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PinkyMacGodess

Suspended
Mar 7, 2007
10,271
6,226
Midwest America.
Talk about 'first world problems'!

I built an open concept home 15 years ago, and it's amazing to see peoples reactions. It seems that most people love it. I've had people offer to buy this house based on being in it. They weren't serious, but still.

And yet, some people walk through and HATE it. And it's not a 'dislike, it's usually an active hate. Their shoulders go up, they 'close themselves off', their body language changes, they withdraw. It's usually along socio-ethnic-political lines too. Usually.

For me, I've hated being a prairie dog in a 'cube-farm'. The image of privacy is shattered with almost ever noise, and having the appearance of an environment to work in is all a lie.

Open works well for me. The sunlight streams in, the darkness does too. It's easier to heat, easier to cool, easier to just deal with. Let managers hide in their boxes. I prefer to be free!!!
 

Firelock

macrumors member
Sep 7, 2012
87
72
Dallas, Texas
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.

Best observation ever on the open office concept.
 
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Ivan0310

macrumors member
Mar 1, 2011
97
72
Dallas, TX
As an engineer that's been suffering an open-office layout for several years now, I find this kind of amusing. The big load of crap we were fed is that it will help foster collaboration and get people out of their offices--especially the senior designers, to interact with and mentor the younger staff.

The big miss there is the fact that not one of our projects is an individual effort. Everything is a team project with multiple moving parts--collaboration is just a normal part of our day. To say that anything you're doing is going to foster something we already do is to completely misunderstand how we operate. As everyone else has said, we just have more distractions and lowered productivity.
 

macduke

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,100
19,598
Well this could be a multi-billion dollar mistake!

I believe open office plans are a sort of way for management to feel superior over their employees by tearing down their walls while they sit in the back corner doing little. This is especially disrespectful of employees that need deep concentration for their work. I'm a full stack designer/developer and I would s--- bricks all over the place if they took away my office. I'll often close my door for 3-4 hours and power through my development to-do list for the day (new website features, bug fixes, pushing out a new version of the app, strategic planning, etc). The rest of the day I can play around with mockups and new designs, edit photos, answer emails, and go to meetings. Those things take less concentration for me.

My productivity would absolutely plummet if I was plopped down in the middle of some room. I actually turned down a better paying job several years ago because of this: All the employees just worked around random tables in the middle of this office, and the few higher ups had offices around the perimeter with glass walls and big desks/monitors that they could hide behind and they would just stare at the people in the middle all day. I had much the same reaction that the quoted Apple employee had, lol. Also—the way my brain works—I need to take little breaks throughout the day. It's why I come and comment on sites like MacRumors. My boss here doesn't give a crap because I almost always exceed expectations in my performance reviews and have several award winning designs that make her and our team look good. Applying the same template to every employee is a recipe for disaster. You have to let your best employees be themselves—within reason.

I can't help but feel like this is part of a systematic effort in our society to disrespect employees. Coming out of the great recession, there seems to be this mindset of "You should be lucky to even have a job!" that is pervasive in American corporations. There is no gratitude towards employees and the hard work they put in. Instead we get stories about companies that are starting to require their employees to be chipped like some kind of dog or prisoner. At my own workplace there is a fundamental lack of communication from the top about important changes that will affect our lives and well being. This sort of "company first above all else" (including over family, personal time, God and country) mindset is horrifically greedy and shameful and only being made worse by the current businessman-in-chief of these United States.
 

mytdave

macrumors 6502a
Oct 29, 2002
620
800
"Apple's viewpoint indicated an open floor plan is "conducive to collaboration between teams."

I'm surprised Apple still believes this ******** and built a huge building in homage to it. It's the modern day equivalent of sweatshops. I would have thought they'd have the intelligence to build thousands of offices in there instead.

Sorry, but people hate "open floor plan" work environments. Some teams need "collaborative areas" when working certain projects, but at the end of the day people want to get back to their own office. Some semblance of privacy and a quiet place to think goes a long way toward productivity.

A sea of cubicles might be ok for a call center, but for most office workers (particularly high tech) the "open" plan is a long ago discredited concept.
 

orev

macrumors 6502a
Apr 22, 2015
571
978
They went with an open office?!?! What a bunch of idiots! That's amazingly dumb. Start selling AAPL, this marks the end of productivity and efficiency.

"We're the most valuable company on the planet. Let's make huge changes to how everyone works so we can be just like every other company!". UNBELIEVABLE!!!
 
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Rafterman

Contributor
Apr 23, 2010
6,661
7,893
Its quite simple why they did it - its cheap. Less building materials and more people per square foot.
 
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Sasparilla

macrumors 68000
Jul 6, 2012
1,954
3,355
>> telling him that they're working on something that is "going to blow people's minds when we ship," <<

AR?
 

neverendingscot

macrumors member
Feb 20, 2015
83
34
I would quit as well. I like being able to shut my office door sometimes so people will leave me alone or if it's a day when there is a lot of foot traffic in my building since I am right beside the elevator and the door to the stairs.
 

HobeSoundDarryl

macrumors G5
You mean they just gonna "wing it" and change things on the fly ? Pretty poor planning, in that case....

