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Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

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Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#11

Post by MagnificRogue »

jdsully wrote: post #10
zzaner wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, they only upside of an open office is economic. When you have empty offices in the building, putting up with it really makes no sense. Basecamp actually designed their office around "library rules": https://m.signalvnoise.com/library-rules-how-to-make-an-open...

That office is mostly empty space, and with all the effort to noise damp one has to ask - why bother? Just add offices at that point. At Microsoft you could always chat in the halls and people would just close their doors.

Now everything is moving to open office or has already moved :(, I envy the people that still have their own office.

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#12

Post by floren »

At my previous employer, I worked in an office with real walls and a real solid wood door, in a cubicle with a sliding plastic door, in a cubicle with no door, and in a couple of larger open areas with between zero and three other people sharing the space. The real office was by far the best, but having a cubicle with a couple cabinets and a sliding door was almost as good.

I've experienced an "open plan" setup that worked; we based the setup on Bell Labs' Unix Room after visiting them. The Unix Room model is actually great, but it's different from your standard open-plan setup:

* People in the Unix Room seemed to be largely working on either individual projects or projects involving only a few others.

* The room itself was not actually very big, so you couldn't jam too many people in there

* Workspace was pretty generous, you weren't expected to tuck your elbows in lest you rub up against your neighbor

* Everyone in the Unix Room also had their own private office with a door, which I think was the key to success.

The last point is the biggest challenge: implementing a good open-plan workspace is going to require even more space than a traditional cube farm.

Edit: I work from home now, in a shed in the back yard. It's the size of a nice office, has doors and windows, and if I decide to work with the door open I get fresh air and birds chirping :)

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#14

Post by jesuslop »

wlesieutre wrote: post #8

Because it's cheap. Less walls to build, more employees packed on to a floor. Do you lose more money than you're saving due to decreased productivity? Maybe. But that's hard to prove, and "This office proposal is $X million cheaper because we can lease three fewer floors" is very straightforward.

absolutely, because it's dirtly comparatively cheaper. Period.

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#15

Post by paulddraper »

wlesieutre wrote: post #8

Because it's cheap. Less walls to build, more employees packed on to a floor. Do you lose more money than you're saving due to decreased productivity? Maybe. But that's hard to prove, and "This office proposal is $X million cheaper because we can lease three fewer floors" is very straightforward.

I'd wager open office is 2/3 the cost of small cubicles, 1/2 the cost of large cubicles and 1/3 the cost of cubicles plus offices.

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#16

Post by village-idiot »

wlesieutre wrote: post #8

Because it's cheap. Less walls to build, more employees packed on to a floor. Do you lose more money than you're saving due to decreased productivity? Maybe. But that's hard to prove, and "This office proposal is $X million cheaper because we can lease three fewer floors" is very straightforward.

That which can be measured gets managed. It’s very easy to measure the cost per employee, productivity is very hard to measure.

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#17

Post by mrob »

I think the real reason is that the bosses like watching all their subordinates at once. They can see that nobody is slacking (or at least everybody is pretending not to, which signals social submission almost as well), and enjoy the feeling of power. Productivity statistics don't produce the same feeling, partly because they're too abstract, and partly because they're evidence of submission to the organization as a whole, not to the boss personally.

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#18

Post by carimura »

It's not just price.

Think about how trends evolve over time and how long it takes larger companies to "catch up". The planning/facilities groups are still high-fiveing from the major work it took to spin up open layouts, ignoring the growing evidence that it was the wrong direction.

And completely opening and shoving people in like cattle is way easier than "well-planned open" (as mentioned in other comments), or even closed offices.

They're not about to embark on an expensive complicated project until it's unavoidable.

Will be years if ever.

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#20

Post by Irishsteve »

zzaner wrote: post #3
mrhandy wrote: post #2

This is painfully relatable... Marketing and sales teams don't seem to mind much but as a developer I once had to quit a job because of this.

I actually worked in sales and trust me, we DO mind the noise. Imagine trying to talk to a client on the phone when you can barely hear yourself.

Also gives me a pretty poor impression when I hear other sales people shouting over whoever I'm talking to. Feels like they are in some kinda boiler room selling me vapourware.
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