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> ... nice one Jony ... design a brave and “beautiful” open plan workspace for a paranoiacally secretive organisation. I feel like it's worth pointing out that

> ... nice one Jony ... design a brave and “beautiful” open plan workspace for a paranoiacally secretive organisation. I feel like it's worth pointing out that Steve Jobs was still running Apple when this building was designed. I don't work for Norman Foster so I have no way to know how much changed internally after he died, but I doubt the balance shifted too wildly given the logistical constraints of massive construction projects. As an aside - and I don't mean this in reference to office layouts - were I in charge of a global consumer products company that competes in multiple cutthroat markets, I'd want to foster a corporate culture of extreme openness and collaboration inside the walls but absolute silence outside. That's not exactly what Apple is today, obviously, but it's within the realm of possibility that it's their goal.

rusk 7y ago
> I'd want a corporate culture of extreme openness and collaboration inside the walls but absolute silence outside Aspiration driven design it is so ... EDIT ... with no consideration for the practicalities of what it takes to achieve those aspirations.
dmitriid 7y ago
> I'd want to foster a corporate culture of extreme openness and collaboration inside the walls Open space offices are entirely othogonal to this idea.
- culturestate 7y ago
  How so? I'd argue that while open-plan offices can profoundly affect people's productivity and morale, they have relatively little impact on collaboration or communication - I view these more as functions of the team's culture. As long as your group makes a conscious effort to bounce ideas around and ask each other for advice, what's the difference between sitting at a table wearing headphones or in an office with the door shut? Or, for that matter, everyone being remote? I can kind of see how you could make a case that open-plan offices change the dynamic of communication, i.e. they make people less willing to "bother" their coworkers, but collaboration can (and probably should, most of the time) happen asynchronously over slack or email or post-it note anyway.
  - afthonos 7y ago
    That’s what “orthogonal” means, in this context … :-)
    - culturestate 7y ago
      Whoops, thanks for that. I must've read it as 'antithetical.'
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Even (information) openness and collaboration themselves are orthogonal. You can certainly have one without the other. Then the physical openness is another dimension. And so on and so forth. So we'd need more information to know whether or not Apple is best optimized in all these, and more, dimensions. Way more information than we'd ever get from one person or team. (Definitely way more than Apple would ever give out.)
- Uhuhreally 7y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-workers-chat-70-less-are-less-productive-and-email-more/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-work...
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
Take the mafia, its the ideal example to organise towards- it thrives and works in open spaces like restaurants, construction buisnesses, it exists in plain sight. Yet, the omerta enforces a absolut silence to the outside world. The ideal buisness organization is the mafia.
adventured 7y ago
Steve Jobs described the whole point to the design: he wanted people to frequently bump into each other, rather than being hidden away in private offices. He noted it was one of his favorite aspects of the Pixar office. It's strange that anybody would blame Jony Ive for a design that Jobs chose. Jobs took what he thought worked about Pixar's office to spur creativity & innovation, and used it in building the new Apple campus design. > According to Jobs’ recent biography, the [Pixar] headquarters was to be a place that “promoted encounters and unplanned collaborations.” > Pixar’s campus design originally separated different employee disciplines into different buildings – one for computer scientists, another for animators, and a third building for everybody else. But because Jobs was fanatic about these unplanned collaborations, he envisioned a campus where these encounters could take place, and his design included a great atrium space that acts as a central hub for the campus. > Brad Bird, director of The Incredible and Ratatouille, said of the space, “The atrium initially might seem like a waste of space…But Steve realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen.” > And did it work? “Steve’s theory worked from day one,” said John Lasseter, Pixar’s chief creative officer “…I’ve never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.” https://officesnapshots.com/2012/07/16/pixar-headquarters-and-the-legacy-of-steve-jobs/ https://officesnapshots.com/2012/07/16/pixar-headquarters-an...
- wolfgke 7y ago
  > Steve Jobs described the whole point to the design: he wanted people to frequently bump into each other, rather than being hidden away in private offices. He noted it was one of his favorite aspects of the Pixar office. It's strange that anybody would blame Jony Ive for a design that Jobs chose. Jobs took what he thought worked about Pixar's office to spur creativity & innovation, and used it in building the new Apple campus design. Perhaps it spurs creativity and innovation, but only few programming activities are highly creative and innovative. Rather to me, programming is about writing bug-free code. In this sense, I tend to compare programming activities with Air Traffic Control.
  - unethical_ban 7y ago
    I'll tell you as someone in a large IT organization creating a new paradigm for us re: public cloud vs. private: Collaboration and communication are huge. Absolutely critical that people are talking more often than not. It's decision making and design at that point, not just DevSecOps.

rusk 7y ago

> I'd want a corporate culture of extreme openness and collaboration inside the walls but absolute silence outside Aspiration driven design it is so ... EDIT ... with no consideration for the practicalities of what it takes to achieve those aspirations.

dmitriid 7y ago

> I'd want to foster a corporate culture of extreme openness and collaboration inside the walls Open space offices are entirely othogonal to this idea.

culturestate 7y ago
How so? I'd argue that while open-plan offices can profoundly affect people's productivity and morale, they have relatively little impact on collaboration or communication - I view these more as functions of the team's culture. As long as your group makes a conscious effort to bounce ideas around and ask each other for advice, what's the difference between sitting at a table wearing headphones or in an office with the door shut? Or, for that matter, everyone being remote? I can kind of see how you could make a case that open-plan offices change the dynamic of communication, i.e. they make people less willing to "bother" their coworkers, but collaboration can (and probably should, most of the time) happen asynchronously over slack or email or post-it note anyway.
- afthonos 7y ago
  That’s what “orthogonal” means, in this context … :-)
  - culturestate 7y ago
    Whoops, thanks for that. I must've read it as 'antithetical.'
bilbo0s 7y ago
Even (information) openness and collaboration themselves are orthogonal. You can certainly have one without the other. Then the physical openness is another dimension. And so on and so forth. So we'd need more information to know whether or not Apple is best optimized in all these, and more, dimensions. Way more information than we'd ever get from one person or team. (Definitely way more than Apple would ever give out.)
Uhuhreally 7y ago
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-workers-chat-70-less-are-less-productive-and-email-more/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-work...

LifeLiverTransp 7y ago

Take the mafia, its the ideal example to organise towards- it thrives and works in open spaces like restaurants, construction buisnesses, it exists in plain sight. Yet, the omerta enforces a absolut silence to the outside world. The ideal buisness organization is the mafia.

adventured 7y ago

Steve Jobs described the whole point to the design: he wanted people to frequently bump into each other, rather than being hidden away in private offices. He noted it was one of his favorite aspects of the Pixar office. It's strange that anybody would blame Jony Ive for a design that Jobs chose. Jobs took what he thought worked about Pixar's office to spur creativity & innovation, and used it in building the new Apple campus design. > According to Jobs’ recent biography, the [Pixar] headquarters was to be a place that “promoted encounters and unplanned collaborations.” > Pixar’s campus design originally separated different employee disciplines into different buildings – one for computer scientists, another for animators, and a third building for everybody else. But because Jobs was fanatic about these unplanned collaborations, he envisioned a campus where these encounters could take place, and his design included a great atrium space that acts as a central hub for the campus. > Brad Bird, director of The Incredible and Ratatouille, said of the space, “The atrium initially might seem like a waste of space…But Steve realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen.” > And did it work? “Steve’s theory worked from day one,” said John Lasseter, Pixar’s chief creative officer “…I’ve never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.” https://officesnapshots.com/2012/07/16/pixar-headquarters-and-the-legacy-of-steve-jobs/ https://officesnapshots.com/2012/07/16/pixar-headquarters-an...

wolfgke 7y ago
> Steve Jobs described the whole point to the design: he wanted people to frequently bump into each other, rather than being hidden away in private offices. He noted it was one of his favorite aspects of the Pixar office. It's strange that anybody would blame Jony Ive for a design that Jobs chose. Jobs took what he thought worked about Pixar's office to spur creativity & innovation, and used it in building the new Apple campus design. Perhaps it spurs creativity and innovation, but only few programming activities are highly creative and innovative. Rather to me, programming is about writing bug-free code. In this sense, I tend to compare programming activities with Air Traffic Control.
- unethical_ban 7y ago
  I'll tell you as someone in a large IT organization creating a new paradigm for us re: public cloud vs. private: Collaboration and communication are huge. Absolutely critical that people are talking more often than not. It's decision making and design at that point, not just DevSecOps.