There are a number of engineers that produce their best work when in conversation. They tend to like pair programming and an open office facilitates their brand of creativity. Believe it or not, but there are people who work better when they can discuss stuff with others, and become less productive with enforced focus.
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Some Apple Park Employees Said to Be Dissatisfied With Open Office Design
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Shocker, some people like change and some people don't. I will say i recently worked on a building redesign project and out consultants said that in general, people are much more productive in open floor plan environments.
Open offices are popular because they are cheap, you can pack a lot more people in less space. And as a bonus people can be better monitored.
Collaborative work is what is used to justify them. In reality what gets you collaborative work is less manager turf wars and less office politics.
I personally hate them because while I don't mind noise I do like some privacy. Some clever separation and desk placement can do wonders for open offices.
Apple's on the other hand, looking at the pictures, look like the worst kind. It's not really surprising, a lot of architects see themselves more as artists than problem solvers and that comes around in their buildings.
Collaborative work is what is used to justify them. In reality what gets you collaborative work is less manager turf wars and less office politics.
I personally hate them because while I don't mind noise I do like some privacy. Some clever separation and desk placement can do wonders for open offices.
Apple's on the other hand, looking at the pictures, look like the worst kind. It's not really surprising, a lot of architects see themselves more as artists than problem solvers and that comes around in their buildings.
In my opinion that's very much dependent on what you measure and value as productivity. Pretty much all the scientific studies I've seen on the topic seem to find open floor plans contributing to more stressed out, unhappy workers.
We did this at our place, and it worked surprisingly well. Most of the time an open plan office is actually a lot quieter than you worry it will be. In the meantime there genuinely is more collaboration, and everyone from junior techs to senior managers (even the CIO is out on the floor) are aware of issues much quicker.
The one caveat is ensuring that there are sufficient enclosed "phone booths", so that anyone who needs to hold a long conversation can do so without interrupting those around them.
It is definitely the way to go, especially these days where things like Agile development and quick turnarounds are important. My advice to these Apple engineers is give it a try. Coming out of the cubicle does change how you work, but the increased interaction can spark all sorts of new ideas as well as preventing time wasted pursing bad options.
The one caveat is ensuring that there are sufficient enclosed "phone booths", so that anyone who needs to hold a long conversation can do so without interrupting those around them.
It is definitely the way to go, especially these days where things like Agile development and quick turnarounds are important. My advice to these Apple engineers is give it a try. Coming out of the cubicle does change how you work, but the increased interaction can spark all sorts of new ideas as well as preventing time wasted pursing bad options.
I know I would hate to work in a completely open workspace all the time. I can't believe Apple would go so far as to lose good talent over this issue, so let's hope they address it for those teams/staff who dislike it.
Would be interesting to know why Tim Cook and other senior Apple people will be working in their own private offices, if the open office is such a good idea... ?
Would be interesting to know why Tim Cook and other senior Apple people will be working in their own private offices, if the open office is such a good idea... ?
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When I wrote outside looking in I meant people like you and me who don't work for Apple as opposed to people who do work for Apple and are complaining our their new office space.
My company implements the same open plans.
Even the CEO of the company doesnt have an office and sits next to those making 1/10th his salary and it does make the higher ups more approachable.
However, I believe the underlying aspect of the open floor office space design is so that bosses can keep a closer eye on their employees and they can't hide in an office.
"Oh where is Joe?" **stands up*** "oh not at his desk..."
Even the CEO of the company doesnt have an office and sits next to those making 1/10th his salary and it does make the higher ups more approachable.
However, I believe the underlying aspect of the open floor office space design is so that bosses can keep a closer eye on their employees and they can't hide in an office.
"Oh where is Joe?" **stands up*** "oh not at his desk..."
What a bunch of childish crap. As if there aren't THOUSANDS of people wanting to work at Apple. They won't be missed.
Hm, from what I see from the picture presented, there's not a whole lot of space dedicated to each person, nor really any way to make that space 'yours'. If you had an office, you could like, put up some stuff on the walls, have a potted plant, some knick-knacks.
Here you get a desk, like you were back in school again, and that's it. I dunno if that's terribly satisfying for most grownup people...
Here you get a desk, like you were back in school again, and that's it. I dunno if that's terribly satisfying for most grownup people...
People aren't interchangeable like lightbulbs. The right people in the right places are literally the difference between world success and crashing and burning. It doesn't matter how many people are standing in line behind those wanting to leave, it takes time and effort to integrate staff into a workplace and make them produce at their top capacity, and no guarantee they will work out in the end as well as the people who took off.
You really don't want employee churn if you can at all avoid it, especially if your employees are highly skilled in their field.
The worst thing you can do as a company is scare away potential talent due to ****** unfavourable business decisions.
Apple has one of the best Silicon design teams for their A series processors. If they basically told that team "like it or GTFO", and many GTFO'd, you'd have no guarantee that the people you hire to replace them are as good or qualified as the people you have pissed off to leave.
