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Companies Move Away From Cubicle Culture
Makarand writes "According to this Mercury News article companies are
freeing employees from
their cubicles to save on corporate real estate costs. By eliminating the
need for offices for thousands of employees they are reducing their building
needs by thousands of square feet.
Employees now work in shared areas or from home or elsewhere outside the traditional cubicle.
Those who prove to be unproductive when they have to share space with others risk getting fired. This trend is expected
to accelerate
as wireless technologies are making workers more mobile and capable of working from anywhere.
About 13000 of Sun Microsystems' 35000 employees working in Santa Clara (CA) currently lack offices."
This seems like a good trend for the environment too, because reduced traffic jams, means reduced emmissions, and reduced pollution. Plus you become more productive working from home. You don't have to shower, or dress up (spend lots of paycheck on classy wardrobe), or spend the time it takes in traffic every day to get to work.
Obviously some jobs will require you to be there, but for development, it's not necessary. There are arguements for having devs in work, because people fear they might be slacking off, but the proof is in the pudding!
I work for the military and that's how we've been doing it all along. Computers are scattered throughout many of the buildings. It works fine, though some locations can be more popular than others, such as the machines in the break rooms. There are offices but they are shared by multiple people/shifts. When ever you need to do a little "one on one" (chew their ass) with someone you just find an empty one. For quiet undisturbed work, take a short walk out to one of the out buildings and you'll have the whole place to yourself.
People doing pair programming, eXtreme Programming, and other agile methodologies have been doing their best to leave cube world behind anyway. It may sound odd, but they are voluntarily leaving their cubes behind and have no desire to return to that enviroment.
FairlyGoodPractices has photos of our layout. Business people use the semi-cubes in the center (there is only the one wall running along the center of the cubes and it's made of glass).
A lot of smaller XP groups simply take over meeting rooms for the duration of their projects. The onsite customer usually has their own desks but the coders share workstations and because of pair programming move from workstation to workstation frequently.
No Zen is good zen
...are doomed to repeat them. Viz. this famous disaster at TBWA Chiat/Day.
The idea (with Sun at least) is that you don't need to know where you are going to work for the day. You come in find a desk in the nice comfy lounge or what ever and log in. The log in gets you to your "desktop", sets up your phone, etc.
To me the big downside is that others may not always know how to find you. I know sometimes I would rather walk over someone's desk/cubicle and have a conversation then do it through email or chat. With people logging in at different machines day to day it could become a hassle to find people.
Plus having your own workspace is always nice. I like being able to put what I want up on my cub wall, in a shared environment this could not happen. Not a huge deal, but people do like having a place to call there own, even if it is just 3 small walls.
man
No manual entry for
Same approach at the Sun Java Center in NYC. They have this web-app - you log in & register for a slot (workstation+desk+chair, in a shared office) for a given day between say 9am to 1pm, and the slot is yours if available.
Ofcourse, you can't store your books there, or put up your feet or have a messy desk with papers & stuff, cause you have to be out by 1pm. You can't even use the workstation for development, since you have to check out by 1. So you basically work on your laptop, but use this slot to ftp your work to the server, & that's it.
You feel quite disconnected from your team, since you never meet your colleagues unless there's a scheduled group-meeting. Everything gets done by email & phones.
Sounds ideal but in reality, its far from that. You are spending far too much time communicating, booking these slots & doing admin work when you should really be coding.
It didn't work out for me...but some of my former colleagues have gotten used to it. I like having a dedicated cubicle to myself, some bookshelf space, dedicated workstation, colleagues bumping into each other so we can bounce off ideas, exchange gossip at the watercooler etc I guess I'm too old-fashioned, but work to me means camaraderie, not living out of a laptop.
Maybe for creative design since that is a collaberative process but on the tech side only during the architecture and design phase does this work well. Once you're coding...your total output slows to a crawl. Been through it twice with a team of 46 due to management forcing it down on us. We went from completing releases once every month to having only 3 per year.
The problem occurs because of two major issues. One, you simply can't work efficiently in that chaotic environment and two everyone's minor problems hold up people on projects who aren't even involved as they get called into meetings simply because they are happening in their area.
The best set up we've used so far is a common area used during project architecture then we move off into 2 man offices broken down by function for the project. That is you're always sitting with someone who's doing the same basic job as you. Finally we group all the offices together for one project to make communication better. We also have video conferencing gear and session sharing software for impromptu help sessions with those not in the office and no one "owns" an office as we rotate in and out of them. All we own is a laptop that we plug in to the docking station in our new office when we get assigned to one and a rolling file cabinet/box with our "stuff" in it.
It's a cluster fuck when commmon workspaces get implemented and it's a classic example of short sighted management looking at building costs only. Good luck to those MBAs who think this is a good thing and implement it.
Then how do you explain that the vast majority of patents on file list fewer than 5 inventors? It doesn't make sense. Surely teams of 5 friendly people should come up with more patentable inventions if they ALWAYS outperform the grumpy loners. I'm sure we'd all be much better off if everything was designed by committee.
Lookup Mythical Man Month and one-ten engineers. These are the men that do the real work in any engineering firm. They are the men that can do the work of ten others and who's work needs less error checking because the design is cohesive and standardized, not to an arbitrary standard but to the only one that matters, internal cohesiveness. Many but not all of the people who fit the definition are introverted. They look into themselves to solve the problem and do not do well with outside distractions. They are often ADD or mildly autistic, it's the flipside of many geniuses.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
What a load of crap. The three most productive people in our workplace are the ones who sit down, shut up and get on with their work.
