single company left that hasn't adopted the open floor plan ideology? If so, are they hiring because I'd like to send in my resume. :/
This. I so strongly wish companies would start including their office arrangement in the job description. It would make it easier for me to avoid open-plan places, and it would let those who like them avoid offices/cubicles - thus making it more likely employees will feel good and thus work at peak productivity. It would also let the industry gather some real feedback about people's preferences. I don't really see a downside of including that info.
OK, let's try that ~15 days from now, when the next "Who's Hiring?" post goes live.
Edit: Here's my suggestion: In the first line of the post, insert one of the following key words:
• "OFFICEn": Replace 'n' with a number ≥ 0 and ≤ 3, this means you will be in an office with 'n' other people. So, "OFFICE0" means you'll be in an office by yourself. 'Office' means a space with floor-to-ceiling walls _and_ a door you can close, and where the door leads into another company-owned space (like a hallway, or open area).
• "CUBEn": Replace 'n' with a number > 0, this means you'll be in a cubicle where the cube walls are 'n' feet tall (measured from the floor).
• "OPEN": You'll be in a space where there are no walls separating you from your immediate co-workers. It is possible for you to stare straight ahead, rotate your chair 90° (in either direction, relative to your normal work position), and be looking at one of your co-workers.
In addition to one of the three words, the following word can be prefixed:
• "HOT": The space you'll work in is not specifically assigned to you. Instead, you will simply find an open space of this type, possibly working in a different location each day.
It's a great idea - as there are very few these companies, their ads would stand out. Honestly, I don't know one single developer who loves open-plan places and wouldn't like to have a quiet room to work in. Most just wear headphones and try to eliminate cognitive noise in every way they can.
I enjoy them. It strikes me as extremely odd that the main complaint against open floor plans is that they kill productivity. This is such a complaint that there's people up and down this post moaning in agony as if it were literal torture that they're unable to be as productive as possible. Personally, I don't think that a company is entitled to me working at 100% productivity constantly, because I value my sanity too much. Yet, here are people begging, pleading for their employer to make them be able to produce more for their corporate overlord.
M'eh. I work at the efficiency that is comfortable for me. Occasionally I chat with my coworkers about stupid shit to keep my mind loose and give it a break. If I absolutely need to be in the zone for a couple hours, I put on headphones, find a private room, or work from home. I'm completely ok with open floor plans.
About the only things that would draw me to a private office job is, first, the prestige of having your own office, and second, the sense of ownership of space. I imagine it to be very comforting to go into work and have one little 8'x10' space which is "yours". If we're being honest, I think these two things are actually what the anti-open office people want. They just use productivity as a way of masking it and making it appear better to their employers.
Disclaimer: I'll tell you how it is in my case, so it may not reflect the feelings of other open-plan-haters.
It's not about wanting to "be able to produce more for my corporate overlord". It's precisely about preserving sanity. I simply can't focus well with people around me - not just when they're talking (in an open plan, at any given point in time, there is someone that has something interesting to say). The very presence of other people next to me is stressful to me, especially if they're paying attention to me and are within visual range of me. That stress destroys my focus, which leads to lack of productivity, which leads to more stress - a "vicious cycle".
When I can ensure that nobody can walk behind my back, I can survive an open-plan office with just headphones and loud music (to cut off audio distractions). Still, in some cases, the very presence of other people in the same room will make me unable to concentrate hard enough to solve some tough problems - at which point I'll either go to the conference room, do the work out of office, or just come in late so that I get ~2 - 3 hours alone in the room in the evening.
Some time ago I managed to persuade my employer to give me 2 days/week of working from home; this alone did wonders to my sanity. 3 days between people is just about enough direct human interaction for me. 5 days tends to take a toll on my psyche.
And again, it's not about productivity for the sake of pleasing the boss. It's just that I feel really bad when I feel I'm continuously underperforming (compared to my performance in proper conditions, i.e. not having other people around).
This is exactly how it is for me. Even when I actively thought my job was stupid bullshit and that no amount of work from me or anyone else would ever make the thing we were working on profitable or useful to anyone, feeling like I could be getting more done if it wasn't for all these distractions was a huge source of stress for me. The fact that there was no material difference to me or anyone else was ultimately sort of irrelevant.
