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Ask HN: Which companies give programmers offices?
Often when I suggest to non-programmers that programmers should get their own offices, I'm met with incredulity: "Where do any programmers get their own offices???" Microsoft and Fog Creek come to mind, but where else?
- factotum 9y agoReynolds and Reynolds in Houston.
- stefantheard 9y agoBUT! This comes with some caveats... check glassdoor. Be cautious and don't undervalue yourself.
- Kluny 9y agoAutomattic. But it's remote, you have to supply your own office. They contribute $250 toward co-working space.
- jtmarmon 9y agoWhat if you live in NYC where a coworking membership is around $500 a month and an office $1000?
- onion2k 9y agoIt's contribution; it's not supposed to cover the full cost.
- bdavisx 9y agoIf it's your employer, they should be paying for the entire cost of your office.
- djmobley 9y agoIf you're hired as a remote employee, basing yourself in one of the most expensive cities in the world is your choice, not your employer's.
- bdavisx 9y agoGood point, and I guess it would be up to the employee to negotiate more $ for their office (if possible).
- onion2k 9y agoThey are but only up to an agreed value. If Automaticc's employees choose to spend more then they can, and probably do. If the employer were to cover the full cost then you can be quite sure they'd want a great deal more control over where the employee was based, and if the employer could rent an office for several employees then they probably would. At that point the job stops being remote and becomes an ordinary office job. That's how these things work.
- Kluny 9y agoThere was a dedicated office in San Francisco that was free for Automattic staff, but it closed down recently because they were paying to maintain a space for 300 people and only 2-3 ever showed up.
- OJFord 9y agoJust toward co-working space? I wouldn't have thought those deciding to work at home (i.e. giving space in their home to their work) need the contribution any less.
- baccredited 9y agoI've had multiple federal government programming jobs with offices. I consider it a requirement at this point.
- kk3399 9y agoEpic systems
- hitekker 9y agoIf you're speaking of the Healthcare Giant based in Wisconsin, I believe you share an office with one other person. Or at least on the Verona campus. It's been a while since I've been around those parts.
- thehardsphere 9y agoSharing with one person is still better than a cube or open plan.
- charsifood 9y agoOr, depending on the person, much much worse.
- samstave 9y agoIn the late 90s I shrared an office with a guy, and he was great and really nice - we both liked to work with the lights out... But he had a very peculiar look to his face, like a charicature. So when we would spin round in our chairs to discuss something, he'd be talking to me about something very serious about work and I would start to giggle. He would say "what why are you laughing?" And I would have to say things like "in sorry something you said just reminded my of something funny" I had a really hard time maintaining a straight face around him - I felt so bad about it.
- jpfed 9y agoI worked there in 2007 and had my own office.
- sidlls 9y agoWhy would anyone want to work for a sweatshop just because they provide offices?
- thehardsphere 9y agoI would hope most companies that consider software to be their core business give programmers offices, even if they have to share those offices with another person on the same team. Most companies that do not often consider programmers secondary to their core business, which is a good reason not to work there if you have a choice.
- dmoy 9y agoI mean I would hope so too, but it appears to be patently not true. Thus the ask HN question, where can one find these mythical offices.
- thehardsphere 9y agoWell, the only place where a non-programmer would treat the idea that programmers should have offices with incredulity would be a place that doesn't value software as its core business. I mean, most "programmers" don't work for software companies; many of them are employed by banks and insurance companies. It's natural for that to be treated weird there.
- dmoy 9y ago"the only place where a non-programmer would treat the idea that programmers should have offices with incredulity would be a place that doesn't value software as its core business" But this is also not true, see e.g. Facebook, Google.
- krageon 9y agoYou can hope that that's the case, but that doesn't mean that it is. In my experience, it is emphatically not the case.
- thehardsphere 9y agoDo you work at a company whose core business is software?
- batbomb 9y agoMost people programming in National Labs get offices, though you might need to share with one person. If you are in the bay area, think about SLAC or LBNL.
- grouchypumpkin 9y agoI know for a fact LBNL Software Developer 4 pays less than half the salary of other software companies. Screw that.
- arcanus 9y agoLaurence Livermore National Laboratories is not too far from the bay area as well.
- rjspotter 9y agoNot always true from my experience at ANL
- cweagans 9y agoDepends on where in SLAC you're working. If you're in the IT building, you'll frequently need to share a larger room with 3-5 other people.
- thearn4 9y agoAt NASA we tend to have 2-3 person offices. But it's a big agency so YMMV.
