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How Much Do You Value Your Office Space?
reason asks: "I've heard that office space costs around $10,000 per employee, and sometimes much more. I have a great office: it's a nice size and I have a lovely view out the window. It's a good working environment, and I know I'm lucky. Still, if it came down to dollar terms, I'd be willing to share my office with a colleague or even move into a cubicle in exchange for a mere $5,000/year pay rise. Am I undervaluing what I have? If you have an office to yourself, how much would they have to pay you to make you willingly give it up? If you don't have an office, how much of a pay cut would you be prepared to take to get one?"
Look at Google. They have very few offices, but instead many small rooms with 4-6 people in each. They say it enhances collaboration through discussion and brainstorming. If you're ever unsure about something, you can turn around and ask someone very quickly.
To me personally, office space doesn't mean much. I almost prefer to work with others around rather than being isolated in an office by myself.
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United Bimmer - BMW Enthusiast Community
Firstly, unless you worked for Webvan, or some other profligate doc com company, office space does not cost $10k per employee. Not even in the SF Bay area.
Secondly, you have to consider that the cost of your space is probably only half or less of the total: conference rooms, bathrooms, corridors, etc.: all must be considered, and while the corridors may have to larger if each employee has more space, the bathrooms and conference rooms and other shared areas don't.
So, the delta cost to a company for you to have a cube vs. an office: probably less than $2k per year. For $2k off my gross wages, I would opt for an individual office.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I probably bought it for $15, but that was a few years ago, and it's not the newer edition "with flair" which means it's probably worth less. However, it's still a very funny movie and worth owning, whatever the cost.
What are you offering?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
What is this "out the window" that you speak of?
I would sell my soul for an office. While in a convenient world everyone can colaborate together yadda yadda yadda, but in reality, most people are stinky, loud, and distracting. I would easily give up 5K in salary to get an office...
In my previous job my desk was against the wall in a warehouse. People walking up behind me all the time. Servers spread-out across 3 desks, Cat5 cables hanging down from the ceiling.
No heat in Winter (Hey this is Ontario it does get cold!)
No air in Summer (Hey this is Ontario it does get hot!)
The only way I could impove my situation; wait for somebody to get canned & steal their desk. By the time somebody noticed I had been there for a few months and 'entrenched'. =)
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Many companies are also encouraging or even almost forcing work from home or mobile locations. Personally it's a nice option, but would rather not be doing that everyday.
Considering the distractions that I get (network operations center, so phones, various alarms, and a television tuned to one of several news stations), I'd love to get some time alone, even in a small place. I don't have a lot of paper around, so I don't need space. I just need quiet.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
But shutting the door and thus muting the conversation about what is going on in the latest edition of American Idol is pretty damn valuable to me.
Being able to control the lighting is also very valuable.
Privacy too. I don't like people to hearing what I am saying unless I actually want them to overhear it regardless of what I am talking about.
Ohhh - closed door meetings - those have lots of value.
I think I'd need at least a 50% raise.
Sadly, there is no one room I spend more time in than my office. I spend about 35% of my LIFE in that room.
Since I am alone in it, I have spent a couple thousand dollars in additional furnishing in it ( Lamps, artwork, stereo, TV, various knick-knacks ). I figure if I spend the time, I should make the investment to make it a comfortable room I want to be in.
I'd be hard pressed to give it up for more salary. Would I sell it for a cube? Sure -- but then I'd look for a new job.
> Still, if it came down to dollar terms, I'd be willing
> to share my office with a colleague or even move into a
> cubicle in exchange for a mere $5,000/year pay rise
But will your efficiency be the same in a cubicle? If you put that into the calculation as well your pay rise could easily be much smaller, probably even negative for some tasks.
Which brings us to the most important point: some kinds of work benefit more from a nice seperate office, some less, some even benefit from a shared room.
And don't underestimate the incentive factor, a wage rise might be more attractive for the individual employee than getting a separate office, but his coworkers won't take much notice of that. Promoting someone to a better office on the other hand can provide a much greater "i can accomplish that too" motivation boost for his coworkers.
[i have an opinion and i am not afraid to use it]
Ironically, my "image of the day" prior to posting is "infects." What a great way to describe our shared keyboards, mice, and phones at work!
I'd work from home just to get work done. People trying to bypass the system to get me to work on their problem first, the politics and gossip in the office.
They already pay for my broadband and give me a softphone and VPN. Weeks go by with me wondering why I even come in since there's nothing I can't do remotely.
I won't even want any salary compensation. I'd be happy to save the travel expenses.
-m
My appartment in downtown Seattle is 1K/month. I could easily have 3 offices instead. Maybe if you were building the offices, and spreading the cost over a very small period (1-5 years)its that high.
On the other hand, I now have 3 offices for rent in an appartment building in downtown Seattle. All for a low, low price of 9K/year. Save 1K!
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
In the past 8 years at my employer, I've been in 6 office spaces, some shared, some semi-private, and one wiht a closing door. I don't consider office space as part of my salary, but I do consider the choice of office space (within relative reason) to be worth "something", if not money. Same with office furnature, network jacks, and good power supply.
