Photo gallery: Engineering's messiest desks

6/23/2011 2:29 PM EDT

Wonder how do these guys get something done in time?

6/23/2011 3:19 PM EDT

It would make a pretty good thump, but there's no way that scope could cause an earthquake.

6/23/2011 5:32 PM EDT

Every heard of the saying:

"A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind!"

6/24/2011 2:59 PM EDT

@Scott Wohler's picture: is that a pint of Guinness in front of your laptop?

6/24/2011 3:44 PM EDT

"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what then is an empty desk?" - Albert Einstein.

6/24/2011 3:46 PM EDT

"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what then is an empty desk?" - Albert Einstein.

6/24/2011 4:53 PM EDT

An empty desk might signal zen nirvana...

6/24/2011 5:59 PM EDT

I gave up on computer mice (in disgust) years ago. Went to a trackball, which allows me to pile stuff right up to the edge of it and it's still usable! Try the Kensington Orbit for a low-buck version.

6/24/2011 9:05 PM EDT

I would love to have the top manager at my last employer be made to look at these desks and then be shown how productive and creative the engineers were. He was one of those types who had outlines on the desk for where the phone and pad should be, and he valued neat far above organized. The same mind believed that all engineering talent was equal. Need I say more?

6/25/2011 3:03 AM EDT

This is the problem with messy desks. If you work with a lot of hardware and prototyping, you have a lot stuff needed to do your work. Some of my larger prototype projects looked like I had dumped pots of spaghetti on several desks. Then add on to that test equipment, meters, parts, tools, and computers then you have what seems a cacophony of chaos. Surfing this undulating wave of disparate hardware is likely an engineer who is probably the only one in the company that fully understands that it is not chaos in their workspace but progress. Then enters the manager who job is to make everything follow “the plan”, reduce costs, systemize, “motivate” the workforce, and meet deadlines. In other words minimize chaos and promote order. When a manager sees what the engineer is doing, the manager skin crawls and seeks to help the engineer improve his productivity by introducing his version of order. To engineers, this is called stress. Managers look at engineers as hoarders and want them to get rid of the “junk” from previous projects. Then the same manager complains that following projects are continually delayed because the engineer keeps ordering and waiting for parts. The manager wants the engineer to clean up their work area to look pretty for customers who tour the area. Then the same manager complains that the engineer is wasting too much time searching for stored equipment and setting up projects. Then the manager makes everybody’s work space the same size then wonders why the hardware engineer has a rat’s nest of several projects on a single desk unlike the cooperative software engineers who can manage several programs on their computers just like the managers. When I had several desks and a larger room, my productivity increased. There are several other ways managers try to help engineers and then wonder why the engineer has a failure to thrive.

6/26/2011 4:32 AM EDT

The desks are only cleared when there are visitors :)

6/27/2011 7:57 AM EDT

I prefer to think that my desk/bench is not "messy"... it's "cluttered in an organized way."

6/27/2011 11:02 AM EDT

My desk isn't cluttered -- its organized chronologically (least-recently-used on the bottom).

6/27/2011 11:40 AM EDT

Perhaps the real test of genius is step B. Step A is to have the messy desk. Step B is to measure how long it takes the desk owner to find an item in that mess. I'd say that's the real test. I have know people that could take a pile like some of those desks and retrieve any item within seconds.

Of course, if intelligence is determined by how fast one can find any given item, then I would likely register an IQ of around negative fifteen.

6/27/2011 12:03 PM EDT

Engineering genius defined: Someone who puts the FUN back in dysFUNctional.

6/27/2011 3:08 PM EDT

My workbench is usually fairly messy while I am actively working on project. I have a fairly standard suite of instruments that I have set up on my bench. However, I almost always tear down the rest of the test set up and re-build a new test set up from scratch when I transition to a new board/project. This means putting (horrors!)EVERYTHING including test leads and probes away.

I do this mostly to make sure that I have everything hooked up properly. I have been bit too many times thinking that the set up was correct when in fact, some remnant of the previous project was still connected and screwing up my measurements.

6/27/2011 4:43 PM EDT

great!

6/30/2011 1:18 PM EDT

This made me feel pretty good about MY desk.

6/30/2011 3:10 PM EDT

Have you noticed that walking on stilts allows you a smaller clear "footprint" of floor space?

7/1/2011 3:31 AM EDT

Nice pictures. I have same workplace, but I did not see a cup and a tin with coffee.

7/1/2011 10:18 AM EDT

A tidy desk is a sign of a sick mind!

7/1/2011 4:48 PM EDT

Some are seeking truth from politicians - totally wrong place to search for;
others think that employees are inspired by a 5S-conformant desk - well this might be fine for shared working areas;
many might believe that a messy desk by itself is a sign for genuity - for sure you NEED genuity to handle such a desk.
While I never had the pleasure to meet Bob personally, I really liked his writing which covered much more than analog stuff.
For sure, any 5S reminder in our office puts a smile on my face - Bob simply didn't care about.
What I will keep in mind is Bob's helping hand.

7/2/2011 7:17 AM EDT

An obituary for Prof Rosalyn Yalow appeared a few days ago:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jun/26/rosalyn-yalow-obituary?INTCMP=SRCH

which includes a picture of her at her very cluttered desk. Allowing a modest extension of the 'engineering workspace' definition it is worth noting that she was awarded the 1977 Nobel prize for medicine and physiology although originally trained as a physicist. The account is worth reading for what she had to overcome in recognition of her work.
Scott Hamilton

7/7/2011 2:15 PM EDT

I see you have a Freescale Tower System on the workbench. Nice!

