We have 3 desks in a large open plan office with a kitchen area. It's about 10 feet from my desk. Most of the time it's just me from our company as the other devs work from home or work out the main office.
My experience of working in this shared space:
* It's noisy. I mean really noisy, noise cancelling headphones are a must. Like I said the kitchen area is near my desk, and people would routinely bang the cupboard doors. I sort of fixed this by putting felt and rubber on the doors to stop the loud banging, but I shouldn't have had to do this.
* People are noisy, people whistle, walk around talking loudly on their phones. Some people I'm sure talk loudly on purpose just to try and look like they are important in front of strangers. One guy makes random trumpet noises with his mouth...
* No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. I often see two people in the kitchen area from different companies and it can be a bit like a comedy sketch as they try to get their kitchening done without acknowledging the other person exists. Absurd, why don't people talk to each other. Especially people you see every day!
* When you are remotely working and the only person from your company you have no one to talk to and this is quite isolating and depressing. Especially worse if you end up in a room with 10 others and they are all from the same company. Then they start looking at you like you are in their space.
* The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. How does this happen?
Our office space is also open to a throughfare to conference rooms and such, so you randomly get random people walking through the office, again noisily.
But working here I at least don't have all the distractions of working from home.
> No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. I often see two people in the kitchen area from different companies and it can be a bit like a comedy sketch as they try to get their kitchening done without acknowledging the other person exists. Absurd, why don't people talk to each other. Especially people you see every day!
Having worked in a number of shared workspaces: while this does seem to be the natural state of things, breaking the barrier is fairly easy. In every workspace I've worked at, I've gotten to know almost everyone there by talking to them in the kitchen, and once people see me doing it, they start doing it. You're not obligated to change the culture of your workspace, but if you don't like it, it doesn't even take much effort to change it. And there are big career benefits to this: I've met a number of my clients this way.
Just ask a question about the person, people are almost always happy to talk about themselves. Something not too personal, and ideally related to something present--i.e. if there's something going on in the kitchen or whatever. In the most general case, you're in a coworking space and their ostensibly working for a company there, so "Hey, I noticed you around and was curious about what your company does?" is generally pretty easy. Or if it's obvious what their company does, "Hey I noticed you around and I was curious about what you do at Foo Company?"
Don't overthink it, it's just a conversation and the worst that happens is you return to the awkward silence that was there before.
Anecdotal reply, hot-desking at WW in central London.
* Some days noisy, some days very quiet. I have great headphones, but find myself more productive than when I worked at home. People are noisy, but generally the 'hum' is a sensible level, and it's only really irritating if someone is on Skype and conversing without headphones in (I'm not sure why that's more annoying that overhearing a face to face conversation, but it definitely is).
* Conversation is what you make it. I'm on first name terms with lots of people here, it's easy to make small talk, exchange a name, then intro someone to someone else. Before long, most regular faces know most regular faces.
* The one thing I missed most working at home was water-cooler chat. I go out of my way now to offer tea / coffee, ask about people's lives, whatever - I can have headphones on for 95% of the day, but that 5% is important. I didn't know anyone here before I joined.
* Our kitchen area is tidy 90% of the time. People are pretty good about cleaning up after themselves, the WW staff are generally very good, and if something is awful, asking it to be sorted is usually pretty painless.
I think generally I'm very pro WW. There are some annoyances; it's usually people drinking and drink-chatting too early. But I don't begrudge it and the building is big enough to go work somewhere quiet. Definitely far more productive than WFH.
> I'm not sure why that's more annoying that overhearing a face to face conversation, but it definitely is
My guess (and personal experience) is that it's because the frequency response of the speakers is so tinny and thin compared to what you'd expect a regular face-to-face conversation to be, your brain keeps being distracted by it? Same with people "listening to" music by keeping headphones on their desk on full blast...
All it takes is one person to really mess it up. It's kind of like breaking the ice -- the barrier to actually making the area go from "clean" to "not clean" is much higher than just making it go from "messy" to "slightly messier".
In an office with a dozen or more people there's a pretty high chance there's at least one person who is lazy, "too important" and/or "too busy" to clean up after themselves.
When my company moved into a new building, there was a problem with employees leaving dishes in the sink, not wiping up spills, etc. One of our coworkers wrote a letter to 'Dear Abby' who responded in her column. That column was clipped out and posted in the break areas. A bit passive aggressive maybe but it was incredibly effective.
> a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action.
I've had this problem in almost every office I've worked at. It shouldn't be different but for whatever reason, people seem to think it beneath them. I often wondered what state some of my co-worker's houses were in.
I've had the same experience, it seems to be a microcosm of the "tragedy of the commons" that has led to the spoiling of the environment, shared spaces, natural resources etc.
That said, I've worked in an office where the company took a nagging/shaming/signs/emails approach instead of upping the cleaning budget as the team grew, which was frustrating and ineffective. Encouraging people to clean up after themselves is good, but if it's not immediately effective the rest of us shouldn't have to live in filth while we try to get the worst offenders in line.
Well, privatization is how you deal with tragedies of the commons. Maybe there should be a ID-card unlocked kitchen where you have to accept T&C before every use that stipulate public surveillance and loss of privileges if not cleaned up. If you don't like it don't use it.
"No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. ... Especially people you see every day!"
Ugh, you clearly don't get some people.
It's probably one of the reasons why they have the coworking space to begin with: they don't want to interact with people! Ain't nothing wrong with that!
They want to get their shit done and go home and do other shit.
Also, if they're halfway competent at their business, why do they need to know what everyone else is doing?
I've done the coworking thing for a while, and the social interaction/collaboration thing literally doesn't come close to working the way you think it would.
If you're hoping for some serendipitous interaction where you magically find that big project or cool new collaborator or etc. you'll be sorely disappointed. Because, many people at coworking spaces have literally been there since it first opened which can be years.
I was at one with a tax attorney. I'm not going to like collab on anything with the tax attorney. Seemed like a nice guy, but I'm a developer and he has no money to spend on software so...
Now multiply that story by nearly everyone in the coworking space and you'll see it quickly becomes...a place to do work and that's it. Which is awesome and exactly what we needed!
Precisely this. I escape to a coworking space for some peace and quiet, which isn’t always possible because the high-pitched cackling from our glass-wall neighbors cuts through most building materials. I don’t want to talk to strangers, I want to get my shit done. If I want to talk to strangers I’ll go to a bar, or the internet.
This happens by default, but isn't hard to change. I suspect this is why the likes of wework are startups while most are just buildings. Not sure it works in every location, but it certainly works in some. I know someone in a south Tel Aviv wework who refuses to move apartments because she likes her local wework, and refuses to change to another one 20k away.
100% agree that there is a lot less of the cross-pollination of companies as they kind of advertise.
At the WeWork I'm at, it's a mix. You can be friendly and talk to other people if you try. If you don't try it's not going to happen.
As far as productivity, I'm a full 50%+ more productive at the coworking space vs being at home. And compared to a coffee shop, it's about the same price and a lot more convenient to have the dedicated desk and guaranteed seat!
Your experience mirrors exactly the ones I've had at a WeWork on the East Coast of the US. Ours was cleaner but amenities we were paying for were randomly missing or not working.
I gave up talking to people after a while. Nobody seemed particularly interested in socializing in the common areas which in retrospect I understand and I got some abrasive reactions from just trying to start conversation. Perhaps they were forced to work there and would have preferred to WFH.
>The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. How does this happen?
Are you staffing a professional cleaner?
Expecting software engineers to be good at keeping a kitchen tidy is about as rational as expecting your marketing people to be good at maintaining your servers.
I mean, sure, there's a basic level of consideration, and even when I'm at work (where we have a pretty excellent cleaning staff) if you drop something on the floor, you are expected to pick it up so that nobody else steps in it and tracks it all over the place, and people do.
But... you can tell that the place would get grungy pretty fast if we didn't have the professional cleaners about. Cleaning is a skill like any other,and some of us are better at it than others... and some of us have higher standards than others.
The right way to deal with this in a commercial space is to pay a professional to deal with it, imo.
Interesting, I interpreted the "mess" as leaving dishes in the sink, and not as not putting on the rubber gloves and cleaning said sink.
In the company I work for, you can take the lunch from the lunchroom to your desk. For a week now, at the team next to ours, there's a pile of trays, plates and soup bowls. It seems that whoever is taking the lunch to their desk, can't be bothered to bring the plates back. Not even next day.
> People are noisy, people whistle, walk around talking loudly on their phones.
