16 ms·
Meta rediscovers the cubicle
- firstSpeaker 4y agoOriginal source that is being referenced in calnewport: https://archive.ph/okUcW https://archive.ph/okUcW
- lozenge 4y agoThe photos tell a different story. The new cubicles reduce noise from the corridor but still provide line of sight between employees (ie, no privacy benefits).
- mklepaczewski 4y agoI'm pretty sure it's not about privacy but productivity. Cubicles are probably there to isolate sound and visual distractions. Line of sight emulates body doubling and accountability buddies. I don't have strong opinion on the lack of privacy. I've been body doubling full-time in work for the last few years and I never felt need for more privacy. I can always go somewhere else if I need to take a break. However, ymmv.
- abecedarius 4y agoOK, this is something else. Tests for an actual 1980s/90s cubicle: when you focus on your work, is anyone else in your field of view? Can you scoot your chair from your computer to a work desk for writing and reading, with say a bookshelf over it? If you stand up, are you in the field of view of a neighbor? Is it reasonably comfy for a coworker to visit you in your cubicle, maybe sitting down for some pair programming or reviewing some papers together? Man, in the 80s we thought of cubicles as the cheapass option. I never did have an office.
- allisdust 4y agoHope it will slowly percolate down to other companies which copied this shitty work culture while not providing any other benefits that the FAANG provided.
- AstixAndBelix 4y agoThis is exactly what happens when lack of scientific literature and manager hubris collide together. After decades and decades there are still no conclusive results about how different types of workplaces influence productivity and mental health, but even if there were manager would not even look at them and instead make decisions based on perceived productivity and "common sense".
- fastball 4y agoI don't think you can really produce replicable scientific literature about this type of thing. Way too many variables. We are already incapable of replicating studies with fewer variables.
- jerrre 4y agoAgreed, it's not something a scientific paper would give any useful insight for. A survey of company success (measured in profits, or market cap) vs office layout, trying to see if there is correlation would be more useful. Even accounting for the fact that there is a lot of cargo culting, and unhappy employees.
- rjh29 4y agoWould be useful to get some data, I agree. Cubicles are soul sucking, inhuman environments. Open plan is distracting. Remote work is socially isolating.
- DrBazza 4y ago> After decades and decades there are still no conclusive results about how different types of workplaces influence productivity and mental health, No idea about the latter, though I'm much happier having removed a 3 hour round-trip train commute (will it turn up on time? will it even turn up? will it be delayed en route?), but as far as productivity is concerned, my previous employer, like others went fully remote during COVID, and then stayed that way, based on internal evidence. For all development teams across the company (green field, existing, maintenance, whatever), the number of PRs almost doubled for each team, and slightly less tangible metrics such as down-time, bug reports, decreased by non-trivial amounts, and quite a few product milestones were hit early, by quite some margin. That on its own was statistically significant, as pre-COVID, I don't think they hit any milestone dates. Of course, you can argue that all of those are due to less meetings, less interruptions, easier availability of people to diagnose problems, and perhaps even better planning is required for being remote, but ultimately, all of those have improved the productivity of my former employer.
- omnicognate 4y agoI've worked my entire career in open plan offices and if I were ever asked to work in a US style cubicle farm I'd resign inmediately.
- ramraj07 4y agoThe only thing that would be more in tune for a HN comment would be someone saying “if someone ever forces me to switch to a modern ide from eMacs I’ll quit immediately.”
- dbalatero 4y agoI'll play; if someone forced me to stop using Neovim I'd strongly _consider_ quitting.
- omnicognate 4y agoI wouldn't take the job in the first place :-D It's the first letter that's capitalised, BTW. "Emacs", not "eMacs".
- wishfish 4y agoGave me the fun thought that this person can only be productive working in Emacs on a vintage eMac.
- simonjgreen 4y agoBased on what? It sounds like you have no experience of that environment so this sounds very close minded
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoi am in agreement spiritually - they look depressing.
- omnicognate 4y agoI've visited a couple of cubicle farms in the US and spent a couple of weeks in a place in Sweden where everyone had a completely separate office. For me, workplaces are more depressing the more people are walled off from each other. I get that some people prefer to be alone, but these days why not work remotely?
- tjpnz 4y ago>Facebook was paying a 40 – 50% premium for talent because people didn’t want to work under those conditions You can mitigate some of the noise with a good pair of noise cancelling headphones. There are far more fundamental reasons for them paying that premium.