It's clear Apple has recognized this at least by building the silicon design team their own separate building. As I said previous in this thread, to just about everyone who believes businesses are free to do whatever they want and employees must "like it or GTFO", this is a bad way to run a business. When you show you have no respect for your employees, your employees tend to not respect you. And when that starts to happen, you tend to run into worsening quality of work, or in worse case scenarios they become unable to actually get decent enough hires to maintain their previous business operations.
if your mindset is "LIke it or GTFO", I am glad I will never work for you, because you'd make an absolutely deplorable boss. Especially since you think people are just numbers and replaceable, shows how little actual business management capabilities you have.
I sent an email to my boss about the "open workspace". Sure, I'd love the Apple workspace over my open-office workspace (with no windows), but that still doesn't mean it's even close to what I'd choose for myself. Since the switch to this environment, I'm now on blood pressure meds. Although I can't pinpoint the open workspace as the root cause, I have been able to relate it to work stress. The open workspace does not help.
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I have some sites and excerpts saved found searching both pros and cons of an "open office" environment. Even typing pros and cons into an internet search, many sites didn't name many or any pros. Like I mentioned, I'm not sure what the exact balance is for privacy and open-ness but if it were up to me to decide how to lay out the cube-farm, I'd research something like "best office layout for employee productivity / health / communication / satisfaction / performance / etc".
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap
The open office was originally conceived by a team from Hamburg, Germany, in the nineteen-fifties, to facilitate communication and idea flow. But a growing body of evidence suggests that the open office undermines the very things that it was designed to achieve. In June, 1997, a large oil and gas company in western Canada asked a group of psychologists at the University of Calgary to monitor workers as they transitioned from a traditional office arrangement to an open one. The psychologists assessed the employees’ satisfaction with their surroundings, as well as their stress level, job performance, and interpersonal relationships before the transition, four weeks after the transition, and, finally, six months afterward. The employees suffered according to every measure: the new space was disruptive, stressful, and cumbersome, and, instead of feeling closer, coworkers felt distant, dissatisfied, and resentful. Productivity fell.
In 2011, the organizational psychologist Matthew Davis reviewed more than a hundred studies about office environments. He found that, though open offices often fostered a symbolic sense of organizational mission, making employees feel like part of a more laid-back, innovative enterprise, they were damaging to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction. Compared with standard offices, employees experienced more uncontrolled interactions, higher levels of stress, and lower levels of concentration and motivation. When David Craig surveyed some thirty-eight thousand workers, he found that interruptions by colleagues were detrimental to productivity, and that the more senior the employee, the worse she fared.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/21/how-your-office-may-be-ha_n_5161469.html
http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/15/why-the-open-office-is-a-hotbed-of-stress/
And indeed, several decades of research have confirmed that open-plan offices are generally associated with greater employee stress, poorer co-worker relations and reduced satisfaction with the physical environment.
http://fortune.com/2015/03/18/pros-and-cons-open-office-floorplan/
The cons of open-plan offices are obvious: they're unhealthy, needlessly stress-inducing, hostile to productivity and creativity, and communicate low social status through the lack of privacy. They're a "Little Brother" state, and even for those who "ought to" have nothing to hide, a surveillance state is an anxiety state.
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The main "pro" is that they're cheaper. They don't foster collaboration because they make people more irritable and aggressive. Nor are they "egalitarian" because the invasive, violating degree of visibility to which the worker is subjected actually increases status-related anxiety and steepens disparities in power. Open-plan isn't as oppressive to the CEO, who can leave that environment without explaining himself. In general, open-plan offices are terrible. That said, they're cheaper than anything else. Of course, you get what you pay for.
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I have some sites and excerpts saved found searching both pros and cons of an "open office" environment. Even typing pros and cons into an internet search, many sites didn't name many or any pros. Like I mentioned, I'm not sure what the exact balance is for privacy and open-ness but if it were up to me to decide how to lay out the cube-farm, I'd research something like "best office layout for employee productivity / health / communication / satisfaction / performance / etc".
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap
The open office was originally conceived by a team from Hamburg, Germany, in the nineteen-fifties, to facilitate communication and idea flow. But a growing body of evidence suggests that the open office undermines the very things that it was designed to achieve. In June, 1997, a large oil and gas company in western Canada asked a group of psychologists at the University of Calgary to monitor workers as they transitioned from a traditional office arrangement to an open one. The psychologists assessed the employees’ satisfaction with their surroundings, as well as their stress level, job performance, and interpersonal relationships before the transition, four weeks after the transition, and, finally, six months afterward. The employees suffered according to every measure: the new space was disruptive, stressful, and cumbersome, and, instead of feeling closer, coworkers felt distant, dissatisfied, and resentful. Productivity fell.
