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Building a Cube Farm that Sucks Less?
"In our office, developers are all intermediate to senior. They have a good knowledge of the software package they are working on as well as the business that they are serving.
In this environment, people can generally work for a day or two without having to ask questions. If questions arise, people don't mind walking over to the right person. The cube vendors' breezy assertion that we'll boost productivity by being able to shriek out questions, and overhear conversations (naturally they'll all be related to what we're working on) doesn't seem to fit our work flows.
My guess is that we're basically going to want to retrofit our existing work patterns into a sub-optimal cube environment. We can design in some workrooms with full walls and doors that shut.
Here's what I'm thinking at the moment: Cubes should be quiet, quiet, quiet! Meetings, pair-programming, collaboration or highly hairy coding should be restricted to workrooms, which would be set up with a CPU to Remote Desktop (WinXP) back to the developer's primary development machine.
But this is just what I've dreamt up on my own. Has anyone experimented with this setup? If so, how often do you need to get out of your cube and shut yourself in a room? Is it useful to have white noise piped in, or is it better to have an oppressive rule of silence imposed on everyone?
Many thanks."
Make a maze so that you have to walk at least three times around the room and reverse directions twice to get from your boss's office to your cubicle. Put a coffee machine somewhere on the route to further distract him. Finally, there are these "half-height" cube walls, usually used for making a service desk type thing -- put them up for one wall of your cube, but HIGH, not low, and cover the low-down opening with a table or desk. This enables you to crawl away to the next cubicle if your boss does make it, also you don't have to walk so far to get out of the building.
Valuble people have offices. Expendable resource units have cubicles.
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Two of the biggest problems I have with cube farms are noise and visual distractions. Being at the end of a row of cubes where through traffic is rare helps with the visual distraction somewhat. Try and be sure that the cubes aren't just laid out in an open grid where people wander every which way. If you can get them formed into halls of cuves with ends to them and you can get into one of the end cubes, you've got a leg up.
It's also possible to get walls that are as much as seven feet high. This helps too, as you don't see people's heads floating by all day.
Why not a open floor? Works for us (import company, not a tech company).
P.S. Double height cube walls prevents the Prairie Dog effect.
That would be an especially important suggestion.
Another good, earlier suggestion was to put plants around the top of the cubes to give it a friendlier jungle look, which I like.
But making the cube walls double height will prevent a bad situation from happening when cube dwellers happen to stand up at the same moment that the plant mowing blades are being used to trim the plants.
At MyCorp, we've found the productivity of programmers typically falls about 97% after their heads have been mowed off like a prairie dog that popped up at the wrong time under a riding mower.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The office at my previous company switched to an open plan. We had actual offices for meetings and group work sessions, and the rest of the area set up as a wide open floor, with nice expensive desks and comfy chairs. It took a while for some members of the team to get used to it, but eventually rules and psychological barriers started to naturally fall into place (call out name and ask permission to roll into somebody's "office"; if someone's got headphones on, don't bother 'em; etc).
It was the best boost in productivity we ever had. Spontaneous group brainstorms, pair programming, etc, were much easier.
--riney
... don't put me next to that weird guy with the long beard and the sketchy "green" sweatpants!
You want "war rooms" - a room with a whiteboard, a door, perhaps a water cooler, and a network drop or wireless LAN.
You need several. Don't allow them to be "reserved" - no sign up sheets for these. These are not "conference rooms". These are places your people can go to hash things out on an ad-hoc basis.
You need an absolute ban on speaker phones.
You should discourage anybody from using speakers on their computer - encourage headphone use (at a reasonable volume level).
It still will suck. I went from an office with a door that I could close to a cube farm, and it gets very hard to concentrate. The only benefit cubes have over offices is that management can change things around whenever they feel bored.
www.eFax.com are spammers
You won't get a very quiet cube farm. Just doesn't happen. However, if the ceiling tiles are the expensive noise absorbers instead of the cheapest crap you can get, then when you sit down it is noticeably quieter than when you stick your head up.
Getting good non-echo cube walls and ceiling tiles is very important. Notice how many people refer to plants . . . often plants installed in the right places noticeably cut down on echos, and even if not consciously noticed it definitely gives a quieter calmer feel to the room.
If your work is seperated into functional groups, consider Double Height walls around each group with short walls (ie. 1' above the desktop) between personnel. This gives the apperance of group privacy but encourages communication between people within the same group. I saw a noticeable improvement in comroderie, performance and moral among my employees by doing this.
Pros:
Cons:
So, I like it more than your Office Space style cube farms, but much less than my own office
--
Mando
You need lots of weapons, CWM's (Cubicle to Worker missiles). Each worker must have a sidearm and senior programmers get mini guns too. By the end
youve turned a boring cube farm into a real life version of Worms Armageddon / BattleZone.
