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The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

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241–250 of 461 posts

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really cannot see the comparison, unless the dogs are barking. I find sportsball* at work extremely annoying, but dogs are relaxing to have around. *Yeah, I know, live and let live, but that is basically impossible with the current sport fanatics around here.

For one thing, they shed and make your clothes and personal spaces look disgusting. They also try to interact with you and touch you without your consent. Dogs are animals. They belong outside, not in shared people spaces.

on hn it seems to be the norm to down vote opinions you disagree with or facts that you'd like to ignore. some I'm down voting you.

also people are animals too.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#242
I hate open office plans, but I would be fine with them with three changes.

Do not allow eating meals in the general workspace. The main office should not be an "office-ateria". Right now, there's a ~3.5 hour block between 11am-2:30pm where there's a 50 percent chance people are eating and having a conversation about last night's episodes/games 5 feet behind my back.

Similarly, if you need to pull up a group of people for anything more than a quick conversation? Get together in a room. Do not do it amongst the rest of the team. Offices still need several private rooms to make this possible. Same thing with phone calls. Any sort of long term outlaid conversations should be relegated to private rooms, or to that cafeteria area. The more people involved the shorter it must be for it to happen acceptably amongst the general workspace.

Lastly, let people be remote when they need to, encourage it even. Don't make jokes about it, or discourage it for any reason other than important dates/meetings. Give them everything they need to succeed remotely. Open office plans make everyone aware of who is there and who is not, and currently, "not being there" is frowned upon. So even people with a valid reason, like they're on the second week of a bad cold, feel pressured to return earlier than necessary.

With these three things, I could reasonably expect that my work space and general area is a suitable environment to focus, to have quick, productive discussions and general be a part of the group.

Without them, I'm an irritable bastard with headphones on all day who loathes everyone around me.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#243
post #132

To throw some more anecdotes in with the rest of the comments, I love open offices. I've had my own office and found it lonely and boring. I never got less work done than at that job. Everything took longer because I had to stand up and walk to talk to my team. Instant messaging sort of worked, but if they didn't respond immediately, you didn't know if it was because they missed the message or they weren't actually i…

I thrive in hybrid environment. I go to office for half the day, while other half the day I either work from home, or in a coffee place or somewhere else where I can be in the zone for hours. But the downside is I’m a workaholic. I spend too many hours working.

I would LOVE this. Unfortunately, commute.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#244
post #9

> We were already working from in open office, but at least I had a desk facing the wall behind me, so there was a modicum of privacy and psychological safety. Then management decided that it would “look better” if we went to circular desks where several of us would be sitting with our backs to the hallway, so everyone walking past would be looking at our screen as they passed. This seems dishonest to me. Can some bo…

I can only speak for myself but it makes me unconformable because it makes me feel like I must be super productive for 8 hours straight lest the big boss happen to walk by for the 3 minutes I'm taking a mental break to read something interesting and completely unrelated to work.

If the big boss happens to walk by for the 3 minutes you're taking a mental break and that is a problem, I would say the problem is the boss/culture, not the space.

Think about it. You just said that someone "catching you" taking a break is an issue and that in your mind that is a justification for keeping your screen hidden.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#245
post #237
post #6

The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of negated when people have the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant cheering, which is my current situation. Even when soccer is over, you have to contend with people playing grab-ass all over the office, or jerks (like me) with annoyingly loud keyboards. The modicum of utility of me "jumping into a conversation" really goes out the w…

I think it's less about increased collaboration but more about fostering culture and relationships between team members. Imagine a soccer team where everyone trains independently and only heads in to the office for video sessions. Teams with good culture, good bond between team members, often succeed (there's a particular sports team in the Oakland that is a good example).

What exact property of private office space prevents fostering a team culture ? At some point, people need to stop discussing and get something done, and that requires quiet, un-interrupted, work time.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize there are large numbers of people who cannot "go elsewhere and work from another location [they] like".

Sure but that’s all just conditioning. Just do it. And if you get in trouble show the code you wrote. Repeat. Eventually you’ll be at peace with just walking out the door.

It is not just conditioning. Some people physically cannot, or have significant barriers to doing so. I would have to give up my two 29" monitors and work over a shitty RDP connection. At my previous two companies I had to be physically at my desk to actually do my job.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#247
Every time I read these threads against the open-plan office, I think back to two arguments that an old boss put forth for them that I haven't been able to find a good answer for:

1) If it works for some of the most successful tech companies on the planet (Google / Facebook / Amazon,) why can't it work for us?

2) Prove to me that the loss in productivity is higher than the cost / investment necessary to build everyone an office (or a semi-isolated cube) + value gained from collaboration.

I hear lots of hearsay and opinions, but if folks have good research or articles to point to, I'd love to have them in my back pocket for the next time I have this argument.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#248
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that this working-from-home people significantly impact the efficiency of your office. It's a trend (could be the open-office space started it) but resulted in people easily working 2 or more days from home. That implies that any desk you have is empty about 40% of the time. Or: your entire office is not being used for 40%... So when bosses realised they were throwing money away, they came up with the op…

Too many people work from home who don't need to. Some people have reasonable commutes and don't bother showing up in the office most of the week. While working from home may help your productivity since you don't have to worry about commute time, it has a negative impact on the rest of your team who walks into a half-empty office. It's just unfortunate that the commute here in the Bay Area has gotten so bad that a l…

I'm sorry, what criterion other than the commute time do you use to determine who "needs to" work from home? Increased productivity while working from home does not simply stem from lack of commute. It's all in the article.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time the topic comes up on HN half a dozen people insist that the only possible reason anyone could ever consider an open plan office is cost. Meanwhile, there's a thriving and growing industry selling desks in trendy open plan offices to self-employed people who for the most part could do their work in the privacy of their own home if they didn't think the atmosphere of an open plan office was worth paying for…

Working at home has other issues (distractions, lack of separation between home/work, loneliness) so I can see someone wanting to rent a desk especially if they find working at home that particular day challenging to their productivity.

I mostly work from home these days but I can't imagine starting out that way after school.

A lot of people I know work remotely in whole or in large part. But I've also worked with people who either felt the need for work-home separation or just found home to be too distracting a work environment in one or more ways.

Re: The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

#250

Every time I read these threads against the open-plan office, I think back to two arguments that an old boss put forth for them that I haven't been able to find a good answer for: 1) If it works for some of the most successful tech companies on the planet (Google / Facebook / Amazon,) why can't it work for us? 2) Prove to me that the loss in productivity is higher than the cost / investment necessary to build everyon…

The obvious answer to 1) is "you're not Google, Facebook or Amazon". How does he propose to distinguish between it "working" for them vs. them being able to function despite the productivity hit because of their other strengths? Given that all the research shows almost entirely negative impacts of open plan offices on multiple dimensions it seems more likely that those exceptions succeed despite not because of the disadvantages.

The OP links to the recent study that the supposed communication benefits of open plan offices also appear to be a myth which calls into question the premise of 2)

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