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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.
with the real doll, eating a sandwich playing wii....
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.
Most of those office spaces look cool and hip, but not very comfortable, productive, or private. Sitting in a windowsill with a laptop looks like fun for about 5 minutes.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
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building used to be owned by IBM, but I can't help but wonder if in 40 years these unique offices don't seem hopelessly outdated.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?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
The place looks COLD! Who designed it? The same guy who did Blade Runner's interiors?
6 apart still has mostly a cubicle-world look; the "oh gee we have a place to stash your bicycle, and a couch!" don't change that. It takes more than a few "exposed brick" walls to "give character."
Pixar looks interesting - but how come everyone chooses couches that don't look like they'd be all that comfy to SIT IN???
I don't know - they still all look awfully "corporate".
Kevin Smith on Prince
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.
I work from home when I am not travelling. Granted, I travel 1-3 weeks out of each month (average is maybe 3 days every other week), but when I am not travelling you can keep all your fancy high tech offices. I have it far better in my high tech home office.
Plus there is nobody to tell me I can't have a beer during afternoon conference calls.
I wonder how the others look like.
A lot of them look like you'll grow RSI within one month. I actually prefer my own office with an ergonomic setup, a proper adjustable office chair, large windows and a door.
1. Most/all are in big cities. No thanks. 1-2 hour commutes to travel 30 miles? Meh. Give me a less-comfortable area in some non-generic suburbs.
2. All-indoor jobs. I'd wager that the best "workspace" isn't indoors. There are days I envy park rangers. Yeah, you can make an office comfortable, but keep in mind that it's STILL an office.
with a door, that can be locked. And a culture that says it's ok to do that. It's like heaven, without all those virgins....
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.
I remember reading an article on Pixar's HQs a long time ago, and one thing that stood out to me was that there's only one pair of bathrooms in the entire complex. This is to encourage people to run into each other and interact more frequently. I'm sorry, but that would just bug me. When I need to go to the bathroom, I don't want to be interrupted to have a conversation, nor do I want to hear other people yapping away while they do their business. But I guess that's just me....
Oblig urinal joke: "I hear this is where all the dicks hang out."
This guy's the limit!
Google's Zürich offices also have a fireman's pole.
.riiiiiiiight.
. . . . . .
The "style" of the furniture in an office doesn't mean crap if the people are assholes and the policies oppressive. This article is about as asinine as the one a few months back attempting to explain why techies never make it in the boardroom... and proceeded to list off ten fashion faux pas.
/.
Gebus! Some people just don't get it.
Our friends at Slashdot really should re-title this piece as "Top 10 best looking tech workplaces"... otherwise, they're just being terribly disingenuous.
Shame on you
They missed Fog Creek.
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?
Remember this: no matter how nice your office space is, if you're an "interactive agency" with an unspellable/unpronounceable name like "Tocquigny", you're going to be the first to go out of business when the Dot-Com Crash 2.0 happens.
Enjoy the pretty scenery while it lasts.
Now, if I could just get rid of my co-workers, life would be perfect. . .
What?
Looks like they've ranked workplaces according to this rubrik:
1) Proximity to bay area.
2) Superfluous amenities such as office fridge stocked with beer and milk*, free haircuts, sex swing chairs, steampunk decor, etc.
3) Is a trendy Web 2.0 company. Sorry non-interweb employers, you're out of luck.
* Who the hell drinks milk at work anyway? Flatulence ahoy!
I worked for an employer that had some of the amenities that would help them rank in the top-10. Among them were an outdoor volleyball court and basketball court, pool tables and a chef in the cafeteria. Luckily my work hours were flexible and I didn't work more than 10 hours a day. I know some had to work longer, but they didn't seem to mind because of all the conveniences and "fun things to do" while at work. You could, on occasion, take a 5-min break to play basketball.
I've read some major employers in the US such as insurance companies, have salons, barbershops, daycare, grocery stores all in the building. While immensely convenient (there's no denying), and as impressive looking as these offices are (looks better than most people's homes), I believe that these are all simply intended to keep employees at work as long as possible. It may be obvious to some, but I think some are in flat-out denial.
They make windows just for that, they are double pane with a small venetian blind thingee in between the panes. Too hot or bright, you can crank it all the way closed or leave it partial for *some* light. Cold outside you can open it all the way to let some warmth in.
You could also get a whiteboard for "conferencing" and set it up in front of the window for a sunshade if your office cow-orkers agree.
With that said, telecommuting is where it is at. That's the greenest of all, no need for huge office buildings* as much, no need for millions to be forced to commute every work day twice. then at home you can really adjust your office like you want it.
*if I was a share holder in one of these companies that wasted millions on some egotrip office building just to have drones pushing electrons around on the screen, then the constant expense and maintenance I'd be getting lawyers and thinking about trying to force some serious changes. In this information age, having the typists (whatever the heck they type) have to go to the office is silly. That was OK back in manual typewriter days and no fast way to move documents around except by courier and like pony express, but with good net connections and faxes and printers, etc I question the over all huge need of tons of those sorts of jobs to have to be done "downtown" all the time. Big fat waste, bigger than the SUVs people rail on about all the time (although that is part of it when they get used as commuter cars), it just over-all wastes energy, wastes time commuting, wastes resources building most of those stoopid towers, wastes energy driving or taking some subway or bus, etc. It is archaic and "dilutes shareholder value" because they could use that money for something else..like paying dividends! Actually be able to pay all the workers more money! Imstead, "my 'member' is bigger than your member" ego trip office towers that cost buhzillions with big signs on top MEGACORPS! shining to outerspace all night.
It's mostly a joke.
Big huge cities are archaic for the most part as well, there's just inertia and big money behind maintaining that sort of business, and it goes all the way back to seaports and moving things by boat or ox cart, so trade centers built up around those areas, because that was it, the only way stuff moved. Not like that anymore. We still need seaports...but we don't need to cram all the workers there. Some yes, all, absolutely not.
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".
Just do what we do in Ottawa. No modifications required.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I just wanted to limit my post size. Of course, this depends on perspective. If you really like the job, or the convenience factor, then sure its a good thing. I wouldn't have minded working a few extra hours (and did on occasion) at that job so it does work. But hours in my job were capped (more a company policy) and when the 10+ hours were needed it was a demand, again I didn't mind at all even if not paid the overtime. The problem becomes, well we're providing this because we 'demand' that you work 16 or 18 hour days. So of course, you'll need all the amenities at the office. But working all those hours are sure to leave burnout, employees quitting, low retention and lower productivity per-employee.
My opinion is that if the employer is at the very extreme, with emphasis on the very long hours being the factor, then instead of the conveniences (chef, swimming pool, salon, ultra-modern decor, shopping esp. when most of it is free) they could certainly afford to hire more employees.
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".
IMHO, open office plans are the worst of all worlds for creative workers. When I'm in discussion mode, I'm bothering everyone else. And because everyone else needs to have those discussions too, it's nearly impossible for me to really get into focus mode. I don't need to be alone in an office, but the ability to close the door around two or three or four people who can be noisy without disrupting others or be quiet and get some creative work done is not optional, it's essential. If you can't do that, you just turned down the productivity knob by some significant fraction.
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.
It's also because they're too stupid to read Joel on Software regarding offices and his own office. Instead, many of them keep doing things that are poison to "knowledge workers," a phrase I hate but that nonetheless describes the kind of people discussed here.
I've been to Tocquigny's offices before. I have a couple of friends that worked there. It's pretty funny that about 3-6 months after they moved into those offices, they laid off about 20% of their work force. The offices are really cool though. Well, not necessarily cool but definitely different. It is pretty much nothing but Apple computers, 90% of the people drink Starbucks multiple times a day, half the cars in the parking garage are Volkswagens, people rarely arrive before 10am, a decent amount of guys that speak with lisps, and most people can be found on the weekends at the local art house movie theater wearing a black turtleneck.
