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Tech's Top 10 Workspaces
theodp writes "Looking to escape your Initech-like surroundings with your next job? Valleywag has culled its picks for Tech's Top 10 Workspaces from Office Snapshots, where you'll find plenty of other Best-Places-to-Work contenders. So how does your Cubicle measure up to the competition?" Pixar, Netflix, and other places. Makes the Slashdot Fortress look like a hovel even though we replaced the dirt floors last month.
look like the Six Apart place, only less well decorated. I hate cube farms and am glad they're not the fashion in the UK. Open Plan for the win.
Those listed are far too modern for my taste. My office hasn't changed much since this building used to be owned by IBM, but I can't help but wonder if in 40 years these unique offices don't seem hopelessly outdated. Till then, my generic flat surface works pretty well for my general office like tasks. My company gives me the option to work a bit from home, so I can implement my own personal style there.
I've tried to work in a few of the more avant garde spaces that some companies try to set up, it's hard to compete with what already 'works'. Too often I find that the curvy chair just doesn't feel as comfortable for over 10 minutes, and that the stylish workspace simply doesn't have enough space to work. And then, you still have the problem that you are working in a space designed by someone else. It won't fit anyone, and when you are dealing with something so unique, the minor annoyances end up feeling 10x worse.
At home, I can design my office to be exactly what I want in my office. It is perfect for the individual using it.
Now, that isn't to say that many of these places couldn't do with some colors other than grey and beige, but in my opinion a great workspace is the one that you barely notice when trying to do your work. My office may be grey and beige, but the facilities people here have created a beautiful nature trail that is designed to be used for a calm walk through a valley near the buildings.
It is simple, and doesn't try to force any of the employees into what almost feels like a lifestyle themed apartment instead of an office. It works great if it is your apartment, but what happens when you don't like the owner's taste in decoration?
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I always wanted to work at a place you would see in the movies of the "typical" high-tech work area. Lot's of screens, overflowing with gadgets hooked up in arcane ways, sitting in your command chair of awsomeness in dark rooms with moody, dramatic lighting that would reflect part of the display into your face if you gazed into it a certain way.
Working in tech, you realize what a load of bullshit that is. I schlep my three year old Compaq laptop loaded with Xubuntu to my clients who have their servers stuck in closets or storage rooms. I have my one screen, dirty from use and abuse, I sit on folding chairs and bathed in florescent light, surrounded by boxes filled with office supplies.
All these neat looking open spaces and cubicles are my worst nightmare. I've managed to spend my entire career having my own private offices and my worst nightmare is to ever have to work in an open space or a cubicle--listening to every asshole in the office, having everyone looking over my shoulder, etc. THAT was one of the big things what made the fictional "Initech" such a terrible place to work (remember Peter having to listen to "Welcome to Initech. Please Hold." over-and-over again all day? Nothing builds morale like private offices. Open spaces just turn everyone into Less Nessmans (if anyone still remembers that reference).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Yeah you remind me about that NOW. Too late I'm afraid. At least I didn't get fired.
Kidding aside, I tend to dress business casual most days even at home. It helps with my mindset. Fridays I wear jeans and a tshirt.
Although this only works if you have enough space/resources I have always preferred offices without doors. When I require privacy then I excuse myself to a conference room.
In my case, it isn't that I don't like my privacy, it is that I enjoy it too much and too easily shut the door and shut myself off from the rest of the group.
When you use an office with a door, you will still have people knock and check in to see if you are free, but when I started to use the conference room approach, it forced me to make sure that privacy was really necessary and that when I was in the conference room with a closed door, it meant it was closed for a good reason.
Not for everyone though, just my own personal (limited) experience.
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Hey, I have a desk looking out of a window. This is apparently the office dream, to get an office or cubicle with a window.
The sun is shining through and the heat is getting absorbed by the monitors, which make noises as they expand. I burned my hand almost yesterday when I left my mouse sitting in the sunlight.
In addition, the screens are really hard to read when the light is shining through onto the desk.
And it's an open plan office room (4 people), so I can't rearrange.
If I pull the blind down, it just makes it worse, because the blind is white, it just acts as a giant back light. Yay.
