Re:Is the open office layout dead?
by tlogan on Sunday August 20, 2017 @10:41PM
(#15061556)
Back in days, each engineer in Microsoft had a private office. Oracle too... Good days...
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Some buildings in Microsoft still do. In my building, most people SDE2 level and up has their own, and below that most seem two-to-an-office (there are counterexamples on both sides though, as well as a number of empty offices). Oddly they're refurbing existing buildings to remove the private offices though. It doesn't seem like a space problem, nor a money problem. Apparently there's just a desire to get rid of them for who knows what reason, spending a lot of money and morale (employees have to relocate to temp offices in downtown Bellevue for a year while they refurb a building on campus) to do so.
When I was moved from single offices to open plan (Microsoft 2012) we were told that we had asked for it(!)
But the architecture firm who designed the space did give a really good walk through of how they designed the space. All their stupid decisions had justifications. One tidbit that fell out of that was that they couldn't put more people on a floor with open plan because the width of emergency stairwells dictates the floor occupancy rating.
So we lost offices, whiteboards, bookshelves, couches, and privacy. There didn't seem to be much gain
I interned at Microsoft this summer and had my own office.
Re:Is the open office layout dead?
by brightsize on Monday August 21, 2017 @09:00PM
(#15068958)
Yes, they'd give you all the resources you wanted, because they had tens of millions in R&D funding.
https://goo.gl/iHb698 (vintagecomputing.com)
Actually remembered that my university had this two, though most people were two to an office so you coordinated to do meetings. And the PhD students were more like 4-6 to a room.
Re:Is the open office layout dead?
by chrisseaton on Monday August 21, 2017 @04:45AM
(#15062928)
I got my own office as an intern at Oracle a couple of years ago.