4 ms·

Is it true that Microsoft is doing two devs per office these days? I just thought back on all the places I sat at Microsoft and out of 9 different offices (ok,

Is it true that Microsoft is doing two devs per office these days? I just thought back on all the places I sat at Microsoft and out of 9 different offices (ok, two were cubicles), I never shared once. They do make you move around a lot, obviously.

pbiggar 13y ago
I was only in one building (maybe building 39, probably 6 years ago) and every office I saw had 2 people. My bad! I'm also generalizing about Google - I only saw building 43.
- erbo 13y ago
  Google's Boulder office definitely has a more open plan. Fairly large cubicle areas, but still not private offices.
- rg 13y ago
  Classic Microsoft in its high-productivity period was strictly private offices for everyone, solid doors and almost all with outside windows, soundproofed so each office could have its own music without requiring headphones, with deskspace and network connections in each office for several computers and seating for at least three people in each office so that people could work together privately when they wanted to. If that standard has been eroded in recent years, then we might understand why MS is now relatively unproductive.
pacaro 13y ago
Microsoft has, in typical fashion, gotten very confused about this. Some teams are still one person per office (some more junior (measured by tenure, not level) team members probably share, all interns typically share), other teams are using open work environments... sometimes pushing the limits of what the fire code permits for number of people in a building. The trend when I left (4/13) was towards open offices Internally, for teams that use offices, there is something known as the "pain index" which is the person/office ratio. As a rule of thumb, you might be expected to share an office upto about two years, and by about 5 years might expect to have a window office - but it was very dependent on team [Edit - added pain index]

pbiggar 13y ago

I was only in one building (maybe building 39, probably 6 years ago) and every office I saw had 2 people. My bad! I'm also generalizing about Google - I only saw building 43.

erbo 13y ago
Google's Boulder office definitely has a more open plan. Fairly large cubicle areas, but still not private offices.
rg 13y ago
Classic Microsoft in its high-productivity period was strictly private offices for everyone, solid doors and almost all with outside windows, soundproofed so each office could have its own music without requiring headphones, with deskspace and network connections in each office for several computers and seating for at least three people in each office so that people could work together privately when they wanted to. If that standard has been eroded in recent years, then we might understand why MS is now relatively unproductive.

pacaro 13y ago

Microsoft has, in typical fashion, gotten very confused about this. Some teams are still one person per office (some more junior (measured by tenure, not level) team members probably share, all interns typically share), other teams are using open work environments... sometimes pushing the limits of what the fire code permits for number of people in a building. The trend when I left (4/13) was towards open offices Internally, for teams that use offices, there is something known as the "pain index" which is the person/office ratio. As a rule of thumb, you might be expected to share an office upto about two years, and by about 5 years might expect to have a window office - but it was very dependent on team [Edit - added pain index]