Open office space is awful! The only benefit is to the company in that you can cram more employees in less space compared to hard walled offices. It DOES NOT encourage communication and team work. IT DOES kill morale and the desire to come to work and be productive. It does setup a caste system so the VP's and above can feel better about how much higher up they are compared to their minion open space workers. This whole trend needs to go away and its only a matter of time before studies come out proving how much negative impact this terrible idea causes. I am with the apple exec who moved his team to a separate building and good for him for sticking up for his employees when he would have gotten an office in the new place anyway. I would work for him!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Some Apple Park Employees Said to Be Dissatisfied With Open Office Design
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
We have "semi-open" offices where I work. I spend most of my time writing software. About 5 months ago I was told to move my office from a relatively quiet area to one where:
1. One guy crackles sunflower seeds ALL DAY. (He gave up smoking.)
2. A nearby manager uses his desk speakerphone for all company-related calls, even if he calls someone two offices away. But for personal calls he uses his desk phone's handset. And he has a wide assortment of loud, annoying ringtones on his smartphone (gotta let everyone know that he's receiving calls, text messages, tweets, etc.).
3. A woman on the other side of my wall just loves to hear herself talk (very loud voice). And she has her personal smartphone's ringtone set nice and loud (gotta let everyone know). (I used to be able to hear her voice and ringtone three aisles away in my former office.)
Suffice it to say I wear ear plugs most of the day (listening to music is too distracting). I've also built-up a wall of cardboard boxes to make my office just a little less open (so I'm not distracted by people walking by).
1. One guy crackles sunflower seeds ALL DAY. (He gave up smoking.)
2. A nearby manager uses his desk speakerphone for all company-related calls, even if he calls someone two offices away. But for personal calls he uses his desk phone's handset. And he has a wide assortment of loud, annoying ringtones on his smartphone (gotta let everyone know that he's receiving calls, text messages, tweets, etc.).
3. A woman on the other side of my wall just loves to hear herself talk (very loud voice). And she has her personal smartphone's ringtone set nice and loud (gotta let everyone know). (I used to be able to hear her voice and ringtone three aisles away in my former office.)
Suffice it to say I wear ear plugs most of the day (listening to music is too distracting). I've also built-up a wall of cardboard boxes to make my office just a little less open (so I'm not distracted by people walking by).
Yeah, that would definitely be a smart approach to offer those people who are working on the next big thing for Apple some intellectual sanctuary away from distractions like someone laughing when looking at funny vacation photos on someone else's iPhone or something like that. It would be a shame if we all lost out when some new innovative product never saw the light of day because someone was wearing a goofy sombrero in Mexico or lederhosen in Germany.
This is the 2016 MacBook Pro of office designs.
Once again, Jiny Ive and Apple leadership value aesthetic over the form and function to support how professionals work.
Apple had a chance to truly innovate with their new office : beautiful space which enables both collaboration and deep, focused work by professionals practicing their craft. An environment where the very best can get lost in their work for hours on end, deep in flow.
Yes, all the research says open office space is distracting and counter-productive to talent. Companies do it anyway because it's cheap to build out and while physical space costs hit the financial statements, the cost of lower productivity does not.
But Apple has the money to do this right. They had the will to build something iconic and amazing.
But like the MacBook Pro, they missed the mark by working in their isolation chamber and focusing on internal values rather than value to the users, aka thinness over battery life and usability.
Once again, Jiny Ive and Apple leadership value aesthetic over the form and function to support how professionals work.
Apple had a chance to truly innovate with their new office : beautiful space which enables both collaboration and deep, focused work by professionals practicing their craft. An environment where the very best can get lost in their work for hours on end, deep in flow.
Yes, all the research says open office space is distracting and counter-productive to talent. Companies do it anyway because it's cheap to build out and while physical space costs hit the financial statements, the cost of lower productivity does not.
But Apple has the money to do this right. They had the will to build something iconic and amazing.
But like the MacBook Pro, they missed the mark by working in their isolation chamber and focusing on internal values rather than value to the users, aka thinness over battery life and usability.
this is a trend amongst companies to move towards open office floorplans, with no walls, and no privacy. Backs exposed to high traffic areas, and the overbearing feeling of working in a Panopticon.
This sort of workspace may work for some, but overall, it's a move to lower costs of employment, by increasing how many people you can fit into a space, while at the same time, allowing for managerial "spying" on employees. Now employees cannot feel safe to take take a 30 second breather from work. They need to worry about people walking around them. Noise levels escalate and the overall feeling tends to be more "Slave labour" than "creative spaces".
