Office Real Estate: Living With a Crowd

Back in November, when the idea of an “open space” office area came up, some of us were pretty darned reluctant about giving up our current single-occupancy real estate. Seriously, you want us to give up our water view and doors that we can shut anytime we want? After living through all the growth that has occurred at Zillow and experiencing up to 7 people in one office, I was thrilled when we finally expanded our offices and had our own space. So, when the concept of sharing that space came up again — to have a more collaborative process — I was so not ready. Would it actually be more collaborative, or would it simply mean more distraction and thus less work getting done?

After thinking about it some, and coming to terms with the fact that I have turned into a bit of a hermit having my own bat cave for the last 10 months, I volunteered my team to test out this new-fangled open space thingy-ma-jig. While for some teams at Zillow having offices (complete with doors to shut) made more sense, the collaborative fun-loving nature of my team (UX Design) made us the perfect guinea pigs for the “open space” initiative.

So here we are in the open space area two months later, the vibe is laid-back chill and a lot more creative conversations are happening (both work and non-work related). There’s frequent bursts of laughter and impromptu brainstorm and wireframe sessions. Our area is right next to a wall of windows so that everyone gets to enjoy looking out at Mt. Rainier (on a sunny day), Mt. Amazon.com, and the Cascade mountain range to the East. We even have a little living room area between where my team sits and another product team sits, decorated with red couches, bright carpeting and boxes of Legos that are jonesing to be pieced together. We still have privacy with our new 120-degree Star Trek-y influenced desks and for more privacy, we can hide out in one of the many meeting rooms nearby.

Andy, Product Team Lead, flexing his arms in the living room.

Hernan, User Experience Researcher, taking flight control of the building at his star command central.

Another advantage of these news digs includes “Three ‘O Clock Rock.” Hauke, our UX Designer on Map and Search, started this new tradition in which anyone can sign up to play three rocking songs at 3 p.m. in our area. The idea is to expose people to awesome music they might not be familiar with or to songs that haven’t made the scene in a while. Plus, it helps to wake us from our comatose state caused by the plethora of sugary carby goodness that’s always readily available for consumption from our kitchens. Here’s a sampling of our Three ‘O Clock Rock lineup:

• Crazy on You, by Heart
• Counting Down the Hours, by Ted Leo
• Friday Night, by the Darkness
• Dio, by Tenacious D
• Easy, by Faith No More
• The Devil Went Down to Georgia, by Charlie Daniels
• Take It Off, by The Donnas
• What’s Going On, by Marvin Gaye
• Jane, by Jefferson Starship

I even went out and purchased some pretty nice subwoofers and speakers for this daily regimen. We had a noise complaint from our next-door neighbors in the banking biz, but how can you not blast a song like “Love Bites” by Def Leppard?

Now that I am in the Open Space, it has really made working here more fun than ever (btw, I am looking to add one more rockstar UX Designer to my team) AND I really don’t ever wanna go back to sitting in a lonely office by myself, all alone… so alone… so, so very alone…