22 ms·

“Today we moved into our new Facebook building”

234 points by somerandomness 12y ago

freeasinfree 12y ago
Coming soon, company-owned archologies[0] so you never have to leave your dot-com bubble. [0] http://simcity.wikia.com/wiki/Arcology http://simcity.wikia.com/wiki/Arcology
- tdicola 12y ago
  Don't worry, Google is working on it: http://singularityhub.com/2015/03/11/googles-new-headquarters-to-be-a-chrysalis-of-glass-fabric-and-movable-office-space/ http://singularityhub.com/2015/03/11/googles-new-headquarter...
robotmlg 12y ago
I never thought I'd see the phrase "a single room that fits thousands of people" in a description of an office building...
- jonknee 12y ago
  Especially as a positive attribute...
gdilla 12y ago
It's like we're going back to the industrial golden age where all a companies workers would get subsidized cookiecutter housing and certain amenities close to the plant. You never have to leave your employer bubble now. The conditions have never been better to work remotely, yet I guess another way to eliminate commutes is to make your workplace so livable you never leave (much). :)
- shard972 12y ago
  Just like a foxcon!
ableal 12y ago
Everytime I see this kind of "new building" news, I'm reminded of the genial "Plans and Plants" chapter of the Parkinson's Law book (by C. Northcote Parkinson, natch). Worth a look. I've seen it in action up close.
- TaylorGood 12y ago
  Fascinating; starts on page 25.. http://sas2.elte.hu/tg/ptorv/Parkinson-s-Law.pdf http://sas2.elte.hu/tg/ptorv/Parkinson-s-Law.pdf
deeviant 12y ago
Pretty soon, offices will be filled with chairs the fit two and three-person keyboards. I don't even want to think about how the whole "open office" philosophy will influence future restroom design.
- tomjakubowski 12y ago
  Okay, this is not really on-topic at all. But someone has finally given me the opening to rant about the state of public restroom design :-) I spend a lot of time working out of cafes, both for my job and when I'm working on some personal project. ~4-8 hours a day in a cafe plus a coffee every 90 minutes or so and plenty of water means I have a lot of experience with coffee shop public restrooms. And almost all of them are terribly designed. The worst problem, common to almost all cafes, is that a place with a capacity of ~40 people or so will have two single-user gendered restrooms. By this I mean there is a label or picture on each door indicating "Male" or "Female". This is a problem for a number of reasons, including that it creates issues for trans and genderqueer people, but also that it inevitably creates situations where there is a queue for one restroom (because of a user who is taking their time, for whatever reason) while the other is empty. Of course, someone could jump out of the queue and use the empty restroom, but there's a social norm that we generally must abide that forbids this. Another inefficiency is that faucets for washing up tend to be locked in the same single-user room as toilets. This causes backups when a person needs to use the faucet but someone else is using the toilet or vice versa. Plenty of people just pop into a single-user restroom to adjust their hair or wash their hands or whatever. In something like 9 years of working consistently out of cafes, I've seen just two that have what I consider to be well-designed restroom facilities: the Starbucks at Main & Olympic in Santa Monica, CA, USA and Sightglass Coffee in SoMa, San Franciso, CA, USA. Each have an open, shared sink area with a glut of faucets and two to four single-user toilets behind locked doors opening out into it. I've never seen a line for the restrooms at these cafes, although I don't know if that's because of good design or because no one wants to use such weird restrooms ;-)
  - geofft 12y ago
    Where are you based? San Francisco "strongly urges" single-occupancy restrooms to be unisex. I've worked out of a fair number of SF cafes and I think this is noticeably less of a problem there than in other cities. http://sf-hrc.org/compliance-guidelines-prohibit-gender-identity-discrimination http://sf-hrc.org/compliance-guidelines-prohibit-gender-iden...
option 12y ago
Having worked as researcher/dev in both private office and open space setup, I am absolutely convinced that private offices are way more productive than open office setup for researchers and developers. Most, if not all, of my colleagues feel the same. In fact, I don't think I will ever accept an offer from a mature company (not startup) which houses its developers in open space.
- Swizec 12y ago
  The only redeeming feature of open plan comes from Hamming's essay, you and your research: Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work ✥ done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't ✥ know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in ✱ importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect ✞ sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can ✝ say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ✝ ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow ✲ they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.
  - nostrademons 12y ago
    I think Hamming's quote pretty much sums up my personal experience with both open and closed offices. In a private office, your personal productivity is maximized; you get the most lines of code written, the most research done, the hardest problems solved. And yet the cumulative effect of that productivity seems to be much less than that of peers who write little, endure distractions, but are always in tune with which problems people are interested in.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
some1else 12y ago
Here's an article with a bunch of sizzling Instagram shots from people who got to take the first look: http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/web/news/a14830/facebook-mpk20-headquarters-frank-gehry/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/web/news/a14830/face... I'm really impressed by how non-gimmicky this Gehry building looks on the outside, and it seems like they really did a good job designing whatever space isn't consumed by the open plan.
- kincardine 12y ago
  > non-gimmicky this Gehry building looks on the outside I feel similarly about a lot of Gehry's more well known work. I'm interested to see how the building performs. If only I worked in Facebook management...
- BryantD 12y ago
  No pictures of day to day work space, alas.
  - ethanbond 12y ago
    That's the key, there isn't any! (kidding)
  - NeutronBoy 12y ago
    I saw this one from Chris Marra https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204715357418943 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204715357418943
    - j-c-m 12y ago
      Ah, that is Zuckberg and Schrep embracing the open floor plan by commandeering a conference room for a small two person meeting.
      - NeutronBoy 12y ago
        'Open floor plan' doesn't mean there's no leeway if you want to have a private discussion, or a meeting with more than 2-3 people for more than 5 minutes.
phildougherty 12y ago
I've worked in offices with cubes, in co-working spaces, remotely (for a long time), and now in an open plan with around 200 people.. I have never been more productive than the time I worked remotely. The constant distractions in an open plan are bad enough with 200, I can't even imagine how it is with thousands.
- monk_e_boy 12y ago
  I don't like people looking at my screens. I've never had a problem with the quality or quantity of my work, but as soon as someone see youtube open blasting out music. Hackernews, reddit, facebook all open, someone soon complains. That's just how I work. I think of it like a sausage factory, the boss loves the product but doesn't want to know how it's made. Leave me to work in my own way.
  - MeganS 12y ago
    "I think of it like a sausage factory..." I know you didn't intend it in that way but considering tech's rampant misogyny leading to the systematic exclusion of women, using a phrase also used to imply an all-male space is potentially triggering to women and non-gender binary folks in the tech space. So don't use terms like that in the future. Thanks.
- jack-r-abbit 12y ago
  I've never worked in an open floor plan with more that like 100 people. But I seem to recall only being bothered by people within a few cube sections from me in any direction. I would imagine that at some point the rest of the people in the "room" are far enough away that it doesn't really matter.
  - phildougherty 12y ago
    The collaboration that an open floor plan is supposed to promote has for me more or less translated to 'i can clearly see you so that is an open invitation to come interrupt you'. For me it's mostly that plus the constant movement in your peripheral vision nearby and far away that makes it bad.
jack-r-abbit 12y ago
I'm not going to get into the debate of open floor plans vs individual offices since most people already have their opinions and I see pros & cons to both. That debate aside, I think that roof top green space is absolutely awesome. I would love to see more of those being built into new buildings.
- monk_e_boy 12y ago
  Like hobbit holes
- phildougherty 12y ago
  Move to France http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/20/france-decrees-new-rooftops-must-be-covered-in-plants-or-solar-panels http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/20/france-decrees-...
  - jack-r-abbit 12y ago
    That is great! I'd love to see all parking lots covered by solar panels and all roof tops covered with green space and solar panels. (But I could never live in France. Two weeks was 13 days too long.)