7/8/2011 2:04 PM EDT

When my desk is clean and neat, it means I'm out of work to do - no designs or projects left to work on!

7/8/2011 3:00 PM EDT

Everything is sorted by weight - heavy stuff on the bottom; lighter stuff on the top. Works for me everytime...

7/10/2011 8:25 PM EDT

A long time ago we needed to have some metal
castings milled to avoid shorting PCB etch when the castings were assembled to the PCB. We found a provincial government supported (NOT USA) shop to do the work.

When I brought the castings and rework drawings to the shop I was surprised to find it incredibly clean. And only 3 staff - a receptionist, a head honcho, and the machinist that actually did all the work.

Clean = no work in progress. Our tax dollars at worst.

7/10/2011 8:46 PM EDT

A recent place of no-longer employment had a rule that all useful under-bench junk be moved to the warehouse when VIP visitors arrived. Then of course the warehouse organizers would move the junk somewhere else and fail to keep records of the new locations. ie, permanently lost.

The real funny thing was these VIP visitors had no technical clue whatsoever. Our chief chimpanzee had a habit of wiring test racks with 100 ohm twisted pair connected directly (no balun) to 50 ohm coaxial cable when the TP ran short. Of course the VIP visitors were not technically astute enough to realize this was not acceptable. Still, when dealing with dummies, who cares?

Another similar con was to order all employees to park their cars in the front parking lot to make the place look busy for the visitors. Usually the employees parked in the rear parking lot.

The company? Think "I Cannot Believe this Schist"

7/10/2011 9:34 PM EDT

It is much easier to tell your boss that you are very busy when he comes to you.

8/5/2011 10:47 AM EDT

In most labs that I know, order and pattern in the mist of chaos is the norm.

8/11/2011 6:24 PM EDT

I had HP as a client in the mid-90's (the real HP...). A hardware guy had all of his instruments tied down to the back shelf of his workbench - I wish I had a picture. Each corner had 1/2" all-thread, and side-to-side was 2" angle iron. This was in Santa Clara, building 52-upper.

His actual bench was messy, of course.

A former co-worker (a EE) once pointed out that, no matter the size of the work surface, you always have the last 6 inches for the actual thing you are making.

Great pictures - fond memories of previous lives.

8/18/2011 1:35 PM EDT

Yeah the last pics definitely looks like a startup not much do eh?

10/26/2011 3:06 PM EDT

The category of management and hr that gives me the most amusement is the ones who think they know how to improve the productivity of people.

But rather than waste verbage with the myriad ways that those people are absurd, I will simply say that these pictures are of the work places of people who truly accomplish meaningful things.

12/23/2011 2:58 AM EST

Description of the research focus messy, which is used to focus……
http://www.wigsmarket.co.uk
I am very eager to have more than this desk, it is a strength

2/15/2012 2:38 PM EST

it is very informative blog and very good blog thanks for it

5/19/2012 6:36 PM EDT

Wow, You can get the job done.

6/29/2012 12:01 PM EDT

The reason, I believe, the mess is what it is has to do the the degree of focus the individual has on the task at hand. They are more interested in pursuing whatever their objective is at that moment rather than worrying about tidying up. The latter is wasted energy because it does not support pursuit of the objective. Most engineers, and I include myself among them, get so focused on whatever they are thinking about in a development/debug mode where you are pursuing an answer....nothing else matters. Thus the issues with messy desks, hygeine, eating habits, stackup up Red Bull cans etc. People could take a lesson from being so single minded about a particular task. The pursuit of perfection is messy.

10/29/2012 10:19 AM EDT

Smart people have the messiest desks, rooms and houses. My brother is a like that and he says that he totally understands his mess and that he couldn't live otherwise. I think that geniuses need that mess because organized stuff get them bored.

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10/30/2012 11:07 AM EDT

Now I notice the chair on top of the cabinet (or whatever that is). Huh, funny!

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11/7/2012 10:50 PM EST

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1/13/2013 12:11 AM EST

I think clean desk means designer is more worried about the desk rather than the design he is working on. So more messier the desk more involved the designer is.

3/20/2013 7:59 AM EDT

some of the desks in the pics are neat

4/19/2013 7:05 PM EDT

I saw Pease's cubicle first-hand, and the photo in this article does not do it justice.

I felt really bad for the folks who had to help him move from Building C to Building D. Because he was so senior, he eventually ended up with two cubicles. One for all of his clutter, and one for his desk (and more clutter).

4/27/2013 2:27 PM EDT

You can tell it's time to clean up when there's so much clutter on the floor that you keep falling down trying to get around.

4/27/2013 4:35 PM EDT

The definition of spacial efficiency - getting the most stuff into the available space.

4/28/2013 4:02 AM EDT

I think they shall not be called "Engineering's messiest desks" rather they are most active and alive Engineering's desks.
An Engineer

4/29/2013 11:22 AM EDT

Well said Realsena
But I write if you allow me. Engineers are "In in solving mode" for more complexe Technical problems, but seem might lead to ignore simple things and seem "messy" from a different perspective;the general perspective. But leaving as it is might be simplest way, leaving room for...comments

5/10/2013 6:47 AM EDT

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