After
years of extensive planning, Apple recently started relocating into its enormous
$5 billion spaceship campus. To say the least, it is an imposing and impressive
structure. The outside of the building is comprised of more than 3,000 curved
panels of glass which had to be custom-made and specifically engineered for the
building. Designed to run on 100% renewable energy, Apple’s massive new
headquarters features a number of interesting architectural quirks that will
ostensibly make the 12,000 employees that work there more productive and more
likely to collaborate with colleagues.
With plenty of open areas on the outside and
free-flowing workspaces on the inside, Wired earlier this year got
a report by Jony Ive saying that the building’s crowning achievement is that
it’s a place where “many people can connect and collaborate and walk and talk.”
Now that all alright, there
are rumours that not everyone within Apple is thrilled with the new work
environment. Specifically, open workspaces as opposed to smaller work areas and
individual offices appear to be the cause of most of the discontent. To this
point John Gruber during a recent episode of the The Talk Showpodcast relayed
an interesting bit of information about how some Apple employees took to the
new digs.
Here’s
the story I heard that I cannot confirm because it was third-hand. So I cannot
confirm it. It could be totally false, but it sounds true to me. And I think it
could be easily checked, because if it’s true, people will know about this.
But
I heard that when floor plans were announced, that there was some, I don’t know,
whether it was a meeting or however it was announced, that Johny Srouji’s team.
He’s in charge of Apple’s silicon, the A10, the A11, all of their custom
silicon. Obviously a very successful group at Apple and a large and growing one
with a lot on their shoulders.
When
he saw the floor plans, he was not happy about is as he said “‘f*** that, f***
you, f*** this, this is bulls***.” And they built his team their own building
off to the side on the campus. So they’re not even in — not only are they not
going along with the open floor plans, but Srouji’s team is in their own
building. And maybe internally they’re saying it’s for security or that’s
there’s a logical reason for it, but my understanding is that that building was
built because Srouji was like, ‘f*** this, my team isn’t working like this.
Notably, this isn’t the first time it has
been reported about Apple engineers voicing concern regarding Apple’s shift to
a more free-flowing work environment. A WSJ article from a few
days ago added that “coders and programmers are concerned that their work
surroundings will be too noisy and distracting.”
All in all, this shouldn’t come as much of a
surprise. There have long been competing schools of thought as to what type of
work environment allows employees to be more productive, and anytime engineers
are forced into a new working environment, controversy is to be expected.
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