Around here, that's known as the "just one software update away..." excuse. Instead of "wing it" that makes it sound like it's more toward well planned but just needs a new (often minor) update of software (which may or may not ever actually show up). In this case, I don't know if Apple can put new software updates into their employees. They may need that red memory influence device from Men In Black...

mib-memory-eraser.jpg

Flash of light + "You love open office plans. There's no better environment in which to work." etc.

Then at the next "big reveal" product rollout event, someone notices a much larger cylindrical silver tube with a red light on it right behind the main stage.

...And the FaceTime camera on your Apple product slides out of the way to reveal a tiny version of the same device made especially for you.

All ;)... hopefully.:eek:
 
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Quu

macrumors 68040
Apr 2, 2007
3,419
6,785
Most annoying thing about open floor plan stuff is there's no privacy at any moment. You can hear other peoples conversations, phone calls, you have to constantly leave the room to get some quiet space to take a phone call, even business/work related stuff. It's just annoying.

You also always feel more anxiety and stress because you never know when someone is watching you and what you're doing which is not great for software development when you need calm and quiet to concentrate.

Apple will learn this though I'm sure they have ways for employees to raise these issues internally.
 

melendezest

Suspended
Jan 28, 2010
1,693
1,579
There's always a certain amount of people who act like spoiled brats every time there's change. Suck it up. I've been at my company (a hospital) for 20 years and they've crammed us into all sorts of environments. I sat in the basement by the morgue, with no windows, for a few years so excuse me if I don't have sympathy for people moving into the nicest building on the planet.

This is the most Apple response here.

Suck it up; you're a spoiled brat if you want things to be better, or rather, done right.

Gotcha. No wonder you've been at the same place for 20 years. You're happy to let them abuse you.

So excuse me if I have no sympathy for people who allow themselves to be abused.

A job has to be a mutually beneficial thing, and the financial side is only part of the benefit.

Apple (or companies that implement this to the chagrin of employees) may lose talent over this.
 

JPLC

macrumors 6502
Dec 20, 2011
429
1,089
Netherlands
I also understand this hate against over-designed office work spaces that distract from work. This also reminds of the Pixar Campus. Pretty sure it would give Jony Ive a headache but it really looks like a great place to work.

enhanced-buzz-orig-21134-1372141479-10.jpg



"We don't try to police the environment," says Payne. "Everybody here really takes ownership to their space." (Pixar pays for the basic structures — walls, basic desks, chairs, and computer equipment, etc. — but the animators are financially responsible for how they decorate inside them.)

Source: Buzzfeed
 

PinkyMacGodess

Suspended
Mar 7, 2007
10,271
6,226
Midwest America.
So, it seems programmers are loners, then, huh... who knew? ಠ_ಠ

HAH! Some programmers SHOULD be loners!

I worked a contract job for a state once, and they had a COBOL programmer that was something that would drive Freud crazy! He had that creepy sexual predator look about him. Always dressed shabby, and leering at people. He never bathed enough, and after management complained about his body and mouth odor, he took to smoking cigars in his office. Really. And the union he was in backed him up on it. They had to install a smoke grabber just to deal with his 'freedom of expression'. And change requests took months, and endless meetings. He was 'connected' so firing him wasn't an option, and they couldn't afford another COBOL programmer, so little got done.

And as an aside, that was one of the most ducked up jobs I've ever had. I made almost twice what the average person there was making because I was a 'contractor'. The levels of politically connected 'management' were innumerable. I was always stepping on someone's turf, and having to be called in to discuss the daily violation of someone's 'space'. I mean, good grief... No wonder government isn't working well, and so many in it are so clueless about how to fix it. Ford forbid THEIR jobs be cast aside to save money and increase efficiency.
 

tedthedev

macrumors newbie
Aug 9, 2017
3
5
Georgia, USA
I'm a web developer who mainly works remote, but about once a quarter I had to visit the mothership in NYC, years ago when I worked for Time.

On one such visit, they had just moved the entire software development group to a large table that was situated in a high traffic area outside of many office, between a set of elevators and a conference room.

Even with headphones on, the distraction of lots of people walking thru your area, behind you, talking loudly is terribly distracting. The week I was there I couldn't focus at all. If I had been required to work in that environment day in and out, I would have quit.

Software development requires focus, and focus requires minimal distractions. I'm sure there are lots of job types that open spaces are great for, but engineering and software development is not one of them.

I predict Apple will be standing up cubes in these open spaces before the year is over.
 

Reason077

macrumors 68040
Aug 14, 2007
3,585
3,521
I don't understand this push towards open floor plan offices.

Software development and engineering are highly focused activities. You get "in the zone" and work on your problem to find a solution. You might have several things going on in your head at once that all have to be there to figure out the problem.

Well, there's a simple office code for this situation.

Headphones ON: Go away, I'm in the zone! Far too busy to deal with your problems.

Headphones on, but slung casually around your neck: I'm pretty busy, but if it's important, I can help.

Headphones OFF: Hi! Let's chat.
 

Vash108

macrumors member
Nov 12, 2015
60
51
You feel like there is no privacy at all. It really sucks. Our office has a very close layout. We have partitions but they are really short and you can just look around and see everything.
 

rtkane

macrumors regular
Apr 29, 2010
187
282
Have you seen the desks in that photo? Do you see how thick they are? Instead of addressing people's concern about the office space, I really think Apple needs to work on making those desks thinner.

/s
 
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