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Building a Cube Farm that Sucks Less? 110

Posted by Cliff from the coders-in-sardine-cans dept.
cubiclist asks: "It has been decreed that our company is moving from private offices to cubicles. We all know that Peopleware has hard data to warn us away from this, but it cannot be helped at this point. Now that we know that we are going into cubes, what can we do to make it suck less? In research on the web, I cannot find any advice on office layouts for developers in cubes. I have found some threads on improving cube interiors from places like ThinkGeek and Ikea, but I am really interested on some best practices for the overall layout of the floor.

"In our office, developers are all intermediate to senior. They have a good knowledge of the software package they are working on as well as the business that they are serving.

In this environment, people can generally work for a day or two without having to ask questions. If questions arise, people don't mind walking over to the right person. The cube vendors' breezy assertion that we'll boost productivity by being able to shriek out questions, and overhear conversations (naturally they'll all be related to what we're working on) doesn't seem to fit our work flows.

My guess is that we're basically going to want to retrofit our existing work patterns into a sub-optimal cube environment. We can design in some workrooms with full walls and doors that shut.

Here's what I'm thinking at the moment: Cubes should be quiet, quiet, quiet! Meetings, pair-programming, collaboration or highly hairy coding should be restricted to workrooms, which would be set up with a CPU to Remote Desktop (WinXP) back to the developer's primary development machine.

But this is just what I've dreamt up on my own. Has anyone experimented with this setup? If so, how often do you need to get out of your cube and shut yourself in a room? Is it useful to have white noise piped in, or is it better to have an oppressive rule of silence imposed on everyone?

Many thanks."
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Building a Cube Farm that Sucks Less? More

Building a Cube Farm that Sucks Less?

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  • Long winding maze (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:25PM (#5738782)
    Make a maze so that you have to walk at least three times around the room and reverse directions twice to get from your boss's office to your cubicle. Put a coffee machine somewhere on the route to further distract him. Finally, there are these "half-height" cube walls, usually used for making a service desk type thing -- put them up for one wall of your cube, but HIGH, not low, and cover the low-down opening with a table or desk. This enables you to crawl away to the next cubicle if your boss does make it, also you don't have to walk so far to get out of the building.

  • Build cube wall double height (your facilities team will know what that meants.) and place widow panel units near the entrance to the cube. With the extra height place plants in such a fashion that it looks like a tree canopy. Plants always make cubes farms look less desolate.

    P.S. Double height cube walls prevents the Prairie Dog effect.

    • Re:Suggestion (Score:5, Funny)

      by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:40PM (#5738910) Homepage Journal

      P.S. Double height cube walls prevents the Prairie Dog effect.

      That would be an especially important suggestion.

      Another good, earlier suggestion was to put plants around the top of the cubes to give it a friendlier jungle look, which I like.

      But making the cube walls double height will prevent a bad situation from happening when cube dwellers happen to stand up at the same moment that the plant mowing blades are being used to trim the plants.

      At MyCorp, we've found the productivity of programmers typically falls about 97% after their heads have been mowed off like a prairie dog that popped up at the wrong time under a riding mower.

      • Prairie dog effect: When a loud noise in a cubicle area causes dozens of employees to pop up from their cubes to see what happened? Wanna see it happen? Drop a phone book on you desk and see who pops up :)
        • Drop a phone book on you desk and see who pops up :)

          And for extra giggles, make sure you set up a webcam beforehand, and record the whole thing.

        • A more subtle way of inducing male prarie dogs to pop their heads up is the sound of a beautiful woman walking by in high heels on a hard floor.

        • When I first read that I remembered the other [imdb.com] definition of "prairie dogging it" (from the little girl in the car who had to go #2, badly).

          I remember it being from the movie Vacation (the above link) but there's a reference to a similar scene from the movie Rat Race [screenit.com] (scroll down to the section titled "Blood/Gore", second bullet item).

          Can't find a reference to it from Vacation, so perhaps my memory's faulty?

      • At MyCorp, we've found the productivity of programmers typically falls about 97% after their heads have been mowed off like a prairie dog that popped up at the wrong time under a riding mower.

        There's a Microsoft joke in there somewhere...

    • WTF is a Prairie Dog?

