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Open offices are bad for us

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Re: Open offices are bad for us

#131

Post by majewsky »

croon wrote: post #79
mattmanser wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Through many experiences I think you're right. However that is an issue that could be solved by being better at measuring productivity. If I can produce better results while playing games for 4 hours and working for 4 hours in a closed office than I could while "working diligently" for 8 hours in an open office, then it's hard to argue for the value of visually supervising someone.

It may be hard to argue rationally, but the protestant work ethic is a strong influence on our culture.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#132

Post by Bahamut »

amyjess wrote: post #67
jMyles wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 industr…

FWIW, not every company in the Bay Area is like that. I work for a small company in Palo Alto (< 50 people) where most people get in around 9 (some come earlier, some come later), and people will leave around 5 (some also leave earlier - SF people tend to leave around 3 to beat traffic). 1/3 of our company is also remote.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#133

Post by jcims »

cnagele wrote: post #41

Hey everyone, Chris Nagele here from Wildbit. For some background, I wrote about our reasons for moving to a private office plan. In short, it's more than putting on some headphones. http://wildbit.com/blog/2015/03/06/wildbit-hq-ending-the-ope... And a tour of the office itself: http://wildbit.com/blog/2015/08/05/wildbit-office-tour

The stairwell is a sound bus, you might consider rotating the column 90 degrees and leave room to wrap it in glass now or in the future.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#134

Post by nilkn »

Someone1234 wrote: post #33
bobbark wrote: post #12

Unfortunately, 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.

Isn't that was cubicles are designed to solve? You take a large inexpensive space, pack in staff densely, than rely on cubicle walls to isolate everyone.

This is a good point. The psychology of office design is surprisingly nuanced and complex.

Practically speaking, cubicles solve a lot of the problems with open office floorplans. On the other hand, they introduce new issues. A big, silent cube farm can feel incredibly dehumanizing. Somehow a large open space feels more lively and human-friendly even if it's actually a way less efficient design for productivity.

Whenever I've worked in cubicles, I've always felt slightly resentful of the "office lords" who looked over the cube peons. It just felt like such a dehumanizing declaration of power and authority to have some people in fancy offices and the rest shoved into cubicles.

This directly leads to lots of office politics, as now promotions are not just promotions but also opportunities to get out of the cube farm. This realization might change every single aspect of your behavior at work. For instance, at one job, there was a manager track and a technical track for developers. They were supposed to be equivalent. But guess which one led to an office at the end and which one did not? They weren't equivalent at all in practice.

Getting rid of the offices and cubicles and putting everyone in a big open space can eliminate those feelings of resentment and anger and perhaps eliminate a lot of politics as well. But now we're back to where we started with open offices being horrible for productivity.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#135

Post by bluedino »

VLM wrote: post #120
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a couple office spaces built out. While we used cubicles for odd spaces (no light/no sprinkler) we tried to use built offices as much as possible. Because it was much, much cheaper. Hundreds of dollars instead of thousands. You can always double-up in a 10X12 office if you grow. And until then, its very nice. And cheap.

One former employer doubled up but only if the parties were opposite "early bird" vs "night owl". My officemate left work at 2 every afternoon to pick up the kids (even in the summer, whatever), then VPNed in from home, and I abused flex time to a level of almost working 2nd shift, so we each had nearly private offices for at least half the work day. It was a small office, couldn't have been more than 10 ft on a side…

>> so we each had nearly private offices for at least half the work day

The problem is someone noticing that and then sticking 4 people in your office.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#136

Post by jonas21 »

a1a wrote: post #81
muninn_ wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's one of the main takeaways from the story tho. In an open office those who need silence cannot get it, even if there are private rooms available: "Some of us even feel that escaping to a quiet room is a sign of weakness" and "it can feel as if we’re not pulling our weight if we’re not present"

Over ear headphones are a pretty good workaround if you don't want to be distracted by the noise.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#137

Post by stuntmachine »

cnagele wrote: post #41

Hey everyone, Chris Nagele here from Wildbit. For some background, I wrote about our reasons for moving to a private office plan. In short, it's more than putting on some headphones. http://wildbit.com/blog/2015/03/06/wildbit-hq-ending-the-ope... And a tour of the office itself: http://wildbit.com/blog/2015/08/05/wildbit-office-tour