- ranting-moth 4y agoMight work for some, but personally my ears and hearing wouldn't cope with a whole day of NC headphones, let alone 5 days a week. Also, sometimes I like having music/noise on but sometimes not.
- robin_reala 4y agoMeta want their staff to be in VR goggles 5 days a week, so NC headphones are only the start.
- erik_seaberg 4y agoClosed-back over-the-ear headphones are good for this. Active noise cancellation damps repetitive sounds, but a big hunk of plastic damps everything. I think I'm on my third pair of Sennheiser HD280s in 25 years, because the plastic does wear out.
- ginko 4y agoI have yet to experience noise cancelling headphones that actually cancel all sounds like people talking. So far it only seems to work for low frequency background noise. I got some airpods pro for their supposedly great ANC and was really disappointed in how limited it actually was.
- ranting-moth 4y agoI remember reading somewhere that this whole open office space started with startups that couldn't afford cubicles. And because startups were doing it, it became trendy and everyone copied it. Cant remember where I read it, but I have no problem believing it.
- varjag 4y agoDidn't help it was also cheaper.
- yieldcrv 4y agoI mean it became trendy because cubicle farms are depressing cautionary tales of a sea of shattered dreams The cubicle itself has utility, nobody denied that
- senttoschool 4y agoIt became popular because Startups need a lot more collaboration and it’s thought that open offices lead to more collaboration. When the startups became huge and successful, they didn’t go back to cubicles because the open office was what they used when they were having business success. Then all the other companies started copying them because they think it will lead them to be more innovative like the startups.
- Terr_ 4y ago> It became popular because Startups need a lot more collaboration and it’s thought that open offices lead to more collaboration. Serious question, how would we measure that, and is there any empirical evidence for the idea startups "need" more? I imagine a lot of it is an immediate workaround for a system nobody wants to bother building, like a mailing list or design-specs.
- swyx 4y agoas with many of these "haha tech nerds are rediscovering old things" comments, my instinctive response is: yes, it is Good Actually that we are continually questioning and testing received wisdom. If we end up reinventing old things from first principles, that means we have all the more confidence in them, rather than relying on the unalive momentum of tradition and path dependence. people who sneer at reinvention can be too smug sometimes. we owe all progress to the unreasonable men and women who are too arrogant to do anything but poke and prod at life on their own terms.
- ekianjo 4y ago> yes, it is Good Actually that we are continually questioning and testing received wisdom. Or you know, alternatively you could understand where the wisdom comes from instead of being clueless about it and think that one can make things better with a snap of fingers.
- cool-RR 4y agoThe part to sneer at is Meta's refusal to call it a cubicle, instead trying to brand it as an innovation. They could say "You know what, we were wrong, cubicles aren't so bad after all."
- synu 4y agoSometimes. Other times (most times?) it seems like a kind of reactionary contrarian arrogance that people who have done/studied/experienced X surely have no idea what they are talking about and be dismissed by anyone who has experience with computers.
- berkes 4y agoIt's also science. In which something becomes solidified only by "reinventing" it over and over and over.
- synu 4y agoProgress in science as I understand is only on the shoulders of giants (previous research), not starting over from first principles with every generation. If we did that we'd get nowhere, each generation would get to the wheel or so and then the next one would start over. I don't think gp is talking about continuous refinement of ideas, which I get the sense is more what you meant. Spending time and energy reinventing cubicles again and again every 10 or so years seems best to avoid, in my opinion.
- liampulles 4y agoI worked at a large company which had a mix between open plan desks and cubicles, and teams would take a cluster of nearby "semicles". I think that arrangement is a good balance between being able to put your headphones on and focus on your work with a bit of privacy, but also being able to turn your chair around and brainstorm things or quickly chat to an architect, etc.
- vandahm 4y agoHonestly, if I was asked to choose between a 10% raise or a cubicle, I would take the cubicle in a heartbeat.
- RobotToaster 4y agoI feel like there would be a lot less push back against returning to the office, if offices still had actual individual offices. People have realised how unpleasant working in open plan warehouses is.
- apple4ever 4y agoAbsolutely agree. Going to the office really isn't that bad, if you have some decent privacy. The benefits of face-to-face communication are really great. But an open office takes so much privacy away and so much ability to concentrate. It's not worth it.
- whateveracct 4y agoThat's gotta be a 2x real estate overhead for current headcount. If they did that, they'd probably rather just go remote.