In my experience of coworking spaces, it is the same one/two people that ruin the space for everybody else. What is missing from co-working spaces is some kind of housekeeping rules and enforcement (in lieu of mutual respect).
> What is missing from co-working spaces is some kind of housekeeping rules and enforcement...
What’s missing is simple walls. Four walls with a door. What’s missing is privacy and silence, which we have apparently collectively decided is not necessary for all tech work.
I have one of those, it's called a study, far more productive than in the company office (when I go in on occasion). Because I live 50 miles from a large city, the 4 bed house is about the same price as a 1 bed apartment in London or 2 bed house in Manchester, so we actually have two studies at the moment (kids prefer to share a bedroom), one for my wife, one for me.
Last week I was in Kenya for business purposes setting up a new office, again far more productive sat on my own in the apps room plugging various things in, than sat with the PM and some other engineers in another part of the office.
"American office workers have barely looked up while their work quarters have been degraded from sensible to silly. Not so long ago, they worked in two- and three-person offices with walls, doors, and windows. (You remember walls, doors, and windows, don’t you?) In such space, one could work in quiet or conduct meetings with colleagues without disrupting neighbors.
Then, without warning, open-plan seating was upon us like a plague upon the land. The advocates of the new format produced not one shred of evidence that effectiveness would not be impaired. They really couldn’t. Meaningful measurement of productivity is a complex and elusive thing."
> * The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. How does this happen?
Have you ever had roommates ? I've never had a clean kitchen and roommates, and never had a dirty kitchen and no roommate (and by my own actions as well !).
I have actually had a roommate and a clean kitchen, though I'll admit it was the exception to the rule. I think it worked out because we set a cleaning schedule early on. Every Sunday, we'd clean the kitchen and bathroom. (switching off responsibility) And this was a couple of guys in their 20s!
This! I miss the cleaning parties my old roommates and I had every Thursday evening (so the house would be clean for weekend guests). It's hard to sit still when you turn up the lights and the music and everyone else is cleaning.
This also worked at one electronics manufacturer I worked at. We'd all spend some time on Friday afternoons cleaning. It was so much easier to find things when they were put where they belong at least once a week.
I'm the opposite; if I share the area I keep it clean, if I'm by myself it's a mess on the first day. Guilt is the only thing that beats my laziness :|
Similar experience at WeWork. At 5pm everyone beelined to the exit. I imagined what it would be like to work with four other people crammed into one of those small glass offices and thought, "yeah, I'd want to get out of there as fast as possible too."
I have worked in several co-working spaces, and this is remarkably similar to my experience. The last one I was in was very loud with people making sales calls. I am currently renting a desk in a friend's small startup office, and it is so much better.
It sounds like the same downsides of working in an open plan area but worse because there's not even an ostensible attempt at making productivity a priority over maintaining a veneer of "fun."
> The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess.
This is a pet peeve of mine. What the hell, people? I feel like in a lot of "cool" spaces, people working there are just kids that expect their mom to take care of their space, so they don't care about dishes or cups lying around. Hey, you don't have to do all chores, but at least move your stuff to the dishwasher or sink! Geez.
> * No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. I often see two people in the kitchen area from different companies and it can be a bit like a comedy sketch as they try to get their kitchening done without acknowledging the other person exists. Absurd, why don't people talk to each other. Especially people you see every day!
I'd probably be guilty of this, but it's not because I am rude or anti-social (I love talking to people one on one or in very small groups), I am just socially anxious and struggle to talk to people in an open office environment where a "private" conversation is really a conversation with everyone in the room. Could be the same reason some people don't talk in a shared kitchen that is in the middle of a shared office! My idea of hell.
A few weeks ago I was abroad with a group of people from my company, I knew 3 of the 10 others. We went out to dinner - Awful time, very stressful. Later in the week it had dropped to 3 other people, only 1 whom I knew, far better.
(The other nights I had room service - that's the best situation, I can actually relax)
That said, I'm happy to
Make grunting noises and guesticulatr at milk bottles to the occasional stranger in a shared office kitchen. I guess part of the problem is it takes me a long time to remember a person's face - when watching tv I rely a lot on context. My wife often says "no that's not xxx, he's got the wrong colour hair". I've been known to get skin colour and sex wrong too, but most of the time context works. Took me about 2 seasons to remember the names of the 6 main characters in "friends".
When making tea, there's no context to build on. At university I wrote down names of people on my floor in halls, which mostly helped. At school I'd learnt the names of everyone in the class by the middle of the second year, and by year 6 knew about 80% of the c. 120 people in the year group. My children's friends are mostly a blur but I can get 4 or 5 of them with a little confidence - that's after 16 months.
In person conversations are far too draining, especially without context, and when there's nothing to gain what's the point?
Add to this that everybody there would fall into the uneasy middle ground of being too close for the idle pleasantries reserved for random strangers and too distant and unpredictable to get attached to.
Whatever answer you get, the best you're going to do with it is confirmation bias. Nowhere in the US is the culture so homogeneous that you won't find the opposite behavior down the street.
Yes! Men and women actually work better together than groups composed of just men or just women [1] [2]
The thinking is, men prefer taking risks, while women prefer to limit risks. In cooperation, men can push women to see the benefit of a risk (and in turn she gains more experience of risk), and women can push men to hold off of risks that might be detrimental. Women are good at synchronizing group thought, in that they make a space for others to talk and they generate talking points by asking important questions, while men generally like taking the floor. So for the man who does not take the floor of his own accord, women are more likely to create a space where he can talk.
Personally, in an environment like WeWork, I can see men and women having more conversations and opening up the place a little.
There are always downvotes with these topics. Either you are perceived as a patriarch or an SJW. I suppose thats mostly because different people have made different experiences and are biased in one or the other direction. I personally don't care - I think James Damore made some valid points, and I also like and value my female colleagues. To me thats not a contradiction.
Fully agree. Narcissistic men are annoying - I don't get how they seem to lack self-awareness, and they are toxic for teamwork. Not that women don't have their downsides, too - some can be neurotic, but at least the bitchy ones tend not to work in IT. I'm really glad we have a few female developers.
I said nothing about narcissistic men. All I'm saying is that men and women work well together. I don't know why you made this comment in such a hateful spirit.
Funnily enough, the couple of times I've done co-working it was the women who were the problem.
One was very aggressive, always having loud arguments on the phone and slamming doors as she left the building.
Another one seemed to think that because she and her partner were renting 2 desks this made her twice as a important as anyone else? She was playing music one day so I asked her to turn it down. She never spoke to me again and made me feel very uncomfortable whenever our paths crossed.
Of course this isn't representative of all women but, just saying, being female isn't a guarantee of good behaviour.
Didn't want to imply that women are better people - I had a female sales rep in the office for some time that talked on the phone a lot and did so very loudly with complete disregard for everyone else, I wanted to throw her out the window. Never had bad experiences with female software devs though.
They want an office that matches their personality. And apparently, that means beer on tap and lots of it.
The office looked like the lobby of a hipster hotel.
Over the next few weeks, we showed up each day and tapped away on MacBook Airs to the sounds of Portuguese house music and old-school hip hop piped in through speakers. (“Rap is urban, and so is WeWork,” the company explains online. “But more profoundly, the common themes of rap are in tune with the company’s mission.”) While we created, cleaning crews in WeWork T-shirts quietly restocked the citrus water and wiped up our spilled drinks.
If this is the future of tech work, then I guess I'd better find another career--perhaps gardening or wood-working?
> If this is the future of tech work, then I guess I'd better find another career--perhaps gardening or wood-working?
Exactly. I can't imagine working in an environment like that.
You don't want to hear me playing Smooth by Neil Cicierega[1], and I don't want to hear you playing rap.
A work environment is not the place to be playing music for everyone around you. Constant generic music is the worst part of retail, and that's saying something.
If your goal is to foster creativity and productivity, but all I hear is thump-thump-thump drilling into my head, I'm not going to be either. Even when it's music I love (or music I love working to) I'll still pause it when I'm trying to really understand what's going on in a complex system.
Also alcohol flowing at work? I’m no teetotaler but isn’t that a recipe for trouble? Assuming we’re not just talking about sharing a few beers after hours. I’ve worked with people who drank on the job to the point where they were working totally shitfaced, and it’s not pretty. If they’re meeting with other teams or customers, they’re going to be an embarrassment, and if they’re checking in code... let’s not even go there. Not to mention how Silicon Valley is now all wrapped around the axle in “harassment this” and “inclusion that” and sexual bad behavior and so on. I doubt alcohol would help with any of that. Just seems like an overall bad idea.
Drinking at work is one of the absolutely worst traits of tech. Not only is it totally unprofessional, but things like ‘Friday beers’ are actually presented by companies as a benefit, and you face major social and professional consequences for not participating. It’s obscene.
Every company offering "friday beer" I've worked at also offered the beer for free and up to an hour of extra paid break. Drinking the beer was never an obligation and there's always non-alcoholic alternatives.
This gave us an opportunity to meet with all the other teams / departments.
Sure, I would rather be at my local microbrewery drinking stout with my friends rather than drink cheap pilsner at work but it has its benefits. There is no way I would have been as close to those people if not for this paid social time.
It also helps the work. Very often people would vent about their projects and other coworkers would listen and come up with quick solutions to their issues. "Oh yeah, X software is a pain in the ass. Did you try doing Z? I had to work with that software at my previous job and doing Z always helped!".
Even in those cultures, I've never ever seen an employer allowing anyone to drink during the rest of the week. Now that would be obscene.
There is no way I would have been as close to those people if not for this paid social time.
One of the worst aspects IMHO of the US working culture is the blurring of the working/personal divide. Because the consequence is the semi-permanent working state of mind.
Don't get me wrong, I like to get along with my colleagues. But they're that, colleagues, not friends. These events only perpetuate the working vibe and merge it with the after-working-hours.
Don't get me wrong. By close I mean that we can have a chat when we stumble on each others in front of the coffee machine. I've only ever met a handful of my coworkers outside of work hour... and it was for happy hour at a bar or for a team BBQ.
You know what I don't like about "Friday beers" in the workplace? It's not the beers. It's the fact that it's a company-scheduled and company-sanctioned event. The company is trying to (pick your favorite interpretation)...
...paternalistically manage our social lives
...tone-deafly intrude on them
...desperately be a part of them
...co-opt something cool and make it corporate
...do the adult equivalent of turning children's unstructured play time into a scheduled, paid-for playdate/lessons/"extracurriculars"
I'll pick and choose my friends and invite them to beers myself. In a bar. Away from the company offices. So we can talk shit about the management and people we don't like! What fun is life without the hating? (Well whatever, I just betrayed myself as a Gen Xer by being so forthright and gauche as to admit that I recreationally hate on people.)
My employer is not my friend. My friends, I will defend if they're in trouble for the next 40 years. My employer, I will ditch at the very first sign they're in trouble, or making trouble for me. Therefore I think maintaining a separation of "work life" from the private realm is appropriate. Of course, the more your "work is your life," and/or the more the company is actually yours, this applies less. But even in that case I would still recommend a healthy (hygienic) separation of concerns just like with any software system.
>So we can talk shit about the management and people we don't like!
Heh, at my last job we always went out to a pub for some burgers and beer on Fridays. 75% of the conversation revolved around exactly this. I found it an important way to decompress and let off steam.
I'll gladly face those consequences. I don't drink. You're not going to pressure me into drinking. You're sure as hell not going to threaten my livelihood for not drinking and then act like I'm the one in the wrong.
I drink. I like Friday beers. I absolutely stamp down on any of my team who attempt to pressure others to drink or ostracise others in the company for not drinking. Friday beers is meant to help colleagues bond, so behavior that excludes some people or makes them want to leave isn't OK.
Luckily the companies I've worked at have all been non-drinker friendly as well as drinker friendly. There's always a non-alcoholic option and they've usually tried to make sure people knock off a little early so that anyone with kids etc can join in before they have to leave.
Friday beers is something that can exclude people, though, even if they're not being pressured to drink. Alcohol is a sort of culturally fraught thing that's important to some people, but for others - members of some religious groups, recovering alcoholics, and victims of drinking-related abuse come to mind - simply being in the presence of someone who's consuming alcohol can be an uncomfortable experience.
I don't think that companies are under any obligation to avoid having traditions like Friday beers altogether, but, if you're looking to be inclusive, you should probably strive to ensure that there are also plenty of social activities where there is no alcohol present.
If you want to think like that, so do morning coffees, someone eating chicken for lunch and someone on a diet! Seriously, some adult thinking needs to be in place. I know several people with alcohol problems, devout Muslims and an abuse victim. Here's a hint, other people drinking isn't a problem for them. That's a part of life and they're mature enough to accept it. Sounds like the person you're replying to has plenty of inclusiveness, no reason to stop everyone elses enjoyment for the sake of the possibility that someone's not matured enough to accept it.
But not everyone is like you. Some people will have negative consequences for it, and some will miss out on opportunities for it, and they plain shouldn't.
I enjoy being able to wind down and have beers the last couple of hours on a friday (in companies that have allowed it). I organise my workload so there is nothing difficult to do then anyway.
I prefer to wait until the work day has finished and then go to the pub and have a beer or two. I don't really understand the appeal of drinking at work (which seems more prevalent in US), surrounded by office equipment and computers, it's not really relaxing. Plus there might be people still in the office at 5pm who actually have something important to do and it's not really fair that they then have to try to work with people getting pissed up 10 feet away.
Aren't people complaining that their office is too noisy to work in? I wouldn't be going to the pub to work, rather to relax and have a beer and a chat. For the record I'm talking about a traditional, "old man" pub where I can get a nice pint of ale and a table, not some trendy place full of office workers.
Comments like your remind me how fortunate I am work with 'adults' at my current company. We don't micro-manage anyone, and only look at results. People who can't handle the responsibility side of freedom are let go, and the rest of us have an amazing amount of freedom to do interesting work. We even have beer in the refrigerator that people occasionally partake in.
I find this standpoint unacceptable in environments that manage PHI PII or anything else involving people's privacy or financials.
I get your point about the "I'm mature and experienced enough to know when a beer is appropriate" angle. Maybe I'm old fashioned but my dedication to my work goes beyond things like test coverage it goes into the details of how I conduct myself talk and dress when I'm the clock.
I dont want to drive over a bridge or fly on a plane designed by people who dont take a similar level of seriousness to being on the clock.
Not to mention beer tastes better when youre not in front of your flatcreen staring at code. Something to be said for being present in the moment.
> Maybe I'm old fashioned but my dedication to my work goes beyond things like test coverage it goes into the details of how I conduct myself talk and dress when I'm the clock.
I agree with you, and I work with people who think similarly. No one is drinking during the day or getting drunk at work even though there is beer in the refrigerator. I was responding directly to the parent comment about seeing people drunk at work. That's completely unacceptable.
> I dont want to drive over a bridge or fly on a plane designed by people who dont take a similar level of seriousness to being on the clock.
I would be much more worried about lack of sleep leading to issues[1] than if someone had an occasional beer at the end of the day.
I've been to many "beer flowing" companies and every time it was reserved for the Friday extra paid break. Those taps are there to offer quality beer at a low cost during happy hour on Friday when there's no more work to be done for the day.
I find it hard to believe that any company would allow daytime drinking.
> I find it hard to believe that any company would allow daytime drinking.
Allow? In some cultures a beer or glass of wine at lunch is perfectly normal. There is also a big difference between having a beer and downing a 6-pack.
I personally would avoid a beer at lunch because it makes me tired, but I wouldn't think much of it if someone had a beer with their lunch.
Where I work we have beer on tap. People are free to drink whenever and the occasional person will grab a beer with their lunch but peer pressure and not wanting to be drunk while at work means most people won't drink during work hours and it's used mostly after-hours or on weekends.
If it ever became a problem or someone got shitfaced I'm sure we'd see restrictions put into place quite quickly.
And not to mention general sleep and mood issues. It doesn't take many days in a row with a couple evening beers for me to get cranky. I'm sure alcohol affects everyone differently, but "flowing" just sounds like a recipe for mass irritability.
You don't have to be a teetotaler to hate that. Just think how often they clean those taps. (One startup that I worked in Chicago would be closed down by the health department becuase they never did)
Drinking in general is a really bad idea. I use it as a good and clear signal for who not to associate with, personally and professionally. I am all for having more opportunities for drunkards to expose themselves.
So, if I were to invite you home and offer you a glass of Glenmorangie (Scotch) or Suntory (Japanese Whiskey), that would make me a drunkard? What about a nice glass of finely aged wine? Please, don't limit your worldview to stereotypes...
Edit: That was written under the belief that I was replying to @sneak.
Haven't had a drop of alcohol since January 28th, so no drinking problem here.