  • Leave while the leavings good. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Unknown Poltroon ( 31628 ) <unknown_poltroon1sp@myahoo.com> on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:29PM (#5738820)
    Valuble people have offices. Expendable resource units have cubicles.
  • At my previous job, the cubicle farm was a maze. You had to make several turns to get to certain cubes. I found myself subconsciously avoiding visiting my peers in the "remote" sections of the cube maze. It should be relatively easy to get from any one cubicle to another--at least inside groups of peers and to their manager.
  • My condolences. We recently went from offices to cubes, and it's a real challenge to keep focus.

    Two of the biggest problems I have with cube farms are noise and visual distractions. Being at the end of a row of cubes where through traffic is rare helps with the visual distraction somewhat. Try and be sure that the cubes aren't just laid out in an open grid where people wander every which way. If you can get them formed into halls of cuves with ends to them and you can get into one of the end cubes, you've got a leg up.

    It's also possible to get walls that are as much as seven feet high. This helps too, as you don't see people's heads floating by all day.

  • why cubes at all (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BigBir3d ( 454486 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:35PM (#5738867) Journal
    Why not a open floor? Works for us (import company, not a tech company).
    • That's so 70s. Keep up with the fads man!
    • I definitely dig the open floor. Have bit U and L shaped desks with computers and cool shit everywhere. Ad some scenery with video games, posters, stuff hanging from the cieling. Give people nerf guns. But a dart board on the wall. Chair with wheels are key. A floor, some desks, some machines, and a combination of work and fun.
    • We have an open floor layout... desks, tables and computers galore for about 35 people. Works great, except for the the constant fight over the blinds and shades on the windows. When the sun starts shining straight in, causing way too much glare and blindness, someone will close the shades. Five minutes later, someone opens 'em again. A few minutes later, they get closed again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
      Sure beats a cube or a cramped office, though.
    • Why not a open floor?

      At least get desks with fronts on them, so everyone doesn't have to look at the boss' hairy legs and to give the people who prefer skirts a sense of privacy.

      I'm serious, too. Legs are distracting. Especially the pretty ones.

  • Open plan is the way to go (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jwriney ( 16598 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:41PM (#5738919) Homepage
    The office at my previous company switched to an open plan. We had actual offices for meetings and group work sessions, and the rest of the area set up as a wide open floor, with nice expensive desks and comfy chairs. It took a while for some members of the team to get used to it, but eventually rules and psychological barriers started to naturally fall into place (call out name and ask permission to roll into somebody's "office"; if someone's got headphones on, don't bother 'em; etc).

    It was the best boost in productivity we ever had. Spontaneous group brainstorms, pair programming, etc, were much easier.

    --riney
  • ... don't put me next to that weird guy with the long beard and the sketchy "green" sweatpants!

  • "War rooms" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:47PM (#5738960) Homepage Journal
    You want "war rooms" - a room with a whiteboard, a door, perhaps a water cooler, and a network drop or wireless LAN.

    You need several. Don't allow them to be "reserved" - no sign up sheets for these. These are not "conference rooms". These are places your people can go to hash things out on an ad-hoc basis.

    You need an absolute ban on speaker phones.

    You should discourage anybody from using speakers on their computer - encourage headphone use (at a reasonable volume level).

    It still will suck. I went from an office with a door that I could close to a cube farm, and it gets very hard to concentrate. The only benefit cubes have over offices is that management can change things around whenever they feel bored.
    • It's really hard to keep 'war rooms' from becoming 'reserved' in any big company. The middle managers need to constantly expand their self importance by scheduling meetings, and they'll have a signup sheet on the door before you can blink your eyes.
      • One trick around this is to call the war rooms "Break rooms".

        However, the best approach is to convince management of the need for these rooms, so that they will support you.

        I suggest the use of hidden cameras, prostitutes, and extortion. Also effectatious are blunt force trauma, cattle prods, and capsacin coated toilet paper in the executive bathroom.

    • Good idea! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Andy Dodd ( 701 )
      This is one of the good things we have here at work. They've even called "War Rooms" on paper signs. They're dotted throughout the building.

      Also, getting access to one of our conference rooms (we have lots considering the company size, I've NEVER seen all of them in use at once.) is pretty easy. These are in addition to the war rooms.

      Speakerphones are (of course) necessary in the isolated rooms, esp. if your company is multi-location. (The team I'm on has almost daily meetings each morning in a conf r

  • often overlooked: noise absorbers (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You won't get a very quiet cube farm. Just doesn't happen. However, if the ceiling tiles are the expensive noise absorbers instead of the cheapest crap you can get, then when you sit down it is noticeably quieter than when you stick your head up.

    Getting good non-echo cube walls and ceiling tiles is very important. Notice how many people refer to plants . . . often plants installed in the right places noticeably cut down on echos, and even if not consciously noticed it definitely gives a quieter calmer f
    • No no no! You want polished stainless steel ceiling tiles! That way, not only can you hear someone talking in a normal voice from across the room, but you can see them in the reflection as well!

      You also want to abolish all color. Colors are visual distractions. You want everything to be stark white, preferably plastic or enameled metal, which blindingly bright white flourecent lamps everywhere. The only source of visual stimulation will then be the workstation monitor, and the employees can devote their at
  • If your work is seperated into functional groups, consider Double Height walls around each group with short walls (ie. 1' above the desktop) between personnel. This gives the apperance of group privacy but encourages communication between people within the same group. I saw a noticeable improvement in comroderie, performance and moral among my employees by doing this.
  • This may not be feasible, it depends on the number of people in your organization... but at a previous job, our operations and applications teams (not quite ten people) moved into a new cube space. We spent a reasonable amount of time haggling around a whiteboard and came up with the plan we all liked, including a high-walled conference room, a couple of "bays" for two people, and some extra cubes for project work and new faces. I want to believe, at least, that getting the people affected involved in the
    • Cubicles cost a fair amount ($1K or so?)... the coolest environment I was in let people take the cost of a cubicle, and if they really wanted cubicle walls they could get them and wall themselve in... ... or if the preferred they could take the cost of a cubicle and buy their own office-decorations to decorate their space... we had people with beautiful trellises of living vines ... 5-foot-tall water fountaints ... etc. all separating cubicles that IMHO were way cooler than sterile cubicle walls.
      • Cubicles cost a fair amount ($1K or so?)

        You WISH.

        When an old employer of mine moved to cubes five years ago, the back-of-the-envelope rates were $5000/seat for cubes (NICE cubes, 8x12, 6ft walls, and sliding "pocket" doors), $7000/seat for drywall offices, and $9000/seat for moveable-wall offices (all prices include furniture).

        You might be able to buy bare cube walls for $1000/seat (esp. secondhand), but someone's gotta put them in, and it all has to be up to code.

        Of course, none of that matters. C

  • Trading Floor (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mandomania ( 151423 ) <mondo@mando.org> on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:58PM (#5739071) Homepage
    The place that I'm working at now is styled a bit around the "trading floor" design, or so I'm told. We have these triangular pods of desks that are staggered around an open floor space.

    Pros:

    • Easy to communicate. Everyone is within earshot and line-of-sight, so it's easy to get up and ask questions as needed.
    • "Team building". There's a lot more of team lunch/bar/movie trips with this setup than in other cube farms I've worked at. I'm sure the floor layout isn't the ONLY reason for this, but it sure helps.


    Cons:
    • Freakin' loud. There's nothing worse than having a client on speakerphone and having your pod-mate scream "God! I hate these fucking clients! Were they born stupid or do they just hate me?!".
    • No privacy. God help you if you accidentally misread "NSFW" as "SFW".
    • Brightness. I like my workspace to be hella-dark, but no one else on the floor likes that, so the stinkin' lights are on all the time.


    So, I like it more than your Office Space style cube farms, but much less than my own office :-). If I had to work in a cube farm I'd want it setup this way.

    --
    Mando
    • Brightness. I like my workspace to be hella-dark, but no one else on the floor likes that, so the stinkin' lights are on all the time.

      You've brought up one of the major issues I've faced with cubes and open plans in the past. It's really, really important to find out how much control individuals will have over their lighting.

