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Apple is About To Do Something Their Programmers Definitely Don't Want (medium.com)
Last week, The Wall Street Journal had a big feature on Apple Campus, the big new beautiful office the company has spent north of $5 billion on. The profile, in which the reporter interviewed Apple's design chief Jony Ive, also mentioned about an open space where all the programmers would sit and work. Ever since the profile came out, several people have expressed their concerns about the work environment for the developers. American entrepreneur and technologist Anil Dash writes: [...] There have been countless academic studies confirming the same result: Workers in open plan offices are frustrated, distracted and generally unhappy. That's not to say there's no place for open plan in an offices -- there can be great opportunities to collaborate and connect. For teams like marketing or communications or sales, sharing a space might make a lot of sense. But for tasks that require being in a state of flow? The science is settled. The answer is clear. The door is closed on the subject. Or, well, it would be. If workers had a door to close. Now, when it comes to jobs or roles that need to be in a state of flow, programming may be the single best example of a task that benefits from not being interrupted. And Apple has some of the best coders in the world, so it's just common sense that they should be given a great environment. That's why it was particularly jarring to see this side note in the WSJ's glowing article about Apple's new headquarters: "Coders and programmers are concerned their work surroundings will be too noisy and distracting." Usually, companies justify putting programmers into an open office plan for budget reasons. It does cost more to make enough room for every coder to have an office with a door that closes. But given that Apple's already invested $5 billion into this new campus, complete with iPhone-influenced custom-built toilets for the space, it's hard to believe this decision was about penny-pinching. The other possible argument for skipping private offices would be if a company didn't know that's what its workers would prefer.
*pple has long been taken over by managers, marketers and fashion designers. The actual engineers are an afterthought.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It's been a long time since Apple was (primarily) about technology. Apple is about fashion. Form over function. Appearance. Show. Illusion.
Apple has great technology. But unlike in the 80's and 90's, technology comes second (or lower) at the Apple of today. I remember when Apple was a great company. When BYTE magazine wrote that the history of the microcomputer industry was an effort to keep up with Apple, it was true, back when Apple was a truly great company.
Open plan space for developers to work? No surprise. Quite a difference from the day when Apple would do whatever it took to make developers productive.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
But given that Apple's already invested $5 billion into this new campus, complete with iPhone-influenced custom-built toilets for the space, it's hard to believe this decision was about penny-pinching. The other possible argument for skipping private offices would be if a company didn't know that's what its workers would prefer.
Or the 3rd choice: They don't really care what their employees prefer.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I don't know why companies like Apple hamstring their developers with these open office design abominations. Study after study shows that developers are most productive when they have an office with a door they can close. The pointy headed bosses argument that they can wear headphones or take their laptop and move to a conference room doesn't work in reality.
For the salary they pay software engineers, it would seem that companies would not still be practicing outdated, brain-dead policies that are costing their company millions. Or in Apple's case billions.
just my 2 cent worth.
I'll refrain from the obvious jokes about the workers' pods only having rounded corners...
I really think the companies that get this trend right and actually want to keep employees happy will eventually settle on a mix of public and private spaces. Those of us who are older and like our private spaces have to remember that this is the age where "social media manager" is a real, full-time, highly compensated position. There are some people who thrive on collaborative spaces, constant noise and distraction, and love to work at cafeteria tables with zero personal space. There are also some (me included) who can't get any serious work done unless I'm in a private location with the door shut and "do not disturb" turned on in my various messaging accounts.
Unfortunately, the more extroverted among us tend to have the ear of HR more than heads-down workers like me. In addition, most corporate HR departments just copy what Google is doing verbatim regardless of fit. Google's where all the kids work, and companies love to have as many young exploitable employees as possible, so it makes sense...sort of. Unitl it meets an organization with a high average age of employee, that lives and dies by conference calls and work that requires concentration.
Let's consider the opposite strategy, then, if programmer is the 'single best example' of needing flow.
Should Apple sacrifice, I dunno, half the open area to work-pods you slide into like a fighter pilot? Basically a ring of three 4K monitors wrapped around you, the backs of the monitors 6" from the walls? I'm thinking four feet by six or seven. No windows, obviously. Sound insulation.
Is there no minimum to the amount of "distraction", that is, anything but what's on your monitors - that should be removed for optimum results?
If so, you've got the only argument they'll listen to - that you will take up even less of that precious office space. Open plans were never about anything but reducing that square-feet per person number.
That, and one other thing: 10x10 private offices were often places where people had some privacy in which to goof off. Watch YouTube in an open plan, and people notice. This is just not a real issue in a well-run place where the supervisor knows what the hell all her subordinates are doing and has done the work herself so that she has an idea how far along everybody should move every day. But when the super is too dumb to measure outputs, they will measure inputs.
You need a manager/marketer/fashion designer at the top, because engineers wouldn't know UI if their asinine choices bit them in the ass.
That's not true. You need Marketers/Fashion designers to guide project requirements and approval the results NOT to decide working conditions for professions conducting work they know almost nothing about.
The number of times that another employee has distracted me in that entire time is zero.
Lucky you, but I've been in places where people were tossing beanbags and nerf balls around, and it gets old, really fast.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."