Or they read him and found his advice useless.
1 have a huge amount of income and no investors to satisfy.
2 have a landlord willing to bend over backwards for you
3 take your vast sums and spend them on an architect.
4 take lots of pics and brag about how smart you are.
What he doesn't talk about are the crappy borrowed offices he used when they actually developed their product.
That's before one goes into the less obvious problems with his "everybody gets an office" model.
What about collaboration? I leave my office and go to yours? You leave yours and come to mine? Neither is very conducive to his vaunted hallway usability tests. (Wait, a blogger's advice isn't internally consistent! Not that!)
While the Slashbot loves the "everyone is stupid but me" mentality, these are actually not easy problems to resolve.
Hint: If our needs were solitary workers who can be left alone in their offices, we would send the work to Raj's office in Bangalore for 1/4 of your salary. The reason we don't is that we need you and your colleagues to solve these problems. And that requires both concentration and collaboration.
This is coming from someone who looked at private offices and decided that would kill our small team collaboration work [maybe offering better, but maybe not] and would cost us a ton of money.
America is more than just only 250 years old, we also love to tear down old buildings, demolition is a huge business in the states, because it's the easiest way to redevelop land, plus Americans like to spend money on the places they live and work, they like at least the illusion of unlimited wealth. part of the reason the dot com bubble collapsed so horribly wasn't because companies couldn't make money making products etc, it was because they spent loads of money on stuff that killed internal productivity... having a game room, and making employees play games on the weekends with fun outings can really kill a company living on borrowed dollars quickly...
fortunately America is leaking money like a sieve, to the tune of 600-700 billion a year, and the national government is already well past 9 trillion in debt, aiming for the 15 billion cap that the house will automatically raise the budget deficit to without new laws being enacted.
the senate with their 6 year terms actually vote on raising the deficit, but thats because 2/3rds of them can vote yes in an election year, with the other 1/3 voting no because they're up for re-election.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
If that's your opinion then I'm grateful that I don't have to work for you.
You have either found an amazingly rare breed of programmers (those that function well in a noisy environment) or you simply have no idea how programmers actually work. I strongly suspect the latter.
Read up on some of the comments from the "trenches". We don't make up this stuff about "conversation mode" and "focus mode". We don't ask for offices with doors because we like status-symbols. We ask for them because we can work better that way by pretty much every metric.
How did you come to the conclusion that separate offices would kill your team's collaboration work?
Do they literally yell across the room "Joe, can you review my last checkin?" or spontanously summon flashmob meetings?
Yes, working in one big room can work well for up to maybe 10 people. But I have witnessed time after time that it simply doesn't scale beyond that.
People have a natural tendency to take the shortest path to solve their problems and when the shortest path means walking (or yelling) across the room then that will be used. No policy helps that. Furthermore there's always a "new guy" around asking a constant stream of questions, there's always some important gossip to exchange and there's always someone walking around behind your back.
As much as we like to deny it, we're still animals. You can not defy psychology. Someone talking or just walking behind your back *will* disturb your concentration. Most of the time you don't even notice because we all have developed filters against such distractions. But keeping those filters up constantly costs energy. Energy that can not be used for productive work anymore.
In each new economy "loft" that I have worked in so far there were some people who'd regularly come in very early, stay in when everybody else went for food,
or stay very late. When asked about that they all had the same answer: "These are the best (read: only) times where I can actually get shit done."
So, for god's sake, if you want to get the most out of your employees then give them choice. Some people *like* to work in a big-room, maybe because they're really that rare breed or (my pet theory) because they think they can make up for their slacking with socializing. But most tech workers, and programmers in particular, will happily take the office with a door and will thank it with a highly improved performance.