We've recently decided at work that we're redoing the office from individual offices and cubicles to open floorplan. works convinced open floorplans are the way of the future and everyone will be amazing workers with it.
They invited me into focus group on some of their ideas. And when it came to my opinion, I outright told thim "this is a **** idea, and I guarantee you that you will lose good workers if you do this" And I outright told them if they shove me into an open workspace after having my own office for the last 10 years, I will be filing a constructive dismissal complaint as I would consider it an unofficial demotion with efforts to cause me undue duress.
and now sounds like the project has died
This sort of workspace may work for some, but overall, it's a move to lower costs of employment, by increasing how many people you can fit into a space, while at the same time, allowing for managerial "spying" on employees. Now employees cannot feel safe to take take a 30 second breather from work. They need to worry about people walking around them. Noise levels escalate and the overall feeling tends to be more "Slave labour" than "creative spaces".
We've recently decided at work that we're redoing the office from individual offices and cubicles to open floorplan. works convinced open floorplans are the way of the future and everyone will be amazing workers with it.
They invited me into focus group on some of their ideas. And when it came to my opinion, I outright told thim "this is a **** idea, and I guarantee you that you will lose good workers if you do this" And I outright told them if they shove me into an open workspace after having my own office for the last 10 years, I will be filing a constructive dismissal complaint as I would consider it an unofficial demotion with efforts to cause me undue duress.
and now sounds like the project has died
Pretty sure they’re called libre office plans now.
You mean they just gonna "wing it" and change things on the fly ? Pretty poor planning, in that case....
Open floor plan is only effective if your workforce is a bunch of slackers that would otherwise read romance novels and/or spend too much time fine tuning their 401k's. If the staff needs to concentrate to solve a complex problem then open plan sucks.
In those environments, a person will surf the web all day, meetings, email, phone calls and do their real job after hours. Management would actually benefit in these environments rather than having an office. My vote is to have management in that environment.
So they don't even know if it is bad! Their preconceived notion is that it's going to be bad and so they've worked themselves up without even trying it out.
If only Apple made some sort of device that could be put into the ear and play sounds...or even......music...that each individual would like to hear!!
If only!! Then background sound would not be a problem
If only!! Then background sound would not be a problem
What's hysterical is that your post commits most of the sin you accuse these "well-known liars" of. Is your post satire, or do you completely lack any sense of irony or self-awareness?
So you're saying that you have seen every building in the world to determine that Apple's is not the nicest ?
Open spaces are not good for everyone. In theory they sound so nice and perfect and are the pinnacle for collaboration... but in reality all open spaces do is create an environment where people get easily distracted. Businesses have yet to find the right middle ground between a cubicle wasteland and open spaces.
Add me to the list of people that have moved into open office environments that have completely stopped being productive. Millions spent on a new office, and they completely ignore the engineers that are making the company their money. Luckily for me we have a liberal work from home policy so I get 100% of my work done at home. On the relatively low occasions I head to the office, I make note that I'm going to get ABSOLUTELY NOTHING done. Just have to make up for it at home.
You have to wonder how typical the arrangement shown in the photo actually is throughout the building. The amount of desk space is really small...so much so that I tend to doubt it's really representative of what the space for most employees is like. At any rate, the main problem with open office situations is whether or not you're facing high-traffic areas. That's where most of the distractions come from.
My company is doing the same f'in thing as part of a building-wide refurbishment.
This "collaborative design" is BS. It detracts from engineer focus.
I'd rather have my ugly cube than to have to sit next to someone and smell their B.O., their food, etc., and be distracted by people walking by and chit-chatting.
I can tune audio out with headphones. But visually, people moving around is a huge distraction. There's a reason why they built semi-private cubicles in the first place!!
The appeal to work remotely just went up exponentially, and the stress of going into the office went up just the same.
This "collaborative design" is BS. It detracts from engineer focus.
I'd rather have my ugly cube than to have to sit next to someone and smell their B.O., their food, etc., and be distracted by people walking by and chit-chatting.
I can tune audio out with headphones. But visually, people moving around is a huge distraction. There's a reason why they built semi-private cubicles in the first place!!
The appeal to work remotely just went up exponentially, and the stress of going into the office went up just the same.
that's bullpoop
Good healthy workplaces are a symbiotic relationship between the employer and employee, where employees feel like they're rewarded justly for the efforts that they do and the business believes they get sufficient value in production and quality in return.
One side of that equation deciding arbitrarily to change the nature of that relationship will have risk that will negatively affect both parties.
If my company decided to make a change to the office layout that resulted in 20% of the workforce quitting, they would be unable to continue to operate their business.
The whole binary thinking of "take it or leave it" is very antagonistic and is not the way to run a business.