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CEOs Want Their Offices Back

wsj.com

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Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#111

Post by coffeeski »

trcollinson wrote: post #59
coffeeski wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would take a 10% paycut to have a small office that fits 2 monitors, a filing cabinet and some pictures, rather then dealing with constant clattering of the guy behind me that decided converting a type writer into a digital keyboard was a good idea.

I understand your sentiment entirely. I have thought the same way. However, I have to ask, why would you, or I, or any other person creating substantial value for a company, ever in their right mind take a 10% pay cut (or any other level of pay cut or reduction) in order to be MORE efficient? Our attitude in this industry drives me crazy lately. And really it has been my own attitude for a long time. We ask to be mor…

All things being equal, yeah I'd love to keep 10% of my pay, but if I have to give up X to get private space, which would help my happiness at work, I would do that. My happiness is worth atleast 10% of my pay. Life is more then money

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#112

Post by ageofwant »

paulgb wrote: post #40
snakeanus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it "stealing"?

I'm not here to defend it, but as a paying digital subscriber to WSJ (and other papers), this link is useful! WSJ signed me out (they often do), and to sign in again I have to re-enable JavaScript which means their site gets slower and the text bounces all over as things load. I'm happy to pay for quality content but news sites have to stop degrading the digital experience if they want me to keep forking over $30/mon…

All I want from these pay-walls is a instapaper-like experience, and that you cannot get that for $30? With $30 I can buy 130 kid's polio vaccines.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#113

Post by jesseryoung »

Danihan wrote: post #108
jdc0589 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I actually like cubicles. you are physically close to your team, if your space is organized well you are on a common isle with people you work with, but you still have at least a little bit of isolation in your personal workspace. I DO NOT understand why cubes get so much hate.

As someone with ADD (who immediately drops focus when someone walks by or when music has lyrics) cubicles are much better than most open office plans. They just don't look as "cool" or "hip" as a long, open table.

I should add that we did not have long open tables. Each person had their own mobile sit/stand desk and mobile filing cabinet for personal belongings. There was quite a few people who positioned themselves facing a corner for that reason.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#114

Post by cdegroot »

jcadam wrote: post #23
ronnier wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mechanical keyboard people in open offices bother me.

The problem is the open office, not the mechanical keyboards (which are awesome, btw).

I'm a nice guy, I paid the extra $$ for silent mechanical keys (http://matias.ca/switches/quiet/) ;-)

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#115

Post by yourapostasy »

StevePerkins wrote: post #61
solnyshok wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

careful what you wish for. I also like silence. But I'd rather use noise cancelling headphones than work in the booth among thousands other booths.

For the life of me, I don't understand how "thousands of cubes" is somehow worse than "thousands of $15 Ikea tables". It's just a matter of fads and fashion. Cubicles are "so 90's", while crappy tables thrown together in a loud frat house romper room is "2000's". I understand that each generation has an impulse to differentiate themselves from the previous one. But in this specific case, it is absolutely a productivi…

> The purpose is for management to save money, period.

Is saving money the real purpose, or the fig leaf for the actual purpose?

If saving money is the real purpose, then Work From Home (WFH) drops putative facilities costs to zero. Forget shaving a square foot here or a tenth of a square meter there: send everyone to their home offices, drop it to zero, call it a day, and collect the bonus check on your way out. No leadership recognition of the valuation assigned to the negative productivity impact of open offices signals that there is no quantified impact for WFH either, despite claims to the contrary. One can't have it both ways, claiming one can measure the productivity impact of WFH and not open offices. In the absence of actual quantification, if saving money on physical plant/facilities was the real purpose, WFH would win.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#116

Post by iplaw »

I've worked at a few places with open workspaces. In the field of law, open workspaces make zero sense. You're always on the phone or always attempting to fully concentrate on the task at hand. Open workspaces allow distractions to fester.

One open workspace was intentionally planned so that the micro-managing CEO could readily see if the employees -- mostly attorneys, mind you -- were hard at work or hardly working. Nothing was private, especially not the condescending beratement from said CEO. I quit and started my own law firm, requiring work from home for my subsequent hires and leasing shared office space.

That firm was acquired by a client, and I was again forced to commute to work since I would be directing a large on-site team of attorneys and paralegals. It was another open workspace but, thankfully, the C-suite enjoyed perimeter offices. I don't understanding why they realized that we needed offices to avoid distractions and to keep confidential conversations in confidence, but failed to consider the effect of the open space on other employees -- also mostly attorneys and licensing guys.

I've since had a successful exit and again get to enjoy "working" from home.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#117

Post by NTripleOne »

Arizhel wrote: post #42
ronnier wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mechanical keyboard people in open offices bother me.

Mechanical keyboards are better for RSI and general comfort. If you don't like them, complain to your manager that you need walled offices.

Also be careful not to point out that "keyboard noise" is the crux of the issue, since then you'll end up with those employees being told they can't use their nice keyboards that they probably paid a lot for just to use at work, which will result in said employees really, really not liking you if they find out it was you that complained.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#118

Post by meddlepal »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #63
varelse wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like the cargo cult Agile pandemic peaked a few years ago, I suspect we're reaching peak open floor plans right now. The overall negative effects of an open floor plan for a significant fraction of engineers (though not all) is self-evident and backed up by reams of data stretching back nearly 40 years: http://iansommerville.com/software-engineering-book/web/work... TLDR: 100 square feet of personal space is opt…

Many large company will do but the large brunt of codetariat working for cash strapped business living and dying according to investors and customers will be keept in the open spaces: they looks cool in photos, convey a reassuring sense of "working bees" and sells well to visiting customers, so I fear the open plan it's here to stay.

I think we can have our cake and eat it too. The all-glass office style at We Work could be adopted. I wish the glass was a bit thicker but the small shared office or bullpen model is ideal IMO.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#119

Post by throwanem »

jcadam wrote: post #23
ronnier wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mechanical keyboard people in open offices bother me.

The problem is the open office, not the mechanical keyboards (which are awesome, btw).

The noise is from bottoming out. Put spacers on the keycap stems, and it stops being a problem, no matter what kind of switch you use.

This is easy to do and only a little time-consuming. It's easier and faster when you take a cheap Bic pen, pull out the tip and ink tube, and use the body tube to press the spacers down on the stems - it's just the right diameter, and makes the job much faster.

The spacers are cheap, too, being simple silicone rubber O-rings, and as an extra benefit, the rubber eats up a lot of the bottoming-out force that'd otherwise be transmitted up the key into your fingers, which means you type more comfortably as well as more quietly.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#120

Post by NTripleOne »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #67
maccard wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most cases, it's the keys bottoming out rather the switches. Guy in our office with a membrane keyboard who smashes the keys into oblivion is far louder than the two mechanical keyboards in the same space.

I have brown keys and bottoming out is definitely the noisy part.

Buy some o-rings, they really do help with the bottoming out noise. Alternatively, train yourself not to bottom out.
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