      In one office I worked in with built-in cubes, each cube had its own light switch and ceiling light. That was nice, but I've never seen it anywhere else. In another, we were unable

  • Weapons (Score:4, Funny)

    by Loosewire ( 628916 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @04:58PM (#5739073) Homepage Journal
    You need lots of weapons, CWM's (Cubicle to Worker missiles). Each worker must have a sidearm and senior programmers get mini guns too. By the end
    youve turned a boring cube farm into a real life version of Worms Armageddon / BattleZone.
    • Are actually a pretty good idea. When you're in that situation, even on of the "great" collaboration sessions going on the next cube row over can disrupt about seven to ten people. Nerf [nerf.com] has a great line of assorted, non-lethal but annoying, weapons of cubicle destruction. If the groups coordinates their purchases, ammo can be reused :)

  • What worked well for us (Score:4, Insightful)

    by octover ( 22078 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @05:06PM (#5739132) Homepage
    I worked at a web developement company that had cubes. The cubes were roomy, and fairly open, we had four developers with our backs to each other. A table in the middle for small ad-hoc meetings. The heating/cooling for the building was handled thru water pipes so we had a white noise that made it virtually impossible to distract anyone except for maybe your closest neighbor. You were only heard if you wanted to be heard (the boss callling us all in for a meeting, etc.). Pretty much everyone worked with music playing all day, and you did not hear it, even if you turned your music off to take a call or something. The white noise was real annoying to me at first, but after a few weeks I rarely noticed it.

    Really it all depends on the worker's ability to adapt. I now work in an office that is open. I really like this way, I can collaborate with the designers and other developers without moving. Granted sometimes it is a little crazy when people are collaborating and others are on the phone, but all in all it works well. We had a designer that could not handle that he wasn't at least in a cube. He couldn't concentrate on anything.
  • I'd raise the walls, install a ceiling, and a door. Facilities people will reject this request because "normal people" don't want to be in a box and building the box blocks the whatever shared sunlight and view you may have.

    I suspect that if you put a bunch of developers together, most would be happy to be boxed in (if the alternative was an open cubicle), and if they all want boxes, they aren't blocking each others light/view.

    Maybe you could try asking for a bunch of "boxes" back in the area with the lea
  • We recently lost our private offices for a cube farm and faced a similar problem. The solution was what we called a semi open plan. We divided our large room into several smaler rooms, about large enough for a work group of 7-8 people. Each room had completely mobile furniture, including rolling cube-style walls. Initially, the group rooms were set up like small cube farms; some stayed that way, others got rid of their walls. Everyone seems to like this flexibility.

    The guiding principle was "windows a

  • It's all about the Feng Shui (Score:3, Informative)

    by loosenut ( 116184 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @05:10PM (#5739169) Homepage Journal
    I've been working in the same cube for about 2 years (they let me out for food and bathroom breaks). It started out as an 8x8 cube, with an L shaped desk tucked into one corner, so my back was facing the cube entrance (a 3' gap in the middle of the partition).

    About a year ago, I had the office staff switch the layout of the cube. The partition which held the entrance was removed, and replaced with a 4' partition, so the entrance was shoved off to one side. I rotated my desk around so I can now SEE the entrance. This way, no one can sneak up on me. Sure, make all the pr0n jokes you want... I love it like this.

    I think there is a psychological effect to having your back exposed. It puts you slightly on edge. This way eases a lot of that stress.
    • I agree whole heartedly. Argued for this configuration at my last job but wasn't successful. I got one of those mirrors to mount on my monitor and it helped some, but I still felt a little odd. It was great to call out peoples names when they came in though. Freaked them out.
    • I personally think this is a very important feature in cube design. I'm lucky now in that I have a 10x12 cube, with a U-shaped desk. I have my workstation on the part of the "U" facing the entrance, others have it facing the back wall of the cube.

      It's nice to be able to greet people when they walk up to you. I hate having to "sneak" up on someone who's back is facing you, and then interrupt them with an "Excuse Me!"

      Unfortunately, it's hard to configure most cubes like this due to size constraints. ...n
    • I am in a similar set up where my back faces the cube entrance. To solve the being-sneaked-up on problem, I cover one wall with AOL and other useless CDs shiny side out, so now I have a big mirror. No one can sneak up on me now unless I am being really unobservant.

  • if I had control over the cubes .... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shaleh ( 1050 ) <shaleh.speakeasy@net> on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @05:12PM (#5739184)
    Things I have observed:

    *) *NO* speaker phones. I always seem to be stuck next to someone who spends his day chatting on the phone.

    *) quiet cell phones. People with the star spangled banner, show theme songs and what not just need to be shot.