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
      - EduardoBautista 12y ago
        They would be built as roofs.
- pbreit 12y ago
  Such a massive waste of space (not Facebook, others). Rooftops could easily house grass, solar and parking and yet is pretty much always completely wasted.
- chrischen 12y ago
jonknee 12y ago
A 9 acre open work space sounds awful. With Facebook's money and Gehry's skills it's sad that a big box store and surface parking lot is what came out in the end.
serve_yay 12y ago
I wonder how you get around the giant room, and how its space is demarcated. How do you meet up with someone else who is in a faraway part of the room?
- jack-r-abbit 12y ago
  Probably the same way people do it at companies that occupy several separate buildings in a complex. You walk.
  - serve_yay 12y ago
    I'm asking how you know where to walk to. Sheesh.
    - jack-r-abbit 12y ago
      I know. I was being a bit flippant on purpose. Having every body in one giant room doesn't mean there is no rhyme or reason to how things are laid out and labeled. Instead of moving between Building 1 & Building 4, you might go from Section 1 to Section 4. Only people that work there are going to need to know where Sections 1 & 4 are.
    - chmullig 12y ago
      Facebook has Wayfinders that provide an interactive touch screen map all over campus. Type in a name and it shows you where they are, relative to where you are. Super handy.
      - serve_yay 12y ago
        Ooh, nice!
- phodo 12y ago
  They could divide the space with cubes/walkways using a BSP algorithm [1] and provide Roguelike movement between openspace areas (we'll call them "rooms") http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_space_partitioning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_space_partitioning
MCRed 12y ago
I will never work in an open office plan. It's one of the items on my "prima donna" list. Despite the name I'm pretty serious, and while some of this list represents things that others might not be able to avoid, or even agree with because they are personal preferences, all of the items are the result of bad experiences or missteps I've experienced directly at a job in the past. I know some may object to these. That's ok, this is my list. I'll answer questions though and I'm open to suggestions. Here's my list, developed over 25 years working for companies, mostly startups: Never work... 0. where you're not getting equity along with a paycheck, or where you can't ask the CFO how many shares are outstanding on a fully diluted basis, and get an answer, during your interview. 1. for a manager who is not an engineer, unless you're the CTO. 2. Think twice working for any "tech" company where the CEO is not an engineer, or technically proficient. (Tim Cook is technically proficient, Jeff Bezos is not.) 3. in an open office plan. 4. for a company that shows disrespect for employees in other ways. Companies try to hide so you have to look close. 5. for a company that uses cult behavior, eg: "magic phrases" like Amazon's "Today is Day One!!", or that has a management book that all employees are supposed to read (if said book is of the pop-management variety) 6. for a company that doesn't provide you a convenient parking space at their expense (you should be working remote anyway!) 7. for a company that doesn't provide flex hours. Flex needs to really mean flex. Midnight to 8AM is an acceptable work schedule. 8. for any company with standup meetings, or other pointless meetings. (yeah yeah, all of the previous "SCRUM" teams have been "doing it wrong", so that just means nobodies doing it "right") 9. on a team where mandatory meetings happen more than twice a year 10. for a company that employs stack ranking, in any form. 11. for less than 3 weeks of vacation a year 12. for a "starter" salary that will be "made up later", unless this is a startup and you're getting a significant chunk of equity- eg: shares valued at most recent round of investment, or a $1M valuation if no investment, EXCEEDS the lost income. 12. for equity with a vesting schedule with an initial cliff longer than 90 days, (30 days is appropriate) 13. for equity with a vesting schedule over 4 years (and only 4 for > %5 equity) 14. for a company that has taken money from dishonest or unethical VCs (I know a lot of the bad ones but check "the funded" for reviews) 15. for a company that doesn't hire ops engineers, but expects developers to be "on call" 16. for a company that has a lot of restrictions about vacation and doesn't treat it as real (eg: you don't get all your days when you leave, bad PTO policies, etc) 17. in any office without adequate bathrooms, this includes any buildings where people are packed like sardines. combine the gender ratio of tech companies with more than %100 occupancy and the bathrooms are insufficient 18. in any setup with less than a dual thunderbolt display, or single 35"4k monitory. 19. on windows on a regular basis 20. where my development machine can't be a Mac
jordigh 12y ago
But will it still have the iconic H|A -+- C|K entrance that the old building had?
moe 12y ago
a single room that fits thousands of people. What a nightmare. These "glass palace" offices may work for bankers or marketing teams. For programmers you could just as well plant their desks into the middle of a mall.
- weixiyen 12y ago
  works for sweatshops too. j/k!
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    I would love to work in a converted sweatshop, I think these are considered prime offices spaces in the NYC garment district.
- thearn4 12y ago
  Everything comes around full circle eventually. http://afflictor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/openoffice.jpg http://afflictor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/openoffice.j... http://www.basexblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/office-workers-1950s.jpg http://www.basexblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/office-w...
- fsk 12y ago
  The offensive part is the people who say that open offices are MORE EFFICIENT than a traditional office. I have a hard time believing that one. Given how high programmer salaries are, the productivity loss due to open offices is almost definitely more than the office space savings. It seems like an introvert/extrovert thing. The introverts would prefer a quiet working space (and they're usually the best workers), but extroverts want the easy communication (and they're usually the bosses). Even small team rooms of 4-10 people get annoying when the other person has a smelly meal, has a cold, prefers a different temperature, or listens to music on his headphones so loudly I can hear it. One of my favorite jokes is when a job ad says "We provide headphones so you can concentrate!" as a serious job perk. How about a quiet space?
  - pyre 12y ago
crashoverdrive 12y ago
The funniest thing about all of these "office design" photos that I see of big companies. "Where does the actual work get done?" Why are those photos never included.
crashoverdrive 12y ago
What I find most strange about all of the photos of office design for "big companies" Where does the actual work get done? Why are those pictures never included?
- spcoll 12y ago
  > What I find most strange about all of the photos of office design for "big companies" > The funniest thing about all of these "office design" photos that I see of big companies. Are you A/B testing your comments?
  - crashoverdrive 12y ago
    Ack! No. I was mobile and it pinged me to login after generating the comment, then brought me to a blank screen. I'd thought I lost my comment. That's a good idea though..If only I had the time
mathattack 12y ago
I think the type of office space needs to meet the group's work. If solitary quiet work is required, you need either lots of quiet spots or a liberal telecommuting policy. If you need lots of communication, open is fine. I'm surprised that open works there, but Zuckerberg is a developer and has hired most of the senior team. They must have data that it works for them.
- nerfhammer 12y ago
  > Facebook's engineering director Jocelyn Goldfein spoke about open office plans during her recent talk at Stanford. She explicitly stated that it decreases her team's productivity, but that it was embraced because it promotes "openness" which is a core value at Facebook. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5768771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5768771
  - mathattack 12y ago
    It takes courage to fess up to that!
Fiahil 12y ago
How did they put a 9-acre park on the roof?
- notatoad 12y ago
  they made a building that covers 9 acres and put dirt and grass and trees on top of it.
  - Fiahil 12y ago
    Yes, obviously, but how is it possible for the building to withstand the weight of the dirt, grass and trees?
    - pkaye 12y ago
      If you design for 100 story buildings, you can design for a few story building with dirt on top.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - zaroth 12y ago
        It's fixing the leaks in 20 years that's the problem. But I guess the building just has to outlast the company...
        notatoad 12y ago
        Nah, we've gotten pretty good at sealing concrete. You put enough tar and landscaping fabric under there, it'll last a while.
    - tdicola 12y ago
      With columns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column
dismal2 12y ago
Not being snide, but I REALLY do want to see a picture of a work desk (imagine it would be one of those standing/sitting electronic ones) and a chair and a computer! Or is that confidential info?
