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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

#331

Post by amf12 »

monkeynotes wrote: post #7

I am not sure why employees would message and email more if they can just turn their chair around to chat about something they are working on. Does anyone have experience of this? I have worked in open plan offices since 1999 and I've never experienced productivity problems. If anything I'd expect working in a cube would lead to more time wasted cruising websites since your screen is more obscured. I dunno, I've only…

> I am not sure why employees would message and email more if they can just turn their chair around to chat about something they are working on.

I have observed two main reasons for this.

1. More people now have headphones on to keep them focused. So people send IM's so as not to distract them.

2. It is easy to disturb others when having face to face conversations in the open area.

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

#332

Post by jdance »

ergothus wrote: post #218
Enginerrrd wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the opposite experience. I had a job where half the floor plan was cubicals and half was open plan where you had groups of 2-3 people in a sort of cove. I started in the cubicle section. And I hated my job. Every day felt draining to the soul. I felt invisible and isolated and I hated it. I was making no progress in the organization. I'd constantly find excuses to leave my desk just to see another human face…

One of my offices, after vocal complaints about the open office plan, did a quick survey. Roughly 50% were fine with the open office plan. (this office was mainly devs, HR, recruiting, and data scientists) As someone that is drained by social interactions (I _like_ them, but afterwards I'm drained, not energized), that is easily distracted by movement, and who can't hear conversations in the background without instin…

Surveys like that don't work very well. The same people would probably also have been "fine" with their own office. Many people just want to get along, and enduring this and that is something that we learn all the way from childhood.

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

#333

Post by erikbye »

My biggest gripes with open-plan offices (aside from the usual productivity cost):

- Listening to coworkers' lengthy private calls.

- You can't talk in confidence with any of your coworkers, so the only talks you have, the only things you say, are what you are OK with everyone nearby hearing. It hurts possible relationships/bonding (probably a positive for management), but it also hurts professional growth.

- When we ask questions, we learn from each other and solve problems; we get things done. However, many are not that cool with asking what they think might be a stupid question (or one that reveals a lack of knowledge). With several people nearby listening in? Forget it!

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

#334

Post by kazinator »

jackfoxy wrote: post #34

35+ years in the IT workforce here. Yep, dumbest idea ever. The vast majority of my office time was in cubicles, which are pretty good. Usually enough privacy to get things done. I did have a glassed-in private office for about a year at one company. That was productivity heaven. In retrospect I was dumb to leave that company when I did, but they started demolishing offices for cubicles about 2 years later. It is all…

> 35+ years in the IT workforce here. [...] I did have a glassed-in private office for about a year at one company.

Let me take a stab: 1998-2000? Ha!

(Same here.)

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

#335

Post by CM30 »

They're also a genuine hassle/pain for anyone who happens to be on the autistic spectrum, or who has trouble with social anxiety in general. As someone in that situation, open plan offices are basically a recipe for constant stress and sensory overload.

Either way, it's worrying given those in said situation are statistically likely to find it challenging to find employment as it is, and software engineering/web development/programming is an area which is seen as more suitable for them.

As for why it's so common? Well there are a few reasons given in other comments, but I suspect a major one is that managers/boss/CEOs tend to be more extraverted than average. So they end up going with office designs that they would have wanted to work in, not ones their employees would work better in.

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

#336

Post by commandlinefan »

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…

He seems to have edited his comment because the part you’re replying to isn’t there any more, but you’re correct, open offices don’t improve communication and they can’t meaningfully improve communication. If you happen to need to “communicate” with any of the maximum four people you’re physically adjacent to, then yes, you can start a conversation without having to get up from your chair. Otherwise, you have to get up and walk across the room to where the other person is (or just IM them): exactly the same as with cubicles.

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

#337

Post by streb-lo »

im3w1l wrote: post #276
bjornjajajaja wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup it’s been proven that libraries are good places to get work done not cafeterias. They really should have collaborative AND personal spaces. Not a forced airport-like office setup. What were they smoking when they designed those?

For me, a little noise is the worst. A busy cafe with a constant level of noise is easy for me to tune out. If everyone is silent but like every 30s something happens: Someone coughs, a bag of snacks is rustled, a cardboard strap is opened. That's the worst.

Sure but a cube farm isn't going to save you from this.

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

#338

Post by mrkstu »

thawaway1837 wrote: post #324
kyuudou wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’m willing to be t silent environments are more conducive to productivity. It's always worked for libraries, I think. Why not offices?

Aren’t libraries usually open spaces? But they enforce strict silence. So you can go tap on anyone’s shoulder but if you want to have a conversation you need to head to a non working area. That sounds like the best idea to me. Open office plan, but no loud conversations are allowed. You need to maintain strict library like silences. However, you also provide enough breakout rooms or non quiet areas where people can h…

Which of course can never work in an office environment. Leave your desk for every Zoom/WebEx conference call? Whisper with the colleague who needs to talk to you for a minute about something? You're not going to decamp to a meeting area for all the daily grind stuff- so the open area is always going to be interruptingly loud.

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

#339

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

100% this, you've described perfectly how I feel. It's not something I have control over either. Even in high school, I've had to close the doors to my room to be able to focus on learning. I can work in a team on a common task requiring constant interaction (e.g. brainstorming, negotiating, designing), but if a task requires individual focus (like programming), I have to expend significant emotional energy on managing my anxiety if my work area is in the open.

I know I'm not alone in this; the last time I worked in an office, we were technically in a semi-open space (8 people in a room), but the desks and monitors got subtly but quickly rearranged to block everyone's line-of-sight to everyone else.

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

#340

Post by Mountain_Skies »

LordFast wrote: post #243
techsupporter wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For some people the idea of chatting someone who's sitting 5 feet away from them is super weird. This is exactly what happens in my employer's "pod rooms." There are 10 of us and inevitably someone will be all, "Jack; Jack!; HEY, JACK!!" and someone else says "he has his headphones on just send him an IM" and the first person replies "ugh!" and then gets up to walk over and stand at Jack's shoulder until Jack takes…

> Right now I can hear my neighbor upstairs walking around on the hardwood floors all of our apartments have with his hard-soled shoes like he's been doing for the past hour, the traffic outside because apparently density should only exist next to busy arterials in the city where I live, planes loudly going overhead because the cloud ceiling is lower and they're taking a more direct route to the airport, and now the…

It'll be interesting to see if SpaceX's Starlink LEO internet service will spur remote workers to spread out even further into places like Montana. We've already had to deal with some remote workers relocating to developing countries and in one case, even an active warzone, without telling the company first.
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