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Open offices are bad for us

bbc.com

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Re: Open offices are bad for us

#211

Post by curtis »

I've worked a couple of jobs where I was working remote but the main office was open plan. In these cases, it seemed like the open plan offices really did help communication. Of course I was only there one week out of maybe every 6, and it didn't matter that I didn't get that much regular work done when I was in the office, since I was working from home the rest of the time.

I don't know if there's a reasonable compromise. You could have a team that tries to get everybody into the office one week out of every three and where most people work remote the rest of the time. I don't know how well that would work, and I don't know if it would be worth the trouble, but it seems to me like it would be better than open plan all the time or remote all the time.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#212

Post by antisthenes »

christophilus wrote: post #171
majewsky wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Working remotely not only is more healthy in every possible way, it's also much more environmentally friendly. You sure about that first part? Everyone working at their home office sounds like the next step of neoliberalism-induced isolation, with its horrible effects on mental health: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/12/neolib...

I commented elsewhere, but I've been working remotely for 2 years and have never been happier in my entire career, even though it's nowhere near the most interesting job I've had. I have yet to miss the office. My dev team has a 1 hr meeting each week just to hang out and talk shop, things learned, discuss ideas, etc. And there are impromptu Slack/Skype session throughout the week, as needed. That has been more than…

The cross section of introverts and people who are able to work remotely (by nature of their job) is much smaller in an economy than you imagine. Can you list at least a dozen jobs that don't require physical presence?

To put it bluntly - your use case is a very small minority, and proving otherwise to people in charge of office space is an uphill battle to say the least.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#213

Post by user5994461 »

Arizhel wrote: post #197
VLM wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This depends entirely on the employer and what they provide for in the office. 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, yo…

The open office is terrible for having meetings, calls and conferences. All the companies I've seen had to allocate about half the building space to meeting rooms only. That totally ruins the alleged space savings from having a single cheap hangar full of people.

There wouldn't be need for that many rooms if there were proper offices.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#214

Post by user5994461 »

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.

You must be kidding. What did the other 100 people in the office said when you put up the sound???

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#215

Post by whatever_dude »

garrettdimon wrote: post #149

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 seem to assume that the solution to lack of socialization is forced socialization. Hey, employees don't talk enough? I know, let's make sure they hear each other all the time!

Personally, I strive for balanced contact. I love locking myself in a corner to get something done, but once I'm done, I actually have the desire and the energy to socialize. Differently from when I'm actually forcibly socializing while trying to work.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#216

Post by ChuckMcM »

I react to the headline in that I don't think open offices are "bad" for people any more than coffee shops are. But I certainly resonate with the notion that different people have different styles. My own story was going from an office with a door at NetApp to a quad cube at Google. If there ever was a place that could afford to give everyone an office (regardless of the cost of real estate) it is Google but they wanted the socialization aspects.

My response was that I became able to completely ignore everything going on around me when I was working. That was helpful for me, but perplexing for some of my coworkers who could say something to me, mere feet away, and I would not react at all because it literally hadn't actually entered my consciousness. Basically I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum from the person who sits there and tracks all 6 to 10 conversations going on around them in real time. I find I can do that if I concentrate on it, but processing so much information which is irrelevant to what I'm trying to get done really feels like a waste.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#217

Post by jMyles »

user5994461 wrote: post #214
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. You must be kidding. What did the other 100 people in the office said when you put up the sound???

Well, after midnight, 75-90% of the people leave, typically.

It's much easier to get 6-8 people to agree and enjoy on music than 60-80 people. :-)

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#218

Post by baddox »

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…

> Staying up late = no respect for private life (unless you've signed for it)

You did sign up for it if you took a job there with full knowledge of the office culture. A culture of staying up late is no less respectful of private life than a culture of starting early. The former is better for people who do better work late, while the latter is better for people who do better work early. It seems to be that companies ought to exist for both types of people, and it's perfectly alright to encounter the wrong type of office and simply choose not to work there without disparaging it.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#219

Post by baddox »

chris_7 wrote: post #114
jMyles wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 definitely understand that "culture fit" is probably often used as an excuse to wrongfully discriminate against qualified employees. But at the same time, isn't it there some validity to the concept? Is it really wrong for different companies to have different distributions of personality/lifestyle types (e.g. working late vs. starting early, open plan vs. cubicles vs. walled offices)?

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#220

Post by whatever_dude »

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

Looks like a dream office to me. Well done!
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