First was a small kitchen area, shared with 3 other people at different points of the day, with some overlap occasionally of all 4 of us plus an extra person or two. We managed, and as a group we all got along together well - we're all still together, same department, only losses have been due to a death and a retirement. Next had a private office, 3 network jacks, 2 different circuits, it was nice. Then moved to a slightly smaller office, turning down a window office because it was on the south side of the building, not shaded, and my desk was just a tad too big for it. Moved to a shared lab area with 1 other person for a while for renovations, then back. Just moved to a shared area with really high cubicle walls, but now I have a north side window to one side of me and a fishtank to the other.
So I guess it really depends on what you consider to be a good office, or a better one than you have now.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
office space does not cost $10k per employee. Not even in the SF Bay area.
I suspect that number confuses several "facts"...
Most relevantly, maintaining a physical presence costs a company between $5 and $10 an hour. As a full-timer, that comes out to at least $10k per year.
However, the vast majority of that comes from things like HVAC, lighting, providing a legal and reasonably modern PC, and cleaning and maintenance staff. If almost everyone telecommuted, a company could drastically reduce that average per-employee cost. By merely moving someone to a cubicle, a company only shaves the tiniest fraction of that off (personal lighting and possibly a bit of HVAC overhead).
So, the delta cost to a company for you to have a cube vs. an office
Bingo! You've got the key idea... While my absolute physical-space cost may come out to $10K or more per year, I'll take up the vast majority of that whether you give me a 12x20 private office with a view, or an 8x8 half-height cubicle in the basement.
They mostly were horrible: My first office isolated me from other grad students and probably had more to do with not finishing postgraduate education than anything. If my personality had been different, maybe, but I was a heavy isolater at the time.
Most of my offices were not helpful: too grim (converted bathrooms and closets mostly), too isolation prone, too depressing.
Formal office or no, a depressing space will get to you after awhile. It may take a month, it may take 5 years, but it isn't worth doing that to yourself!
I have my own office. The office next to me is 30% smaller yet 3 people share it. Why? Because I'm "more important."
I have found that nice office space is good, but if the company is more concerned about appearances than their employees, that is not so good.
In the long distance past, I found out that the office space for a company I was working at cost 40$ (Canadian) per square foot per month. Now that doesn't include anything other than the rental itself... not power, plumbing, etc. So, I did the math... I was using up an area of 8ft by 6 foot, so 48 square feet. Round it off if you include use of common areas, so make that 50 ft^2. At that price, they were paying 2000 $/month for the space I occupied. Funny thing is that happened to be what I was earning at the time. So when they offered me a 100 square foot office, (raises had occured -- I was up to 3k/month by then) I started looking for a new job. I for one think that an employee should be worth at least as much per month as the floor under their feet. I felt the company was more concerned about appearances and having a fancy address than it was concerned about having employees who could afford clothes to match the office.
For reference, 40$/sq foot/month is for AAA office space... Just about any other building in the city would go for 12-20/month.
Don't get me wrong, I like having a nice office as much as anyone, but not when the company is paying a premium for the address and can't afford to pay a better wage. Maybe it's just ego, but I would like to think that good employees should be worth more to a company than an expensive address. The expensive address may add prestige to the company and bring business, but happy employees who are well paid tend to work harder, produce better quality work, and are less likely to leave the company for greener fields in the middle of a project.
More Caffeine. NOW
If you have an office to yourself, how much would they have to pay you to make you willingly give it up? If you don't have an office, how much of a pay cut would you be prepared to take to get one?"
If I had my own office, I wouldn't give it up for anything. Being able to work somewhere with the benefit of natural daylight and without distraction is something I would not give up. Having the ability to open the window and get natural air is an added bonus.
My reasoning is this: By being able to work without distraction I can focus on producing quality work in a short amount of time, and increase my value to the employer, which would increase my
chances of getting better pay rises. Having natural air also helps achieve this goal (as opposed to having a desk right next to an industrial laser printer which as in constant use).
There was also a previous discussion where Microsoft observed that every 5 minute distraction caused their developers spend 25 minutes in order to get the flow going again).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I used to work for a large multinational "everything" company, and I was lucky enough to start work, shortly after they'd moved into their brand new UK head office. The design of the building was completely open plan(dividers between desks were no higher then a monitor). No-one had an office, not even the MD. All the meeting rooms were glass walled (on at least one side. But actually I got a lot more done than if I'd have had my own office*, or even shared an office.
You had a very good feel for exactly what was going on within the department (120 people), and building. Especially within your own team. You could hear every conversation that went on. Surprisingly it's not that distracting. Because of the levels of noise you learnt to live with it, and block it out, consequently you could keep track of the world, and get on with work. I think had I been in a more secluded environment, I would have spent a lot more time browsing.
They had a quiet room where you could get away from all the people who came to see you/called you etc. And meeting rooms for anything more than a quick discussion.
