Want to take your open office plan to the next level? Double the efficiency of your space by having two employees per standing desk.

FUCK YOUR OPEN SPACE OFFICE!!!!

AND FUCK YOUR HOT DESKING!!!

As a developer, is it too much to ask for a quiet section? 😭

In a user-interface design meeting over a regulatory compliance implementation:
User: “We’ll need to input a city.”
Dev: “Should we validate that city against the state, zip code, and country?”
User: “You are going to make me enter all that data? Ugh…then make it a drop-down. I select the city and the state, zip code auto-fill. I don’t want to make a mistake typing any of that data in.”
Me: “I don’t think a drop-down of every city in the US is feasible.”
Manage: “Why? There cannot be that many. Drop-down is fine. What about the button? We have a few icons to choose from…”
Me: “Uh..yea…there are thousands of cities in the US. Way too much data to for anyone to realistically scroll through”
Dev: “They won’t have to scroll, I’ll filter the list when they start typing.”
Me: “That’s not really the issue and if they are typing the city anyway, just let them type it in.”
User: “What if I mistype Ch1cago? We could inadvertently be out of compliance. The system should never open the company up for federal lawsuits”
Me: “If we’re hiring individuals responsible for legal compliance who can’t spell Chicago, we should be sued by the federal government. We should validate the data the best we can, but it is ultimately your department’s responsibility for data accuracy.”
Manager: “Now now…it’s all our responsibility. What is wrong with a few thousand item drop-down?”
Me: “Um, memory, network bandwidth, database storage, who maintains this list of cities? A lot of time and resources could be saved by simply paying attention.”
Manager: “Memory? Well, memory is cheap. If the workstation needs more memory, we’ll add more”
Dev: “Creating a drop-down is easy and selecting thousands of rows from the database should be fast enough. If the selection is slow, I’ll put it in a thread.”
DBA: “Table won’t be that big and won’t take up much disk space. We’ll need to setup stored procedures, and data import jobs from somewhere to maintain the data. New cities, name changes, ect. ”
Manager: “And if the network starts becoming too slow, we’ll have the Networking dept. open up the valves.”
Me: “Am I the only one seeing all the moving parts we’re introducing just to keep someone from misspelling ‘Chicago’? I’ll admit I’m wrong or maybe I’m not looking at the problem correctly. The point of redesigning the compliance system is to make it simpler, not more complex.”
Manager: “I’m missing the point to why we’re still talking about this. Decision has been made. Drop-down of all cities in the US. Moving on to the button’s icon ..”
Me: “Where is the list of cities going to come from?”
<few seconds of silence>
Dev: “Post office I guess.”
Me: “You guess?…OK…Who is going to manage this list of cities? The manager responsible for regulations?”
User: “Thousands of cities? Oh no …no one is our area has time for that. The system should do it”
Me: “OK, the system. That falls on the DBA. Are you going to be responsible for keeping the data accurate? What is going to audit the cities to make sure the names are properly named and associated with the correct state?”
DBA: “Uh..I don’t know…um…I can set up a job to run every night”
Me: “A job to do what? Validate the data against what?”
Manager: “Do you have a point? No one said it would be easy and all of those details can be answered later.”
Me: “Almost done, and this should be easy. How many cities do we currently have to maintain compliance?”
User: “Maybe 4 or 5. Not many. Regulations are mostly on a state level.”
Me: “When was the last time we created a new city compliance?”
User: “Maybe, 8 years ago. It was before I started.”
Me: “So we’re creating all this complexity for data that, realistically, probably won’t ever change?”
User: “Oh crap, you’re right. What the hell was I thinking…Scratch the drop-down idea. I doubt we’re have a new city regulation anytime soon and how hard is it to type in a city?”
Manager: “OK, are we done wasting everyone’s time on this? No drop-down of cities...next …Let’s get back to the button’s icon …”

Simplicity 1, complexity 0.

*deep breath*

Remain calm, don’t freak out, remain calm, don’t freak out.

*deep breath*

Ok, so my sort of new manager (had a slightly different manger-ish role on the team), has for the third time in as many months, just sent an email criticizing the dev team for our working from home-ness (which for the record has not been that bad, 2/3 or 3/3 have been in everyday for the past month)

In this same period, there has been late nights, weekends, successful releases, I’ve been invited to talk at a conference about my work (not a particularly big one, but still). Point is, everything is going well, very well in fact.

There has been no emails discussing our great work, thanking us for extra work, thanking us for picking up slack from other teams who are down a few people etc. no our major concern it seems is the “optics” of our team not being present in the open space.

Our contracts list flexible working hours, and his boss has frequently told us WFH is fine when things are too busy. But no he is complaining for us to get our hours in the office in line and make sure we are in the office more.

It’s been a particularly long and frustrating week, and I’m very tempted to inform him that if he is concerned about my chair and desk looking empty, that I can put them somewhere for him where they will always be occupied until a surgeon can remove them.

However, thanks to the deep breaths, I’ve managed to restrain myself long enough to run this past you all first and ask advice.

Please help,
Sincerely,
My sanity

!!good news
!!great news
!!linux dev lappy recommendations?

So, @Root might finally have a job! Woo!
(Pending a background check, drug test, cavity search, ...)

I'm excited, and kind of giddy. It's an open-office setup, but the devs are chill, the boss is chill (reminds me a bit of myself thus far, just... nice), pay is decent too. Drive is hell, but everything else feels kinda cushy. The parent company is super-stuffy corporate and has an HR and red tape fetish, but supposedly I won't have to interact with them at all. I start as soon as all of the background check nonsense comes through. (Don't get me started on that, please.)

One of the questions that came up, however, is what type of system I wanted to use. I requested a Linux lappy, and that's sadly a bit beyond the parent company's nontechnical IT department. They asked me for links to a few specific machines on amazon for options. (MacBook Pro or equivalent)

That's where this question comes in: Which lappys make great dev machines and also have decent linux (Debian/Mint/Ubuntu) support? The role is backend Rails development + some devops, so I don't need super-fancy graphics, though I will be attaching a 4k (hopefully IPS) display because space and pretty colors.

Recommendations welcome, as I should get back to them today!

I worked on a company with an open floor plan where you would get a desk assigned depending on the type of project you worked on. All the desks were modular an you would get a desk with a cube with a set of drawers, or with a locker-like cube with a single space and door. When this guy started, he was assigned a drawer set. Around the third day he went around the office asking anyone with a locker to trade cubes. He finally got one. He filled it up with liquor bottles, cans of juice and several types of glasses. He would prepare himself cocktails during the work day. Once he was enjoying a Coca-Cola and whisky mix when the HR boss came around to ask what he was up. He offered the guy a drink.

Home office / lockdown story

Last year, when the first lockdown happened, everyone in my office started working from home. Including myself of course.
I decided to use x11vnc for remotely accessing my PC cause it is super convenient.
A few days into the home office and suddenly the remote keyboard acts weird, with random keypresses that I didn't do, and then the letter L was written over and over like it was stuck.
Assuming a bug in x11vnc, I restart it several times, but no luck. Whenever I open a terminal it is full of "L"s within a matter of seconds.
So I restart my PC remotely and reconnect the x11vnc, which is a huge pain in the arse if you have ever done it. And can you believe it... Still the same problem!
So, finally I gave up and went to the office to see what the hell was going on with my PC. I entered my office room and could not believe my eyes.
What had happened? The room cleaner had wet-wiped my desk. To create enough free space for that, she had first cleaned up the mess, putting the scattered paper nicely on the side, but then also *putting the bloody mouse on the bloody keyboard*.

Since 4 weeks i have during work my noise cancelling headphones on, thanks to the new open space office.
I don't even hear my phone ringing 😂

In the open space, EVERYONE can hear you scream.

So this happen on my previous workplace. I worked there for 4 years and quitting was the best decision I made while was there.

One manager/owner there was the most toxic, piece of shit, disrespectful cunt I have ever worked with. The type of guy that comes in and every person's productivity goes down in a heartbeat.

