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The Worst Workspaces In Tech
nicholas.m.carlson writes help you feel better about your hovel. Vallywag recently compiled a list of the top ten places to work, but the resulting submissions and exploration also provided them with an interesting look at some of the worst places to work. "What makes them so bad? Some offend with exposed fluorescent lights, gray cubicles and a dystopian corporate sheen. But others, with their pseudo-hip graffiti, kindergarten toys and plastic decorations — all in a desperate attempt to seem 'Internet-y' — come off even worse."
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
When I worked there they found that if they shrunk our cubes by a couple of feet they could get X more programmers in the building.
Nothing like having your restricted little world reduced by two feet. I even had to give up my red stapler.
Yeah, but at least it doesn't Rot the Mind.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I worked in building D. D for DEATH. I had to unload a van filled with paper from banks. I'd get the truck weighed at the front gate, net to the sign that said "PHOTOGRAPHY IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN". Geee. I wonder why...
Once it was weighed, I'd drive it to building D, and back it up the ramp into the building itself. The building consisted of several ENORMOUS rooms, each one at least 50 ft wide and 30 ft tall. In the room I ws in was an enormous machine that looked like a cross between a cauldron designed by Rube Goldberg and a funnel designed by NASA. On the side of this thing was a hopper. I would dump paper out the back of the truck into the 6 inches of standing filthy water that filled the floor of the place. Often I could see the V shaped ripples of rats swimming through the smelly brown miasmic watery goo.
Against one wall was a stack of paper that went all the way to the roof, which had gaping holes in it. It was summer, and there was no air conditioning, and wearing a mask was very uncomfortable. But wear one I did, for as I looked down the hallway to the other end of building D, the air was thick with the blue haze of asbestos.
I would stand on the paper bales, and toss more paper into the hopper. Once it was full I'd signal the guy who operated it, Mike, and he would press a red button, and I would press a red button, and the hopper would lurch up the side of the vat, and dump the contents into the steaming smelling chemical bath of crap.
Out of the bottom of the vat was a pipe about 14 inches wide. A steady stream of really foul smelling waxy black ooze would slowly extrude from the pipe. Mike would hack at it with a Machete and it would plop into his wheel barrow. H would then wheel it down the hall to a drop point, where there was a 55 gal drum, and he would dump the stinking vile glop into the drum. Once the drum was full of the black gelatinous offal, he would cap it, crimp it, and seal it, where it would then be "take somewhere", likely some landfill near Newark or Edison or Sayreville.
Some of the people who worked there were practically feral. I remember one fat black guy who drove this miniature bulldozer around at a high rate of speed, splashing the filthy stanky water all over the place. He didn't care wher eit went.
My guess is that all those people who worked on site all day in building D are now dead. And that's industrial capitalism for ya. OF course, now we ship that kind of work to China or Indonesia, so we can't see it, so it's OK....
That was the worst place I ever worked.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Agreed. The one picture with the rows and rows of computers appears to be the Hands-on lab at TechEd.
I'm not impressed with either of these articles. My preferred environment is someplace clean and uncluttered. Yet valleywag called the offices with gimmicks the best, and the nice clean offices the worst?
I wish I had a picture of the "office" I and six other consultants were put in years ago. It was the former mainframe tape storage closet. No windows. Six feet wide, with a table along the wall. When the guy at the end wanted to go to the bathroom, everybody had to get up and let him through.
I'd like to see what happens the first time they try that on somebody with either kidney or bladder problems.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
When I worked Bresnan Communications they did just that to a woman I worked with and came up with a new policy that all bathroom usage must be done on breaks and we would be monitored to be sure we were not taking time outside of them for breaks. I refused to sign the policy. They kept bringing it to me. They told me I'd be fired if I didn't sign it. I asked why they needed me to sign it as I would be held to it as a condition of my employment. They simply told me have it signed by the end of the day and then came back and had a supervisor stand over me while I signed it. I signed it and put "signed under duress" below my signature.
I worked to try and organize with the Communications Workers of America. That idea fell through when someone was told that I didn't trust at all. I finally ended up giving the company the finger and moved a good portion of the way across the country. After leaving they found a copy of the source code of some SNMP network management software I had written. I wrote it on my own time to assist the staff as they wouldn't pay Motorola and Arris for the tools we needed to do our job. They changed the graphics to their logos and renamed it Bresnan something or other. After hitting the coast I ended up finding a job working as a systems analyst for a labor union [other than CWA] and am part of a staff union that is represented by CWA. Being union represented isn't perfect. But it really beats having to deal with things like the BS that went on at Bresnan Communications.
That picture of "Microsoft" is a demo lab at a conference. The article actually has 0 pictures of a typical work-space from that company. Makes me wonder how accurate their other ones are...
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie