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Is the open office layout dead?

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Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#61
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a 42inch 4K monitor (Philips BDM4350UC). In term of screen real estate it is fantastic.

In terms of PPI, not so great.

For development I take screen real estate over PPI. The idea is to run it at native resolution while being very readable, and to be able to work on multiple documents side by side.

(And for coding you actually need height more than width, if you think of a typical layout of a code file)

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#62
post #49
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a 42inch 4K monitor (Philips BDM4350UC). In term of screen real estate it is fantastic.

It doesn't appear to be curved or ultra wide screen.

It's not curve but you can see it as an ultra wide screen which is also very high.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#63
post #55
post #7

> No designated desks I hate hot desking. I know it's very subjective but when I come into an office for eight hours a day, five days a week, I like to personalise my workspace. I don't drive, I take public transport and walk, and hate carting my laptop and charger around with me. I want my own space, with meeting rooms and collaboration spaces for when I need those things. I may be alone in saying so, but I'd happil…

A colleague had another problem with hot desks - a visitor would arrive at his floor and ask "Is Bob here?" => "I don't know". Without hot desks, you know where Bob sits and have a good chance of finding him. With hot desks, the visitor now has to work to find Bob, as does the person receiving the visitor.

If a face-to-face conversation is important, one of us will spend two minutes finding a good time and booking a meeting. If it's an emergency, my team has a pagerduty rotation. Showing up at my desk is not the best way to do anything.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#64
post #7

> No designated desks I hate hot desking. I know it's very subjective but when I come into an office for eight hours a day, five days a week, I like to personalise my workspace. I don't drive, I take public transport and walk, and hate carting my laptop and charger around with me. I want my own space, with meeting rooms and collaboration spaces for when I need those things. I may be alone in saying so, but I'd happil…

We've recently moved into new offices in Frankfurt/Germany and being the CTO of our 40 Person Startup gave me an in-depth look at all the calculations involved. It's simply horrible how expensive it would be to give private offices even to >3 people in our company.

I've fought tooth and nail to keep everyone in small team offices(We've got two small rooms set aside as flex-desks(complete with 2 4K Monitors & Gigabit Ethernet via a TB3 Dock) to give everyone the possibility to work in a 1 person office when its critical, but that combined with our lax home-office rules is more of a best we can do approach than a real solution to the office plan/distraction problem.

The problem stems from there being simply no officespaces available that have a default layout that permits many small rooms while retaining quick access to group/meeting and social areas. This seems to be a result of different design goals of other professions that need to maximise for the most amount of butts in seat per square meter, without factoring in the losses that distractions can cause.

If you want to redraw the floorplan, you have to sign rental contracts upwards of 5 years, something no sensible startup would do and even if, the whole investment is relatively large and needs a lot of focus from the company management to ensure its worthwhile. The expensive part is not the additional room the company would need to rent for each employee, it's the amount of empty space(hallways and large rooms) a company would need to rent to have more small rooms available up front.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#65

As long as an office is considered a status symbol by management, then the open plan environment will stay. In a general sense, offices for any reason related to productivity is a non-starter today (has been so for a number of decades). Offices are considered a reward for climbing the hierarchy not for actual work by the plebs (you know, those who would actually need it or benefit from it for work purposes). And cert…

Unless you’re at Apple where everyone seems to have a private office with a locking door.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#67
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my own personal U3415W for my Visual Studio programming. I have brought it up in interviews, if any issues to my bringing it in. (At home I have the Acer X34 Predator. The Dell came first; when I realised how good it was for programming I knew I needed one at work.)

I use an X34 at home, aside from quality issues (needed a warantee repair after 6 weeks, nontrivial shipping and hassle), it's a fantastic monitor for every task. I've never understood the tendency towards multiple monitors over one larger monitor.

I find multiple monitors easier to manage with a tiling window manager and offer a better "separation of concerns" in terms of grouping of active applications I want to see. But my home set up includes 3 28in displays so I may just have a problem, ymmv.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#68
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how you classify "space to get into the zone" as an employee benefit, while all that does is increase your productivity. But I guess that could mean going home earlier...

It's an employee benefit because it makes work more enjoyable. Being stuck in a problem that you can normally tackle with relative ease when "in the zone" is extremely frustrating.

"Enjoying your job" is a perk most people don't get. To them, larger monitors, better laptops, offices with doors, etc are simply tools people use to feel better than you.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#69
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of PPI, not so great.

For development I take screen real estate over PPI. The idea is to run it at native resolution while being very readable, and to be able to work on multiple documents side by side. (And for coding you actually need height more than width, if you think of a typical layout of a code file)

To each their own. I love the fact that I can't see pixels on my retina iMac at 220 PPI. It makes reading code much nicer.

I still have more than enough room for a few buffers on screen.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#70
post #56
post #14

I hope so. I didn't work in in one, but worked in a cubicle as an intern, then in an office with 3 other people focusing on the same project, then in my own office with a door, now at home. But I can only imagine the sensory distraction and just can't see why anyone thought it was a good idea for software development. Sure I can see the photo-op image appeal for PR purposes "Oh look at our dynamic startup, working in…

If you're a newbie and need to get up to speed, having an experienced person you can ask questions of every 5 to 10 minutes is a big help. And if you can design your software so that the team members are replaceable, being able to easily replacing engineers is more important than keeping them happy. IMO it only works on a certain complexity level of software, and up to a particular skill level of engineer. Beyond tha…

> experienced person you can ask questions of every 5 to 10 minutes

Please don't abuse your peers' goodwill this way. Write down your questions as you go, meet about stuff too abstruse to straighten out over email, and add what you learn to the docs so the next newbie will be less of a burden.

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