What Kind of Office Space Do You Want to Work In? 338
Geeky asks: "A friend of mine was visiting a client in their new offices. All very flash, award winning architecture, but virtually unusable as a place to work. For a start, the desks were the width of keyboard + mouse, and just big enough for the computer. No space for manuals or other paperwork. This was done to enforce the clear desk policy. No clutter was allowed - apparently the architect was still allowed final say over the use of the office, and even forbade such extras as plants being added. I've also been in offices that took open plan to extremes and mixed meeting areas and (in one case) a coffee shop with working areas. The noise pollution was extreme." Sounds bad. What kind of office architechture (and environment) do you think sponsors a constructive work environment? Are there any other other office layout horror stories like this one?
"Being in the UK, I've never experienced cubicles in the Dilbert sense, and open plan offices are the norm. I don't know whether the isolation of a cube or office would drive me insane or make me more productive.
So what factors affect your happiness at work? Have you ever changed job based purely on a poor environment?"
My pet peeve.. (Score:2)
A serious work space. (Score:4)
Oh.. and free sodas, windows and skylights, as well as alot of work space.
Zero-Knowledge Systems Has A Fantastic Setup (Score:2)
However, I believe that I have a pretty good job myself -- I'm an admin on GameSpy Arcade [gamespyarcade.com], and I work from my house! =)
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CitizenC
If you desk is clean - you are not working (Score:4)
Either dead quiet or Music (Score:2)
Our office... (Score:2)
The happy hacking keyboard is a great way to reclaim needed desk space. I can't believe how much space traditional keyboards waste.
I've worked in cubicles before, and they're not all really that bad. Some companies have big cubicles (so you could fit say, 3 machines in them), some have medium sized ones (maybe 2 machines), and some try to cram you in closets.
As long as you're not in the last category, they're not all that bad. It's your own private universe where you can do whatever the hell you want to it, essentially.
I prefer the "war room" setup, though, just because there's more social interaction with the other geeks.
Lights, Sounds, Action, et al. (Score:2)
Ideally, I would like a space in the basement with a good stereo, or my headphones, and a solitary lightbulb, and a large steel door. The powers that be dont seem to understand that productivity increases with fewer distractions. Even someome walking behind me bothers me.
I am still trying to get a better desk and chair.
Usually things like this are a case of the creator not being forced to use his own creation: Form before function. Sometimes it makes me want to go back to sweeping sidewalks for a living.
my ideal work place (Score:2)
However, I think jobs with one task are boring. I like to multitask. But the side effect is a cluttered desk. It needs walls to prevent collapse. Strong walls sometimes. And I usually need 3 computers or more. A real walled office space is necessary. Window preferred (but my new job doesn't have the window).
It's all about real offices (Score:2)
It's all about offices. Not only does this allow you to surf pr0n, but it cuts down on noise dramatically. It's best to be paired up in an office with the coworker that you work with the most. Face time is dramatically important, and you can convey a lot more information that way. You (me) also tend to slack off less when there is a human nearby who is also working.
The next factor is furniture ergonomics, a word vastly overused but also a concept dramatically underapplied. I am a BIG MOFO (6'7", 350 lbs) and my office furniture is never the right size. An office willing to buy you furniture that fits you is a must.
Finally, I come up upon the topic of lighting. When I worked for Tivoli Systems [tivoli.com] I shared an office with two people, then with one person, then had my own. In the latter two circumstances the lighting was to my specs; A desk lamp for close lighting and a halogen torchiere for room lighting. One of them is enough to cast a good, broad-spectrum light (or so it seems) with enough light to find your way around the office without falling over things, but not enough to make your eyes tired. The desk lamp is a necessity to provide enough light to see documents by and to provide enough light to where staring at your monitor isn't too high-contrast, but not enough to where you have to crank the brightness beyond the point where black is no longer black, but a dark grey. Having proper contrast is a must.
You also need a bookshelf, in my ever so humble opinion. While I am constantly using digital documents (you can search them, after all) I frequently turn to books from ORA or Microsoft Press (I work in a Microsoft-centric shop at the moment) for in-depth information. You need a place to keep these books that isn't your desk. Avoid clutter when possible, but when you need to lay out a lot of docs at once, nothing beats a desk.
OT Side note: The thinkgeek ad I'm looking at right now spells "movie premiere [dictionary.com]" without the trailing "E". Give me a break, folks.
A lot to be learned form elsewhere (Score:2)
But what a lot of people don't take into advice is land cost. In countries like Japan, they work in much smaller spaces than ours and are still productive.
This is because they have a different outlook on work. It's not easy to just assume that aligning offices differently will change things.
Personally, I like any office that can be changed around easily and is informal. Luckily us decadent westerners can afford to do that
"But Doctor, if they take away my head surely I'll die?"
Peopleware. (Score:2)
The book Peopleware [fatbrain.com] by Tom Demarco [fatbrain.com] and Timothy Lister [fatbrain.com] has a section with seven chapters about the office environment alone.
This book is a must read for anybody who manages people in the tech industry, wants to manage people in the tech industry or who just want to get additional perspective on how many facets of management, environment and coworkers can affect your productivity and your happiness.
This book is as essential as The Mythical Man Month [fatbrain.com] by Brooks [fatbrain.com].
If you haven't read this books yet, read them now.
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No cubicles! Pods! (Score:2)
A "pod" consists of 4 regular "L" shaped computer desks placed together to make a cross shape. Place these pods in the middle of your group's work area (assuming a large rectangular work area), perhaps (but not preferably) with desks ("offices") on the outside corners.
Results: A really open atmosphere, potentially loud with people asking questions over desks (but most of us like that). The other co-workers are amazed at how much space and open windows we seem to have, even though we're the most compact group in the whole building.
Not for people who want quiet, enclosed caves, and it's not the best layout for "work alone" types.
My philosophy: I want to be able to hit any one of my workers over the head with a thrown bean bag, without hitting a cubicle or regular wall...
workspace research (Score:2)
I imagine the "no clutter" policy will last as long as it takes for the architect to get his shots for Architectural Review, and then the workers can get back to filling their workspaces with faxed cartoons and stuffed aminals.
Cubicles suck (Score:2)
On a side note, flourescent lights can be really nice if you get those "full-spectrum" bulbs instead of the traditional, cheap, crappy ones.
Maximum flexibility (Score:2)
The way I like to set things up is by dividing teams up into project rooms. Meaning that the people you work with most should be immediately accessible to you. This can be done using either a big room or, if that's not possible, using large cubicle walls to create a roomlike division.
I then put workstations around the outside of the room so that the developers are facing a corner workstation or a wall, their preference. There should be half height walls or no walls between developers on the same project team. This makes it easy to get to know your team members, and allows for impromptu communication, and good line of sight for nerf blasting.
Optionally, in the center of the room is a conference table so the team can quickly and easily have a group meeting. Since their workstations are in the same room however, this is not a requirement.
The room should have as many whiteboards as it can hold, nuff said.
This layout can be scaled. For example, if you have lots of space, you might have actual offices around the outside of a large room, with the offices opening into conference room. The office walls stifle communication a little bit, but you can alleviate that if your offices are big enough by putting 2 or 3 developers per office. The office situation works well though if you like a lot of peace and quiet, but I still prefer having everybody on the team in one room because while quiet is nice, it has a tendency to divide the team. If you need some isolation, headphones are great.
Lighting should be a per workstation basis. I like dim lighting, helps my eyes relax. If brighter reading light is needed, there are several good desk lamps available.
And plenty of space should be allowed for books, diagrams, etc. For workstations I prefer a U shaped desk so I have surface space on three sides of me.
