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Is the open office layout dead?

blogs.dropbox.com

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Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#351

Post by flurdy »

vacri wrote: post #55
davb wrote: 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 permanent desks then having a somewhat recognisable but standardised photo and name on the wall or screen will let some people find the right desk without asking.

Though to be honest people still asks as that is what humans do. Even though it interrupts flow of others.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#352

Post by Sodman »

curun1r wrote: post #203
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…

> 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…

I have an older noise-cancelling model, the QC 15s, and they do a decent job at noise cancelling even without music. I listen to https://www.brain.fm/ (paid, but lifetime license is cheap) at a low volume to drown out any remaining noise. It's consistent background "white" noise that drowns out even the loudest co-workers. Wear them for 6-10 hours / day, best productivity investment I've ever made.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#353

Post by irq11 »

daniel_iversen wrote: post #269
irq11 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Sure, but it's clear that privacy and quiet are amongst the most important qualities in an office, yet companies continue to strain to find "creative" new ways of avoiding private offices.

Call me cynical, but it's obvious that per-person cost reduction is the driver of this logic.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#354

Post by bassman9000 »

mindcrime wrote: post #325
bassman9000 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No designated desks is the Agile of floor planning. Everyone's the same, anyone can do the same job, you can hotswap spaces and people as you replace hard drives.

While I agree with your overall point, I would add that anybody who thinks that "Agile" prescribes that people be considered fungible, has been misled. Somebody's specific implementation of "agile" might prescribe that, but nothing in the Agile Manifesto says anything like that. In fact, I'd argue that, to a first approximation, anytime anybody makes a statement along the lines of "Agile says you do X", you can safel…

Sadly, the Agile manifesto is, on purpose, lacking. Yes, it contains sound ideas. But it has to be implemented. And that's where the problem lies.

To be fair, I should have stated Scrum as Agile implementation, instead of Agile itself. My bad.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#357

Post by tedmiston »

flurdy wrote: post #350
flurdy wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to insist on designated desks and hated offices with hot swap desks, clean desks policy etc. I had drawers full of crap, my own "special" monitors, kit bags underneath my desk, lots of cans of pepsi max etc and dreaded moving desks. And sometimes I often had managed to get the back-to-the-wall/window far-from-corridor lots-of-privacy desk and did not want to surrender the desks... But then in the last few year…

The only issue is where the company has gone cheap on the desks and they are not all height adjustable so people can not opt to stand at them. So people bring in their own monstrous (but good) sit-stand desktop risers by e.g Varidesk, Ergotron, Ergo Desktop, etc which are not that movable. Hopefully, we are not long away from that being a ubiquitous option in the office.

Likewise for chair adjustments.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#358

Post by rhizome »

djsumdog wrote: post #190
rhizome wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to open plan? Absolutely. Even half-walls are better.

I find even half walls to be as bad as open layouts. I hated the cube for years until 2012 when I had my first open workspace job. It was a small shop and space was limited. The next two shops I worked at were also in open floor plan layouts. At least with the most recent one I could work from home 3 to 4 days out of the week. I have to admit, I started to miss the cube. I don't want to see other people pick their no…

Agreed on all points. One thing that cubes protect against is visual distractions. In an open plan, even when I'm able to focus on my work, I'll always be catching something out of the corner of my eye.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#359

Post by mikekchar »

ffumarola wrote: post #158
latkin wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their [sic] talking all the way up to about $70 per square foot. Peopleware says 100 sq ft per person, so that's up to about $700 per month per employee (or $8400). $7000 per month, not $700. $84k/year.

$70 is an annualized price

Either way my math is clearly wrong :-) I should be less lazy when I post!

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#360

Post by itsdrewmiller »

falcolas wrote: post #309
rb808 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 sq ft/person really? :) make sure to include space for luxuries like hallways and bathrooms, as well as meeting rooms, printers, cupboards etc.

Even at 10 times that (a bit larger than a "middle manager office") the price isn't that bad. Especially when you consider the base square footage per person in an open office plan is around 60 square feet.

What do you mean by "base" here? From what I've read on this avg square footage per employee has been declining for some time, but from low 200s to high 100s. That includes hallways and conference rooms, but those are generally a necessity for supporting open offices I would assume.
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