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I worked at a web developement company that had cubes. The cubes were roomy, and fairly open, we had four developers with our backs to each other. A table in the middle for small ad-hoc meetings. The heating/cooling for the building was handled thru water pipes so we had a white noise that made it virtually impossible to distract anyone except for maybe your closest neighbor. You were only heard if you wanted to be heard (the boss callling us all in for a meeting, etc.). Pretty much everyone worked with music playing all day, and you did not hear it, even if you turned your music off to take a call or something. The white noise was real annoying to me at first, but after a few weeks I rarely noticed it.
Really it all depends on the worker's ability to adapt. I now work in an office that is open. I really like this way, I can collaborate with the designers and other developers without moving. Granted sometimes it is a little crazy when people are collaborating and others are on the phone, but all in all it works well. We had a designer that could not handle that he wasn't at least in a cube. He couldn't concentrate on anything.
I've been working in the same cube for about 2 years (they let me out for food and bathroom breaks). It started out as an 8x8 cube, with an L shaped desk tucked into one corner, so my back was facing the cube entrance (a 3' gap in the middle of the partition).
About a year ago, I had the office staff switch the layout of the cube. The partition which held the entrance was removed, and replaced with a 4' partition, so the entrance was shoved off to one side. I rotated my desk around so I can now SEE the entrance. This way, no one can sneak up on me. Sure, make all the pr0n jokes you want... I love it like this.
I think there is a psychological effect to having your back exposed. It puts you slightly on edge. This way eases a lot of that stress.
Things I have observed:
*) *NO* speaker phones. I always seem to be stuck next to someone who spends his day chatting on the phone.
*) quiet cell phones. People with the star spangled banner, show theme songs and what not just need to be shot.
*) headphones at decent levels. My current cube neighbor has headphones but may as well be using speakers.
*) tall cube walls. Prevent gophering and helps with the noise.
*) people who need to work together should be near each other. Sales and marketing should be nowhere near the engineers. They tend to violate the first two rules above. It should not be difficult to wander near the people you need to talk to. Avoid mazes.
*) easy to acquire rooms with doors and either no windows visible from cube land or easily covered ones. My current employer has accordion blinds which is a good solution. Nothing worse than managers wandering into meetings to steal people.
*) some number of the easy to acquire rooms should be set aside for war rooms and not be reservable as meeting spaces. Sometimes you need to get 3 people together and hash things out. This is not limited to programmers either.
*) a whiteboard (or 2) in every cube
*) as much as possible the major flow paths should not have cube openings on it. People constantly walking behind you is not conducive to productivity.
Let me get this straight, you're going FROM offices TO cubes?
.
:)
Time to add your company to fuckedcompany.com, methinks. Put a 'SELL' on that those shares, too. Eek. My condolences on your upcoming loss of peace of mind.
A previous poster mentioned a ban on speakerphones, which is a great idea, but doesn't go far enough. Separate out the people who use the phones a lot (project managers, sales, etc.), and move them far, far away, otherwise you'll hear their ringing phones and phone conversations all day long. "Joel on Software" has a lot of strange ideas, but his essay on this topic is spot-on in my experience. Check it out here
Make sure your new spiffy partitions are very high - as high as possible.
Make sure the ceiling absorbs sound. Dropped ceilings suck, but they do absorb more sound than the trendy 'industrial' bare concrete ceiling look.
Overhead lights - kill them. I had to get out the ladder and remove the fluourescent tubes multiple times before maintenance understood this point. $10 torchiere lamps from Ikea make for much better lighting.
If you want to try to avoid the asking for help syndrome, check out the software at AskMe.com - an interesting idea, though I've not used it. If not this, set up some type of knowledge base intranet.
Make sure people's phones can be set to "do not disturb".
If people listen to music at work, make them use headphones.
Look for a new job is probably my best advice.
Prairie dog effect: When a loud noise in a cubicle area causes dozens of employees to pop up from their cubes to see what happened? Wanna see it happen? Drop a phone book on you desk and see who pops up :)
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
telecommute. Just tell your boss you need to telecommute a heck of a lot more...
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
At least you aren't in bullpens, or open plan. For a span of nearly 2.5 years I only had a cube of my own for two months. The rest of the time was shared cube, corral, or open office.
So I don't think cubes are so bad. If you can, get nice big ones. I think 10'x10' is ideal. Make sure everyone has a large bookcase in addition to drawers and some lockable storage. Everyone should have a large whiteboard, a guest chair, and a coat hook. Install keyboard trays everywhere.
Some cubes are available with sliding doors. Ours looked a lot like frosted shower doors. These were very popular.
Definitely configure the desks so that people don't have their backs to their "doors".
Good lighting is important! Be careful, though. There's a particular cube system that features lamps that attach to the underside of shelves with gigantic magnets. Be sure not to get those. I've worked at *two* places that had them!
