Some Apple Employees May Quit Over New ‘Open’ Office Plan

San Jose Mercury News ^ | August 17, 2017 | Gene Marks

[CodeToad]

“It was like trying to work at a cocktail party.”

That is the perfect one-liner for open offices! Consider it stolen.

I used to say it is like trying to work at a rock concert.

[Harpotoo]

Raleigh.

[roadcat]

They told me that Joe had had a heart attack, and been carted off a half hour ago.

Ouch, sorry to hear of your co-worker's distress. I know the stress that can happen around the office. One Friday I was going over code with a manager and bid goodbye in the evening; we had been working closely for a week on some mainframe system coding. Monday I came in and was told he died of a heart attack, found on the weekend in his easy chair; he was only 47 years old. We worked in an open office environment. We would code clist programs that would interrupt someone else's dumb terminal with a joke and watch the receiving worker's reaction. (Clists are IBM mainframe terminal code.)

[Albion Wilde]

People process information differently, and personalities range between extroversion and introversion, as the Meyers-Briggs typology brings out. I would go out of my mind in an open plan, because I'm an "I" (introvert). Surely many very cerebral people are, and surely many work in knowledge, information and systems fields. It's where I spent the bulk of my work life, and I thrived on having my own space where I could shut the door.