My last sentence wasn't sarcasm and this comment of yours prove my point. You are so entrenched in your point of view that you automatically assume stereotypes about me. You are assuming that drinking alcohol === drinking problem and that me "offering you" a sip of quality booze is a proof of alcoholism.
Yes, my comment was "defensive". However, yours was on the offensive. "Drinking in general is a really bad idea" is a pretty wide statement. This makes me suspect that you are the one with issues here. Perhaps that you had negative experiences related to alcohol or alcoholism, making you perceive any consumption of alcohol as negative and dangerous, and that's perfectly fine.
I'm not trying to be insensitive either. You are perfectly in your rights not to like alcohol and to think of it as negative.
The issue is when you allow stereotypes to taint your perceptions of others.
>You are so entrenched in your point of view that you automatically assume
My point of view? Gee. A lot of assumptions there. Sounds like you think you know all about me. Hmm no, I don't assume drinking alcohol===drinking problem. It sounded like the guy you replied to first maybe did. Maybe you thought we're the same person? I didn't say anything about "proof".
Ahhh yes, you have confused me with the first guy. That explains some of your "so entrenched" language. You're mostly talking about what the first guy said, I'll let you take it up with him.
ps Counting the days since you last had a drink doesn't make me feel I was wrong. Good luck with that! I've had alcoholism ruin a couple of friends lives, it's such a terrible thing, so hard to do anything about.
Drunkard here, nice to meet you. I think it’s a bit unfair to pass judgement on such a human tradition as consuming alcohol. All things in moderation, as they say.
> Constant generic music is the worst part of retail, and that's saying something.
And getting away from the front-of-house area saturated by muzak doesn't promise much relief, because in the employees-only areas of any blue-collar workplace it's a near-certainty you'll find an FM boombox playing absolutely the worst top-40 station within range. There was a NYT article from a few months ago saying 'employers are starting to play music for their staff, what do we think of this?', basically an enormous shibboleth announcing that none of the people involved had ever worked for minimum wage in their lives.
Many years ago, I worked on the production floor of a print shop. (I wasn't actually doing print work. I was a designer, but they hadn't built out the offices yet, so my Mac was literally sitting on a desk in the middle of the print room floor.)
Do you know how loud "Butterfly Kisses" — apparently the #1 through #40 top song during the time I was doing this — has to be cranked to make it audible over a web-fed offset printer and cutter? I do.
This is totally tangent to the coworking discussion - but honestly mouth moods is a work of art and Neil is a genius. If anyone hasn't heard it, play T.I.M.E.[0] its really unexpectedly good.
He's also responsible for the Potter Puppet Pals videos, and the Guide to Lord of the Rings/Star Trek/Star Wars races and characters. Neil Cicierega is a hero and treasure of the Internet.
T.I.M.E. is a favorite of mine when listening to Mouth Moods straight through. But I can't have it in my shuffled playlists like I can with Smooth or Wow Wow.
It's like Love Psych. Great idea, great execution, but not something I can listen to very often.
I do like how it brings out the message the Village People intended though. You have to really try to hear what they're saying in the original.
I would like to hear both but not at work(I feel like saying you only like one genre is saying you only like one style of food). I would like absolute dead silence at work because that's when I do my best work; hence why I like to work from home 90% of the time.
> (I feel like saying you only like one genre is saying you only like one style of food)
Is the implication that I said that?
Otherwise agreed, silence is great. I find my concentration varies throughout the day, and when I'm most focused I prefer silence. When I'm least focused, music helps bump me up to a productive level. And in the middle, it can go either way.
That's why I like it, but I think you can agree that it's not universal music that everyone would enjoy. Which is (half of) why I wear headphones at work.
I never forget when I had an interview at a WeWork location, my first exposure to "co-sharing" workspaces, it was in Boston and the place was so loud and annoying I honestly thought I was in a mess hall for a university. It was an immediate pass.
I can see the benefits for small teams/companies but at that point why not just commute from home and save the money?
I can't imagine worse environment for a tech job than the one where you have music playing out of speakers. Also - working on your laptop? Without proper monitors and upright sitting position? Nope, thank you.
Two of the most productive times in my life were when I had a tiny office to myself and was able to play music on speakers instead of through headphones. I got a lot less ear fatigue that way, and the ambient background music really helped me get in the zone. Having a space to myself certainly helped too.
Of course, this only worked because the work I was doing during those times also required very little coordination and communication with other people. I'm introverted enough that if I have my own space but need to get out of it to talk to someone, I'll find myself procrastinating doing that.
Having a shared open plan office makes it harder for me to focus, but easier for me to interact with people. I'm not sure if that's a net win for my productivity or not.
That depends on what level you are. If you are the best developer on a medium sized project, or among the best on a large project then it is a win for the project even if it is a loss to you.
The best people on a project should be on the least important parts. The second best people lead the important projects, and thus grow to the best. In the mean time the best people are on something that isn't that important anyway, so if someone has a question there is no reason not to interrupt them and ask. This also leaves your best people free for when marketing has another "great idea" so they can ask before promising the impossible (and in some cases they can get something now instead of waiting for the entire project cycle)
I got an ipad pro (larger one) and a clamp so I can use it as a second monitor at eye level anywhere. I do get a few funny looks from time to time but considering how much time I spend travelling it's been a worthwhile investment.
I'm at a WeWork now and I'm far more productive than the time I spent working in a quiet home. I speak to people here who love it, I speak to people here who hate it. One of the best things about being in 'tech' is unless you're terrible, you can probably find somewhere to work that better fits how you like to work :-)
Agreed. I'm certainly not knocking extrovert-tailored work environments for their own sake. I am expressing frustration that the huge differences between extroverts and introverts are nearly universally ignored, especially, it seems, in tech workplaces. I hate to be reminded that such insensitive places still exist.
I hear ya. I suppose it's just 'cool' to be able to say "we have beer! We have ping pong!" but I can understand the frustration if you're not looking for an extrovert-tailored work environment.
Do any of the bigger tech companies offer quiet space? As in somewhere you can work without all the 'cool'? Seems like it would be quite a selling point for some.
Nothing quite as urban as grapefruit water and side parts, right? ;) I haven’t caught up on Silicon Valley, but I do hope this makes it in. I live in a rather “urban” city and I’m sorry, but other than the zip code, there is nothing urban about WeWork.
I know you may have meant it sarcastically, but woodworking has a lot of traits that appeal to a software developer. I do it as a hobby and if I wasn’t a software engineer I would probably have a woodworking business of some sort.
Better to be a programmer in a woodworking shop than woodworker in a WeWork.
Woodworking on a CNC is very much a software job. I built a wooden remote and for the most part it’s software with a woodshop component. I explored how I made it in detail in a series of blog posts if you’re interested.
Considering your reply and because I now have a lot of opinions to share, I think I might write a Joy of Software and Woodworking article. I feel like I can condense it down to how I figured out how to piece together the parts (cad, cam, cnc, wood) to make the whole.
Look around for a local makerspace / hackerspace. We have two different size wood CNCs at ours, plus light-weight coworking. No citrus or cucumber water though and members do the cleaning (for now).
I wasn't being sarcastic; I have seriously considered, especially recently after a couple of terrible work experiences, completely changing my life and getting away from tech forever. My young son loves working with his hands, so I've been considering picking up some power tools and such and learning something completely different. :)
Woodworking is an incredibly hobby, and woodworking side projects are much more satisfying than writing some worthless app on the side, especially if you produce pieces of furniture you can enjoy everyday in your own home.
However, it's not the cheapest hobby. I've spent thousands setting up a proper shop. But it has been fun. And if I wanted to I could easily make the money back building custom pieces of furniture for other people.
You should definitely pursue this! Even if you stay in tech, at worst you pick up a hobby that you love, and at best you find your life's calling :) Nothing wrong with diversifying your interests ;)
If you play music in the office, count me out. I am a musician, if I hear music my brain will focus on that and forget coding. I can deal with talking and stuff but not music.
I always wonder what Apple Mac coffee shop workers are actually working on. The closest I got to seeing someone working, it looked like cutting some parts out of a photo using something like photoshop. (Not exactly rocket science.)
One summer, I've done my usual job (programming) in public - parks, squares, on trains, etc., gravitating towards cafés (read: WiFi+power); mostly for the change from sitting at a desk for the whole shift, and for a bit of travel, too. Very few things are rocket science, I guess ;) but wouldn't want to work this way permanently.
I don't really like coffee or the burnt smell so I mostly work from places like the library, sports bar, McDonalds, mall food court, etc. but I'm at one or the other a couple times a week, chipping away at iOS, Android, or macOS apps.