- Rebelgecko 9y agoSimilar experience where I work (FFRDC). Most people have their own offices, although some of the more desirable offices (ones with windows that are also bigger than interior offices) are shared. It does get a little sardinelike in summer when interns need somewhere to go.
- qnk 9y agoStack Overflow has blogged about their private offices for developers many times before. This is a post from 2015, I'm not sure if that's still the case: https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-in-private-offices/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-i...
- jonhmchan 9y agoWork at Stack here. We still provide private offices for developers when they're in one of our offices. A lot of the engineering team is remote too, which lets people have their own workspace as well.
- 52-6F-62 9y agoColour me green with envy. I'm working in one of those fabled "cubical farms" mentioned in the post. Half of the company has gone full open office, and the laggers (who didn't get redone before the last CEO suddenly quit) seem to not be changing. I could wander elsewhere in the building to work once in a while, but eventually people would start questioning where I am.. and I'd be missing out on my single monitor and ergonomic seating. I work for a modern company with 30 year outdated office structure... At least its feeling that way today. Yep, right there -- there's the envy!
- taternuts 9y agoA lot of people would be jealous of your cubicle setup, including me. If your company decides to update their '30 year outdated office structure', you'd most likely be stripped of your cubicle and have no real private space. I'd venture a guess that you'd curse yourself for taking your precious cube for granted.
- 52-6F-62 9y agoYou've got a point, I do like having a little personal space to drop my things, but I'm actually not sure what I'd like better. I'm not much of a nester. Yet an office... especially like the ones at SO would be pretty sweet. This is the fist time I've worked in a cubicle. I rarely see sunlight, although I recently was moved about 5 feet closer to a window (with walls still in the way). I used to either work outside (in other occupations), or at varying locales. It's new to me to be tied to one place, bathing in fluorescent lighting. Recently the company took offices away from people and moved them into cubicles, including management. The open office spaces have more private sections to tuck into for the day, they're just bookable.
- borplk 9y agoDo pretty much all programmers in Microsoft get their own office? Is it as simple as that or there's more to it?
- jmspring 9y agoDepends on the group, there is a push for open offices of late.
- Qworg 9y agoIn Research, everyone still has offices.
- latencyloser 9y agoDefinitely depends on the group, but I think mostly just whatever building you happen to be in. The building I'm in is newly remodeled. Meaning entirely open-office. In my opinion, my building/group/whatever does it wrong by jamming so many bodies in the same room together. There's 26 desks here in a room that looks as though it could comfortable fit about half that many. I've since adopted big sound-proof headphones and a wall of monitors that eliminate most distractions. But the biggest annoyance to me is that there's constantly a line for the bathrooms. Too many people for what the building was originally designed for, I think. Assuming we better limited the room capacity, I could likely tolerate this just fine.
- colanderman 9y ago> Too many people for what the building was originally designed for OSHA regulates the ratio of employees to toilets ("water closets"). Check this table [1] and file an OSHA complaint [2] if the requirement isn't met. [1] https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9790#1910.141%28c%29%281%29%28i%29 https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_tab... [2] https://www.osha.gov/pls/osha7/eComplaintForm.html https://www.osha.gov/pls/osha7/eComplaintForm.html
- hinkley 9y agoI assume those numbers are per employee by gender, right? If my company managed gender equality we'd be right at the limit if all the desks were full. Maybe that's why the facilities guy gets cranky if people take over meeting rooms for contractors or interns? A certain online retailer of books and counterfeit electronics has slightly larger bathrooms and a similar layout in its new buildings, but worse gender equality. They may actually be in violation.
- danesparza 9y agoYou mentioned it in the question already, but when I worked at Microsoft as a contractor I got an office.
- kuharich 9y agoOld Microsoft: it was a BillG ethic: anyone touching software got an office: software design engineers, PM's, QA, even admins ... it allowed one to be quiet and focus. And signaled to co-workers - do not disturb ...
- Chris911 9y agoMost new buildings at Microsoft now have open office plans.
- qq66 9y agoThis is mostly due to employee demand (although some employees are very angry about it).
- existencebox 9y agoMicrosoftie here. I haven't seen any indication for it to be due to employee demand. The vast majority of engineers on my team, and my last N teams, have agreed it was top down from leadership; and even those that preferred open offices agreed that cost cutting and space utilization are likely driving factors. To contribute to the broader discussion; SOME teams here still have offices, but it's a dying breed. I consider myself very lucky that I found one that did, and it was certainly a factor in my choice.