- gboudrias 12y ago
  Yeah this is a bit silly... "Yes Facebook, what I really wanted to see was a helicopter view of the building."
  - chmullig 12y ago
    FWIW normally Facebookers aren't permitted to take/post photos of work areas. You're generally encouraged to keep visitors away from them as well.
    - sfjailbird 12y ago
      All parts of Facebook's open and transparent culture.
- myhf 12y ago
  http://i.imgur.com/20rCfSM.jpg http://i.imgur.com/20rCfSM.jpg
  - kzhahou 12y ago
    Humor prohibited.
- dismal2 12y ago
  I found one! https://instagram.com/p/03riqAsW_e/embed/?v=4 https://instagram.com/p/03riqAsW_e/embed/?v=4
moron4hire 12y ago
Reminds me of the episode of "Better Off Ted" where they invent an itchy chair and it increases productivity because workers can't get too comfortable. In focus group testing, they find a maximum limit of uncomfortableness before people start jumping out of windows. I keep thinking the latest announcement of "gigantic open floor plan" is going to be that stroke too far. But I have also learned to be disappointed.
- shostack 12y ago
  That show was truly prescient in many ways. Man do I miss it.
Osmium 12y ago
> Our goal was to create the perfect engineering space for our teams to work together. [...] To do this, we designed the largest open floor plan in the world — a single room that fits thousands of people. Almost reads like an Onion article. I'm sure that they thought this through though before spending so much money.
JohnBooty 12y ago
I would literally switch jobs (and perhaps careers, if every company was like this) if forced to work in an open office like this. I cannot work that way; I can't focus. I realize that I'm adding nothing constructive to this thread; I don't care. Maybe some manager somewhere will see this and a hundred other anecdotal opinions and think twice about open offices. I am the opposite of a prima donna. I just want to work. I want to make awesome stuff, keep my skills sharp and make the company some money. Preferably lots of it. I'd be fine with an office that's literally 5x5', a desk, a door, a wifi connection, and some shared working areas for when it's time to collaborate. Because yes, collaboration is crucial (and fun) but if I have to hunt all over the damn building for a bit of quiet space (that might not even be avaiable) when it's time to bear down and do some solo coding then this is not going to work. Hell, I'll even bring my own damn desk, chair, and laptop. Supplied my own laptop to my last two jobs. No big deal. I'm an engineer; I get paid decently. But I need a freaking place to focus for at least half of any given working week - and sometimes, for close to the entire week. I don't need: famous guest speakers, catered food, fancy architecture, anything. I wouldn't even care if the office was a poorly-insulated garage that gets cold in the winter. I'll bring my own $20 space heater that will heat a 5x5' office just fine. What I can't have, if you want me to get any work done, is multiple simultaneous conversations taking place five feet away from my head all day long.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Have heard the exact same sentiment from numerous Bookfaces in the months leading up to this move.
  - JohnBooty 12y ago
    I wonder: are any of them excited about the move? Is anybody actually like, "Hell yeah... open offices!"
    - chmullig 12y ago
      Everyone at FB is already in open offices. It's just on the scale of a floor of a normal building, instead of a gigantic building.
cowpig 12y ago
Facebook HQ moves to a different building: the third most interesting or important thing happening in the world right now.
cc439 12y ago
I believe that this whole "open office" concept is driven by the idea that an observed worker is a "productive" worker and that it's actually true to a certain extent. Sure, you may be less productive in an open office when you're actually bearing down on something but the management is assured that you're doing something work related within the boundaries of the company's cultural definition of "productive". It's an old-school, assembly line style of thinking. An open floorplan gives the impression of vulnerability, you won't goof off on HN or reddit when you know somebody could be looking. A loss in crunchtime productivity may be worth it if the employees would otherwise spend 2 hours a day wasting time privately. The culture determines the amount of time spent socializing in plain view but the open office completely kills any attempt to spend company time on non-work activities in private. I work outside the tech bubble but even with my limited experience, I know that the more company provided distractions (a 9 acre park, free snacks in the breakroom, etc), the less you'll be allowed to actually do anything but work.
msane 12y ago
So what is this giant open space going to look like when people begin to work VR displays primarily? When most people work with opaque glasses silent and staring off... (co?)incidentally that could make such a room almost bearable as a work environment, personally...
- normloman 12y ago
  When you enter the metaverse, you'll arrive in a virtual open office, and you'll see / hear / all your coworkers working in the same virtual room.
  - msane 12y ago
    Yes but how will I smell them?? hmm app idea. There could be places like that... one could be in several spaces, like chatrooms/channels. Most lobbies on the internet are filled with noobs and cat memes though...
kosma 12y ago
I'm genuinely worried about people with sensory oversensitivity problems. Personally I shudder to even think about spending time in a building like that one; those uneven lines painted in the common rooms, bright orange walls, breathtaking vertical spaces - I mean, sure, they do look impressive in photographs, but what about employees who get nauseous and/or dizzy just from looking at that kind of architecture all day long? This may sound silly, but considering how a significant portion of the IT workforce comes from the intersection of extreme introversion and Asperger's, this should be a genuine concern for any equal opportunity employee, especially in that sector.
AVTizzle 12y ago
On a positive note: >>On the roof is a 9-acre park with walking trails and many outdoor spaces to sit and work. That's awesome.
rsuelzer 12y ago
Hasn't this been open for a long time? I was there a few months ago and it was so bizarre. Like being at Disney Land or on a movie set, everything was perfect. I got pretty creeped out after spending the day there, that being said I could probably get used to working there, but could never deal with an open office.
jkjfffifkfll 12y ago
Call it what you want, Zuck. It's still a giant warehouse sweatshop. I work in an open office now. Never. Again. Fuck that. Could you imagine the sound of a hundred conversations going on, at once? "Wear headphones." Thanks, but I'd rather not damage my hearing. Where is OSHA when you need them. This is a factory and you need hearing protectors. Not headphones. 85 dBA. If you can't hear a person four feet away for most of the day, your employer is breaking the law.
ulfw 12y ago
Oh look it looks like every other boring Valley building that caters to the <25 yr old crowd only.
bbarn 12y ago
My least and most favorite topic rears it's head again. The open floor plan. Here's what I've come to think is about perfect: The open floor plan, with +-3 hour start/end time to your 8 hour work day (from say, 8:30-5), with optional hour lunch (paid or unpaid depending on policy/culture). Think about it.. there are definitely collaboration benefits to be had with the open floorplan. The contrast to that is always the "engineer needs alone time" bit. I get it, I work well both ways, but as others have said, you can't do all of either all of the time. That's where true flexibility in working schedule comes in. Like your quiet time? Come in at 6 and leave at 3. Or come in at 11, and leave at 7. The bulk of the office will tend to come in near the societal norm of 9-5, especially those who like the collaborative bit the most, and that leaves you the ends to pick from. Entire office likes to get together for group hour long lunches? Skip it and work. The idea is, if you honestly can't fit the work you need to do into blocks of time at the ends or middle of the day when the office naturally quiets down, you've got a bigger problem than the distractions of the office. The idea that you must have 8 hours of quiet or near quiet to do your job means you're not that good at doing your job, or your job role is too demanding for a reasonable person to do. If it's truly the case, you're likely SO good at what you do someone's noticed and you're getting what you want already.
- staticfish 12y ago
  Why should people that would like some quiet time (which is needed for all of us) have to come in at non-standard hours. That sucks. I think the bigger issue is how we've all been duped into how the open-plan offices "work" from MBA dicks.
  - bbarn 12y ago
    The "MBA dicks" didn't start this, we did, like it or not. All the agile, write stuff on sticky-notes, stand up meetings did this, not managers looking to cut costs. They may have benefited, embraced an idea, and exploited it, for sure, but this didn't come from higher up. The problem is, they do work - for a lot of people. Things are getting done, at the biggest companies (case in point, the original article). People can complain and I'm right there with you - I love my quiet, but you have to adapt, and an engineer that can't adapt isn't much of an engineer, in my opinion. There's an army of people who can adapt working at these "god forsaken hideous open offices" which must then be "gender discriminating experienced engineers" when they can't work like it's 1990 anymore. This is the new reality. We don't have to write COBOL or VB or Pascal anymore, we don't have to wear suits, and most of us are paid really well, taken very seriously as a profession and in high demand. That comes with a little bit of give for all that take.