In all honesty, having worked in that type of environment - office space really isn't a factor that bothers me. I currently work from home part time (student the rest of the time) - and I don't get any more or less work done than I did then. It would nice to have a more social working environment - but as I'm the only dev for the company, that's not possible.
(*Note, I was a placement student, I never would have had my own office anyway!)
.sigs are for losers
I left my first f/t software job, where seniority had given me the best office after VPs, for a 10% pay increase and cutting back to 50 hours a week. We'd had our first child; and money and time at home were more important than office space. That was about 21 years ago.
I'd lop off maybe $2K a year to get a windowed office with a decent view now, but that's definitely less than 10% of what I make today! And I wouldn't give more than that to get a primo office.
Don't under estimate office space. I interned at the same company my mother works at last summer. For the first two weeks I got a corner office (nicer than my mom's office, THAT pissed her off), and it was great. Then they finally processed me and I moved into a little teeny cubicle. I was SOOO much more producive in the office, becuase I didn't have the destraction of listening in on the various conversations of people in my cubical block, and people didn't tend to just walk right into my office unless they had a reason (good to know I'm feared ;) but they would barge right into the cubical and give me other stuff to do.
The space that it takes store all of the TPS reports it what eats up most of the space.
I actually think offices cost less in the long term. I was in an office for half of my career, and in a cube for the other half. My office was at least 25% smaller than my cube, but since it is an office, it doesn't really feel small, it actually feels more comfortable. So with careful planning, I think you can pack more offices (without windows of course) than cubes given the same square footage. Also, I'm pretty sure that a company will save a lot of employee-work-hours ( = dollars! ) just due to the fact that there's more noise isolation and less distractions. Some people say cubes encourage 'brainstorming' or 'collaboration', which I think is total bs. You can always go to someone else's office, take a few of colleagues with you, shut the door, and collaborate all you want without distracting anybody. Finally, you can deny it all you want but everyone takes care of personal business at work. A simple phone call to your doctor which would take a few minutes of your time from your office becomes a 'task': find an empty conference room, (maybe you need to reserve it too), go to the conference room, etc etc, effectively costing more for your company.
You could be lucky like some of us to finally get an individual office to soon lose it to an "open floor plan", to "encourage communication amongst teams".
I'm sorry, but most software developers don't want to listen to chatter, and we don't want to come out of our dark offices and interact with someone.
I would happily trade $2k of my annual salary for a quiet office. My sanity is worth that $2k.
I did not include the cost of buying or leasing furniture, PCs, etc.
This report has details of rental rates in San Jose: $23 - $30 per square foot. At less than 200 square feet per employee (10 x 10 office plus shared space), that comes out to less than $6k. There are plenty of less expensive places in the Bay Area (although San Francisco is more expensive).
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Given the obvious cost savings, why do employers hate telecommuniting so much? Some employers seem to say that telecommuting is ok but not telecommuting 100% of the time which defeats most of the cost savings since having someone come in 3 days and work from home 2 days is probobly MORE expensive than having them come in to work for 5 days a week. On the other hand, having someone work from home 5 days a week is significantly cheaper than having them work in the office 5 days a week (since they dont even need a desk, office or cube)
Has anybody seen my red stapler?
I'm writing this from my office at 8:38 GMT-5. I guess I must frikin' love it!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I own a small business that calls downtown San Jose its home. We lease office space that is about 1300 square feet and split it with another small company. Rent is $1.26 a square foot (but the landlord is now offering the office space above us for $1.15...bastard!) :(
;)
We have 4 people in the office currently, plus a nice-sized workbench space to build servers and a conference table area. We could easily fit 5 people in the same space.
Rent, plus electricity, water cooler, phone, and 6Mbit DSL connection, costs around $1300 a month. $1300 divided by 5 people is $260/month per person. That, on a yearly basis, is $3120 per employee.
Yes, I suppose we could all work from home and save the money, but productivity would be dramatically decreased. For one thing, we do a lot of datacenter work, and we need quick and easy access to the datacenter during business hours (and space to build servers!) Plus, I like the "office environment" where we can easily chat with each other. A lot of ideas come out just from us talking. Plus, there is a comfy couch where anyone in the company can crash out or just sit and think, and some snacky things to chew on while pondering problems. These are fun amenities that I couldn't justify the cost for as easily if they were at my house.
Also worth mentioning is the comfort our customers derive from us having an office. It's a lot easier to sell customers on our dedicated servers and colocation services if they know they can come knock on the door whenever they have a problem. For whatever reason, the "everyone works at home" thing is not considered a professional way to run a small business, and having an office is seen as a must-have for customers to take us seriously.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Sure it's 10K for an office. But how much is it for a cubicle?
;).
Having an office means you can close the door and not hear the noise outside, and concentrate on stuff without having to buy headphones and make yourself deaf. So developers should get office space - easier for them to think.
Sales people don't - they should be at the customer's office
Big bosses need them so they can have private closed door meetings with X number of important people at anytime without having to walk here and there to some meeting room. Plus its a symbolic thing - they're public figures.
Is the distribution of office space an indication of how much an employer values you;simply a matter of seniority and space-mongering; or an unpredictable combination of those and other factors?
If you have an office to yourself, how much would they have to pay you to make you willingly give it up?
If you have an office to yourself, it's either because you're the CEO or becasue you're the last (wo)man standing!
On a more serious note, in the UK, office space tends not to be partitioned into cubicles, or even personal offices, but tends to be open plan.
If you take a modern office, like 30 St.Mary Axe, the London HQ of Swiss Re insurance - a beautiful building btw - office space is offered in three configurations; Financial, corporate or legal. Legal tends to have the most space per person and more individual space and trading the least.
Check the website linked above, click through accommodation, space plans and choose a floor to see an example of this.
All of the offices I've worked in have been open plan and one of my past employers had a policy of everyone working in an open plan area regardless of rank within the organisation. So, in theory, the Chief Exec and the coding grunts had exactly the same facilities. I say in theory, because I never saw the Chief Exec in person and I suspect that senior management had their own open plan office for themselves and their admin staff.
The office I currently work in isn't great - it has faulty airconditioning, exposed block walls old desks and chairs etc. However, that's OK because the company isn't about glamourous good looks, or employee creature comfort.
Notes:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Something else to consider -- if you work from home, you are always at the office, and can be called upon at any hour to log in to the corporate network (on call -- yes, I know...). We had a problem with this 100 or so years ago with people doing "piecework" from their homes. There are laws against this for a reason. Lets not be quite so eager to give up our personal space...
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
I work in a fairly large office with two other people and lots of media related gear. The three of us cover all media related events and equipment (including around 60 electronic classrooms) on a small liberal arts college campus.
We each have our specialties, but I'd say that 60% of the work that each of us does could be done by any of us. When the batphone rings, any one of us answers it, and any one of us can respond if it is an "emergency."
If we didn't share an office, we would constantly be going back and forth between offices to discuss things. In my case colaboration makes for a much better work environment.
Here's a link to one of the seminal studies: http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/171/ibmsj17 01C.pdf
You can also check out "Peopleware" by DeMarco and Lister.
Offices are good -- if you want/need interaction, you can always invite people in, but it's hard to invite people out of a shared space.
The worst "office" environments I've ever been in:
- at one engagement (I was on-staff at a consulting co. for a big client), I actually shared a DESK (not an office), with another programmer. Seriously -- one desk, two PC's, two chairs. Can you guess how productive either of us were?
- Another time, the co. I was consulting for (independent this time) had just finished remodeling their offices, and of course as soon as that was done, they had run out of space. So, they moved all the "consultants" (read, those who actually did real work) into desks strung out along a hallway. Every other person who walked by ended up kicking the back of my chair (not on purpose, at least I dont think so), but it made for a very frustrating experience. Productivity was even less than the "one desk, two people" scenario described above -- after getting jostled a few times, it was necessary to go for a walk outside to vent some steam.
Some managers can't get their heads around the notion that professionals are paid to "produce", not "populate". If they can't see you, you must not be working.
Yet, they love to Off Shore jobs to India, where they REALLY can't see the workers.
Offices are already set up to provide meeting rooms and such for anything from a productive brainstorming session to a mundane "status" meeting. Trying to cope with conference calls with or without a video conference feed just adds more expense and delay to the equation.
No everyone's jobs involve useless meetings. Check out any Dilbert cartoon- meetings just get in the way of getting stuff done.
Politically, it's bad if you're not in the office for extended periods of time. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.
How is that bad? I don't have a manager micro-managing me, and can actually get more work done. I can work days I wouldn't other wise (sick days, etc). I can put in partial days, or even do overtime or on-call shifts a lot easier.
How is this bad?
if you work from home, you are always at the office, and can be called upon at any hour to log in to the corporate network
Great!! I'd love the overtime! And the on-call pay!! And if I didn't want to be bothered, I'd not answer the phone.
I think this is a good questions we have to ask ourselves.
General speaking, most people like it. They like to customize their work space to suit their personality. Why? so your comfortable at work? but why? Your there to work not to sit back and relax. Sure, having a positive environment is a must, but at what cost? If you can't work in a can, find another job. I work in a cube, and am moving soon into an office with another person. This isn't an improvement for me. I will not have a window now, which my cube gave me. I'm also expected to reduce the amount of stuff I have (hard for my job) and use a smaller space. But, I'm not going to look for another job, because I don't need these things to be productive. I don't want to be comfortable at work. Sure, i have pictures and such up, but I don't want to be here longer than I need to, and not having the distractions of comfort, I'm more driven to complete stuff, so I can move on. There is nothing that i keep around that will distract me from my work.
my 2 cents...
EXACTLY!!! They already pay for my high speed net and pay for some 60% of my phone, in addition to the blackberry(to be replaced with something else if BB is shutdown) Why not just let me work from home a few days a week, the only time I have to be in the office is for tuesday meetings! As the parent said, I'd be happy with saving the travel expenses. I would stay on IM all day so the boss can "check up" on me anytime he feels like, if they felt the need to.