    *) headphones at decent levels. My current cube neighbor has headphones but may as well be using speakers.

    *) tall cube walls. Prevent gophering and helps with the noise.

    *) people who need to work together should be near each other. Sales and marketing should be nowhere near the engineers. They tend to violate the first two rules above. It should not be difficult to wander near the people you need to talk to. Avoid mazes.

    *) easy to acquire rooms with doors and either no windows visible from cube land or easily covered ones. My current employer has accordion blinds which is a good solution. Nothing worse than managers wandering into meetings to steal people.

    *) some number of the easy to acquire rooms should be set aside for war rooms and not be reservable as meeting spaces. Sometimes you need to get 3 people together and hash things out. This is not limited to programmers either.

    *) a whiteboard (or 2) in every cube

    *) as much as possible the major flow paths should not have cube openings on it. People constantly walking behind you is not conducive to productivity.

  • uhhh (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @05:13PM (#5739192)
    Let me get this straight, you're going FROM offices TO cubes?

    Time to add your company to fuckedcompany.com, methinks. Put a 'SELL' on that those shares, too. Eek. My condolences on your upcoming loss of peace of mind.

    A previous poster mentioned a ban on speakerphones, which is a great idea, but doesn't go far enough. Separate out the people who use the phones a lot (project managers, sales, etc.), and move them far, far away, otherwise you'll hear their ringing phones and phone conversations all day long. "Joel on Software" has a lot of strange ideas, but his essay on this topic is spot-on in my experience. Check it out here [joelonsoftware.com] .

    Make sure your new spiffy partitions are very high - as high as possible.

    Make sure the ceiling absorbs sound. Dropped ceilings suck, but they do absorb more sound than the trendy 'industrial' bare concrete ceiling look.

    Overhead lights - kill them. I had to get out the ladder and remove the fluourescent tubes multiple times before maintenance understood this point. $10 torchiere lamps from Ikea make for much better lighting.

    If you want to try to avoid the asking for help syndrome, check out the software at AskMe.com - an interesting idea, though I've not used it. If not this, set up some type of knowledge base intranet.

    Make sure people's phones can be set to "do not disturb".

    If people listen to music at work, make them use headphones.

    Look for a new job is probably my best advice. :)
    • Quote: "Make sure your new spiffy partitions are very high - as high as possible."

      From my personal experience in cube farms, I have greatly preferred the ones with lower cube walls - the high ones get oppressive and claustrophobic, in my opinion.

      I'd rather deal with a bit of extra noise than work all day in a small, isolated box.
    • I know florescents may drive you batty, but tuff! There are folks other then programmers and sysadmins that may need to work on your floor.

      Free Soft Drinks? Gourmet cook in the Cafeteria? PLEASE! I can see coffee. Office coffemachines themselves are cheap and supplies are even cheaper unless you go gourmet and get a espresso machine. Even then, supplies to make your own espresso cost much less then buying one at the local cafe. Soft Drinks on the other hand can get very expensive. People will stop

  • Don't downsize, don't rightsize, DILBERTIZE! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If your lame management (and if they are not literally lame, I hear that skater's boyfriend is out of jail - you might give him a call) doesn't buy you Dilbert's Ultimate Cube [ideo.com], you should make sure you buy the inflatable cubicle door [violetcrown.com] (with velcro signage) and the Dilbert periscope [calpots.com] so you can have the honor of being the first labeled "NOT A TEAM PLAYER!"
  • You should set up all the walls so that you've got a big maze, because that'd be cool. ;-)
  • I have not tried working in a white noise space, but it's a good idea if you want to implement acoustic privacy. I remember some research on outdoor spaces that showed people in areas with waterfalls did not necessarily pay attention to the waterfall itself - the attraction was the insulation from the street noise. You'd have to tinker with the sound level and speaker placement so people didn't find themselves in a Cone of Silence [tvland.com]. I'd try a grid of small, unobtrusive speakers. Try to use materials and deco
  • I hate having my back to the openning ("door") of my cube. My colleague prefers having his back to the openning as he is easily distracted. Design a cubicle layout where the main workstation can be moved to accodate either.

    Use the seven foot or higher cubicle walls.

    Design the floor plan such that cubicles do not open onto major hallways. This can take a bit of thought.

    Remove all computer speakers.

    Remove all speaker phones.