If you subscribe to extro/intro vertedness, I am squarely an extrovert, have great time at random party, will literally walk up and talk to anyone. And feel exactly as you do. When I need to concentrate, it requires solitude.
> Occasionally I chat with my coworkers about stupid shit to keep my mind loose and give it a break. If I absolutely need to be in the zone for a couple hours, I put on headphones, find a private room, or work from home. I'm completely ok with open floor plans.
What if your coworkers don't want to chat about stupid shit? Or what if some of them do, but your other coworkers who are trying to get something done under a deadline have to now endure your conversation about stupid shit? What if putting on headphones, finding a private room, or working from home isn't an option for them? What if it isn't about "working at 100% productivity constantly" but just about getting something done that needs to be done?
Having worked in solo offices, shared offices, in cube farms, and (once, briefly) in an open office plan, the main problem with interruptions is that the person being interrupted cannot choose when those occur. It might be just at the moment when some series of thoughts was converging on a conclusion that would produce a real solution with big effects. But meanwhile, some dumbass coworker decides it's time for his mental break, and in the process decides it's also time for everyone else's break.
That's the problem. It has nothing to do with prestige or ownership. It has everything to do with getting shit done. Otherwise, why work at all?
>Yet, here are people begging, pleading for their employer to make them be able to produce more for their corporate overlord.
That's not the point. Let's say I need to produce 80 UP (utility points) per day to be considered an average value producer. If I produce significantly less than that, I'm fired. Now let's assume I can do 10 UP per hour in open office plan, and 20 UP when left alone. In an open office plan I need to completely devote every single hour of my work day to producing UP. In a private office, I can only work for 4 hours per day to meet my daily quota. I can do whatever I want the rest of the time. More productivity = work less! That's what we want.
If writing code paid no better than flipping burgers, I would still do it, because I enjoy efficiently solving challenging algorithm problems. I don't enjoy failing to solve them because I'm continually being prevented from remembering something clever I just thought of. If I only get to spend a couple of hours in the zone where I belong, either I'm in the wrong role or the wrong industry.
I used to work at a bank service center. It was a cube farm filled with mostly 30 to 60-year-old women. There was occasional chatter, but it was so perfectly quiet all the time. And that's with people talking to bankers on phones.
Now I work with a bunch of 20 and 30-something men and it's like I'm back in college. Sorry, but I don't needn't to hear you not be able to control the volume of your voice for two hours on Google Hangouts. Sorry, I don't need to hear you sing to yourself while I try to desperately glue back together the thoughts in my head after you shattered them with your noise.
It's not about wringing every last drop of productivity out for your employer, it's about getting anything productive done at all. And I don't think it's asking too much for a quiet, peaceful office environment to be the default. If you want to screw around and talk at a volume that is inappropriately high, take it to the pub.
Microsoft did this when they promoted their private offices in the 80s. Unfortunately, I can't find a copy of this newspaper job ad on google, but I saw it internally on Yammer.
some companies do, one company I see openings for on the local job board puts something like "on your first day you will come in and go to your own private office" in all their ads. I have thought of working there just based on that...
That would be best, sure, but not every company can (and owners can subscribe to their own philosophies of workplace). All I'm saying is that providing this information would help potential candidates self-select to environments they find comfortable, which is beneficial both for employees and the company.
True. But perhaps different types of people like different styles of workplace. E.g. "creatives" could prefer the open style, whereas programmers could prefer the office style.
An alternative solution is to allow employees to freely move between workspaces.
I cannot believe how short sighted companies can be when it comes to these things, but I don't think it's malice per se, it's usually a variation of the person who makes the decision does not have to live with it and so doesn't have any incentive outside of spending as little as possible.
It's like how in many cases the desktops/monitors for developers come out of the IT budget, so the IT department tries to buy the crappiest things possible (24" single 1080p monitors, because they can't find anymore the 22" 900p they had before, 500 gig hard drives, etc.) because it does not impact them if developers are happy or not or are hampered by having to work with substandard tools.
In several past companies when we moved offices or had an office redesign, it was always up to the facilities department to deal with this, and developers were involved only at the very end when it was time to pick the seating and by that time all the design was locked, contractors hired and so on and so there was no way to change anything of significance anymore.