In 2011, the organizational psychologist Matthew Davis reviewed more than a hundred studies about office environments. He found that, though open offices often fostered a symbolic sense of organizational mission, making employees feel like part of a more laid-back, innovative enterprise, they were damaging to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction. Compared with standard offices, employees experienced more uncontrolled interactions, higher levels of stress, and lower levels of concentration and motivation. When David Craig surveyed some thirty-eight thousand workers, he found that interruptions by colleagues were detrimental to productivity, and that the more senior the employee, the worse she fared.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/21/how-your-office-may-be-ha_n_5161469.html
http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/15/why-the-open-office-is-a-hotbed-of-stress/
And indeed, several decades of research have confirmed that open-plan offices are generally associated with greater employee stress, poorer co-worker relations and reduced satisfaction with the physical environment.
http://fortune.com/2015/03/18/pros-and-cons-open-office-floorplan/
The cons of open-plan offices are obvious: they're unhealthy, needlessly stress-inducing, hostile to productivity and creativity, and communicate low social status through the lack of privacy. They're a "Little Brother" state, and even for those who "ought to" have nothing to hide, a surveillance state is an anxiety state.
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The main "pro" is that they're cheaper. They don't foster collaboration because they make people more irritable and aggressive. Nor are they "egalitarian" because the invasive, violating degree of visibility to which the worker is subjected actually increases status-related anxiety and steepens disparities in power. Open-plan isn't as oppressive to the CEO, who can leave that environment without explaining himself. In general, open-plan offices are terrible. That said, they're cheaper than anything else. Of course, you get what you pay for.
yeah. over the last few years, there's this big disconnect with the things that the Apple Executives say, and the "Common worker". it's like Apple's small group of executives forgot that not everyone in the world is worth 100 million dollars. They make bold claims about their business, and products that seem to be disconnected.
For example you've got tim cook claiming the iPad is a full computer replacement because he's able to do his work on it. Forgetting that his work isn't reflective of 99.99% of the rest of the world.
or the new MacBook Pro making large compromises for design over function, and schiller exclaiming after the backlash he doesn't understand why some people really hated the new design
or taking almost 5 years to aknowledge that the Mac Pro didn't suit the need they told everyone it should, and they couldn't continue to maintain it.
The Apple executive needs to hire in new, young, and outside talent who are not set in the current executives mindset. Who have been so out of touch with the reality of how people work for so many years.
Some employees leave when every business moves into new and different offices. This is par for the course.
My theory is that open space office is for people who like to talk and closed office space is for people who like to work.
Open space is potentially significantly cheaper regarding seat space but if I want to be creative and use my brilliant intelligence I can't sit in a bee-hive with ppl talking all the time all around me. The interruptions cost more money in waste of time than it saves in office cost.
Open space is potentially significantly cheaper regarding seat space but if I want to be creative and use my brilliant intelligence I can't sit in a bee-hive with ppl talking all the time all around me. The interruptions cost more money in waste of time than it saves in office cost.
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Many years ago, before I ventured out on my own, I had an office in a large company. Usually, I had to close the door if I wanted to work undistracted and uninterrupted. Even with assigned offices, workers would use their stretch breaks to visit others or converse in the hallway. Ultimately, I tired of the interruptions--even legitimate ones--and some of the personalities I had to collaborate with. So I left. I have control of my environment now and can choose who to collaborate with.
According to the Myers-Briggs preferences assessment, I am an extrovert and experience energy when I participate in a group activity. However, I need quiet for critical thinking. While they re-carpeted my office, I had the opportunity to work in an admin bullpen. I loved it! It was an open floorplan; however, the occupants were as quiet as librarians. I had the best of both worlds--the company of others and a meditative environment. Sitting in a windowless, tiny office all day felt like a cell.
According to the Myers-Briggs preferences assessment, I am an extrovert and experience energy when I participate in a group activity. However, I need quiet for critical thinking. While they re-carpeted my office, I had the opportunity to work in an admin bullpen. I loved it! It was an open floorplan; however, the occupants were as quiet as librarians. I had the best of both worlds--the company of others and a meditative environment. Sitting in a windowless, tiny office all day felt like a cell.
I observed a generational difference in workspace preferences when I went to visit a Google office.
Everyone had their own cubicle, but there were also open spaces for anyone to work any time. The older employees tended to work in their cubicles and the younger employees tended to work in the open spaces (stand up desks, lounges, and cafeteria).
Everyone had their own cubicle, but there were also open spaces for anyone to work any time. The older employees tended to work in their cubicles and the younger employees tended to work in the open spaces (stand up desks, lounges, and cafeteria).
You would think Apple would have done a full study and involve/consult employees in such drastic decision regarding employees workspace.
Hope if need be they will/can make the necessary modifications.
Just because they are qualified doesn't mean they are as good, Qualcomm also hires qualified people, yet the Apple SoCs are much better. Oh well, I'm sure Qualcomm would be happy to hire the team who made the A series SoCs and start making great chips whilst Apple ones stagnate.
Yeah, I mean by the looks of it, it can be whole teams that don't want this workspace. That shouldn't be happening, especially in Apple. I can only imagine how much of a hassle a modification would be given the attention to detail and precise designing, but I hope it can be done. If employees haven't spoke up about this already, I hope this has made it clear to Apple.
Since you cite MB and the basic tenet in MB is that there are sets of archetype personality types among people that have different characteristics and needs. One would think that a progressive, ultra-creative industry leader organisation would cater to that simple principle when designing the ultimate work space for creativity.
Nope, they go with "one size fits all"
I think they are mistaken. And I'm an ENTJ btw so I understand you.