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from the should-really-be-in-space-or-undersea dept.
When Apple finishes its new $5 billion headquarters in Cupertino, California, the technorati will ooh and ahh over its otherworldly architecture, patting themselves on the back for yet another example of "innovation." Countless employees, tech bloggers, and design fanatics are already lauding the "futuristic" building and its many "groundbreaking" features. But few are aware that Apple's monumental project is already outdated, mimicking a half-century of stagnant suburban corporate campuses that isolated themselves—by design—from the communities their products were supposed to impact.
In the 1940s and '50s, when American corporations first flirted with a move to the 'burbs, CEOs realized that horizontal architecture immersed in a park-like buffer lent big business a sheen of wholesome goodness. The exodus was triggered, in part, by inroads the labor movement was making among blue-collar employees in cities. At the same time, the increasing diversity of urban populations meant it was getting harder and harder to maintain an all-white workforce. One by one, major companies headed out of town for greener pastures, luring desired employees into their gilded cages with the types of office perks familiar to any Googler.
Rockstar coders don't do suburbs?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday October 20 2016, @05:12PM
I would be interested in hearing first-hand reports from anyone who works in one of these buildings.
I've seen one example of this, the Novartis Campus in Basel [novartis.com], where I have visited a few times. A former director of the company had a wild collection of different buildings put up, each of them an architectural statement. The pictures in the link look nice, due to really careful photography. If you are actually there, these buildings are tight up against each other (you can see this in some of the overhead shots), and some of them are only a few meters wide. Fewer but larger buildings would have been a far better use of space, but then fewer star architects would have been involved. The interiors are nothing special (outside of management and visitor areas) - no worse than anywhere else, but also no better.
Has anyone worked in one of the Apple/Google/Microsoft/whoever campuses? What are the impressions from the inside? Are they actually good places to work? Or it is all about the egos of the top brass?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday October 20 2016, @09:20PM
I have worked in a major IBM facility. Practically zero imagination to the buildings, they were simple rectangular boxes of concrete with windows, 6 stories high, painted in dull burgundies and dull yellows. Had a parking garage. Campus was like the ones the article described, in the suburbs, a bit apart from the surrounding buildings such as they were. The grass wasn't much, and the trees were sparse and short, as it was a drier, hotter climate.
Important managers got corner offices. Windows in 2 directions. Peon contractors such as myself got to share a windowless interior room, and at that I was higher ranked than most of my fellow contractors who had to use an off-site office. It was part joke and part serious that you could tell how highly the manager ranked by the size of the potted plants in his or her office.