No air conditioning either, because it's the UK. However I suspect that we'll demand that soon.
1. I would rather live in the big city and deal with my 25 minute commute then live out in the boonies and have to drive an hour to pick up groceries, go to the movies, shop, go to the hospital/doctor/dentist, take my car to the mechanic, or use the airport. 2. FYI, park rangers have their own set of problems. Weather (rain, snow ,sleet, hail, etc.) being one of the least worrisome. Park rangers are often called in for drug busts and raids. Park rangers also have the unenviable task of dealing with some of the world's ilk such as poachers.
No kidding, those pictures are just "colorful" at best. Definitely wouldn't be a dream for any person who deals with computers most of the day. Wheres the big screens? Where's the DUAL(+) monitors (okay, there was 1 pic with them, but they were facing away)?!
I would like to think multiple monitors would be about the best thing, in fact... it's what keeps me happy at my job. Browse slashdot and code.
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
In our case we can't get AC installed because our office is in a listed building, so making modifications is a nightmare - we had to get planning permission just to run a leased line in.
The problem with gray and beige is that they are offensive precisely because they are trying to be so inoffensive. They're bland and ugly. Gray reminds me of concrete, which is durable but hideous unless you're designing parking garages. And beige seems to be the default color of anything that isn't supposed to look dirty... but it never really looks clean either. Have you ever tried to get an old beige box to look clean? It's impossible.
You want inoffensive? Silver is metallic, but clean. White gets dirty, looks boring on walls, but if office furniture isn't white on a white floor against a white wall, it can look pretty good. Black can look good if the rest of the office isn't gray and beige. Browns look great if they're actual wood, and dark stained wood can look downright elegant as long as it's not fiberboard crap from Ikea. Hell, even transparent glass or plastic for countertops or work surfaces looks pretty good (as long as you don't have to run an optical mouse on it). Other colors might offend certain people, but at least they won't be bland.
Here's offensive: every single office worker's desk in Japan is made out of metal, and painted gray and beige, and is exactly the same dimensions, right down to the three shelves. EVERY SINGLE ONE. I swear there must be a single company that makes all office desks in this country. They're so generic and utilitarian it makes me want to find the guy who designed them and slit his throat, spilling his blood all over the damn things. Maybe at least that would give it some color. And you wonder why the suicide rate is so high here, it's because of all the gray and beige in the concrete cities and in the offices and in the prefab apartments with their beige plastic walls. People need color and variety and texture or they go nuts. Does painting the thing navy blue instead of beige really cost all that much more?
My office has a door, but I keep it open at all times, except when I'm on extended phone calls (so I don't disturb my colleagues) or the few moments where I really require privacy (small meetings, changing my clothes, fucking the secretary).
I found out that having the door closed shuts me from the rest of the offices and "uninvites" people from stop by. Since my colleagues aren't doing it very often, I usually welcome a chance to take a small break to chat, or help someone out.
Some people do like their privacy and keep their doors closed at all times, but most people here leave them open.
BTW, I was kidding about the secretary thing -- first I would need a secretary... *sigh*
They moved me to my department's sole window cube a few months ago -- two cube walls and huge window makes the third. It faces north, so the sun never shines on my stuff, but it's got an HVAC unit right under it, so I control how warm or cold it gets.
It faces Discovery Communications HQ with a cluster of nice trees in the foreground.
Window FTW.
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
I agree, but I'm wondering whether or not you think it's bad that employers would do this -- kind of a counterintuitive productivity measure (at least for people exempt from overtime). I mean, why else would a company spend money other than to make more? Because they love their employees? Anyone proposing that is moving into real flat-out denial.
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
..a boring office building. They have a foosball table but no one has time for that. Most blue badges have to wait up to three years to get their own office because space is so tight. :(
I used to envy park rangers, but not anymore. Apparently, these days the job is mostly dealing with dangerous drug runners either growing pot or stashing other drugs out in the boonies of the national parks. Also, the drug runners have guns and the rangers don't.
