Comment by kinkrtyavimoodh
6 years ago
I am kinda happy that open offices exist. The collaborative kind of setting really helps in creating a nice vibe (I am a weirdo in that I like my team, my teammates and my job in general) as opposed to being stuck in a room.
But more importantly, as an ex-FB employee I am glad that open offices let companies give nice perks to employees even in extremely expensive real-estate markets like the valley. I would rather have a well-equipped onsite gym and a roomy cafeteria and a free ice-cream shop than that space being filled with 100 'offices'. The former are what make the office space fun and distinctive. The latter is the equivalent of a concrete jungle.
I come to work to work - it's not for the fun perks - the perk is being paid. That's the one perk that keeps me working. Do I think having "fun" takes away from that work? No. But I don't particularly care - I'm a professional, doing professional work, and if I could get 4 walls and silence, I'd happily light the ice cream machine on fire myself. If you want to collaborate, sure, do that - go to a meeting room, or meet in your own pod, and if you really want that open office charm, go work in the lunch room.
FAANG style employees get the best salaries in the world AND the best perks in the world. What exactly is the tradeoff here, if salaries is all you care about? Also, if all companies in the bay area moved to giving each employee an office, where do you think that money is coming from? It will cause depression in salaries.
Open offices work in favor of your salary. And despite the weekly posts on HN about open offices, hardly any employee uses it as a bargaining chip. Microsoft has open offices, and yet not once I have heard anyone on HN saying they would chose MS because of that.
> I am glad that open offices let companies give nice perks to employees even in extremely expensive real-estate markets like the valley. I would rather have a well-equipped onsite gym and a roomy cafeteria and a free ice-cream shop than that space being filled with 100 'offices'.
You're saying companies trade out having open offices for perks. I'm saying I don't care about those perks, and would rather have less perks and 4 walls.
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>...Open offices work in favor of your salary.
That is not how it works with highly profitable companies like FB, The extra cost to give people some privacy and allow them to less distracted is a tiny percent of the costs to pay the employee salaries + benefits over time. This is not a tradeoff. (Indeed, since people have been shown to be less productive in a distracted environment, employee salaries might be less than what they would be than if they were more productive.)
> What exactly is the tradeoff here, if salaries is all you care about?
All the non-FAANG companies copy the trend of open offices (it's a cargo cult), so if you want to look at it from an utilitarian perspective, more people are actually worse off.
> The collaborative kind of setting really helps in creating a nice vibe
Yeah, the vibe is the entire reason why they're popular.
It's like the "I f*cking love science" image of science: science looks cool and fun if you're an astronomer posing next to a telescope, as opposed to grad student tediously running spectroscopy against thousands of images.
And developers look way cooler when they're models smiling and pointing at a computer screen than when they're heads down writing actual code.
Apparently nobody wants to feel like a cog in the machine they really are.
In the (not so) elder days, displaying a roomful of people banging on typewriters was considered cool.
I really don't care about any of those perks.
I want privacy and silence, and really all I'm interested in doing at work is putting in my eight hours and then going home. I'm just here to draw a paycheck. I actually like my job and my teammates; but I just work to fund my life, and I'm an introvert who craves solitude. My idea of having fun after I get off work involves ordering delivery, having a nice meal by myself, and then spending the rest of the night playing video games by myself, going on a nice, long wiki walk by myself, and/or hacking on some personal project that tickles my fancy by myself.
And, quite frankly, I detest the culture surrounding the tech industry in the valley, I will never, ever move there, and this is a large part of _why_ I detest the culture there. I'm happy I live in the middle of the country where real estate is cheap and the tech industry is dominated by conservative telecoms where the only bro culture is in the sales department.
The collaborative kind of setting really helps in creating a nice vibe (I am a weirdo in that I like my team, my teammates and my job in general) as opposed to being stuck in a room.
So you can't like your team if you like your team be productive in its own office?
But more importantly, as an ex-FB employee
Jesus, here we go.
I would rather have a well-equipped onsite gym and a roomy cafeteria and a free ice-cream shop than that space being filled with 100 'offices'.
Nothing prevents the company from creating that, aside from private offices.
Your post doesn't make any cohesive point, looks like humblebragging.
> I am glad that open offices let companies give nice perks to employees even in extremely expensive real-estate markets like the valley
I'm pretty sure Facebook can afford private offices and free ice cream.
> (I am a weirdo in that I like my team, my teammates and my job in general)
I don't think that makes you a weirdo. I feel the same. I wouldn't be willing to stay in a job where I didn't feel that way!
However, I simply cannot work in an open office. It's far too stressful, and I have great difficulty actually getting quality work done in that setting.
> I would rather have a well-equipped onsite gym and a roomy cafeteria and a free ice-cream shop than that space being filled with 100 'offices'.
I am exactly the opposite. I honestly couldn't care less about things like a gym, etc. What I care about is being able to work to the best of my ability.
> What I care about is being able to work to the best of my ability.
This is so critically important.
> I am a weirdo in that I like my team, my teammates and my job in general
How does that make you weird? Seems pretty normal to me.
> I would rather have a well-equipped onsite gym and a roomy cafeteria and a free ice-cream shop than that space being filled with 100 'offices'
From this statement, I'm guessing you are in your 20's and single. Those are not important things when we are talking about a job.
I like my team too, and I didn't offer alternative office styles although there is a lot of space between "isolation" and "completely exposed".
I think it's even possible to do open concepts in the right way that mitigate a lot of the distractions and factory farm feelings.
So, what do you do for a living, player?