[paulcole]

Despite what every open office critic says, it's very possible to be productive at work in an environment that is not designed to meet their very exacting needs.

You're not painting the Mona Lisa, you're working on some app or spreadsheet. It's called work for a reason. Learn to make do.

[drakonka]

While it is possible to put up with a lot and still churn out work, many tech companies nowadays try to make their office and facilities a perk of the job. "Look how cool our office is. We have twenty coffee machines on each floor, a massive beautiful kitchen and bar, meeting rooms with couches! A game room. Come work for us!"

Companies that treat their office as a selling point for employees should expect to be criticised when that selling point falls short in the most important area of all - where the people they are trying to attract actually sit and work all day.

[VLM]

My advice for young devs is to pay very close attention at interview time to who's using those perks.

Ah nice k-cup machine collection but no k-cups have to bring those from home. Nice bar with beer keg tap, pity its a firing offense to drink on the job and that kegger is only for sales execs to woo customers. Nice couches in the meeting rooms, those managers and directors sitting in meetings sure look comfortable sitting there. I worked at a place with a genuine foozball table and getting caught playing foozball was a euphemism for getting downsized the next quarter, the thing seriously had dust on it like it was cursed. Maybe it was. All of that stuff is supposed to be for the trendy software dev, but its not.

Its sort of the democratization of the executive washroom. We no longer have solid marble and gold plated toilets for the executive washroom, that's so last century, today we have couches that only director level and above can sit on during meetings and kegerators that only customers can drink out of and foozball tables that no one uses. Looks nice though, doesn't it?

[taurath]

It tells me that you're not a valued professional, you're a line worker. There can't possibly be any reason why you'd need privacy to have difficult conversations or focus on important tasks.

[paulcole]

My open office has a conference room for meetings. Otherwise I just focus at my desk. I manage to make do.

[taurath]

Because you manage to make do, everyone else must be whiners or special snowflakes? I've been in many office setups and am objectively more productive and have better succeeding teams. Thankfully I have plenty of options now and don't have to put up with "making do".

[quickben]

Our c++ dev team sits next to an ops and a customer support team. The later ones are always on their phones.

Taking notes does jackshit. Best I could muster were construction noise isolating headphones.

Mona Lisa was a one time, frontend job :)