the_mad_man wrote:
I don't post here very often, but I have a topic of great importance to discuss.
I have been working for nearly a decade as a professional software developer. I know that I'm in a field with many other Aspies, and I have seen posts about this problem before.
Friends, to put it dramatically, our house is on fire! We are rapidly becoming unemployable in the modern office workspace.
At the moment, I am unemployed because a contract ran out. To blow my own horn, I am very talented at what I do and deliver outstanding value for my employers and clients, but nearly everywhere I go, I see companies transitioning to "open office" spaces. These are equivalently called "bullpens", "team rooms", "hackerspaces", "makerspaces", or anything "collaborative".
I don't need to repeat how sensitive we Aspies are to our environment. We value our privacy and we are quick to retreat from noise and any other noxious stimuli. However, NTs think that it's weird, and even if they don't think it's weird, they cannot, or will not understand how it affects us.
Honestly, I feel sick just imagining being in one of these awful places for eight hours a day. I've been to interviews where the company work environment is literally a long table with rows of chairs. I have been told that some of the most desirable companies to work for use this setup because they believe that it leads to "collaboration".
Let me be clear, I have no qualm with working "collaboratively". What I have a problem with is being forced to sit at a desk on an "island" or a workbench where I'm constantly haunted by the people stepping around me, where I am forced to listen to every little detail of Sue's cellphone conversation with her long-distance boyfriend, where I can't get out of line-of-sight of ping-pong players. I am unemployable in such an environment.
Most of us are unemployable in such an environment, and we damn well know it.
In spite of the lies spread by people like Mark Zuckerberg and Bob Iger who demand unlimited immigration from low-income countries to compensate for an imaginary talent shortage in the USA, competition for desirable software writing jobs is fierce! If I cannot tolerate an "open space" office, there are 10 other people who can who want the job.
In short, our house is on fire! If this trend continues, we face perpetual unemployability no matter how talented we are. A quick Google search indicates that here in the USA, 70% of companies have already transitioned to open office plans.
Let me point out that if I needed to use a wheelchair to move about and my wheelchair wouldn't sit comfortably next to the desk, the courts would demand that the employer make a "reasonable accomodation". So how is it that we can be put in environments that are intolerable for us as Aspies and then be told that we're SOL.
The subtext for this forum says that at work, you'll be stuffed into a depressing box called a cubicle. Today, you're lucky to get a cubicle! As Dilbert pointed out, the open plan office is the only thing that could possibly be worse than cubicles.
We need to do something about it, but I don't know what that thing is. Any ideas?
I don't like noisy environments either. However, I fear the greater danger is the huge stress on communication skills i companies plus the offshoring/replacement with H1Bs of the STEM jobs that favor Aspies.
Of course, I totally get you on the noisy environment. While in the computer lab at school, one time I snapped at people nearby because they were too noisy (I'm sure they were working on a project too but I was struggling with something difficult and the noise didn't help.)
08 Feb 2018, 9:08 pm
