Some Apple Park Employees Said to Be Dissatisfied With Open Office Design

[chrono1081]

Open office designs are literally the most terrible environment to work in. I'm a software developer and we have this design because management falsely thinks it "promotes cohesion".

No, it invites distraction and frustrates those who need a quiet space to work in. The only people who think its a good idea are managers who have their own private offices, and employees who don't have a real job and just like to talk all day.

The open office environment where I work is so bad that I essentially surf the internet a large amount of the day, since it's so loud I can't concentrate enough to read developer documentation, which leads me to working on my time off at home where its quiet just to get the crap I needed to get done during the work hours finished.

I'm a software dev who sits with people that are on the phone all damn day with visitors stopping over all day long. Its infuriating.

I would welcome being shoved away in a broom closet with my computer.

 

[Juicy Box]

Basically anyone who is an introvert will hate an open floor plan.

Anyone who can't handle distractions while working will have a lot of problems

As an introvert with ADD, I agree with this statement.

 

[Arty6]

I’m not surprised, the whole ‘open and collaborative work space’ stuff can go to far, and it’s become a joke. They should be building it around employee needs.

I agree. It was one of those "reinvent your business" fads that was somehow supposed to improve productivity. There is a place for collaboration but many employees need private spaces to do their best work. I was really surprised to see that apple followed through with this concept all the way to the end.

 

[Moonjumper]

An open office is good for collaboration, but very bad for getting work done.

 

[now i see it]

The company I worked at last went from cubes to open office space and it sucked. It sucked so bad that I eventually quit (among other reasons). I honestly couldn't wait for the weekend to be able to work in peace & quiet at home. That blows big time. It's too freaking distracting having people walking around behind you, looking at your screen, and it's distracting having people walk by in front of you too. It blows. It's like a call center. Management thinks this is the new way forward... so they can keep an eye on you, but employees for the most part despise the concept.

The wowy zowy circular design of the Apple park building looks spectacular from a drone or airplane, but for the people working there, it might as well just be a square building its so big. The circular shape is lost due to its size.

 

[campyguy]

I'm an engineer/construction manager, worked on light rail alignments, bridge rehabs and replacements, seismic upgrades, building upgrades, etc., et al, ad nauseam. I've worked in a converted mobile unit, out of the back of my rental car, in huge open spaces and cubicles, out of my home, and sat next to some pretty strange people, let alone crawling or walking through some gawd awful spaces during evaluations.

It's a job. Likely much better paying than places that start with "Win", "Tar", "Chev", or "Safe" - some of which I worked for before I went to college, thankful for that experience and pay.

Besides, I'm 6'7" and can't hide anywhere anyways. No empathy here, whiners - get back to work.

 

[4jasontv]

With the amount of noise echoing from a 2016/2017 MacBook Pro keyboard, multiply that by 100 in an open environment and you can likely get why this would not be a great fit for a programmer.

My math says 100 keyboards would be 20 dB louder than a single keyboard, but that doesn't take into account variable distances from each macbook. Based on the number of desks per sq ft its likely a few dB under that.

This means the environment is slight less annoying than a noctua fan a few feet away. But typing isn't the issue. The issue is popcorn. And recaps of fishing trips. And ringtones. And footsteps. And quick questions. And flashing lights.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

I was wondering about as some don't want noise or people around them when working.

 

[mmm1345]

Open plans are awful. Nothing makes you feel more like a drone than being forced to work in some conference room or crowded table where you have no personal space or sense of "privacy" and don't even get me started on all the distracting conversations, the people who spend most of their time complaining about being stuck in said crowded spot, people chewing gum and eating food and the germs. One person gets sick and the entire area is gone.

 

[jscooper22]

We renovated/built a mostly open office for ourselves about 10 years ago. Took some getting used to, but eventually they did. But the THEY in this case are architects, who constantly bounce ideas off each other and generally aren't as introverted as IT people (like me ... sitting in an office under the stairs next to the server room and happy as an introverted clam ).

Apple probably should have thought more about who it was they were filling those spaces with. Maybe project managers are fine with collaborative "pods" or whatever, but tech-heads often do best when they collaborate with the tech.

 

[chrono1081]

Only thing worse is the 'hot desking' idea.........

Holy **** who thought that would work?! I never heard of it until you mentioned it and then I read about it. Talk about feeling like a disposable person.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

My office experienced this same thing.

After a move to brand new buildings, the employees went from relatively small offices with large partitioned cubicles, to very, very large office with no partitions.

It was really distracting, and loud, without the partitions. After a few years, management decided to add partitions for privacy, and to reduce distractions.

I think the open office collaboration idea is thought up from people that would never actually utilize it. In practice, they suck (imo).

