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Yes, these open office plans are very popular in CA. It started as a way to encourage the cross communication between departments that occurred at Bell Labs.
It has now morphed into a "Bastille-style" you never know when we're watching type of productivity booster.
Speculating what people may do or not do on a psuedoanonymous forum has to be one the dumbest wastes of time in what is already a waste of time. For all you know I'm Linus.
It's not quite that exciting, but there are free car charging stations that run on solar panels. The campus is open. Anyone can ride around and see what's offered outdoors. Which is a good bit.
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That Citrix office looks pretty great but the open concept would be a big no for me these days after so many years of it in various settings. I mean - imagine an open office setting where most people are single and dating each other, and how annoying that would be, and then imagine it after the breakups (that room wasn't big enough for all of us). And then in another open office setting, the guy next to me used to talk about his anal fistula, and he'd describe how he shot cats with bb guns.
For creative work, I personally can focus more in a crowded, open office setting... for highly technical work it's the exact opposite. Now I work remotely - definitely not as exciting! Good snacks, though.
One thing that has become clear on this thread: at least as of this writing, the overwhelming majority of thread respondents doing technical work dislike open environments. Yet, companies continue to implement them (apparently not because its what their workers want, but for some other reason). How many of them are doing it primarily for extensive employee monitoring, versus just doing it because they read in a trade magazine that it's the "in" thing to do, is of course something that's harder to answer. Usually when a huge change like that comes down from management that's mandatory, you can be sure the motives are non-transparent. I haven't heard of a single case of employees voting in favor of this type of arrangement, it just mysteriously seems to happen. If the company provides each employee with choice based on how they work best, then I would say maybe they are one of the good ones who genuinely care about the work-life balance and stress level of their employees.
It's just that I've yet to see it happen that way, even once. It's always a mandatory move.
I hate the open office/bullpen style... not because of noise, I can ignore that, but rather I hate people constantly being behind my back and walking around and everything. Even in restaurants I go to the corner if I can, just... feel really unnerved with it. It gives no privacy and is disconcerting, so haaaaaaaate it.
That's my wife's biggest issue. She didn't love giving up a decent sized cube when her company went to desks like Citrix has, but she is hyper organized and doesn't need a huge desk anyway because she is addicted to filing things so it wasn't that bad.
But, there is one person near her that constantly talks about things of a HIGHLY PERSONAL NATURE with his wife multiple times a day. Issues with their kids. Deep down issues no one wants to hear about. Issues with money and all the bills they can't pay because they have like 8 kids that are homeschooled, medical stuff, etc. And this guy loves to walk around behind people and talk on a headset instead of just going to one of the many breakout rooms like everyone else does, one of which is 20 feet away. She and a couple others were very close to telling his manager he had to cut it out after numerous hints and directly asking him but they just found out he is going to work from home permanently.
I would have never expected a thread about open office space to go 8 pages. lol
I worked in a public sector job once that was a mixture of offices and cubes that when seat you could see everyone's head. New boss comes in and wants them replaced with cubes that are desk height.
Not long after, aforementioned boss goes to a different public agency and has all the cubes replaced with desk height cubes -- $80,000 +/-
It wasn't a matter of collaboration it was a matter of trust. He wanted to be able to step into the room and immediately see what everyone was doing.
I don't do technical stuff, but I still need to be able to concentrate. Thankfully, the culture in my office of seven people is a buttoned-up, quiet professional one.
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