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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.
Sad but true. You can see it in the XCode UI changes. A decade ago, it was ugly and sometimes you had to go to the command-line, but it had all the necessary features and once you figured them out it was easy to use.
Now XCode is pretty but it looks like it was designed by a product manager, the UI changes fairly often and the actual meaning of buttons is utterly opaque.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
When one of our corporate offices moved to a new location and got a ground-up remodeling as part of the deal, there were great opportunities to make a more functional space for everyone. Instead, the top level management for that location took charge of everything, designing a floor-plan the way THEY envisioned it. The "rank and file" employees barely got a chance to see it before it was approved and work begun on it.
The group of us in I.T. got a sneak peak at it, just before work started on it, and we collectively said, "Woah! Hold up! BAD ideas here!" The whole space was an open floor plan, except for a row of 6 "phone rooms" where you could shut the door to talk on a phone, placed on a small table, with a few chairs around it. That, and one short hall of offices with doors.
To be fair, it is a marketing oriented company, BUT a lot of the people working in this space are designers, or at least have jobs that require a lot of conference calls, video-conferences, and negotiating with clients over the phone. In other words, lots of need for quiet in the surrounding space so you can sound professional while communicating with people.
Our opinions held no weight though, and everything proceeded despite our complaints. So now? The office tends to be largely empty, because everyone decided they can get work done more effectively by just working from home whenever possible. The upper management folks who pushed for it? Well, they're rarely in the office anyway because they're constantly traveling. I guess they think it's fine when they finally come back for a few days though, since it's so quiet with so few people wanting to come in now?
'a workspace designed from the ground up for the millenial generation'
Agreed it's not all about age, but I generally haven't seen older people outside of sales and marketing who love working in one of these Millenial workspaces. I have seen that younger workers are coming into the workforce being used to more distractions, so while they may not be getting a lot of work done, they prefer the "collaborative preschool" environment with the bright colors and the beanbag chairs. It's different from a more traditional work-style, where older people are used to going to an office, doing their work and leaving. Younger people (at least in IT/development) seem to want to continue their college years and work in a dorm-style atmosphere. Without as many commitments at home they find it appealing to basically live at work, which is a huge bonus for employers.
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.
Actually, it's a fourth: They believe that open plan offices promote creative interaction while closed offices promote focused productivity, and they choose to favor the former over the latter. There's also an element of flexibility. The theory is that it's easier for people in open-plan offices to use noise-cancelling headphones to focus when they need to be productive than it is for employees to walk out of their office and into a colleague's office when they need to collaborate.
I'm not saying that money never enters into it. But clearly for the likes of tech companies sitting on enormous cash reserves, money isn't the primary consideration. Competitiveness is. Staying ahead of the rapidly-changing technology world is. And they believe that open plan office spaces, with lots of additional space for ad-hoc collaboration in meeting rooms, lounge areas, volleyball courts, etc., is the best way to do that.
I'm not willing to say that they're unequivocally right, but they're certainly not completely wrong, either.
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I work in an open office in Atlanta. It's so damn loud that some days I just send my developers home to work.
I bought some $300+ Bose QuietComfort 35 headphones to cancel the noise -- they help, but it's not enough.
I can use the foam earplugs you use for working around heavy machinery, but honestly, at that point how much degradation of productivity have you taken on when that's your own recourse?
I truly don't understand the open floorpan. It's only result is unhappy employees.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Actually, it's a fourth: They believe that open plan offices promote creative interaction while closed offices promote focused productivity, and they choose to favor the former over the latter. There's also an element of flexibility. The theory is that it's easier for people in open-plan offices to use noise-cancelling headphones to focus when they need to be productive than it is for employees to walk out of their office and into a colleague's office when they need to collaborate.
Whereas it is undeniably true that an open office results in more dialogue, I don't think that is the only way to encourage it. Nothing beats face-to-face and easy access to encourage collaboration, but the problem is, not many people are going to want to work like that.
I know I quit a job primarily for the reason of switching to open-office. (I had other issues with the place, but the moment they switched to open-office I updated my resume and started job hunting)
Open office is simply a much less pleasant environment in which to work.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch