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

Is the open office layout dead?

blogs.dropbox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 373 posts

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#281

Post by AriaMinaei »

moogly wrote: post #260
AriaMinaei wrote: post #247

I wish someone who works at Pixar could comment in this thread. They've had private offices ever since the steve jobs building, and often you hear that private, customized offices is one of the things that they love about their workplace. The Steve Jobs building is designed to increase chance of random encounters between people to stimulate collaboration, but these encounters happen in the hallways and the designated…

Someone did in an earlier thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14963985

> As a current Pixar employee, the open office trend has unfortunately spread to our admittedly beautiful campus. You have to be fairly senior to get an office around here, lowlifes like me get stuck in shared open hallways and the like.

Well that's a shame..

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#282

Post by Spooky23 »

gm-conspiracy wrote: post #270
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…

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.

It's a pain in the rear. Also keep in mind that you're often stuck with landlord approved vendors some some trades.

Your budget gets wacky when you're stiffed paying $75/linear foot for bullshit like plastic wire moulding.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#283

Post by nickcox »

jsmeaton wrote: post #174
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?

Opex vs capex

Isn't this opex vs opex though? Most companies don't actually own their office space.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#284

Post by vidarh »

dnh44 wrote: post #255
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how it can be so expensive, I can rent a serviced office for two people locally for £400/month. This is without the economies of scale of an organisation.

It'd be about £400/month where I am as well, and I'm guessing you're not in London/Cambridge/Oxford. Also since you're in the UK don't forget about rates (local property taxes that businesses pay in the UK). Once you're beyond a certain size this tax will jump from £50 a month to over £1000.

In London it's more like 600-700 for good quality places in a co-working space (Wework or similar), up to 1k+ for particularly central locations. But then if you can afford the salaries here, the 300-400/month increase per team member compared to a desk in a co-working space doesn't need to cause a particularly big performance bump to be worth it.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#285

Post by m-p-3 »

I wish it was. Since our management decided to test the open office/hot desk layout, we mostly deal with docking station issues non-stop.

Most of our equipment is Dell, and those docking station connectors seems to be even more fragile now. I guess (and hope) this will get better when all our laptops will support USB-C docking station..

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#286

Post by nerdponx »

No designated desks.

Please please please no. Having "personal" space at the office is just as important as having "quiet" space. I do not want to feel like a drifter, a student in the library, or a tenant in a co-working space, unless I am actually one of those things.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#287

Post by nerdponx »

regularfry wrote: post #272
gm-conspiracy wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not as complex, but: electrics, lighting, networking, phone, smoke alarms, sprinkler system, ventilation, security... it does all add up.

None of which costs more in cubes vs tables.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#288

Post by pennaMan »

nerdponx wrote: post #286

No designated desks. Please please please no. Having "personal" space at the office is just as important as having "quiet" space. I do not want to feel like a drifter, a student in the library, or a tenant in a co-working space, unless I am actually one of those things.

I read more along the lines of you having the liberty to decide where that personal space is.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#289

Post by mercurysmessage »

closeparen wrote: post #41
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.

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…

I basically live your last paragraph right now. Home prices are lower here than in the rest of the country, but I probably also get paid a lot less than you. So yes, all of the perks, affordable housing, private parking, but lower wages.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#290

Post by maccard »

ric2b wrote: post #208
cortesoft wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are creatures of habit.

It's also simply more efficient, it's one less thing to think about instead of searching for a table every time.

I would say if you were to go for the most efficient method, you would have everyone take the farthest desk away from the door when they got in each morning.
Post reply on HN