Strange Company rules and manipulations

[David Hess]

Duh, nobody doesn’t understand that open plans are cheaper. Our point is that it’s a false economy to save a few hundred bucks a month on rent, at the expense of a few thousand bucks of productivity (and the employees’ sanity).

Rent is an immediate ongoing expense.  Employee's sanity is speculative and someone else's cost anyway; there are plenty of new employees to hire and as a bonus, they cost less.

[David Hess]

The flaw is very simple - and very obvious.  There is no stickiness here unless someone acts stupidly.  You are describing two entirely different scenarios.  Having drinks with a single person is completely, utterly and totally different to a group get together.

It does not matter if someone acts stupidly.  In the current climate, an accusation is punitive whether justified or false.  For the same reason, I have deliberately avoided any profession which includes children or students.  What would I gain by taking such a risk?

I would get the door for any colleague but drive a woman home from work because her car died?  I would not if I could avoid it.

[CatalinaWOW]

On the subject of letting employees select open or closed workspaces, based on their need for quiet to concentrate, or whatever worked for them. 

I was at one point participating in allocation of office space.  My experience was that actual need for working conditions was far less important to most employees than the recognition associated with the assignment.  In this particular case there were several standardized office layouts, with more square feet for higher grade levels along with other "perks" like bigger desks, more file cabinets and the like.  In one case the only difference between one layout and another was a slide out pencil tray added under one of the work surfaces.

The ridiculousness was two sided.  One one side, that pencil tray could not have cost more than a couple of dollars to make, and even at full retail including installation costs couldn't have been more than $100.  So it was ridiculous to not include them everywhere.  But at least as ridiculous were the fights that occured over who deserved the tray and who got them.

The bottom line is that people are emotional as much or more than they are rational.  And this is obvious on decisions and attitudes by both employers and employees.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Some companies, such as Facebook, take open plan offices to the next level. In those companies, you don't even have a dedicated desk. You take whatever desk is available when you're there. I suppose companies do this because they think it saves even more money than open plan offices with dedicated desks for each employee.

yyyyyyeah, I brought up hot-desking several days ago in reply #59.

TL;DR, but BTW, it's in reply #58 (although your link does point to #58, it says #59).

[tooki]

Duh, nobody doesn’t understand that open plans are cheaper. Our point is that it’s a false economy to save a few hundred bucks a month on rent, at the expense of a few thousand bucks of productivity (and the employees’ sanity).

Rent is an immediate ongoing expense.  Employee's sanity is speculative and someone else's cost anyway; there are plenty of new employees to hire and as a bonus, they cost less.

I hope that reply was meant sarcastically.

Thousands in lost productivity is also an immediate, ongoing expense.

Some companies, such as Facebook, take open plan offices to the next level. In those companies, you don't even have a dedicated desk. You take whatever desk is available when you're there. I suppose companies do this because they think it saves even more money than open plan offices with dedicated desks for each employee.

yyyyyyeah, I brought up hot-desking several days ago in reply #59.

TL;DR, but BTW, it's in reply #58 (although your link does point to #58, it says #59).

Maybe a bug in the forum software, since on my screen, it did, and still does, say #59:

[Sal Ammoniac]

Maybe a bug in the forum software, since on my screen, it did, and still does, say #59:

Strange. This is what I see:

[Mr. Scram]

Rent is an immediate ongoing expense.  Employee's sanity is speculative and someone else's cost anyway; there are plenty of new employees to hire and as a bonus, they cost less.

This isn't true in some markets where personnel is in high demand and nearly impossible to replace and yet the open plan persists. It's short term thinking and a red flag a company can't see past the numbers and isn't willing to invest.

[james_s]

So pretty much all public companies and startups. Public companies are all about the next quarter and startups just need to last long enough to either go public or get bought by an existing big public company so the founders can cash out.

[Alti]

(...)Our point is that it’s a false economy to save a few hundred bucks a month on rent, at the expense of a few thousand bucks of productivity (and the employees’ sanity).

An employee is just a source of gains to be extracted, like an office space.
The "false economy" maximizes shareholder's profit, the floor tiles wear out.

[tooki]

(...)Our point is that it’s a false economy to save a few hundred bucks a month on rent, at the expense of a few thousand bucks of productivity (and the employees’ sanity).

An employee is just a source of gains to be extracted, like an office space.
The "false economy" maximizes shareholder's profit, the floor tiles wear out.

No, that’d be a real economy. It’s a false economy if it actually costs more, which is what happens if you end up reducing productivity by 20%. That more than erases the savings in rent.

[Mr. Scram]

No, that’d be a real economy. It’s a false economy if it actually costs more, which is what happens if you end up reducing productivity by 20%. That more than erases the savings in rent.

As an engineer Dave always urges to do some back of the napkin calculations to gauge viability of a plan. The cost reward estimate here is straightforward and in almost any western market has very clear results in favour of caring for your employees yet it seems surprisingly rare.

[james_s]

Most of the people who make these decisions are not engineers, they're middle and upper management busybodies with no idea what engineers actually do.

[tooki]

Yep. Even if they're a hands-on manager who's in the trenches, they'll still do open plan for everyone else because "communication", but maintain a private office for themselves, under the pretense of needing privacy... 