kamaal 12y ago
I currently work with people across the world, Indians, Chinese, French and people from various other nationalities. This open office thing makes it just worst. The most annoying thing I have come to face until now is the part where people from the same country start aggregating in groups over the floor talking in their own native languages. Constant chatter over simplest and silliest of the issues, previous night's dinner, pranks they played with their room mates and what not. Over a period of I've noticed the best way to handle has been to just tune out. I mean just be completely irresponsive to anything happening around you. Unfortunately I've been told many times by my manager that certain cultures can consider as being rude. Its almost like the office is now a community center for people to just gather around and chat.
- koenigdavidmj 12y ago
  The fact they're not speaking English is not relevant, so I think this just boils down to "having to hear other languages makes me uncomfortable". If you just didn't want to have distracting talking happen around you, then you would not have included the bit about the languages. Simply from a distraction standpoint, foreign languages that sound nothing like English are probably better, since you lose your ability to eavesdrop.
  - hellbanTHIS 12y ago
    It would make collaboration tough though. The whole point of open office plans is to improve communication (actually it's so the boss can look over your shoulder, but I digress).
kzhahou 12y ago
People always talk about the terrible NOISE in open office plans. For me, I hate the feeling of BEING WATCHED. It's just unnerving. There's people all around me with low cube walls... * I want to stare ahead as I focus - someone's looking at me. * I have my big headphones on and am rocking to the music - someone's looking at me. * I wanna put my head down on desk and think - someone's looking at me. * I check gmail - someone's looking at me * redit break - someone's looking at me * I scrape off dry snot caused by the super-dry office air - someone's looking at me. * I'm working - someone's looking at me I just can't be in my own head when I'm so surrounded by people... always there... always right. behind. me.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  I second this. For me it's not even about being watched. It's that unnerving feeling of presence of other people that often makes me unable to focus in open-space setting at work. I had that since forever - even as a kid I aways closed the door to my room. I'm usually the last person to leave the office and when I see a cow-orker of mine staying late I start to feel irritated (saying in my head "hey, this was supposed to be my time for focused work!"). Funny thing is - I'm not an antisocial person. I love people. Just not when I'm trying to focus on something. Then the very presence of others makes me nervous. And yes, when I'm focused, I like to talk to myself out loud, lie down on a couch to think, rock to music and draw a lot (when designing something). All those things look silly and I'm uncomfortable doing any of it when not alone.
  - pdkl95 12y ago
    Being around people usually engages various parts of the brain that are involved in being aware of the local situation. Even if you're not interacting to someone, some amount of monitoring happens to maintain the brain's model of the local environment that we actually experience. This would include stuff like tracing the locations of people/stuff in the room, checks of stuff like body language or subtle social indicators, and probably a long list of other tiny checks that we never really notice consciously. The problem is that some of the areas of the brain that do that processing are also used when handling other complex tasks such as programming. This overloading of processing areas will vary from person to person, of course. This problem is the main reason I could never work in an open office, and have serious productivity problems even ion an office shared with only one other person. It's not that they are interrupting constantly or otherwise distracting in the commonly-used sense. If there are people around, I have to be aware of them, which wastes mental CPU time and introduces cache-flushing context switches at annoying times.
eellpp 12y ago
Besides the productivity aspect, its a reflection of single dimensional focus of Zuckerberg. If facebook continues to be a platform of social collaboration between people, then the team building it has to live it as well. Given that the developers spend major part of their day at office, this idea would be unconsciously forced into them every day. They would be more social and collaborative in presence of other human beings (or will learn to be). This is what facebook is about.
BadassFractal 12y ago
Would be interesting to hear feedback from folks actually working in that building in a good 6 months, let us know how it turns out.
edandersen 12y ago
Remember folks that if you are in open plan offices, most of the time they pump white noise through speakers in the ceiling to prevent sound travel. Think about that for a second.
skatenerd 12y ago
My gripe with open plan offices is that I spend a lot of the day overhearing a bunch of shit I have zero interest in. I used to work at a consulting company, and I'd be in an open plan office with 5 other teams, working on 5 other projects. Everyone was working through engineering decisions that were unrelated to my own. If everyone's on the same team, at least, there is some saving grace to the open plan office - you overhear stuff that you might be able to contribute to.
michaelochurch 12y ago
I'm surprised that I'm the only one to mention the (in this case, young, preening, "hip" and twinkish) elephant in the room behind this open-plan nonsense. Age discrimination. In a Daniel Day-Lewis There Will Be Blood voice, "Aaaaagggge discrimination, Eli, you boy!" Companies use these horrible office layouts for a number of reasons, and not all are so distasteful: everyone else is doing it, they're cheap, and they take good pictures for marketing because they "look busy". But, when you get to the core of it and the leadership behind this open-plan fetishism, it's all about age discrimination. Life changes make people less able to handle the chronic visibility (especially from behind) that these offices inflict. For women, pregnancy will do the trick. Men tend to like open-plan offices less after having children as well, because when you have kids you no longer perceive the world as free of danger, due to having a biological imperative to protect another creature, and you stop believing in the "nothing to hide" bullshit that convinces people to accept such invasions into their privacy. But even in childless people, the ability to handle the needless stress inflicted by open-plan offices seems to decline around age 30. There's also a stress that comes from incoherent noise when it comes from all angles. This is something that scuba divers are aware of, because of the way water plays with sound. It can exacerbate the "blue orb phenomenon" that can cause an open-water freak-out (which sounds, presumably unintentionally, similar to an open-office panic attack). This is especially bad for technology. The cruelty of software's age discrimination is that it takes 10-20 years just to be good at this stuff. People are pressured to leave the industry long before their prime. Oh, and there's a 1 to 2 percent per year chance, even in healthy people, that you get a life-altering anxiety or panic disorder if you do knowledge work in an open-plan office. (They aren't as bad for less cognitively intense tasks.) That doesn't show up in the marketing materials, and the casualty rate is low enough that few people talk about it, but it's a factor as well.
zhte415 12y ago
Can the windows be opened? Opening a window is very important for a lot of people, including myself.
avelis 12y ago
On the general discussion of open vs closed work space: IMO there are four types of mutually exclusive workspaces in a tech office setting: Open collaboration, library time, telephone booths, and small to large general assembly. These four, while briefly explained, highlight their purpose for optimal productivity in the day to day workflow. Specifically, library time would be an open space for work but with an implied quiet noise level. In contrast open collaboration is similar but without the noise level restriction. Both spaces would live in separate areas not near each other for understood respect in work style. Just my 2 cents. :-)
deleted 12y ago
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chatmasta 12y ago
Literally, a walled garden. I guess it fits well with the platform attitude. Employees are just another component of the platform. Make them happy, keep them at work longer hours, derive more value from them.
h43k3r 12y ago
I also hate open office plans. Everyone needs a little bit of privacy if not much during their work. I won't feel good if my manager/co-worker comes to my desk at the time when I was just switching to some music on youtube. It can give a wrong impression of you even when you know you were not doing the wrong thing.