If I ever had a company I would make it a rule that any decision has to be made by the department / people affected by it. Other departments can offer support as needed, but I would never have IT control which hardware the developers get, or facilities decide for open office/cube height/chairs, or the CTO decide for the code review tool, etc. etc.
I am no fan of open-plan office or just going to an office but there is a huge difference between a cramped open-plan office and one where you have so much space around your and your peer's desk that you need a hoverboard to get to the next couple of coworkers. Also carpets, semi-wall, calling booths can make a difference.
So what I want to say is that every open-plan offices is different and yes, most are terrible. But I guess that if somebody made them right it must be Apple?!
If you really want a private office, there are a couple of spaces available right next to mine for $225/month each - http://www.klopferbuilding.com/ ;)
You could literally retire here and work on whatever you what with a few year's worth of bay area salary. (Which is, more or less, what I intend to do.)
The crime rate is so low that the town closed the police department a few years ago. (Now we contract with the sheriff.) I think I've locked my house twice in four years.
We do usually get a couple of good snows each winter.
Yea, there isn't much in Pleasant Hill. There's an Air Force base, a couple of hospitals, a couple of software/web agencies, and a few other things around Dayton, though.
I work remotely for IBM, and also have a side business that's mostly wound down now.
Open plan “offices” need to go away. I’m a professional and the products I develop make my company lots of money. Telling me if I need quiet I should put on headphones is insulting and is treating me like a child.
It's worse. In college I could work in the lab with partners when we needed to collaborate but then work from "home" when I really needed focus. And I got to choose when I went to each.
I'd take a significant pay cut to have a permanent desk in something like a university library (expectation of quiet on the floor, no conference rooms around the edges with booming teleconference speakers, go to another floor if you need to collaborate).
We have open plan, I revolted by never returning to my desk. I work from random location, old unoccupied desks, home, the cafeteria, but never my desk. You just burned that real estate.
At my current job, out of circumstance of the stuff I'm doing, I started going straight to the lab without stopping by my desk. On average, there will be 1-3 people in the lab including myself. At my desk? It's an open-office styled lab-converted loading area where one "wall" is a floor-to-ceiling roller door; loud rattling on windy days is only one perk.
The lab is much nicer. Smaller, fewer people, generally quiet, a door, controlled environment [lights, temperature].
YMMV. I ended up losing my job of 7 years after proving incapable of sitting in a high-traffic area cubicle. Had a single unit office up until they decided to hand those out to the new hires in sales/marketing. They even complimented me on the quality of my work on the way out. Go figure.
In EU all those glass doors would have to have matt texture/stickers around eye level so you don't enter them by accident - I'm surprised in US there's no such requirement?
As someone who managed to crash into a glass wall by accident (someone was really good at cleaning them), I second the suggestion - such stickers are a good idea.
> Similarly, Gensler's 2016 UK Workplace Survey found that workers were more likely to innovate if they had access to a range of spaces supporting different working styles – including private, semi-private and open-plan environments.
This is my favorite part, because it confirms an intuition I've held for a long time: both open areas and private offices have their uses, so provide both. The only downside I can see is that it's expensive to implement, which is, I'll grant, non-trivial.
And this is the part that I don't understand. According to most articles about this, they do offer private, shared offices. They're shared in that anyone can badge into them and use it privately but they're not assigned to any individual. That seems like a great compromise and yet it's rarely mentioned in articles like this.
Isn't that what's being referred to by the shared working offices? I thought the whole point of the article was that these spaces are what people are complaining about. They're on a team that needs to collaborate but they want it to be swapped around from the default. They want private spaces for everyone and a shared area for team work. Apple wants them to work in teams for most of their time and to have private spaces for the rarer occasions where they really need to be alone and focus on individualized tasks. I think they're making the debatable assumption that the most valuable work is done collaboratively and that the menial work is done individually.
As for the engineering team that got moved to their own building, I don't see how or why a private area for everyone would make their jobs better. If everyone's coding and not talking to anyone else, then what's there to distract? If people need to talk, they go to the collaborative space. If they don't want to hear people talk, they can go in one of the private spaces. Some people will simply spend more time in the private space or will work from home.
Steve Jobs saw a productivity increase when he was at Pixar according to Ed Catmull's book (Creativity Inc.)
The problem is that what Mr. Catmull described as open space for creative people to let them mingle and bounce off creative ideas. That's the whole premise of an open office space.
