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Large Tech Companies Moving Beyond the Cubicle
statemachine writes in with a story from Silicon Valley about how Intel and Cisco, among other companies, are experimenting with cubeless, open, and unassigned seating. "Beginning this month, [Intel] will set up three experimental work sites. Open areas, comfortable armchairs, extra conference rooms and tables where people can plop down with laptops will replace the ubiquitous cubes that have been standard issue for decades. Each morning, Intel employees will log onto the corporate network using wireless connections. Their phone numbers will follow them. White boards that employees use to sketch out business plans and project strategies will be outfitted with electronics so drawings and plans can be transferred to laptops and e-mailed to colleagues. 'People feel much more comfortable coming up to me. It's more of a friendly atmosphere,' Cisco senior manager Ted Baumuller said. 'I hope I never have to go back to cubes.'"
I was moved from a single office, with a door, to a double up office, to a cube farm in a call center with cube walls one foot higher than the desk. This was intolerable and clearly designed to get people to 'volunteer' to work from home. We still have a so called visitor center but unless you have ITN installed on your VoIP on your PC you don't have a portable phone number.
I don't mean to sound insulting or presumptuous, and I don't claim to know nearly enough about you or your work to make this claim with much accuracy, but perhaps you have adult ADD? I know someone who has it, and described nearly exactly what you said. They can't block out sound/visual input well and basically any sensory input not related to the task at hand, and once they get side tracked they have a hard time being able to regain focus.
Or it could just be simple boredom/frustration/fatigue with doing a task for long stretches of time.
What's stopping you from bringing your own noise canceling headphones?
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
They did this when I worked at Andersen. It made sense there because hopefully you were out at client sites more than in the office. With a job where I go to the same place every day people will start to stake out their areas, not unlike seating in college.
;)
For fun I used to move all around the room and sit in other peoples seats. They'd freak out at first but I'd actually talk about it, make friends (or enemies) and then move somewhere else. If the people weren't complete assholes (maybe 10% were pricks), the entire class would lighten up and become friends. I only had one class where that didn't happen. Ah, the think they're better looking and smarter than they are whores, how could I ever forget them
It will become a turf war if these people aren't actually out of the office more than they are in it. One more worry people have to take on (assuming they're anal retentive, which seems to be almost all the engineers, programmers, etc. that I know).
In the photo (in TFA) there's bad posture and trailing cables. How this got past health and safety I'll never know.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I wonder how much of this is due to the Hawthorne Effect?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Just been on the other side of this decision: planning our own office layout for our new office. We're currently in the big open plan space (no cubes) setup and the noise is deafening at times. You can just see people's heads swivel as soon as an interesting argument/discussion breaks out on the other side of the room. Of course, as many have said they then need ages to get back in the zone.
Cubes seemed too horrible to us and private offices seemed a bit lonely and isolated.
What we went for in the end was a set of 3-6 person rooms, some of which can be combined if required. The idea was to merge the benefits of each approach - you get a dedicated "project room" where ad-hoc conversations, whiteboad design discussions, etc. are encouraged. The team gets to personalise their space, as does each of the workers (for at least as long as the project lasts).
On the other hand if a team is in deadline mode, they can shut the door and agree between each other to be quiet. Similarly if a team wants to play music they don't disturb others, etc.
We'll see how it works out... Anyone else tried this sort of approach?
I work in a "War Room" now and its the worst idea ever conceived. Programming requires being able to quietly concentrate on your work, but the war room atmosphere is noisy and makes for a lousy enviromnent for the developer. Its all part of this FrAgile process... the next job I take will not be in such an environment.
And I'm sure there's tons of others. If I, as an employer, were to institute this system, I'd ensure that the employees had the flexibility to organize the space as they wanted. If I, as an employee, were to be part of this system, I'd design a tightly knit squad of nerf-enabled roombas to guard my personal space, and lead assaults on other employees during lunch hour.