234 points by somerandomness 12y ago

Coming soon, company-owned archologies[0] so you never have to leave your dot-com bubble. [0] http://simcity.wikia.com/wiki/Arcology http://simcity.wikia.com/wiki/Arcology

tdicola 12y ago
Don't worry, Google is working on it: http://singularityhub.com/2015/03/11/googles-new-headquarters-to-be-a-chrysalis-of-glass-fabric-and-movable-office-space/ http://singularityhub.com/2015/03/11/googles-new-headquarter...

robotmlg 12y ago

I never thought I'd see the phrase "a single room that fits thousands of people" in a description of an office building...

jonknee 12y ago
Especially as a positive attribute...

gdilla 12y ago

It's like we're going back to the industrial golden age where all a companies workers would get subsidized cookiecutter housing and certain amenities close to the plant. You never have to leave your employer bubble now. The conditions have never been better to work remotely, yet I guess another way to eliminate commutes is to make your workplace so livable you never leave (much). :)

shard972 12y ago
Just like a foxcon!

ableal 12y ago

Everytime I see this kind of "new building" news, I'm reminded of the genial "Plans and Plants" chapter of the Parkinson's Law book (by C. Northcote Parkinson, natch). Worth a look. I've seen it in action up close.

TaylorGood 12y ago
Fascinating; starts on page 25.. http://sas2.elte.hu/tg/ptorv/Parkinson-s-Law.pdf http://sas2.elte.hu/tg/ptorv/Parkinson-s-Law.pdf

deeviant 12y ago

Pretty soon, offices will be filled with chairs the fit two and three-person keyboards. I don't even want to think about how the whole "open office" philosophy will influence future restroom design.

tomjakubowski 12y ago
Okay, this is not really on-topic at all. But someone has finally given me the opening to rant about the state of public restroom design :-) I spend a lot of time working out of cafes, both for my job and when I'm working on some personal project. ~4-8 hours a day in a cafe plus a coffee every 90 minutes or so and plenty of water means I have a lot of experience with coffee shop public restrooms. And almost all of them are terribly designed. The worst problem, common to almost all cafes, is that a place with a capacity of ~40 people or so will have two single-user gendered restrooms. By this I mean there is a label or picture on each door indicating "Male" or "Female". This is a problem for a number of reasons, including that it creates issues for trans and genderqueer people, but also that it inevitably creates situations where there is a queue for one restroom (because of a user who is taking their time, for whatever reason) while the other is empty. Of course, someone could jump out of the queue and use the empty restroom, but there's a social norm that we generally must abide that forbids this. Another inefficiency is that faucets for washing up tend to be locked in the same single-user room as toilets. This causes backups when a person needs to use the faucet but someone else is using the toilet or vice versa. Plenty of people just pop into a single-user restroom to adjust their hair or wash their hands or whatever. In something like 9 years of working consistently out of cafes, I've seen just two that have what I consider to be well-designed restroom facilities: the Starbucks at Main & Olympic in Santa Monica, CA, USA and Sightglass Coffee in SoMa, San Franciso, CA, USA. Each have an open, shared sink area with a glut of faucets and two to four single-user toilets behind locked doors opening out into it. I've never seen a line for the restrooms at these cafes, although I don't know if that's because of good design or because no one wants to use such weird restrooms ;-)
- geofft 12y ago
  Where are you based? San Francisco "strongly urges" single-occupancy restrooms to be unisex. I've worked out of a fair number of SF cafes and I think this is noticeably less of a problem there than in other cities. http://sf-hrc.org/compliance-guidelines-prohibit-gender-identity-discrimination http://sf-hrc.org/compliance-guidelines-prohibit-gender-iden...

option 12y ago

Having worked as researcher/dev in both private office and open space setup, I am absolutely convinced that private offices are way more productive than open office setup for researchers and developers. Most, if not all, of my colleagues feel the same. In fact, I don't think I will ever accept an offer from a mature company (not startup) which houses its developers in open space.

Swizec 12y ago
The only redeeming feature of open plan comes from Hamming's essay, you and your research: Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work ✥ done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't ✥ know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in ✱ importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect ✞ sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can ✝ say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ✝ ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow ✲ they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  I think Hamming's quote pretty much sums up my personal experience with both open and closed offices. In a private office, your personal productivity is maximized; you get the most lines of code written, the most research done, the hardest problems solved. And yet the cumulative effect of that productivity seems to be much less than that of peers who write little, endure distractions, but are always in tune with which problems people are interested in.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

some1else 12y ago

Here's an article with a bunch of sizzling Instagram shots from people who got to take the first look: http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/web/news/a14830/facebook-mpk20-headquarters-frank-gehry/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/web/news/a14830/face... I'm really impressed by how non-gimmicky this Gehry building looks on the outside, and it seems like they really did a good job designing whatever space isn't consumed by the open plan.

kincardine 12y ago
> non-gimmicky this Gehry building looks on the outside I feel similarly about a lot of Gehry's more well known work. I'm interested to see how the building performs. If only I worked in Facebook management...
BryantD 12y ago
No pictures of day to day work space, alas.
- ethanbond 12y ago
  That's the key, there isn't any! (kidding)
- NeutronBoy 12y ago
  I saw this one from Chris Marra https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204715357418943 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204715357418943
  - j-c-m 12y ago
    Ah, that is Zuckberg and Schrep embracing the open floor plan by commandeering a conference room for a small two person meeting.
    - NeutronBoy 12y ago
      'Open floor plan' doesn't mean there's no leeway if you want to have a private discussion, or a meeting with more than 2-3 people for more than 5 minutes.

phildougherty 12y ago

I've worked in offices with cubes, in co-working spaces, remotely (for a long time), and now in an open plan with around 200 people.. I have never been more productive than the time I worked remotely. The constant distractions in an open plan are bad enough with 200, I can't even imagine how it is with thousands.

monk_e_boy 12y ago
I don't like people looking at my screens. I've never had a problem with the quality or quantity of my work, but as soon as someone see youtube open blasting out music. Hackernews, reddit, facebook all open, someone soon complains. That's just how I work. I think of it like a sausage factory, the boss loves the product but doesn't want to know how it's made. Leave me to work in my own way.
- MeganS 12y ago
  "I think of it like a sausage factory..." I know you didn't intend it in that way but considering tech's rampant misogyny leading to the systematic exclusion of women, using a phrase also used to imply an all-male space is potentially triggering to women and non-gender binary folks in the tech space. So don't use terms like that in the future. Thanks.
jack-r-abbit 12y ago
I've never worked in an open floor plan with more that like 100 people. But I seem to recall only being bothered by people within a few cube sections from me in any direction. I would imagine that at some point the rest of the people in the "room" are far enough away that it doesn't really matter.
- phildougherty 12y ago
  The collaboration that an open floor plan is supposed to promote has for me more or less translated to 'i can clearly see you so that is an open invitation to come interrupt you'. For me it's mostly that plus the constant movement in your peripheral vision nearby and far away that makes it bad.

jack-r-abbit 12y ago

I'm not going to get into the debate of open floor plans vs individual offices since most people already have their opinions and I see pros & cons to both. That debate aside, I think that roof top green space is absolutely awesome. I would love to see more of those being built into new buildings.