Linux Works
I get 2 sq ft and I have to share it with a spock ear wearing intern. And my boss has made it clear that if I complain once he'll outsource my job faster than you can say "management bonus."
Note: the above is a lame attempt at humor. My actual work area is about 50 sq ft and I rarely have guys in spock ears sitting on my lap (at least not at work).
Is that really $10k per year?
I would gladly trade my cubicle for a small, ugly room like the one in Brazil (remember the scene where Sam is fighting for his half of the desk shared between him and his neighbor? that part is ridiculous but the room itself looked to be an adequate size, if it just had a whole desk to itself.) Building offices is a one-time cost, not an ongoing one. If you work for a company that's been around a few years, it makes you want to ask, why don't they already have offices that were built on day 1, fully amortized by now so that it doesn't cost any more? What if they didn't maintain them too much, leaving that to the employees? Each could be free to decorate it in any way that he likes. So the only ongoing cost would be the same air conditioning, electricity and rent for the whole building (if applicable), the same as it is with cubes.
Cubicles are promoted by managers who think they are good for corporate image, or communication between employees, or because they think employees are more likely to waste time if not being watched closely. So I don't buy this "saving money" bullshit. The fact is that introverts in intellectual positions will be better off with their own offices, and the gregarious types might be better off in one big room, with no barriers at all (although I do not understand how this helps them get their work done, personally). Cubicles are a half-measure designed to make everyone equally unhappy.
The only place that I worked that actually had offices, they were shared offices. Fortunately the noisy people were in one and the quiet people in another (just worked out that way - lucky me). They were threatening to tear down the walls to encourage communication, which was ridiculous since that very company had built those very walls itself a couple years before, so the cost would have been double (once to build, once to tear down). So obviously cost was not the issue.
You don't see professors at universities being forced to give up their offices. IMO an engineer is doing similar work, and should have similar accommodations.
I find that when I really need to concentrate, a cubicle just won't do, and I have to go find a room to hide in. (I like to talk to myself when solving tough problems.) In some places this has been very inconvenient.
My office used to be a conference room.
We never had much in the way of conferences so I moved into it.
You can't justify a couch and some munchies for your house? Gee, and here I thought I was cheap!
...the AUD$120,000 is per each.
Nearly halfway to Broome. Good tourism into the Pilbara, too (Karajini, Wittenoom etc, and you can dig around in Wyloo Station's amethyst mine).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I've worked in a private office, a not so private office, shared an office, and worked in an open floor plan.
The best option i've seen is where we had some communal computers with a standard setup that anyone (and groups) could sit down and work at, plus offices for when we needed to work privately. That was fantastic for productivity (having the offices didn't isolate us), yet also was pleasant because we could retreat to the offices to take phone calls, or to work solo when that was more effective. That's the model every development company ought to have in my opinion.
That's hard to come by though. When deciding between having to work surrounded by people with no privacy, vs having an office with privacy, vs having an office with a view, I value it at $10k/year for each step. I'm currently working in the open floor plan with no view, but I took the job because they offered me $20k more than I was making before plus bonus opportunities that may be worth even more. I've also taken a $10k paycut to go from an internal office to an office with a beautiful view (similar work). Totally worth it. That daily pleasantness did so much for my stress level, helping to improve my health, it was great. I'm actually slightly regretting taking the 20k step up right now given the stress of the environment I'm in now, but hopefully the extra money will let me have kids, and that's important enough for me to make the trade off, at least for a while.
Anyway, all in all I'd strongly urge you to consider just how much value your personal space has for you. Consider: how much extra would you pay in rent not to have to deal with a roommate?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I love the space I work in. From what I've heard, you could compare it to a Google type setup. I work in a room with five other people. We all have our own desks, we have windows to the outside along two walls, and we keep the overhead lights turned off during the day. Everyone has their headphones on most of the time while we're working. If someone needs help with anything, it's very quick to just ask the question to the room and someone will respond quickly without needing to get up and track someone down.
We also keep it fun if everyone if burned out after a few hours of coding (or designing... it's a web development production room, so we have many things going on). There is an electronic dart board, darth vader stand-up, and capt. Kirk on the door reminding people to keep it closed. We even keep a unicycle in the space for entertainment.
It can get distracting if you're the only one not burned out when everyone else wants to play, but usually the break is welcomed anyway.
Overall, I wouldn't give it up easily. You'd have to add 30% to my salary to make me take a private office away from the team.
If you're overdue for a raise, would getting an office make up for it?
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
is a hexagon made of dry erase board.
All the hexagons are attached in a sort of hive configuration.
Would I give it up?
Hell no.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
I actually love my cube, as far as cubes go. It's in the back corner of the cube farm, so it was at the end of the "hallway" which went between the windows and the cubes. I took down the walls between me and the hallway so I could annex that space (the hallway went 1 cube section past my 'door' and into a wall) and get a view out the window. (Note: cube sections do not come apart anywhere near as easily as Office Space would have you believe.) Our facilities manager was surprised to find out that I wasn't joking when I asked if I could do that, but he knows better than to argue.
However, I spend so little time in my cube that I probably would give it up for a small interior cube and few $k.