Keep it simple... (Score:2)
Where I work, the office space is ridiculously spartan and cheap, and yet is perfectly functional: Think random 1970's dentist office architecture with lots of little offices and a large central "waiting room"-style common area with fridges, a large countertop, etc.; ancient, solid-metal government surplus desks (LOTS of drawers and pull-out work surfaces!), dozens of $30 Office Depot desk lamps and torchieres (we removed probably three quarters of the flourescent tubes from the overhead fixtures because everyone hated them so much)
Privacy and fresh air. The rest is just eye candy.
-A.
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Three Words: (Score:2)
It just wreaks havoc when your working on a computer. I've yet to find much of a solution for it except taking matters into my own hands and shielding the monitor from the lights with something above the monitor.
The perfect workspace (Score:3)
*Lots of fancy LCD monitors clamped (not placed) on the desk.
*No PC towers or stuff like that - everything should be hidden under the floor. No noise or things to trip over.
*Everything cordless (including power cords).
*Big desk space to put as many manuals on that will fit. Cleaning personnel shall clean the surfaces without displacing any manuals.
*Comfortable swivel chair.
*Open plan office with non-Newtonian behaviour. You can see, hear and smell everything of interest to you while filtering out the visual clutter, noise and fart smells. Also, noone can see or hear you without you wanting them to. You are free to fart or pick your nose.
*Access to any required food and drink without having to get up or order. Your wishes are read directly from your mind and immediately executed.
*Matter transporters replace toilet facilities and double as fat removers.
*Bright lighting which switches to deep blue when you say "Red Alert" (why not "Blue Alert"?)
*Deals with the government to prevent NSA agents from breaking in and ransacking your computer
*No management interference!
*Capability to go home at any time without first having to find a suitably equipped telephone or jumping out of the window.
*Enormous viewscreen at front of room displaying slashdot
etc.
I'm a bit of a geek on this topic. (Score:3)
I've seen and worked in a variety of spaces. Cubicles are cool if they're large enough because it's a little like having your own office, but it's more open than that. I've also worked in places where desks are just shoved where they will fit without partitions (quite usual in the UK), and that allows a bit more social interaction, but can be distracting if you're coding. Great for being an admin in though.
One of the more intriguing options I've seen is hot-desking. The concept sounds... different. With no desk of your own, or space of your own, you are expected to just work wherever you want with a laptop and mobile phone. Although a lot of people find it liberating (especially in media companys), I think for geeks, it would actually be quite constraining - you can't have your manuals nearby.
I've seen it go the other way as well. Every member of staff gets their own office that they are free to personalise as they want. Some companies have even allowed budgets to be given for people to spend on decorating their office. I seem to remember the company that "pioneered" this approach was an advertising agency that wanted offices full of toys and fun things to act as a stimulus to the imaginiation. Oh, they had a basketball court in the foyer as well for meetings.
Personally, I work from home and myself and cow-worker use a spare bedroom in my flat. There are pluses and minuses with the situation, but not having to commute is fantastic. I haven't been in a car or on public transport in several weeks. I live in a city center so I'm near most things.
I suppose the ideal working space for me would be a mixture of the above ideas. I like the idea of having space to personalise, but I also like the idea of being able to move over to a sofa with a laptop on a coffee table for a bit if I choose to. I think gimmicks like free food and drink are good, as is the idea of being able to shoot some hoops whilst discussing database design internals. Perhaps a mix like that is the best solution. Well, it sounds like fun to me.
An Apology from the Architecture profession (Score:3)
On behalf of architects everywhere, I would like to extend you all a formal apology for our profession's: lack of understanding; our unwillingness to listen; our obsession with personal agendas; our disregard for basic human comfort; our arrogance against (l)users; our prioritizing ideas over substance; our facination with 'creativity' for the sake of it, and ignorance of proven solutions; our elitism in being 'producers of Culture', and obnoxious pretentiousness; and for when we forget to look at the engineer's drawings, until two months later, somebody asks, "Hey, is there any cross bracing in this building...?" --- "Hey, I just found this drawing... and its got bracing going through... er.. where we've drawn all the windows ... "
But seriously, I can't apologise for these people. Just know that the sorts of problems you're talking about, as "users" of buildings (that's what architects call you), is a direct result of how they are taught.
Perhaps someone could start a "programmer's/IT office user organisation", to collect information and promote the better education of architects in this respect. They (architects) would be chuffed to know they're being noticed, (although they'll still think they know better.)
Re:Other horror stories... (Score:2)
The Great Pyramid of Stockport, a few miles out of Manchester (in England), is a -huge- glass pyramid with offices inside.
One day a guy passes the place, riding in the back of a cab/taxi. He says to the driver, "god, that's an awful building". The taxi driver replies, "Actually, I designed it."
Apparently this is true. And apparently the original plan called for 12 identical "pyramids" across the whole site.
The worst thing is, they're not even "proper" pyramids, being "stepped" into an ugly "broken pyramid" shape.
My horror story... (Score:2)
My high school (the one I have since graduated from) was built in 1967. Needless to say, it showed its age. It was filled with lots of day-glo orange and green furniture, had indirect lighting, wood paneling, high ceilings and earthtones everywhere. The classrooms were huge.
Overall, it was an extremely cozy place. The building was warm and inviting to staff and students alike.
Then, they realized they needed some more space. So they spent my sophomore through senior years renovating and expanding. The result was horrible.
The school suffered under what I call the 1990s Sterility Movement. White walls, white floors, white ceilings, white concrete, white furniture and row after row of bright white, eye assaulting florescant lights. What little color there was ended up in the little bits of trim here and there, even then it was neutral colors.
This was supposed to be "refreshing" and the minute amount of color was supposed to provide "flair", but instead it utterly destroyed the character of the place. There was no doubt in anyone's mind we had suffered a $77 million downgrade.
I suppose they were trying for the yuppie/soccer mom house design. Where the whole place is horribly bright white and feels like a museum.
I beg any architect or building project manager out there, PLEASE do not give in to making whatever office, school, etc you are responsible for, feel like a hospital. Add some color! Add some character! Making everything hideously white will not make the people who have to deal with it happy!
When Architect = Artist, Architect != Engineer (Score:2)
Workers there are just pieces on display. It's not a workplace, it's a gallery for the architect.
Re:Home Office (Score:2)
I'm an environmental modeling researcher, and I need insight, not numbers!
Workspaces that Work (Score:5)
Start with a big cubicle farm. People with like tasks (engineers) or working on the same project (same portion of the site) have cubicles located proximal to each other. Many times, people will tear down the wall between two cubicles to form a "bullpen" where those two (sometimes three or four depending on the space requirements of the people involved) can share the space and work better.
Each person's workspace is his own, and short of legal requirements (no p0rn, no fire or safety hazards, etc.) what you do with your own space is your own business. Some people have very neat and orderly spaces, some (like me) have a cube filled with clutter. You want an arcade game in your workspace? Fine, if you've got the room. You want a TV and Sega Dreamcast in your cube? Fine, if you've got the room. (Just try to keep the volume down on both of them so as not to annoy the neighbors, something people are very good about doing)
Surrounding the cube farm are conference rooms (the only people in the entire company who have actual DOORS on their office-space are the legal dept, so closed off rooms being available is a must). The conference rooms are fairly well sound-insulated so that if groups need to meet, they can. The conference rooms vary in size from cozy (2-3 people comfortably) to gargantuan (30-40 people), so you can pick a conference room that fits your needs.
Coffee bar and vending machines are located in their own walled-off niches, so that they can generate the noise that is "natural" to them, but they do so largely without interfering with anyone. (In the building I work in, they're further separated by having a conference room in between them and the workspace).
There are also rows of phone-booths, which are essentially closets with phones (as opposed to traditional "phone booths" like you might see at the airport). The doors are heavily sound-proofed, so if you need to make a private call to your therapist or doctor about the lab results, you can do so without your cube-neighbors overhearing.
