Whoever thought huge open plan offices were a good idea needs shot in the fucking face with a brick-gun

Got migrated from 3-nerd room to 18 person open office. Even call centers have cubicles, but noooo.

Who the FCK invented open plan offices?

I can see how the morons are rubbing their two cells together:
"Who on earth would like to have some quiet when thinking? Thinking is for nerds! Sales people make money and they like to yell all over the F!#!#! place.

Fck this. Turning in my resignation today.

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.

The exit interview with an ex boss.

While working there, we had regular meetings every other week. Discussing current work, equipment requests, technology, sometimes office politics. At some point we discussed that our team was moved to an open-plan office and how I regarded this as detrimental to our productivity and satisfaction. Of course we sometimes had different opinions, but it was an amicable atmosphere. My boss also always carried a personal organizer and sometimes wrote notes during these meetings.

Later I resigned. Him becoming more and more abusive was a major reason, and I think he knew he had crossed a line. So the day of the exit interview came...

In a professional setting, you'd thank each other for the good collaboration. Maybe laugh about one or two points from the past. And then wish each other success for the future and say farewell.

Not there. Not with him in the exit interview.

Instead, he apparently went through a list in his personal organizer. A list of every single thing we ever disagreed at. And roasted me for each. single. item. "Back when you said x... you can't really say it like that". Or "remember that time when you were against open-plan offices? Let me tell you, that's just your opinion. There are no actual arguments against them, it's just a matter of taste". And that went on and on and on. Like a final reckoning. Like he needed to get revenge. I hope that carnage made him happy, because it made *me* happy to have had resigned.

And it was fucking unprofessinal, because this is the management equivalent of stomping your foot in rage and anger, shouting "no no nooo I'm right! I! am! Riiiiiiight! *stomp*".

> Worst work culture you've experienced?

It's a tie between my first to employers.

First: A career's dead end.
Bosses hardly ever said the truth, suger-coated everything and told you just about anything to get what they wanted. E.g. a coworker of mine was sent on a business trip to another company. They had told him this is his big chance! He'd attend a project kick-off meeting, maybe become its lead permanently. When he got there, the other company was like "So you're the temporary first-level supporter? Great! Here's your headset".

And well, devs were worth nothing anyway. For every dev there were 2-3 "consultants" that wrote detailed specifications, including SQL statements and pseudocode. The dev's job was just to translate that to working code. Except for the two highest senior devs, who had perfect job security. They had cooked up a custom Ant-based build system, had forked several high-profile Java projects (e.g. Hibernate) and their code was purposely cryptic and convoluted.
You had no chance to make changes to their projects without involuntarily breaking half of it. And then you'd have to beg for a bit of their time. And doing something they didn't like? Forget it. After I suggested to introduce automated testing I was treated like a heretic. Well of course, that would have threatened their job security. Even managers had no power against them. If these two would quit half a dozen projects would simply be dead.

And finally, the pecking order. Juniors, like me back then, didn't get taught shit. We were just there for the work the seniors didn't want to do. When one of the senior devs had implemented a patch on the master branch, it was the junior's job to apply it to the other branches.

Second: A massive sweatshop, almost like a real-life caricature.
It was a big corporation. Managers acted like kings, always taking the best for themselves while leaving crumbs for the plebs (=devs, operators, etc). They had the spacious single offices, we had the open plan (so awesome for communication and teamwork! synergy effects!). When they got bored, they left meetings just like that. We... well don't even think about being late.
And of course most managers followed the "kiss up, kick down" principle. Boy, was I getting kicked because I dared to question a decision of my boss. He made my life so hard I got sick for a month, being close to burnout. The best part? I gave notice a month later, and _he_still_was_surprised_!
Plebs weren't allowed anything below perfection, bosses on the other hand... so, I got yelled at by some manager. Twice. For essentially nothing, things just bruised his fragile ego. My bosses response? "Oh he's just human". No, the plebs was expected to obey the powers that be. Something you didn't like? That just means your attitude needs adjustment. Like with the open plan offices: I criticized the noise and distraction. Well that's just my _opinion_, right? Anyone else is happily enjoying it! Why can't I just be like the others? And most people really had given up, working like on a production line.

The company itself, while big, was a big ball of small, isolated groups, sticking together by office politics. In your software you'd need to call a service made by a different team, sooner or later. Not documented, noone was ever willing to help. To actually get help, you needed to get your boss to talk to their boss. Then you'd have a chance at all.

Oh, and the red tape. Say you needed a simple cable. You know, like those for $2 on Amazon. You'd open a support ticket and a week later everyone involved had signed it off. Probably. Like your boss, the support's boss, the internal IT services' boss, and maybe some other poor sap who felt important. Or maybe not, because the justification for needing that cable wasn't specific enough. I mean, just imagine the potential damage if our employees owned a cable they shouldn't!

You know, after these two employers I actually needed therapy. Looking back now, hooooly shit... that's why I can't repeat often enough that we devs put up with way too much bullshit.

After googling "fuck whoever thought of open plan offices" out of pure rage, I found this gem of a website, now I'm happily surprised I'm not alone. :)

After this pandemic I cannot return to open plan offices. I learnt so much about aerosols, breath, air circulation and germs... I cannot go back... just the thought of it... disgusting

Just visited my new office! Tech offices are the best IMO. Open office plan, fully stocked pantry, bean bags, and a lot of cool stuff. Wayyy better than my previous job where we literally had desks and a coffee machine.

Anyone have success dealing with nondevs and explaining the “zone” and to not interrupt if I’m programming and would like to share their techniques? I’m the only developer in the company I work for and all my coworkers/bosses don’t get it and even give me grief about using headphones in the office. I’ve actually gone into vacant offices off the open floor plan to try and program uninterrupted, but I don’t know how long I can keep that up without catching flak.

Open-plan offices are amazing. Fuck you developer who sometimes really needs some quiet time​ to be able to THINK.

!rant

You know, I sort of hope that open-plan offices become illegal after this Corona crisis.

We all know most companies don't give a flying fuck about the productivity, opinion or wellbeing of their "lowly work force". OTOH maybe, just maybe, do politicians care about lowering the risk of such a pandemic repeating. Pass some laws for reasonable working conditions already!

Worst part of being dev :
Open plan offices and people pulling you out of the "Zone" - Manager, PMs, QA , other devs. There is such thing as ' momentum ' ! :/