How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle
forrestbrazeal.com
forrestbrazeal.com
I hate open offices and will actively avoid them. They are noisy, distracting, stressful, and not conducive to productivity. They are conducive to collaboration though.
Offices are stifling. They put too many barriers between talking to people, and I found everyone tended to rely on chat and email a lot more. Offices are fantastic when you really want to put your head down and focus.
Cubicles are a nice balance between the two extremes. Collaboration is possible and still happens, but privacy and space is still available too.
Susan Cain in her book "Quiet" advocates for a space that is basically an open office in the center, with private nooks around the edge, so people can consciously decide when they want to collaborate versus concentrate. I've never been in an environment like that, but it sounds nice.
I like initiating communication with chat or email, with the option of an impromptu face-to-face meeting if necessary, or the option of being able to defer that meeting when I need to focus.
I keep my door open when I don't mind a visitor (like a cubicle), but I can close my door to indicate to people that I am in focus-mode and should not be disturbed. I didn't have that choice with a cubicle, because anyone could walk up at any time and cause me to shift that focus.
The office also makes for a good place for uninterrupted collaboration when the meeting requires it, which is something else you don't get with a cubicle.
This isn't true of all cubicles. I used to work at a very large microprocessor manufacturer and before they "compressed" the cubicles, the cubicles were 9x9. Someone had to physically come into your cubicle to get your attention (or pop their head over the wall, but only 6-foot+ people could do that). To deal with disturbances, we actually had "DO NOT DISTURB" signs assigned to us which we could hang across the cubicle entrance to keep people from bothering us. These signs were frequently used, and to very good effect.
Personally, I wish I could go back to that environment. It was the best of both worlds when I had this nice-sized cube with privacy, but was also seated next to a coworker I frequently needed to collaborate with. It was great being able to pop my head over the wall when I needed to, but without worrying about being distracted or disturbed by other people for less-important stuff, and especially not by random passers-by the way I am in open environments.
We both had enough privacy without the isolating effects of having an entire office to ourselves.
Now that you mention it, I got a lot of work done in that library...
In smaller spaces, however, I agree. Not good.
Absolutely despised by the developers; we would have been ecstatic with cubes.
We get a lot of natural light this way which can be great, except when the sun rises right into your eyes with no way to block it.
Bottom line: I don't have time, I get home very tired, the work I do could be done in less time or better distributed through the day.
I tell my boss when I have to leave, and then I leave by that time. If he needs something from me, it will have to wait until tomorrow unless it's an emergency.
Control your own life!
I found a place 15 minutes from my house, and everyone in the office is gone by 5, sometimes earlier on Fridays. I hope you find a better job soon.
The general HN sentiment is one of finite work hours, great work conditions and great pay or people quit. In an ideal world, I love that notion. Many people here are fortunate enough to have the leverage granted by the current job market to insist on those things (or quit and walk into another better paying job the next day).
Unfortunately, for those that are not engineers, or don't live somewhere with incredibly high job demand, many people take what they can get and suffer. The alternative is often losing your mortgage, not being able to pay for college, etc.
There may also be other factors keeping them at that employer (particularly if they are in a rural area and there literally aren't any other options closer).
So as much as I agree with you in spirit, the pragmatic part of me is wondering what will happen to people with this attitude when the economy shifts, and suddenly the job market isn't so hot anymore.
It's ludicrous to see people making the point of their perfect >40 hours job now, let's see in 5 or 10 years when the market is saturated.
While I understand that everyone's situation is different, you can always try to change and improve it.
... when?
It's almost like everyone is different...
I've never had an employer complain about this. I've had some bosses who regularly work past 5, but they understand that I am in the office before they are each morning and that although I am flexible when big projects are due, there is a limit to what I will tolerate before I start looking for work elsewhere. I learned the hard way that you have to draw those lines yourself, otherwise someone will draw them for you.
The good side of working at a defense contractor.
Or look for a place that needs people willing to do nighttime deployments, finish up things that have a next-day deadline, infrastructure, etc. A lot of people are happy not to have to do that, so having people that prefer it anyway is valuable to them.
My current employer is all open-office, but also very remote friendly. I live hundreds of miles away so I work remote from my home office, but I've spent a few odd weeks in the office and the environment is actually pretty good for getting stuff done.
