When the company I used to work with switched to an open Office layout it didn't look like a big problem at that time, but after a year I became more irritated and less happy, If I was at a very critical call with a customer the phone rings, laughts and chats diverged my attention, with the time I quit for other reasons, but open office have some influence in that desition.
Open offices are bad for us
61–70 of 377 posts
Re: Open offices are bad for us
#62Open offices are awful, but they're here to stay for the same reason more adults are living with roommates and relatives: high real estate prices. Working remotely is one solution, but many companies don't think it would work for them. Personally, I'd make the shared area for solitary work only: no work discussions longer than a minute at work areas (use a conference room, take a walk or Slack), no eating at work are…
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Re: Open offices are bad for us
#63If we could all raise our standards on workplace manners open offices are good for us.
PSA of the day: Please train yourself to fully exhale right before sneezing.
Re: Open offices are bad for us
#64I started a new job where I work in an open office. I don't really mind it. We do have more open conversations about work and that's a good thing. These are similar to hallway conversations I've had in other places. When I want to crank I put headphones on and get some music going. I've always done that though even when I had an office so it's not new for me. My biggest peeve with the open office is that I have no ro…
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Re: Open offices are bad for us
#65Unfortunately, a large (if not the largest) reason for open office plans that rarely comes up is space efficiency, ie packing more people into the same space. Sure, there are might be some folks who also think about creativity, but in my experience, a large portion of open space layouts have been driven by real estate cost considerations.
The decision maker always spins open office as some kind of collaborative, productivity enhancer. But we all know the real reason is cost.
Re: Open offices are bad for us
#66Open offices are awful, but they're here to stay for the same reason more adults are living with roommates and relatives: high real estate prices. Working remotely is one solution, but many companies don't think it would work for them. Personally, I'd make the shared area for solitary work only: no work discussions longer than a minute at work areas (use a conference room, take a walk or Slack), no eating at work are…
Like cities and human development, there should be different areas for different types of work and different people.
Maybe you're a programmer and you want 100% silence, that should be available.
Maybe you're like me, who gets a lot more done in a small, focused group. You should be able to squat in a collaboration room all day and get shit done.
Maybe you don't mind ambient noise, and like to sit on a couch to work so people can stop by and visit and interrupt you for a chat and to share an idea. That should be available too.
Like most things in life, it comes down to having options available to people, and letting them make choices versus trying to predict or control behavior for "performance".
Re: Open offices are bad for us
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
"We stayed up very late, listened to loud music, and did some of the best work of our lives." No offense, but that sounds like some kind of boys club, not professional working environment. Staying up late = no respect for private life (unless you've signed for it), loud arbitrary music = forced culture implications (why do I have to listen to the music you like?). Yes, probably our work place expectations differs imm…
Your comment doesn't resonate with me. Have you worked in an early- or mid-stage startup in NYC or the Bay Area in the past... 10 years? > No offense, but that sounds like some kind of boys club, not professional working environment That's a strange value judgment; I'm not really sure what to think about it. At the end of the day, the company is still growing and meeting its goals. It is also still facilitating the d…
> Have you worked in an early- or mid-stage startup in NYC or the Bay Area in the past... 10 years?
...why do you think I have no desire to move to either of those parts of the country or to work for a startup? I like to describe Silicon Valley as "degenerate" for a few reasons, and this is one of them.
I'm perfectly happy working in the suburbs of Texas in a corporate environment (~500 employees, B2B telecom industry).
> and our baby to join whenever they wanted
Screaming baby in the office = I quit. I'm glad my current employer has "no children in the office" as written policy in our handbook.
Re: Open offices are bad for us
#68Open offices are awful, but they're here to stay for the same reason more adults are living with roommates and relatives: high real estate prices. Working remotely is one solution, but many companies don't think it would work for them. Personally, I'd make the shared area for solitary work only: no work discussions longer than a minute at work areas (use a conference room, take a walk or Slack), no eating at work are…
For my company, we went with a semi-open design, in the spirit of your quiet rooms: Desks with huge glasses in front, forming rows of floor to ceiling cubicles. Think small offices with no doors and with glass walls. It allows natural light to flow through the office, while reducing noise. Noise reduction ceiling and a policy of quiet zone in the development area complement the solution, for what I think is a great work space.
We used Peopleware's (IBM's actually) ratio of 10 square feet surface area per employee and 100 square feet of dedicated space per employee. Not cramming people up is mandatory for success in high performing work spaces.
The only thing I'd add now would be a couple of extra non-assigned 4-pax work rooms, for when you know your team will be noisy for a while, or for those periods when you know you'll be on the phone a lot.
Re: Open offices are bad for us
#69I came from a world with shared offices and team rooms (about 10 to a room) and found the team rooms the optimal way to work -- with the ability to dive out into an office if you needed intense focus on something or privacy.
Open offices (note I'm meaning cubes here) can be done reasonably well, but I think they need lots of small huddle rooms you can dive into for focus, discussion and privacy and that everybody in your area of the open plan needs to be on the same page for noise and behavior.
Where open plans seem to really fail is mixing different teams in the same space and not providing any personal space at all. The warehouse full of big tables almost universally seem to be hated.
Re: Open offices are bad for us
#70Unfortunately, a large (if not the largest) reason for open office plans that rarely comes up is space efficiency, ie packing more people into the same space. Sure, there are might be some folks who also think about creativity, but in my experience, a large portion of open space layouts have been driven by real estate cost considerations.
The decision maker always spins open office as some kind of collaborative, productivity enhancer. But we all know the real reason is cost.
I've always got the feeling more often the reason is trust, they don't trust their employees to work without someone looking at them all the time.