The only complaint is the ever-present "flourescent lighting" complaint, however our buildings/facilities department is very understanding about people who disable the lighting above their cubicles (And they'll even, if you fill out the online request form, come over and "do it right" removing the bulbs completely as opposed to just twisting them to the failure-point.
From my experiences so far, this has been the best work-space I've ever had.
one ideal? bah! (Score:2)
If you're only good at one end of the spectrum (as seems the case with the technical requirement-driven undersized desk/noisy environment example), you ought not be in the business of designing total environments -- especially not trying to come up with an ideal environment for a large number of people with differing functions, habits, and needs. Why is FLW so famous? Because it's really hard to get the environmental design balance right. And even his best designs [greatbuildings.com] don't fit everyone -- some people find his office spaces to be ugly and unlivable.
The upshot is that the definition of my ideal workspace is probably useless to anyone else. A more reasonable approach to designing a successful workplace, IMHO, would be to meet the technical requirements at a common level, while not expecting to meet human requirements at a similar common level. That appears to make some designers' brains hurt, offending their sense of consistency. Get the hell over it.
My office space... (Score:2)
Cubicles can sometimes be annoying, but in this case, I actually really like my cubicle. It's big enough, it's lit by sunlight, it's got a ton of deskspace and plenty of drawers, and McAfee.com is nice enough to let me do what I want to it. One of my coworkers took all of the soft cloth padding off of his cubicle walls so that it looks like a big metal industrial box. Kinda cool, actually. I took out one section of one of my walls so that me and my neighbor could interact without having to stand up and talk over the walls.
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Re:Other horror stories... (Score:2)
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
Re:My pet peeve.. (Score:2)
I couldn't agree more. Flourescent lights have a very detrimental effect on my productivity. I avoid them whenever and whereever I can. I prefer warm, soft lighting - it's much easier on my eyes and somehow my brain works better.
Which reminds me, I should rework this home office...
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
Re:transient office (Score:2)
I'm a monitor-bigot (I want at least a 21-incher; ideally, I'd like at least 72-inch by 30-inch at 200 DPI, in the shape of a quarter-cylinder (with focus-follows-eyeballs:-) ); I hate working on those dinky little laptop-screens and keyboards. In flat-screens, I wouldn't mind having a 42-inch one cut from the "motherglass" made by Samsung's new LCD fab, described at http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000 817S0010 [eetimes.com]
Re:You environmentally unfriendly .... (Score:5)
good.
Hi, I'm a technician at a large manufacturing plant who also considers it a part of my job to repair people's problems with thier workplace. One of them is disagreements with lighting. Examples include disabling epileptic seizures, headaches, and fustration at flickering lights. Be considerate of people who are brave enough to complain about lighting, because they may also be in the payroll or accounting office that does the paper work for your office too.
But most importantly, lighting (or lack of) is often the most stimulating factor in the workplace. To me, white text on a dark screened computer monitor in a dark room allows me to focus on the subject at hand. Most people are familiar with a white browser and black text that has the familiar look of paper and india ink --instantly recognizable as user friendly software, but can be brutaly harsh on the eyes after long periods of time.
Many users prefer customized settings for thier own experience and for a good reason. Some people may tolerate the exhilerating intensity of 60Hz flourescent lights as it simulates the great outdoors. But for others, it will cause mental blackouts and collapse. People have entered the hospital for such a trivial thing such as lighting. Its happened where I work. Please do not dismiss other's complaints about lighting as "myths about mental health and computer power" and having been from places where "fluorescence is norm."
How about NO lights? (Score:2)
Right now I work in your typical cubicle environment, I'll guess-timate mine is 5x8. A little cramped with 3 systems and a small library. The main printer for my floor used to be on one side of my cubicle wall ( sales shares my floor ) which constantly had traffic. Our department's paper shredder is right outside of my cube, and there are very few things more annoying than that. We are not a software house though, we are almost entirely hardware, so there are not many programmers that the company has to consider. We programmers wear headphones to drown out the noise, which then makes people assume that we are anti-social or something. No, we'd just like to be able to concentrate thank-you, that and I happen to enjoy listening to music as opposed to paper shredders, doors, and pages.
Anyway, my perfect office, i.e. with a ceiling and a door, would be a modest area, 10x10, 12x12, or something like that.. Windows, but the ability to completely shutter out all light. My desk would be in the center of the room. I'd have a nice stereo and speakers in all corners. Most of the time, the room would be pitch black, other than the light from my monitor, and something by Rush would probably be coming out of the speakers, at a rather high volume. Oh, and I mustn't forget the dorm fridge.
Yes, that would be perfect..
Re:My office space... (Score:3)
Knowledge workers, however, have the opposite needs. They spend their time focused on a single task for extended periods of time. They need to be able to create an environment that provides the right level of external distraction; some folks like to work in silence while others concentrate better with the TV on. They need to control temperature and lighting. They need to have lots of whiteboard space for sketching out ideas, and lots of shelving for the dead tree manuals they need to have handy. Offices are perfect for this.
Unfortunately, I have yet to see an organization that hasn't been afflicted by the office royalty syndrome...
Truly Useful Office and Home Office Furniture (Score:2)
We've looked at many different things from low-end to high-end modular furniture (computer cabinets that, when open, have room for decent sized monitors, a keyboard, etc. (or so they think) yet look like high quality furniture of the quality you'd find in your dining room or bedroom (i.e. real wood...not laminate...no water beds allowed ).
Bottom line is that we've found NOTHING on the market that is truly designed with computer users in mind despite being labeled as computer furniture. Most furniture looks like TV cabinates with a keyboard draw attached. It seems that what we've been looking for doesn't seem to exist.
Furniture designers don't seem to realize the needs for real computer users.
We need:
1) space for one (if not two), mini-towers or desktop machines per cabinet. They need to be out of the way yet accessible.
2) space for decent sized monitors (17-20 inch) and a means to adjust the monitor to a comfortable and egonomic position.
3) Keyboard drawers that provide ample wrist support and space for the mouse (yeah..like I'm going to reach into the cabinet to move my mouse).
We saw one model where the face of the keyboard drawer drops down to make a decent wrist support and then flipped back up to look like a panel in the furniture. While we liked this line, there were still things that were all wrong.
4) accessible, yet hidden cable runs with maybe a ethernet port or two.
5) space for a printer (small laser or inkjet would be nice). Access to the printer for maintenance is essential.
6) Cooling fans to keep our stuff from overheating.
7) Auxillary spaces for such things as hubs, switches, and UPS.
8) Surge protection and plenty of outlets.
9) Usable desk tops and cabinets that provide ample storage space and functionality (like for printers).
10) Bookcases that seem to integrate.
11) it to be standalone (vs built-in) so we can take it with us when we move.
As a result, we're now considering designing our own furniture and then will take the interior designs to a cabinet/furniture maker to clean up the design and then build it ("Damnit, Jim, I'm an doctor (um..computer geek)..not a brick layer (or skilled cabinet maker)...")
Have others run into these problems and what did you do about it?
RD
The best choice for the 21st Century is... (Score:2)
Think about it:
Each worker can do whatever they want in terms of work setting, dress, etc.
It's cheaper for workers and employers.
It promotes flexible work hours
Workers are happier and in my experience work better and accomplish more
And my favorite point: It's wholly more envrionmentally sound. Getting ride of commuting, even if by public transportation, is better for the environment. Also, people don't print things up constantly as they do in an office since meetings are virtual.
Re:I perfer them off to SAVE power (Score:2)
That's 320w worth of fluorescent lighting in a small (~10x10) office.
You mentioned turning off 320 watts of lights to conserve energy. That might be an understatement if your office is also air conditioned. It takes an additional amount of power to pump that generated heat out of the office too.
So, you would be saving, perhaps 640 watts of power. There's a reason why computer monitors are fluorescent. Don't make them compete with the overhead lights.