Unfortunately we are forced to share our workspace with someone who simply cannot shut up - he is forever finding the most inane and stupid things to attempt to make conversation with, which inevitably interrupts us.
People are not cattle and should not be treated as such. A bit of privacy and a workplace in which they can get away from loud-mouth social climbers on mobile phones can do a considerable amount for productivity and company morale.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
What this reminds me of is how the Feds are made to work in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash: the first ones in in the morning take the desks nearest the door and management can tell at a glance who's the most dedicated to the job.
I think this is the plan. Instead of management having to understand what their business does, they just assume the drones are substitutable or know what they're doing as much as anyone else and then hire or fire them based on how much they're willing to surrender of themselve to acheive the corporate "vision". Whatever that is today.
It's a fairly inevitable outcome of seeing employees as commodities or resources. How else can you discriminate between them? It's not as if management are going to bother learning their names for God's sake!
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
But some proved unproductive and were fired
I bet that the cost of firing and replacing these employees was larger than the savings associated with the open seating plan. By far.
A friendly word from a geek who has remained employed throughout the recession...
The days of the techno primadonna are over. If you were part of the social group associated with the beginning of the computer age, cool, but you need to understand that inability to communicate or work well with others is and always has been a liability. In the heady days of signing bonuses and six figure salaries, the idea was that you had to tolerate sociopaths if you wanted IT talent. Today's rule of thumb with regard to IT labor goes something like this - is outsourcing your job to an Indian programmer who will work for 10% of what you make more difficult for me than dealing with your bad attitude?
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
Since then, Silicon Valley real estate has become a lot more expensive. To stay in Silicon Valley, Sun has replaced their US work force with H-1b workers overwelmingly from India and China and proceeded to loose over 90% of their shareholders value.
I personally,think it would have been a wise business decision to set up a campus someplace like rural Utah or Oregon. If present trends continue, it appears likely Sun will eventually move operations to India or China.
Basically, there is a workforce that has proven itself able to build a company like sun-but they aren't real productive in high-rent situations. There is another workforce that is much more unproven. We haven't seen really major IT innovations out of India or China yet. We may, but that is still somewhat speculative.
It looks to me like Sun, HP, Compaq, Lucent are all killing the geese that have laid the golden eggs form them.
In the Uber-Messed-up cubicle farm, sometimes action is required:
The basic rule is lead by example & then skrew em.
Figure out how to reduce the ringer volume on your phone. Turn it down.
Listen for & locate the clowns who have theirs on max.
Come in on the off hours & turn theirs down. (Asking them to do it is polite but usually useless)
When you go away on vaction or whatever, turn your ringer off.
When somone else goes away, do unto them. A post-it with "Ringer Off." stuck on their phone is polite.
Figure out how to up the volume in the phone earset & turn yours up. (Reduces the tendancey to SHOUT into the phone.)
Off hours, do unto the shouters.
If there is someone in the farm that uses a speaker phone to check their voice mail, have a "friend" leave them a detailed pornographic voicemain from a payphone over the wekend. (VERY effective.)
For the clown who would rather use you as a talking data retrieval servent rather than flip open a manual, start by answering their question with the instructions on how to look it up themselves. If the clown does not "get it" the answer becomes "I don't know." and then go back to work. If that fails, start returning the "favor". (Whats the format of...?) If that fails, it is now time for for a heart felt face to face (loudly: "Look it up yourself you %&#*!")((If saying it to your own manager, be ready for trouble. Personal experience.))
Hail-Fellow-Well-Met syndrome:
If the morning ariaval of a co-worker is met with a rousing corus of "Hi" and "Good Morning", along with inquiries into last nights activities including but not limmetted to: sleep patterns, food consumption, road conditions and recreational activities, then be the last one in. Or spend the usual arrival period doing some non-local activity. (Collecting/stealing office supplies, user group visits, anything that gets you out of there. )
In a standard poorly designed cube farm, all hall chats will be beside someones cube. There is no way aroud this one. (Good time to clean you desk, and other assorted administrivia.) Or just join in the conversation and say things that are so stupid, everyone leaves.
The foul stench of someones lunch wafting through the air and peeling the paint requires a loud statement of fact. "Wow, that really stinks. I think I am going to be sick. I have to go home." Then leave.
When it gets to the point that nothing is getting done by anyone, anywhere, state the facts in writting. To the boss. Eventually their boss will figure out somthing is wrong & a paper trail comes in handy.
These things come and go. When they come, it's a good time to take advantage of "Developmental assignments". On the last one, I took a position on the 24 hour support dest. Yep it was that bad.
Meeting Mania & how to be a wee bit less unproductive:
When someone attempts to schedule a meeting within 30 minutes of the regular quitting time, have a long standing personal issue that requires you to leave early that day & on that day leave early, no matter what.
The only valid answer to the question of "When is a good time this morning to have a get together?" is: "Now." Then start the meeting.
When handed printed material at a meeting, as soon as you leave, throw it out and e-mail a request to have a replacement e-mailed back. If you get something, you are now free to read it. If valuable, save it on disk, else delete. Next step, if required, is to actaully do what the meeting was about and/or reply in e-mail. Now the meeting Bozzo has a copy they will be able to find in 2 weeks.
When you call a meeting that has an agenda, send out the agenda when you call the meeting. (Give the attendies the chance to come prepared, but don't expect a miracle. You will be the only one prepared.)
After showing up at the correct place, when the clock strikes meeting time, start the meeting, even if you did not call it. There is nothing more productive than a room full of people wait