Another open space! Wheeeeee!!!!!
We’re going to be building out the space to create a environment really optimized for our great engineers, product managers, web developers, designers and quality engineers to all sit and work together. Very high energy, with a lot of thought given to providing the best possible place to design & build the features for the world’s largest professional network.
When the space is done in a couple of months, we’ll have room for another 120-150 people, and we’ll post pictures of the launch. But as a teaser, here is a quick 3D rendering of the type of stations we’re planning for the space:
What I find hard to believe is that the guy actually uses the word “teaser” for the most horrible, common, mediocre of office space setups, one that you can find (and suffer) anywhere on Earth. And 3D rendering? 3D RENDERING? They’ve used a CAD program to do a photo that you can find in any IKEA catalog?
This article is absolutely amazing. The more I read it, the less I understand it. Hasn’t anyone read Peopleware? Geez.
3 Comments
#1. Adam 11.13.2007
what an amazing place…geez i wish i worked there…not
With only looking at the picture:
Standard drawers…terrific, encourage people to store paper and horde things, that way when noone is having an interesting phone conversation in the open space and you’ve gotten tired of switching windows back and forth on your single monitor you can get up and walk to the printer and collect random pieces of paper to file diligently in your drawer. So when that useless idiot across the partition asks you for something you can pretend to look for it in your files before saying, i’m sorry it doesn’t seem to be here are you sure it was sent to me?
Also, no whiteboards…that way people need to go to meeting rooms to jot down ideas, but thats probably a good thing, that way ideas are planned scheduled events and nothing scary happens…besides you wouldn’t want to disrupt the other openspacers from eavesdropping on Paul talking to his new girlfriend…would you?
#2. adrian 11.27.2007
Adam Nash (not the Adam who left the comment above, mind you, but the author of the original article which inspired this post) really don’t like me adding my comments about this crappy idea. I’ve trackbacked this post to his, and also added a comment, and both haven’t appeared in his blog. So much for his “affinity for public speaking and product evangelism” (sic)
#3. Fernando Cassia 11.28.2007
Hi there!. Just paying a return courtesy visit to you, as you left a comment on my blog. Very nice blog you have, I must say, and I totally agree with you when you say: “the guy actually uses the word “teaser” for the most horrible, common, mediocre of office space setups, one that you can find (and suffer) anywhere on Earth”
When I looked at the picture I couldn’t help but thing… “how many ’50s “regular desks” would have fit into that space? And the answer was “two or three, at most”. So they have doubled the number of people per office in the last 50+ years, and removed any privacy whatsoever. Is that progress? I don’t think so!.
PS: If you read this and you can e-mail me (fcassia at gmail) I’d appreciate it. I’d like to do an e-mail interview with you. I’m interested in the angle of a former-microserf-turned-open-sauce-developer.
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