WTF office move
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Always a fun time, moving offices. First bad thing is that my 2 desks are being squeezed down to 1. I'll cope, just. I mean, I've only got 2 laptops, 2 TFTs, 3 other PCs, a network switch, a KVM, some hardware that we make, telephone etc on my desk.
"Ah," they said. "Some of the PC's can go into the server room." Ok, much of it is our test environment anyway and I'll use the excuse to chuck out a couple of machines and build one decent box with virtual machines on it.
But then they hit us with the real WTF: There will be no server room, because partitions are too expensive.
We have quite a lot of servers (for a company with 40-odd employees). Many of them aren't rack-able either. So we're going to have one or two racks in the open office, all network cabling going into a patch panel in the open office, and a good amount of other boxes that are going to go, um, somewhere.
Yesterday I had a typical pizza-box server on my second desk to configure it (whilst I've still got the space...), and one of the bosses came over and said "That's a bit noisy isn't it?".
I had to bite my tongue...
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oO
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QUIT!
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Maybe you should propose keeping the servers off-site; perhaps a co-lo facility? If you can't properly care for your servers, let someone else who can do it; though it's even more expensive than partitions.
Otherwise, train A and train B have already left the station, and you're sitting at point C. What is the time T before train A intersects with train B at point C?
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Stick a couple of servers (these should probably not be the production servers) in your boss' office for a day or two. Then see if there's a budget for a server room.
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How does a 40 people company not have budget for WALLS?
What kind of awful mismanagement is that?
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@dhromed said:
How does a 40 people company not have budget for WALLS?
The wall is the prime enemy of the social organism.
Have you not read books?
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Server hum is the bigger evil. :)
This I know because in our previous office, we did not have a separate server room either. I sort of sat within the blast ray of the fans.
But now we moved and SERVER ROOM. With a real lock and keys, no less.
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If you have a lot of servers in an open-plan office, won't that cause a problem with air conditioning as well? I used to work at a company with less than 20 people and we had a fair few servers as well, in a server room (mercifully with good solid walls!), and that used to generate a lot of heat and noise.
I think if your bosses are really suggesting keeping all the servers in the same room as where you're supposed to be working, it might be time to start looking for alternative employment.
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You're all preaching to the choir here, guys... I know it's bad, our IT manager knows it's bad, all the staff know it's bad (we're basically an engineering office) but management won't do it for some reason.
We do have a good co-lo facility for our web-app and some DR, but no chance of moving anything else there...
Our new head office (we were bought out a little while ago) runs their web-app from their office (although in a server room) and won't co-lo it out... was interesting last week when their power went out and the genny wouldn't start!
Budget for walls... daft I know! It's not like we're completely broke or anything. Record profits this year (but no payrise, of course). Not swimming in cash though, but still... walls! No proper kitchen, either.
No bosses here really, so can't dump some servers in his office! Indeed, there was going to be an office for visiting directors but, again, walls are expensive y'know so that got pulled too!
Aircon... probably going to be an issue, yes!
I might have over-estimated at 40 people actually. These days it's more like 25 in our building, plus about 60-70 in 2 other buildings, plus roving sales/CS people. The axe was wielded after the aquisition.
Alternative employment? My eye is open, and has been for a while! That said, my contract actually states I work from home (hangover from my tech-support days before they "promoted" me to software engineer)... might be time to point that out! Sure they'd change it in a flash though.
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@valerion said:
I might have over-estimated at 40 people actually. These days it's more like 25 in our building, plus about 60-70 in 2 other buildings, plus roving sales/CS people. The axe was wielded after the aquisition.
I don't care if your company has 4 people.
WALLS.
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Walls are so overrated. My best job didn't provide walls. Of course I could work from home, in my back yard, under the shade of the umbrella next to the lake. The view was fantastic, especially when the boat with bikinis in them passed by.
Man I miss those days.
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The first job I had out of uni had a bullpen for the bulk of the tech staff (software vendor). For me it beats cubes any day. I forget who said something like "cubes have all of the noise and none of the communication." Okay, except for the day when the sysadm was moving and he had to call all his utilities and spell his name. Over and over. That was annoying as hell.
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@valerion said:
Alternative employment? My eye is open, and has been for a while! That said, my contract actually states I work from home (hangover from my tech-support days before they "promoted" me to software engineer)... might be time to point that out! Sure they'd change it in a flash though.
Remember that they cannot change your contract without your permission. If they propose a change, send back a counter-proposal that includes a clause requiring walls and a raise.
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@poochner said:
The first job I had out of uni had a bullpen for the bulk of the tech staff (software vendor). For me it beats cubes any day. I forget who said something like "cubes have all of the noise and none of the communication." Okay, except for the day when the sysadm was moving and he had to call all his utilities and spell his name. Over and over. That was annoying as hell.
Cubicals FTW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRpej75hONw
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@asuffield said:
@valerion said:
Alternative employment? My eye is open, and has been for a while! That said, my contract actually states I work from home (hangover from my tech-support days before they "promoted" me to software engineer)... might be time to point that out! Sure they'd change it in a flash though.
Remember that they cannot change your contract without your permission. If they propose a change, send back a counter-proposal that includes a clause requiring walls and a raise.
That might be just as dangerous. They might decide that he can do with out his last desk too - as he works from home...
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It's probably more dangerous than that. They'd probably decide they could do without me altogether!
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We had a fun office move this past year too. Several months before the move date they started a "purge campaign" because we were being moved from individual offices to a cubicle environment. PURGE PURGE PURGE. My supervisor is one of those pack-rat people who over the years filled his office with computer equipment - some working, some not - boxes and computer manuals and project binders and toys. Even after purging what he could stand to get rid of, he moved the following into his new cubicle: enough equipment to reassemble 4 computers, some spare equipment and 14 large boxes. He made me feel downright tidy with my 3 boxes and one computer.
Oh, and those of us who had printers on our desks were required to dispose of them also. Corporate thoughtfully had arranged to re-deploy them to other people going other places, so if you purchased your own printer or acquired it for a project, you had to take it home (i.e. disappear it) before the move. Since we have centralized shared printers arranged around the floor, nobody's allowed to have their own printer. When questioned how they could stop us, they let slip that there would be random inspections. Life in the corporate city....
Actually our cubicles are fairly nice. They have 3 short bookshelves, one overhead shelf, two long lateral file drawers, three small drawers, a tiny whiteboard and a full-height coat locker. Oh and a cute little knick-knack shelf over our monitors. On our first day, I was pleased to see that they'd put one plastic coat hanger in each locker. However, no markers for the whiteboards. Hello? Instead of the silly logo coffee cups as a welcome gift on each desk how about a 60-cent whiteboard marker?
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@jetcitywoman said:
They have 3 short bookshelves, one overhead shelf, two long lateral file drawers, three small drawers, a tiny whiteboard and a full-height coat locker.
\Wow.
Luxurious.