    Have a lottery for the cubicles. As the name is drawn from a hat the worker choos
  • Cubes and offices just don't do it for me.

    My favorite was small rooms with open work areas. No marketing or sales allowed! The small rooms kept traffic and noise down. You could also hold group meetings without using a conference room. We used internal irc for conversations. This way you could scroll back if you missed something. We had various sized rooms for other meetings.
  • I actually like cubicles. I think it makes for a much more lively work environment (nerf breaks every once in a while come to mind). And when you do need to ask a question of one of your coworkers, it's much easier (especially if they group you by who you work closest with).

    Seriously, why do you need an office? Can't concentrate with the mindless chatter from next door? Get some headphones. Concerned about your boss seeing you reading slashdot? Don't read slashdot.

    BTW, if you guys can all work for days wi
    • I agree. We ripped out the hall side walls of our cubes, so that the team of 8-10 programmers could better communicate. We all faced into the hall and wore headphones when you didn't want to be bothered. Worked Great! We learned from one another faster than any one of us could have learned isolated with books.

      Privacy was an issue. You had to respect others when they turned their back to the hall; they may have been picking thier nose. For personal phone calls, we did escape to a conference room or a
    • Over the last 25 years (yes, I'm that old), I've worked in every sort of office arrangement imaginable. Here's why I need an office:
      • No mindless chatter, cellphone ringtones, speakerphones, etc. from next door or across the room. Drowning it out with headphones is not an acceptable alternative.
      • A door that closes, for uninterrupted work. Door open, come on in. Door open a crack, knock first. Door closed, don't bother me unless the building's on fire. "Do not disturb" signs across cube openings are no

  • The new trend (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In order to really maximize worker performance, the latest trend is towards more community. Rather than isolate workers in private offices, they are located in a larger room with partitions commonly refered to as "cubicles". Unfortunately this term has garnered a quite negative connotation despite the clear benefits of such an arrangement.
    The ideal goal is to bring people closer together. To that end, we recomend dispensing with walls completely. Instead, simply lay down some brightly coloured tape o
    • Those are some good ideas. As a side-benefit, it helps to maximize profits by keeping salaries down (and eliminates those unproductive paid vacations -- people getting paid while they're not at work, can you believe that?!), because all the people are entry-level and there are no overpaid crotchety old "seniors." The increased turnover and suicide rates see to that.

  • The perfect Answer is (Score:3, Insightful)

    by crotherm ( 160925 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @05:47PM (#5739471) Journal
    telecommute. Just tell your boss you need to telecommute a heck of a lot more...


  • It has been decreed that our company is moving from private offices to cubicles. We all know that Peopleware has hard data to warn us away from this, but it cannot be helped at this point. Now that we know that we are going into cubes, what can we do to make it suck less?

    Quit now.

    Seriously. Get a job at a company that has a clue and doesn't decree stuff like this. You won't regret it, and within a year your present co-workers will be asking you if you can get them hired on there too.

    -- MarkusQ

  • I worked in an open plan office where the designers touted the "you can over hear discussions and chip in - helps stimulate communication flows."

    Yup - sure did. Now all I could hear for the entire damned floor was who watched what on the TV, what sports were in vogue, who was with whom, fashion, office gossip, bullshit, etc.

    Best thing I ever did was bring my music and headphones with me. When you're trying to write a document, plan a project, etc (let alone trying to write code) you want zero interruption
  • Hire an interior designer. A good one will assess your needs, talk to you, and design something that works for YOU. A bad designer just spits out cube farms day in and day out that have nothing to do with the occupants. The litmus test: Does the designer talk to the people who live in the cubes?
  • Putting a piece of cheese at one end of the maze of cubes is a good way to make it suck more.
  • The best layout I've worked in had "supercubes" of 4x4 people, partially connected to other supercubes, with extra high walls. This was a great layout, since people had their backs to each other, but could turn around and chat with a coworker. Best to keep teams together so they can pow-wow as necessary. High walls prevented disturbances.

    I hope the lameness filter doesn't kick my ASCII art
    ___ ___
    |A B|
    | |
    |C D|
    |-- --|
    |E F|
    | |
    |H G|
    --- ---

  • It could be worse. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sclatter ( 65697 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @08:38PM (#5740579) Homepage
    At least you aren't in bullpens, or open plan. For a span of nearly 2.5 years I only had a cube of my own for two months. The rest of the time was shared cube, corral, or open office.

