Anyone else tire of sitting in the cube? (aka I want an office!) 8

[Fasteddie82]

I've been in various engineering jobs for about 10 of the last 13 years. In each one, I was in some form of cubicle. The best was probably my previous place, where the cube walls were about six feet high (can't see over the walls unless you really try), and the room was relatively quiet. My current cube is probably one of the worse ones I've had. It's only four feet tall (folks can easily see over the walls), and its in a huge room where someone is always on the phone, or having some sort of impromptu discussion at their desk.

Not to mention, the folks who talk on speakerphone at their desk. Those guys deserve their own Dilbert comic.

Listening to music on headphones helps, but dang, if it isn't still difficult to concentrate on what I'm doing with all of the noise in the background.

Anyone else tire of sitting in cube land? At this point, I think I'd probably accept a pay cut if I just had an office with a door.....

 

[GregLocock]

This is the official story:

Even the dumbest engineering supervisor realises that the productivity of the more able engineers suffers in a cubicle environment, due to noise and interruptions. However the rest of the team gains by unfettered access to the wisdom of the relevant engineer. So on average the team's productivity is enhanced, at the expense of the guy being interrupted.


Now like every theory it has unintended consequences. Roughly speaking if I am interrupted in certain tasks it takes me about an hour to get back to where I was. This rather peeves me so when I am doing that sort of job I (a) change my location (b) switch my phone off and (c) use antinoise headphones and (d) switch email off.

This is, at root, why your boss is paid much more than you to do an easier job. That position is a reward for team players who logically compete to improve team performance even when it hurts their own output in the hopes of promotion (aka Tournament Theory).

Tournament theory fails when team members are not promoted but new talent is brought in from outside, or where the rewards are not big enough, or the system is obviously non transparent.





Cheers

Greg Locock


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[mtu1972]

One of my early jobs had no cubicle walls. Pods of 4 stations (drafting board; reference table; and desk top) separated by aisles so the department manager could sit in his office and see all that went on. Our department (Civil/Structural) of 30 to 35 was separated by a gap (future expansion) from the Electrical group. On the opposite side of the building were the Mechanical and Planning/General Arrangement groups. Separating the two sides were the print room and file rooms. All 4 groups were laid out in a similar manner.

Upper Management was in a nicer office area adjacent to the work area.

The idea was that because we were being directly supervised we would be more productive. When you got really involved in your design you would be pelted with rubber bands being shot at you, or even worse the drafting eraser bags. Somehow management never seemed to be paying attention when those things happened.

gjc

 

[oldestguy]

Think about the owners and some of the overhead costs of running a business. With competition out there the office overhead situation is a cost that enters into the decisions of how to spend money versus returns. While separate rooms are nice in some respects, there is an overhead cost per employee that needs to be considered. For my beginning years all offices were open, young engineers and draftsmen sat on stools at drafting tables, not desks. The ratio of overhead to payroll was kept as low as possible. We learned to keep our minds on our work, in spite of noise. As we moved into management, with higher salaries, the same ratio of overhead to payroll applied and we had separate offices. Somehow we never complained at those earlier year open spaces since it was a job and conditions at the competitor were the same. We were well aware of the competitors and valued our jobs. The question than is posed to those who want a better work area: Is your production earnings for the company such that it should pay for more overhead goodies? This is something management has to consider even if it may seem unfair. That is one of the perks for being a manager.

 

[MikeHalloran]

The four foot high cubicles are hardly better than tape lines on the floor.
Okay, you can hang stuff from them, but they don't help otherwise.

Six-ish foot high cubicles, faced with noise absorbent, and installed on a carpeted floor, are not bad, except for speakerphones and really loud talkers.
... and a secretary who would trigger a stink bomb of intensely floral scent, that you could taste for hours, just as she left for the day, right on time.

My favorite office was small and odd-shaped, lined with cheap paneling and carpet and acoustical ceiling tile, all of which absorbed and re-released vapors from smoking Prince Albert in a pipe, all day, every day for ten years. It was like walking into a humidor, which is a good thing, unless you're a nonsmoker of course. It's since been ripped out and remodeled, of course, but I was at my most productive (working at solo activities mostly) there and then.

My second favorite 'office' was a workbench in a laboratory where the entire electronic and mechanical staff hung out. Communication among the team was easy and instantaneous. Concentration on solo activities was difficult, as was getting anything done on projects not specifically requested by the boss, who also had a desk there, sort of at the head of the room.

I have had a couple of nice offices with outside-facing windows. I liked being able to turn around once in a while and look at what the rest of the world was doing. ... but I think the nice offices also made me a more visible target for internal politics, so the positions didn't last as long as I'd have liked.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[MikeHalloran]

Or, you could sign up or field work, and maybe get a nice pickup truck for your office.

... after a decade or more; new guys get the ratty trucks with bent frames, rusted out floorpans, and no working radio, right?



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[loki3000]

Even the dumbest engineering supervisor realises that the productivity of the more able engineers suffers in a cubicle environment, due to noise and interruptions. However the rest of the team gains by unfettered access to the wisdom of the relevant engineer. So on average the team's productivity is enhanced, at the expense of the guy being interrupted.
isn't that actually better in a non-cubicle environment (gain for the rest of the team), as they can speak among themselves uninterrupted, without leaving the computer?

 

[SomptingGuy]

Mixed feelings...

I had my own little office when I first got out of university. Small, in a portakabin (temporary structure) and no PC (too junior for my own PC). Just a phone, desk, filing cabinet. But it had walls, corners and a door. Not good for productivity (no PC), but a good place to store bits of hardware.

Since then I've been in cubes, open plan and more recently, pods (4 people). One thing I do like about the current situation is that there is quite a lot of passing traffic as I'm on a bit of a thoroughfare. Zoning out is quite easy if I want to. I get infinite focus if I look above the 4" pod wall.


- Steve

 

[moltenmetal]

The reason people have cubes instead of offices is that it's a cheaper and more flexible use of space without requiring massive lease-hold improvements.

I had to start working at home 1 day per week to get sufficient peace and quiet to do anything requiring uninterrupted concentration. Unfettered access means continual unscheduled interruption, sometimes as frequently as every 5 minutes.

Headphones help with the noise- you'll see few here who don't have headphones on at least part of the day.

I'm grateful for a cube: I've seen another arrangement I call the "slave galley", where teams working on a project are expected to relocate so that their desks are all adjacent to one another to facilitate communication. Nobody has any kind of private space that they can retreat to. That arrangement is beneath the dignity of a professional in my opinion.

 

[ctopher]

There was a study once that shorter cubicle walls help with communication. They also force 'some' people to be quieter.
Although there are the ones that don't care.
If you want a hard wall office, work on being promoted to manager.
I always pop in my iPod earphones when it gets too loud. Our cubicle walls are 4' high.

Chris
SolidWorks 13
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[DRWeig]

Have you not read the complete works of Dilbert? It's time.

Best to you,

Goober Dave

Haven't see the forum policies? Do so now: Forum Policies

 

[Jboggs]

Be thankful. One past employer saw truly amazing benefits from employing lean manufacturing principles on the manufacturing floor, so (like a few other misguided companies) naturally thought they could apply the same "principles" to their design engineering process. Not that the idea is necessarily a bad one, there could be many advantages to the approach. But as usual the devil is in the details.

The consultant they hired was a true Kool-Aid drinker who thought he could make ANY process more efficient and more reliable by simply applying the very same ideas in all cases, and compromise was not in his vocabulary. The result? They spent $250K redesigning and rebuilding the engineering design area to create a theoretical "flow thru" process where the engineers literally sat at one long table with book-end size dividers between them close enough that they could literally hand their work from one to the next. Phones? No, you don't need them. They're not part of the design process. Catalogs? Reference books? Project files? Personal items and photos? Ditto. Talk about a painful transition! Morale and productivity both plummeted. Duh!! We were living in the middle of a live Dilbert comic strip!

Like I said - be thankful.

 

[TheTick]

Cube sure beats sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring before unemployment runs out.

 

[1gibson]

I like Greg's take on it. It's win-win *if* everybody is on the same page. If 10 minutes of my time saves someone else an hour of fumbling around to come up with a shaky conclusion, then great. As long as I don't get dinged for not getting all my other tasks done as quickly as desired, I am happy to help. I could "waste" all day and not cross a single thing off my to-do list, but maybe I've saved the group 50+ man-hours, they all learned something, and they produce more accurate results. If I am knee deep in something time sensitive, people will understand and come back later, get someone else's opinion, or give it a shot and ask if I can look it over when complete.

Maybe I am lucky that there is no real sense of competition, as I can see that completely ruining the strategy. A team is people with various skill sets working together to accomplish a common goal. A competition is people with the same skill set working to look better than everyone else.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Heck, my first 14 years working in engineering was in a 'Drawing room' with 60 other designers and draftsmen. The only 'cubes' were 3-sided affairs where the department heads sat where they could look out over their section of the office where their people were sitting at drawing boards. The only true offices (where you could close the door) was occupied by the chief engineer and the director of engineering. The head of R&D also had a true, although somewhat smaller, office. The rest of us, engineers included, were assigned drawing boards (this was pre-CAD/CAM). When we installed our first CAD system (back in 1977) the stations were in a semi-darkened room away for the rest of engineering (just because it was the only space available but this was later moved to an area carved out the drawing office space, but still with controlled lighting and high walls, but no doors).

The only way you could really tell the difference between Draftsmen and Engineers was by the way we dressed. Draftsmen generally wore white shirts with some wearing ties including a few bow-ties, but no suits or sportcoats. Supervisors, who also sat at drawing boards (just with no drafting machines) generally wore sweaters or sportcoats. Engineers, both degreed and non-degreed, and department managers, wore suit and ties. You could also tell by where you parked. Hourly employees, which included the draftsmen, had to park in the regular parking lot, outside the walls of the factory area, along with the other office personnel as well as the people from the shops, while salaried employees, which included all the executives, managers, supervisors and engineers, parked in assigned (with your name on them) spots in a smaller area inside the walls of the factory site right next to the main office building (which being in Michigan was a big deal during the winter). You could also tell when it came time for paychecks to be delivered (this was before direct deposit). If you were salaried you got paid once a month, but a secretary from payroll would personally hand deliver your check to you on the last working day of the month. If you were hourly, your check was dropped on your drawing board/desk every Friday, whether you were there or not.

Yes, those were the good old days.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[GregLocock]

Sorry I misdescribed our current layour, it is based on pods of 4 desks, with 4' partitions between pods.

Of course inevitably they try and squeeze 2 extra people in rather than expand, which leads to a certain amount of elbow banging, but all the guys who did time in Japanese engineering offices just say that we should be thankful to have a desk each.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[zeusfaber]

Our current configuration is open-plan: 72 desks shared between a hundred people - repeated about 70 times across the site. Book one online a month in advance or take your chances. No personal effects to be left on a desk overnight.

Brought in because somebody felt desks sitting empty on a day when somebody was on holiday or working away was a waste of money. At least it's shamed them into stopping saying that "Our people are our most valuable asset"

Now don't get me started on the car-park rationing.

A.

 

[SomptingGuy]

One old manager of mine declared a "clean desk policy" once. The response from the outspoken staff member of the department: "I don't want a desk then".

- Steve

 

[JohnRBaker]

I have a sign above my desk (I now have a true hard-walled office with a door and everything ;-) ) which reads:

"A clean desk
is the sign of a
sick mind"​

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[TGS4]

My take on the clean desk policy is this - if a cluttered desk shows a cluttered mind, what does an empty desk show?

(I have a hard-walled office, with windows on two sides...)