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Comment by tkiolp4 | Hacker News Reader

Off topic: I’m a bit surprised about Gregg’s desk (pre-pandemic). I imagine he’s getting a top level salary at Netflix but yet he’s got a small desk in what it looks to me a shared small office (or perhaps is that a mini open space office? Can’t tell).

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A number of times people have asked about my desk over the years, and I'm curious as to why! I've visited other tech companies in the bay area, and the desks I see (including for 7-figure salary engineers) are the same as everyone else, in open office layouts. At Netflix it's been open office desks, and all engineers have the same desk.

Does some companies give bigger desks for certain staff, or offices, or is it a country thing (Europe?).

I think given your visibility and profile (compared to many tech workers), the previous poster expected a grand office or vast desk, certainly different from the setup “everyone else” has.

I understand why people might think that, but I'm not sure it'd be great for the culture for me to be different from my coworkers. We're all working on important things, and we all need to collaborate together.

Absolutely, I agree with you there. I’m relatively junior in my team and my team is quite absent of clout within our organisation as we’re a new team.

Our correspondent teams are much more approachable when it comes to collaborating than I’ve experienced in the past - it’s something I find very refreshing.

Looks pretty similar to the desk I had at Amazon UK. You have a nicer chair though.

Almost every US company I've been at gave at least 2 stand-alone monitors to every engineer. That's what stuck out to me.

Ah right, people have asked about that before. I'm just happy with a single normal-sized monitor.

Maybe related, but we once went around the Netflix parking lot with Blippar to look at the KBB value of the cars, and found that I was driving the cheapest car at Netflix (at least until we got sick of looking). Mine was a 2001 Toyota Prius, KBB value ~$1800. Not the cheapest car to ever park at Netflix, just the cheapest on the day!

I don't find the desk itself surprising, but I am surprised by the open office plan. I've found sharing an open space with more than two or three other people extremely distracting. I'm sure it depends a lot on the personalities of the coworkers.

Why is open office plan surprising? Its practically de rigueur at tech companies.

Is there a story behind those cricket stumps? ^_^

Yes, I helped organize the Netflix cricket practice sessions. Netflix has a cricket team (in engineering) that in the past has played in the GPL: Google Premiership League, along with several other tech companies. Lots of fun!

We practiced on baseball diamonds, and played league games on the Google soccer field.

When I ran the BPF tutorial at USENIX LISA 2019, I had one finger in a splint from breaking it playing cricket. :-)

This reply made my day ^_^

Cheers and thanks for everything.

Used to work at Sun in Ire and i had a massive corner desk cubicle, whiteboard, 3 monitors etc. Then working in banking it was pretty big cubicle areas (NYC/London) now reduced down to more normal desk sizes.

I'm more shocked at the modesty of your monitor

I don't know about larger companies, but I work for a much smaller company and every person has an office with a door. After having my own space, I'm not sure I could go back to an open office plan again.

I haven't had my own office. That feels like such a 1950s Mad Men type of thing. Has to be pretty rare outside of accountants and lawyers today.

But I will say the absolutely best I've had was 3 devs to a single office, with desks oriented so that the monitors face the walls for privacy. We could chat throughout the day, but you could also get real work done. I've done the open floor plan thing. Never again. There is a certain constant level of anxiety with having people floating around you and talking nearby all day long.

> Has to be pretty rare outside of accountants and lawyers today.

Add WFH to that list!

I like how you have your own books on the desk :) ultimate flex!

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