231–240 of 483 posts
I remember reading in "Peopleware" that science says privacy is good for productivity and people tend to perform better in their cabins. Isnt this open office a bit unnerving ?
Open offices were developed by people who don't have to really concentrate for their job. They're awful for developers.
I've been through the full gambit: single office; shared office; cube; back to shared office; open office.
My favorite is definitely open office, because it's simply more social.
- open offices are less productive as a whole due to the increased noise levels and the increased number of coffee machine talks all over the working floor.
- privacy is gone. On the plus side this is forcing people to work. On the downside this also reduces job satisfaction for many.
- one large room makes you no longer be able to regulate temperature, lights, and that sort of stuff. Less control on your environment. Some people like hot rooms, others like fresh air in winter.
From what I observed open offices sure can be fun. A bit too much even. Usually you meet people at the coffee machine if you weren't directly walking up to them. You usually spend a coffee for some smalltalk, just because it's fun and you were walking around anyway to clear your mind. In an open office it's like fulltime coffee time. There are always people having fun stories from past weekend, last holiday, or just beer time. Sure you know a few and pop in more frequently than you would have in coffee machine talks at the coffee machine. This is not a downside for you personally, you might perceive it as fun, but it kills your output.
A lot of reactions in favor of open offices mention it's ability to quickly get a hold of someone. I never understand why the ability to quickly ask colleagues anything is a pro for open offices. I have worked in both and to be honest there is no difference in time it takes to reach out to a colleague. If they are in my room, the people you typically need most, it's the same as an open office. If they aren't, it's one walk away. The distance doesn't chance that much. Get out of your chair, visit coffee machine on the way, and walk into the room of the person you need. Pros might want to check the chat status, if green he's at his desk.
I'd say if you think you need to schedule a meeting for every question there is something else wrong, an open office is not going to help you there. Also, if you need a meeting now you will need it in the open office as well. Only on paper these two environments have different protocols when it comes to human interaction.
Noisy. Well, enough is said about this. I don't mind too much but others do.
Control on your environment is something I really missed. Everything is set to general population. The heating is average but I really like fresh air even in winter. The great perk of a company for me is always to have a heater and open the window ( :) ). There are plenty who like warmer rooms though and after a couple of months, or years, you learn to not take the same room. No offense but either party agrees on the different preferences. Same holds for light. Some people close all sun screens the moment the sun peeks in. I personally like the sun and only close stuff when it's directly on my screen. With large rooms it's always in someone's screen and the sun screens are always down. I have had a summer where basically they were down all day.
I think ideally you need a mix. I'd say the only thing in favor of open offices is the increased interaction. If you accept less productivity in favor of potential great ideas spawned in that one case where two people bumped into each other at the right time than by all means make it happen. Doesn't need to be an open office though, can also be open spaces where you create an incentive for people to hang around more frequently. Relaxing areas. Make sure you communicate it's okay to be there as well. The rest is basically against open offices. Personally I don't think they are worth it for engineering departments.
I work in an open office, and have been to Facebook's open office campus many times. I love working in an open office, and think Facebook's campus looks excellent. I think the disadvantages of open offices are radically exaggerated by people who have difficulty imagining how easy it is to book a small conference room for yourself for a few hours, to walk away to a hotel desk in a more quiet part of the office, or (mo…
I'm supposed to work all day every day, not a few hours. And the open offices I've been stuck in didn't even have enough conference rooms for actual meetings.
> walk away to a hotel desk in a more quiet part of the office
If that space existed, I would move into it full time. But open offices are wall to wall with people who do not shut up. In practice I stay very late and get things done after they leave.
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Natural light is one of the most important aspects of an office to me. A few years ago I actually turned down an offer because I realized I'd be sitting in an interior team-sized room with no windows and just a door to a hallway, again with no windows. I would have been giving up a seat next to huge windows with light flooding into the room. I just knew that I'd end up depressed in those working conditions and decide…
I had several years of that when I worked in a DOD closed area. Never going back to that again.
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Where I work (at Google), it's generally pretty quiet; you'll occasionally have conversations going on, but most of the time all you hear is typing. It's not quite "library-like", but making phone calls at your desk is very strongly frowned upon. At my last company, we generally had 1-2 person offices; it was very easy to stay in your office all day long and never interact with other developers. With the open plan he…
Did you not have a team chat application in your 1-2 person offices? In my experience that has always provided an excellent balance between distraction and isolation.
I work in an open office, and have been to Facebook's open office campus many times. I love working in an open office, and think Facebook's campus looks excellent. I think the disadvantages of open offices are radically exaggerated by people who have difficulty imagining how easy it is to book a small conference room for yourself for a few hours, to walk away to a hotel desk in a more quiet part of the office, or (mo…
Personally I feel that a persons desk is the place where they're suppose to be doing the majority of their work, so that should be the quite area. The noise people can book a conference room for phone calls.
One thing I find fascinating is that all the people I've meet that claimed to love open offices, or require background noise, all, every single one, have had head phones glued to their head. At my last job I asked if we could not have the radio on: Nope, people like the background noise, and I was just being difficult. The next week I asked again, adding that the people wanting the noise where wearing head phones anyway, or where rarely in the office. So the radio was turned off.
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No natural light is pretty much illegal in most civilized countries. This is why office buildings in most of Western Europe aren't as massive and square as in countries like the US.
Don't expect that in the US anytime soon as we haven't even mandated annual leave yet. I really think natural light should be required for all. I went to a high school in Texas literally modeled after a prison. No windows, no natural light anywhere in the entire building. Built in 1979. What is wrong with these people? I took my SATs at a high school classroom with a huge windows looking out to a forest setting... It…
Speaking of forests -- I think schools are overly concerned with controlling the environment kids learn in. I personally think that letting the mind wander for short periods helps your mental stamina recover.