Had an interview, was told the group all sits in an open room? Wtf?

Makes it easier to F with your coworkers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i2rlymfLbE

Those damn cubicle walls cost way more than you think. When we set up our office we told everyone they could have whatever chair they wanted. That was very popular.

I liked it wrote:

How many people are we talking about in one open area? My team had four people working in our bullpen. I can see how it would get terrible pretty quickly if you had more than six people or so all sharing one space.

It was a lot less noisy than you would think. People generally wanted to get on with their work so when any impromptu meetings took place people kept their voices down. As your group would all be working on the same project any impromptu meeting involving one of the group was usually relevant to the others anyway so they would stop and listen in. We certainly had a lot less formal meetings. If somebody asked for a status update meeting the usual response was "Why, have you been sleeping at your desk?"

In my experience cubicles have led to people speaking louder and more formal meetings and, of course, PowerPoint slides. Which leads to the question: Which is the greater achievement, the Apollo program being completed without computers, or the Apollo program being completed without PowerPoint slides?

My entire office is this way. 3-4 SVPs get offices but the rest is all open. We used to not even have assigned desks. At least your team will have a separate room. Just get a screen privacy filter and a good pair of closed-back headphones. It's really the noise that will get to you. And stop streaming Twitch at work.

Hey man... it's your lucky day because I will actually give you some advice from a guy who has been there.

I am going to be 100% honest here. This post kinda freaks me out because it is so similar to my situation a few years ago.

I was making $70K at a bank and took a lateral move to make some more money ($87K) in an office like you described.

It was one of the worst decisions I've ever made. The extra cash was nice, but the working conditions were horrible... so loud all the time, and all the sound echoed throughout the entire building 24/7.

I worked in a really detailed field (making spreadsheets) that requires 100% focus at all times and I just couldn't do quality work in that setting. Constant interruptions and noise led to lots of mistakes and errors. After a couple years, I threw in the towel and looked elsewhere.

Landed a new job where I have peace & quiet and a normal cube... my work quality has skyrocketed. I recomend avoiding this situation altogether unless you are a sales person (which it sounds like you're not)

This sh*t gets started by a-type extroverts who think it's great ...everyone can hear their voice and why they are superior to the peons. Truth.

The introverts don't want to raise a fuss and get swept up in the tide. You find phone conversations are overheard by all and when trying to concentrate you will often fail.

The company I worked for was going to the open plan mainly to squeeze out more space when I retired, I would have hated it and even as an introvert would have argued loudly against it. It is loved by most (not all!) millennials who are more interested in socializing and calling their moms and dads for cash to pay for the new furniture they want for the oversized home they bought right out of school.

Never take more money over the workplace environment if it is not a LOT more that you can save while looking for a better place elsewhere. You will be miserable and stress is a steady assassin. Think about ways you can work for yourself and not be dependent on others.

Good luck.

P.S. Retirement is awesome, get here ASAP.

One of the downsides of working so close to your co-workers in that type of setup is the background noise. Listening to your co-workers conversation on the phone, listening to their music blaring from their headphones, hearing them pound on the keyboard when they type (i freaking hate that)....

Also food noises. Listening to people eat. Smelling their food, bad breath, whatever. Loud chewing noises should be illegal, as should that gum that you can smell from 100 feet away. Yuk.

Ha, okay, I said that I liked my open office, but I can see that my experience is very different from others'. First of all, size of the team definitely matters. A 3-5 person group in a bullpen can be good, but if our entire 50+ person office had all been in a single open space, that would have been chaos. My concept of an open office is more separate open spaces for each team or department rather than a single giant open space for everyone.

Also, I guess you need to be on the same page as far as work ethic and amount of time spent on non-work stuff. I'm not against spending a few minutes chatting socially or making a personal call every once in a while, but I probably would have hated the open office thing if my coworkers had been the type to want to spend 45 minutes of every hour yammering about stuff that had nothing to do with work.

Flagpole wrote:

Agile

Yup.

How much did it suck?

100% The worst place I worked at also expected you to go to lunch with them everyday. Best thing that happened was I got laid off and work someplace normal now. No Agile BS, no Project Management (R) principles BS, AND no Rational or waterfall BS. We just get the job done. If forced to work at one of those places, I'll punch the clock or start my own company.

The arrangement completely eliminates candor. You need a place where you can criticize your fellow employee's work (and that includes destructive criticism as well as constructive), and that can't happen in a completely open environment.

runhills wrote:

hearing them pound on the keyboard when they type (i freaking hate that)....

+1

Although it is a great personality test. I can tell there is a moron I need to avoid sitting at that abused keyboard.