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Is the open office layout dead?

blogs.dropbox.com

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Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#261

Post by drunkenmonkey »

hota_mazi wrote: post #173
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…

You're painting open offices in a completely negative light without seeing that they also have upsides. I'm in the same position as the CTO above and giving everyone a private office in my company is not even remotely close to being financially feasible. What's more, a lot of engineers actually voiced a preference for open space plans over individual offices. Cubicles are on the table as an acceptable compromise but…

The issue is that people who prefer open offices can make use of open areas, while people who need closed spaces actually need them in order to work.

One is a preference, the other is an outright necessity.

You have not mentioned any upsides of open offices for the percentage of the workforce which require isolation. Please, give their needs equal weight and consideration.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#262

Post by drunkenmonkey »

hota_mazi wrote: post #176
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's simply horrible how expensive it would be to give private offices even to >3 people in our company How do you quantify the loss in productivity and quality that could be associated with a noisy work environment?

It's quantified, along with the gains from ease of access to everyone and the increased communications and social geling of everyone. Individual offices are simply not worth it, financially, culturally and physically.

This is a hot air balloon which is about to burst culturally.

Don't fight the transition to closed-offices too hard, or you'll be remembered for advocating to make engineers' lives difficult.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#263

Post by bujak »

gerbilly wrote: post #48
closeparen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing when you look at software engineers' value in dollars. If you measured our value in square feet of local real estate, it would be blindingly obvious. A tech company in a prosperous city can buy you all the 4k Dell Ultrasharps and Macbook Pros a person could want without breaking a sweat. Another couple feet of desk, on the other hand, could turn you from a net creator of value to a net destroyer of value…

Really, citation please? I see companies was so much money all over the place that it's a bit hard to believe that assigned desks would be such a hardship for them.

Office space real estate isnot about money. It signals status

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#264

Post by emj »

vbuwivbiu wrote: post #229
curun1r wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> get yourself a set of Bose Quiet Comfort 35s That's only if you like to listen to music while you work. If you just want quiet, get yourself a pair of the earmuffs that the airport ground crews wear out on the tarmac. I had a coworker who wore those and the only real downside was that he'd get horribly startled when people were trying to get his attention because they'd have to come up and touch him on the shoulder…

that's if you can tolerate having hot earmuffs pressing on your head all day, which I cannot. It hurts and gives me earache.

That depends on the model for me, some work good others do not. But I don't know about daily use I've only worn them for two days max.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#265

Post by drunkenmonkey »

cm2187 wrote: post #57
CamelCaseName wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it like that for security purposes or are you working with legacy software? Apart from those two issues, the loss of productivity should so obviously outweigh any possible savings. There must be some explanation.

Well, it's a large company with lots of in-house software, so that's the official reason for the delayed roll out of Windows 7. But I think it has more to do with bureaucracy and inefficiency. For not bringing my own hardware, security (it's a bank).

> XP

> delayed roll out of Windows 7

Is your bank located in Kazakhstan?

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#266

Post by dx034 »

Fifer82 wrote: post #230

As far as I am concerned the Office is dead, open or not in the tech field. I mean an office which you travel to, and work all day. No way am I going back to that for less than another 70k a year on top. It isn't 1930.

I'd think many companies would disagree with you. Slack and Skype still cannot replace face2face meetings so that working remotely (full time) is a non-starter for many jobs.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#267

Post by raverbashing »

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...

It's a good reminder for those "I prefer BT to wired headphones"

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#268

Post by jdbernard »

dingo_bat wrote: post #214
concede_pluto wrote: post #2

It's been over a decade since I had so much as a semi-private office (shared with just one quiet teammate) so I have to say the death of the open office is exaggerated. And all of their workarounds assume a laptop could ever substitute for a desktop with an ergonomic keyboard and a large screen. It's amazing that the escalating competition in pay and perks never seem to include space to get into the zone.

A laptop is a great substitute for a desktop if you have a dock. I just place my laptop on the dock, it clicks into place and I have a couple of big screens, a full size keyboard and a mouse on my desk. No different than a desktop.

The article is discussing mobile desks, so to get the benefit you are describing you'd have to have docks, monitors, and peripherals at every workstation.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#269

Post by daniel_iversen »

irq11 wrote: post #194
Spooky23 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever had a bathroom remodeled? Construction sucks and is both a time and money sink. You can literally have a crew show up and build a big cube farm in 1-5 days. It's really the same argument as "why would anyone pay outrageous fees to Amazon for slow, shitty VMs?". The answer is that when you factor in the cost of a data center facility and the people to build and run it, it turns out that AWS is a good dea…

I know for a fact that dropbox, and all other large tech companies, spend a fortune on office buildouts. Offices don't add significant construction expense; it's purely a matter of how many people you can cram in per square foot.

Well, I don't think that for large tech companies that its only about the money it costs to build the office, probably at least equally about the productivity of employees, their creativity and employee satisfaction. (full disclosure, I work at Dropbox)

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#270

Post by gm-conspiracy »

Spooky23 wrote: post #141
rayiner wrote: post #123

I've never understood the price issue. Class A in midtown Manhattan is $80 per square foot. That's $8,000 per year for a developer that probably makes well over six figures. Put two in an office that's only $4,000 per year. I really don't buy it considering how much money companies spend on office space. Like why he hell would you have offices in Greenwich Village ( http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-new-york-of…

Have you ever had a bathroom remodeled? Construction sucks and is both a time and money sink. You can literally have a crew show up and build a big cube farm in 1-5 days. It's really the same argument as "why would anyone pay outrageous fees to Amazon for slow, shitty VMs?". The answer is that when you factor in the cost of a data center facility and the people to build and run it, it turns out that AWS is a good dea…

Are we running new sewer and water lines?

Installing a drain pan? Retiling?

I thought for an office, you need to frame w/ some metal studs and drywall, doors, and maybe blown-in insulation to abate sound.

Not nearly as complex or skilled an endeavor.

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