Re:Other horror stories... (Score:2)
The clean desk...and other goofy rules.. (Score:2)
But, the work areas (cubicals) while not horrendous, were a little impersonal. Rules like:
a) No personal effects.
b) No papers on desk after hours.
c) Must use black rather than blue pens.
Naturally, in the IT department, we skirted many of the issues by putting things on walls facing AWAY from the normal viewing area and stuff put to the sides of our monitors where they couldn't be seen unless you walked into the cube.
Then, there was the hot-swap desks for the consultants. They had no area to put things (despite being FT consultants). No barriers between desks...just phone and PC.
Needless to say...this didn't last too long as we started having difficulty in keeping consultants.
What I've had, What I have now, What I want (Score:5)
- 40 desks in a big huge room with nothing to deaden sound, and a management policy that wearing a walkman to deaden the noise and get some work done was "unprofessional looking". Can you guess that Andersen Consulting was involved?
- 100+ people in a gigantic room with cubicles, and about 25% of them regularly on the phone or checking voicemail with speaker phones. (By the way, if somebody near you is checking his voicemail with the speaker phone, go find a private office, call him up, and leave a message saying "I was wondering if you could please SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU INCONSIDERATE PIECE OF SHIT!". It helps if your voice isn't recognizable.) Even worse was the fact that there weren't real desk, just those psuedo desks that hang off the cube wall. So the guy opposite me would start stomping his feet to the music he was listening to, and my monitor would shake. Or somebody would sit on the desk in the cube next to me, and my monitor would rise up.
- 8 developers in a big room with no cubicles but lots of nerf guns. This one actually worked pretty well.
- Most of a floor in a building shaped like three hexagons. Cubicles clustered in little "pods" around the windows, all the "support" rooms in the middle. This one worked very well, because the rooms in the middle and the shape of the building kept it so only a few dozen people were in your line of sight, even if you stood and looked over the cube walls.
What I have now:
- Three people sharing an office originally meant for two. Since I'm new, and these guys know lots about the application, it's working pretty well since I can ask them questions and have them show me stuff. Even better, they like to keep the lights off and the blinds drawn some (but not all) of the time. We've got real desks, and lots of bookshelves.
What I want:
- A private office. One that I have room for a white board on one wall (or a window that I can write on with dry erase markers!), a window, and room for posters and paintings to make the place feel like home, and desk and bookshelves like I have now plus a side table and a guest chair. One of those nifty little desk lights they have at thinkgeek. A secretary to give me @$@#$@#NO CARRIER
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A "freaking free-loading Canadian" stealing jobs from good honest hard working Americans since 1997.
Offices are best for us introverts (Score:2)
In order, my preference would be my own office; a large cube with high walls and fairly completely enclosed; or share an office with the right kind of people. Now, it may still be true that being alone would allow me to goof off too much, but I think coworkers are more of a distraction. And once in a while I encounter a problem that requires some deep thought, where I need to be able to talk to myself, out loud... and at the job where I had to do this the most (was doing some computer graphics stuff, working out affine tranforms and stuff like that), we had the "open office" thing going on - just a bunch of desks in a big room. There was a guy there who had a very loud voice, not that he was yelling on purpose, just his normal speaking voice was sort of bellowing and penetrating... you couldn't help but hear everything he said even 20 or 30 feet away. So I'd occasionally disappear and find a storage room or an empty office where I could sit and think. Then my boss the SOB had the nerve to tell me he didn't trust me to leave the office and I needed to tell him where I was going. God that guy was a jerk, I can't believe I stayed there so damn long...
Anyway, my ideal office I think would be a high floor on a skyscraper downtown, with lots of smallish offices around the periphery with nice views, so that everybody can have one; surrounding a huge meeting/recreation space. The idea of movable furniture so spontaneous meetings can happen sounds good in theory, but I've never tried it; and I don't like the idea of being "homeless" either, having to use this movable furniture all the time and not having a desk of my own. Whatever you do for meetings and "war rooms" should be supplemental, not the normal way of working. If the extroverts like to spend all their time working that way, they can do so, in the large space outside the offices. Everyone should have high-end laptops with wireless ethernet, so they can take them to the meetings, but also have a full docking setup at the desk, with a large monitor and keyboard. Needless to say the laptops should not be required to run Windows. There should be no admin; because any good programmer can administrate his own laptop. Every admin I've known has been a big obstacle and just somebody to avoid at all costs. You don't make use of them, you work around them.
Nobody should stand in the way of telecommuting. Just give me an SSH connection into some kind of Unix server, and I'll be happy (can forward X connections over it too).
hot-desking and Chiat/Day (Score:5)
The article is worth reading, if you're interested in the subject. Seems like Jay Chiat was the ultimate PHB, imposing his limited personal vision on his entire company, and brooking no disagreement.
More advice (Score:2)
Ergonomically speaking, I'm OK. The desk is at the right height, there's plenty of space and I'm facing the door so I'm comfortable and not paranoid. I have natural light in the daytime and indirect halogen light at night. Since I got the laptop, I can move around more, but I need to get more of the house wired for ethernet...
Now all I need is a laptop cooling unit that doesn't make much noise and has a space for a mousepad...
Dilbertville (Score:2)
With the right codes, you could close all the blinds and turn off all the lights from anywhere in the world.
In the grid of cube-forests and offices, there are mini-stores, like you'd find in an airport, between sections. I got lost in there on the first day, and walked past three, that all looked alike, selling drinks, prepackaged sandwiches, candy, and other stimulants.
Highly wacky.
Kevin Fox
Re:Our office... (Score:2)
My theory: cubes offer the *promise* of privacy, but everyone remains keenly aware that none really exists--hence everyone stays unnaturally quiet to "respect" the others. With the "war room" layout, on the other hand, the illusion of privacy is done away with, and everyone has to establish a new social contract. That contract is much more balanced, IMO...privacy is important, but too much of anything can be bad for you
The home office... (Score:5)
21" Trinitron monitor: $1050
Herman Miller chair: $999
Telecommuting in my underwear from a office bigger and better than my boss's: Priceless.
Kevin Fox
My preferred workspace (Score:5)
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Home.
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The Beach.
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The Mountains.
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Barnes & Nobles
I think it's clear: the office is the pits. With modern technology everyplace is my office.The down-side is it is hard to actually get away from work when I go home, to the beach, to the mountains, etc.
Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers
Re:Aargh! Cubicleville! (Score:2)
I'm starting to feel more and more this way, myself. For a while I toyed with the idea of getting up early, showing up at the office by 8, working until 1, then splitting for lunch and taking the afternoon off, and finally coming back in to work from 7-10. There's just a lot of noise and activity around me in the afternoons, which makes it rather hard to concentrate.
electrical interference (Score:2)
It's bad enough to give me a headache after about an hour or so. I've been working with the display awkwardly off to the side for a few days. I've been leaving a message for the facilities guy every day, but he never calls back.
Scott Bishop, if you're reading this, call me first thing Monday I just want my office fixed.
electronic ballasts?? (Score:3)
I prefer indirect halogen lighting reflecting from the white drop ceiling when I can get it. The key for me is to have a lot of light when needed (ie: trying to read a manual or find something) but keep it much darker as the norm.
I also enjoy an environment where when I have to think really hard about something, my co-workers will turn off the music. I don't mind music when I am just coding. However, when I am trying to debug or plan, I must have quiet.
-John
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Re:If you desk is clean - you are not working (Score:2)
Nah. My desk is clean because all my reference material, design-work, psuedo-code, correspondence, notes, reference material -- everything -- is digital and on my computer(s). I don't have anything on my desk except:
Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers
IBM got it right 25 yr ago (Score:2)
25 years ago IBM had some architects design the Santa Teresa labs based on user input. They got it right then and only a few employers have figured out the right way to do it:
DeMarco and Lister have a bunch of good ideas, too. Like getting rid of paging.