I don't like the super-tall walls, but then I'm too short to see over the default height. Where I've seen the super-tall walls the top parts were glass. This helps to keep the place from seeming like a dungeon.
Finally, headphones, headphones, headphones.
Sarah
I've most been in cubes all my short work life, and where is what I found worked. Some of this is a repeat of what others have said.
Furst tellecomute. Even if you have an office learn to tellecomute. Nothing stops interuptions when you are on a deadline like not being there (and your boss can tell others you are sick to encourage people not to call you at home). Short of a major customer having a critical problem isolated to your code you won't be interupted. Sell it to upper management as a solution for bad weather days, or enviormental awareness. (There is no reason to go to the office 5 days a week. 1 or 2 is plenty for a programer, think of the enivormental benifits for 1/2 the car traffic)
Make sure there is a white board in every cube. And not a little one either. I had a 4x4 one in my cube, and sometimes I ran out of space. A lot of algorithms are more easially planed on a whiteboard than on a small piece of paper. We had "war rooms" that others mentioned, but they were never used because the white board in the implimenters cube wasn't subject to erasure by the next team to need a whiteboard.
Insteard of a guest chair we had two "pedistools", which were fileing cabinets with a cushion on top. Not comfortable for all day use, but a guest could spend a few hours in your cube with one, so you could make some real plans. (See whiteboards above) Get these instead of the normal cube supplied drawers.
Make sure there is enough other storage. Some people will need it, some won't, but make sure those who need it have it.
Keybaord trays: don't fake them. We decided that instead of a $400 keybaord tray to substitution $200 keyboard shelves. A freestanding tray replacement that sat in front of the desk, and in theory could be moved away. Out of 100 cubes with them install, I recall 3 people used them, and the rest were sent to storage somewhere else. (about 10 more were latter given to cube users in other areas who wanted them). The only people who seemed to find them useful had 3 keybaords in their office. (Normally a PC, Xterminal, and a 3270) Keyboard trays would not have been a waste. (OTOH those who used the shelves likely prefered them as an ideal way to get the extra keyboards out of the way)
Lighting: for me task lighing only. For others overheard lights work good. It is easy to remove tubes, just make sure the miantance guys know you are allowed to do this. Have some hall "night lights" that are always on so it doens't get too dark. Put some task lights in every cube. Make sure there is natural light avaibale somewhere, windows in the break room, or at least sky lights. Something so we can see the sun. Even though I was 100 feet from the nearest window I could tell when a storm was comming by the changes in the light.
Have a simple plant policy and enoucrage it. Basicly if nobody is alergic to the plant than you should have it. (My first cube mate was deathly alergic to just about everything, so blooming plants were out in the area, but normal plants were still allowed) There will always be a few green thumbs in the area, install grow lights for them. It brightens the room up for the rest of us to have some real green.
Last, because last is remembered best: Get a GOOD chair. The typical cube worker will spend most of the day sitting on one chair in their cube. Dont' let management skimp here. Make it clear that if there is ever a choice that a good chair is more important than any other demand! Your body will thank you. (though a good chair doesn't substitute for exercise)
This is one of the good things we have here at work. They've even called "War Rooms" on paper signs. They're dotted throughout the building.
Also, getting access to one of our conference rooms (we have lots considering the company size, I've NEVER seen all of them in use at once.) is pretty easy. These are in addition to the war rooms.
Speakerphones are (of course) necessary in the isolated rooms, esp. if your company is multi-location. (The team I'm on has almost daily meetings each morning in a conf room, with a speakerphone to one of our other locations. Yes, our product is developed in two places and it's worked out quite well.)
High walls are a must. All cube walls here are above head height when standing for most people. (A few MIGHT have their eyes above cube level, but these are the excessively tall ones.) High cube walls helps in soundproofing. Sound from more than 2-3 cubicles away is almost completely deadened, and from closer in is still reasonable. Good sound absorption is critical in a cube environment - Don't skimp on this or you'll pay in the long run.
An interesting thing about our layout was that the original CEO of the company had a policy of mixing people throughout the building - Engineers would sit next to supply chain management, etc. It would sometimes be a little less convenient (you'd have to get up and walk to find someone), but it helps people get a little exercise. The fact that most of the engineers are constantly shuttling between their desks and labs means that even if people were seated together (an increasing trend since we merged with another company), they'd STILL have to get up.
Make sure the cubicles are sized well. Mine is monstrous and I was assigned it when I was just an intern. Keep them all the same size so no one feels inferior. Do NOT put more than one person per cubicle!
If management wants easy communication between adjacent cubes - Keep the high walls. People can get up and walk next door, or stand on their desks. (Yes, a few people do this where I work. It works quite well, and often provides a small amount of amusement for anyone walking nearby.) Needless to say, sturdy desktops are important.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?