- rightbyte 4y agoIs 2x really the case? I got a feeling the number is way lower, maybe 10% - 20% space savings for open plans, compared to if you make people share offices. Also the need for meeting rooms is lower with offices.
- whateveracct 4y agoI think an office is 2 open office spaces easily
- rightbyte 4y agoSure, but if you wanna pack tight you can put two workers in a reasonably sized by old standards office room.
- omnibrain 4y agoI worked in a company with 2-3 person offices. And I think 2 persons was the best. You could stick two people together that needed to cooperate a lot anyway, or a senior with a (very) junior. We practically never needed meeting rooms, except for team/project meetings, because whenerver 2 -4 people needed to discuss something they just met up in one of their offices.
- globular-toast 4y agoI worked in a couple of open offices. The worst was one where "hot desking" was a thing and they didn't even have meeting rooms. All meetings were conducted at the desks using Skype. I didn't know from day to day who I would be sat with and how much noise they were going to make. After that I was still in an open office but it had no hot desking and people didn't take calls at their desk. That was a lot better. After the first one it seemed great. Then COVID happened and I started working from home and it was amazing. I questioned whether I'd even done any work in the past few years. It was so much better. Then I got depressed because living in the same four walls day in day out gets to you. Now my workplace has also reintroduced cubicles and I work mostly from home still but regularly work in the office in a cubicle. This is the bet set up I've had so far. I get enough of a dose of "office" but I'm still able to actually work in the office. I get to do the majority of my "head down" work in peace in a familiar environment with no commute. It's pretty good.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- JaDogg 4y agoDifferent people need different things: Open office, cubicle office, work from home, work from office, hybrid, etc. There is no silver bullet.
- spirit557 4y agoSums it up nicely. My experience with open office, I despised. Impossible to have any focused train of thought. I found in the morning and during the day it was constantly disruptive. Headphones are a bandaid that makes it worse most of the time. But during the evening, when there was less of us having some company around actually helped productivity as you're not normally functioning 100% by then anyways. There was an ebb and flow but an office that is designed strictly open or strictly opposite both seem bad. There should be a balance of common, colaborative space and isolation focus. I also find that most office designs have excessive lighting, where the color temp and dimming is unadjustable. There is no way to just have screen light mixed only with natural light during daylight hours. I think workers should have the ability to isolate in a tiny room sometimes, ability to work in a more collaborative space when they find it suitable, but also have time to sit at a desk in a space that is semi isolated but still somewhat open. I don't understand the drive to go to either extreme and not offer any flexibility.
- bregma 4y agoThe wants of the few outweigh the needs of the many. The most important want is that of the executive who can open the door of his office and gaze out at the sea of reportees and down-levels assigned under him in the corporate org chart. After all, he's the one who decides on office layout and WFH policies.
- synu 4y agoHaving been around for cubicles, its surprising to see them described by a new generation as some kind of utopian ideal. Even if they are round now, instead of square. Roundicles? Best not think too much about what we will call the ones for the test team.
- whaaswijk 4y agoI think it would be “sphericles”.
- Maro 4y agoI remember in the 90s, when I was a teenager, my Dad's work at Allergan (in Irvine, Orange County, California, not far from Blizzard's office) had a cubicle layout. Sometimes he took me inside, and it was just terrible. This was also one of the themes of Office Space, an excellent movie making fun of workplace culture (starring Jennifer Aniston and Ron Livingston). In one memorable scene of the movie, after Livingston's character has had enough of the toxic workplace culture and stops giving a fuck, he unscrews the cubicle walls so he can see out the window from his desk. I would definitely prefer to work in an open-office environment vs cubicles. I also don't want an office, because I don't even want to go to work regularly anymore. The best option for me would be: (i) go to work 2-3 times a week to get out of the house (ii) hot desk open office layout with (iii) lots of meeting rooms.
- andybak 4y ago> I would definitely prefer to work in an open-office environment vs cubicles. That's fine as long as you understand that for certain types of people and/or certain types of work - open plan can be a disaster. This discussion has been bouncing back and forth for decades. Personally speaking my coding productivity drops something like 80% in an open plan office.
- ipaddr 4y agoIt's so true. 80% gets lost but you feel like you've done so much more just getting to the office by the time you arrive your job is to kill time. You can now bother others all day and look productive.
