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cellioMy company is in the process of moving to a bigger space a few blocks down the street. There's been a lot of packing and move-logistics foo over the last few days, making it harder to continue to get work done. (I was chided for doing a build finishing at 11:50 against a noon shut-down.)
I saw the new space today for the first time since it was a vast unfinished area. It's kind of funky, but should be fairly nice in most ways when it's finished. (There are still unfinished bits, because no construction project is ever done on time.) There are a couple things that elicited the (silent) reaction of "heaven please save us from designers", but oh well. Most notable in this category is running a checkered carpet at an angle in rectangular rooms, giving the impression that the walls are at angles other than 90 degrees. Non-rectangular rooms would not be out of place in this company, but that's not what the advance diagrams showed.
The work spaces are smaller than I had been given to understand, by about two feet in both directions. I hope things fit the way I want them to, but I suspect they won't. We'll see.
More people than I initially expected will be affected by my need for a darker work area; I hope that doesn't pose a problem. Or we might hang curtains or something. Must consult "office"-mate and the aesthetics police. (Our "office" has walls on three sides, high but not to the ceiling, and is open on the fourth side. Only people at the director level rate real walls and doors.) They chose white light throughout; I find yellow to be much easier on the eyes. We'll fix that in my immediate area, though there's nothing I can do about public areas. It's mostly indirect light, at least, and I didn't notice a pronounced fluorescent flicker today.
I feel bad for our IT people, who are going to be working all weekend (I suspect) to get everything back up before Monday morning. I guess you know about that sort of thing when you take an IT job, but it still sounds like a hassle. I hope they get some time away next week to compensate -- but not on Monday. :-)
I saw the new space today for the first time since it was a vast unfinished area. It's kind of funky, but should be fairly nice in most ways when it's finished. (There are still unfinished bits, because no construction project is ever done on time.) There are a couple things that elicited the (silent) reaction of "heaven please save us from designers", but oh well. Most notable in this category is running a checkered carpet at an angle in rectangular rooms, giving the impression that the walls are at angles other than 90 degrees. Non-rectangular rooms would not be out of place in this company, but that's not what the advance diagrams showed.
The work spaces are smaller than I had been given to understand, by about two feet in both directions. I hope things fit the way I want them to, but I suspect they won't. We'll see.
More people than I initially expected will be affected by my need for a darker work area; I hope that doesn't pose a problem. Or we might hang curtains or something. Must consult "office"-mate and the aesthetics police. (Our "office" has walls on three sides, high but not to the ceiling, and is open on the fourth side. Only people at the director level rate real walls and doors.) They chose white light throughout; I find yellow to be much easier on the eyes. We'll fix that in my immediate area, though there's nothing I can do about public areas. It's mostly indirect light, at least, and I didn't notice a pronounced fluorescent flicker today.
I feel bad for our IT people, who are going to be working all weekend (I suspect) to get everything back up before Monday morning. I guess you know about that sort of thing when you take an IT job, but it still sounds like a hassle. I hope they get some time away next week to compensate -- but not on Monday. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-21 10:34 pm (UTC)Bringing new levels of literalism to the expression "eleventh hour", I see. :)
I feel bad for our IT people, who are going to be working all weekend (I suspect) to get everything back up before Monday morning. I guess you know about that sort of thing when you take an IT job, but it still sounds like a hassle.
I actually did a bunch of corporate moves as a temp, doing "desktop configuration", i.e. crawling around under desks stringing ethernet cables. Often temps are hired for just this sort of thing. It was good money.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-23 12:15 am (UTC)Well, the official charge was to work until noon, when IT would shut down, and then pack and get out of the way. I may have been one of the only people actually working Friday morning, but I wanted the safety of checking back into source control before moving. (That means the movers have to drop two hard drives to hose me.) Since nightly builds are done from the checked-in code, and breaking the build invites mockery and rubber chickens, I wanted to verify the build. Good thing I did, too; I'd forgotten to add a new file and things broke. But at least I will not get a rubber chicken when things come back up on Monday!
