Tech's Top 10 Workspaces 213
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In bed (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Ours look like the Six Apart place (Score:4, Interesting)
look like the Six Apart place, only less well decorated. I hate cube farms and am glad they're not the fashion in the UK. Open Plan for the win.
Re:Ours look like the Six Apart place (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Loathing Open Office Plans (Score:5, Insightful)
Discussion mode is typically animated and noisy; happens at random unpredictable times; most frequently involves the same one or two people, occasionally involves others; often needs a whiteboard; etc.
Focus mode is the rest of the time, mostly happens at my desk, and I need quiet in order to be at my most productive. No music, no white noise, no intercom, no fax machine beeping that it's out of paper, no cell phones with hip-hop ring tones ringing at full volume, no animated discussions happening "right over there".
IMHO, open office plans are the worst of all worlds for creative workers. When I'm in discussion mode, I'm bothering everyone else. And because everyone else needs to have those discussions too, it's nearly impossible for me to really get into focus mode. I don't need to be alone in an office, but the ability to close the door around two or three or four people who can be noisy without disrupting others or be quiet and get some creative work done is not optional, it's essential. If you can't do that, you just turned down the productivity knob by some significant fraction.
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My big objection to open workspaces is the lack of noise control. As a creative worker (software developer), I get most of my job done by switching back and forth between two modes: discussion mode and focused mode. Discussion mode is typically animated and noisy; happens at random unpredictable times; most frequently involves the same one or two people, occasionally involves others; often needs a whiteboard; etc. Focus mode is the rest of the time, mostly happens at my desk, and I need quiet in order t
Re:Ours look like the Six Apart place (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Ours look like the Six Apart place (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Doing concept art and trying to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the piece you're working on is much harder if you're surrounded by noisy solipsists.
An OFFICE with a DOOR I can CLOSE and LOCK. (Score:2)
Keep your moronic music to yourself, keep your eyes off my screen, and keep your hands off my desk.
I'll keep my desk thankyouverymuch (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'll keep my desk thankyouverymuch (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'll keep my desk (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'll keep my desk (Score:4, Insightful)
1 have a huge amount of income and no investors to satisfy.
2 have a landlord willing to bend over backwards for you
3 take your vast sums and spend them on an architect.
4 take lots of pics and brag about how smart you are.
What he doesn't talk about are the crappy borrowed offices he used when they actually developed their product.
That's before one goes into the less obvious problems with his "everybody gets an office" model.
What about collaboration? I leave my office and go to yours? You leave yours and come to mine? Neither is very conducive to his vaunted hallway usability tests. (Wait, a blogger's advice isn't internally consistent! Not that!)
While the Slashbot loves the "everyone is stupid but me" mentality, these are actually not easy problems to resolve.
Hint: If our needs were solitary workers who can be left alone in their offices, we would send the work to Raj's office in Bangalore for 1/4 of your salary. The reason we don't is that we need you and your colleagues to solve these problems. And that requires both concentration and collaboration.
This is coming from someone who looked at private offices and decided that would kill our small team collaboration work [maybe offering better, but maybe not] and would cost us a ton of money.
Re:I'll keep my desk (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's your opinion then I'm grateful that I don't have to work for you.
You have either found an amazingly rare breed of programmers (those that function well in a noisy environment) or you simply have no idea how programmers actually work. I strongly suspect the latter.
Read up on some of the comments from the "trenches". We don't make up this stuff about "conversation mode" and "focus mode". We don't ask for offices with doors because we like status-symbols. We ask for them because we can work better that way by pretty much every metric.
How did you come to the conclusion that separate offices would kill your team's collaboration work?
Do they literally yell across the room "Joe, can you review my last checkin?" or spontanously summon flashmob meetings?
Yes, working in one big room can work well for up to maybe 10 people. But I have witnessed time after time that it simply doesn't scale beyond that.
People have a natural tendency to take the shortest path to solve their problems and when the shortest path means walking (or yelling) across the room then that will be used. No policy helps that. Furthermore there's always a "new guy" around asking a constant stream of questions, there's always some important gossip to exchange and there's always someone walking around behind your back.
As much as we like to deny it, we're still animals. You can not defy psychology. Someone talking or just walking behind your back *will* disturb your concentration. Most of the time you don't even notice because we all have developed filters against such distractions. But keeping those filters up constantly costs energy. Energy that can not be used for productive work anymore.
In each new economy "loft" that I have worked in so far there were some people who'd regularly come in very early, stay in when everybody else went for food,
or stay very late. When asked about that they all had the same answer: "These are the best (read: only) times where I can actually get shit done."
So, for god's sake, if you want to get the most out of your employees then give them choice. Some people *like* to work in a big-room, maybe because they're really that rare breed or (my pet theory) because they think they can make up for their slacking with socializing. But most tech workers, and programmers in particular, will happily take the office with a door and will thank it with a highly improved performance.
Re:I'll keep my desk thankyouverymuch (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Air conditioning and the UK (Score:2)
You know, I've heard a lot of people complain about that in the UK. Why on earth haven't they adopted AC yet? I know they have summers there, no?
Is it because it's really difficult to retrofit the buildings, or are they just too stubborn to change? I mean, it's not like AC is some radically new invention or something.
Re:Air conditioning and the UK (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Air conditioning and the UK (Score:5, Funny)
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Any modern office building would have A/C of course. Typically this would be set up so that the A/C unit would work in winter, but fail in the summer, or you'd be working in a small sub-zero patch of the office all year round.
Re:Air conditioning and the UK (Score:4, Funny)
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It faces Discovery Communications HQ with a cluster of nice trees in the foreground.
Window FTW.
better windows (Score:2)
You could also get a whiteboard for "conferencing" and set it up in front of the window for a sunshade if your office cow-orkers agree.
With that said, telecommuting is where it is at. That's the greenest of all, no need for huge office building
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I would like to think multiple monitors would be about the best thing, in fact... it's what keeps me happy at my job. Browse slashdot and code.
Far too 'modern' (Score:5, Interesting)
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' (Score:5, Insightful)
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' (Score:5, Interesting)
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'.
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One thing that I would put in my own office is one of those classic couches you see in Shrinks offices. Currently I work from home and my favorite place is on the bed with my laptop.
Sometimes I work on the PC at a desk, and the bed is my absolute fav.
Since a bed in an office would be a nono (unless you have very specific plans for it) one of those couches would be good to work on.
And I have little use for a desk - except when working on a desktop PC from time to time - because I have achieved the paper
rage against gray and beige (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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You don't happen to work at GE Plastics in Chicago, do you? I visited that office once and was impressed by how they imbued the typical, cubicled office with a zen-like atmosphere. It was subtle touches - the prints used for the carpets and cubicle walls, high ceilings, strategically placed windows - that made all the difference
So much for taste ... (Score:3, Insightful)
The place looks COLD! Who designed it? The same guy who did Blade Runner's interiors?
6 apart still has mostly a cubicle-world look; the "oh gee we have a place to stash your bicycle, and a couch!" don't change that. It takes more than a few "exposed brick" walls to "give character."
Pixar looks interesting - but how come everyone chooses couches that don't look like they'd be all that comfy to SIT IN???
I don't know - they still all look awfully "corporate".
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Kinda makes sense, I know I'd pass the hell out on a comfy couch.
Workspace disconnect (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
The movie stuff only exists in marketing.
Re:Workspace disconnect (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
It looked pretty much like you see in the movies, only it wasn't messy like on some shows except for that little office.
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I'd love a 'more sci-fi' workspace, but I'd settle for a PoeticTech Aura: http://www.poetictech.com/aura/index.html [poetictech.com]
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Re:Workspace disconnect (Score:5, Interesting)
it is, but only if you have NOT been in such companies.
I actually have. been in the silicon valley area since the early 90's working for quite a lot of the big names.
back when it was an employees market (sigh!) things REALLY were good for us. I did have several sgi widescreen displays on my desk plus laptops and other misc monitors and embedded systems with cables all over the place. this was in the 1998-2001 era.
silicon valley was all you imagine. it still is, but less and less so. things have changed a lot over the past 15 yrs or so and having google replace SGI wasn't really the kind of change I was hoping for, in the local area.. (just as one random example of a silicon valley 'paradigm shift').
