Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open offices are bad for us

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 377 posts

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#361

Post by majewsky »

amag wrote: post #293
majewsky wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - You're not stuck on your commute for several hours a day. That time can be spent much more beneficially, for example for having social interactions. My commute is 20 minutes. I can barely read my newspaper, so I'd not mind a longer commute, actually (as long as I can use public transit). > - Working remotely actually requires you to communicate more and better than when everyone's sitting in the same office. I ha…

> My commute is 20 minutes. Wow! Good for you, but you're truly a minority then. > When I leave, I leave the job behind Also good for you! As a software developer I find it quite hard at times not to think about how to solve a work related problem.

True, I do that, too. But I consciously don't act on it.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#362

Post by jasode »

christophilus wrote: post #161
jasode wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We need some kind of vaccine to combat it. The vaccine is a startup that is 10x (or even just 2x) better than everyone else because they use private offices. Since that hypothetical business hasn't yet proven that idea, all the articles from journalists writing about "open offices bad" are just preaching to the choir. Even the common cited reason for open offices being "saves real estate costs" is questionable. As a…

FogCreek / StackOverflow might be an example of this. https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/why-we-still-believe-in-p...

First, Stackoverflow was not successful because it was built by programmers in private offices. It was successful because Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood had popular blogs followed by a large population of programmers sick of ExpertExchange. Stackoverflow is a demonstration of guerilla-SEO via a ready-made audience to make a site instantly popular.

Fog Creek has(had) 3 major products:

- FogBugz: profitable but less of a success than Atlassian

- Trello: not profitable (sold to Atlassian)

- Stackoverflow/StackExchange : not profitable yet [1]

According to the open-office "distractions/interuptions" theory of killing productivity, the Atlassian programmers should have been severely handicapped and as a result JIRA should have evolved at a snails pace. Instead, the opposite happened and Atlassian JIRA released more features than FogBugz. Both FogBugz and Trello lost to Atlassian.

That Joel Spolsky post about private offices gets repeatedly cited in threads about its benefits but I recommend people not mention it. It undermines their point. It's ineffective at convincing executives. However, it's very effective at making other programmers reading it nod in agreement (aka "preaching to the choir").

Don't link ineffective articles devoid of business evidence that happens to confirm your desires. Instead, study the way some executives actually think. Too many programmers dismiss companies' rationale for open offices merely as "saves square footage costs" or "it's a way to spy on employees because of distrust". Yes, some of that may be true but others also have different reasons. (Take a look at the Mark Zuckerberg video I linked and listen to what he's saying about his desk in the open floor plan. Is he trying to recreate that elbow-to-elbow collaboration he had at the Harvard kitchen table or is he just trying to spy on people? Would that Joel Spolsky article convince Mark Z to build private offices? No? Why not?)

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2015/01/20/stack-exchange-rai...

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#364

Post by kdamken »

chinathrow wrote: post #247
Arizhel wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way NC headphones block conversations is because they are also acoustically isolating. That is, they would block conversations even with the NC feature turned off. The headphones you link to look like this: they're basically earplugs with headphones built in. Earplugs block conversations because they physically block sound waves from entering your ears. The same principle works with the big over-the-ear cans…

I own them so I can assure that having them plugged in without NC does not block conversation voices. Turn them on and they are gone or way quieter. Edit due to downrate: I own or owned multiple over ear medium size NC models and the mentioned in'ear ones win by large.

Agreed - there's a big difference between having it on and off.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#365

Post by chinathrow »

Arizhel wrote: post #257
chinathrow wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own them so I can assure that having them plugged in without NC does not block conversation voices. Turn them on and they are gone or way quieter. Edit due to downrate: I own or owned multiple over ear medium size NC models and the mentioned in'ear ones win by large.

Hmm, interesting. I wonder if it's because they fit in the ear, rather than sitting outside like more traditional headphones. This would allow them to cancel noise at higher frequencies since the driver-to-eardrum distance is smaller. Have you used other, more traditional can-type NC headphones? Can you compare?

I edited my previous comment to address your questions.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#366

Post by amyjess »

brokenmachine wrote: post #342
learc83 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>people sit on long benches shoulder to shoulder How do you sit on a bench for 8 hours a day?

I doubt OP meant literal benches but more long tables with individual chairs. That's how I read it anyway.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Somehow the word "bench" just pops into my head when I think of those long tables. I'm not sure why.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#367

Post by tristor »

notahacker wrote: post #321
tristor wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> rather than spending that cash on a bigger AirBnB/hotel room promising a desk and fast WiFi

This is a risk you can't take as a business-person in a lot of ways. There's many places in the world that are great to visit and travel to, but that simply don't have acceptable quality of residential Internet connections. For example, I was in Rabat, Morocco a few months ago and was able to work effectively because I had a coworking space with fiber Internet connectivity, meanwhile the best broadband connection on offer to residential addresses was similar in performance to 56k dial-up in most of the rest of the world.

The part that makes a coworking space a preferable working environment isn't the lack of solitude, it's the guarantee of high performance Internet connectivity.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#368

Post by db48x »

zzgo wrote: post #249
GFischer wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Christopher Alexander solution described in Peopleware sounds like a good compromise, having both individual and group spaces. "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…

> space counselor Does anyone have a "space counselor" how is not their manager? I've always taken my "space counselor" issues to my direct manager.

Their idea of a "space counselor" wouldn't work in a startup or even a small company. In a large company like Google or IBM or Microsoft then having someone who just specializes in knowing where all the buildings are, their floorplans, and who is currently using which rooms would be quite important. When you form a team (of 3-5 people, ideally) in this company you would go to them and find a spot where you could all work together. They would help you pick out furniture, design the layout, recommend putting in a couch and coffee table, etc. They would basically be the front-end UI for the entire facilities department.

This would indeed be happening completely independently of your normal manager (except that your manager probably told you where to find the space counselor, made an appointment for you, etc).

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#369

Post by jMyles »

quanticle wrote: post #334
jMyles wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was exactly as you described your office. It was not even three in the afternoon, and they had some loud European techno playing. ...but that's... not how I described the office in question.

From the grandparent post: We stayed up very late, listened to loud music To me, the two are related. You stay late because there's loud music playing. If it was quiet, you'd get your work done and go home at a reasonable hour. Instead, you have to deal with loud music, co-workers playing foosball, people coming and going behind you, and as a result, you don't end up leaving until 9pm or later.

> To me, the two are related. You stay late because there's loud music playing.

That's a presumption, unstated in the comment, and it is incorrect.

I have worked at... I don't know how many co-working and incubator spaces. And of those, some had a very socially lubricated environment at night that sometimes included loud- (or even live-) music.

But never have I experienced loud music during the day except on some special occasion (ie holiday party or something).

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#370

Post by db48x »

rotten wrote: post #185
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The furniture police!
Post reply on HN