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What Kind of Office Space Do You Want to Work In?
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?"
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.
I come from a country where fluorescence is norm, and I have not seen people complaining about "dizziness" blah etc. It's all a fixation with light bulbs (a 60W light bulb emits less than 10% irradiation than a 40W fluorescence). That's not
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."
What I've had in the past:
- 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
--
A "freaking free-loading Canadian" stealing jobs from good honest hard working Americans since 1997.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
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.
IKEA 3 surface Effectiv desk: $750
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
Kevin Fox
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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
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I was very interested in this a few years ago and read quite a few books on it. The book that most influenced me was Peopleware which talks about the best environment has the most amount of un-interrupted time. For example un-interrruped by phone calls, by noise from other people, by PA system paging etc. It also said offices are best and at most 2 or 3 people per office. Best was 1 office per person.
Well when I started my own company I gave that a try. We got a space with 21 offices and gave each of are 16 employee's their own.
It was an utter failure. Some employees would download porn all day, others would be on the phone all day but the biggest problem was communication. We were in the video game business where the product is something that has to be fun and visually pleasing as opposed to a perl script or a command line utility or even many apps which only have to be functional. I've come to believe that this "fun and visual pleasing" requires lots of interaction and feedback from the various team members and that separating the team into offices prevents this. Well prevents is a strong word but I now believe that it would be best to have almost the entire team in one room. This way artists and programmers can give and get instant feedback and collaboration.
I believe the reason the Peopleware model did not fit was that the Peopleware model was for "average" programming tasks. By average I mean that the majority of programmers have a technical spec. They don't really need to interact much with others to implement that technical spec. Making the spec might have required meetings etc but once the spec is finished they programming job is fairly solitary. Things like writing drivers, database apps, network stuff, custom corporate apps, etc.
Games on the otherhand have to be fun and pretty. Two things that can't be specified. Sure you can write down alot of stuff and there is tons of stuff to implement in making a game "engine" that may not require interacting with other people on the team but when in comes to making the actual game, making an enemy or weapon or even setup screen, many people need to give their input. "Make it a little faster... Can you adjust the height he jump a little?...When he goes past that make it a little louder...Can that fade out a little slower?..." etc.
Basically that means that what is good for some programmers "private offices" is not good for all programmers.
-gregg
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.