191–200 of 377 posts
I hate open offices with a passion, for reasons well explained in the article (and many others that regularly pop up here). However, many companies that have open offices enjoyed an incredible success and some even achieved world domination (Facebook). How is that even possible is what I'd really like to know.
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Strangely, open offices with cubicles can be more expensive than building drywall walls to make closed offices. And the much-vaunted flexibility of cubicles is way, way overrated. In my experience, cubicles sit in the same place for years. Any benefit of re-using them is lost. Also if the company is growing, new ones get bought all the time, so old ones aren't re-used anyway. Its obvious on the face of it: re-usable…
At one place I worked we went in on a weekend and rearranged all of the cubicles in our work area to better suit our work style and needs. (moved openings, created a central collaboration area, etc) Our boss was ok with it because he said he was responsible for the budget for that floor (including real estate) and if we felt it would make us more productive he was all for it. Unfortunately the corporate bureaucrats g…
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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…
One of the CSRs had a previously criminal history, but was a nice guy and did good work. That day, the daughter accused him of molesting her. Because he had a criminal record, he ended up going back to jail. I don't know if he did it or not, but the daughter should not have been there in the first place. Had the cashier followed company policy, the situation couldn't have happened.
I'm not judging anyone, and no matter what actually happened, it's a horrible tragedy.
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I hear you. I prefer floor plans that cater to the mood of the team, rather than setting out some one-size-fits-all-every-day notion of productivity. Thus, it's nice to have open space, but also cozy, comfortable environs for solo- or small-team work. W+K in Portland accomplishes this masterfully.
Have you considered that the team's mood might not actually be as good as you think that it is? It's generally inadvisable to bring up environmental things that are making you unhappy at work, it could mark you as "not a team player" or "not a culture fit". People might be keeping it internal and just waiting it out until they can leave (I'm doing this now, actually).
I worked with a Chinese guy that routinely put up with many of the others making jokes (all nice, IIRC) about his ethnicity. I noticed that he didn't look happy about it, and tried to help, but he refused to do anything about it. He eventually stressed out and quit, and I can't help but think that was at least part of the reason.
Likewise, I've seen it for noise, conversation, and even once someone finally snapped and complained about a co-worker would trim their finger and toe nails at work in his cubicle. He did it for quite a while before someone finally got fed up enough to say something. He shrugged it off and kept doing it, and nobody did anything about it.
So yeah, I agree that many people simply won't do anything about the things that make them unhappy.
A lot of the comments here seem to focus on socialization and feeling like you're in a community, but closed offices don't preclude this. I work at Wildbit (the company referenced in the article), and we have family-style lunches around a big table and plenty of common areas where socialization happens in the mornings, during lunch, when people make coffee, and plenty of other times. The key is that when folks are wo…
"People cannot work effectively if their workspace is too enclosed or too exposed. A good workspace strikes the balance."
"fashion space explicitly around working groups. Each team needs identifiable public and semiprivate space and each individual needs protected private space. The team members and their space counselor could work out the possible ways their space could be arranged."
http://web.archive.org/web/20150319051220/http://javatrooper...
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Nose canceling headphones don't work for blocking conversations.
Not all, but some achieve very nice results. E.g. Bose Quiet Comfort 20 are indeed good also for blocking more quiet conversations. https://www.amazon.com/Bose-QuietComfort-Acoustic-Cancelling...
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You might be comparing to the wrong thing. These days, lots of open offices I see do not involve expensive (low) cubicle walls and desks, they're just simple tables. You can't get much cheaper than simple fold-up tables.
What about the cost of those special collaboration rooms that no one wants to talk about? At my previous cube farm employer, we had maybe 75 cubes, a giant 30x30 cafeteria/lunch/meeting room, oh 16 tables to eat lunch at least, a large conference room we literally called the large conference room of 20x20 and a small conf room we called the small conference room of 10x10 and there was an engineering team meeting oper…
Yes, if they provide special "collaboration rooms", that's going to add to the cost. But if they don't, then it's not a factor. If your employer just gives you one big open room with a bunch of tables, and that's it, that really doesn't cost much. And there's a bunch of employers these days that do exactly this.
(As for coats and boots, you can put your coat on the back of your chair. Or drop it on the floor under your desk. Yeah, it sucks, but again there's plenty of employers that treat engineers this way these days.)
I have a traditional office, but every day part of me misses being back in the giant cube farm that I used to work in. I still remember counting six rows down, then three blocks over, to get to the section of identical grey cubes where I sat. I had a computer just powerful enough to run a 3270 terminal emulator, a small bookcase, and a chair. What do I miss about that? Any time that someone was not deep into a progra…
The office with a door is for when you need to focus, not meant to be a jail.
I hate to be negative but this article is frustrating because it makes an argument without backing it up with evidence that can be followed up by the reader. It makes claims such as 'it’s well documented that we rarely brainstorm brilliant ideas ... in a crowd.' but doesn't provide any link to these documents. The only links it provides are ones to other BBC articles. It also cites studies and references their data w…
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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.