- Maro 4y agoIf you read Cal Newport's biography, he works in academia, he has never worked a 9-5 industry job, eg. at Meta or any other (software) company. CMIIW. So, he doesn't really have any personal experience to comment on what works or doesn't work at a large software company like Meta, the same way a SWE at Meta doesn't have any personal experience to comment on what works or doesn't work for a Professor at Georgetown University. Also, to be more specific, he's a Professor of Comp.Sci., not Professor of Psychology or Professor of Workplace Layout Optimization.. I read 2-3 of his books and concluded that he doesn't know what he's talking about. His books are 10 page blog posts tortured to be 300 page books.
- JamesMcMinn 4y agoI tried to read his Deep Work book, and it was truly awful. Usually I avoid writing reviews for books that I didn't finish, but Deep Work is one of the worst books I've ever tried to read. To describe it as a 10 page blog post would be generous.
- olegious 4y agoInteresting. I found it great, it completely changed the way I work.
- JamesMcMinn 4y agoI could not take the book seriously due to how shallow it was. Written to sound clever, but lacking any actual substance. It literally could have been 2 pages of bullet points and delivered more value by dropping the pseudoscience nonsense and excessive "[famous name] is productive because they do X" trope. The only takeaway I got was that Deep Work is a bullshit term for having focus.
- olegious 4y agoI thought it was the perfect level of depth, contrast this with something like "Art of Impossible" which spends paragraphs talking about your biochemistry and how it impacts motivation, focus, etc- I couldn't get through it because I don't care about biochemistry, I just want actionable advice with concrete examples from high performers so I can think about how and if I want to apply the advice to my life.
- _trampeltier 4y agoI worked in open offices for years. Recently I got a room for just myself. It is so much better than I ever could imagine. My last place in the open office was really bad, just next to coffee machine. It was the worst place to work ever. Every 5 Minutes somebody started to talk to me. Now in my own room, nobody distract me. This is really day and night.
- scrlk 4y agoYou will work in the Meta Cube(TM), and you'll be happy! /s I hope that this is the first step on the road to allowing more people to have a private office. This seems to be a temporary fix to work within the constraints of buildings that were designed to be open offices.
- Magi604 4y agoI work in a shared office with 3 other people (described by my boss at the time as a "bullpen". Lots of chatter, people coming in and out, other employees coming in for whatever...it is definitely distracting. My solution to this was to listen to "brown noise" on my over-ear headphones while I was in there trying to work. Then I remembered my ancient Gear Iconx Samsung bluetooth earbuds had built-in storage. I loaded a 20 loop of brown noise in there so I don't have to tether it to my phone all the time and I started using that. It really does make a difference in terms of focusing and getting things done. Even random mumblings from my office mates, hallways conversations etc. don't distract me.
- sneak 4y agoThis seems like a very good solution to the wrong problem. Sometimes treating the symptoms is the right move, but oftentimes it is not. Local maxima.
- Magi604 4y agoI hear ya, I'd rather not be working there and I do find excuses to work off site when I can (sadly a large portion of my role needs me in the facility). I'm working on it.
- nntwozz 4y agoJust kill me now.
- imhoguy 4y agoHm, can it have some health implications? Ears covered all the time plus constant sound.
- kitsune_ 4y agoDefinitely, most people using noise to treat a noise problem will sooner or later get tinnitus and hearing loss if they do this constantly over years. Btw, I have tinnitus, it's not fun. Protect your ears people.
- osrec 4y agoMy observations: If you need to do actual work, an office is the best. If you're doing BAU 9-6 clockwatching type job with no real deliverables, the social aspects of an open plan office make this torture a little more tolerable for most people.
- imiric 4y agoI was always a fan of cubicles, and never got the FAANG fascination with open plan workspaces, that the entire industry seems to have adopted. As the article says, the noise and distraction were always an issue. Even if you used headphones, as most people did most of the time, there were still visual distractions in your peripheral vision. It was a nightmare for productivity, and I'm surprised that the false narrative of how they promote collaboration stuck around this long. Cubicles were great, especially if you got one near a window. You had the outside view; desks were angular in large cubicles so you had ample space for multiple monitors; the barriers provided just enough visual and noise isolation, while you could always prop up and chat with your neighbors; the barriers also served as tackboards, and people decorated their spaces in unique ways. Et cetera. I still don't want to go back to working in an office, even if I had a personal space with a door, which most companies can't afford, but they should bring back the cubicle. It will probably be renamed and marketed as something else, but kudos to Meta for taking the lead.
- rjh29 4y agoWhy can't FAANG companies use their budget to make cubicles with sound proofing and a closable door behind you? Similar to Japanese manga cafe booths. All the advantages of a private office but you can cram more of them in per square metre. Keep the door open to be social, close it and be fully isolated when you need to concentrate.
- baby 4y agoI slept in one of these manga kissa and I remember waking up in the middle of the night and looking at the ceiling and seeing my neighbor's head popping and looking at me from above. I didn't say anything, and he slowly retracted his head when he saw that I was looking straight at him. Didn't prevent me sleeping because I had ingested alcohol that night, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is typical manga kissa weirdness.
- rjh29 4y agoIt's not typical. At least the ones I've been to are completely sealed. Sometimes there is a window built into the door, mostly so people can check you're not doing naughty things in there. edit: some manga kissa are designed for people to watch porn, obviously those don't have windows.
- bmitc 4y agoI feel like I remember reading about some think tank or design firm from the 50s-80s that did some sort of deep dive into workplace settings and their correlated productivity and whether they were preferred. Does anyone know about something like this? I don't really remember the specifics about the report. I just have a vague memory of reading about it.
- CraigRo 4y agoThe driving issues are the area per employee in the working area, the number of employees present, the volume of the employee conversations, and the sound absorption of the office surfaces. Meta packed lots of people into small spaces where everyone has crappy for audio phones in an industrial look with concrete floors. It was worse than a trading floor imho
- robg 4y ago… the knowledge sector completely disregarded any realities about how human brains actually go about the difficult task of creating value through cogitation… This, why are knowledge-based companies so bad at designing work for the brain’s best capabilities?
- ElfinTrousers 4y agoBecause their "knowledge" usually consists of a drop of actual knowledge in a barrel full of ego.
- janmarsal 4y agoEvery sweatshop is an open plan. Open plan was never trendy. It's a way to cut cost. Calling it trendy is like saying starving people are on a trendy diet. That's just insulting. Everyone wants their own office. A cubicle is the next best thing. Open plan is the worst and cheapest option. I've never had a boss who didn't have his own office. Going from cubicle to open plan is an obvious downgrade.
- brabel 4y agoYou may be right that this was the actual motivation, but it was and still is often justified as some sort of cutting edge way to spread ideas and "foster communication" and I know lots of people who bought those stupid ideas.
- rjh29 4y agoCubicle isn't that much more expensive than open plan, especially when you are paying devs $200-300k a year. I think it's more about "fostering communication" and making the workspace "appear to be" more enjoyable. Of course we devs know it's a horrible distracting environment.
- dijit 4y agoI heard the same, but there is no peer reviewed paper that has ever claimed that open office environments foster collaboration or assist communication. Rather, every single study has asserted that it decreases communication. Yet, it's clung to. Which is why I think it's purely a cost saving (or flexibility?) move. Office managers must love not having to care about how teams are sized? Only thing I can think of.
- whiplash451 4y agoTrue, but not every open plan is a sweatshop. There are many shades of gray. In an open space, you can have sound walls, pods that people can use for calls, add meeting rooms, isolate noisy places like the kitchen, etc.
- JohnFen 4y agoAnd people forget that before the invention of the cubicle, open office plans were the norm for nonmanagement office workers. The cubicle was viewed by these workers as a wonderful thing, because it brought an end to the nightmare of the open office.
- Hatrix 4y agoI was reviewing a new open office layout with a CEO one day. I pointed out that my new desk was surrounded by people who smoke. I was not a smoker. The CEO ignored my comment and I had to sit there smelling the smoker stink of my coworkers. I'm not sure cubicles would have helped or not.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago> “Apparently, the majority of people that work there make sure that they are away from their desk when they need to get work done,” he explained > Developers need to concentrate Can someone explain to me why is top management of these companies so low quality? They make the big bucks and take years to discover concepts obvious to high-schoolers?
- relix 4y agoThe most likely explanation is that your premise is wrong - top management of these companies is not low quality. Instead they are very good at their jobs, but what that means is just not be what you think it is.
- Raptor22 4y agoMy experience working in a small startup, a largish tech company and a FAANG, is that management (especially at the top) follows a highly unbalanced bimodal distribution - that is, about 85-95% of management has no idea what they're doing and in many cases are actively hurting the company. But 5-15% are actually great and know what they're doing, and can carry the deadweight along. But since they're a minority, they are completely focused on getting the business to work; the deadweights are the people making the open office decisions.
- ElfinTrousers 4y agoDo you have any theory about why the deadweight is even allowed to keep working at these firms in the first place?
- clnq 4y agoThey are generally out of touch with the people they manage, clueless about how to effectively help them, and they spend a lot of time posturing. So I guess... the job description fits that of a washed up politician? Then there are the 5% of upper managers that know what they're doing. But to the rest it would be an insult if you asked them to 1-to-1 with a random employee and actually understand the real problems in the company. Anyone feeling this is wrong is free to test it. Ask an upper manager in a large tech company to speak with your coworker who's frustrated at work. Maybe about RTO - there are many of those around now. Good luck!
- choeger 4y agoSo Meta is putting much effort into isolating employees from each other to create a quiet working environment and foster concentration? At the same time, are they forcing their employees to work from that apparently bad-for-work place? I think it is official now: Office presence is a policy solely for management. Everything else is a transparent lie.
- baby 4y agoEvery time I went through this building when I was at Facebook I wondered how people could work there. It's all in the open, and people go through that long room all the time (lots of visitors too since the buildings has lots of cafes and restaurants and even a park on the rooftop). It looked more like an attraction at this point (all my visitors always loved this place, and so did I as I wasn't working in that building). TBH, I find all open spaces really distracting so I don't think it was necessarily worse than my smaller open space office. At least it felt neutral, as there were so many people you didn't know that were passing by. Kind of like a library or a uni campus, as opposed to a class room. Which I might have liked more, if it wasn't for the more noisy environment. I'm sure that when COVID hit and we all got to work from home, Facebook got a weird peak of productivity.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago> The open office boom is right up there with the spread of Slack as representing the peak of early 21st century distraction culture I have the same issue with Slack, that I do with open-plan offices in the US (They actually work well, in Japan, but their culture also makes it work). I remember visiting the Facebook (Instagram) development shop in NYC, and walking through that huge central room, with the rows and rows of desks (standing and sitting). This was at 7PM or so, and the place was a zoo. Lots of people there. Quite noisy. The thought that sprang to mind, as I saw it, was "Planet Fitness." The food was good, though. Facebook caters well.
- johnchristopher 4y ago> I have the same issue with Slack, that I do with open-plan offices (in the US. They actually work well, in Japan, but their culture also makes it work). Can you expand on open-plan offices in Japan ? edit: I just read that article https://manabink.com/en/2020/12/26/why-do-japanese-like-open-plan-offices/ https://manabink.com/en/2020/12/26/why-do-japanese-like-open...
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoI worked for an "old-fashioned" engineering corporation. Their Shinagawa headquarters was in a huge building, with many floors. It was considered one of the better work environments. Each floor was basically a very large room, on either side of the central elevator column, which would bisect the building. The room usually extended from the elevators, to the windows, and there was a lot of light. You didn't have offices against the glass, like you do, in the US. The ceilings were high, and used acoustic tiles, with fluorescent lighting panels. There would be dozens of desks, in each room, arranged in parallel rows, with a "row," consisting of fairly small, uniform, sitting desks, back to back (so each engineer was facing towards another one, on the other side). These rows would extend from the windows, towards the central column. There would be an aisle, at each end, perpendicular to the rows. Each row would have a fairly wide aisle, separating it from the next row. At the window end of each row, would be a slightly larger desk, set against the last two desks of the row, so the occupant faced the row. That would be the manager's desk. The higher-ups, would have desks behind the managers. They would be closest to the windows. Separators were generally file cabinets. Partitions were used for informal meeting areas. The central column would have enclosed meeting rooms, and they had two floors, completely dedicated to meeting rooms (the Japanese love meetings). What's wild, is how quiet these offices are. Hundreds of people, packed together, and very little noise. I think the interior design has a lot of acoustic absorbency, as well. [UPDATED] That article is pretty much spot-on. > my shoes were too noisy The Japanese generally have "office shoes," which can be a pair of slipper-like shoes, usually slip-on. They exchange their regular shoes, for these. My company's offices were carpeted, so you didn't get clacking of shoes.
- fsociety 4y agoCubicles are my worst nightmare. Enclose me into a tiny space separated from the world so I can reach “peak efficiency”. The most depressing job I had was with a relatively large cubicle. I’ll take an open office space any day of the week, and you know I actually worked in the Meta offices for a little bit. I like to see my coworkers if I have to go into an office. In the rare occasion I needed privacy, I could go find a couch or move to a rooftop garden. If I had to join a meeting in another office then I could use one of these quiet booths (which you know, is why they exist). I also enjoy my home office, but even there I like to move around my house during work. Limiting 8+ hours of my day to a tiny enclosed space is depressing in my mind.
- laichzeit0 4y agoAn argument could be made that what most developers are doing most of the time is not particularly difficult and does not require the level of concentration that would warrant investing in isolated office space. Donald Knuth level work sure. Maybe compiler development or something math heavy. Front end or back end for CRUD apps? Nope. It’s just ordinary cookie cutter code monkey stuff, put on your headset and bang it out.
- dhfbshfbu4u3 4y agoI’m old enough that I worked in an actual office, like with a door and everything. It was the best. Truly. Not only was it a great way to be productive but it also spoke to how much the company valued you and your time. When the cube farms came along it was billed as a cost cutting measure but in reality it about making office layouts more compatible with cycles of mass reorganization. In this structure, management needed the ability to shift bodies at will while still maintaining some semblance of structure. Cubes provided that flexibility while still giving the appearance of stability and status. You would have slightly larger pens for more “important” members of staff. Higher walls were also part of the status game… But in reality, as the walls came down, the people became even more expendable. As the nature of work trended further towards transient employment, the cube walls got shorter and shorter till they just did away with them entirely. Well, entirely for regular people. Management always had offices, even if it was just commandeering a conference room as an office. I’m not surprised to see a new trend developing with tiny silos. I assume that they’ll add chutes below each workstation so employees can be conveniently flushed when a boost to the stock price is needed.
- Jabbles 4y agoWhat kinds of noise do people experience in open plan offices? People in my office may have quiet conversations, but no one is taking phone calls at their desk. If someone did (maybe they are new), I'd tell them to go elsewhere. Is this a cultural problem rather than a physical one? Or do people need absolute silence to work effectively?
- herval 4y agoSome open plan offices have good acoustics, others are quite literally open warehouses where the noise adds up, even if everyone whispers. And there's always that guy who's always shouting and doesn't respond when you ask them to tone down. For me (and I suspect, for many), all the movement tends to be way more distracting than the noise - you're constantly seeing things from the corner of your eye. On top of that, the feeling of someone peering over your shoulder makes it hard to focus (even when there's nobody actually doing it)
- freetime2 4y agoI worked in a open office with a sales team whose job it was to make phone calls from their desk all day. But even for engineers, it was common for them to join meetings with people from other offices from their desk. There was no other place for anyone to go - there weren’t nearly enough conference rooms to support all the people making calls simultaneously.
- ElfinTrousers 4y agoSame, and it was terrible. And I promise you it's not just a techie copping a "hurr hurr salepeople are awful amirite" attitude: most of the salespeople at this company were great folks and I enjoyed their company...in my free time, i.e. when I wasn't trying to concentrate on coding with them all talking at once.
- sylens 4y agoConsider that in open offices there is often no other place for people to go to take phone calls. There is always a shortage of conference rooms and phone booths because everybody wants/needs them
- freetime2 4y agoI’ve worked in cubicles with high walls, cubicles with low walls, a “pit” (high cubicle walls surrounding a whole team of devs), open offices, and remote. Cubicles with high walls was my favorite configuration. I have a really hard time focusing when people are constantly moving through my field of view, and it makes me uncomfortable when I am constantly in someone else’s field of view. High cubicle walls solve that. They also provide a little sound absorption. But you still get the benefit of being in an office and meeting with people face to face. Open office was the worst for me, by far. It was so noisy, with so many distractions. I would never work in an open office again. The “pit” and the low-wall cubicle were similar, though not quite as bad. I have worked remote for many years, and it’s the best for work-life balance (emphasis on the life part), but have found that collaboration and team morale suffer pretty significantly. Edit: one other note about cubicles is that if the ceiling is high and the windows are large, you can still get a large amount of natural light even if you aren’t next to a window. The cubicle setup felt way less claustrophobic to me than the open office.
- bluenose69 4y agoI'm confused. The article mentions 8 acres (i.e. 3 hectares, 5 city blocks) of open-office space. Surely that cannot be contiguous. And if it is broken up into sub-units, then surely the size of the sub-unit ought to be mentioned. (Not that I think cubicles are all that great, in large numbers.)