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I've also been in Microsoft's Redmond campus, where a lot of people having pretty sweet offices.
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Do you have a link for a command chair of awesomeness though? That IS missing. And I am definitely looking forward to having a wall (or more) that's a screen.
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Here you go.
Chair [elitechoice.org]
Wall/screen [primenova.com]
Nothing can beat my office (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus there is nobody to tell me I can't have a beer during afternoon conference calls.
Re:Nothing can beat my office (Score:5, Funny)
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...
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Kidding aside, I tend to dress business casual most days even at home. It helps with my mindset. Fridays I wear jeans and a tshirt.
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And remember to wear them for internal meetings too, especially if visitors are coming over.
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Re:Nothing can beat my office (Score:5, Insightful)
NEVER NEEDING TO POOP IN PUBLIC PLACES!!!
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You can't have a beer during afternoon conference calls.
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I travel 4 days a week, and hell, all I need is my Blackberry, laptop and my noise cancelling headphones, and I am a happy camper.
And besides, I could be anywhere - airport, restaurant or home, so who cares if I'm sipping a beer? Can't beat the lifestyle.
And when I'm home, tracks and a tee and a beer. w00t!
If those are the favorite ones.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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My office is a sealed room with no doors and a single tiny unbreakable window.
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At least, I think it's a different colour. The light isn't very good in here.
Re:If those are the favorite ones.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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I found out that having the door closed shuts me from the rest of the offices and "uninvites" people from stop by. Since my colleagues aren't doing it very often, I usually welcome a chance to take a small break to chat, or help someone out.
Some people do like their priv
Re:If those are the favorite ones.. (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the 'casualties' of the modern office seems to have been the secretary. I suppose it is for lack of understanding of just how much productivity a competant secretary can add. Too many people seem to assume that a secretary is just a receptionist, but a good secretary should be viewed as nearly as important/necessary as the person that they are supporting.
Without getting too much into the topics, it is my view that a secretary should be viewed as more of a "Alfred from Batman" than a "Daisy the receptionist". The trick of course, is that if you expect the secretary to hold that much responsibility, then the pay needs to match.
However, I've seen people looking for true personal assistants who had no clue what they should be offering someone who will essentially be running their estate. If your income is enough that you can shrug off a 1-3 million dollar loss in an investment, then you are going to need to offer someone more than $8/hour... Unless of course, you plan to continue to shrug off those poor decisions.
The problems... (Score:3, Insightful)
2. All-indoor jobs. I'd wager that the best "workspace" isn't indoors. There are days I envy park rangers. Yeah, you can make an office comfortable, but keep in mind that it's STILL an office.
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I'll deal with the bears
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Get your company to set you up with a bus pass. I commute to downtown Kansas City from the suburbs and it's glorious with an iPod.
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I'm with you on the big cities thing. There are good reasons to locate an office in a city, but there are really bad ones, too. If you can get the people you need without being downtown, you can do so much more if you locate in the outskirts of a small city. If they'd move out of their $50-75/sf office towers, they could afford to do very good design. Then again, those companies aren't exactly
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Then there's dealing with the general public and their disrespect for the park. I actually got to work with a park ranger once, and it was thrilling. It was at Carlsbad Caverns. I got to hold his flashlight while he climbed down to pick up some
Still looks like Veal Fattening Pens (Score:2)
Of course, given the depth of indoctrination in our society, speaking about such things is 21st century blasphemy. After all, we know what "works" - even though what "works" is pushing us all over a cliff of ecocide.
sigh....
RS
Old fashioned Office (Score:2, Insightful)
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In the world outside Slashdot, it's not just virgins who have sex you know
And if it's a virgin slashdotter's office maybe the locked door is for the sake and sanity of the poor unfortunate souls who might stumble in at the "wrong time" and be scarred for life.
