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| Strange Company rules and manipulations |
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| Sal Ammoniac:
Some companies have recognized the need for privacy and quiet and have/had private offices for 100% of their technical staff. This includes/included Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and others. |
| Dundarave:
Re: Open Plan office space, over the last 20 years I’ve managed a dozen different teams of software developers, and every one of them, when given a choice of cubicles or open plan with long tables, have always wanted the open plan. These are teams of 3 to 12 individuals. In a couple of cases we had to repurpose largish board rooms to accommodate them all together so that the people in the cubes weren’t disturbed. Might be a millennial thing, but for me this has been the case since before 2000! Just a different viewpoint, I guess. Personally, as a boomer manager, I simply can’t function without a door, and consider it a condition of my employment. |
| james_s:
--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on February 14, 2020, 03:02:46 am ---Some companies have recognized the need for privacy and quiet and have/had private offices for 100% of their technical staff. This includes/included Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and others. --- End quote --- Microsoft used to have private offices or offices shared by two people but that has been changing. Their newest buildings are all trendy open layouts and they've been remodeling some of the other spaces into that. Some employees are still lucky enough to be in the older buildings that have offices. I'm not aware of any major tech companies that still have most of their staff in private offices, the pendulum is still swinging toward open plans and management types are still touting the BS advantages. |
| Towger:
--- Quote from: Dundarave on February 14, 2020, 04:36:38 am ---Re: Open Plan office space, over the last 20 years I’ve managed a dozen different teams of software developers, and every one of them, when given a choice of cubicles or open plan with long tables, have always wanted the open plan. These are teams of 3 to 12 individuals. In a couple of cases we had to repurpose largish board rooms to accommodate them all together so that the people in the cubes weren’t disturbed. --- End quote --- I view this a a big cubical or private office, with everyone working on the same task. With true open plan your developers would be working on a large floor, surrounded by the likes of technical support, sales droids and admin creating constant loud noise and other distractions. |
| Alti:
--- Quote from: james_s on February 14, 2020, 02:01:07 am ---Most of the people who make these decisions are not engineers, they're middle and upper management busybodies with no idea what engineers actually do. --- End quote --- If a management busybody does not understand what s/he is deciding about, then this is not a concern of an engineer from a cubicle. Employees are not responsible for wasteful decisions of superiors, only the shareholders are. Of course there are always scuckers that can be easily convinced to tame their career expectations (usually because of "difficult situation on the market", or "maybe next year"). I think it is just cheaper to train another (HR management) busybody how to deal with suckers than to get involved in a space arrangement that considers top performance. --- Quote from: Alti on February 13, 2020, 10:23:05 pm ---An employee is just a source of gains to be extracted, like an office space. --- End quote --- |
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