Nailed it.
I suspect this thinking is common amongst hiring managers, and I think it’s a shame. Hiring managers often give the impression that the employee should just trust the company to be perfect, and that to question or enquire about any practicalities of someone’s day-to-day working life (which has a huge impact on job satisfaction) is inappropriate.
Employment is a transactional relationship between employee and employer. An interview should be 50% about the interviewer finding out whether the candidate would be a good fit in the role/company, and 50% about the candidate finding out whether the company would be a good fit for them and a place they could spend 40 hours a week with reasonable satisfaction.
I’ll add to this pile-on.
My workspace is one of my primary concerns. I take pride in my work, and I want to do it to the best of my ability. I know for a fact that I can’t work efficiently in a loud or overly social office. I need quiet & privacy, so I can concentrate for long periods of time without being interrupted by someone’s phone call or asked to look at someone’s vacation pictures or listen to someone’s music.
It’s flat out amazing how many places who hire programmers don’t get this. I don’t care how great your job is, if you expect me to work in an open floor plan or low-walled cubicle, you’re out of your mind. And no, I won’t take your word for it; I want to see the place I’m expected to work before taking the job, because I don’t want to waste either of our time. It’s absolutely not superficial.
Some time during the interview process you should have a chance to see the work environment. If it’s a critical issue, you could bring it up, but as others have said, you’re better off waiting until there’s an offer. Among other things you can make it part of your terms to accept the job. This has a little more weight than a simple statement that people work in offices instead of cubicles. Companies often have to rearrange space and seating, so you could end up believing you’ll get an office, and a week after starting the job they’ll move you into a cube. If it was discussed as a condition of the job they’re more likely to consider that before moving you, and it gives you a bone of contention if they do anyway. But there will never be a guarantee.
It’s common among bad hiring managers, especially at larger companies.
There has been a trend in corporate America to expect employees to be unquestioningly dedicated to their employers. Especially at larger companies. The attitude, whether spoken or unspoken, is that the company only hires the best and the brightest and you are fortunate to even be considered working here. Last year a recruiter from Ernst & Young called me and her first question was “what did you think when you heard that E&Y was interested in you?!” I told I’ve already worked at two of the Big-4 accounting/consulting firms and I wasn’t looking for a hat trick.
I believe this trend probably started in the 80s when Japanaphobia made every company want to emulate their style of total worker dedication. The 90s didn’t help much either with it’s mythos of getting a job with some dot com startup, working your ass off as a microserf for a year or two until it could go public and then retire on the stock options.
Part of it is management necessity. As a manager, I have to convey a positive image about the company and the people working here. But too many managers interpret “be positive” to be a smiling simpleton with your head in the sand all the time instead of “make positive changes based on what you learn to be potential problems”.
The book Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister, covered this in detail, nearly 20 years ago.
But managers pay no attention.
I know, it’s on my shelf.
I actually brought this up with a manager at one place I worked. We had a pretty good office space, but they were expanding, and they were planning on moving. I talked with him about a lot of the ideas in Peopleware, and how he’d get more out of his coders if they were in a quiet spot, etc. etc.
He not only ignored me completely, but the eventual office space was just about exactly the diagram that’s in Peopleware that illustrated the way to NOT set up an office space the resulted in extremely productive workers. I actually made a photocopy of the page and passed it around to the coders and we all got a good laugh out of it.
To add insult to injury, they threw salespeople, phone tech support people, and a fookin’ receptionist (with a ringing phone all day) in the same big cube farm as the coders were in. There was not a quiet square inch in that office.
Yeah, this. Some places want you to seem so eager to start doing the super exciting and challenging work that only THIS company offers that you don’t care if you work out of a cardboard box.
I would ask if you could tour your future work space, preferably during a second interview. But during the first if they plan on doing only one. If that isn’t possible, ask about it when you get an offer.
It’s kind of like asking about benefits and vacation. You’re not supposed to be thinking about vacation because you can’t imagine ever wanting to be away from that exciting, challenging work they offer you.
While I don’t think it’s out of line to ask, I prefer to leave that question for later in the process. As a job applicant, I’ve always been most concerned with what I’d be doing on the job followed by the office culture.