My current employer has an excellent evironment: private offices for everyone (some shared now due to rapid growth). Each office has a door and a window. Some people have incandescent lights, but during the day most lighting is sunlight. After the last move they got rid of the paging.
My previous employer had one thing better: windows that open.
The one thing IBM didn't know about in 1976 is telecommuting. Some people do it a lot. For many projects it's hard to not meet with other team members on a regular basis.
Get the book "Peopleware" (Score:2)
Run, don't walk, to get the book "Peopleware" by Demarco and Lister. It outlines a number of very specific things to consider in the work environment. Below is some info on it from amazon.com:
Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd Ed. by Tom Demarco, Timothy Lister
Paperback 2nd edition (February 1, 1999)
Dorset House; ISBN: 0932633439
"Peopleware" asserts that most software development projects fail because of failures within the team running them. This strikingly clear, direct book is written for software development-team leaders and managers, but it's filled with enough commonsense wisdom to appeal to anyone working in technology. Authors Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister include plenty of illustrative, often amusing anecdotes; their writing is light, conversational, and filled with equal portions of humor and wisdom, and there is a refreshing absence of "new age" terms and multistep programs. The advice is presented straightforwardly and ranges from simple issues of prioritization to complex ways of engendering harmony and productivity in your team. Peopleware is a short read that delivers more than many books on the subject twice its size. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
TWR
Re:You environmentally unfriendly .... (Score:2)
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Re:Other horror stories... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, they'd built it upside-down for the company's management structure.
Air conditioning isn't that inefficient. (Score:3)
If you really wanted to save power you would light with daylight, and perhaps even have some system for using outdoor light as the backlight for your LCD flatscreen (with a fluorescent backup). Natural light is about half visible, half IR; the best fluorescent lamps are between 20% and 27% efficient, giving you between 3 and 4 watts of waste heat for each watt of light instead of 1.
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Re:You environmentally unfriendly .... (Score:2)
I do not disagree that lighting is important in workplaces. The place I used to work in has atrocious (yes fluorescence) lighting. We had an open office,with rows of cubicles. The problem is that the ceiling tubes are not arranged "in sync" with the cubicles, so some cubes are overbright and some are too dark. People complain all the time.
But the fault is not the fluorescent. I have also worked in a factory as a line engineer running production of LEDS (irony). The whole plant is lit by fluorescence and the lighting is well-designed. There are "rest areas" of semi-brightness (for people to rest eyes), and bright areas for work, and dark areas for LED testing. The point is that flurorescence works, and runs at lower wattage.
The "flickering" of fluorescence is usually caused by (a) bad tube (b) bad power supply (running lower than 50/60Hz required). It's nothing to do with fluorescence.
Now when I work at a desk, and the lighting is not good enough, I flipped on my desk lamp. Fluorescent of course.
(oh yeah, I share your disagreements with halogen. Those are bloody dangerous things, and over bright for the eyes.)
Re:Truly Useful Office and Home Office Furniture (Score:2)
Budget 1: I was setting up a home office for a member of senior management, to include company purchased furniture. Since price wasn't much of an option, you can find really nice looking stuff that looks right in a home and was designed ergonomically as a PC workstation in the executive part of your company's furniture catalog.
Budget 2: When I set mine up, I found that it was very inexpensive (comparitively) to find a local furniture maker and bring my ideas straight to him (with pictures of standard office stuff that I'd like to see on my home unit). I got for about $3,500 a highly useful desk set that looks very nice, fits in with our home decor, and is the most comfortable I've used.
Just some ideas.
Music, definitely. Noise is murder on work. (Score:2)
When I can come up with a way of managing it so that I can handle my phone through the headphones as well, I may never take them off from the time I sit down until the time I leave.
I have quit several jobs because the environment was so noisy that I could not concentrate effectively. IMHO "bullpens" ought to be banned, walls should be at least 2.2 meters height minimum, and there should be standards for acoustic damping and isolation which companies must meet or exceed. The ability to sit and do work when the guy in the next cube is on the phone would be more than enough to compensate for the inability to "prairie dog".
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Re:hot-desking and Chiat/Day (Score:2)
I think this is a concept that works well with consultants. One of the guys I always travel with in the morning works as a consultant in this setup. He has to travel alot throughout the country and never knows when he is in the office. I think he likes the concept, also because having an office in that building hardly gives any status, because his collegeus are hardly around to notice it anyways. What is also nice is that whereever he is in the country, he just needs to tell the reception where he is going to sit and you can call him on a fixed phoneline with the same number throughout the country.
My personal idea is that office space and software are alike in one sense, you need the tools for the job, not one size fits all.
Re:You environmentally unfriendly .... (Score:2)
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Re:You environmentally unfriendly .... (Score:2)
Yes, electronic ballasts can remove the flicker. Compact-flourescent bulbs with electronic ballasts rock, I use them all over my house.
Life in the Box Ain't So Bad (Score:2)
At my last job, I had an office [steinhoff.net]. It was nice. I had loud music after hours and a non-windowed door so I could freaky with the secretary.
At my current job, I'm in a cubicle. Of course, I'd like an office but I'm really learning to like the cubicle. It allows me more interaction with my coworkers. I've found that I'm much more likely to ask for help or offer help living in such a communial environment than I every was in my office.
Overall, I'd say the best working environment is one you can customize. No matter if it's a desk, cubicle or office, the key is customization. One size doens't fit all and a comfortable employee is a productive employee.
The best office environment tip I can supply, however, is this one... Have a guest chair but always have something on it. That way, people can't just enter your work area and sit down. If you want someone to spend some time with you, take the laptop case (or whatever) off the chair. If you want piece and quiet, not offering the person a place to sit is pretty effective.
InitZero
Both my jobs are great! (Score:2)
My other job I'm a programmer for travel-italy.com and they have a lovely new building of a villa style. It's not huge but it is roomy and probably the nicest looking place I've worked. It is elegant but still working enviroment. The programmers have a little area with a view of the fountains and enar the kitchen and bathrooms.
Overall I'd say I have it good.
Re:If you desk is clean - you are not working (Score:2)
Architecture as Social Programming (Score:3)
I like GNU/Linux, and I flourished best in a company that downsized the excess crud. Then I and a few other people could roam around and pick up all the goodies and ornament our personal spaces. Essentially, we served as our own architects, and could fix or repair anything without calling in some other professionals.
Read Christopher Alexander's books for some tips. I need a window to be able to think. I also appreciate a little privacy when I talk on the phone, and I don't like hearing others talk on the phone either.
Like some programmers, too many office architects look for the "magic bullet." They jump from fad to fad without any empirical evidence. When the space no longer works, they tear it down and start over.
Here are almost a dozen names for schemes to rework the office environment:
The list is from "Building Evaluation Techniques," ed. Baird, ISBN 0-07-003308-0.
The idea of this book is to make formal evaluations of how the environment affects productivity, and adjust as needed. It depends on a certain amount of flexibility built into the space, not everything predetermined by the architect down to the last millimetre and cent. Here is a good book too: "How Buildings Learn: What happens after they're built," by Stewart Brand, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-013996-6.
In fact, after evaluation, many businesses drop these new-fangled ideas as impractical. Workers don't like them, and find ways to resist or work around them.
The eXtreme Programming idea is new, but it puts forward a model of having a big room with high-powered workstations in the center on tables. Programmers work as two-member teams on the same computer. All around the center, at the borders, are cubes or private spaces for times when a person needs to work alone or with privacy.
Another idea that aids in personalizing and customizing office space is the HVAC system from Johnson Controls, that allows desk users to tune white space to control the sonic environment, as well as temperature, air flow, and lighting. This can be employed in any of the office environments, cubicles, offices, big rooms.
