Meta’s Push to Solve the Noisy Office

My thoughts exactly. Facebook was the pioneer in the "Hey, everyone loves open office spaces! We can all collaborate!" bandwagon, to the point where other companies started going more towards that route years ago because "Big Silicon Valley companies are doing it!"

Yes, I speak from bitter experience.

My understanding is that the campus they took over from Sun was all offices until Facebook ripped them out.

These headsets are cheaper than a cubicle.

Tell me the incentives and I can tell you the outcome.

VR makes more sense in the office now.

I don't think of it as satire exactly, more like talking "exploring ways to change the surface tension of water to keep from getting wet while standing out in the rain."

When I was at IBM, post acquisition, they were trying to move a company into open space from their existing offices and the former CEO presented them with incontrovertible evidence of work productivity vs offices vs cubes vs openspace vs individuals. To explain that to maximize work done per unit time they needed a mix of offices and open space, just open space would harm the productivity of the team. The VP on the line kept falling back to "but everyone else has to do this" and "you aren't seeing the big picture" kinds of arguments. It was really sad.

The truth is that "office space", which is to say the number of square feet (or meters) of office space you need per employee is a "cost." And that cost is computable, whereas the cost of less productivity, or inability to attract the best talent, are not. And when you run your company with accountants they go for the "known savings" over the "potential gains" every, single, time. You can put more employees in a building that is "open plan" than you can in one with cubicles, and much more than in a building with offices. So the accounts force this on the company and senior leadership doesn't have the stones to contradict them.

It's kind of sad that I (and probably others) look back fondly at the era of cubicles as preferable to the current trends. With the caveat that there are some cubical farms (I'm looking at you, Intel) that barely different from open-plan offices with individual desk, some jobs I worked back in the day gave each person a relatively roomy and well-appointed individual cubicle. One place I had plenty of surface space in an L shape, multiple lockable storage areas, and even a small coat closet.

I would probably want this too. Noise-cancelling headphones help a lot to solve the audible noise problems of an open office, but do nothing to fix the issue of visual noise with coworkers buzzing around and such which can be just as much of a productivity killer.

Small cube farms with tall partitions don't get obnoxiously loud and you can still talk over the walls. Have the floor subdivided into reasonably sized cube rooms and you don't need to have offices with doors.

If I worked hybrid I’d be fine (or even prefer) an open space, or at least some shared offices. The only point of coming to the office to begin with would be human contact. If I need to focus I have a door I can shut, at home. Going to the office and closing the door to a private office seems like a situation where I could just as well have stayed home that day!

If there was a correct answer to this whole discussion, this down-v'd comment is it.

Instagram is being flooded with 20- to 30- something people bragging about how they hate work, hate their coworkers, hate going out with their friends. Why is everyone so bitter?

Perhaps a full open office can actually be good for connectedness and transparency, but the catch is it requires every team member to be very socially attuned.

Not to distract someone who is clearly not going to be happy distracted from work unless it's really important, but also be receptive and not angry when someone wants to ask you questions and they couldn't catch you when you were idle.

Since this is unrealistic, hybrid wfh or individual offices with enough common shared spaces probably next best.

LOL, the irony. Only real legs need to be visible.

You mean the modern meta-cubicle that just wraps your head?

I would have agreed with this a few years ago, but now the preferred "noise insulated cubicle" is my own house. If I'm going in to the office, I want to do it specifically to collaborate with others in an open space, not sit alone in a box.

We kinda do as we prefer to work from home!

They already did, it’s called working from home

Didn't bother reading the article. Why does anyone care what Facebook says about the workplace? They have a lot of cool tech for sure, but this whole reinventing how people collaborate on basic shit (not lab science, open heart surgery, physical mechanics) seems like a waste of time. A whiteboard and some beer works just fine.

It looks like they came up with a cheaper cubicle configuration, but I’m guessing that they will push their VR headsets as a more cost effective option

The picture is all you need. They added some small felt walls to their desks which still do not provide as much privacy as real cubicles and dubbed them "cocoons" to seem innovative.

I actually have them both for if I really need some heavy duty anc (for sleep, have tinnitus, can't use earplugs and earmuffs, tried them, uncomfortable).

That only (partially) solves the sound problem. The visual distractions are equally as bad.

Walls?

I had to turn off slack and just open it up and check it every couple hours. If people really need me they can knock on my door in an emergency, the building isn't that big.

They make a point of making them space wasting round, and then still call them “cubes”.

What did you expect? Fashion trends are circular.

This one blocks natural light, turning the employees into vampires.

META (thinkin): and we make it to the news, and people actually talk about us again, and maybe they join back at fb.

And we talk about them..

I’ll take all sorts of funny over open-office.