The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by telchar » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 9:01 PM UTC

kingbirdy wrote: post #290

telchar wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What's the difference you notice in the "earbuds + noise cancelling headphones" setup vs using the noise cancelling headphones to also play music?

I prefer the music to come from the headphones because my in-ear phones can be overly loud, even on the lowest volume setting on my phone. Having music coming from them hours every day had me feeling like I was damaging my hearing.

With earplugs inside noise-canceling phones I still get two layers of sound isolation but have a layer of sound isolation between me and the phones, providing finer volume control so I can add just enough music to finish the job of drowning out loud people around me without hearing damage.

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

#382

Post by Joeri » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 9:06 PM UTC

I’ve built software for the facilities industry so could see the move to open offices from the inside.

The single most important motivation for open offices is cost. The facilities department inside almost every company is viewed as a cost, and managers of departments viewed as a cost have only one way to make a bonus: cut costs. Most of the facilities costs are a multiple of the square meters (rent, cleaning, heating, ...), so to cut costs you cut square meters. How do you do this most easily? Get rid of walls first (open office), get rid of fixed desks second (flexdesk / hot desk), then keep reducing the ratio of desks to staff and push people to work from starbucks. Of course, it’s always packaged up as an enabling story, creating better workplaces, but in almost all cases that I saw the core driver was cost.

To get back to private offices the facilities department needs to be seen as an investment, with higher productivity as ROI. The trick is proving that with numbers. Reducing square meters is so much easier.

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

#383

Post by eikenberry » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #382

I’ve built software for the facilities industry so could see the move to open offices from the inside. The single most important motivation for open offices is cost. The facilities department inside almost every company is viewed as a cost, and managers of departments viewed as a cost have only one way to make a bonus: cut costs. Most of the facilities costs are a multiple of the square meters (rent, cleaning, heatin…

If this is the case it would indicate an eventual move toward mostly remote positions. With remote work the company gets the productivity advantages of private offices while having near 0 cost for facilities.

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

#384

Post by Cyph0n » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 9:22 PM UTC

mikec3010 wrote: post #184

Cyph0n wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, because it's probably just you. Quite a few people in this thread really don't understand how big of an event thr World Cup is...

It isn't a big event though. They kick a ball into a rectangular volume.

And us software devs push buttons on a keyboard. You can make anything sound useless if you make it your goal to do so...

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

#385

Post by iamdave » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 9:24 PM UTC

llampx wrote: post #380

iamdave wrote: post #344

Anyone else find themselves assessing office space when on interviews? Not things like looking for the pool table or seeing what craft beer they have on tap, or how fancy the giant wallboard behind reception is. I'm talking about going into an interview, taking a look at the space and asking yourself "Could I really stand working in this configuration for more than a month?". I ask, having gone into interview after i…

If more developers would put that line in their feedback to HR, I suspect change might come sooner rather than later.

See, that statement alone makes me think of something. If more developers put that line in their feedback to HR, and you analyzed that data, how much you want to bet the people who are fed up and tired with "open offices" trend on the older side?

I'm much older than I was earlier in my developer years (turning 36 in a few months) and have come to form an appreciation for this kind of thinking. With age my patience for some of the crap these high-speed, energetic startups (and even some established companies looking to target the young and energetic worker by adopting startup-y tropes-like the open office) put their workers through has plummeted.

I don't care about your beer. I care about your healthcare plan. Do you offer retirement benefits? Are you matching contributions?

Hey that's a real nice pool table you've got there. There's a slim to none chance I'll ever be playing on it (partly because I'll mop the floor with anybody you throw at me over a game of 8-ball), do you support continuing education of your employees? How? Subsidized or can I expect to be reimbursed for taking a certificate course?

Are you discussing met objectives with the workforce? What gets discussed in an all-hands meeting? Did we meet our monthly business goals or did we come up short? Or are the meetings just feel good moments of superlatives for someone who got a positive reaction on twitter?

Don't get me wrong, this line of thinking kind of drifts away from the core discussion we're having about open-office spaces, but I look at the open office space as an indicator of QOL in the work place.

I walk in for an interview and see rows and columns of monitors, surge protectors and switches, entire ecosystems of cables mashed under a desk and the only thing that looks like a wall separating one area from the next being a conference room with not enough chairs, and history has taught me to be very incredulous. Very good chance I'm not going to want to work there or will regret it in a few months.

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

#386

Post by tombert » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 9:26 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #349

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…

Ah yes the world cup - kills productivity for 6-10 hours every 4 years. Definitely worth changing office layout for.

I think you might have missed my point; it's not about the world cup (or any ball-based sport you want to talk about) in particular. I'm complaining about the fact that can make people loud and therefore very distracting.

I wouldn't suggest changing the office layout if I were only distracted by events every four years. I get distracted by events related to the open office every single day; the latest one just happened to be the World Cup when I wrote that.

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

#387

Post by frogperson » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 9:33 PM UTC

If open floor plans are as beneficial as managent says, then why do they always get to keep their private offices?

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

#388

Post by sushid » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

dazc wrote: post #372

sushid wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had it 'mild' for years. After ignoring the warning signs and also having an ear infection which I never bothered getting medical help for it got much worse. It's settled down to a manageable level for me now but heed the warnings, you may save yourself a lot of misery in the long run.

Are you suggesting that I get checked for an ear infection or saying that I should stop using ear plugs? I have pretty much done the latter, only wearing them for the occasional nap once every other week.

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

#389

Post by notyourwork » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 9:46 PM UTC

jbronn wrote: post #377

notyourwork wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting, as someone who is interested in law and currently an SDE I would love to hear more about your transition. Did you all along plan on this, did it come after your engineering career, at what point did you become an attorney. For reference, I am 8 years into a software engineering career and heavily considering going to law school.

Do not go to law school unless it's a passion that you're willing to sacrifice financial and mental well-being for. It's only "worth it" if you're able to attend an elite (top 10) institution -- otherwise, in an industry obsessed with status and prestige, you'll end up on the wrong side of the bimodal salary curve¹ struggling to pay your six figure student debt. BigLaw, IP (patents), and tax attorneys are the only sp…

This doesn't really answer any of the questions I asked but thanks for the perspective. I'm not worried about the financial cost and planning on focusing on IP law in the company I currently work at.

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

#390

Post by fit2rule » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 9:46 PM UTC

My headphones are my cubicle. These days the anti-social aspect of wearing headphones in the workplace is alleviated by the fact that there are, at any given time, about 10 different ways to get my attention through those headphones without requiring you to leave your desk - Slack PM's, email alerts, etc.

If I forget to charge them, however, my productivity goes out the roof. I cannot sit in an open plan office for 8 hours and get even close to the same amount of work done, as if I'd had headphones on the whole day.