Tech's Top 10 Workspaces

theodp writes "Looking to escape your Initech-like surroundings with your next job? Valleywag has culled its picks for Tech's Top 10 Workspaces from Office Snapshots, where you'll find plenty of other Best-Places-to-Work contenders. So how does your Cubicle measure up to the competition?" Pixar, Netflix, and other places. Makes the Slashdot Fortress look like a hovel even though we replaced the dirt floors last month.

In bed

with the real doll, eating a sandwich playing wii....

Re:In bed

with the real doll, eating a sandwich playing wii....

Uh, mods? RFTA before casting people into the pit.

The parent post doesn't count as OT (or a troll)... I saw pretty much the same sidebar ads when I visited the page.

I'll keep my desk thankyouverymuch

Most of those office spaces look cool and hip, but not very comfortable, productive, or private. Sitting in a windowsill with a laptop looks like fun for about 5 minutes.

Re:I'll keep my desk thankyouverymuch

Open spaces are for companies that don't want to spend money.

Re:I'll keep my desk thankyouverymuch

Hey, I have a desk looking out of a window. This is apparently the office dream, to get an office or cubicle with a window.

The sun is shining through and the heat is getting absorbed by the monitors, which make noises as they expand. I burned my hand almost yesterday when I left my mouse sitting in the sunlight.

In addition, the screens are really hard to read when the light is shining through onto the desk.

And it's an open plan office room (4 people), so I can't rearrange.

If I pull the blind down, it just makes it worse, because the blind is white, it just acts as a giant back light. Yay.

No air conditioning either, because it's the UK. However I suspect that we'll demand that soon.

Far too 'modern'

Those listed are far too modern for my taste. My office hasn't changed much since this building used to be owned by IBM, but I can't help but wonder if in 40 years these unique offices don't seem hopelessly outdated. Till then, my generic flat surface works pretty well for my general office like tasks. My company gives me the option to work a bit from home, so I can implement my own personal style there.

I've tried to work in a few of the more avant garde spaces that some companies try to set up, it's hard to compete with what already 'works'. Too often I find that the curvy chair just doesn't feel as comfortable for over 10 minutes, and that the stylish workspace simply doesn't have enough space to work. And then, you still have the problem that you are working in a space designed by someone else. It won't fit anyone, and when you are dealing with something so unique, the minor annoyances end up feeling 10x worse.

At home, I can design my office to be exactly what I want in my office. It is perfect for the individual using it.

Now, that isn't to say that many of these places couldn't do with some colors other than grey and beige, but in my opinion a great workspace is the one that you barely notice when trying to do your work. My office may be grey and beige, but the facilities people here have created a beautiful nature trail that is designed to be used for a calm walk through a valley near the buildings.

It is simple, and doesn't try to force any of the employees into what almost feels like a lifestyle themed apartment instead of an office. It works great if it is your apartment, but what happens when you don't like the owner's taste in decoration?

Re:Far too 'modern'

I think smart employers would treat their lower level employees like their mid to higher level ones (i.e. design your own office). Even if it was just to bring in your own furniture, I think there might be too many places out there that have a "take it as it is and don't touch it" attitude with their office space.

Re:Far too 'modern'

The biggest talk in the office was when they started distributing 24" LCDs to all employees. Many of us now have two displays, I keep one aligned to read documents, and the other is my 'scratch' working display.

Although, when someone was testing a video teleconference system he had a 50" plasma display in his cube. He was in the bowels of the building, so one day when he was out we put a video camera in one of our windows and set it up as a participant. When he came back from his trip, he suddenly had a cube with a 'view'. :)

rage against gray and beige

The problem with gray and beige is that they are offensive precisely because they are trying to be so inoffensive. They're bland and ugly. Gray reminds me of concrete, which is durable but hideous unless you're designing parking garages. And beige seems to be the default color of anything that isn't supposed to look dirty... but it never really looks clean either. Have you ever tried to get an old beige box to look clean? It's impossible.

You want inoffensive? Silver is metallic, but clean. White gets dirty, looks boring on walls, but if office furniture isn't white on a white floor against a white wall, it can look pretty good. Black can look good if the rest of the office isn't gray and beige. Browns look great if they're actual wood, and dark stained wood can look downright elegant as long as it's not fiberboard crap from Ikea. Hell, even transparent glass or plastic for countertops or work surfaces looks pretty good (as long as you don't have to run an optical mouse on it). Other colors might offend certain people, but at least they won't be bland.