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Date: 2005-10-22 11:55 am (UTC)I also built a new firewall system with a new configuration, instituted a VOIP PBX, built two new machine rooms, and provided network and phone to everyone when they showed up Monday morning.
Maybe next week I'll get some time off.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-22 01:33 pm (UTC)Liveliness in the office
Date: 2005-10-23 07:03 pm (UTC)Anyway, I'm curious as to how productive you felt in your old office environment. Was it too understimulating? Conducive to enough motivation on your part? What do you find your productivity is affected by in the office environment? Do they allow music? Do you ever feel like you're in a Dilbert cartoon?
I like having my own personal workspace. I've been living in dorms on my University's campus since the beginning of last year. I find working in my own room to be much more preferable than working amidst other people who are making a cacophony of annoying noises. Classical music - through an internet radio medium - is a definite boon to my ability to concentrate and relax whilst studying or writing. Breaks once an hour with much needed stretching help a lot!
Would you choose to work at home if given the chance?
Questioningly,
- Inkhorn
Re: Liveliness in the office
Date: 2005-10-23 09:49 pm (UTC)Old: shared office, about 10x20 (three people); near other similar offices and next to the kitchen. We had a door but never closed it. Inside office; no windows. The walls were reasonably solid.
New: shared "pen", about 8x16 (two people); middle "pen" of a row of three. Most of the back wall goes to the ceiling (private office on the other side); rest of that and both side walls go up about 8 feet leaving a gap of a few feet). Fourth side has a token wall-let for about two feet and is otherwise open. Walls are really thin; the person with that private office was playing music today when I stopped by and it would have been distractingly loud in our office had anyone been working. Because of the walls (and their absence in places), light control is iffy. (There are no overhead lights -- or if there are, it'll only be a matter of time before I find and map the breaker box.)
While private offices are nice, with the right office-mate I like a shared office too. It leads to more collaboration without being massively inconvenient. I liked being able to casually overhear snippets of conversation from surrounding spaces because it helped keep me in the loop; I suspect the key to that working was those real walls, so it wasn't constant loud chatter. I find amplified sound to be much more annoying than ordinary conversation -- so speaker phones (the spawn of the devil!) and stereos are worse than in-person discussions. I don't know why that is. (With the speaker phone, it might just be that the local person has more of a tendency to shout.)
In my old space, I sat with my back against the back wall and with my monitor at the "wall" end of the opposite wall (not the "door" end). This meant that I looked at my monitor and, behind that, an unchanging wall. (My office-mate's desk faced mine and his monitor was behind my monitor, so either of us had to move to see the other.) This was a good arrangement. I'm replicating my setup in the new space (don't know yet what the office-mate is doing), but past the monitor I'll be seeing a changing work area across the "hall" from us (open seating, not pens), with variable lighting, and I suspect that's going to be more distracting. I'm thinking seriously about some sort of visual screen -- tall bookcases, long curtains hanging from the ceiling, or something of that sort. We'll have to see what it's like when everyone's there tomorrow. The visual issues ought to be fixable, especially as my manager is fully behind giving me what I need there; sound issues will be more challenging.
For all that, though, I would not work from home if given the choice. I want contact with my coworkers that doesn't require that someone say "yes, this is important enough to pick up a phone (or send email)". In addition, I want a cleaner separation between "work" and "home"; if I worked from home all the time there would be more blending of work activities and non-work activities and then I'd feel like I was working all the time (or so I suspect). Or if I didn't, my husband would. I like the idea that, most of the time, when I'm at home my time is my own.
Apropos of nothing, can you get an RSS feed for your weblog?
Re: Liveliness in the office
Date: 2005-10-23 11:55 pm (UTC)http://feeds.feedburner.com/inkhorn
I guess I should put a link on my blog?