Now, programming can be a creative field, but most of the time when I code I'd like to be quiet around me. If anybody distracts me that's an instant 15 minutes loss (at least) of whatever I was doing. At least for me.
Pixar is "open" only in the sense of having a central atrium and common areas to encourage chance encounters and interaction. The rest of the building where work is done is nooks and crannies, studios and offices.
Creative people doing the grunt work of raw design and animation will need and want isolation from distraction just like programmers do.
In all my 25+ years in the valley, I've seen office trends come and go. None have been more hated than the open floor plan. Especially when you don't have a wall behind you.
It's why I now work from home. Why many work from home. Open offices are not comfortable, collaborative, friendly, or enjoyable. They make people feel watched, interrupted, and stressed.
Want me to come back to work in the office? Give me walls.
we had a web group to great fan fare had all new work area created for them, open ceilings, glass walled conference rooms, and open-plan in general. I am not sure if anyone like it. from lack of perceived "my space" to simple increase in noise. plus if the computer setups are not well planned out it just looks wrong.
for me, it reminds me of one especially bad contract where we worked on school lunch room tables. five of us in a row facing a wall with one phone at the end. amazing after spending our hourly rate what they thought they could save without realizing the impact on productivity if not turn over.
people deride cubicles now but they are last safe haven, just like dogs and other animals, there is a lot to be said from the subconscious feeling you have from the walls of the cube and single entrance
Yeah, I don't understand where the hate comes from. I suspect it's just about using cubicles as symbols of corporate environment in general. Because from a floor-plan standpoint, they're a fucking great invention. It's a perfect compromise between the need to give everyone their personal space, and the need to fit in lots of people cost-effectively. Today, if a company offered me a cubicle to work in, I'd consider it as hugely positive about them.
Cubicles were considered the worst of both worlds. No proper privacy because there is not enough sound blocking and the faux walls isolate people and prevent collaboration.
I wonder why. I think they provide enough privacy for a workplace (as long as you're allowed to use headphones for extra sound blocking, and as long as the entry is to your side, not behind you) - the only way to get even more would be closed-door offices, but that takes much more floor space.
As for "collaboration", at this point I consider talking about it as a negative thing about a place. I mean, frankly, I know "collaborating" is fun and games, but at some point somebody has to sit down, focus, and write the fucking code.
> as long as the entry is to your side, not behind you
I had a place like this once, close to the room entrance with the door to my left. It wasn't a cubicle but room for 4-5 people; I was just the last one to start working there and couldn't pick another desk. It was generally quiet and, with headphones, I could've easily gotten into the zone... if not for the people walking down the hallway (the door was left open most of the time).
Every time I saw a glimpse of someone in the hallway I, reflexively and involuntarily, turned my head to see who's there. I think it would be easier to get used to and ignore if the door was behind me - but seeing someone from the corner of my eye induced a response, every single time.
We all know how little things may turn into productivity killers. After a while, I thought that maybe it's not pattern-matching faces that is so distracting (our brains are supposedly well equipped for this), maybe it's just the motion needed to turn my head away from my monitor?
I found a small mirror somewhere, pretty similar to this one: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Goody-Start-Style-Finish-Two-Side..., and set it up on my desk, just next to the monitor, in a way that allowed me to see the door and a good chunk of the hallway.
It may be hard to believe, but it did solve the problem for me. A sub-second glance at the mirror was enough to register who's coming, after a couple of days I was doing it reflexively without even thinking about it, like when driving a car. Later, when I changed seats, I actually missed my mirror and the ability to effortlessly scan my surroundings.
Well, it could have been a placebo effect, and my co-workers (the ones from other rooms, ie. the ones I was "spying on") didn't like it that much, but it may worth a try if one's getting desperate :)
Having worked for years in a pair programming environment, I am pretty sure you can get a lot of code written collaboratively. Indeed, even though I'm an introvert, pair programming teams with frequent pair rotation (pairing with 2-3 people per day) is my favorite way to work because I think we end up with better code.
I hate cubicles because it means the company is too cheap to build proper offices, so I end up working from home as soon as I can. Apparent now they are too cheap to provide desks and assign groups of people to planks. However, it turns out that they are sooooo cheap that they assign far too many people to each plank so then they can't even sit down and finally decide that people can work from home to help alleviate the space issue. This is great by me, but awful for anyone that doesn't do well working from home.