There are many models for forming social space in a business. There are many programming languages, and each has virtues and faults. It is up to us to choose the best tools. Professional architects and design engineers can help, but can't design everything perfect to begin with.
Comment removed (Score:5)
Re:If you desk is clean - you are not working (Score:2)
-B
Monitor refresh (Score:2)
This is more of a legacy MS Windows issue than a Linux one. It also does not apply to flatscreen (LCD) panel displays.
The default refresh rate on many CRTs is 60Hz. This creates an interference pattern with any proximate florescent lighting, and is the major cause of "monitor glare", which isn't in fact glare, but flicker. It's particularly noticable in peripheral vision -- I often find I'm more disturbed by a co-worker's display (caught from the corner of my eye) than they appear to be.
The solution is to set monitor refresh to some higher level -- 72Hz or better seems to push the effect beyond any perceptible threshhold.
In Linux, check the output of your X server (startx -- 1>.startx.log 2>&1 & should save output to '.startx.log) to see what rates are being selected for your X session, or monitor the rates with tools like xvidtune or your window manager or desktop video tuning tools.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
and voicemail... (Score:2)
But eventually they get their own:
"Bob, this is Dr. Smith, The test results came back positive...."
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Re:What's with the obsession with cubicles? (Score:2)
Re:Workspaces that Work (Score:2)
No, I don't work for Intel. ;-)
I work for a company that has taken that workspace environment and merged it with the "workspace ideals" you're describing. Nobody complains about silly "company time/property" issues, unless someone is being an idiot about it (making 500 photocopies or something).
Our cubes are actually bright purple and yellow, and while it may SOUND disgusting, it actually works fairly well, surprisingly enough. :)
Re:Lights, Sounds, Action, et al. (Score:2)
If I have to work somewhere else, give me my own office. Or divide up one large office with cube dividers into two or three spaces. Cube farms suck, open plans suck, give me my own space when I can revel in my cruft and have some peace and quiet.
Re:If you desk is clean - you are not working (Score:2)
Ok, Im german and there usually isnt much stuff on my desk. A bunch of papers and books that I'm currently using or what not but hey, that's me. Other people in my office have their desks loaded!
And yes, we do use e-mail. Maybe not when I need to talk to someone on the next desk. BTW the e-mail where I work isnt monitored - is your's? Maybe *that* should worry you.
Where I'm working we exclusively have open plan offices and I quite like them. Especially when it's got a lot of room on the desks. But since there are a lot of different people with different jobs (architects, graphics, software, etc) the noise level is usually quite high. I sort of got used to it and like being able to communicate easily but apparently it's driving other people insane. We'll probably move to a different offices soon with open, glass walled 2- to 4- people offices where there's more privacy (while still being communicative I hope). It'll be interesting although I'm going to miss the view...
Aaprt from that I just need a good coffee maker, a fast Internet line, and decent equipment (IRIX and linux do just fine for me).
-Uli
Work environment... (Score:2)
Part of my job is as a web developer, and the work load is split between my office (a real office with a door, totally customizable to my every whim) and my home-office. The only real difference is that I can drink and smoke like a maniac at home, which I find is very productive. I'm aware that neither habit is good for me physically, but man, can I crank out the code (bug free!) in such an environment. It's tough to quantify productivity, but I honestly feel 50% more effective after 4 - 6 beers. Often, after an 8 - 10 hour coding frenzy at home, I'm amazed at how attractive and efficient the final product is... with the exception of a mild hangover. I don't know if the booze helps me relax or focus, but whatever it does works very, very well.
It's weird but true.
The realy ideal work enviroment (Score:2)
Just think:
Desktop clutter and caching efficiency (Score:4)
This is lifted from Gregory Pfister's In Search of Clusters: the ongoing battle in lowly parallel computing. Among the discussions: caching systems work best by randomly clearing sections in the cache (desktop), which should remain fully populated. Emptying the cache (clearing your desktop) wastes cycles. In the section "The Cache as a Messy Desk" (6.2.7, p 146):
Suppose you walk into an office and start to work on some project. You dig the files out of a desk drawer or cabinet, put them on your desk, and work. Then you start something else. No, don't put the old stuff away; restrain your tidiness even if you completely finished the previous job. just get out the new things you need, find an empty spot on your desk, and works there....Eventually, of course, your desk will be amess with no more room left on it. That's when youclear some space off by putting some of the itmes on your desk back in the files -- but only clear enough space to do the next theing you need.
Notice that the desk never, ever gets clean. In fact, except for the initial period when you first start using it, the desk is always completely filled with "old stuff" of various ages....
Cache memories work exactly like that messy desk; Noting is emptied out of them until the space it occupies is required for something else.
Viva la mess!
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
I go both ways and nuttin beats a real office... (Score:5)
Without ANY doubt, I'm dramatically more productive at the location where I can shut the door and get some uninterrupted work done.
So that's rule #1, a real office. Rule #2 is access. Ability to get to it and your work site whenever you need to. You know, sometimes you are just on a roll and being forced to go home cause everyone else is just sucks. But rule #2 also requires a boss that understands rule #2. If I work until after midnight and then roll in the next day around lunch time, I don't want some lame 9-5er making smart-ass remarks about how lazy I am. If that smart-ass happens to be your boss, much much worse.
Rule #3, not office related, but office politic related. Dress code. I think clothing manufactures are convincing media to run stories saying that people are far more productive and feel better about themselves when they are dressed professionally. Yeah, right. Sometimes I have to wear a shirt and tie and worse, occasionally a real suit, to work. On those days, I don't do jack. All I can think about is getting home early to get out of the thing and into something more comfortable. When I'm comfortable, I can work longer hours, take less breaks, and manage stress better. Jeans and T-shirts are the way to go.
And finally rule #4. Access to a secretary. You know, those under-appreciated and now considered un-needed employees. IT people are getting damn expensive and being interrupted by the phone constantly is a killer. I also need someone to keep my life organized. Someone who knows to find out when someone says their CD-ROM drive is failed, whether they just use it to listen to music, or need it for a critical part of their job.
(How many of you get those damn phone calls that start out "Hello, this is ____ from xyzzy research, and we are conducting a survey. This is NOT a sales call and will only take 5 minutes." Yeah, sure, I was getting two of those a day and each took like 20-25 minutes, until I got a secretary to run interferance. Once upon a time, ZDnet would at least give you a free year's subscription to PC Week and a host of other of their mags, but after a while they stopped, so I said "flock("em") all...)
An ideal work environment is worth making 10-20 grand a year less, maybe more. I spend most of my life at work, I'd like it to be pleasant and rewarding. Yeah, for the right pay, I might put up with a cube farm, dressing up, and not getting much real work done. For the right pay, I'd spend my days dreaming and waiting until the quitting bell rings so I can run home, escape, and spend some of that extra dough...
It really amazes me how employers tend to focus on things that make their people less productive and eager to leave the work site asap... They'll spend several million on cute architectural features in the lobby and common areas of the building, then when it comes to housing the employees that exist to make them a profit, they skimp, make a huge cube farm and then often circle the outside of each floor with real offices for "important" people so they can have windows and to prevent the working staff from looking outside.
Steve McConnell has a good chapter about this (Score:4)
A few pages. Some good statistics. A sample calculation showing that at the time and place he was writing hiring a new developer vs getting a better office space was no contest in bang for the buck. Over a factor of a hundred different.
A couple of references. Including IBM's paper describing their design considerations for the Santa Teresa complex back in the 70's.
Cheers,
Ben
PS In case it isn't obvious, this is a recommendation.
My dream office... (Score:2)
After all this time, I think my dream office environment would be:
1) Offceis for each person. You need to be able to hold stuff and express your interests - floating offices and shared spaces don't let you do that much. So, even if small, an office where a person can settle down, listen to whatever music they want (or seal themselves away from all noise) and just be comfortable.