Or you could just work from home where you can set up your own office with whatever equipment you want blasting music you want (or not) and dictate the quality of your working space yourself. And save a few hundred bucks a month...
There's a bias toward the negative in writing, which I think comes from the fact that people write as an attempt to solve problems. So you're always going to see more negative reporting on shared offices than positive.
But I'm old enough to remember when private offices were still common, and there was a lot of negative writing about those too. As someone about to enter the software industry, I was very concerned that I'd be lonely and depressed from working alone in front of a screen all day.
I think the truth behind all this is that the people writing this negative writing are all mismatched with the offices they're in. If you put a bunch of introverts in a shared office, they're going to be distracted and stressed. And if you stick a bunch of extroverts in private offices, they're going to be lonely and depressed.
The answer for employers is to create mixed workspaces that are conducive to both forms of work, and make explicit the fact that nobody should be pressured to work in one space or another.
The answer for individuals is to know yourself and where you work best, and work at jobs that will allow you to work in a work environment that works for you.
Complaining about shared workspaces or private workspaces is counterproductive--it's just trying to force the kind of workspace that works for you onto a diverse industry that doesn't necessarily work the same as you.
Personally, I get a lot done in shared offices. I can relate to a lot of what the author complains about, but a lot of the problems he brings up are problems with startup culture, not with shared workspaces. We extroverts aren't idiots, we know that stuff like "the common themes of rap are in tune with the company’s mission" is ridiculous.
I agree with you on employers needing to create workspaces conducive to introverts and extraverts.
I've seen one attempt at this and I think it was basically an extraverts attempt at making introverts happy. It was basically "we made these 3 'private' office things that you can use when you need to". This doesn't help me at all. Can I use these 90% of the time I'm at work? If not, what's the point?
I think the unfortunate thing that makes this virtually impossible in this day and age are two things:
1. It seems to be vastly more expensive for introvert-friendly spaces where square footage is expensive. Stacking people on top of each other is more economical.
2. Introvert-friendly workspaces are generally seen as "uncool" and unable to attract young and cheap talent.
Sucks being an introvert in tech right now. I'm either working in a noisy space, forced to wear headphones and listen to music all day long or working from home where there are other distractions. I just want to see a workspace that has SOME kind of attempt at catering to introverts. Have yet to see one though...
> I've seen one attempt at this and I think it was basically an extraverts attempt at making introverts happy. It was basically "we made these 3 'private' office things that you can use when you need to". This doesn't help me at all. Can I use these 90% of the time I'm at work? If not, what's the point?
Did you give this feedback to anyone who could do anything about it?
> 1. It seems to be vastly more expensive for introvert-friendly spaces where square footage is expensive. Stacking people on top of each other is more economical.
That's true, but the benefits of having a workspace that's effective for your workers' needs would seem to outweigh the cost, I would think.
> 2. Introvert-friendly workspaces are generally seen as "uncool" and unable to attract young and cheap talent.
Sure, but places that are more concerned about being cool to attract young and cheap talent are generally crappy in lots of ways. If a place is staffed entirely with folks fresh out of college, that's a better reason not to work there than any office layout.
Yea. I actually talked to the guy building the space. Gave me a vague answer but it seemed like he was basically saying square footage was expensive.
I may have a skewed view on things because I work in a techy college town.
I've actually had some friends who got offices but their job was miserable (defense contractor). I may have just had bad luck but from my experience, finding a good place to work without a completely open office environment is tough.
Yeah, I'm not sure what "the common themes of rap are in tune with the company’s mission" means. Does it allude to "diregard females and acquire currency" rap, or "selling pharmaceuticals" rap, or something entirely different, like conscious "class struggle" rap? This reader wants to know.
This is 100% the truth. I don’t know why it’s so hard to recognize different people have different working preferences, there’s no absolute correct arrangement. HN (rightfully) shoots down “anecdata”, but on this issue everyone’s fine with a sample size of 1?
don’t just shout your preferences at everyone else, it turns these threads into useless repetitive noise.
But the problem is, the industry is trending toward just doing the open office thing. Cubes are on their way out, and places that offer private offices for developers are few and far between.
We're not the one's shouting our preferences at everyone else; we're the ones having the preferences of others thrust upon us.
You're right, it's the extroverts who are thrusting their preferences on the introverts. So what? Which would you rather do, get revenge on the extroverts, or come up with a solution that's amenable to both introverts and extroverts?
If all the introverts are doing is complaining about open offices and demanding private offices, they're turning this into a zero-sum game where in order for introverts to win, extroverts have to lose. Not only is that not a good result, but it's not likely to work, since it's not going to get any support from extroverts.
Mixed private/shared workspaces are a solution to this problem that benefit everyone.
No, don't try to put this on the introverts. And don't try to paint this as trying to "get revenge." I'm fine with having mixed spaces. But the extroverts are the ones in charge, and they're the ones that are, again, forcing their preferences, instead of asking. They are the ones that need to come to the middle and meet the rest of us.
I mean the ones that are turning everything to open offices. No offense, but I find it highly unlikely you, or just about anyone else here, would have the kind of influence needed to cause existing open offices to change.
Probably because research dating back to 1980s (see Peopleware) shows that shared offices are objectively less productive and result in less happy workforce?
It’s been awhile since I read it, so correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought peopleware was advocating for the same as the GP - mixed spaces that suit the individual preferences of teams/individuals.
The experiment I remember from Peopleware (at Cornell, IIRC?) is that some people preferred quiet and some people did not, but when measured they all were more efficient at completing tasks in the quiet environment.
It was advocating for more old Microsoft-style layout, with a few smallish private offices (2-4 people IIRC) and common spaces for debates/planning/socializing between them.
Very much depends on the people. Two people can work okay, the chance of adding someone incompatible increases rapidly from there.
There seems a lot of reluctance to give the worker bees privacy. I don’t know if it’s a status thing or a “how do I know whether they’re goofing off on HN” thing. Maybe it amounts to the same issue.
Why would you be lying? It seems more like either of:
- You're mixing up the difference between personal preferences of an individual and emergent results of groups of people.
- The fact that you prefer something doesn't mean it's best for general productivity (or even your productivity for that matter).
Did that research make any attempt to distinguish between extroverts and introverts in the workforce? Because if it didn't, it is irrelevant to the post chain you're responding to.
That's not a shared office, it's a coworking space or something.
I've shared an office with a teammate before, and it was very productive. It was a great mix of heads-down work and the ability to discuss issues/design as needed.
OTOH, someone I know started a coworking space a few miles away from my home. I popped in there a couple of times to check it out and decided it was very much not for me. Too much "collaboration" and background noise for me personally, though some thrive on that. The clincher for me was one time there was supposed to be a presentation that sounded interesting, and well after it was supposed to start someone announced that it had been canceled last minute. "Well, I'll do a little work then," I thought. Then they announced that since the presentation wasn't happening they'd be playing talks from YouTube. Great, no work after all, big screen video and blaring audio of something I can watch myself at any time, because why? I dunno. Just not for me.
It's more like a narcissistic frat than a co-working space. Or maybe more of a "co-space", since actually getting work done in a WeWork can be a challenge.
(Note: I've actually spent a good deal of time in a WeWork.)
WeWorks are hell, ironically I would only work there if I wanted to do some “casual work” – writing a few lines of code, play some ping pong, drink a beer, living the startup life, chat with some people. When I actually needed to do some serious business I got the hell out and went to my real office.
Id agree my first job we had 2 or 3 people in each office and that worked well. We had some interesting brainstorm sessions how do you measure the efficiency of a toilet flush.
Though when I was in a portacabin next to the hanger where they tested executive jets it could get a bit loud :-)
Because Hollywood and overzealous architectural design firms dont understand acoustics...many of them have only recently come to realize the hubris of their ideas.
I once worked for a $web_company in a cubeless open office with hard flooring and lots of glass. It was so bad you could hear a fart in the bathroom from the kitchen. Developers routinely recommended brands of noise cancelling headphones. In the sysadmin pool we were virtually un-addressable unless you talked to us on IRC. The office was just too damned loud.
and thats not all, things dropped on the floor never survived. they didnt just break, they went off like a bomb. I remember a tech-support coworker dropped her novelty coffee mug and someone thought it was gunfire.
We hired a sound control company to fix most of the problems when an executive was overheard in his office addressing our devops lead by a homophobic slur.