Then there's dealing with the general public and their disrespect for the park. I actually got to work with a park ranger once, and it was thrilling. It was at Carlsbad Caverns. I got to hold his flashlight while he climbed down to pick up some garbage some jackass had thrown from the trail inside the cave. I would imagine having to do that sort of thing day in and day out would make you develop a healthy hatred for humanity, and I have enough disdain for people in general as it is.
In my experience, very often the look and feel of the work place is a good indication of how a company treats it's workers in general. Not in the sense of having Garfield toys on the tables, fancy chairs or unusual gadgets, more like:
- Is it cheap open space? Is it open spaces with tall barriers and sound separators? Cubicles? Team offices?
- Is there plenty of natural light? Tall ceilings? Plants?
- How good is coffee? Is it free?
In my experience, companies which use the cheapest possible open space configuration, only provide crap coffee for free (or nothing at all free), have no plants and/or have workspaces with little or no natural light are also the ones that have frequent down-size and then up-size cycles, squeeze as much free work as they can out of their employees and in general treat everybody like little cogs in a big machine.
Cheap companies are just as cheap in setting up the work environment as they are in the way they treat people.
My big objection to open workspaces is the lack of noise control. As a creative worker (software developer), I get most of my job done by switching back and forth between two modes: discussion mode and focused mode. Discussion mode is typically animated and noisy; happens at random unpredictable times; most frequently involves the same one or two people, occasionally involves others; often needs a whiteboard; etc. Focus mode is the rest of the time, mostly happens at my desk, and I need quiet in order to be at my most productive. No music, no white noise, no intercom, no fax machine beeping that it's out of paper, no cell phones with hip-hop ring tones ringing at full volume, no animated discussions happening "right over there".
I hear ya. Whenever I get annoyed at my current office environment, I try to think what the ideal environment would be. And I always go back and forth between having something conducive to discussion mode, but also allows for the privacy and seclusion needed for focus mode. I can't think of anything that's reasonably simple that fulfills both requirements.
In my first job, we had a cube farm, but many of the cubes were four-person units. It was one large cubicle, and each person had their own corner. The space had a small table in the center, so we could all turn around and have impromptu meetings (i.e. discussion mode) when necessary. I really liked that. One of the desks was usually empty (unless we had an intern), and my cube-mates were always quiet. So focus mode was available on-demand. That was also my first "real" job, so I was in discussion mode more often than not (being a newbie I had lots of questions).
Towards the end of my tenure there, the whole building was remodeled with new cubicles. Gone were the multi-person cubes, and everybody had an individual unit. By this time, I more or less knew what I was doing, and needed more focus time. So in theory, the individual cube would have been nice. However, the company went really cheap on everything, and despite having my own "private" space, there was actually more noise. The old cube walls were padded and coated with cloth; they were also taller. So most noise outside of my immediate cube was significantly dampened. But the new cubes didn't block sound at all; I could hear every word of conversations from people several cubes down (and these were people with average volume voices).
My current job has what I would call an open plan. It's a trading company, and I gather that this kind of setup is typical for traders (and programmers in the finance industry). The first thing that annoys the hell out of me is that we don't have desks with drawers. Our desks are basically just tables. They are big, but I like to keep my work area tidy, and with nowhere to stash things, my desk always looks messy.
But what really annoys me is that the quality of open seating is dictated by your neighbors. I never realized how good I had it in the quiet shared cubicle I described above. The guy who sits by me drives me insane---and it's petty stuff, so I feel bad about asking him to be quiet. But, as an example (begin rant): he's a smoker, so a few times a day he comes in and stinks up the whole room. His smoking also gives him a hacking cough. He flips his pen while he's thinking, which means that every few seconds I hear the sound of his pen crashing down on his desk. He slurps his food---and I mean, really slurps. I'm certainly not Mr. Manners, but I've literally heard wild animals make less noise when eating. If he's not flipping his pen while he's thinking, he's constantly slamming C-x C-s (emacs' file save key sequence). If it weren't so annoying, I'd actually be impressed at how quickly he could hit C-x C-s over and over and over and over again. There's also the humming; sometimes he just hums the tune in his head; other times, he hums louder to hear himself over his headphones. If he gets confused by something, he starts sighing really l