My office sucks. It's too cold in the winter (there is actually cold air coming out of the heating system in the winter), too warm in the summer, and opening windows doesn't make the atmosphere much better. I used to be in the oxygen free zone on my floor, so I shouldn't complain, but the fact is that my office complies with but a tiny amount of the requirements my gouvernment made for offices. And I get payed by my ***n gouvernment!
-- Cheers!
From reading the other comments here it seems that whether private offices are important is a matter of personal opinion. From asking about this it sounds like you don't really value it. If you've been in a cube farm/shared offices then you should have a good idea what works for you, productivity wise. If not, try to determine that before making any changes. Also consider who you'd be around if you didn't have a private office. If it's with people you work with often in a shared office, it might be beneficial. If it's in a cube farm with people who are noisy or on the phone a lot it's probably going to drive down your productivity.
You might want to consider this from the company's prospective: how much do they value the benefits of giving you a private office. Most companies wouldn't dare pay that much for something without expecting some return from their investment. They might be expecting higher morale and loyalty to the company. They might expect you to be more productive. They might just expect their clients to take them more seriously because everyone has an office. Most businesses wouldn't dare spend that much money unless the expected benefit of a private office exceeds (or at least equals) the cost of the increased rent.
where most of us would LIKE TO BE
Why in the world would you give [it] up?
I think you answer that question yourself--most != all.
Well, I'm currently sitting in an officer with a cow-orker (which has just left, though), which is nice and quiet. While the door is always open, it does give me the chance to concentrate and get work done.
;)
If anybody needs something from me, send an email. I don't have to answer it immediately (contrary to a visit/phone call), and thus get a lot more work done.
I 've refused several jobs where I'd have to sit in a cubicle. Terrible idea, no peace and quiet at all. Sure it's suited for certain occupations, but as a programmer/designer I'm not happy in it.
Besides, I tend to swear at my code
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
That I work at home as much as possible.
I can either sit here on my couch, laptop in my lap, my dog curled up next to me, the fireplace going, and have a nice view to the back yard where I can see the birds at the feeder - or sit in a cube. No contest..
Facts are stubborn things.
I've seen headphones sprout in shared offices with too many people. The headphones allow workers to tune out their surroundings and also discourage others from interrupting that person, just like walls and closed doors.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Because we put the drywall up ourselves the hourly rate was a bit higher than the cubicle-mechanics, but the quality was way better.
This was using steel bracketing and standard drywall & drywall screws... The month after we painted them pretty (non-beige) colors.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
The company is throwing away a third of your salary, if the office space isn't well designed.
... The only method we have seen to confirm claims that open plan improves productivity is proof by repeated assertion."
To paraphrase: "The advocates of [open plan seating] produced not one shred of evidence that [knowledge worker] effectiveness would not be impaired.
Umm, my office is 250 square feet and our rent is approximately $45.00 per square foot for a prime Midtown Manhattan location. That works out to $11,000 a year in rent just for my office. There are also utility reimbursements, garbage collection fees, insurance for the property, etc.
I don't know what sort of office rent statistics you are looking at, but even downtown SF is going to be $35.00 PSF for Class A office space (unless you have a huge company and get some sort of bulk discount).
I don't read or respond to AC posts
I only paid $15 for my copy of Office Space [link].
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
I defend my office space with testosterone and anger. Where I work, people do not know when to shut up and leave you alone so you can get something done. I only have one roomate and it's an enclosed office so I can shut the door. Even then, I'd gladly take a pay cut and give up my window view to be by myself and enjoy delicious, golden silence.
Team rooms and collabration spaces appear to be the wave of the future. In our last round of hiring we specifically looked for individuals we felt could thrive in these environments. The introverts who like to work in closed door offices are past over regardless of how talented they are.
The whole is greater than the some of the parts. A team of individuals working closely together will outperform the same number of more talented individual working in isolation. At my company, we have proved this.
"The world is like a circle with as many centers as there are men"
Just so you know, the cost of a cubicle is -not- $0. I've heard figures quoted around $3000 at the low end for cubicle space. So your company is not offering you a $10,000 perk there to exchange for more cash. It probably works out to more like $5000, and the company make take a hit on your productivity that makes it more valuable to them than saving the cash.
I worked in an office in the Boston area. It was OK in summer, but in winter it became clear that the building's HVAC was fundamentally faulty: it had no humidity control, so the air was literally drier than a desert (below 10% humidity). Lots of people had headaches, sinus problems, and so on.
Then the company decided they wanted to clear out the entire floor I was on, and turn it into a center for customer meetings. I was told I could either move to a cubicle on another floor, or move to a home office. You don't get any prizes for guessing which I chose.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I'm going to build a home office. Over 700 sq. feet, library, server room, storage, and plenty of windows. To me - that's worth about $100K in construction costs.
The problem is, I don't know if I'm going to deduct the building costs or make a yearly usage deduction, or neither. Currently, I use a 200sq ft. bedroom as my office, and I don't itemize its use in my taxes, just to avoid the old audit red-flag. But now that I'm building a separate addition to use exclusively as an office, I'd like reduce my tax burden somehow.