That said, remote-friendliness is something that's hard to adjust a company's culture to. I've found that heavy use of Slack and the right personalities can lead to a very productive and the sort of spontaneous sync-ups that are somewhat easier to happen in a physical office.
Ultimately the real test is whether your company's culture fits with your company's offices, and whether you fit into that culture.
Work from home actually works for a lot of people. Some of those people are just as creative, collaborative, driven and successful as the folks that work in offices.
What happens in our open office which is half engineering is that nobody says much of anything. It doesn't help collaberation. If we had cubes or god forbid OFFICES with CLOSABLE DOORS we could have 1-1 conversations whenever we like.
I've worked in a cube. I've had my own office. I've shared an office with one other person in a variety of desk arrangements. I currently share a large office with three other people (might as well be an open plan).
I'd probably rank the cube second, with sharing an office with one other person as the best (with desks arranged so both our backs are to the wall).
Open offices are terrible, terrible things. Next time I interview, I'm going to make sure to ask what their office arrangements are, so I can avoid that situation.
So one answer is given "up the chain" (cost/density) and another is given "down the chain" (collaboration), and that's not cool IMHO.
My feeling with open offices is that sales/marketing people like it and most developers can't concentrate. It's not an extrovert issue -- I'm pretty extroverted at times, but coding is one of those things you need to minimize distractions while doing.
This kind of crap is so offensive yet so common and most managers have no idea how transparent it usually is.
But I think the concept behind them is valid: to foster collaboration and eschew meetings.
Given the choice between being stuck in meetings all day and an open office plan, I'd take the open office any day.
I do miss physical meetings. Not "meetings" but discussions about work problems happening at the coffee machine. You know how you describe a problem to a coworker at the coffee machine and often figure it out as you talk, before you even get an answer? That doesn't happen to me at home. I can explain to a rubber duck but it just stares at me and the insight never comes (neither from it nor from me).
I also feel "invisible" at times, which I'm sure is partly just perceived, but that doesn't help.
I think the ideal setup is working from home 3-4 days a week, and commuting 1-2 days. As for the office itself, I think open/cube/office is mostly a matter of taste. Offices with doors that open to a shared space is great, did that a long time with good results. If you commute 1 day a week just to get social, open plan is fine (or even better because more social).
It says it right their on their web site: "Help Spread the Word"!
The amount of evidence that exists contrary to this statement is staggering. Don't know who this Steve guy is, but he seems like a real dip-shit.
2. Career advancement
The gripe: Working in a cubicle enslaves you to micromanaging bosses.
My view: Working with other people keeps you engaged and visible.
Next down in supra-aural that presses into the ear (rather than around it), and then you get to earbuds and in-ear headphones.
I'm pretty good at tuning out distractions when I'm focused, sometimes too good (you may need to wave your hand between me and the monitor to get my attention). Unfortunately, sometimes I overfocus and get mental tunnel vision / can't see the forest for the trees. I need to step away from the screen, pace around, maybe grab a clipboard and sketch a diagram, or clear my mind some other way.
In my own office, I can do that and the computer's right there when the mental switch flips, the gate opens, and the ideas start to flow again. In an open office, I have to leave the building and may be 10 minutes away from my desk (and subject to several interruptions on the way back). And of course, you always have the feeling of being watched and judged whenever you step away or do something at your desk that doesn't appear to be diligently working. So open offices (or cubicles) can be worse even when you do need distraction.
but the entire "we need to socialize in order to be successful" thing is sorta mind-numbing. The word that comes after "social" is "engineering."
The boss would only give me tasks through email/JIRA and we would have standup meetings daily.
Almost every time I was assigned a task, I would be given an extremely vague description. Now normally, this is what we need to deal with as developers, but I could barely get an idea of what we were trying to accomplish with the task. I usually just finished the task with what little information I had and it would have to be re-rewritten almost every time because the boss wanted something different.
This was all through email. Some people just don't know how to effectively communicate in writing.
They let me go after about a year because they could hire '4 people in India for the cost of my salary'. I had to chuckle.
Personally, I split time between the office and home, and find that works pretty well.
http://zachholman.com/posts/how-github-works-asynchronous/
I sometimes like face-to-face discussions too, but only with people who are smarter than me.