2) Shared areas where people can work together. Though having your own office is nice, there are times where you want to quickly work with a group of people to do things for some period of time - for a few weeks or months. In those times you need a shared area to work with together that has a number of computers to work with.
In short, I think there is some level of combination of the office/no office idea. I like an office but know it limits communication and slows us down. On the other hand, I also know a totally shared space would be very uncomfortable for me.
Work in a Vault sometime. (Score:2)
Now I work at a different company in a rather spacious and comfortable cubicle. I just don't understand it when people say they couldn't work in a cube.
Re:Truly Useful Office and Home Office Furniture (Score:2)
But, as far as computer workstations go, the Jagger seems pretty well layed out. It might be suitable as a workstation for the kids or for new personnel at our company.
But, I'm hedging that a nice room with the appropriate dividers and built in desk/storage might make more sense (i.e. 2 to a room).
Currently, we've got such an animal that is two L's with the lower leg of the L's attached and rounded. It gives each person their own space yet keeps the room open and accessible to others (we have a printer in there as well) without disturbing the occupants of the space.
RD
Re:If you desk is clean - you are not working (Score:2)
I usually clean my desk when I've lost something. I usually find what I'm looking for in the process, so I set that aside and keep cleaning. It will stay clean for a couple days.
I couldn't work in an environment the original poster described. In house clients are always dropping off printouts, meeting notes, etc. I guess I'd have to start piling them up on the floor and have a path to my chair. Cubicles aren't that bad if they have enough desk and shelf space. Before we moved to our new building, there were some cubicles that people referred to as urinals because they were practically the same size and layout as what one would find in a public restroom.
Re:An Apology from the Architecture profession (Score:3)
I would say that if an architect had final say over how the building was to be used, then they should have designed a gallery or museum, not an office building. Once the building is completed, the owner should be able to do with it what they want. I've worked at a places where facility services would knock out and reconstruct walls because more room was needed for the tech staff or some VPs decided they wanted the offices in a different part of a floor. Come on! How does this guy think you are to get any work done? Or are the people just there for show?
Peopleware (Score:2)
Interesting to see your post, I've got my own copy of the book open to Section II, dealing with the issue of workspaces.
There are those who've always held that Peopleware (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, Dorset House Publishing Co., New York, © 1987 ISBN: 0-932633-05-6) is a programmer's wet dream of the ultimate work environment. I'd also say that things have changed a lot in the 13 years since it was published: the Internet, a workforce which has grown up in cube farms, voicemail and pagers replacing overhead paging. Still, there are some powerful truths, argued with facts, contained in the book, and echoed in more recent works such as Steve McConnell's Code Complete.
I do strongly feel that open-plan and private-office workspaces fall at either end of a large continuum, and probably are not ideal for much contemporary technical work. The shared office or high-walled cube approach seems to work better than either open or private layouts.
Of the environments I've worked in, two of the most conducive where a "pod" arrangement of cubes, in which four cubes shared a common corridor access. Scooting back on my chair I could convene with co-workers on similar projects, yet within my cube, I had relative privacy. The other was a "coding pen" with three developers at standard desks pushed up against walls. Small enough group that multi-way communications weren't overly common, enough people that collaboration and quick queries were possible.
One of the worst environments was at Visa International, which has "rationalized" its contractor workspace environment by placing all contractors on a single floor of its Foster City offices, dubbed the UN for its international flavor. My direct reports were six floors above me, and co-worker contractors were a dozen cubes down the aisle and across the floor. Hardly conducive to communications (but I got the skinny on the Y2K project and the marketing design campaign).
Private offices, in a development enviroment, tend to cut too many communications channels. The worst situation is closed doors and no glass -- it's hard to tell what you're walking into and/or whether or not it's appropriate. Even a cube-orientation can be almost as effective. The same office which originally had a "coders pen" moved to a new location in which a high-walled four-workstation unit shaped like a "+" was the initial furnishings. Interactions were virtually stifled: the only ways to communicate were to walk around the entire periphery, or to shout in a voice audible over the entire office. Later, a section of cubes with mixed wall heights was adopted -- communications between common working groups was possible, distractions from other groups were minimized.
With the Internet, the opportunities for distraction have also increased. As you say, downloads, pr0n, computer games, personal business, are all distractions. I don't feel that this is the best mode of operation for most technical work, particularly for people who aren't used to working in such an autonomous environment, unless a well defined (and resonably revisable) set of performance milestones can be established, in which case I really don't care where you work or how you spend your time, so long as you produce.
My current employer has just moved from a large-office, high-walled cube environment to a workspace typified by smaller office spaces (8 to 20 workstations), with low cube walls -- about 5'. The effect, for the developers and QA team who share a space with 14 workstations, is that neither public nor private workstyles are facilitated. Noise and distraction are significant problems, as is privacy. Conversations by co-workers, phones (particularly cell phones), pagers, etc., are constant. At the same time, it's impossible to carry on a private (or discrete) phone call at my own desk.
Low walls essentially turn the space into an open-plan office, with various group and individual workstyles meaning that there are radically different work patterns. Neither privacy (a quite, distraction-free personal work environment) nor a small-group bull-pen are possible. Other departments have similar or worse issues with major corridors walking through workspaces, mismatches of proximity and projects -- work teams being split up or disparate teams being pushed into the same space.
It's a less than optimal situation, and working from home (lots of windows, radio, large desk, network connectivity, remote access, phone, IRC) make it an attractive alternative. We do have a large number of conference rooms, and the space is still being built out, so there's hope for improvement.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Cisco is the place to work (Score:2)
Our office consists of a 20 x 30 room with a dartboard, my stereo blasting SKA, or Everclear, or other appropriate music, a beer fridge, and my desk is two keyboard carrols (I got sick of the Server keyboard in my lap all day.... broke a kick ass IBM keyboard by dropping it)with two 19" monitors on it, and a 24" wide table that is 5 feet long next to it. I thought about getting a return for my desk but this small table works much better. The beer fridge is right under it, very accesible, and the white board is right above it. So the perfect working environment....
Re:Other horror stories... (Score:2)
"Zigurat"?
(And the first person who says "no thanks, I'm trying to quit" gets a slapping)
Rich
A rant from the land surveying profession (Score:4)
Plus God damn it you f*ckers CAN'T ADD! All you guys went to college, right? So I know you must have at some time passed some kind of college entrance exam. And they teach people how to add by the third grade at the latest! Why the Hell can't you guys ADD?
I have been a land surveyor, specializing in construction layout, for over twenty years, with a temporary, and now mercifully terminated, side-trip as a small-business network admin - a job which I have lately found so disgusting, between Microsoft's perverted customers-be-damned lust-for-gelt and the recent systematic capitalist crack-down of hacking in general, that I threw it all up and went back to the field. Best career move I ever made too; I even got a raise out of it!
Now I KNOW that an architect is an artiste and can't be bothered with mere technicalities like making their damn grid lines add up the same up one side of the plan as they do down the other. But for the last decade or so, almost all the architectural drawings I have used were produced on CAD systems, and damn it all, they STILL don't add up! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to create a CAD drawing with inaccurate dimensions? It is twice as hard to produce a dimensionally-wrong CAD drawing as it is to just do it right. Yet at least half - and I'm being very conservative here, the correct number is closer to 80% - of these foundation plans off which I'm supposed to lay out the design in the field, are literally impossible to stake, at least in a Euclidean universe, because they don't add up!
So I have to assume that you bastards are doing it on purpose!
Indignantly yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
why an office is useful. (Score:2)
It's also important to segregate your life, as you noted. If eveyplace is the office, and the office is the pits, your life will soon start to suck.