    So I don't think cubes are so bad. If you can, get nice big ones. I think 10'x10' is ideal. Make sure everyone has a large bookcase in addition to drawers and some lockable storage. Everyone should have a large whiteboard, a guest chair, and a coat hook. Install keyboard trays everywhere.

    Some cubes are available with sliding doors. Ours looked a lot like frosted shower doors. These were very popular.

    Definitely configure the desks so that people don't have their backs to their "doors".

    Good lighting is important! Be careful, though. There's a particular cube system that features lamps that attach to the underside of shelves with gigantic magnets. Be sure not to get those. I've worked at *two* places that had them!

    I don't like the super-tall walls, but then I'm too short to see over the default height. Where I've seen the super-tall walls the top parts were glass. This helps to keep the place from seeming like a dungeon.

    Finally, headphones, headphones, headphones.

    Sarah

  • Cubes are all well and good, just make sure you dont switch from swingline to boston staplers.
  • During the height of the dotcom days there was a gentleman at Cisco who came to work from another country. He wished to send as much money as possible back to his home country to help his ailing parents and prices being what they are in the valey he just couldn't see how he could do it and rent a place. His solution: go to a hardware store and get a framed door that was the right width to fit in the cubicle entrance. He slept nights there and used the employee washrooms which included showers (they had an o
    • That was, of course, before the bureaucrat announced that water consumption had gone up four times since he started working there, and then he was put in charge of finding out who was responsible. And then later, he got kicked out and wound up living with his robot friend.
  • ---have it mostly open in the big picture view, with CURVED 1/2 or 2/3rds walls around the various individual workstations. Right angled walls are too enclosing and boring. Encourage employees to get their own furniture and desks and customise as much as they want in their own space. That way it's both private and personal,but still makes use of space, and make sure it's quiet most of the time. Most likely you'll need a separate room to house the chronic swearers though, people who can't help but interjec

  • What I liked from the last cube (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @09:57PM (#5741058)

    I've most been in cubes all my short work life, and where is what I found worked. Some of this is a repeat of what others have said.

    Furst tellecomute. Even if you have an office learn to tellecomute. Nothing stops interuptions when you are on a deadline like not being there (and your boss can tell others you are sick to encourage people not to call you at home). Short of a major customer having a critical problem isolated to your code you won't be interupted. Sell it to upper management as a solution for bad weather days, or enviormental awareness. (There is no reason to go to the office 5 days a week. 1 or 2 is plenty for a programer, think of the enivormental benifits for 1/2 the car traffic)

    Make sure there is a white board in every cube. And not a little one either. I had a 4x4 one in my cube, and sometimes I ran out of space. A lot of algorithms are more easially planed on a whiteboard than on a small piece of paper. We had "war rooms" that others mentioned, but they were never used because the white board in the implimenters cube wasn't subject to erasure by the next team to need a whiteboard.

    Insteard of a guest chair we had two "pedistools", which were fileing cabinets with a cushion on top. Not comfortable for all day use, but a guest could spend a few hours in your cube with one, so you could make some real plans. (See whiteboards above) Get these instead of the normal cube supplied drawers.

    Make sure there is enough other storage. Some people will need it, some won't, but make sure those who need it have it.

    Keybaord trays: don't fake them. We decided that instead of a $400 keybaord tray to substitution $200 keyboard shelves. A freestanding tray replacement that sat in front of the desk, and in theory could be moved away. Out of 100 cubes with them install, I recall 3 people used them, and the rest were sent to storage somewhere else. (about 10 more were latter given to cube users in other areas who wanted them). The only people who seemed to find them useful had 3 keybaords in their office. (Normally a PC, Xterminal, and a 3270) Keyboard trays would not have been a waste. (OTOH those who used the shelves likely prefered them as an ideal way to get the extra keyboards out of the way)

    Lighting: for me task lighing only. For others overheard lights work good. It is easy to remove tubes, just make sure the miantance guys know you are allowed to do this. Have some hall "night lights" that are always on so it doens't get too dark. Put some task lights in every cube. Make sure there is natural light avaibale somewhere, windows in the break room, or at least sky lights. Something so we can see the sun. Even though I was 100 feet from the nearest window I could tell when a storm was comming by the changes in the light.