I had the privilege of working in this environment and I can vouch for Chris here. The design of the Wildbit space works exponentially better than any open office layout could ever work. Communication was isolated to where it was needed, and conference rooms exist for when communications need to be had in private. It's the perfect mix. It may have cost more to do it right, but the bottom line wasn't money, it was productivity and the ability to have heads-down time to get real, meaningful work done.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#138

Post by logfromblammo »

romanovcode wrote: post #80
dx034 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why good managers will tell their employee to go home when they're ill. There are companies that have strict policies for that, to avoid exactly this problem. Even though it's a problem that probably mostly affects flexible working space. If you don't share your desk with anyone else, you should usually be >3ft away from other people, lowering the risk for contagion.

Yeah, and this should be encouraged by everyone, not only managers. You should definitely tell your workmate to go home if he is sick.

My company does not provide sick leave or paid vacation. They replaced it with "PTO" to make it easier to treat a de jure salaried employee like a de facto hourly wage-earning employee.

I have no time-card code to use for hours that I cannot work, due to being involuntarily banished from the office due to illness.

So guess what, people? If I'm sick, and I feel like I can work, I'm coming in to the office. If I don't work 40 hours in a week, my pay gets docked. (Actually, the computerized system forces me to "request" that my own pay be docked.) And if I need to take PTO time for a sniffle, I can't use it later, in lieu of actual vacation. So if anyone orders me to go home, that order had better be accompanied by a check.

If Sneezy McHackencoff gets the entire rest of the office sick, that is a direct consequence of the employer's worker-hostile HR policy. Don't blame the messenger. Your company consciously decided that it does not want to provide you with a salubrious work environment, in order to move inconvenient "future obligations" off their balance sheets. If they gave out sick leave and vacation, they would have to keep some money in the bank, to pay you when you use it. And you could use it at any time, so it has to be very liquid. Obviously, they would rather earn a higher rate of interest on that cash, if they have it, and also not have to pay it to you if you still have time left when you leave the company.

Sick leave is just one of the benefits that even the simplest and weakest of collective-bargaining units can enforce, and one of the things that is becoming harder and harder to find around here.

Back when I actually had sick leave, I used it appropriately. I'm very sorry about possibly making my peers sick now, but if you keep using your own energy to cover things up, management will never get any firsthand experience with the potential damage their stupid personnel policies can wreak on the business. I'm not trying to get you sick. I'm trying to get upper management and HR to reinstate sick leave, without getting "at will" fired for being an uppity peon. Getting each other sick is the only leverage we have. Don't go around sneezing on other people's keyboards. That's malicious intent. Just go in to work, and go about your business as usual. If anyone suggests that you should go home, say "I would have stayed home, but I have no sick leave, and I can't afford to not work today."

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#139

Post by Arizhel »

kbart wrote: post #17
jMyles wrote: post #4

Am I the only one left on HN who prefers open plan? I've done some of my best work for open plan companies. I have a particularly fond memory of when Reelio rented space at Blueprint (healthcare incubator in NYC). We stayed up very late, listened to loud music, and did some of the best work of our lives. I remember one night in particular, listening to the soundtrack from "O Brother Where Art Thou," when asynchrony a…

"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…

Exactly. If we're going to have shared music, it needs to be what I want to listen to, which is likely to either be thrash metal or baroque. If someone tries to play country or 90s alternative or any kind of modern pop, I'm going to pitch a fit. No, I will not tolerate that crappy music while I'm trying to work.

I really don't expect a lot of people to care for listening to my thrash metal, so the obvious solution here is to simply not have shared music. It's just a bad idea, and just like you say, reeks of a boys' club and not a professional working environment. I don't go to work to bond with a bunch of people who I did not explicitly choose to be my friends; I go there to earn a paycheck and do interesting work within my profession and build my resume.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#140

Post by mti27 »

Open offices SUCK SUCK SUCK. The worst thing is when someone wants you to answer a question which requires a few moments of concentrated research. So then they stand there waiting on you but talking to the person in the next cube about their weekend or the weather or whatever. You can't tell them to leave because they are not in your office, but it's majorly distracting.
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