Maybe that's just WeWork, maybe it's a culture that develops in certain places. I've worked at CrossCampus in Pasadena for awhile and there are a bunch of programmers, writers, and other types who need to be able to concentrate who have made the shared-table space work for us. Together we've made it more of a "study hall" atmosphere. We asked management to turn the music down to an acceptable volume in our part of the floor, and we apply social pressure on people who talk too loud or are otherwise too distracting.
In my experience shared-table or open-plan offices didn't work when I was at a company, but they work pretty well in a coworking space. One aspect of this is the lack of a power dynamic: you're not sharing an open-plan office with your manager. You can also leave (or threaten to leave) a coworking space if it doesn't work for you. Members have more power over their environment if they can organize. WeWork is a huge chain now, so maybe this works better at smaller coworking spaces that have less corporate inertia.
I love libraries and my city has some truly beautiful ones. The problem with working there is that unless you work in a group you have to basically pack up your whole setup if you want to go to the bathroom or get a cup of coffee. The coworking space I'm at has physical access controls and the members/residents/inmates all know each other.
Our public libraries are now homeless encampments. As the other reply noted, no bathroom / stretch breaks.
Our local university libraries are pretty good, when I still had wifi access.
My laptop camping secret is hospitals. Free wifi, pretty good cheap food, clean bathrooms.
I've also found a few local companies which have their own cafes, which are still open to the public.
I'd probably pay $5/hr to laptop camp. I generally "pay rent" where ever I'm camping with tips, treats, and coffee. I'd rather just pay outright. A cafe, event space, or study zone that allocates hours for quiet time will clean up. I imagine all the vacant 2nd and 3rd story retail getting repurposed. Maybe even mall vacancies, kinda like the board game retailers & hosters are now doing.
Yes! It's been a while since I was there, but Indianapolis's library even lets you reserve private rooms. (And, it's a pretty impressive building too.)
Here's my way of explaining to managers why software developers need to be left undisturbed.
Software developers on average write only about ten lines a day. The reason the process is so slow is that for each new line of code, you are trying to accomplish a task, and their are a great many different specific ways to do it.
However, you can't pick just any way of doing it. That's because any line of code will impact on dozens of different things in the program, and generally in bad ways. So you have to figure out a line of code that will accomplish the specific thing you are trying to do, but without having any bad consequences for the rest of the program.
This is a complicated puzzle, and to solve it you have to have the whole program, or at least a lot of it, in your mind all at once.
But few if any programmers are smart enough to keep it all in their mind all the time, so for each new line of code they have to sit and think about the program, look up lots of specifics about it, and then get it all organized in their minds. That takes a whole lot of focused attention. Any interruption causes all this to disappear from the programer's mind, and they have to start all over again.
Now I am not a programmer myself, so I may not have this all right. Maybe someone could improve it. Also, it would be helpful to have an analogy for something similar the manager does.
> That's because any line of code will impact on dozens of different things in the program
I'd say that's something to avoid whenever possible.
But that's just pushing the metaphor back a level: in order to know how to design your codebase so that it's well-organized and extensible, you have to have a pretty good understanding of what it does, what it needs to do, and how it does it.
For me... once I get into the zone on that, all the noise in the world can't distract me. But conversations by my desk, other people's music, drive-bys by the boss, all those things make it harder to get into the zone. (Though, for me, this means it's way easier to work around strangers in a truly shared space than around co-workers who I'm more likely to talk to.)
On the other hand: Foosball, ping pong, video games -- all those are obviously distractions. They're there to make it easier to take a break without checking out and going home for the day, but I've seen many people (shared office or no) fall into the trap of letting the job be the distraction from the play.
>But that's just pushing the metaphor back a level: in order to know how to design your codebase so that it's well-organized and extensible, you have to have a pretty good understanding of what it does, what it needs to do, and how it does it.
There's also the risk of design paralysis. Where you focus so much on perfect program design that adding a new feature or making a change is offset by excessive, obsessive time spent making sure it fits the design absolutely perfectly. Some programmers think more about the aesthetics and organization of their code than the actual function. They may make large refactors with every minor change or spend hours thinking about the design when just implementing their first intuition would be way more efficient for both their present and future selves.
So, in some cases it may actually take more time to make a change to a well-designed codebase vs. someone who's just plugging things in as they go and refactoring later when they need to. But I would agree the opposite problem of poor design is far more common and that it's usually much faster to make changes to a well-designed application.
Ok, but the purpose of my explanation is not to be technically correct, but to get a manager to understand why programmers need to be undisturbed. So if it is a little inaccurate, but accomplishes the goal, then I think developers should use it as needed.
I've heard variants of this before, and while it's not wrong, I feel that once you're done telling a 200-word story to explain something, you'll have lost most of your audience. It's no longer an easy metaphor. They're not going to go back to their managers and tell a 200-word story, so you're limited to people you can talk to directly for a couple minutes.
What I would say, to anyone old enough to have lived through the HD->SSD transition, is: "Quiet offices are an SSD for programmers' brains."
It's short, it's simple, it's repeatable, it's understandable. I think it's more or less true, and it's hard to argue against SSDs. We buy our programmers SSDs for their computers, so why wouldn't we want them for their brains, too?
>why software developers need to be left undisturbed
I've tried explaining this to manager and business type of people. I've even shown them articles and papers about this topic. All I've ever gotten is mocking and scoffs about how we aren't special snowflakes and how every job requires thinking and concentration. Maybe they are right. I've never been a manager or business person. But it seems to me they spend an awful lot more time talking and creating powerpoints than they do thinking.
Reading this comment. I have to admit the reason I write 10 lines of code on average is because I spend 95 percent of my work time browsing hackernews or slatestarcodex or dare I say r/the_donald. I also strongly suspect a lot of people are avoiding work in a similar way based on relative productivity.
Depends on the type of software you are writing. If you are hooking up a bunch of libraries you installed with NPM on your node project you will be much more productive than if you are debugging a compiler or working on a hardware level device driver.
99% Invisible did a great piece on the invention of air conditioning and its role in modern architecture. The part of the story discussing the battle for the ideal office temperature reminded me of the open vs. closed office debate. Some memorable excerpts:
"And some architects, like Lisa Heschong, see this as problematic — “you will never achieve a static environment where 100 percent of the people are happy,” she says. “There is a huge amount of individual variation in what people experience and what they prefer,” based on factors like age, sex and the kind of climate we are used to. All of this runs against the idea of targeting a single static indoor temperature."
And
"Brager says we could save enormous amounts of energy by letting the temperatures in buildings fluctuate over a wider range, and giving people more tools to heat and cool themselves. To accomplish this, Brager advocates a take a combination of high and low tech approaches. A window that you can open right by your desk is a great personal cooling device. A sweater is a pretty good personal heating device. But Brager and her team are also developing low energy desk fans, foot-warmers, and chairs that can heat or cool."
I for one am very happy to have my own office with windows that open and an individual thermostat. That's not to say that I would say no to a self heating and cooling office chair...
"People don't buy products, they buy better versions of themselves."
$500/month is a lot of money for a chair at a noisy table. On the other hand, $500/month is easier to stomach if it comes with the feeling of being successful.
As someone who has worked at co-working spaces in places not urbane enough to have a WeWork, $500 a month strikes me as ridiculous. I'm paying $150 a month at my current place for a dedicated desk (so not just shared table space). I do this because I'm able to be more productive than I would be working from home, so the $150 a month easily pays for itself, but I highly doubt I'd be over four times more productive paying $700 a month for the same thing at a WeWork.
Granted, this place doesn't have beer on tap, but it has free-flowing coffee, and that's all I really need.
You be you, so pay WeWork's prices if the value fits you, but if you're considering joining shared workplaces for the first time, note that you can probably find a much better deal.
That's what they are selling people. I've been thinking of renting out some space to local startups, but my approach is completely different - barebones for people who want to just pay a low amount but have a spot to actually work.
Is this some kind of coastal culture thing, to add all kinds of stupid, non-productive crap to your work environment?
Here in flyover country, you can rent an entire suite of multiple private offices in a strip of class B office-park units, including utilities, for less than what WeWork is apparently asking for just one private office. And that's without the insane brand-connected features like having beer kegs at work.
Out here, a foosball table in the office is a red flag. People working on laptops on couches is a red flag. An untidy kitchenette is a red flag. Conducting an interview at a noisy restaurant is a double-red flag. (TSB. I was eating there with my family.) An open office plan is a red flag, unless it is clear that situation is aspirationally temporary, as the company is trying for ramen-profitability. People drinking beer at work is a triple-red flag.