I worked in cubicle land for many years, and they are only marginally less bad than open plan offices. I got good at snagging the cubicle at the far end of a row with only one entrance, and that worked to stop the passers-by, but it still didn't stop the noise, or people who want to talk to you interrupting your flow by coming up behind you, tapping your shoulder, and scaring the shit out of you.
A proper work environment for this kind of thing requires floor-to-ceiling walls and a door you control.
I'm always reminded of those stock photos of typing pools or pre-computer accountants, where you had a vast noisy field of people (usually gender-segregated) clattering away on typewriters: http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/photo/secretarial-pool-1...
Really if there is to be a change in the industry it has to be led at the biggest, most fashionable employer. Everyone else will then be able to follow suit without the tedious need to actually think about the problem.
(Maybe there will even be a union threatening a strike over working conditions?)
Apple is hardly the first to do this, many other large companies already have.
The problem is the people doing typing pools or accountants weren’t doing creative work, they were doing more rote tasks. They weren’t trying to come up with complex abstract thoughts or get into a state of flow so the additional noise wasn’t as big a deal.
I'm one of the outliers who likes open floor plans, BUT at densities much lower than what makes economical sense. 1 person per thousand square feet would be my minimum and I'd really like half again as much space.
Problem is the economics of it. Open floor plans I see on blogs are often side by side working stations with less than 200sqft per worker. That's not really open floor plan in my mind, just removing the walls to recoup a couple of inches to cram more people in.
I think it’s easy to reversed TOP floor for quiet working environment and noisy environment at lower level.
Looking at Singapore has an office look similar to Apple Park spaceship. Directors, professors and councillors are working in open space, I don’t see why not?
If as an engineer your only Job is to write code based on perfectly written functional specs, then open offices may not be the best. However, In larger project communication and transparency is an as important part of the job. While many people are more comfortable alone, you are part of a team and not just a coder. I find it selfish for people to feel their alone time is more important than learning how to work as a team. Noise canceling headphones do wonders when you need to focus.
Hm. Maybe I'm nuts but I have literally no idea what desiring a private and quiet space for concentration does to ruin a persons ability to work as a teammate.
My coworkers love their noise canceling ear phones. That's great. What I'd love is to not hear their ratatat as they drum to their music.
And I do not fault them for that, because I love to ratatat to my own music when I'm listening to it as well.
A place to be myself while I work, what an odd concept.
Some examples: Wanting a private and quiet space means you won't be there to provide help for the new person who has spent all day fighting with their dev environment or trying to understand an area of code that you wrote. And if two people who sit near you are trying to solve a difficult problem that you've already solved, then you won't be able to overhear and chime in with your solution.
Focus is certainly important, and can help you be super-productive if you have a well-defined task and are already comfortable with the code you're working and your tools. But I think newer people at a company are in an opposite situation; they're overwhelmed with complexity and need collaboration and guidance to be productive, and they can level-up much faster by hearing the problems people are working on around them.
If someone pings me I'll be right there for them. Setting up development environments absolutely sucks but it's usually a one time thing.
Pair programming is great and I'd never advocate a development environment where senior engineers weren't available to mentor junior engineers.
But I also think tenacity is a huge part of our job. My first job as a junior engineer had me working with a fellow in Israel, I'd get two hours with him in the morning and then he'd cut out due to the timezone difference. My colleagues were consistently impressed that I'd produce despite this. One time my code didn't work, I sat there for eight hours until I realized I was missing a space in my jquery selector. It was simultaneously a moment of relief and a more existential questioning of "what the hell did I get myself into?".
At the end of the day, if you're paying a premium salary for a senior software engineer, while you shoukd encourage mentorships, you should make sure that individual has the environment they need to produce high quality, maintainable software.
Putting them in an environment where people are talking about football is not the way to accomplish that.
* Agreed that (too many) discussions unrelated to work can be frustrating. My experience is that the vast majority of conversations I overhear are work-related and at least a bit relevant to me, but I imagine different office cultures are different, and it also probably depends significantly on how you arrange seating.