I know this is somewhat offtopic - but does anyone have any advice for my situation?
About as much as I value my Red Stapler.
It depends heavily on the job.
Personally I'm a scientist (well, ok, I'm currently looking, but otherwise) and there's a pretty big disconnect between what you're doing. You obviously need lab space to do work in and it's just plain idiotic to have each person working in their own little lab. Each research group, yeah, but not each person. Depending on your lab and what you do people either pick out lab stations or you set up areas based on the work done in them. The thing is, you're not always working in the lab. You need to have an office someplace where you can go and analyze your results. Read journals. Type stuff up. These are generally tasks where having peace and quiet is much more of a bonus. Want to collaborate? Go check and see if someone's in their office or check in the lab.
While I was an undergrad and completely without an office it was frequently a pain in the ass. Sure, it wasn't in any way relevant for me to actually have an office, but you get into little problems with even the most basic things (e.g. nowhere to put your stuff) and trying to work through your notes and figure out just why your experiment keeps failing isn't much fun when you have a loud centrifuge going next to you and your co-workers trying to work on their experiments.
...with smart courteous people is the way to go. However at most places they simply put all of the 'tech' people into a crowded space, working on unrelated projects. Some people are loud and rude, (eating at their desk, coming into work sick, bad hygiene, having private conversations in close proximity to coworkers.)
From what I see Google has it right.
- Everyone working in the same space is on the same project.
- They have a dedicated cafeteria. I would imagine that eating at your desk and taking unrelated phone calls is not tolerated.
To many IT shops just pile people into a crowded room without any thought on managing that space.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
... no one can have an office space with a door that closes. I was trying to move into the server room to give up my cube for a newcomer. I asked about it but I didn't know about the "no door" policy.
Even the owner has a space just like the rest of us.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
You'd even (*gasp*) move into a cubicle? Where exactly do you think most of us already are, you insensitive clod? I'm thinking that if you are working in an actual office, you don't need an extra $5,000/year.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
We did that at my company. We moved to a smaller office and most of us went from small private offices to open cubes and a lucky few got to share a small office. I heard our VP bought her Lexus with the bonus she got for saving money. Us? We got to wear shorts while we helped with the move. Oh, and one of the IS guys dropped half our Sun boxes off the back of his pickup so we got to share those too.
The most productive space I've found is sitting in the back of a meeting I don't care about. I get no interruptions and the background noise is just the right level.
Background: I've worked in software development and QA since 1980. I've worked in multi-nationals (IDM, DEC, WANG, PR1ME) down to startups with 3 people and many other sizes in between.
Sensitivity: Some people are more sensitive than others. There is a range of stimulus within which people are comfortable. Too little stimulus and they are bored; too much, and there's an urge to yell "SHUT UP!". In between is where people are most productive. Imagine a thermometer, but marked in amount of stimulus instead of degrees. Your "comfort-zone range" is most likely not the same as mine. I need little stimulus to be comfortable and am easily overwhelmed. BUT, that sensitivity allows me to be exceptionally good at picking up on software defects - I perceive things that most people don't even notice. OTOH, there are people on the other end of the scale who THRIVE on CHAOS. Anything less and they feel bored. These are the folks who can keep their heads when all around them is going nuts. It's not so much that they are necessarily processing all that stimulus better, but more often they only perceive some fraction of what you and I would notice. Freed from the additional input that overwhelms us, they can see the big picture and make decisions when others couldn't.
Distribution:Of course, offices are set up to be most comfortable to the most people. Take a bell curve of sensitivity. I'm with the 10% at the low end - it doesn't take much and I'm happy... and it doesn't take much more and I'm overwhelmed. The manager types tend to be at the other 10% end of the scale - they can deal with chaos. Then there's the other 80% or so for which the usual office setup is designed.
My experience:I am most productive when I can get into "FLOW"... that's when all outside distractions disappear and I am totally immersed in the problem at hand. I can, in one hour of that, produce what would otherwise take me a whole morning or even a whole day. In a cube farm, it is EXTREMELY dfficult for me to get into the FLOW. My productivity suffers. I just can't keep focused when so much around me is distracting. So, what has worked best for me is an office of my own where I can close the door. For many (most?) other people, this would be akin to an isolation chamber and they would be bored - and out of their comfort zone.
Then again, there have been a couple of times when I was working VERY CLOSELY with a co-worker on the EXACT SAME problem area... it was as if the two of us were one with the project and with each other's way of thinking. Then, and only then, did I find a shared office to be more productive than either a cube farm or a single office.
Positions: I've hinted at this above, but some jobs are more conducive to engaging, constant stimulus than others. Deep contemplation versus constant interaction and brainstorming. Software QA, e.g., versus a software developer trying to brainstorm a way past a blocking problem.
Summary: I do not believe there is a single, best answer. It depends on your personal makeup and the task(s) you are trying to accomplish. What is best for me, may well be the worst environment for you. So, I won't forcce you into a private ofice, if you don't force me into a cube farm. Okay? ;^)
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
that's because if you don't meet your customers expectations, they need an address to send the goons with baseball bats to.