As he was a owner he usually came in later. This one morning it was 11-ish and a meeting with a client was happening and it was an open space.

He comes in.
He puts his laptop down.
He sits.
He screams of the top of his lungs:
- WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?
- ANTS ALL OVER MY DESK!!!
- I CAN'T WORK LIKE THIS.

He leaves for about 30 min.
He came back with a can of spray, and literally intoxicated the office and everybody had to stop working.

And there you go one of my last place's beautiful stories.

Could all this fucking weak sick people just stay at home instead of coming to our damn open space office and be coughing their guts out ever 20 seconds for all the office to listen! damn, have some respect for the healthy people and go lie in your bed.

Manager: we require people to work in the office but we'll give you a space to get as comfy as you want.

Me: *walk into the open space office, set my mechanical keyboard, plug in my noise cancelling headphones, start coding and mumbling every now and then*

Manager: keyboard is distracting others and we don't allow headphones as we want to be able to speak to you when we feel like it.

Why is it so uncomfortable working in an open space office!

I hate open space offices for following reasons
- bright environment (I cannot turn off the light just for my own)
- noises (talking, discussions, chewing)
- requests and questions
- people

But I still cannot afford to be in my own office room yet.
Now I have to wear a cap inside the office like a mad-hatter and plug my ears with earphones even without playing any music.

So, now that companies are used to "WFH", maybe we can agree upon a better office for tech companies?

I do actually think the more "ideal" tech company office wouldn't have to be expensive.

It can be smaller. Any tech company worth it's salt should have discovered in the last few months that it's not just devs who can work from home. Sales, support, management — you really don't need to fight your way through highway traffic or cram yourself into a sweaty subway every day.

There's value in having an office. Not everyone can fit a good workspace in their apartment.

But we could at least center it around:

1. A bunch of small, completely soundproof isolation booths, for those who need a focus space, and can't find a silent spot at home.

2. A social lounge space, a communal living room with couches, a bar, creative relaxing stuff, whiteboards, etc. WFH can become depressing even for the most antisocial employees, chilling on a couch with some coworkers to brainstorm ideas or chat about random tech is valuable for building good relationships with your team.

The "open plan office" with rows of desks and monitors, no matter how luxuriously decorated with vertical gardens and hipster desks from reclaimed wood, can go die a fiery painful death.

I either want to work, or socialize.

Open plan offices (and it's even more dystopian suicide-inducing cousin, the cubicle) are like being unable to choose between fucking and a blowjob, so you end up humping a navel.

Oh, and conference rooms, go fuck yourself as well. I want to be able to minimize your ugly face if you plan to talk about company financial reports for 2 hours.

Who invented the open space office layout? If you're as unlucky as me, you end up sitting next to the protein junkie who pops open a tin of tuna mixed with some other shit that's there just because it smells horrible almost hourly, or you end up next to the PM whose desk is gossip central and by the end of the day you know "Sheila" is sleeping with her brother in law, and "Steve" has a tiny weiner.

I don't know how recruitment goes outside of the Netherlands, but here they can be very very aggressive due to the scarcity of programmers.
One was even so blunt that he called the office I was working and asked to be connected to me with some bullshit story. Now you have to understand that this was a small company, so small that it was one open space. You can imagine how I felt when he was asking me questions and offering me work while the rest of the people could actually hear me. I got mad at the guy and refused.

What are your weirdest recruiter stories? Beside LinkedIn spam...

Can we rant about coworking spaces?

I like the coworking office concept and I love this desk I have for myself, I like this building, the supervisor is sweet and I made new clients here...

But I hate one of my "neighbours".

We have several office rules and he constantly breaks them.

No music allowed without headphones. Nope, gotta listen to shitty radio straight from the smartphone speaker.

No loud conferences or phone talks. Nah, let's set the volume to the max. And leave the phone behind and let it ring loudly forever.

You can only occupy one desk unless you rent more. In comes his coworker who keeps occupying an extra desk for free and who's as loud as he is. And bring the kids because hey, growing up bored inside a office is good for them.