Here's offensive: every single office worker's desk in Japan is made out of metal, and painted gray and beige, and is exactly the same dimensions, right down to the three shelves. EVERY SINGLE ONE. I swear there must be a single company that makes all office desks in this country. They're so generic and utilitarian it makes me want to find the guy who designed them and slit his throat, spilling his blood all over the damn things. Maybe at least that would give it some color. And you wonder why the suicide rate is so high here, it's because of all the gray and beige in the concrete cities and in the offices and in the prefab apartments with their beige plastic walls. People need color and variety and texture or they go nuts. Does painting the thing navy blue instead of beige really cost all that much more?

Workspace disconnect

I always wanted to work at a place you would see in the movies of the "typical" high-tech work area. Lot's of screens, overflowing with gadgets hooked up in arcane ways, sitting in your command chair of awsomeness in dark rooms with moody, dramatic lighting that would reflect part of the display into your face if you gazed into it a certain way.

Working in tech, you realize what a load of bullshit that is. I schlep my three year old Compaq laptop loaded with Xubuntu to my clients who have their servers stuck in closets or storage rooms. I have my one screen, dirty from use and abuse, I sit on folding chairs and bathed in florescent light, surrounded by boxes filled with office supplies.

Re:Workspace disconnect

Even at the places that work on 'cool' things, you will find that it is very similar to what you describe and very unlike the movies. The latest fighter planes don't get built in a facility that looks like some hobbiest's garage. Of course, when you are trying to sell those things, then all of a sudden out jump the minority report displays, the flashy graphics, and the promo videos.

The movie stuff only exists in marketing.

Re:Workspace disconnect

I once worked at a place that tried to "high tech" up their lobby to impress clients. Within a year or two, most of the cool (and expensive) plasma displays they used had either stopped working altogether or developed glitches and burn-in. Their "high tech" lobby ended up looking like a shabby tech scrap-yard. When they finally redesigned it again, they went back to the traditional design they had before they wasted a lot of money.

I suspect the idea of the "cool, high tech, hip" office space, with gadgets and displays everywhere, is a fiction invented by more by movies and wishful thinking than anything else. I remember Tom Clancy laughing in the DVD commentary track for "The Sum of All Fears" about the CIA offices being shown as these high-tech wonders with glass that could be rendered opaque for security proposes, etc. "Well, what do real CIA offices look like?" asked the director. "Like any other boring office," Clancy replied.

Re:Workspace disconnect

I worked at a power company over the summers during college. One summer I worked as an assistant in the monitoring center, which was a giant room inside a concrete dome that was rated to withstand an F5 hurricane (the site is in the midwest.) Behind a couple sets of keycarded locked doors, you came into a circular dimmed room with a giant map from floor to (_very_ high) ceiling of the entire service area of the power company, with lights indicating status of electricity and water pressure in the different parts of the water system. In the center there was a long circular console lined with monitors showing power plant stats and weather reports and other stuff. The walls were all accent-lit with natural light bulbs, it looked really cool and modern. Against one of the walls was a large bank of "something" with blinking green lights. About two weeks in, a guy comes out from behind and starts talking to me, it turns out there was another little office back there with a couple of HP-UX machines nestled among a mountain of tech manuals running a SCADA system.

It looked pretty much like you see in the movies, only it wasn't messy like on some shows except for that little office.

If those are the favorite ones..

I wonder how the others look like.
A lot of them look like you'll grow RSI within one month. I actually prefer my own office with an ergonomic setup, a proper adjustable office chair, large windows and a door.

Re:If those are the favorite ones..

Although this only works if you have enough space/resources I have always preferred offices without doors. When I require privacy then I excuse myself to a conference room.

In my case, it isn't that I don't like my privacy, it is that I enjoy it too much and too easily shut the door and shut myself off from the rest of the group.

When you use an office with a door, you will still have people knock and check in to see if you are free, but when I started to use the conference room approach, it forced me to make sure that privacy was really necessary and that when I was in the conference room with a closed door, it meant it was closed for a good reason.

