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Is the open office layout dead?

blogs.dropbox.com

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Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#231

Post by primeblue »

mindcrime wrote: post #148
emerged wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would honestly rather change careers than work in a cubicle. They give me a feeling of deep existential dread. Do some actually prefer them?

Compared to no walls at all? Fuck yeah. When I was at IBM, they had us (~60 people) in one big room, with no walls, no noise-dampening, right next-door to a server room (with the accompanying server hum coming through the walls). I used to go downstairs to the "cubicle hell" area and just walk around and dream about how nice it would be to work down there. There was a point I'd have paid money to move to the cube-far…

They say hell will make you dream of heaven.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#232

Post by mhink »

chairmanwow wrote: post #98
jasonjei wrote: post #4

How open is Dropbox to remote work? A lot of places of work "allow" or "tolerate it," but it feels hard to use this working mode for a consistent period. Working from home often has the same stigma as unlimited vacation days--you can do it, but it's often frowned upon...

I think that stems from the many people that "work from home" only to take their cat to the vet, get their car washed, go to the dentist, and pick up their dry-cleaning. Most of the time whenever I hear the term "working from home" I immediately assume they will not be home and will not be working.

I think it varies considerably depending on the company culture- in particular, how remote-oriented the company is. (Yeah, I know that sounds buzzwordy, but hear me out.)

At "remote friendly" companies I've worked at in the past, most people were in the office at least 80% of the time- and because of that, there was sort of a general mindset that if someone wasn't in the office, they "weren't there"... which lead to the same sorta assumption that you mentioned.

On the other hand, at the place I'm at now, I would guess that less than half the company are in the office on any given day. This leads to an amusing inversion of what you're talking about, because if a normally-remote colleague needs to come into the office, it usually means they won't get as much done that day, because of the overhead of travel time! :P

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#233

Post by rcarmo »

Last time I switched jobs, I moved from a 3-person office (engineering managers) to a hot-desking "culture" (consulting & sales) where we all sit around large tables (power sockets only, all wireless).

Everyone spends time with customers, so hot-desking makes complete sense (and we have a mix of differently sized glass cubes for solo work and meetings, with extra monitors and conferencing gear).

As a direct result, I now do most of my actual work at home, keep in touch via Skype, and go to the office only for internal meetings. It's completely impossible to do any sort of focus work in an open plan office.

The upside of being able to work anywhere, anyhow is, however, completely offset by office politics. You have to literally waste a couple of days a week for the sake of face time and trying to herd things through a miasma of constant interruptions and overly excited interactions (everyone is low on time and concentration, so conversations are hurried and often unfocused).

(Edit: typos)

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#234

Post by blub »

northwest65 wrote: post #175
throwaway0255 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's simply horrible how expensive it would be to give private offices even to >3 people in our company. And how much does it cost to have your entire engineering team audibly and visually distracted and annoyed 100% of the time? Environmental factors that decrease engineer productivity may not show up on a balance sheet, but the cost is massive. Can you get an engineer an office for less than $40k/year? Then it's…

I would really encourage you to move on the interviewing as soon as you can. I was in your position, desperately unhappy with the working conditions, and now I'm in a small quiet office with 4 to 5 other people and I have never been happier in my work. In the meantime, get yourself a set of Bose Quiet Comfort 35s. An absolutely life changing piece of equipment for me at least. If nothing else you will comfortable enj…

Bose headphones spy on listeners: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bose-lawsuit-idUSKBN17L2B...

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#235

Post by chrisseaton »

tlogan wrote: post #130
rtpg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why cubicles are a thing though right? Obviously it doesn't have as much in terms of sound dampening effects but the cost nearly isn't as high and there's a psychological effect Though... cubicles do make it so that you're working in a "pit". So people... start wanting to remove the barriers..... and we end up in open office plans again. Hard to figure out how a smaller company can manage this (since private…

Back in days, each engineer in Microsoft had a private office. Oracle too... Good days...

I got my own office as an intern at Oracle a couple of years ago.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#236

Post by alphadevx »

blub wrote: post #234
northwest65 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really encourage you to move on the interviewing as soon as you can. I was in your position, desperately unhappy with the working conditions, and now I'm in a small quiet office with 4 to 5 other people and I have never been happier in my work. In the meantime, get yourself a set of Bose Quiet Comfort 35s. An absolutely life changing piece of equipment for me at least. If nothing else you will comfortable enj…

Bose headphones spy on listeners: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bose-lawsuit-idUSKBN17L2B...

The app does, not the headphones itself.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#238

Post by salvar »

tome wrote: post #226
coldtea wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Who did the quantification? Citation needed. Probably you missed the "increasing body of research" mentioned in TFA then... "According to a study on the cost of interrupted work, a typical office worker is interrupted every 11 minutes. Even worse, people often take up to 25 minutes to refocus on the original task." "Researchers have found that the loss of productivity due to noise distraction doubles in open…

> "According to a study on the cost of interrupted work, a typical office worker is interrupted every 11 minutes. Even worse, people often take up to 25 minutes to refocus on the original task." So they're interrupted more frequently that the time it takes to refocus and therefore never complete any task?

Did you miss the word 'often' in there?

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#239

Post by gedy »

mattlondon wrote: post #224

> No designated desks We had an office where they tried this as an experiment. Each desk was sit-stand, had one or two 24inch monitors, a chromebox + mouse + keyboard, plenty of wall sockets easily accessible at the top of the desk and powered-USB port for charging etc. People either plugged their laptop in, or just logged in on the chromebox and were away. And it was awful. * People started to have "their" desk wher…

I'm curious what in holy hell did they say or think they were improving by using open seating?

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#240

Post by majewsky »

blub wrote: post #234
northwest65 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really encourage you to move on the interviewing as soon as you can. I was in your position, desperately unhappy with the working conditions, and now I'm in a small quiet office with 4 to 5 other people and I have never been happier in my work. In the meantime, get yourself a set of Bose Quiet Comfort 35s. An absolutely life changing piece of equipment for me at least. If nothing else you will comfortable enj…

Bose headphones spy on listeners: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bose-lawsuit-idUSKBN17L2B...

Only the new ones. I have the previous model (Quiet Comfort 25), and they're really nice and dumb. Only a 3.5 jack and a battery compartment, no other interfaces.
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