And today's newest: no eating in the office. Coworker brought her kid who set up a -dinning table- on the extra desk and began eating her lunch leftovers. It wouldn't have been so bad and I wouldn't have noticed except the office was overflowed with the stench of overheated pasta.

This is a big office. I had to open the windows. I can still feel the smell. It's nauseating.

I didn't say anything because it's not the kid's fault they didn't take her to the building's canteen space. But at the risk of making enemies where I shouldn't, I need to have a "fun" talk with someone.

We have an open space at the office, and you can hear things people say in their teams meetings.
Most common question is: "When do you think you will be done with ... task?"

Dear recruiter,

Open space is not a perk.
If someone tells you they want remote, not bit of remote or any other indication,
Why would you ask how much remote is ok?

If someone tells you "i want open space" would you ask "how much open space? Like half office?" No, you wouldn't.
But for sure, what is not acceptable when someone tells you they want remote is answering "that's a shame" if you want to get a developer a job, work, if you want to get cash because of a developer then do that.

I have noticed I have had great success using another co-worker as a metaphorical rubber duck (sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally). It improves my productivity vastly. However, I know that it probably distracts others when I am using them in that way.

That's why I want to buy a literal rubber duck and talk to it. I could do it very quietly and most of my close co-workers use noise-cancelling headphones 80% of time while sitting at their desks. My only concern is other people passing by my desk would think that I am weird. My desk is in an open space and several people pass by it every hour. (however on my floor besides developers we have HR, marketing and people from high up who might be unfamiliar with the rubber duck method).

Is it unprofessional to talk to a rubber duck at the office?

Went to steal a tool from my father's office. That was 3 hours ago..
Didn't find the tool (more labels for a label machine, I'm marking everything), still found lots more stuff, filled the space in my office that took me a week to open and now I have like days off stuff to unmount, reuse,... And didn't find the fucking labels...

Being forced to leave the serenity of my home office where I'm happy and not riddled with depression to work from an open work space with long shared desks. I can't effing wait!

Based on the current trend of show-your-workspace pictures doing the rounds, let me ask this...

How important is your workspace to you, specifically in an office environment, i.e. type of setup, amount of desk space, open plan/cubicle/office, number of colleagues on your proximity, noise pollution, etc., to your overall productivity and performance? And have you/are you able to do anything about?

Aside from simple programs I wrote by hand-transcribing code from the "Basic Training" section of 3-2-1 Contact magazine when I was a kid in the '80s, I would say the first project I ever undertook on my own that had a meaningful impact on others was when I joined a code migration team when I was 25. It was 2003.

We had a simple migration log that we would need to fill out when we performed any work. It was a spreadsheet, and because Excel is a festering chunk of infected cat shit, the network-shared file would more often than not be locked by the last person to have the file open. One night after getting prompted to open the document read-only again, I decided I'd had it.

I went to a used computer store and paid $75 out of pocket for an old beater, brought it back to the office, hooked it to the network, installed Lunar Linux on it, and built a simple web-based logging application that used a bash-generated flat file backend. Two days later, I had it working well enough to show it to the team, and they unanimously agreed to switch to it, rather than continue to shove Excel's jagged metal dick up our asses.

My boss asked me where I was hosting it, as such an application in company space would have certainly required his approval to procure. I showed him the completely unauthorized Linux machine(remember, this was 2003, when fortune 500 corporations, such as my employer, believed Ballmer's FUD-spew about Linux being a "virus" was real and not nonsense at all), and he didn't even hesitate to back me up and promise to tell the network security gestapo to fuck off if they ever came knocking. They never did.

I was later informed that the team continued to use the application for about five years after I left.

