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Open offices are bad for us

bbc.com

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Re: Open offices are bad for us

#261

Post by tinalumfoil »

blowski wrote: post #251
sssilver wrote: post #245

I do my best work after everyone has left and the floor is completely empty. I hate distractions, and my brain is wired in a way where it processes every word spoken by a human to somehow be more important than abstract thoughts about an engineering problem. I wish I had a quiet room with blank walls void of decorations, and sound isolation. I'd be so much more productive. But alas, that is not hip.

I think there's more to open plan offices than fashion. They are cheaper - you can pack a lot more people into the same place. If they're all juniors that's great. As you start hiring more seniors do you give each of them an office? That changes office culture because now everyone wants an office to feel important. Having worked in a few places hat went from 5-6 staff to more than a 100, I've seen how difficult these…

If a senior dev cost 100k and an office increases productivity by 10% the office has to cost 10k for it not to be worth it. While I don't doubt

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#262

Post by aidenn0 »

smelendez wrote: post #21

Open 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…

A cube and an office take up nearly an identical amount of square-footage, so real-estate prices ought not have an effect.

In addition, the material cost of drywall is much less than that of cubicles, and the total installed cost will usually be less than all but the crappiest low-height cubes.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#263

Post by rhizome »

jonas21 wrote: post #136
a1a wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One problem with that is that in an open-plan office, meetings can be de-formalized into open conversations and you'll have to monitor those if you don't want to be left out or might have something to contribute.

I once worked in an office where the founder would stroll out of his office (natch), and have a conversation with one person, extending to a second person, into a decision-type meeting with more people. Call it an evolving standup.

Even if you're locked into headphones this is can be a big distraction equivalent to not wearing headphones at all.

tl;dr: sometimes "the noise" is not noise.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#264

Post by tristor »

notahacker wrote: post #228
cmdrfred wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two questions. > the only reason anyone would choose to work in an open plan environment is cost-efficiency is rather dented by the number of self-employed people paying (and commuting) to work in shared office space Does anyone have numbers for this. I doubt the majority of work from home employees use such a service. >more peace and quiet staying at home. Is this also true? Homes with children are rather loud place…

The size and recent growth of the multibillion dollar coworking industry is a pretty good indication that the number of people wanting a big open shared workspace is pretty high. I mean, you've got a survey here finding over a million people using coworking spaces, of which more than half are single founders or freelancers. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/64387613/Coworking%20Sur... I'm pretty sure most of them a…

As a piece of anecdata about coworking spaces. I use coworking spaces when I'm working remotely from a location other than my home. When I'm in my home city, I work from my home office. The beauty of remote work is it enables me to travel, but because I'm traveling I need to define a space that is "work" vs "play". That and stable fast Internet are what coworking spaces provide. It's not that I /like/ open floorplan designs better than my home office, it's that I like the flexibility of working from Bogota, Colombia this week and Lima, Peru next week instead of being stuck in my suburban house every day.

Due to my experiences I've met a LOT of people in coworking spaces all over the world and I would say that my general take is pretty consistent. People pay into a coworking space to guarantee a space that work can be done when they're traveling. Very few of my fellow coworkers permanently reside in the same city as the coworking space they frequent. This, also, is why networks of coworking spaces like WeWork are doing so well. WeWork in particular enables me to go to many destination cities and have a spot to work without needing to pre-plan to work with a local space.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#265

Post by lacampbell »

The only times I've been in an open office, it's been with people who were answering phone calls all day. Wasn't a fan and my ears got sore form having headphones on all the time.

I feel like sharing an office with a small handful of other devs could work. But not with people who answer phones all day.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#266

Post by [deleted] »

bobochan wrote: post #235
mixmastamyk wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not walk around the office, sit in the commons with a laptop, collaborate in a conference room, etc? The office with a door is for when you need to focus, not meant to be a jail.

Because then people say, "I stopped by your office and you were not there!" It is a big campus so there is a benefit to people being able to track me down.

[deleted]

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#267

Post by Apocryphon »

smelendez wrote: post #21

Open 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…

> Working remotely is one solution, but many companies don't think it would work for them.

Remote work has been brought up time and time again as a possible way to allow employees better work-life balances and the freedom, leading them to have higher morale and motivation to work. And yet, most SV companies do not institute it. For a tech scene that's all about disruption and contrarianism for the sake of it, they sure don't like disrupting geographical proximity. (Locating their offices in San Francisco or the Valley to be closer to VCs is another dogma.)

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#268

Post by jimbokun »

smelendez wrote: post #21

Open 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…

"no eating at work areas"

Coworker eating with mouth open at desk next to mine, a special kind of torture.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#269

Post by OJFord »

Amusing to think that this was probably* written from an open office.

*I used to commute through the BBC's White City campus; visible through large glass windows were open offices everywhere. (They were essentially open even to the outside!)

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#270

Post by amag »

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…

The irony is that in order to get things done it's better to work from home. How's that for socialization?
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