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Open offices are bad for us

bbc.com

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Re: Open offices are bad for us

#321

Post by notahacker »

tristor wrote: post #264
notahacker wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My own anecdata about coworking spaces involves a space that only allowed permanent residents, so needless to say the group of people I met had very different motivations

Still, if nomadic workers are finding it easier to "guarantee that work can be done" by booking a coworking space rather than spending that cash on a bigger AirBnB/hotel room promising a desk and fast WiFi it's an indication that at least some of the time they consider an office shared with other people working a preferable working environment to the solitude of an empty bedroom.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#322

Post by PunchTornado »

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…

getting work done is NOT why I come to the office. I don't like to be one of those guys who sells half of his day to somebody. I come to work to have fun, meet people etc.I also have to work sometimes... but it is easier to mix the 2 of them in an open space. Sure, I'm not very productive, but that's not what I want.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#323

Post by devopsproject »

wolfgke wrote: post #313
jimbokun wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"no eating at work areas" Coworker eating with mouth open at desk next to mine, a special kind of torture.

> Coworker eating with mouth open at desk next to mine Isn't it strictly forbidden to eat near computers where you work? At the university's computer labs it was and at the place where I had internshipss it was also.

no. if you experience these types of rules, you are in the wrong building and need to leave

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#324

Post by vacri »

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 work discussions longer than a minute at work areas (use a conference room, take a walk or Slack)

Nope. I've had so many "just a minute" talks that turn into 5- or 10- minute chats, and there's no way we're going to break the flow of the chat at the 1-min mark to go and hunt for a free conference room, or take the lift out of the building for a walk. And the reason we're chatting in the first place is that Slack isn't good enough for the needed information transfer, otherwise it would be there.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#325

Post by yarou »

wccrawford wrote: post #193
amyjess wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

When I worked retail, one of the cashier brought her (12 year old?) daughter to work one day and left her in the break room the whole time. 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…

That's really fucked up. It's not impossible to imagine a scenario where the daughter playfully started flirting with the cashier and that ended up fucking his life over.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#326

Post by amag »

wolfgke wrote: post #310
amag wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's so unnatural. If I need to discuss something with a colleague and (s)he's sitting right there, I have to hit myself not to just blurt out loud what I wanted to say. A lot of times the mouth is quicker than the mind and I'll upset ppl. If OTOH we're sitting in separate offices I have to physically leave my office and enter my colleague's office to do that. A lot of the times I realize that I can figure out a…

> A lot of times the mouth is quicker than the mind and I'll upset ppl. Let's introduce a policy: Talking even one word in such a public space (except for emergencies like fire hazzards etc.) costs 100$ each time. This way everybody should learn the lesson very soon.

Yay! Let's make miserable workers even more miserable!

We can also implement a policy that any software developer who writes a bug gets a $100 fine, that should teach them!

I wonder why no one has thought of this before? Hey HN, I have solved the problem with bugs in software! If you implement my solution there will be no more bugs! Ever! Now give me my Nobel Prize!

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#327

Post by soulnothing »

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.

I often do this, but find it enclosing. I also can't stand headphones when I leave the office. I like to listen to music while I work generally. When I work from home, I leave the speakers on. I can move about while I work, not tethered.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#328

Post by jMyles »

tristor wrote: post #264
notahacker wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree that WeWork has a good deal of this vibe. Some notable WeWorks have more of the vibe that the rest of us are talking about (community, action, high-aesthetic open plans, late nights, people who love open plan), including the epic 175 Varick in downtown Manhattan.

However, the other major NYC WeWorks (SoHo, Midtown, Madison) have much more the vibe you describe. Well... Madison is basically just offices.

If WeWork is your only or primary experience of co-working, I think you picked the right space for the vibe you're saying you like.

However, other major open plan office spaces - TechStars, Alley, and so on, do very much specifically cater to and create an affirmative open plan vibe and the people who prefer that.

Office spaces that share with or are primarily incubators often have a set up that allows for pitch practice right on the floor. This is a little hectic even for me. :-)

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#329

Post by wolfgke »

amag wrote: post #326
wolfgke wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of times the mouth is quicker than the mind and I'll upset ppl. Let's introduce a policy: Talking even one word in such a public space (except for emergencies like fire hazzards etc.) costs 100$ each time. This way everybody should learn the lesson very soon.

Yay! Let's make miserable workers even more miserable! We can also implement a policy that any software developer who writes a bug gets a $100 fine, that should teach them! I wonder why no one has thought of this before? Hey HN, I have solved the problem with bugs in software! If you implement my solution there will be no more bugs! Ever! Now give me my Nobel Prize!

> We can also implement a policy that any software developer who writes a bug gets a $100 fine, that should teach them!

I seriously doubt that this would help to reduce the bug rate. But let us for now assume that it really did reduce the error rate.

First: What does one consider as a bug? The interface of typical functions is not well-specified. So let's create a function that creates a C# IList from passed parameters. Now consider that IList.Count returns an int. What is supposed to happen if the list that is generated will have more than Int.MaxValue elements? Is the not-consideration of this a bug in the code or something that a caller of this function should never do?

So one consequence would be that we additionally define a contract of pre and post invariants for each function so that it becomes clear whether something is a bug in the function or a bug of the user of the function.

Of course we would have to do the same for all libraries that we use, implying that we can hardly use any available library (at least not until libraries also begin to implement such a strict policy). So a lot more code to write.

I don't want to begin to talk about bugs in parts of the stack one has no control over (e.g. OS, compiler, browser) and code whose whole purpose is to circumvent these bugs one has no control over (how do you even detect in this kind of code parts what is to be considered as a "100$ bug"?).

Nearly every programmer will say: "if I really have to deliver such a low error rate because otherwise I lose money, at least I have to be allowed to use methods that enable generation of code with an error rate that is so low that it is affordable for me to submit to a 100$ per bug policy". So at least being allowed to create a giant test suite for the code or even better being allowed to use mathematical methods of formal verification.

So we get code with indeed an extraordinarily low bug rate - but on a pace that is so slow that few companies can afford it.

TLDR: Things that one would have to do to even implement such a policy would increase the quality of the code a lot. I personally believe if these were implemented a 100$ per bug policy would not be necessary anymore because the bug rate becomes so small. On the other hand these actions would increase the development time by a lot - thus increase the cost by a lot. So except for, say, software from avionics, medical devices or military this is probably not affordable.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#330

Post by wolfgke »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #233
eropple wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you have to block out noise by strapping things to your head for six hours a day is the problem that you are steadfastly not solving, though. You can't get around needing to strap things to your head when you're operating a jackhammer. Nerd at a desk? At the least we should fight for a little dignity.

Additionally, it's not a universal work-around. Noise canceling gives a significant fraction of us nausea

Or some people are very sensitive to the (white?) noise that noise that NC headphones still generate.
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