* The tradeoff between asking questions and figuring things out by yourself is an interesting one, and I think people start their careers in different places. My personality is more on the shy side, and for a long time I was worried about wasting people's time, so I would spend a very long time on any given problem before asking for help, which hurt my overall productivity. Having an office environment where it feels normal and welcome to ask questions would help people like me quite a bit. But I understand that some people are on the other end of the spectrum and give up too soon and end up asking more questions than they should.
* Another thing that I think differs from person to person and from office to office is how much you expect work to be a source of social connections. At one point I moved from a "social" office to one where people quietly focused on individual work all day (and where it felt very difficult to start a conversation, even a work-related one), and it was much more lonely than I would have liked.
I don't think it's generally about selfishly wanting alone time, it's understanding that a lot of people can be far more productive when they have some space and quiet to get work done, free of constant distractions. The more intense focus the work requires the more true this is. I would agree that it's not good for engineers to want alone time to the point where team communication significantly suffers, but a lot of open offices swing the balance too far in the other direction where it's hard to write code that requires you to carve out blocks of working memory in order to get things done. Also, I've yet to find noise cancelling headphones that are so effective that an open office wouldn't bother me at a all and I don't want have to listen to loud music to block out other noise - that's distracting in itself. That's not to mention visual distractions as well. I think ultimately there has to be a balance between space to focus and low barriers to communication, many companies handle this by letting people work from home, Apple I imagine has the budget to find an even better solution.
>> I find it selfish for people to feel their alone time is more important than learning how to work as a team. Noise canceling headphones do wonders when you need to focus.
Wow. That's a fairly narrow view you have there. The core work of engineering is done individually. People having ad-hoc meetings next to you ruins concentration and it's not just the noise. It's the visual distraction as well as a psychological distraction - you may wonder if something pertinent to you is being discussed and you should stop and participate. The notion of "just put on headphones" and it will all be better is - to use your own word - selfish.
How about some degree of privacy by default. In a traditional cube farm you can have 1 or perhaps 2 people stop in for discussions and go to a conference room for larger discussions that involve the team.
I guess the simplest way to show how wrong it is: in most open offices, the management still get offices. Sure, they have reasons like a need for private discussions (people conflicts, compensation, etc) but they could just grab a conference room for that stuff right? Nope, they hate being in the open too.
> While many people are more comfortable alone, you are part of a team and not just a coder. I find it selfish for people to feel their alone time is more important than learning how to work as a team.
I can't imagine a project which would justify so much "collaboration" that you have to have everyone in the same room, next to each other, all the time.
If you design your project right, you end up with each team member having a well-defined piece of work isolated behind (broadly understood) interfaces, so for most of the time they can do their actual work alone. You can do meetings and design sessions and watercooler chats to sort out what has to be done and what is the division of responsibilities, but at some point people need to actually sit down and write the code. This is a lone-man job (barring pair-programming). If you need to constantly "collaborate" while coding, you're doing something wrong.
To be clear, I work in a very well designed, but not perfect, open office space. If somebody needs to speak with me, I am always available and consider it a strength I do not isolate myself. While my personal velocity is affected by this (hence the use of the word selfish, a descriptive but not derogatory term), the team as a whole does better for it. We do have rooms for collaboration for all meetings and ceremonies, and the desks are in octagon arrangements to minimize visual distractions. The point is that isolation is just the most obvious, but not only way to have a good environment to solve problems in.
Every time I hear someone complain about open offices, I want to say "Shhh! They'll send us all back to our cubicles and chain us to our desks!". Seriously, if you have an open office it's not that hard to put headphones in or pop into a side office for some focus time. But being required to spend 40 hours a week alone in a tiny box is my personal definition of hell.
There are some environments where headphones are discouraged, sadly I worked in one that was semi-open (more of a bullpen).
The reality is some people work fine in open environments, some don't. If you really want to have happy, productive team members, you need to offer some different options.
I don't understand why more companies don't copy university libraries and create a mix of spaces for different tasks. Sometimes you want small collaborative rooms, sometimes you want a quiet cubicle.
In another month we'll be moving out from our room into the general open office seating area, which I'm not looking forward to. It's not even the noise that bothers me, it's the raw animal insecurity of having things going on behind your back. I get horribly distracted in a big open area when people are moving around behind me, and I thus can't concentrate effectively. I also feel self-conscious about what others can see on my screen, and can never relax. I feel a low-level anxiety from it throughout the entire work day.