- in_cahoots 4y agoYou are correct. And Meta isn’t paying a 40% premium due to that 8 acres, it’s functionally no worse than any other company I’ve been in with an open-office plan. Longer lines of sight but somehow less noisy due to a lower density and a strong culture of moving collaborations to a more private space. I understand people hate open offices, but this article calling out Meta in particular doesn’t pass the smell test.
- microtherion 4y agoI believe it IS contiguous: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/facebook-s-new-headquarters-where-openplan-is-king-and-frictionless-working-is-the-aim-a6756426.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-fea... The building appears to be 860m long on the map: https://www.google.com/maps/dir//''/@37.4805293,-122.1563983,17.1z/data=!4m9!4m8!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x808fbdcb8a31833d:0xd8bd64d31e7a1ea5!2m2!1d-122.1562408!2d37.4809878!3e0!5m1!1e1 https://www.google.com/maps/dir//''/@37.4805293,-122.1563983... It's like a work environment designed by Terry Gilliam: https://www.evanerichards.com/wp-content/gallery/brazil/brazil-040.jpg https://www.evanerichards.com/wp-content/gallery/brazil/braz...
- luizcdc 4y agoI work in a small startup with a headcount around ~30 employees. Although they are fully remote, employees can optionally work on the office, which is an open plan workspace. It really does work for me. We have desks that could support about 25 people, but very rarely there are more than 8 present, so it doesn't feel crowded. I also like most of my coworkers, and that's a key part of it. I wouldn't want it to change to a cubicles workspace if I have the opportunity to just work from home when I'm not feeling like interacting with people.
- ipaddr 4y agoThe failure to make remote work for facebook where it has worked for many companies is a grim sign that they might not be the right company to build the metaverse.
- Mizoguchi 4y agoAlthough I haven't worked in open-space setups for years, I never found them distracting. Perhaps growing up with a huge family where I had to concentrate and study with people around me talking, playing, fighting, watching tv etc prepared me for them.
- jnwatson 4y agoA quarter century ago, as an intern, I had my own room as office. The next job I shared a room with one person. The next job I have a cubicle. After that I had an open space with a dedicated desk. Now it is hotdesking in an open plan. We sure have made progress.
- Overtonwindow 4y agoMy first tech job was doing technical support for American Online. We were in this giant converted Walmart that had been turned into a cubicle farm. It was awful, loud, and soul crushing. Just give people office pods. Section it off into smaller offices that have 4 people max. Each four-person pod is enclosed with a door.
- acd 4y agoPrivate office spaces will be rediscovered past Silicon valley bank dotcom 2.0. The dynamic driving this will be that office space assest price will fall with higher interest rates. The dynamic was that close to zero central bank interest made it cheap to finance office real estate. That led to increased rents. That led to open office plans. I predict that the open office floor space trend will go in reverse towards private office space.
- ghaff 4y ago>I predict that the open office floor space trend will go in reverse towards private office space. I'm skeptical. At least in the tech sector, what I'm seeing is office space being downsized and rethought as primarily meeting and collaboration space.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoTry earmuffs + earplugs.
- bastardoperator 4y agoMy last cubicle had it's own meeting area, 2 chairs and a door. Granted that was many many years ago before open floor plans. Humans want privacy which is one of the reasons work from home is so popular and why people are more productive working from home.
- indymike 4y agoI've worked in offices, cubicles, open areas, coworking spaces, coffee shops and even an occasional sports bar. The value of having an office has really went to zero for me (I'm a developer/founder/sales guy) as we got to the point where all my work tools and documents easily fit in a backpack or (for fancy settings) a nice briefcase. Gone are the days of having a huge desktop computer rig, fancy desk phone, and lots and lots of paper files. Any more, I think ideal space comes down to this: What works for your team? And, I think there's a lot that points to big cubicle farm offices being a relic of a bygone, non-work-from-home era.
- moomoo11 4y agoMeta mates become cell mates. I went with my dad back in 2000 to a “take your kid to work day” and got to hang out with him in his cubicle. Honestly it was pretty cool. He had a CRT monitor and a calendar, and his desk space was minimal and clean. Others had decorated their spaces in unique ways. It was private and we could chat without disturbing others. It felt cozy? Again I was like 9 so keep that in mind.
- precompute 4y agoEmployees should get small, 100sqft rooms with a window and one door. And non-urgent comms over IM. It's basically WFH but from the office.