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Is the open office layout dead?

blogs.dropbox.com

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Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#361

Post by brightsize »

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...

Yes, they'd give you all the resources you wanted, because they had tens of millions in R&D funding. https://goo.gl/iHb698 (vintagecomputing.com)

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#362

Post by closeparen »

bujak wrote: post #263
gerbilly wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Some more traditional companies allocate offices according to the need to have confidential conversations, which usually means management/authority/involved in other people's problems, yes.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#363

Post by cerberusss »

regularfry wrote: post #339
jdbernard wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some offices do exactly that. Thinkpad docks everywhere.

This will get even better with USB-C and/or Thunderbolt. Just sit down and with a single cable, get monitor, power, network and peripherals. (Almost) regardless of laptop make & model.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#364

Post by daniel_iversen »

irq11 wrote: post #353
daniel_iversen wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Probably depends on the company, I'm sure for some that's the main driver and some of those companies may not even agree that a more open and creative workspace improves collaboration and individual productivity. Each to their own.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#365

Post by dingo_bat »

cerberusss wrote: post #363
regularfry wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some offices do exactly that. Thinkpad docks everywhere.

This will get even better with USB-C and/or Thunderbolt. Just sit down and with a single cable, get monitor, power, network and peripherals. (Almost) regardless of laptop make & model.

No it won't get better. On a dock, you have to connect exactly zero cables. Just place the laptop on the dock. That's it. No cables. No connectors. The bottom of the laptop has a connection which touches the pins on the top of the dock surface.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#366

Post by dtech »

jchampem wrote: post #317
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.

At my current job, they plan to move office and to change the organisation from "open office layout" to what they call "dynamic layout", including no designated desks. And they made some studies stating that an average of X% of the company workforce time is spent in meeting rooms, so they can cut off the number of desks by X% (minus a small delta). People will even have lockers to store personal stuff... I'm looking…

> And they made some studies stating that an average of X% of the company workforce time is spent in meeting rooms, so they can cut off the number of desks by X% (minus a small delta).

I never understood that logic. These kinds of calculations usually completely ignore the most relevant thing for desks: the (regular) peak number of people that want to use a desk.

At a place I worked for they had 10 people from a company we worked with come in every monday and tuesday. No more desks needed, because "most of the time there are more than enough desks". People just called in sick on monday and tuesday, because there were 20 people in a room that could maybe fit 8-10.

Whenever next someone is going to suggest something like this, I now enthusiastically propose to also cut parking by 50% since the lot is nearly empty 18:00 to 7:00 anyway (adjusted to whatever calculation they are using)

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#367

Post by mattmanser »

hota_mazi wrote: post #340
mattmanser wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire article, and all the studies, flatly contradict you.

The entire article offers as much evidence for their claims as I do: none. Have you visited the offices at Google? Yahoo? Facebook? Tesla? Square? Twitter? They are all bursting at the seams and are fighting on a daily basis with each other to find new space to expand, which is very hard to find here. Same for pretty much all the companies in the Bay Area, actually. The mere idea of switching these companies from an…

I don't understand why you are lying? Your first sentence is an outright lie.

The article links studies, you do not.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#368

Post by cm2187 »

drunkenmonkey wrote: post #265
cm2187 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No but I am sure we source our hardware from flea markets in Kazakhstan!

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#369

Post by notyourday »

jchampem wrote: post #317
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.

At my current job, they plan to move office and to change the organisation from "open office layout" to what they call "dynamic layout", including no designated desks. And they made some studies stating that an average of X% of the company workforce time is spent in meeting rooms, so they can cut off the number of desks by X% (minus a small delta). People will even have lockers to store personal stuff... I'm looking…

> People will even have lockers to store personal stuff...

It is fun to watch uppity personnel of the SV companies to realize the companies would gladly treat them as the blue collar throw away technicians.

Re: Is the open office layout dead?

#370

Post by erroneousfunk »

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've been at my current company (satellite of a larger company) for a year and a half, we have 8 people in the office, max, every day. There are a couple people who usually work from home, some days it's only one or two people in the office. Our office is 4,200 sq ft and it's an "open office." We're not growing, we didn't just shrink from a massive size -- the company just picked an office and that was that.

I get paid well above market rate, I own a home just outside Boston, my macbook pro had an issue a few months ago and the company just issued me a new one without blinking. The company just doesn't give a crap. Open offices are cool and just what programmers do these days, right?

My last company was very similar. 5 people, > 2,000 sq ft, great salaries, open office. The CEO talked about how awesome it was all the time, and actually said he wanted MORE talking in the office. Annoying as hell.

I don't think it's a money issue. I really think it's a culture issue. The only company I ever worked at that had cubicles was my first job out of college and they were actually relatively strapped for cash. The difference is the founder was in his 60's and they were in business consulting, not software specifically.

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