Scenerio in point: You're at the beach and a deadline is near. Your solution just does not work right, Your cell phone is just in range so you loose contact frequently. It happens again. Total frustration. Right then, your little girl pokes at your sunburned shouler again, sending waves of sand and salt into your keyboard. "Look dady", she starts. Her touch reminds you of your own father's 5PM shadow kisses when you were her age, what a bad burn you have. Her high pitched voice has penetrated your shell. Possilbe actions:
A) Yell: "Yeah, Great! Another fucking sand castle. Will you kids shut up, so I can think for a minute!"
B) Try to unstick the jjjjjjjjj key. Say, "That's very nice dear."
C) Drive home early.
Cubicles? Open space? Wrong. (Score:2)
Read Peopleware [amazon.com] by Demarco and Lister for the reasoning and proof of why this is so.
I've had the pleasure of working in both of these environments, and I'm easily 20-30 times more productive than when I'm in a cubicle environment (like I am at the moment). I know this because I managed to write 30 pages of documentation in two days whereas it took 50 days to write the first 20 pages in my most recent contract. I've repeated this experiment many times over the last two years and hope that you will take the time to test it too.
I'm looking forward to the Olympics so I can telecommute again and get some real productivity back from the black hole of time that is my "office" at my current multinational telco client.
Re:My pet peeve.. (Score:2)
As far as flourescent bulbs being more enviromentaly friendly, they aren't. They typicaly use less power to operate but they take far more power to make. They are full of toxic chemicals (including mercury) which can't even been recycled in most areas. A well designed system will use less power but all it takes is one transformer in 100 to go bad and that may change. I don't know how may times I've found transformers that were converting more than 100W into heat.
The small little flourescent bulbs that are replacing normal light bulbs are the worrst. They are even sold by some enviromental groups as being a good thing. Lets see, they have all the toxic chemicals as the typical 4' tubes concentrated in a small package. They use transistors to do the switching so its production involved even more fun chemicals. How about all that plastic too? And once the things are a few years old, the transformers are only about 10% efficent which blows any savings from operating the stilly things. I have yet to see them last any longer than good incondecent bulbs. One last warning since I don't want this to happen to anyone else --don't point these facts out to your friendly greenpeace people unless you can deal with a crying enviromentalist
Re:Truly Useful Office and Home Office Furniture (Score:2)
Later
Erik Z
Dicipline (Score:2)
Yeah, some people have the dicipline to do their work and live both in the same place. I doubt employers will like it when ALL of their employees are working from 8:30PM to 2:00AM... And when certain employess hand in reports with the titles coloured in with Crayola and spilt coffee.
If you can juggle it, thats great... go for it. But the office place symbolizes work and puts most people in that productive mindset.. though I wouldn't mind being able to turn the lights off, some people may find the atmosphere wrong..
I dunno.. heh.. whatever.
For all others there's Mastercard (Score:2)
Computer: $2000
Chair: $80
Enough time to hotkey away from Freecell when boss comes: Priceless
There are thing money can't buy...
Re:Monitor refresh (Score:2)
Of course, what was really happening was that the default refresh rate on the card was either 60 hz, or on many occasions it was 56hz(!)--- between that and low end monitors [shudder] ---- although some monitors had better persistance, and did not look so horrible at the low refresh rate, while others were no better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Although the radiation angle was a legit concern, it was totally mis-understood by most everyday folks
Re:18khz sounds (Score:2)
Strangely enough, info on the construction of home music studios can also be useful.
Re:Ideal Work Environment (Score:2)
One of the companies I used to work for had the bright idea of pumping "white noise" through the speakers above our heads. It was supposed to be "noise cancelling". Instead it sounded like a giant toilet flushing eternally over our heads.
One day the speaker system broke, and through the sudden quiet, we all realized that we had been shouting to be heard about the "noise cancellation".
It was a dilbert company, indeed.
-jerdenn
Re:Part of a larger problem. (Score:2)
You're right. New businesses have no idea how to make office space work, because they have very little idea of how to plan robustly for their future more than a few months ahead.
So most new dot coms and other high tech businesses end up leasing space in an office building that was built on spec. What are the implications of that?
Such buildings are built cheap. The "efficiency" of a commercial building as measured by real estate pros is the "net-to-gross ratio"--the rentable worker area, that you can charge rent for, divided by the total square feet, part of which is the core functions of elevators, corridors, and so on.
Landlords consider 90 per cent efficiency optimal--since individual offices would be too small then, they cut down on corridors by using open space plans or cubicles. Then they save money (energy) by reducing ventilation, thus increasing inhalation of noxious gases emitted by the building contents--the plague of "sick buildings". They have to build large cubes with most of the space far away from walls and natural light. The more windows, the more energy loss. Elevators shut off communication between floors.
The "churn rate" on many office buildings is very high today, maybe 70 per cent move every year. Rents can thus increase more rapidly. If the building does not have computer room raised floors, it becomes a nightmare to string cable and the individual users can't do it themselves.
Many of these office buildings are built in "edge cities," supposedly more convenient for automobiles, but far from the conveniences of the downtown city and public transport. Cars soon clog the roads.
What people have been saying here is that this way of designing offices doesn't work. And your point is very valuable--this is the way businesses in America feel they have to start.
What are the alternatives, that can give the end users the control they need? One possibility is to build incrementally--instead of leasing a huge new office space, rent part of a larger building, with the option to grow into the other space as the business grows, or shrink the space if the business doesn't need to grow in size. Don't plan for the latest high tech gear--instead, create a strategy so that growth can be flexible, and respond appropriately no matter what happens.
I really think that such businesses ought to consider moving closer to downtowns than stay in edge cities. The reason for separation of industry and residences has been in the past that industry pollutes and makes noise. But this is not something to complain about for high tech industries. Another point is that high tech workers are valuable and it is worth investing in better and more expensive space in order to keep them.
Finally, many office buildings, like too many schools, are just too big. They become like factories. Occupants don't even know names of neighbors--there are too many. Computers and the Internet can allow smaller teams to branch out and work in a decentralized fashion.
I believe if new businesses gave more control to employees they would not only prosper but also be able to retain happy people who work hard to make the business prosper. Let's give more control to users to shape their own environments!
The best office layout (Score:2)
Postcards from a Cube (Score:2)
- A converted house with 3-4 people per room. I was core business then and I enjoyed the company. Typically people doing similar tasks were together, but I was the only one cutting up audio on PC. Found out about Tangerine Dreams there.
- Stardard office in academic setting. Down the end of the corridor, only thing past me was a meeting room. I got very isolated and "bad things" happened.
- A less isolated "office" (just a bit of the floor with a door and walls to the ceiling. A bit better than above.
- A cube-like desk at the end of an isolated corridor, not much better than the second room above, but more desk space. Still haven't go used to people always coming at me from behind though.
- A traditional cube in the middle of the office. This is great for overhearing stuff. And for that reason I'm not pushing to get moved into an office.
I'd like to take my existing cube, remove the desk on two sides, raise the remaing desk up and have two stools installed. In the new (previously desk) space I'd like a soft leather couch. That would be my ideal work area. But I'll probably just have to do with the Nerf guns I've recently ordered...Kris J. -- Introducing Nerf into Perth, Australia.
Regarding tall, narrow buildings... (Score:3)
1. Zoning Codes - yeah, bureacracy. Maybe it is simple something saying a building can only be a certain height in an area, but this stops most.
2. Ground Makeup - tall buildings tend to need a stable foundation - solid granite for most large tall buildings - otherwise they will sink, tilt, or do other nasty things which can make for a bad day.
3. Cost - I imagine, up to a point, most tall buildings cost the same as squat buildings. But at a certain point or height, the cost probably rises near exponentially - duing to technical reasons and need to hire skilled workers to build the thing.
However, I agree with your other points. Personally, I would like to see a cubiclized office, but with the cubicles made with real walls, etc. Then, on one wall - have it be a multiple LCD display (or maybe a projector system mounted in the ceiling), showing live outdoor views as the background for X - voila, no need for real windows...
I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?