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Apple Employees Rebelling Against Apple Park's Open Floor Plan, Report Says (neowin.net)
During a new episode of The Talk Show podcast on Daring Fireball, John Gruber touched on the topic of the open floor plans that Apple has implemented within its new campus, Apple Park. A WSJ profile of Jony Ive, where he talked about Apple Park, mentioned how programmers, engineers, and other employees had already expressed concerns about working in such an environment. Gruber shared what he has heard: I heard that when floor plans were announced, that there was some meeting with [Apple Vice President] Johny Srouji's team. He's in charge of Apple's silicon, the A10, the A11, all of their custom silicon. Obviously a very successful group at Apple, and a large growing one with a lot on their shoulders. When he [Srouji] was shown the floor plans, he was more or less just "F--- that, f--- you, f--- this, this is bulls---." And they built his team their own building, off to the side on the campus ... My understanding is that that building was built because Srouji was like, 'F--- this, my team isn't working like this.'"
Nobody but management and some handful of hyper-social outliers likes open floorplan. Cubicles are bad enough. But open floorplan is the devil. Of course the employees hate it. Management had to know that going in. They apparently didn't care or thought the level of spying they can do would be worth pissing the employees off and making them less productive. When you look at the confluence of IT type workers (that Apple, being a tech co, is heavy in), we tend to be on the "autism spectrum" (what was formerly called Asperger's). We don't do well with a cacophony - and white noise doesn't help.
Trying to have a conversation with someone in an open-plan office while two other groups of people are already having conversations is maddening. When I worked in one of those places, I seriously found myself losing track of sentences I was speaking midway through... something going on in another conversation distracted me. I sometimes found it easier to wear noise-isolating headphones and use jabber to chat with people, even when they were sitting a few feet away.
apparently covered in the TFA; "open office" is only for rank and file. Executives have their REAL offices on the 4th floor.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Bahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Corporate jackassery at it's finest.
This is actually very common.
Yes it is, but he asked for a citation, not a repetition of the assertion.
Here is a citation: Employees Only Think They Control Thermostat.