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

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

#351

Post by loco5niner »

telchar wrote: post #252
loco5niner wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done this. I have a whole collection of over-the-ear ear-protection. I can still hear my co-workers. It also made my tinnitus worse. Thanks though.

You could go the opposite route: good earplugs with good noise canceling over-ear headphones. The advantage of this over the other setup is that the minimum effective volume from music is lower, protecting against tinnitus. I had the same issues and found this setup works well for me. As an added bonus the obvious rigamarole I have to go through when a coworker taps me on the shoulder makes them more likely to send a…

Thanks, I've tried this and it works slightly better. Can still hear noisy co-workers though.

It seems the best solution is to not have loud people around.

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

#352

Post by dgreensp »

eqdw wrote: post #269

At a previous office we did a survey regarding our open office space. The answers were extremely polarized, with about half the office loving them and half the office hating them. The separation was pretty clean: people whose jobs involved focusing for extended periods of time hated it. People whose jobs were mundane/mindless/entry level, people whose jobs involved multitasking across a lot of things, and people whos…

> People whose jobs were mundane/mindless/entry level, people whose jobs involved multitasking across a lot of things, and people whose jobs involved constant interruptions

This is a great description of being a software engineer at certain companies. The pay is good, though.

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

#353

Post by RandallBrown »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #326
RandallBrown wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lighting is certainly trickier, but if it's that big of a deal, work with the people around you and/or your manager to move to a darker part of the office where you can set up your own lighting. I have worked in multiple open offices where people didn't want harsh fluorescent light and they worked with the team/facilities/whoever to get the lights dimmed/removed/changed to be more compatible with what people wanted.

> “I have worked in multiple open offices where people didn't want harsh fluorescent light and they worked with the team/facilities/whoever to get the lights dimmed/removed/changed to be more compatible with what people wanted.” I’ve never seen an open-plan office where this would be possible, do you have any links? In the open plan offices I’ve worked in, the overhead lighting could not be dimmed, and it would not b…

I don't have any links, but most office buildings I've encountered let you turn off sections of lights. For more granular control we've simply removed the lightbulbs. (Sometimes to the chagrin of the facilities people)

If lights from far away are a problem I don't have a very good solution beyond hanging a flag or something from the ceiling to try and block the light.

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

#354

Post by watwut »

commandlinefan wrote: post #116
watwut wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "grab-ass all over the office"? I tried to google it to find whether it is expression, but got tons of porn as result.

> but got tons of porn Sure hope you're not googling it in an open-plan office...

Not large open office, but very visible screen.

I closed tab very very fast.

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

#355

Post by rhizome »

jSully24 wrote: post #299
rhizome wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't the team agree on some norms of behavior for this very situation Who is going to assume the authority when a company is promoted as having a flat hierarchy, or holocracy, etc.? If the CEO is speakerphoning or fomenting adhoc floor meetings in an open-plan, nobody is going to say it's bad.

"nobody is going to say it's bad" It's not about saying "it's bad". It's about talking about what might be better. Flat hierarchy or not, anyone should be able to bring up the topic. And if you can't, that's a bad place to be working. There should be some kind of trust between people. You don't need any kind of hierarchy to have real leaders. Every where I've been, you just step up and try to make it happen. Most of…

anyone should be able to bring up the topic

It's not like people never actually comment on how they'd like to change their job environment. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the most common complaint among humans in general!

Do you have any examples of non-management fomenting a change in the entire physical architecture of their office, or other large change in a company?

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

#356

Post by anxiouspete »

eqdw wrote: post #271
0x445442 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and what kills me is how ubiquitous tellocomms are for multi-site corps. I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in where everyone was at their desk, headphones on and each was playing the mute/unmute game in order to not blast everyone else on the meeting with the surrounding noise. Then, given all that, you get the coworker two seats down Slacking you. If you're Slacking folks within 10 seconds walking di…

The reason I slack people who are ten seconds walk from my desk is mostly because, if I walk up to them and talk to them, I'm generating noise which will disrupt the other hundred people in my open plan office

Which when you think about it is absurd really. Here we are in this open plan office that is meant to encourage communication and collaboration and yet we're communicating over Slack because we don't want to disturb our other colleagues.

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

#357

Post by vlozko »

kindatrue wrote: post #222
tombert wrote: 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…

>you have to contend with people playing grab-ass all over the office ??? Do you work at Sterling Cooper Draper?

You forgot about Pryce!

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

#358

Post by mbrameld »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #76
PietdeVries wrote: post #61

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…

“flexdesks” or “hot desking” is just about the most juvenile reaction to working from home I can imagine. If a company believes it will gain more from “saving money” on open plan offices or hot desking than it will from just paying more to facilitate more and better work from employees through buying the best tools (a private office is a tool like a keyboard or ergonomic chair), it’s self-evidently a company to get f…

By your logic, the flight school I'm currently attending should have one helicopter per student/instructor pair since we could get more flying done without having to schedule helicopters. From the point of view of the instructor and student this is a fantastic idea. From a business standpoint it really doesn't make much sense. They do, however, give each student their own headset and view-limiting devices. We could share those, too, they're only used when the helicopter is used.

Can you think of reasons why maybe each student doesn't have their own helicopter but does have their own headset (assuming they were cleaned properly after each use and hygiene wasn't a concern)? Those same reasons apply to the office/keyboard situation.

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

#359

Post by fsloth »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #284
fsloth wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The increased collaboration angle is most likely bs. According to this study open offices do reduce face to face communications: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/1753/2017... The only two rational factors why anyone would choose open office: 1. the floor space really is so expensive you can waste xx% of capital output of labour. 2. You inherit a dysfunctional organization or just a one you cannot tr…

> You don't really have an opinion what consitutes a good working space but open offices seem to be trendy ("It's what the big boys are doing") and a consultant made you an offer to redesign your office space, so, why not. I'm pretty sure the lemming see, lemming do explanation is one of the top actual reasons.

Considering the high regard for fiduciary duty towards stock holders among corporate officers I would imagine it's stratified - company officers accept the financial rationale since it's explicitly affecting profits positively, while lower rung troopers might accept the political explanation of increased something something interaction as at least a plausible one.

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

#360

Post by sushid »

dazc wrote: post #298
loco5niner wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done this. I have a whole collection of over-the-ear ear-protection. I can still hear my co-workers. It also made my tinnitus worse. Thanks though.

'It also made my tinnitus worse.' I've found any earplug or headphone option will make my tinnitus worse - sometimes days afterwards. I explain my tinnitus to non-sufferers as being on the threshold of noise intolerance 24/7. I'm surprised there hasn't been a lawsuit against any of these companies that expect employees to damage their health just so they can save on floorspace?

I've also wondered about that. I didn't feel like I had tinnitus (I have a very mild one) until after I moved my apartment to a noisier street and wore earplugs for about 2 weeks.

Now I have a very faint one that "toggles" once or twice a week and ALWAYS when I wear earplugs.

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