Having open space office is like having Slack with only one main channel

Reasons why you like open-space office model rather than more privacy such as a cubicle?

rant && !rant

so my company just relocated to another part of the city.

it took about 2-3 months of searching for a space till the management found a suitable place. then about one more month for settling on the details (price, when we move, etc). then another month of just waiting for the space to be ready ...
the actual move took 1 day ... just one day ...

so the new place
- is better placed (for me at least)
- has lots of nice pubs / restaurants around for lunch or just relaxing after work
- has great views from every office
- lots of extra space for everyone
- ok people (so far) working at the other companies in the same space
- everyone seems so much more relaxed and easygoing and happy at the new place

But:
- the ac is still not working (32 degrees Celsius outside, and our office is facing the sun almost all day)
- for the first days we were lacking blinds at the windows
- office was full of little stinky bugs and they still keep showing up when we open up the windows

So, overall pretty great ... so (rant part??) WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG TO MOVE HERE ??? (both before it was decided to move, about 4 years at the old place, and after)

also, relating to the topic of the week ... nothing code related was learned, much was gained, and a life lesson was obtained: if you don't like something, just change it as soon as you can

Noise!!!
I guess that is bound to happen when working in an open space.
People at my team love playing music from the computer speakers and talk loud. I moved to another corner of the office where people are not playing music aloud and talking less passionately :)
I bought noise canceling headphone, but i figured i don't like to put them on for a long time.

Seen in twitter
"What if developers dont work in an #OpenSpace office? What if the n of bugs start shrinking & apps get better? NOP b/c ur boss likes parties"

Couldnt agree more

I work in a small office (about five people) and probably once or twice a week, we will do a group order of delivery/take-out for lunch. I’m the most junior at the company, and often I end up asked to place the lunch order, so I put it on my personal card and have everyone pay me back. All of my other colleagues are quick to ask how much they owe and reimburse me, but on the occasions where my CEO joins the lunch order, he has never paid for his food or even offered to do so. I honestly don’t think it crosses his mind to wonder who paid for the meal, and I have a sneaking suspicion it’s often because my other colleagues simply pay for him. (I have another sneaking suspicion it’s because he’s a white man who has had a great deal of wealth his entire life.)

After the meal there’s always a conversation, initiated by my colleagues, in which everyone ask me how much they owe. We are in an open office space with our CEO, but he seems to be entirely oblivious to these conversations. I would love to be able to simply Venmo charge him, but alas he has made it clear that he is “anti-Venmo” (what?).

I’m feeling very bitter that he is in a position where he doesn’t have to think about the cost of a $14 salad, and frustrated that my other (wealthier) colleagues are all willing to eat the cost to avoid asking him to pay. He knows how much I make, but how do I gracefully make it clear that he should be expected to reimburse me like everyone else (and ideally, should do so without being prompted)?

Fuck the bureacracy.

It's so difficult being an solo entrepreneur due to outdated bureacracy.

I just wanted to have a current/ business bank account to separate txns related to the business from my personal account and GST ID to officially register the business and also avoid headaches with taxes in the future.

However, If you want business bank account in the name of business, you have to have an official registration for the business and GST is the easiest and affordable way for sole proprietorship. Since my work is basically online and can be done remote, it doesn't make sense to waste money renting or buying an office space, getting electricity coonection or pay other related expenses which is necessary to have to show as proof of existence.

So I went ahead and purchased a virtual office plan and applied for GST with required documents. However, the bureacrat rejected the application. The informed about it to the biz where I purchased this virtual office and they had a meeting with the bureacrat and they were told virtual office address can't be allowed.

They told had no such issues in last few years and now on they are gonna have to stop providing virtual office to register GST. That was one of the main reason people went with virtual office.

Now I won't be able to open a business bank account.

I won't be able to signup for payment gateway networks. They ask for GST ID.

I won't be able to complete Paypal business registration.

I may have to expose my personal address on invoices or otherwise lie on it.

I will have to use my savings account for any expense related to it.

Also by end of this fiscal year, I probably gonna have to deal with tax issues.

POLL:
What kind of office do u prefer working at?
1. Big open space (with tables and no separations)
2. Open space with cubicles
3. Medium room (3-5 ppl)

And did ur preference change due to covid?

In a quiet, closed space unhindered by distractions.

