| > At self-organizing firms you might be placed into a huge open office and given massive monitors. This is to normalize all communications and for more effective surveillance. Everything will be monitored either directly by a corporate arm employee, one of their barons or friends. This. I'm a compsci master-student and currently (since 2017/03) work at a big german tax-software company. This company is not a self-organizing firm, but has a clear hierarchy (from small groups of 5 ppl to several divisions with up to ~300 ppl. Nevertheless, they tried to adapt some aspects of thr american work big players - such as the open office concept. The situation there is even worse, as students/interns have to dynamically choose a random workplace every day. In the open office -filled with ~100 ppl in total- I felt surveillanced and could not concentrate on my current projects as every now and then someone passed my desk and glanced into my code etc. Lucky for me: I do have a pretty exotic status&job at this company and was able to get a company laptop that enabled me to wander from place to place within the company until I found a pretty isolated room for ~20 ppl (full with software testers). I managed to get access rights for this room and am officially allowed to work there. Although the ambient noise is worse than in open workplace (those software testers are chatty as shit :-) ...), I'm generally more concentrated and prefer wearing hearing protection now and then, instead of working in an panopticon. Conclusion: after my graduation I'm looking for a small/middle sized company and consider buzzwords like 'flat hierarchy', open office, free fruit, etc. as red flags. |