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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

#341

Post by dang »

Misdicorl wrote: post #253

Meta response. There has to be a better way to aggregate than having this same article (effectively) pop up every other week. And then like 30% of all hiring/firing/workplace discussions devolve into the open floor plan discussion. The responses are always the same and the conversation hasn't moved an inch in five years. No, its not that hard to just hide the submission and close the comment chains which veer. But my…

In this case the sad thing is that the thread filled up for hours before we noticed the actual topic and changed the title. If people would discuss the study, which is the new information here, the discussion might be less generic.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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

#342

Post by SJetKaran »

RivieraKid wrote: post #84

For me the problem is not really distractions (I don't care if people interrupt me from time to time, in fact I like it). My problem is the mental strain that stems from lack of privacy, the knowledge that people can see me and my monitor all the time, it's like there's a background process in my mind that checks whether what I want to do (move a lot in my chair, comment on HN, eat something) is ok with people around…

Exactly! I would be fine in an open office where monitors can't be seen from behind (sideways is okay, I should be able to show colleagues sitting beside me, my screen). Perhaps, between two rows a thin paper-ish wall can be put up.

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

#343

Post by mrkstu »

bradlys wrote: post #129
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.…

Honestly, I don't see this as a thing once you get to a certain size. It used to be a thing at my workplace when we were smaller. However, now, the place is just so loud with conversation/whatever on a daily basis that people are less bothered by individual conversations near them. It's like complaining about conversation next to you when you're in a cafeteria full of it already. Everyone wears headphones at my place…

And why do they need meeting rooms for everything? Because they don't have offices.

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

#344

Post by Accujack »

arafa wrote: post #192
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…

"It is all about efficient use of real estate." I've been a part of these discussions at very high levels and this is the consistent theme. Short-term, easily quantifiable savings against nebulous, hard to quantify harms. Facilities folks always win and get a pat on the back. Any push back about the open office should, in my opinion, start with addressing this basic incentive. Everything about collaboration, open com…

> It is all about efficient use of real estate.

To be completely accurate, it's all about maximizing profit and minimizing costs, which in this case means having as many people in a given amount of floor space as is legally possible.

The benefit of the low cost per person of office space is weighed against the negatives:

* Employee attitude/positive workplace (hard to measure)

* Difficulties introduced to the workplace by the increased density - noise, psychological effects, smells, etc (hard to measure/easily dismissed)

* A less pleasant workplace makes employee retention work less well (difficult to measure)

The other up side of the open plan space is that it's a project that an otherwise ineffective manager can do to appear valuable.

The real elephant in the room of open plan offices is "hoteling", IE employees are supposed to sit down at the first open space and start working. The real reason this is implemented is that assigning spaces in an open plan is difficult, and hoteling avoids arguments over who gets the better spot (near the restrooms, vending machines, windows, or whatever) and avoids the work of tracking employee seating and doing assignments.

However, in every single open plan space I've worked in, everyone sits in the same location every day. Despite this being obvious, no one ever seems to remember this when they decide on yet another open plan office conversion.

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

#345

Post by anthonypasq »

mjevans wrote: post #246
kylec wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extroverts: I feel invisible and isolated and I hate it. Introverts: I feel invisible and isolated and I love it.

More like: Introvert: Anyone could (and has in the past) interrupted my thoughts in similar situations, I need to be ready. Introvert: What are they saying? Does that involve me or an area I should be concerned about? Introvert: There's someone within speaking voice 'ear-shot' and/or eye-contact range, lets work on that task together.

im not sure what any of this has to do with introversion

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

#346

Post by anthonypasq »

fernandotakai wrote: post #75
commandlinefan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Constant surveillance is another part of the real reason with collaboration used as the public rationale. I mean, it doesn't make sense, but it makes them feel more like slave-owners, and that makes them happy.

>Constant surveillance is another part of the real reason with collaboration used as the public rationale when i worked on an open plan office, that was huge. it seems like my boss' favorite hobby was checking everyone's screen to see what they were doing. once, i was watching a yt video on a monitor while i worked on the other. normal right? nope. my boss came to my "desk" and said i had to shut it down because it w…

my boss has literally never walked by to look at my computer. He doesnt even know what im working on day to day.

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

#347

Post by erikbye »

raindropm wrote: post #58

and here I am, at my newly renovate office with gasp open plan. We have some cliché things like table tennis desk, rock climbing space(that no one have a time to climb, of course) and garden plot with fresh vegetable(just for show off at new office opening day), that HR staff told us that employee can plant their own after that(good luck with that) Everything about it screams pretentious and dumb. What's better, we h…

> The only thing I can do is put on my trusty noise-cancelling headphones, thanks god for this miraculous technology in this noisy world.

Noise-canceling headphones help a lot, but I've tried all the most expensive, top-of-the-line ones, and unless you play some sound (which, no matter what you play, is tiring in the long run) you can still hear people talk, they just remove the lower frequencies.

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

#348

Post by three_seagrass »

switch007 wrote: post #159
RivieraKid wrote: post #84

For me the problem is not really distractions (I don't care if people interrupt me from time to time, in fact I like it). My problem is the mental strain that stems from lack of privacy, the knowledge that people can see me and my monitor all the time, it's like there's a background process in my mind that checks whether what I want to do (move a lot in my chair, comment on HN, eat something) is ok with people around…

Foucault wouldn't be surprised at all at the prevalence of open-plan offices.

Foucault would also argue that open-office is the best office plan. His ideas of the power structure behind discipline reach far beyond what the penal system implemented them as.

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

#349

Post by xp84 »

veeralpatel979 wrote: post #330

I wonder if ease of setup has something to do with the popularity of open offices, especially for startups? 1. After choosing an office setup, a company is not likely to change it unless it needs to 2. You can set up an open office in an afternoon. