{"id":12713,"date":"2016-10-21T12:16:59","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T16:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=12713"},"modified":"2021-01-08T11:11:27","modified_gmt":"2021-01-08T16:11:27","slug":"open-pit-coding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/21\/open-pit-coding\/","title":{"rendered":"Open-pit Coding"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After a visit to Facebook I want to establish a new phrase for the English language: open-pit coding<\/em> (see “open-pit mining<\/a>“).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current Silicon Valley best practice seems to be a big room filled with desks and chairs. There are not private offices. There are no cubicles. There are few dividers of any kind. At least for Facebook, this cannot be because it is cheap. They hired Frank Gehry to build a space that is essentially an aircraft hangar with cafeterias both ends. If they cared about cost they would have hired a hangar company to build it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some snapshots from the Facebook campus. Note the Burning Man play structure in the roof garden. Also note that it is impossible to walk more than about three minutes without passing either a smoothie bar, a kitchen stocked full of snacks, or a full-fledged restaurant. Our lunch began with a rooftop smoothie and continued indoors with dim sum. We then walked to the other end of the big new building for the salad bar. Ribs at the BBQ shack were next. Finally there was the ice cream parlor and bakery.  “We had lunch in five restaurants,” I explained later to friends. Donald Trump said in the first debate<\/a>, regarding who might have had sufficient computer skills to crack into an email server, that “It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?” I wonder if the Silicon Valley leaders are creating factories for these 400-lb. software and system experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as decor goes, Facebook has an in-house poster-printing facility whose output adorns most walls. Although I don’t recall seeing any black employees, “Black Lives Matter” posters are prominent and sometimes dominant. The only posterable wall that I found without a Black Lives Matter poster was one (pictured below) that celebrates same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n