Not for everyone though, just my own personal (limited) experience.

My nightmare is to work in a cubicle

All these neat looking open spaces and cubicles are my worst nightmare. I've managed to spend my entire career having my own private offices and my worst nightmare is to ever have to work in an open space or a cubicle--listening to every asshole in the office, having everyone looking over my shoulder, etc. THAT was one of the big things what made the fictional "Initech" such a terrible place to work (remember Peter having to listen to "Welcome to Initech. Please Hold." over-and-over again all day? Nothing builds morale like private offices. Open spaces just turn everyone into Less Nessmans (if anyone still remembers that reference).

Pixar

I remember reading an article on Pixar's HQs a long time ago, and one thing that stood out to me was that there's only one pair of bathrooms in the entire complex. This is to encourage people to run into each other and interact more frequently. I'm sorry, but that would just bug me. When I need to go to the bathroom, I don't want to be interrupted to have a conversation, nor do I want to hear other people yapping away while they do their business. But I guess that's just me....

Oblig urinal joke: "I hear this is where all the dicks hang out."

Google's Zürich Office

Google's Zürich offices also have a fireman's pole.

. . . . . . .riiiiiiiight.

Who gives a flying flip what the place looks like?

The "style" of the furniture in an office doesn't mean crap if the people are assholes and the policies oppressive. This article is about as asinine as the one a few months back attempting to explain why techies never make it in the boardroom... and proceeded to list off ten fashion faux pas.

Gebus! Some people just don't get it.

Our friends at Slashdot really should re-title this piece as "Top 10 best looking tech workplaces"... otherwise, they're just being terribly disingenuous.

Shame on you /.

Fog Creek

They missed Fog Creek [joelonsoftware.com].

All I want is...

In order (for some reason I'm not seeing numbered bullets on my OL here)

1. Peace & quiet
2. Easy access to my co-workers, but the ability to go into "hermit" mode if need be
3. A comfortable desk & chair
4. Walls where I can hang whiteboards, a corkboard, and a dartboard
5. Windows so I can get real sunlight
6. Non-crappy artificial lighting
7. N+1 displays where N is the number I presently have. No matter how many displays I have, I always seem to need one more. (I will accept a switch to Leopard so I can use Spaces, thus reducing my physical monitor requirements to 2-3).

Re:Nothing can beat my office

Plus there is nobody to tell me I can't have a beer during afternoon conference calls.

Also, the dress code is much more relaxed - in that clothes are entirely optional!

* prances *

Note: working from home can instil bad habits, such as the above. Remember that other, real offices may look down upon such behaviour, so do remember to wear clothes for external meetings...

Re:Ours look like the Six Apart place

Open Plan for the win.

Ugh, I don't like cubicles much, but I loathe "Open" designs.

They work well in living spaces where you feel safe and comfortable, and make optimal use of soft lighting to relax.

In an office environment, I want by back to a nice solid wall, only one easy approach vector to my side of the desk, a comfy chair, and a coffee pot. Outside that, I really don't care (though the fewer old-style fluorescent light tubes - Up to and including "total darkness" - the better).

Re:Ours look like the Six Apart place

I agree. I hate big, open floorplans. I'm not a huge fan of cubicles either, but at least they give some degree of privacy and isolation. A big open space just has too many distractions for me. People walking by, conversations I'm not interested in, etc.

I've worked at Initech (except we called it "Motorola"). I've worked in a private office with real walls and a real door. I've worked in a big bullpen. For me, the best environment is working in a real office (with a door and walls all the way to the ceiling) with about four other people who are working on the same project. We can have relevant work conversations without having to all pack up and move to a conference room, and without having to hear the guys next door who are working on something else.

Re:Ours look like the Six Apart place

Count me out for Open Designs.

They work well if you're ten people. They feel like sweatshops when you're 80. They're loud, lack privacy, and its too easy for people to yell across the room or walk up to your desk instead of forcing them to think about whether they really need to initiate the communication in the first place or if its something they can figure out/live without in the first place.

Open Concepts are music to a companies' ears. They're cheap as hell. Designers/artists/loud people love them. But engineers who can't do math while listening to music on headphones rightfully hate them.