My nightmare is to work in a cubicle (Score:5, Interesting)
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Slightly off topic: It's spelled "Les" Nessman, with one S. WKRP rocked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Nessman [wikipedia.org]
Even more off topic: I just realized how old I am. Now get off my lawn.
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Open work areas aren't necessarily bad. They can increase information sharing and productivity. They don't have to be huge, and not all coworkers are annoying. It depends on the culture.
Pixar (Score:5, Insightful)
Oblig urinal joke: "I hear this is where all the dicks hang out."
Google's Zürich Office (Score:5, Funny)
. . . . . .
Who gives a flying flip what the place looks like? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Who gives a flying flip what the place looks li (Score:3, Interesting)
- Is it cheap open space? Is it open spaces with tall barriers and sound separators? Cubicles? Team offices?
- Is there plenty of natural light? Tall ceilings? Plants?
- How good is coffee? Is it free?
In my experience, companies which use the cheapest possible open space configur
Fog Creek (Score:5, Informative)
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I hope that places like 37Signals, etc. do have private areas where people can get some uninterrupted t
More like, top IT places to work. (Score:2)
Somebody likes to decorate (Score:2)
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Corporate workspace pfft.. (Score:2)
All I want is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All I want is... (Score:4, Insightful)
I see too many places where they give people crappy chairs, and spend tonnes of money on other things. Frankly, if I'm going to spend 8+ hours a day parked in a chair, it'd better be comfy. I'd rather have a smaller desk and a nicer chair, than going home with a sore back, sore neck, sore wrists (poor posture in a bad chair)...
People at my office think I'm odd because I have my desk setup backwards - it's a big U, in one corner is a keyboard tray and cable run for a computer to sit. in the other corner. nothing, which is where I have my computer. Why? Because keyboard trays are a) horrible but b) so poorly designed that it's a normal occurance, in my office at least, to hear *thud* *profanity* many times a day as people bash their knees on the stupid keyboard tray arms. That's poor planning and implementation of a workstation.
A comfortable, functional work space is the key to working well. I think for too long comfort was forgotten, because management occasionally forgets that their resources are people, and need to be comfortable in order to work well. A day at the office shouldn't be painful.
Nice here... (Score:2)
a basic truth (Score:5, Funny)
Remember this: no matter how nice your office space is, if you're an "interactive agency" with an unspellable/unpronounceable name like "Tocquigny", you're going to be the first to go out of business when the Dot-Com Crash 2.0 happens.
Enjoy the pretty scenery while it lasts.
Mushroom farm (Score:2)
I Love My Workspace (Score:2, Funny)
Now, if I could just get rid of my co-workers, life would be perfect. . .
obviously a subjective list (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Proximity to bay area.
2) Superfluous amenities such as office fridge stocked with beer and milk*, free haircuts, sex swing chairs, steampunk decor, etc.
3) Is a trendy Web 2.0 company. Sorry non-interweb employers, you're out of luck.
* Who the hell drinks milk at work anyway? Flatulence ahoy!
Nothing Beats an Office (Score:2)
I've always felt these are a trap to stay at work (Score:5, Insightful)
I've read some major employers in the US such as insurance companies, have salons, barbershops, daycare, grocery stores all in the building. While immensely convenient (there's no denying), and as impressive looking as these offices are (looks better than most people's homes), I believe that these are all simply intended to keep employees at work as long as possible. It may be obvious to some, but I think some are in flat-out denial.
Re:I've always felt these are a trap to stay at wo (Score:3, Interesting)
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Low Standards (Score:2)
IMO what makes a workspace great is light, air, and natural materials. It has to have one or more windows, which _open_. No tinted glass either. Shades or blinds are also critical, and far greener than AC. Lighting should be warm. Not the sterile, cool panels covering cheap florescent bars that we are typically stuck with.
Th
I love windows! (Score:2)
But the commute sucked, so now I'm back to my window-less cube with 5-foot walls...
Try a trading floor? (Score:2)
Open plan isn't bad in itself, it's what you do with it IMHO.
Rgds
Damon
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