For me (and I'd imagine, many others here), constant conversations in the background, people walking by, etc absolutely kill my focus and keep me from getting work done. Working from home helps a bit, but my neighbors provide plenty of their own distractions.

Honestly, I'll take a broom closet with a laptop, headphones and an Ethernet jack over any other open office design.

In a country, a long time ago there was a programmer by the name of Alex. He was a programming genius and apart from a few hours of sleep, he was busy developing unique programs for new generation technology firms. Alex was a bachelor and he happily and proudly lived the way he wanted to. He did not have duties, authority over him, bosses to report to, children to take care of, and distractions. He could sit and code for the entire day without getting any break or feeling a bit tired. However, he had no idea that everything in his life was soon going to turn around. Before Marriage: The Bachelor’s Life Alex was the epitome of a modern ‘Play Boy ‘ or every man’s dream. He was fairly dressed, had a classy house, a snazzy car, and a good-paying job. He was in the habit of spending his mornings drinking coffee while browsing through the different coding topics. He comes in the afternoon and spends the evening part of the day with his friends. Life has never been this good. Alex was able to work hard and the more he was innovative, he enjoyed it. It illustrates how a young person would sit for many hours coding at night and not bother about other people around him. He was alone as a bird and as per him, that’s what he wanted to be. He had no peer to tell the truth to, no wife to prepare meals for, no maids to babysit his mess. A man could chow down a pizza for breakfast, lunch, and supper with not even a raised eyebrow from onlookers. He was profiting from living the best life he possibly could. After Marriage: Married Life: Alex & Sarah The climax for Alex is when he marries Sarah on a sunny morning on a fine day. Young people met, and after becoming enamored, started a family and got married to find a new home. Sarah was friendly with people and it was very easy for her to make friends; however, she had little knowledge of technology. Alex had it in his mind that marriage does not change the life you lead and how wrong he was. It was a fairy-tale to have such a perfect life for several days after the marriage. Their nights would be spent in front of the television set with their arms wrapped around each other, eating takeout. Despite this, when the number of days stretched into weeks, and the weeks into months, Alex felt the beginning of a shift in his behavior. The Coding Cave That Transformed into A Home Office Due to the pandemic the coding cave Alex used to have became a home office. Sarah had made up her mind to open her business from home, therefore, she required a home office. Thus, she moved inside the cubicle that Alex had created as his coding cave and left him with no space to code. He now had to code in the living room, because Sarah would incessantly request him to either lower the auditory input of the keys he was typing or to switch off the LCD screen. The Once-Clean Apartment Turns into a Mess Alex was a neat freak, and he adored tidiness, especially in his apartment. But after marriage, his once clean and neat-looking apartment was changed into a dirty one. Although Sarah was not very neat, she used to litter her things anywhere she felt like without being conscious of it. Alex was a programmer and his coding notes were mixed with Sarah's business papers, it irritated him so much. Alex’s to-do list before marriage The to-do list before marriage only comprised coding-related tasks. At marriage, however, he seemed to have developed a longer list of things to do than ever before. Instead of just going to the grocery store to buy some food, Alex seemed to have endless tasks to do mostly around the house. He had to cook for himself, sweep the house, and wash the dishes among other things. This was a new world as far as he was concerned. The Pizza Days Are Over Gone there is no more time for Alex could eat pizza in the morning, afternoon as well and evening. Sarah was very conscious of what she took as food or what her family took as food and therefore ensured that Alex took healthy home-cooked foods. He could not have the pizza anymore but the meals prepared by Sarah were really tasty. Conclusion Therefore from a life before marriage to the life after marriage, it was evident that Alex led two different lives. He went from a playful man with not much responsibility to a man with more responsibilities as a husband and a father. Still, he wouldn’t have it any other way, despite these changes. Later he cherished Sarah and the life they had, and nothing in this world could make him exchange what he had now. Essentially, it was a tricky business being married, but a blessing, and an addition of love, company, and much hilarity too. Therefore, if you are a bachelor reading this, embrace your coding cave and your pizza days because once you utter the words ‘I do,’ all those will be things of the past.But trust me, it's all worth it.