- orange_bear 9y agoFormer Apple employee here. That sounds exactly like what I witnessed. The new Apple HQ is very much open office and the design was definitely top-down from execs - I just know that I had no input at all even though it was my workplace. Always got my best work done at home.
- crispytx 9y agoIf companies can't afford to give programmers their own offices, then they should just let them work remotely from their own private offices in their homes.
- zodnas 9y agoAll full-time employees at SAS have their own office.
- bebop 9y agoEveryone at ESRI has their own office.
- luu 9y agoMicrosoft is switching from offices to open office plans. Buildings with offices are slowly being remodeled to open plan. My first team started off two-to-an-office (unless you had something like 5 or 6 years of seniority, in which case you'd get your own office), but they moved to open offices when their building got remodeled.
- dannysu 9y agoI'm hearing that things are moving in that direction as well. Were there reasons provided or were you asked for your preference at all?
- crunchyplastic 9y agoI was invited to an employee feedback session at Microsoft. We were asked to discuss teamwork and collaboration and float any ideas we had for changes that could be made to improve them. There were plenty of ideas, none of them involved open offices. Strangely, the consultants running the session used "different workspaces" as an example several times. After it showed up on the slides for the fourth time, I brought up the rumours about moving to open offices and said I thought it would harm productivity and wouldn't have a noticable effect on collaboration. Private offices with whiteboards and enough space for 3-4 people to stand and talk are fantastic for collaboration as-is. Several other attendees voiced their agreement. I don't recall anyone advocating for open offices. When the session ended I suggested to the senior Microsoft representative there that a survey be conducted to gauge engineer's preferences on work spaces. He said those decisions weren't in his hands (almost certainly true). I never did get such a survey. The open offices that I did see at Microsoft were actually pretty nice - they were discrete spaces with room for ~25 desks and 2-3 meeting rooms attached. Certainly better than the spaces I've seen at startups, but still not close to individual offices in terms of pleasantness. As for a reason, I suspect it's the same reason they unified dev and test into a single discipline. "Because that's what Facebook does."
- nxc18 9y agoEsri gives just about everyone their own office; aside from people displaced by moves or visiting, I've yet to encounter a programmer without one.
- infinitone 9y agoAnother Esri HNer i see!
- msluyter 9y agoOn the general question of open vs. private offices, my views have tempered over time. The first time I worked in an open office, I hated it. But I've come to realize that a lot depends on the layout of the office and that there are better and worse ways to configure one. The first case -- the one I hated -- had a) long rows of desks, b) bright overhead fluorescent lights, c) a lot of noise due to being in a large room with sales/marketing, d) a lot of visual distractions due to people walking up & down the aisles, and e) few available areas to go to collaborate away from your desks. Now, I'm also in an open office, but I find it quite livable, because: a) my desk faces the wall, for fewer visual distractions, b) the room is comfortably lit (ie, not too bright)[1], c) it's a smaller room with only engineering and is generally quieter[2], d) there are enough areas to go if you need to collaborate. All this is to say that, while the evidence is that open offices generally suck, there's probably a number of ways to ameliorate their problems to some degree without having to resort to private offices. I don't think I'd prefer an office to my current setup, actually. [1] I think this element is underrated. In fact, I'd be curious to know if there's a verifiable correlation between brightness levels and how loud people tend to talk. There's something about a dim room that seems to induce people to lower their voices. [2] Small, but not too small. There's a sort of sweet spot. I was once in a room with 3 other people and it was maddening because it was generally quiet but every little noise -- coughing, swallowing, etc... -- was seemingly amplified by the overall quietness to became hugely annoying. (An inverse concept explains why I can work quite well in a coffee shop despite the background din.)
- maaaats 9y agoI work in a team. The team of 5-10 people sit in the same office. That way we can talk to each other when needed. Some say that's disturbance, I call it collaborating. I'm not a code monkey. I don't sit alone in an office all day hammering out code. If that was what expected of me, I would change job. So, not exactly open floor plan, but not separate offices either. I think that's perfect.
- celim307 9y agoSame. I'm a huge fan of a team having its own 'alcove' or bullpen as we all are usually tackling a problem together or triaging something.
- pyrox420 9y agoAccuLynx - we aren't even in a tech hotbed. Just little ol' Beloit, WI. We got to build a brand new office building with offices for all devs. Great place to work, awesome perks. We saw a marked throughput improvement after moving to the new office.
- prdonahue 9y ago> we aren't even in a tech hotbed That's precisely why you have offices. Real estate is extremely cheap there compared to tech centers such as SF/ Bay Area.
- drfuchs 9y agoAdobe in San Jose. (At least it used to.)
- rajeshp1986 9y agoThey are in the process of dismantling those office and creating an open office plan.
- omg2k 9y agoMathWorks (Natick, MA).
- jonhmchan 9y agoStack Overflow does. I'm an engineer there and we still think providing private offices to our engineering team is important for their productivity. This includes engineers, SREs, designers, data scientists, PMs, and others. However, most of our engineering team is remote and if they're not in one of our locations, we give them pretty much what they'd like to build their own home office or go to a coworking space. For me, I'm actually nomadic, so I tend to work from wherever I'm staying or end up in cafes a lot of time. I still get the support I need if my work "station" isn't optimal. TL;DR Stack Overflow provides private offices, but is really flexible, especially given its remote policy.
- nfriedly 9y agoI'm still occasionally sad that I bombed an interview at SO a while back. I had prepped for more of a front-end/full stack JS role, and got asked a series of low-level data structure questions. I thought I did alright given the circumstances (I did work out the correct answer to each one), but the interviewer wasn't impressed. I asked for a do-over and they said no. Oh well...
- Jach 9y agoTypically companies will let you 'do-over'/re-apply in 6-12 months, so there's still hope!
- nfriedly 9y agoHaha, yea, but I ended up at IBM Watson, which has been a pretty good gig so far. (It was a little better before they flip-flopped on remote, but that hasn't affected me as much as I thought it would.)
- module0000 9y agoMy programming career involved an office at every position (Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cisco, HP, XTime, VMWare, and a handful of private equity groups). As I was transitioning into another field, the "open office" craze was taking over. I could be wrong, but I have a strong feeling I would not have enjoyed it. Nothing like being an hour into analyzing a core dump to be jerked back to reality by someone interrupting you!
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoAn hour focused on one thing? Lucky you!
- lonnyk 9y agoSocial norms change. You end up messaging a lot w/ people you can physically touch and it's not considered rude to just ignore someone coming up to you if you're concentrating.
- kzisme 9y agoI'm not sure if you're just lucky based on the setups at previous jobs, but for me it has been open floor plan so far. The only people who have offices are managers or C-Level executives. Currently I sit next to a door that is constantly opened which really kills my productivity.
- msukmanowsky 9y agoParse.ly is 100% remote and I've got a pretty sweet home office :)
- amorphid 9y agoIn the USA... Given real estate prices in tech hubs, who can afford an office space anymore, let alone private offices! I imagine working from home will become the new normal. At least until the FCC allows ISPs to throttle Internet connection speeds so much that ISDN lines start looking attractive. Hopefully they make the phone company maintain those copper phone lines!
- calafrax 9y agothis fcc comment is so uninformed. getting rid of net neutrality will make service way better because you will be able to pay for a line with prioritized access for video conferencing and remote presence. net neutrality is what makes it impossible for individuals with a public isp connection to get the same quality as corporations with their own private networks.
- sand500 9y ago>net neutrality is what makes it impossible for individuals with a public isp connection to get the same quality as corporations with their own private networks. Right, its definitely not the ISP monopoly/duopoly
- calafrax 9y agoyep. all of those qos and traffic shaping features on routers don't actually do anything. that is why it should be illegal for public isps to use them. makes sense.
- iLemming 9y agoYou don't work from home. You live in the office.
- dacracot 9y agoLawrence Livermore Nat'l Laboratory. Everyone has an office with a door.
- suhith 9y agoFog Creek Software does iirc
- LVB 9y agoAt Garmin in Salem, OR, they have four-person quads. These are enclosed spaces with an additional central table, storage, ceiling and door. Though not my own office, I liked it. Quiet, everyone had a corner with ample space, and a nice group dynamic formed. Devs would move occasionally and you'd get to know other people pretty well.
- rbanffy 9y agoTwo places that allow you (actually they prefer) to work remotely are Avaaz (avaaz.org) and Canonical. Both may share the cost of a rented office. I can't speak highly enough of either - awesome teams, awesome missions.
- alok-g 9y agoQualcomm
- tesmar2 9y agoIf you are in QRC, T, N or S. I think the newer buildings are open office plans.
- ozzmotik 9y agoi had my own office at cPanel, albeit a small one but it was a pleasant personal space.
- mpa000 9y agoI manage developers for the publishing arm of a professional association. While I did not have an office when I started as a dev here over a decade ago, all of our developers now have their own offices while we two managers share one. Priorities. Immediately prior to this, as a junior member of a non-IT/IS-department rapid development group for a utility company, I was relegated to whatever cubicle they could find to stuff me in, usually on the periphery of the call center area. This is also where they'd stick the COBOL guys they'd had to hire back as consultants, along with others who didn't fit into any of the (many) union contract workflows. (I was a listed as a line-item in the same cost code group as a rented photocopier or scanner, meaning that for most of my tenure there I had ZERO contact with anyone from HR. It was glorious.)
- jaegerpicker 9y agoThat's why programmers should work remotely. It's the best thing I've ever done for my career. Moved back from Management to IC because it was remote and it's been amazing.
- mooreds 9y agoRemote work is great for so many reasons. Off the top of my head: For the company: * less office space expense * bigger talent pool * low cost benefit * increased documentation * encourages the trend towards outcome based management (as opposed to butts in seats) For the programmer: * more control over their work environment * more control over their time * no "commuting" subsidy for their employers * arbitrage payscales and standard of living * working vacations become possible There are some downsides in terms of increased coordination costs and I have some friends that will never get to work remote because of security concerns, but for most developers this trend is fantastic.
- hackermailman 9y agoOne of the downsides is managers think we don't do anything all day as they can't stand over us monitoring for efficiency, so insist we are available at a whim on Slack, which makes Slack the new open office where you have to stop reasoning about what you're building and answer somebody's meme post on Slack or a manager's musings that would've been an email in the past you could reply to later. To me this is just as great as disturbance as the door opening to the foozball and video game room with a crowd of people yelling.
- chrisco255 9y agoPerhaps you could write a chat bot that periodically makes arbitrary comments or adds reactions to others' posts?
- devmunchies 9y agoI've been looking into https://twistapp.com/ https://twistapp.com/ for the reasons you said about slack.
- jedwardhawkins 9y agoMicro Focus in Provo, UT provides offices. The last company I worked for was a mature startup with an open floor plan. Most of the noise complaints were mitigated by noise cancelling headphones which were purchased for each engineer.
- mindcrime 9y agoIn my experience, noise cancelling headphones don't really solve any problems. They do nothing for "visual noise" and even for audio, the noise cancelling mode just feels artificial (which it is). I find that, for myself, I rarely want "no noise", I just want the quiet rush of the AC vents, maybe the pitter-patter of footfalls in the distance, etc. But no loud noises / talking / music / etc. in the immediate area.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pawanpe 9y agohttps://www.mathworks.com/ https://www.mathworks.com/
- DavidThi808 9y agoWe mostly have 2 people/office. We would have done individual offices but the office space we found to rent was perfect except the offices were larger and so it was a LOT cheaper to use the existing build-out. It is working well. People mostly are heads down getting their work done. So add Windward Studios to the list where all developers get offices.
- nfriedly 9y agoI have a small private office that I just lease myself. I bicycle in every day and work "remote" for IBM. It's fantastic. If I want some noise, I'll work from home (I have a 3-year old.) The down side is that IBM's management has recently done a 180 on remote working and is now "strongly encouraging" me to move to one of their offices and work in a cubicle. I'm pretty sure they won't actually fire me for not moving, but any promotion is probably going to be harder to come by until things (hopefully) swing back in the other direction. Or I'll just retire. The benefit of living in Ohio is that I can save like 40% of my salary and still live comfortably. (And lease an office for $225/month!)
- united893 9y ago> Remote, IBM Did this not affect your role: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/ibm-tells-its-remote-employees-get-back-office-n763441 http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/ibm-tells-its-...
- nfriedly 9y agoYea, before that, everything was roses. After that, I was initially told that I would be fired if I didn't move on site (I was given a few location choices). I said "no", got a new job lined up, and then about 4 months later, they decided not to fire me (they apparently did let go of some people, I was an exception). I don't recall the exact phrasing, but it was at least hinted that I shouldn't expect a promotion. I never received any of it in writing, it was all phone calls from the start. I did get a 5% raise a few months later, though.
- Sohcahtoa82 9y agoThat's gotta be quite the complement to your value to the company. Not only did they not let you go, but you still got a decent raise later. Even if they hinted that you won't be eligible for promotions (I imagine that decision comes from someone higher than the person allowing you to continue working from home), I'd still be feeling good about myself if I were in your shoes.
- hack_mmmm 9y ago2 years back We used to get a cabin office @Qualcomm for all Engineers same as VPs. Now Staff Engineers and above still get cabin office and others have moved to cubicles. We have a lab where most of us sit in the afternoon to collaborate. I must say this is the only place where I saw in my career where a fresh grad got cabin offices. It feels great to code in isolation uninterrupted. It also feels great to collaborate in lab with other folks and also code there.
- neogodless 9y agoI searched "cabin office" on Google, but the results were largely about offices in cabins. I have a feeling you mean something else. Would you mind defining them for me? To clarify, I'm not familiar with your usage of the word "cabin" in this context.
- praneshp 9y agoIt's a regular room, nothing special (in terms of using the word "cabin"). 4 years ago at San Diego interns were 3 to a room, regular engineers were 2 per room, and I guess at some point it became 1 per room. Kind of useless for me though, because I spent almost 90% of my time in a lab (and a large portion of engineers spend most of their time in a lab). The lab is a large noisy room. with people next to each other. It was a good deal though; if I had stayed past my internship and gotten comfortable enough to write a lot of code before wanting to test it, I could've spent more time in my office.
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoIf your work is classified you almost certainly get an office.
- caboteria 9y agoThe last place I worked where I got a private office (and probably the last place I ever will) was the MITRE Corporation in Bedford, MA, a federally-funded R&D corporation. Level AC-5 and above got solo offices, AC-4's had to share.
- neofrommatrix 9y agoOracle does provide private offices in their Santa Clara location. This has mostly to do with this being the old Sun Microsystems buildings. It might have changed now, though after rapid expansion of their public cloud engineering group.
- sizzzzlerz 9y agoMy 600-person company, a wholly-owned part of a much, much larger national multi-billion dollar company has single or double private offices, with doors, for the entire staff, new hires, IT, admin, everyone, at our headquarters in SV as well as our smaller, satellite offices. AFAIK, there is no plan to change this. If, however, our current lease isn't renewed and the company moves, all bets are off. I've heard rumors that our parent company isn't happy with the "wasted" space. We'll see.
- bdavisx 9y agoYou might want to "name and not-shame" them, some people want to know because they want to work for companies like this.
- kondro 9y agoAnd how is revealing where you work and that they have offices privileged enough that you aren't prepared to name them?
- rdiddly 9y agoI grudgingly concede that "my 600-person company" is a valid answer to the question. But never mind that -- How are YOU doing? Everything going well? What's new? I am, as they say back East, breaking your balls a little. (-‿)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- orange_bear 9y agoApple placed me in an experimental building where they were changing the interior design constantly, trying to decide how to design their new "space ship" building. The whole time, I fumed at no longer having an office and having to work in an open office design. I could not focus due to audio and visual interruptions while I worked (programmer) in the open office spaces. But no one ever asked me for my opinion about the experimental open office environments! Now this: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/08/08/apple-park-employees-floor-plan-hq-spaceship-aapl.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/08/08/apple-pa... "Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan at new $5 billion HQ" Glad I wasn't the only coder there who utterly despised the move to the open office design.
- pawadu 9y agoSo what do the designers think of the new office? I once was at a place were designers always had the last word (maybe because CEO was an architect), hence their new offices looked like a much cheaper version of Starbucks. With fewer couches and the few walls that made it were all made of glass. The company is no longer around. These days just nearby their old offices brings back horrible memories.
- puranjay 9y agoDesigning seems like a collaborative thing. I'm a writer and nothing peeves me more than open offices. Some tasks require isolation. Writing is one of them. I reckon programming is similar.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rwoodley 9y agoI've worked for financial firms for 31 years. Almost all of that time, I've been a programmer on a trading desk sitting right next to traders. There is constant noise and shouting. I can tune out a lot. EXCEPT: TV noise, and idle chit chat like you'd have down at the pub. As long as people are focused on work, I can tune it whatever they say. Strange.
- s1gs3gv 9y agoI think choice is important. Some people prefer one, some the other. The best working environment I've experienced in my life as a software developer was at Bell Labs in the 80s, where small private offices was the norm. On the other hand, its good to have open working areas available when they are appropriate. In Bell Labs, we'd often congregate near the railings overlooking the Holmdel atrium while our build finished or downstairs in the large open seating areas.
- MrBuddyCasino 9y agoThis. Just let people choose for themselves. We have a regular open office room, a special "quiet zone" open office room, and several smaller rooms to retreat to if you want even more privacy. There are people in all three areas, usually the same ones. There is no one size that fits all. Just let people choose.
- TallGuyShort 9y agoMicrosoft comes to mind? I've only been in a couple of buildings in the Seattle campus, but it was the typical open-air shared desks that you see in many other software companies recently. Are they known for using desks otherwise?
- orange_bear 9y agoThanks for the info! At my last workplace (Apple), the department had brought in a ton of H1B visa workers from body shops and I'm skeptical about if it was legal. They were all crammed elbow-to-elbow in bullpen cubicles. As a contractor at the time, I sat on a bench in the hallway because there were no free bullpen cubes!! The bathroom urinals always had pools of urine beneath them, due (in part) to excessive use. The toilet seats were always urinated on. Oh, good times.
- colanderman 9y ago> The toilet seats were always urinated on. I don't get this; this happened at my workplace too, until we installed a coded lock on the restroom (which was otherwise accessible to anyone in the building). What kind of boor has a professional job but can't piss in a foot-diameter hole and is too lazy to clean up when he does so?
- yvhhjbb 9y agoIndians?
- dang 9y agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly violating the HN guidelines. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
- orange_bear 9y agoThe user was correct in my case, stereotype or not.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- orange_bear 9y agoHate to say it, but I caught a guy one day after he completely ruined the toilet seat and it was an Indian H1B contractor. No I didn't go chase him down at that point. Please don't ban my account, that's true and anecdotal - 75%+ of my coworkers in that department were Indian so maybe it was just the odds.
- meddlepal 9y agoPTC in Needham, MA does if you're on the ProE/Creo team
- holbue 9y agoWho else read "... gives programers coffees"? :-D PS: Seriously, free coffee is more important to me than an office. I like open working environments.
- Bahamut 9y agoI have my own office at Apple here in Cupertino (just a software engineer)...I'm glad that almost all our teams are moving to Infinite Loop as opposed to the new campus :) . Most of our offices hold two people though (still better than open offices!).
- orange_bear 9y agoI remember the IL buildings having almost exclusively single-occupant offices and cubicles throughout the 2000's. In the last few years you can't even find a parking spot out there. Maybe things will be better for you with people shuffled to the new hell building.
- pixelmonkey 9y agoMy team at Parse.ly is fully remote/distributed -- and one of the motivating reasons I formed the team that way was to reproduce the feel of Fog Creek's "bionic office", but in each engineer's home office space. I discussed this a little in my "Notes on Distributed Teams" presentation here: http://pixelmonkey.org/pub/distributed-teams/notes/#open-plan-vs-open-source http://pixelmonkey.org/pub/distributed-teams/notes/#open-pla... Here's how my personal home office looks: https://flic.kr/p/v1NZ73 https://flic.kr/p/v1NZ73 (Shameless plug, here are the positions we're hiring for, if you're interested! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14902227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14902227)
- taheca 9y agoJust out of curiosity, why do you have two webcams?
- pixelmonkey 9y agoOh, simple explanation -- I have two computers. I have an always-on Mac Mini these days, and then a docking station for a Lenovo X1C. One webcam on each. (Since we have a remote team, I sometimes sit in on meetings [listening only] while doing work on my laptop, and for convenience and to save CPU, I do it from a second machine.)
- phaed 9y agoAs long were showing off remote workspaces, heres mine. Herman Miller Aeron + 50" 4k Samsung. https://www.instagram.com/p/BVGgCYMFhF_ https://www.instagram.com/p/BVGgCYMFhF_
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- starbuxman 9y agoWouldn't it be more appealing for companies to allow their employees to work remotely?
- bsimpson 9y agoAt Google, it depends on which building you're in. I sit in an office with 3 other people. My manager sits in an open pod in the hallway.
- DarkContinent 9y agoEpic in Madison, WI, gives all employees their own offices. (I can't find a source but I've been on a tour.)
- nhumrich 9y agoI can validate this claim. I interviewed with them.
- tuna-piano 9y agoThe (only?) female-founded, tech unicorn you've never heard of. For some reason, Epic, and it's enormous success, doesn't get much coverage.
- hnal943 9y agoWell it's private, so it's harder to get information about. The tech is ancient, and it's not on the coast. Not sure what the coverage would be about, really.
- azdle 9y agoNot sure more coverage would be good for them. I graduated from the U of MN so I was well aware of them, they were always recruiting. They had a reputation for only hiring fresh grads, enticed by 'perks', and then working them as hard as possible until they quit. They probably see it as in their best interest to not be talked about too much.
- tibbon 9y agoAt least give me my own 64sqft cube, and then have some decent lighting. I'd far rather live in a cubefarm than be rubbing elbows with the person beside me. It's not perfect, but having some degree of "my space" is really essential. Oddly, I had my own office when I was working in IT at 17, but now it's harder to find.
- nhumrich 9y agoThe book peopleware argues for the middle ground. Shared offices. Rooms with a door, with 3-4 people. You have quick collaboration, but also are closed off from unrelated distraction.
- mindcrime 9y agoWhen the day comes that Fogbeam Labs has an actual office, and employees, I absolutely intend to make sure that everybody has a private office with a door. Unfortunately, I can't say when that will be.
- Balgair 9y agoMost DoD and DoE jobs/contractors have personal offices. In fact, I've never seen one that doesn't at least have a cube-farm and most just have a personal office and then meeting rooms and then lab-space, depending on the job. Cubes are terrible in their own right, but it's better than an open office by a lot. At least you have somewhere to put pictures of your kids up at eye level.
- ryanSrich 9y agoWork for companies that support remote work. You'll always have a private office.
- bostik 9y agoWe have team offices at Smarkets.
- carapace 9y agoI'm literally about to go talk to recruiters and I'm going to try it: I'll take $20,000 off of my pay if co will provide an office with a door I can close. I'll report back what they say. I just recently was working in an open office and the difference between daytime and evening (after everyone else left) was dramatic.
- rajeshp1986 9y agoI don't think any decent size company could afford to do that in Bay Area. The real estate prices are too high to give personal offices to everyone and that's why open office plans are adopted.
- coderjames 9y agoUniversal Avionics provides their Engineers private offices. It was important to the founder of the company, so when a new building was constructed it was specifically arranged to provide as many offices as possible, even if some are internal (no outside window).
- gwbas1c 9y agoHonestly, I'm less concerned about an "office." A cube with high walls is more similar to an "office" than an open layout where everyone shares a table. What's more important is company culture. Does your company expect you to accept interruptions at any time for any reason, no matter how trivial? Is your manager willing to run interference when suddenly every new employee in every department shows up expecting that you'll handhold them? You can have an office with a bad company culture; you'll find that your office door is always full of lurkers, or you'll find that you can't walk between your office and the bathroom without getting mobbed with "urgent" requests that need your attention immediately. What's more important is to ensure that management avoids distractions, that newcomers in other departments are trained, and that processes are established and followed when needed. Handholding should not be required from any engineers; instead mentoring and process refinement goes a lot further than a door that you can close.
- matheweis 9y agoI shared a two person office at the university that I worked at before my current job. If that sounds like a good deal in exchange for 50% of the industry salary, I believe they're hiring... :)
- rurban 9y agoCpanel, Houston Texas
- jps359 9y agoibm
- programmarchy 9y agoI worked for a successful medium sized business called SpeakWrite early in my career that specialized in voice transcription for the legal industry. The company was founded by a former lawyer, and the office culture was very traditional. The software team was treated with respect, paid well, and everyone had their own office. It was great! Having worked in tech/startup culture since then, I much prefer the traditional office culture. Now I work remotely as a consultant and have my own office, but miss working on a closely knit team.
- rdiddly 9y agoIntel still has the old-school high-walled cubicles in some places. But gradually, floor by floor, building by building, they've been renovating, and you know what that means! More openness. To their credit the new motif is 1) more aesthetically pleasing, and 2) not TOTALLY open. In other words, not this fuckin' nightmare... http://workdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Open-plan-office-014.jpg http://workdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Open-plan-o... ...but more like a range going from this... https://media.glassdoor.com/l/ce/49/d7/6c/intel-office.jpg https://media.glassdoor.com/l/ce/49/d7/6c/intel-office.jpg ...to this... http://media.glassdoor.com/m/2d/0e/af/40/desk-with-a-view.jpg http://media.glassdoor.com/m/2d/0e/af/40/desk-with-a-view.jp... ...and even this... https://media.glassdoor.com/l/17/25/41/7c/intel-office.jpg https://media.glassdoor.com/l/17/25/41/7c/intel-office.jpg
- rspeer 9y agoLuminoso, a natural language processing company in Cambridge, MA.
- potus_putin 9y agoProgrammers dont have individual offices ? How can you think with others distracting you ?