I have been in plenty of small-business service company or business incubator offices (for me, plenty = 2), and they looked just like regular large company offices, except the employees all worked for different companies and had the actual keys to their own lockable office. In one of them, instead of a data center in the secure area in the back of the building, there was a bio-chem lab. Neither were hard to work in, even in the rent-by-the-desk bullpen, because it was quiet. The tenants were mainly working from home and using the rented office only for customer contact, interviews, and the mailing address.
Are you talking about red flags from an investor or an employee perspective? Hard to argue with the latter, as it's completely personal, but I'm also from flyover country and I disagree with most of what you write.
>A member of the cleaning staff— a young Spanish-speaking woman with a tight ponytail— was one of the few people actually working. She moved quietly, picking up the dirty mugs that people had left lying about and stacking them into the dishwasher. Her shirt was emblazoned with the company slogan: Do What You Love.
This is definitely the most common response I hear to shared/open offices ... but dang it, I love them (part time)!
I go into a co-working space once or twice a week, and wfh the rest of the time. When I'm there, I enjoy being around people who can relate to what I'm doing (even if it's just as simple as a knowing nod when I comment on a tough bug I'm troubleshooting). And if I need to focus, headphones easily place me in my own acoustic palace.
I totally get that everyone is different, and thrives in different environments ... but don't crap on this type of shared experience as if it's universally hated by everyone, because it's not.
That is a too important distinction to be left on a small parenthesis without relevance.
Yes, part time shared/open offices are good. I would still argue that real offices let you create a better interactive environment than those, but they are perfectly ok for the amount of time you must go out and talk to somebody.
Just don't expect anybody to create anything when forced to work on one of those full time.
I parenthesized it on purpose ... because _for me_, it's a small detail; personally, I really enjoy being in open office environments, even if it was full time ... and I feel fully productive there. The part time thing is more a mix of laziness and enjoying going to lunch with my wife ;)
But back to the point I was trying to make, this works _for me_; and I acknowledge that it doesn't work for others. I was only trying to balance the discussion such that it's not assumed that everyone despises open office plans, because it's not universal.
My work has a number of private offices, cubicle space, and open space.
There's a funny thing that happens: the private offices are always occupied and apparently work is getting done in them. The cubicles are a step down, with those workers stepping out occasionally for some fresh air away from the office. The open areas are only ever occupied by new employees or not at all. Nobody wants to work in them. And it's true that my workplace is full of introverts (basically exclusively). But it's telling, to me, that the offices are the most productive places.
> WeWork offers freelancers a chic workspace and beer on tap—but are people productive?
Not really. That was my experience at a WeWork space in London. It was not quiet (glass walls), it was hard to focus, social events starting at 4pm (who finishes work at that time?), and if you end up being close to the common spaces, near the kitchen… well, I suggest you get a good pair of sound cancelling headphones.
Having worked in traditional offices, open offices, at home, at Starbucks, and at various coworking spaces - I still don't know how to feel about shared offices. I am using one right now on trial basis, and I can tell once or twice a week is about right for me. It's great for putting together a marketing presentation, not so great for coding.
I also ran a tech coworking space for a couple of years. I shut it down. I will be happy to share what I learned if anyone is interested.
We had a relatively small footprint: 4 offices (2..3 desks each), a conference room + projector, 10 dedicated desks, plus some shared space for up to 10 more people. I wanted to focus on tech startups, so we also had a small datacenter on premises, VPN, and everything was wired with subnets etc. I also made accelerator deals with Google, Microsoft, and Amazon so we could award cloud credits to those who needed it. Additionally, we got some lawyers to provide legal advice to members for free. We wanted to provide a good environment for building and launching an MVP (and beyond) [1].
What actually happened:
* we did attract a few startups, and we helped them launch
* many people were so early in the process, they had no use for cloud credits (or on-site infrastructure)
* we did a series of free events (with pizza and beer), and those attracted a lot of people - but did not convert to memberships
* we were hoping to get some interest and support from the state (CT) at least in terms of visibility and potential grants for members - but that didn't happen, as the State only wanted to invest in their official incubator in Stamford (which they sank a lot of money into, and ended up evicting the people who ran it [2])
* most trials didn't convert
* several more coworking spaces opened in the area, so people began hopping around
* attracted a few dreamers, who were constantly in pitching mode - and had no desire to actually sit down and build something (also usually the ones with money problems)
I think my main mistake was trying to be an accelerator as opposed to simple shared space for rent. We couldn't find a way to make it work financially, considering the amount of time and energy it was demanding.
I also underestimated the lack of interest in innovation and startups here in CT.
I appreciate your detailed response (and candor)! Sounds like a great idea on paper -- I would think a "built-in" legal team and infrastructure support would have attracted more interest. Sorry to hear it didn't pan out.
Sounds like some shady circumstances around the state-sponsored incubator, on the other hand...
A better example would to have private offices with a shared space in the middle for working together.
I think the truth is that office space is very expensive in Sillicon valley startups. Thus to lower the operating costs shared space is used but it is not fully productive and has lots of distractions for workers.
Google is probably a company that has actual productivity data about working in private work spaces vs shared work spaces.
I tried working from home five days a week for about a year and I hated it. I like being in the office and having spur of the moment conversations that lead to productive brainstorming (rather than the mostly dry Slack or Teams conversations that occur). That being said, I don’t think I’d an enjoy a WeWork setup where there is constant buzz and activity. I think balance is key and finding work that’s flexible where you can possibly even change work contexts whenever you want (which is something I realize I’m very, very fortunate to have).
I hate open offices for being productive. They are cool for chatting and socializing. My pair of Bose QC20 are a must if I want to get anything done.
Actually I ended up having my own 3 storey building where I can actually site/lounge/work my way and invite people to come to work with me on an as needed basis.
Productivity is at least 3x vs open office.
I go to client offices to catch up base and be around the people but productive work of mine occurs elsewhere.
Am I the only one who has grown to absolutely despise the term "creative" when used as a type of worker/employee? As in, for example (from the article) "members of the creative class" and "young creative types". Makes my skin crawl for some reason. I envision a bunch of people who stand around smelling each other's farts like they are at a wine tasting.
I realize this comment isn't really productive and doesn't really contribute to the conversation but am I curious if anyone else hates that term.
This narrative seems to be common these days about WeWork:
- it has a high valuation
- nobody there really works
- everyone there is a stupid startup that won't pan out
- WeWork is a scam
In the past, I've worked at fortune 50 companies in private office, at startups in open office, rented space personally at various coworking spaces, and currently rent a hot desk in a WeWork in Brooklyn.
Where I work, on any given weekday the shared workspace of about 45 desks is 60% full with people working silently or talking very quietly. It is a great environment for technical work. The music doesn't play in the shared work space but it does in the common eating area / kitchen where people frequently do work and talk to one another.
I think this "trash the new unicorn" mentality is fun to write about but in my experience, WeWork really is better.
One example of something they do extraordinarily well is that their phone booths actually work and give real privacy. The internet is always perfect. Things like that matter when you want to be productive. There is paper shredding service. The mugs are always clean. The snack bar is cheap and always stocked.
There are also network effects. I frequently have meetings in Manhattan spread throughout the day. No matter what part of town I'm in, I almost always can rent a desk at a location nearby for free (or for $25 if I've done it a lot that month).
This is just my experience but IMO WeWork is definitely worth it. I pay $350/mo. Maybe it's not for everyone but I am happy giving them my money for what I get in return.
There's a (currently) $20 billion valuation on the line, expect to see quite a lot more press (positive and negative) in 2018 as they press towards an IPO.
It's not about "trashing the unicorn" (eg, Dropbox has managed to keep negative press to a minimum). It's that there's yet to be anything substantive that examines what people are doing that isn't "a stupid start up that won't pan out" that justify paying $350/mo for a desk, when a coffee shop will do.
The prejudice is not that that your "stupid start up that won't pan out" won't, err, pan out, but that eventually the entire industry will collapse and we'll all have to go back to doing serious work at serious jobs. No more getting paid to make a dating app for people with dogs with a floppy left ear.
Despite evidence to the contrary, WeWorks isn't selling office space, they're selling convenience and a lifestyle (two things people are willing to pay a premium for). If you've got an niche business with revenue that lets you afford $350/mo, and you're getting value out of WeWorks, good for you! Keep that niche your secret though.
This article exploits anti-urban-hipster sentiment in order to replicate itself across social media. It has no actual data for or against various office space designs.
