I saw those photos and noped right out. Collaboration is almost impossible in a space like that.
Was there a popular management book or something recommending it? Not sure why they are everywhere these days. On Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 6:00:02 PM UTC+11, Danial Pearce wrote: > > This topic came to the top of my brain queue just now after reading > @FredWu's post for jobs at GetBlix. In particular it was one of the photos > he posted, well maybe 2 of them. > > https://flic.kr/p/LUwGoB > https://flic.kr/p/LMwLbp > > I didn't want to hijack Fred's thread, hence a whole new post. And I want > to preface this by saying I mean no offence to GetBlix or Fred (who I've > worked with in the past), since every office seems to be doing this, > whether the be a startup, small org or medium org. (I can't speak for large > org like Telstra/NAB etc as I haven't worked at any). > > Those 2 photos though. Does this look like an environment that entices you > as a developer to work a that office? It certainly doesn't for me, and I > wonder if I'm in some sort of minority, or people just don't speak up and > are happy to accept a paycheck? As mentioned, I can't speak to a better > solution because our office, brand new, build a year ago is extremely > similar. But for me, it really looks like an environment I would have an > extremely hard time concentrating in. A conversation 10m away would be hard > to not hear and get distracted by. > > Then we have the classic ping pong table. And situated near all the > workers, so of course everyone knows when someone is playing. I can't find > the exact quote for the life of me, but it was something along the lines of > "I've never once accepted a job because they had a ping-pong table". > > The answer most oft given is along the lines of "go find a quiet space > when you need to concentrate" or "get some good headphones". The problem > with the former is in a collaborative environment, going off to work on > your own is no good, and with the latter, you need to be constantly finding > music to play, enjoy constant music and/or actually be able to use music to > concentrate. I'm aware of many people that would just get distracted by the > music. And I'm certainly guilty of wasting more time trying to build my > playlist for the morning than actually coding. > > Anyway, some light reading for a Monday night: > > - http://qz.com/806583/programmers-hate-open-floor-plans/ > - http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap > > So I guess I'm posting this here rather than twitter or something, as I am > actually curious. What do others here in AU think about this trend? I've > only ever worked in "cubicles" like on Office Space, or open plan similar > to the above pics. Heck I've even worked in cubicles where other devs > thought it was ok to play through their speakers, and get into volume wars. > Or worse, a shared playlist environment. > > As it turns out, i've been more vocal about this than I previously > thought: > https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Atigris666%20open%20plan&src=typd > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rails-oceania+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rails-oceania@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