My current office is windowless and roughly 9x11 feet and since it used to be an EMF interference testing area (a.k.a. "closet") for medical equipment, has copper mesh on the back of all the drywall and covering all of the ceiling tiles. Yes, I work in a faraday cage. Radio reception sucks and company policy is that no streaming is allowed over the network so I have to be sneaky. One of these days I'm going to run an antenna out into the place where the normal people work and I'll finally be able to get a signal.
My best. office. evar. was when I was still a developer 5 years ago and my company (a midsize VOIP startup) had just moved into a new building with room to grow. Almost everyone got their own office. Mine was east-facing, approximately 20x50 feet, big wide window across the 20-foot side, with a 40-foot walk to the kitchen and an outdoor 2nd floor balcony. I had room for my fishtank plus having the other half of the office for a test area. It was XANADU. The company ping-pong table was on the other side of my office wall, so I'd get periodic crashes into the wall during particularly energetic games, but it wasn't bad. I could crank the tunes and I'd be set.
I doubt that I'll ever get an office like that again, but it was great while it lasted.
The only other observation I have about office space is that when I was working a 4-week stint in Germany (Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart), all the developers had to share offices, but there were only 3-4 in a room. All offices had -=openable=- windows and everyone was seated facing into the center of the room so that nobody could see anyone else's monitor. No cube partitions, just plenty of desk space. It was lovely... very calm. There was a rule that quiet was preferred and that energetic discussions should take place in conference rooms and common areas. At the time, the German parliament was debating workplace rules with an eye to avoiding sealed buildings and cube farms, oddly enough. We were quite fortunate, there.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
I hope they don't qualify as porn but they may qualify as comedy or maybe tragedy.
My office is in Orlando where full service Class A rent (includes utilities, cleaning, etc.) is $21 PSF. I am sitting in a approximately 150 square foot office (very nice size I must say). Simple math tells me that my office costs $3150 per year. This is in a very nice new building in a nice area. Outside my office there are cubicles that are approximately 70 square feet each. So I would say the differntial is about $1500 per year.
I currently inhabit one third of a standard 8x8 cubicle. I would settle for either cash compensation to me or paying the other two guys to shower and brush their teeth more often.
What about that /. article from some time ago that said that when you're in "the flow", an interruption can mean waiting quite a wait for "the flow" to return. Six programmers sharing space seems like an "interrupt thrashing" waiting to occur and re-occur, with work proceeding at a glacial pace.
For the last few years I've worked for a large consultancy which shall remain nameless because they're likely to hit the news soon anyway (I left for a reason ;-), and they had some designer type redo the offices. 'Hotdesking' is IMHO an excuse not to offer storage space, and I found teh the best work I could do was when locked away in a conference room instead of in teh middle of a gazillion half overheard phone conversations (other than by sticking headsets on but that has it's own problems - not everyone likes music when they think). It's ironic that such companies pay (just ;-) above the mean to get really clever people, and then sets forth to avoid getting their best thinking from them..
;-)
Give me my own office anytime - my challenge is to keep it totally empty to avoid distrations
Insert
I'd love to hear an anthropologist or psychologist's view on this. Groups of up to 4 or so people sharing a space sounds great, something primaeval about small groups of people sharing the same rhythyms, having quiet times, having social times, informally worked out. Collaboration indeed prospers in groups.But more than 4 or so is hell in my experience.
I work in an open plan space with up to 20 people and senior bosses offices round the outside; constant distractions, noise, people on different work patterns.
At any one time somebody is trying to get into a deep calm silent work headspace, and somebody else has just finished a major task and really wants to burn off some energy and enagage others in social banter. I don't blame anybody, I just think it's natural that if you put 20 people together then they will be in different headspaces at any one time so conflict will occur. We've tried informal rules (e.g. go to the coffee machine if you want to chat) but they just don't work that well.
How is that bad? I don't have a manager micro-managing me, and can actually get more work done. I can work days I wouldn't other wise (sick days, etc). I can put in partial days, or even do overtime or on-call shifts a lot easier.
You're looking at it logically and from a task-focused perspective. None of that has anything to do with business. If you aren't in the office, you gradually become nobody. You become increasingly isolated from the political and social core of the company. Soon you become an abstraction with a very huge cost center associated with your pay and benefits. You might actually be the most productive employee in the company. None of that matters, because the people whose asses you are pulling out of the fire won't realize it if you aren't there. As we all know, labor costs in the modern economy are not fixed. A quarter will come along sooner or later where the company does poorly and people get laid off. You are already gone. You aren't in the office every day. Your manager can let you go without creating tremors in the grapevine. No messy security escorting you out, no rumors running around - nice and clean. One day they are paying you, the next day they aren't. Then it's on to the next quarter.
See? Bad.
When I took a tour of google, I didn't see much in the way of rooms. It was mostly open space with 3-4 employees per (enormous) cubicle.
Beauty is just a light switch away.