[Mr. Scram]

Most of the people who make these decisions are not engineers, they're middle and upper management busybodies with no idea what engineers actually do.

Even managers should be able to understand employee cost and the value of almost any productivity increase. You can spreadsheet the crap out of that with very appealing lines moving up.

[james_s]

Regardless of what they *should* be capable of, they often don't.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Some companies have recognized the need for privacy and quiet and have/had private offices for 100% of their technical staff. This includes/included Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and others.

[Dundarave]

Re: Open Plan office space, over the last 20 years I’ve managed a dozen different teams of software developers, and every one of them, when given a choice of cubicles or open plan with long tables, have always wanted the open plan.  These are teams of 3 to 12 individuals.  In a couple of cases we had to repurpose largish board rooms to accommodate them all together so that the people in the cubes weren’t disturbed.

Might be a millennial thing, but for me this has been the case since before 2000!  Just a different viewpoint, I guess.  Personally, as a boomer manager, I simply can’t function without a door, and consider it a condition of my employment.

[james_s]

Some companies have recognized the need for privacy and quiet and have/had private offices for 100% of their technical staff. This includes/included Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and others.

Microsoft used to have private offices or offices shared by two people but that has been changing. Their newest buildings are all trendy open layouts and they've been remodeling some of the other spaces into that. Some employees are still lucky enough to be in the older buildings that have offices. I'm not aware of any major tech companies that still have most of their staff in private offices, the pendulum is still swinging toward open plans and management types are still touting the BS advantages.

[Towger]

Re: Open Plan office space, over the last 20 years I’ve managed a dozen different teams of software developers, and every one of them, when given a choice of cubicles or open plan with long tables, have always wanted the open plan.  These are teams of 3 to 12 individuals.  In a couple of cases we had to repurpose largish board rooms to accommodate them all together so that the people in the cubes weren’t disturbed.

I view this a a big cubical or private office, with everyone working on the same task.  With true open plan your developers would be working on a large floor, surrounded by the likes of technical support, sales droids and admin creating constant loud noise and other distractions.

[Alti]

Most of the people who make these decisions are not engineers, they're middle and upper management busybodies with no idea what engineers actually do.

If a management busybody does not understand what s/he is deciding about, then this is not a concern of an engineer from a cubicle. Employees are not responsible for wasteful decisions of superiors, only the shareholders are.

Of course there are always scuckers that can be easily convinced to tame their career expectations (usually because of "difficult situation on the market", or "maybe next year"). I think it is just cheaper to train another (HR management) busybody how to deal with suckers than to get involved in a space arrangement that considers top performance.

An employee is just a source of gains to be extracted, like an office space.

[tooki]

Some companies have recognized the need for privacy and quiet and have/had private offices for 100% of their technical staff. This includes/included Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and others.

Microsoft used to have private offices or offices shared by two people but that has been changing. Their newest buildings are all trendy open layouts and they've been remodeling some of the other spaces into that. Some employees are still lucky enough to be in the older buildings that have offices. I'm not aware of any major tech companies that still have most of their staff in private offices, the pendulum is still swinging toward open plans and management types are still touting the BS advantages.

I believe Apple still relies on private offices, since they really value secrecy, and that’s kinda hard in open offices.

[David Hess]

Re: Open Plan office space, over the last 20 years I’ve managed a dozen different teams of software developers, and every one of them, when given a choice of cubicles or open plan with long tables, have always wanted the open plan.  These are teams of 3 to 12 individuals.  In a couple of cases we had to repurpose largish board rooms to accommodate them all together so that the people in the cubes weren’t disturbed.

Might be a millennial thing, but for me this has been the case since before 2000!  Just a different viewpoint, I guess.  Personally, as a boomer manager, I simply can’t function without a door, and consider it a condition of my employment.

It might also explain why software and human factors engineering has becoming worse.

People have not changed so if it is a millennial thing, then it is a fad and they will find out how distractions destroy productivity.  Of course these are the same millennials who like chicklet keyboards and screens filled with glare so maybe they will not.

[james_s]

Some companies have recognized the need for privacy and quiet and have/had private offices for 100% of their technical staff. This includes/included Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and others.

Microsoft used to have private offices or offices shared by two people but that has been changing. Their newest buildings are all trendy open layouts and they've been remodeling some of the other spaces into that. Some employees are still lucky enough to be in the older buildings that have offices. I'm not aware of any major tech companies that still have most of their staff in private offices, the pendulum is still swinging toward open plans and management types are still touting the BS advantages.

I believe Apple still relies on private offices, since they really value secrecy, and that’s kinda hard in open offices.

Apple recently built a huge fancy very expensive new campus. A number of teams have refused to relocate to the new place which was opened with much fanfare because its all open layout. I'll see if I can find the article about it, the place sounded very form over function which mirrors the recent product line.

[tooki]

I remember seeing photos of the private offices in the new campus shortly before move-in. So it's possible that some of it is open-plan, but most definitely not all of it.

[james_s]

Maybe it's the usual thing where only senior managers have offices? I've never been there.

https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/apple-employees-hate-apples-5-billion-open-plan-o.html