    Have a simple plant policy and enoucrage it. Basicly if nobody is alergic to the plant than you should have it. (My first cube mate was deathly alergic to just about everything, so blooming plants were out in the area, but normal plants were still allowed) There will always be a few green thumbs in the area, install grow lights for them. It brightens the room up for the rest of us to have some real green.

    Last, because last is remembered best: Get a GOOD chair. The typical cube worker will spend most of the day sitting on one chair in their cube. Dont' let management skimp here. Make it clear that if there is ever a choice that a good chair is more important than any other demand! Your body will thank you. (though a good chair doesn't substitute for exercise)

    • Chairs are by far the most important consideration for me. At my last job, we had Herman-Miller Aeron chairs, and I would most likely take one like job over another if one had an Aeron chair. The chairs breathe, are comfortable and highly adjustable. You could sit and code 16 hours a day on one, if you had to. It's the only chair I've used that let my butt outlast my eyeballs.
      Another thing that I've found to help is a good LCD display. Although most people don't realize it, all CRT screens flicker, ev
  • The Wiki has a page about this discussing peoples experiences. Surf around their wiki a bit, I seem to remember a page talking about "how they would design a cubical farm" but I can't find it right now.

    A good discussion on how to survive a cube farm (and things to look out for when designing them) from The Wiki Programming Outside The Cube [c2.com]

  • Been reading posts when it hit me:

    Have you asked your developers?

    A lot of the posts I read where all about what the poster liked, and how they liked things; or how their current setup was and what they'd change. And they were all different. Some like dark, some light. Some liked quiet, some like background noise. Some think open plan is great, some like tall walls. So it would really depend on who's going to actually be in those cubes.

    Btw, just for the record, I like bright lights, background n
  • Whatever you do, don't ask an IE to design your cube farm. The ones our IE designed were 9ft X 9ft, intended to have four 4ft X 2.5ft desks centered on each wall with the opening on one corner. This gives you 81 sqr ft, minus 40 sqr ft for the desks, minus 18.75 sqr ft of dead space from the corners, minus the opening of about 9 sqr ft, which leaves 13.25 sqr ft for people to move around in. Fortunately, the cubes were shared across three shifts.

    And yes, I did have to ask, "Have you seen my stapler?"

  • WiFi (Score:2)

    by sohp ( 22984 )
    I like the setup you have in mind now, but instead of remote desktops, consider buying high-end laptops and building a wireless network (they're going to have to re-jigger the network anyway, why spend money on copper?). You can move from your cubes to the work areas without missing a beat or losing the state of your desktop.

    That's the optimistic answer. And now for something completely different.

    Just shoot yourself and put yourself out of your misery now.
  • ...each other's inconsiderate habits.

    1. White noise helps. I didn't realize we even had it until one day it cut out, and then I could hear a coworker's radio two cubes away and it drove me bonkers. (How anyone could work with that endless stream of caterwauling and insult-to-your-intelligence radio ads is beyond me.)

    2. Make sure everybody knows how to turn off their speakers and turn their phone way down. In our office you need to dig out the manual to figure out the phone thing, and evidently a lot of pe

  • earplugs (Score:1)

    by foog ( 6321 )

    Push to get in a disposable earplug dispenser from Lab Safety Supply [labsafety.com]. Or buy your own. Headphones don't cut it, music is a distraction.

    And get your resume out if you're at all good at what you do, getting moved from offices to cubes is a sign of how much management values you...

  • As a business owner [teamonetickets.com] who currently has a new building under construction allow me to point out that sometimes "cube farms" are the only option. In the amount of square feet that I was able to afford I need to fit a certain amount of people. My choices were:

    1. Enough cubes to fit everyone
    2. Everyone get offices but we can have less employees than we need
    3. A cheaper office in a crappy location

    I hate to go against the grain here, especially because I used to be a cube-dwelling programmer at my old job [motorola.com], but someti

  • Lines of code/developer/day, function points, whatever they'll buy. The most important thing is to get them to do it again a year from now, when the cubes have been in place awhile. If your management says no, start looking for a new job, because they have just told you:

    They don't care about your working conditions.

    They don't care about measuring the effect of your working conditions on your productivity.

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