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Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

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Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#231

Post by falcolas »

montagg wrote: post #16
Mikeb85 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. Real estate is expensive.

I’d be really curious how much of a hit to people’s salary they would be willing to take, or the reduced capabilities of their business, to get an open office environment. I worked with an internal team that created a brand new office for a decently-sized tech company. We had this exact debate: open or closed. We explored closed, or versions of it (see Spotify’s team rooms as a great example of a compromise), but the…

It wouldn't have to be much of a salary cut. If you amortize the up-front cost for around a 110 square foot office, the total is only about $5,000 a year (more than an open office).

45 additional square feet at (a vastly overestimated) $100 per year per square foot for rent. $5,000 construction costs amortized over 10 years.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#233

Post by LordFast »

projektfu wrote: post #207
praptak wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Waterfall was never really advocated: https://davesquared.net/2008/01/contentious-myth-of-waterfal... It was conceived as a straw man which was being dissed so vigorously that people started believing it was real.

Waterfall represents the default approach to managing chaos. One or two programmers with a single customer have an easy time getting a job done. When the budget gets into the millions, the project fails from having too many chefs in the kitchen, etc. So the gut reaction is to overload the front end with process. Finish requirements first, create a high level design, split it up into components that can be implemented…

> It doesn't work this way because software development is the process of figuring out the actual requirements and a good design.

In my experience very few people truly understands why engineering is something expensive at its core, and it's usually this particular lack of understanding that ironically ends up making making things even more expensive and produces worse value-for-money, and so the vicious cycle continues.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#234

Post by Izkata »

Loughla wrote: post #170
mgolawala wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post reminded me of how my own perception has changed. I remember when I graduated college I interviewed and got a job and went to work at this company that in hindsight, had these awesome large high end cubicles, with wooden U shaped desks and tall partitions. Yet, I remember walking to my cubicle and feeling a pang of sadness. I could see this huge cubicle farm and I was being guided to my own "little" cubicle…

>But now that my expectations have been lowered further... I'd take that cubicle setup over an open plan office any day. Scott Adams nailed it in his book from 15 years ago: >After your boss has taken away your door, your walls, and your storage areas, there aren't many options left for the next revolution in office design. One of the following things is likely to go next: the floor; the ceiling; your happiness. I th…

There's a missing stage in his description, that we're having issues with right now: in an open office plan, not having enough seats for everyone.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#235

Post by falcolas »

UncleMeat wrote: post #199
Androider wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple, when you go visit someone in a private office you can close the door and have a long conversation about your topic and really hash out the details. If you turn around and start blabbering to one of your teammates in an open office plan, everyone within hearing distance will want to murder you. If you're not aware of this, I guarantee everyone within 30 feet of you is already wearing headphones and hates you.…

Private offices aren't cubes. You can still hear conversations with cubicles. And if you have an office with more than one person, the long conversation still disrupts the other people in the office. Long conversations do deserve private space, but this can be resolved by having ample meeting spaces.

You can hear loud conversations. Those fabric walls do a surprisingly good job at limiting the spread of a normal-volume conversation to about 1 cubicle around you, and you can speak in soft tones and not be heard at all.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#236

Post by BoorishBears »

noxToken wrote: post #225
BoorishBears wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what, if I'm going to be downvoted for an opinion, it should at least earn it: Too bad open offices are here to stay, if you were worth it you could get an office, maybe invest in some good headphones :)

>a huge part of craft is communication, and open offices are great for that. Can you explain this to me? How does an open office lead to better communication than cubes or partitioned group work spaces? I'm in an open office. A lot of communication is done via email and IM. When someone comes to my desk to ask a question, collaborate, or just say hey, I typically don't get up. If a group stops by, we'll usually move…

I hear a conversation relevant to me and jump in, a conversation stops being relevant I jump out

That simple interaction has added tons of value for me over the last few years of open offices.

We have a very simple way to indicate you don't want to be interrupted, headphones or a flag

There's also tons of huddle rooms you can go into if you want to hunker down in quiet

-

Everyone is different, some people feel switching from keyboard to mouse is a huge productivity drain and invest a lot in avoiding that transition

Maybe I'm just fortunate but it's never been an issue for me, people are pretty respectful of their coworkers where I've worked

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#237

Post by bassman9000 »

notduncansmith wrote: post #79

I work in an open office environment. I never thought I’d say this, but it works excellently; there’s always energy in the air, collaboration is easy, and it’s a great space to hold company all-hands meetings. I’d say there are 4 keys to making this work: 1) The founders have a great sense of aesthetic and our office is a beautiful space as a result (also stays very clean), meaning it stays less stressful and promote…

2) is flawed: I don't want to go to a private office for focus time. I got my external monitors, headphones, dock, etc. in my main seat. It's my working area, and should be the main focus area.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#238

Post by jandrese »

projektfu wrote: post #207
praptak wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Waterfall was never really advocated: https://davesquared.net/2008/01/contentious-myth-of-waterfal... It was conceived as a straw man which was being dissed so vigorously that people started believing it was real.

Waterfall represents the default approach to managing chaos. One or two programmers with a single customer have an easy time getting a job done. When the budget gets into the millions, the project fails from having too many chefs in the kitchen, etc. So the gut reaction is to overload the front end with process. Finish requirements first, create a high level design, split it up into components that can be implemented…

I've seen too many projects where the specification guys were basically writing the whole program suite in English and then expecting it to just translate smoothly to computer code.

Then their beautiful 5 year late 2000 page specification slams head first into the realities of computers and the project immediately becomes quagmired. It's basically the Soviet model of computer programming, where you try to make all of the design decisions from the top but the people at the top don't have the whole picture and can't make good decisions and the scope is way too large for mere mortals to learn enough to make said decisions.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#239

Post by jmilloy »

Regardless of your personal preference, it should be obvious that offices and productivity are not one-size-fits-all.

We seem to enjoy sharing personal anecdotes and preferences here regarding open plan, cubicles, home office, etc, and I find these discussions interesting. But I think the OP is a bit more interesting, because it summarizes some studies about both personal productivity and interactive teamwork.

Furthermore, they make the argument that it is a bad "management fad". In other words, since different folks/teams/projects work best in different arrangements, when an office accomodates all sorts, it should succeed, whereas management that forces any one arrangement will fail for some people. The fact that it is a fad is precisely the problem inasmuch as causes management to select open plan offices exclusively.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#240

Post by wikibob »

JohnFen wrote: post #164
dualboot wrote: post #137

The other side of this is that a very large percentage of folks in our industry seem to have social anxiety-spectrum issues. Folks without those don't seem to understand how much energy is being burned through just being out in the open and on display for all of your coworkers. It's not something I, personally, have control over. The time I've spent in "open concept" work places, I finish every day frustrated with my…

> I've moved on from jobs due to this type of work environment. Me too. The last job I had was with a top tier company whose products nearly everyone reading this owns and uses. The open office workspace is why I quit. It was an intolerable hell.

Fruit company?
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