monk_e_boy 12y ago
Like hobbit holes
phildougherty 12y ago
Move to France http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/20/france-decrees-new-rooftops-must-be-covered-in-plants-or-solar-panels http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/20/france-decrees-...
- jack-r-abbit 12y ago
  That is great! I'd love to see all parking lots covered by solar panels and all roof tops covered with green space and solar panels. (But I could never live in France. Two weeks was 13 days too long.)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - EduardoBautista 12y ago
      They would be built as roofs.
pbreit 12y ago
Such a massive waste of space (not Facebook, others). Rooftops could easily house grass, solar and parking and yet is pretty much always completely wasted.
chrischen 12y ago

jonknee 12y ago

A 9 acre open work space sounds awful. With Facebook's money and Gehry's skills it's sad that a big box store and surface parking lot is what came out in the end.

serve_yay 12y ago

I wonder how you get around the giant room, and how its space is demarcated. How do you meet up with someone else who is in a faraway part of the room?

jack-r-abbit 12y ago
Probably the same way people do it at companies that occupy several separate buildings in a complex. You walk.
- serve_yay 12y ago
  I'm asking how you know where to walk to. Sheesh.
  - jack-r-abbit 12y ago
    I know. I was being a bit flippant on purpose. Having every body in one giant room doesn't mean there is no rhyme or reason to how things are laid out and labeled. Instead of moving between Building 1 & Building 4, you might go from Section 1 to Section 4. Only people that work there are going to need to know where Sections 1 & 4 are.
  - chmullig 12y ago
    Facebook has Wayfinders that provide an interactive touch screen map all over campus. Type in a name and it shows you where they are, relative to where you are. Super handy.
    - serve_yay 12y ago
      Ooh, nice!
phodo 12y ago
They could divide the space with cubes/walkways using a BSP algorithm [1] and provide Roguelike movement between openspace areas (we'll call them "rooms") http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_space_partitioning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_space_partitioning

MCRed 12y ago

I will never work in an open office plan. It's one of the items on my "prima donna" list. Despite the name I'm pretty serious, and while some of this list represents things that others might not be able to avoid, or even agree with because they are personal preferences, all of the items are the result of bad experiences or missteps I've experienced directly at a job in the past. I know some may object to these. That's ok, this is my list. I'll answer questions though and I'm open to suggestions. Here's my list, developed over 25 years working for companies, mostly startups: Never work... 0. where you're not getting equity along with a paycheck, or where you can't ask the CFO how many shares are outstanding on a fully diluted basis, and get an answer, during your interview. 1. for a manager who is not an engineer, unless you're the CTO. 2. Think twice working for any "tech" company where the CEO is not an engineer, or technically proficient. (Tim Cook is technically proficient, Jeff Bezos is not.) 3. in an open office plan. 4. for a company that shows disrespect for employees in other ways. Companies try to hide so you have to look close. 5. for a company that uses cult behavior, eg: "magic phrases" like Amazon's "Today is Day One!!", or that has a management book that all employees are supposed to read (if said book is of the pop-management variety) 6. for a company that doesn't provide you a convenient parking space at their expense (you should be working remote anyway!) 7. for a company that doesn't provide flex hours. Flex needs to really mean flex. Midnight to 8AM is an acceptable work schedule. 8. for any company with standup meetings, or other pointless meetings. (yeah yeah, all of the previous "SCRUM" teams have been "doing it wrong", so that just means nobodies doing it "right") 9. on a team where mandatory meetings happen more than twice a year 10. for a company that employs stack ranking, in any form. 11. for less than 3 weeks of vacation a year 12. for a "starter" salary that will be "made up later", unless this is a startup and you're getting a significant chunk of equity- eg: shares valued at most recent round of investment, or a $1M valuation if no investment, EXCEEDS the lost income. 12. for equity with a vesting schedule with an initial cliff longer than 90 days, (30 days is appropriate) 13. for equity with a vesting schedule over 4 years (and only 4 for > %5 equity) 14. for a company that has taken money from dishonest or unethical VCs (I know a lot of the bad ones but check "the funded" for reviews) 15. for a company that doesn't hire ops engineers, but expects developers to be "on call" 16. for a company that has a lot of restrictions about vacation and doesn't treat it as real (eg: you don't get all your days when you leave, bad PTO policies, etc) 17. in any office without adequate bathrooms, this includes any buildings where people are packed like sardines. combine the gender ratio of tech companies with more than %100 occupancy and the bathrooms are insufficient 18. in any setup with less than a dual thunderbolt display, or single 35"4k monitory. 19. on windows on a regular basis 20. where my development machine can't be a Mac

jordigh 12y ago

But will it still have the iconic H|A -+- C|K entrance that the old building had?

moe 12y ago

a single room that fits thousands of people. What a nightmare. These "glass palace" offices may work for bankers or marketing teams. For programmers you could just as well plant their desks into the middle of a mall.

weixiyen 12y ago
works for sweatshops too. j/k!
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  I would love to work in a converted sweatshop, I think these are considered prime offices spaces in the NYC garment district.
thearn4 12y ago
Everything comes around full circle eventually. http://afflictor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/openoffice.jpg http://afflictor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/openoffice.j... http://www.basexblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/office-workers-1950s.jpg http://www.basexblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/office-w...
fsk 12y ago
The offensive part is the people who say that open offices are MORE EFFICIENT than a traditional office. I have a hard time believing that one. Given how high programmer salaries are, the productivity loss due to open offices is almost definitely more than the office space savings. It seems like an introvert/extrovert thing. The introverts would prefer a quiet working space (and they're usually the best workers), but extroverts want the easy communication (and they're usually the bosses). Even small team rooms of 4-10 people get annoying when the other person has a smelly meal, has a cold, prefers a different temperature, or listens to music on his headphones so loudly I can hear it. One of my favorite jokes is when a job ad says "We provide headphones so you can concentrate!" as a serious job perk. How about a quiet space?
- pyre 12y ago

crashoverdrive 12y ago

The funniest thing about all of these "office design" photos that I see of big companies. "Where does the actual work get done?" Why are those photos never included.

crashoverdrive 12y ago

What I find most strange about all of the photos of office design for "big companies" Where does the actual work get done? Why are those pictures never included?

spcoll 12y ago
> What I find most strange about all of the photos of office design for "big companies" > The funniest thing about all of these "office design" photos that I see of big companies. Are you A/B testing your comments?
- crashoverdrive 12y ago
  Ack! No. I was mobile and it pinged me to login after generating the comment, then brought me to a blank screen. I'd thought I lost my comment. That's a good idea though..If only I had the time

mathattack 12y ago

I think the type of office space needs to meet the group's work. If solitary quiet work is required, you need either lots of quiet spots or a liberal telecommuting policy. If you need lots of communication, open is fine. I'm surprised that open works there, but Zuckerberg is a developer and has hired most of the senior team. They must have data that it works for them.

nerfhammer 12y ago
> Facebook's engineering director Jocelyn Goldfein spoke about open office plans during her recent talk at Stanford. She explicitly stated that it decreases her team's productivity, but that it was embraced because it promotes "openness" which is a core value at Facebook. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5768771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5768771
- mathattack 12y ago
  It takes courage to fess up to that!