Hopefully there are some sound dampeners installed to avoid echo and noise.
When people talk on the phone all the time, it gets very annoying. Some speak loud (for multiple reasons).
This layout may be best for software development, where everyone collaborates keeping the sound level low.

Of course, in a private office you can play music, talk on the phone all you like, as loud as you like.
Some people abuse this privilege, reason why companies prefer open spaces with hardly any privacy.

 

[travelsheep]

They removed all the ports, upped the price, still nobody leaves. Nobody ever leaves Apple (except in a wooden box).

 

[Thunderhawks]

I am sure Apple has some sort of plan or mechanism to change or reallocate space as they see fit for secluded team areas or individual offices. Maybe they are waiting for team and staff to fill in to see what is needed and what functions better for certain departments.

Of course

Apple didn't overnight turn stupid.

It is the same as moving into a new house and figuring out which way the furniture should go and what works best
for flow.

So, all the department heads need to get a grip, move in and work from there.

It will be solved!

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Forcing something new on people who don't want it just because Apple thinks it's better for them even when people say they don't want it? Definitely sounds like something Apple would do unfortunately.

Certainly no way to roll back this firmware update, LOL.

 

[69Mustang]

Bold: It's a nice building but not the nicest in the world.

I don't get it that people always seem to say things like: The biggest/nicest/most beautiful while they never have seen everything.

Perry, we all absolutely love hyperbole. Everybody in the world thinks it's the absolute best way to communicate our thoughts in the most emphatic way possible. Superlatives are the most effective, dare I say absolutely necessary, way to make a point. This is 99.9% fact. No one denies this.

 

[62tele]

LOL. It doesn't appeal to me but there are lots of jobs, tasks that require focus which are conducted in open environments. When folks are "in the zone" they can tune out the static in the system.

This is a non-story.

For everyone that leaves there is another talented person waiting anxiously to take their place.

 

[Dave-Z]

If the emails are to be believed, perhaps these employees should leave. I mean as a matter of course an employee should speak with their supervisor if they're unhappy versus, If I don't get what I want I'm leaving.

That being said, the idea that programmers work in that type of environment is ridiculous. As others have said, it's a task that requires focus and an open environment is not conducive to it. Even if that office space looks amazing.

 

[MisterK]

Open offices have pluses and minuses. Their popularity is leading some to over index on the minuses. I'm pretty on the fence about them. They're definitely better for roles that require more collaboration and creativity vs. heads-down development. There's going to be some amount of unplanned situations and hopefully Apple's employees have enough agency to be able to customize their environments, eventually, to suit them. All that said, I've never gone through an office change without some large percentage of the staff being unhappy, initially at least. You miss the stuff that isn't there anymore and you haven't gotten accustomed to the stuff that's great about the new space. There are people within even individual teams who work very differently; some like a quiet office to themselves while others want to sit around a large communal table where they can riff off each others' ideas. There is no single best workspace that works for everyone.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I don't get it that people always seem to say things like: The biggest/nicest/most beautiful while they never have seen everything.

Apple made this one. So obviously everything else that is different is now inferior-to-abominations. It is automatic to some people. For example, HomePod has already been crowned best speaker in the world and none of us has actually heard one in our own setting yet (just the other day, some guy was arguing how HomePods only competition is some $40K speaker in one of these threads).

I'm confident that if Apple would decide to offer air as an Apple product, some of "us" would suffocate ourselves if we could not breathe only their superior air.

 

[ZipZap]

As an employee at a company with an open office floorplan like this, I can confirm that it really does bug the heck out of some people. Other people really like it. The rest of us are just really easily distracted. I suspect Apple's employees will find a similar spread of reactions.

The people that like this office format are usually the most unproductive people in the office.

For me, I like to come in and focus on my work. I dont want to hear all other inconsequential conversations and distracting noises. Hopefully they have invested in a good white noise system. If not, many developers and other highly technical folks will bolt no matter how nice it all looks from the outside.

 

[maflynn]

I would hate the idea of an open floor plan. Tbh, I'd probably think twice about going to a company that has that sort of arraignment. I understand in this case, we're talking about Apple, and because of their reputation, many people are willing to live with it.

 

[TigerWoodsIV]

I would hate this. I worked in an open floor plan office once, never again. Too distracting, obviously no privacy.

 

[Jsameds]

ITT: People moaning about people moaning about something the first set of moaning people haven't seen.

 

[wlossw]

So I used to run an office with a big open space... The real reason we decided to put everyone out in the open, is so they couldn't f*** around on company time. It's much easier to make sure the grunts are working when you can see them. Everyone hated it. The lazy people hated it, because they couldn't get away with playing solitaire all day, and the hard working people hated it because they couldn't concentrate.

TLDR it's a great way to help get mediocre performance across the board!

p.s. I had a closed office still of course.