At our office, directors have their own offices, the rest of us is spread out over the workspace, divided into 'islands' per team or part of a team, but no cubicles or dividers between desks. Most of us do need to discuss with nearby colleagues enough that cubicles/dividers would be pretty annoying, so if someone needs to do something requiring particular privacy or concentration, or they just want to call someone while suffering from particularly loud neighbours, they'd have to go to a meeting room/table. Haven't seen any noise-canceling headphones yet.
View original postA 100% agile workspace has no offices. None. Not even for directors and VPs. No cubicles. No assigned seating at all. If there is a desk phone at your seat, you have to log on every morning and log out at end of day because tomorrow you might be sitting somewhere different. Everything is open seating with an 18 inch high plastic divider between (most) workstations. Others are just like long tables with 4 or 5 computer ports per side.
I've heard about this before, from one of your main competitors actually, and it sounds pretty weird.
View original postThe kool-aid explanation is such open workspaces foster collaboration and increase individual empowerment. They increase worker morale and job satisfaction. This is such bullshit that pointing it out makes one feel like Captain Obvious.
Yeah... You can achieve all that while still having assigned seating. Surely the only real point of refusing to use assigned seating is that it allows you to have fewer desks than employees.
View original postWhy are we really doing this? Coincidently, we are condensing from three floors to one at the same time. So the inescapable fact that we are reducing our square foot per employee ratio by two-thirds must be a side benefit. Amirite?
Heh, subtle.
View original postThis will suck big time. We will have 220+ people vying for 225 seats. Instead of 3 kitchens, we will have 1. Instead of 6 bathrooms, we will have 2. Empowerment and increased satisfaction my ass.
You don't have any regulations over there about the minimum number of bathrooms, based on the number of employees, in work buildings?