Fiahil 12y ago

How did they put a 9-acre park on the roof?

notatoad 12y ago
they made a building that covers 9 acres and put dirt and grass and trees on top of it.
- Fiahil 12y ago
  Yes, obviously, but how is it possible for the building to withstand the weight of the dirt, grass and trees?
  - pkaye 12y ago
    If you design for 100 story buildings, you can design for a few story building with dirt on top.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - zaroth 12y ago
      It's fixing the leaks in 20 years that's the problem. But I guess the building just has to outlast the company...
      - notatoad 12y ago
        Nah, we've gotten pretty good at sealing concrete. You put enough tar and landscaping fabric under there, it'll last a while.
  - tdicola 12y ago
    With columns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column

dismal2 12y ago

Not being snide, but I REALLY do want to see a picture of a work desk (imagine it would be one of those standing/sitting electronic ones) and a chair and a computer! Or is that confidential info?

gboudrias 12y ago
Yeah this is a bit silly... "Yes Facebook, what I really wanted to see was a helicopter view of the building."
- chmullig 12y ago
  FWIW normally Facebookers aren't permitted to take/post photos of work areas. You're generally encouraged to keep visitors away from them as well.
  - sfjailbird 12y ago
    All parts of Facebook's open and transparent culture.
myhf 12y ago
http://i.imgur.com/20rCfSM.jpg http://i.imgur.com/20rCfSM.jpg
- kzhahou 12y ago
  Humor prohibited.
dismal2 12y ago
I found one! https://instagram.com/p/03riqAsW_e/embed/?v=4 https://instagram.com/p/03riqAsW_e/embed/?v=4

moron4hire 12y ago

Reminds me of the episode of "Better Off Ted" where they invent an itchy chair and it increases productivity because workers can't get too comfortable. In focus group testing, they find a maximum limit of uncomfortableness before people start jumping out of windows. I keep thinking the latest announcement of "gigantic open floor plan" is going to be that stroke too far. But I have also learned to be disappointed.

shostack 12y ago
That show was truly prescient in many ways. Man do I miss it.

Osmium 12y ago

> Our goal was to create the perfect engineering space for our teams to work together. [...] To do this, we designed the largest open floor plan in the world — a single room that fits thousands of people. Almost reads like an Onion article. I'm sure that they thought this through though before spending so much money.

JohnBooty 12y ago

I would literally switch jobs (and perhaps careers, if every company was like this) if forced to work in an open office like this. I cannot work that way; I can't focus. I realize that I'm adding nothing constructive to this thread; I don't care. Maybe some manager somewhere will see this and a hundred other anecdotal opinions and think twice about open offices. I am the opposite of a prima donna. I just want to work. I want to make awesome stuff, keep my skills sharp and make the company some money. Preferably lots of it. I'd be fine with an office that's literally 5x5', a desk, a door, a wifi connection, and some shared working areas for when it's time to collaborate. Because yes, collaboration is crucial (and fun) but if I have to hunt all over the damn building for a bit of quiet space (that might not even be avaiable) when it's time to bear down and do some solo coding then this is not going to work. Hell, I'll even bring my own damn desk, chair, and laptop. Supplied my own laptop to my last two jobs. No big deal. I'm an engineer; I get paid decently. But I need a freaking place to focus for at least half of any given working week - and sometimes, for close to the entire week. I don't need: famous guest speakers, catered food, fancy architecture, anything. I wouldn't even care if the office was a poorly-insulated garage that gets cold in the winter. I'll bring my own $20 space heater that will heat a 5x5' office just fine. What I can't have, if you want me to get any work done, is multiple simultaneous conversations taking place five feet away from my head all day long.

thrownaway2424 12y ago
Have heard the exact same sentiment from numerous Bookfaces in the months leading up to this move.
- JohnBooty 12y ago
  I wonder: are any of them excited about the move? Is anybody actually like, "Hell yeah... open offices!"
  - chmullig 12y ago
    Everyone at FB is already in open offices. It's just on the scale of a floor of a normal building, instead of a gigantic building.

cowpig 12y ago

Facebook HQ moves to a different building: the third most interesting or important thing happening in the world right now.

cc439 12y ago

I believe that this whole "open office" concept is driven by the idea that an observed worker is a "productive" worker and that it's actually true to a certain extent. Sure, you may be less productive in an open office when you're actually bearing down on something but the management is assured that you're doing something work related within the boundaries of the company's cultural definition of "productive". It's an old-school, assembly line style of thinking. An open floorplan gives the impression of vulnerability, you won't goof off on HN or reddit when you know somebody could be looking. A loss in crunchtime productivity may be worth it if the employees would otherwise spend 2 hours a day wasting time privately. The culture determines the amount of time spent socializing in plain view but the open office completely kills any attempt to spend company time on non-work activities in private. I work outside the tech bubble but even with my limited experience, I know that the more company provided distractions (a 9 acre park, free snacks in the breakroom, etc), the less you'll be allowed to actually do anything but work.

msane 12y ago

So what is this giant open space going to look like when people begin to work VR displays primarily? When most people work with opaque glasses silent and staring off... (co?)incidentally that could make such a room almost bearable as a work environment, personally...

normloman 12y ago
When you enter the metaverse, you'll arrive in a virtual open office, and you'll see / hear / all your coworkers working in the same virtual room.
- msane 12y ago
  Yes but how will I smell them?? hmm app idea. There could be places like that... one could be in several spaces, like chatrooms/channels. Most lobbies on the internet are filled with noobs and cat memes though...

kosma 12y ago

I'm genuinely worried about people with sensory oversensitivity problems. Personally I shudder to even think about spending time in a building like that one; those uneven lines painted in the common rooms, bright orange walls, breathtaking vertical spaces - I mean, sure, they do look impressive in photographs, but what about employees who get nauseous and/or dizzy just from looking at that kind of architecture all day long? This may sound silly, but considering how a significant portion of the IT workforce comes from the intersection of extreme introversion and Asperger's, this should be a genuine concern for any equal opportunity employee, especially in that sector.

AVTizzle 12y ago

On a positive note: >>On the roof is a 9-acre park with walking trails and many outdoor spaces to sit and work. That's awesome.

rsuelzer 12y ago

Hasn't this been open for a long time? I was there a few months ago and it was so bizarre. Like being at Disney Land or on a movie set, everything was perfect. I got pretty creeped out after spending the day there, that being said I could probably get used to working there, but could never deal with an open office.

jkjfffifkfll 12y ago

Call it what you want, Zuck. It's still a giant warehouse sweatshop. I work in an open office now. Never. Again. Fuck that. Could you imagine the sound of a hundred conversations going on, at once? "Wear headphones." Thanks, but I'd rather not damage my hearing. Where is OSHA when you need them. This is a factory and you need hearing protectors. Not headphones. 85 dBA. If you can't hear a person four feet away for most of the day, your employer is breaking the law.

ulfw 12y ago

Oh look it looks like every other boring Valley building that caters to the <25 yr old crowd only.

bbarn 12y ago

My least and most favorite topic rears it's head again. The open floor plan. Here's what I've come to think is about perfect: The open floor plan, with +-3 hour start/end time to your 8 hour work day (from say, 8:30-5), with optional hour lunch (paid or unpaid depending on policy/culture). Think about it.. there are definitely collaboration benefits to be had with the open floorplan. The contrast to that is always the "engineer needs alone time" bit. I get it, I work well both ways, but as others have said, you can't do all of either all of the time. That's where true flexibility in working schedule comes in. Like your quiet time? Come in at 6 and leave at 3. Or come in at 11, and leave at 7. The bulk of the office will tend to come in near the societal norm of 9-5, especially those who like the collaborative bit the most, and that leaves you the ends to pick from. Entire office likes to get together for group hour long lunches? Skip it and work. The idea is, if you honestly can't fit the work you need to do into blocks of time at the ends or middle of the day when the office naturally quiets down, you've got a bigger problem than the distractions of the office. The idea that you must have 8 hours of quiet or near quiet to do your job means you're not that good at doing your job, or your job role is too demanding for a reasonable person to do. If it's truly the case, you're likely SO good at what you do someone's noticed and you're getting what you want already.

