Comment by Ascetik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ascetik | Hacker News Reader

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>The year and a half or so that I spent in a bullpen style open-office made me feel like I was an inmate in a panopticon style environment.

I would have replaced 'environment' with "prison" for literary effect. But well said nonetheless. Spot on.

I am in a panopticon open-office currently and it is really bad. People shooting nerf darts all the time (one hit me in the eye when I stood up, luckily I wear glasses). People are exceptionally loud. Yesterday the guy in the half-cube next to me was blasting reggae music for 3 hours even after I said "no one wants to hear that". Last Friday our dispatch manager was walking around all the cubes for 2 hours talking as loud as she could because she just got back from vacation. So I told her "Can you stop talking so loudly? I can't concentrate on my work." Her response: "You just started here what 2 weeks ago?" As if that somehow justified being a huge distraction, ok, I am the bad guy cause I don't want to hear you basically shout for hours on end, sure. Then I got asked by my boss if I said all the women in the office are loud. Then I overheard her complaining to another manager, about being told she was being too loud (talking loudly so everyone in the office can hear). They were essentially indirectly taking a jab at me. It is just petty office garbage and totally unprofessional.

I have already started looking at other companies and I've only been here 3 weeks.

I'm no fan of open offices but your workplace sounds like it has more issues than just the floor plan.

Yes, that's only about half of what I've noticed so far because I didn't want to write a novel on HN.

I'd be interested in reading your "novel" if you care to make a post. I try to learn what I can from others in these cases, and grow to recognize similar patterns... companies can be hard to read from the outside.

That said, I hope your luck turns and something better works out.

That sounds a bit rough for an org. How was their interviewing process? Did they ask for an implementation of merge sort? Other strange signals of workplace value?

The process was pretty typical, met with ops manager and another engineer. Some red flags were they were floundering a bit on process when I asked them some specifics. Another red flag was in my first week my boss asked me to basically tell me everything I thought that was wrong with the company and employees there, which I thought was interesting. My direct superior is actually a really awesome guy and I like him a lot, it is the other managers that have this power struggle thing with him going on right now that is really awkward.

Plus, there is no clear direction on what my job role exactly is. I was told project engineer, then I was told Level III Engineer, then I was told I am Level III inside a 3-tiered system, being the level 3 of level 2? All within the span of the last week and a half. It is very off-putting and awkward.

The one perk is that I am salaried non-exempt, so I get paid for overtime. But it is just so disorganized and there seems to be a lot of weird politics going on.

I really don't like most of the team here except for my director. There is only one or two guys who are mature, everyone else acts like they're 15 (the nerf gun shooting, yelling).

I also have basically no control over anything network related or back-end stuff, which is super frustrating because there is so much inefficiency going on it's insane. They haven't automated anything here.

There is so much wrong, it's hard to synthesize it all in one post. But a quick example is that we have literally no automation in place, so level 1 and 2 techs are setting up workstations manually... It's 2017... I mean really?

I am getting micromanaged over stupid little things too by a manager who is not even my direct manager. It is just frustrating.

Oh one more thing, we have a 9:30 "huddle" every morning with the ops team (like 10 guys + manager [not my direct manager]) and we have to say what we're working on, if we're stuck on anything, and what our plan is for the day. Then they read this little quote that is submitted by at least one engineer into a box and we have to guess who it is. It is ultra, ultra cringe inducing and super weird. I've never been in a company that does this. It makes me feel like I work in a daycare.

Thanks, reading this was better than the book I’m reading in my kindle right now. Best of luck finding a new configuration

Haha, thanks, I should edit the formatting above, but last night I had the shower thought of abandoning IT and becoming a journalist.

This guy was a journalist, and then went into tech-startups as a 'marketing consultant' his take on it is hilarious, very woody-allen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7vrCpWbmDw

The unrestrained happiness and the necessity of reply to all for any little thing ('You sick? Aww, get well!') rings all too true from my experience in a startup.

Has working with headphones on worked for you?

Cans do help block out the noise yeah, but open-offices are also visually distracting as well because people are always by. Cans can only block out so much noise too. I don't like to wear them all day because my ears get tired of listening to music that long, nor would I want to. Sometimes I just prefer silence.

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