My startup leases a big private office and we did it because it made really good economic sense. no deposit, major curb appeal that impresses potential clients for zero capex on our part, and flexible in a way in which traditional leases could never compete. There are now so many weworks in our city that whenever our team expands we just move to another office across the hall or to another wework building. Wework is happy to accommodate and roll over our lease. it's an easy move -- no furniture, just desktops computers and personal effects - 24 hours tops.
Meanwhile, potential clients walk into the common area, hear the indie rock and think we're this super high-end, hip, "urban" company filled with creative young people. The reality is that we only step out into the kitchen and ping pong tables when we get bored. We have the option to retreat to our sanctuary any time. It's incredible. Tell me a better solution! There is none!
But as this backlash indicates, the hot desks are the big scam -- essentially younger, non-salaried individuals who are essentially paying for the privilege of providing atmosphere and brand for us, the private suite tenants.
Wework gets the valuation, i'm guessing, because in addition to the typical rental income from the private offices (albeit, these aren't long term leases, but with scale, they don't have to worry about that), they are collecting $500/mo from the hot desks in the lobby area, an area that would normally sit empty. Wow! what a business model. Bravo Wework.
Try sharing a completely open office concept with 250 people on one floor, it's a joke. Now that I have worked in both a office with walls and this open office concept I can see that people get much more work done in a cubical with walls or an actual office where you can close a door and focus.
I've worked in numerous coworking places across the US, from the local mom-and-pops to the larger global companies.
All of them have private offices for rent, which curtails the noise issue. All have meeting rooms to book. Most have phone cubby-holes.
My experience has also been that you can socialize as little or as much as you'd like, it's up to you. You can attend events, or not. You can drink, or not.
That said, there are large cultural differences between the younger, startup-scenester spots and the more diverse small-business ones. The latter usually skew older and include non-tech businesses like attorneys and realtors. I prefer these and have enjoyed the "cross-pollination" of ideas and focus on turning a profit.
YMMV, but my current workplace sits in a co-working space (although we are big enough to have our own exclusive office within it) and the noise levels on the common areas from what I have seen are ok most of the time. No music being pumped anywhere. The place described in the article sounds like a dystopian nightmare, but I doubt its the norm...
Also, if you are a freelancer or a tech founder that wants to work on his own thing, what is the alternative? Working on a coffee shop brings pretty much the same noise problems + no guarantee of power supply/fast Wifi. Working from home all the time can get lonely. Renting an office? Too expensive...so co-working spaces fill a nice niche.
I've worked at several different co-working spaces and it seems that the culture either becomes really loud (phone calls and open conversations) or library silent. Nothing in between seems to last long. I'd love to see this improve. It's like being in an elevator; it has a social weirdness that's hard to overcome — if that's even what people want. Finding a way to encourage conversation in some areas and silence in others would go a long way to making these places more enjoyable. How to do that? No idea. That's an open question and my guess is the alcohol centered parties are one attempt at trying to solve this.
I work in a shared office and it's OK. But that's just because we all know that focusing with other people speaking is basically impossible, so we all try hard to not make noise. If we have to talk we go to a conference room.
I once worked in an open plan office with a guy that had Tourette's syndrome. As you can imagine, for him the open plan office was a particular kind of torture that should only be reserved for the worst members of humanity.
I'm curious what it was specifically about his Tourette's that caused him problems in the open office. I ask because I suspect I have mild Tourette's, and absolutely hate the open office my work moved us into.
For me it is the incessent people-noise. Loud-laughers, sounds of chewing, constant self-talk, etc. If it was just light-industrial noise, it wouldn't be so bad.
I always find that WeWork has a very weird vibe. It has all of these companies but nobody talks to each other. It feels oddly sterile. When I worked out of General Assembly, the big benefit was that these companies would talk to each other, make deals or just help each other out with business/tech problems. Investors would come in to meet one company and would end up talking to a few more.
They certainly had a shitload of self generated hype on here a few years back. Then they laid off some people and went remarkably quiet. (I definitely see some similarities with the Solyent hype wagon, I just didn't hear of them laying off people yet).
I "work" in an open office type space. My ears are filled with people on the phone or just talking about work they could do. In my peripheral vision is a colleague and various other movements. I'm here to do only very simple work because I can't think very deeply. Any serious work is done at home where I am many times more productive. For some work this type of setup might be fine, but for anything resembling engineering it's impossible.
I've worked as a software engineer for over a decade and most of that time was spent in open office spaces. I am most productive in that environment.
I don't doubt that you are more productive in a different environment, but it's a pretty big leap to assume that every engineer is going to be productive in the same environment. Different people work different ways, and the answer is to find a workspace that suits you, not try to apply the work environment that works for you to the entire industry.
There is pretty much overwhelming research that people are more productive and healthy at work when they have some privacy and don't have distractions. One example - a study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology of more than 40,000 workers in 300 US office buildings:
"...Enclosed private offices clearly outperformed open-plan layouts in most aspects of IEQ (Indoor Environmental Quality), particularly in acoustics, privacy and the proxemics issues. Benefits of enhanced 'ease of interaction' were smaller than the penalties of increased noise level and decreased privacy resulting from open-plan office configuration."
>...and the answer is to find a workspace that suits you, not try to apply the work environment that works for you to the entire industry.
Unfortunately, the trend seems to be to apply the open office design to all environments which is hurting people. The best environments I have seen are when there are individual offices with plenty of open areas and conference rooms for people to meet.
> There is pretty much overwhelming research that...
Okay, but general studies that lump everyone together as if everyone works the same doesn't really address the point that people have different work styles.
> The best environments I have seen are when there are individual offices with plenty of open areas and conference rooms for people to meet.
A mixed shared/private workspace is exactly what I've proposed elsewhere in the thread.
Can you explain how you find it possible to think deeply about complex algorithms and data structures, or to debug code? When I do this I find that I'm essentially running programs in my head and keep a "mental stack" of what's going on. A distraction can easily break this mental stack. How do you deal with this?
For me, I don't know if that's necessarily related to the workspace I'm in. Talking and other sounds around me don't distract me unless someone is actually talking to me--and that's not really different in a private office, because someone can just knock on my door. The general noise of an open workspace doesn't bother me. I get that this is not true for everyone, which is why I'm saying that different people work differently.
There is a slight increase in interruptions just because it's slightly easier for someone to speak to you directly in an open workspace. But the flipside, which I gain a lot more from than I lose, is that I can address other people who might know something immediately that would take me a 15 minutes to figure out--that kind of stuff is a big time-saver. I tend to figure out what other people on my team are amenable to this sort of interaction quickly, and respectfully don't interrupt people who aren't.
Of course, there are still times when I need to concentrate deeply, and then headphones go in. If that doesn't cause people to weighing the value of my time versus what they'd gain from talking to me, setting polite verbal boundaries usually does.
And finally, there are always going to be distractions even if you're working in a private workspace, and all the strategies that work for those distractions work for the distractions of a shared workspace.
I think I'd rather commit seppuku or eat Tide pods than work in an open office as described. Hopefully there is an eighth circle of hell in the afterlife reserved for management that inflicts such things on their workforce, full of gibbering, odoriferous, chronically sneezing demons that will pelt them with whiteboard markers and constantly ask for TPS reports.
We have 3 desks in a large open plan office with a kitchen area. It's about 10 feet from my desk. Most of the time it's just me from our company as the other devs work from home or work out the main office.
My experience of working in this shared space:
* It's noisy. I mean really noisy, noise cancelling headphones are a must. Like I said the kitchen area is near my desk, and people would routinely bang the cupboard doors. I sort of fixed this by putting felt and rubber on the doors to stop the loud banging, but I shouldn't have had to do this.
* People are noisy, people whistle, walk around talking loudly on their phones. Some people I'm sure talk loudly on purpose just to try and look like they are important in front of strangers. One guy makes random trumpet noises with his mouth...
* No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. I often see two people in the kitchen area from different companies and it can be a bit like a comedy sketch as they try to get their kitchening done without acknowledging the other person exists. Absurd, why don't people talk to each other. Especially people you see every day!
* When you are remotely working and the only person from your company you have no one to talk to and this is quite isolating and depressing. Especially worse if you end up in a room with 10 others and they are all from the same company. Then they start looking at you like you are in their space.
* The kitchen area, despite being an office staffed with supposed professionals, is always a mess. How does this happen?
Our office space is also open to a throughfare to conference rooms and such, so you randomly get random people walking through the office, again noisily.
But working here I at least don't have all the distractions of working from home.