staticfish 12y ago
Why should people that would like some quiet time (which is needed for all of us) have to come in at non-standard hours. That sucks. I think the bigger issue is how we've all been duped into how the open-plan offices "work" from MBA dicks.
- bbarn 12y ago
  The "MBA dicks" didn't start this, we did, like it or not. All the agile, write stuff on sticky-notes, stand up meetings did this, not managers looking to cut costs. They may have benefited, embraced an idea, and exploited it, for sure, but this didn't come from higher up. The problem is, they do work - for a lot of people. Things are getting done, at the biggest companies (case in point, the original article). People can complain and I'm right there with you - I love my quiet, but you have to adapt, and an engineer that can't adapt isn't much of an engineer, in my opinion. There's an army of people who can adapt working at these "god forsaken hideous open offices" which must then be "gender discriminating experienced engineers" when they can't work like it's 1990 anymore. This is the new reality. We don't have to write COBOL or VB or Pascal anymore, we don't have to wear suits, and most of us are paid really well, taken very seriously as a profession and in high demand. That comes with a little bit of give for all that take.

kamaal 12y ago

I currently work with people across the world, Indians, Chinese, French and people from various other nationalities. This open office thing makes it just worst. The most annoying thing I have come to face until now is the part where people from the same country start aggregating in groups over the floor talking in their own native languages. Constant chatter over simplest and silliest of the issues, previous night's dinner, pranks they played with their room mates and what not. Over a period of I've noticed the best way to handle has been to just tune out. I mean just be completely irresponsive to anything happening around you. Unfortunately I've been told many times by my manager that certain cultures can consider as being rude. Its almost like the office is now a community center for people to just gather around and chat.

koenigdavidmj 12y ago
The fact they're not speaking English is not relevant, so I think this just boils down to "having to hear other languages makes me uncomfortable". If you just didn't want to have distracting talking happen around you, then you would not have included the bit about the languages. Simply from a distraction standpoint, foreign languages that sound nothing like English are probably better, since you lose your ability to eavesdrop.
- hellbanTHIS 12y ago
  It would make collaboration tough though. The whole point of open office plans is to improve communication (actually it's so the boss can look over your shoulder, but I digress).

kzhahou 12y ago

People always talk about the terrible NOISE in open office plans. For me, I hate the feeling of BEING WATCHED. It's just unnerving. There's people all around me with low cube walls... * I want to stare ahead as I focus - someone's looking at me. * I have my big headphones on and am rocking to the music - someone's looking at me. * I wanna put my head down on desk and think - someone's looking at me. * I check gmail - someone's looking at me * redit break - someone's looking at me * I scrape off dry snot caused by the super-dry office air - someone's looking at me. * I'm working - someone's looking at me I just can't be in my own head when I'm so surrounded by people... always there... always right. behind. me.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
I second this. For me it's not even about being watched. It's that unnerving feeling of presence of other people that often makes me unable to focus in open-space setting at work. I had that since forever - even as a kid I aways closed the door to my room. I'm usually the last person to leave the office and when I see a cow-orker of mine staying late I start to feel irritated (saying in my head "hey, this was supposed to be my time for focused work!"). Funny thing is - I'm not an antisocial person. I love people. Just not when I'm trying to focus on something. Then the very presence of others makes me nervous. And yes, when I'm focused, I like to talk to myself out loud, lie down on a couch to think, rock to music and draw a lot (when designing something). All those things look silly and I'm uncomfortable doing any of it when not alone.
- pdkl95 12y ago
  Being around people usually engages various parts of the brain that are involved in being aware of the local situation. Even if you're not interacting to someone, some amount of monitoring happens to maintain the brain's model of the local environment that we actually experience. This would include stuff like tracing the locations of people/stuff in the room, checks of stuff like body language or subtle social indicators, and probably a long list of other tiny checks that we never really notice consciously. The problem is that some of the areas of the brain that do that processing are also used when handling other complex tasks such as programming. This overloading of processing areas will vary from person to person, of course. This problem is the main reason I could never work in an open office, and have serious productivity problems even ion an office shared with only one other person. It's not that they are interrupting constantly or otherwise distracting in the commonly-used sense. If there are people around, I have to be aware of them, which wastes mental CPU time and introduces cache-flushing context switches at annoying times.

eellpp 12y ago

Besides the productivity aspect, its a reflection of single dimensional focus of Zuckerberg. If facebook continues to be a platform of social collaboration between people, then the team building it has to live it as well. Given that the developers spend major part of their day at office, this idea would be unconsciously forced into them every day. They would be more social and collaborative in presence of other human beings (or will learn to be). This is what facebook is about.

BadassFractal 12y ago

Would be interesting to hear feedback from folks actually working in that building in a good 6 months, let us know how it turns out.

edandersen 12y ago

Remember folks that if you are in open plan offices, most of the time they pump white noise through speakers in the ceiling to prevent sound travel. Think about that for a second.

skatenerd 12y ago

My gripe with open plan offices is that I spend a lot of the day overhearing a bunch of shit I have zero interest in. I used to work at a consulting company, and I'd be in an open plan office with 5 other teams, working on 5 other projects. Everyone was working through engineering decisions that were unrelated to my own. If everyone's on the same team, at least, there is some saving grace to the open plan office - you overhear stuff that you might be able to contribute to.

michaelochurch 12y ago

I'm surprised that I'm the only one to mention the (in this case, young, preening, "hip" and twinkish) elephant in the room behind this open-plan nonsense. Age discrimination. In a Daniel Day-Lewis There Will Be Blood voice, "Aaaaagggge discrimination, Eli, you boy!" Companies use these horrible office layouts for a number of reasons, and not all are so distasteful: everyone else is doing it, they're cheap, and they take good pictures for marketing because they "look busy". But, when you get to the core of it and the leadership behind this open-plan fetishism, it's all about age discrimination. Life changes make people less able to handle the chronic visibility (especially from behind) that these offices inflict. For women, pregnancy will do the trick. Men tend to like open-plan offices less after having children as well, because when you have kids you no longer perceive the world as free of danger, due to having a biological imperative to protect another creature, and you stop believing in the "nothing to hide" bullshit that convinces people to accept such invasions into their privacy. But even in childless people, the ability to handle the needless stress inflicted by open-plan offices seems to decline around age 30. There's also a stress that comes from incoherent noise when it comes from all angles. This is something that scuba divers are aware of, because of the way water plays with sound. It can exacerbate the "blue orb phenomenon" that can cause an open-water freak-out (which sounds, presumably unintentionally, similar to an open-office panic attack). This is especially bad for technology. The cruelty of software's age discrimination is that it takes 10-20 years just to be good at this stuff. People are pressured to leave the industry long before their prime. Oh, and there's a 1 to 2 percent per year chance, even in healthy people, that you get a life-altering anxiety or panic disorder if you do knowledge work in an open-plan office. (They aren't as bad for less cognitively intense tasks.) That doesn't show up in the marketing materials, and the casualty rate is low enough that few people talk about it, but it's a factor as well.

zhte415 12y ago

Can the windows be opened? Opening a window is very important for a lot of people, including myself.

avelis 12y ago

On the general discussion of open vs closed work space: IMO there are four types of mutually exclusive workspaces in a tech office setting: Open collaboration, library time, telephone booths, and small to large general assembly. These four, while briefly explained, highlight their purpose for optimal productivity in the day to day workflow. Specifically, library time would be an open space for work but with an implied quiet noise level. In contrast open collaboration is similar but without the noise level restriction. Both spaces would live in separate areas not near each other for understood respect in work style. Just my 2 cents. :-)

deleted 12y ago

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chatmasta 12y ago

Literally, a walled garden. I guess it fits well with the platform attitude. Employees are just another component of the platform. Make them happy, keep them at work longer hours, derive more value from them.

h43k3r 12y ago

I also hate open office plans. Everyone needs a little bit of privacy if not much during their work. I won't feel good if my manager/co-worker comes to my desk at the time when I was just switching to some music on youtube. It can give a wrong impression of you even when you know you were not doing the wrong thing.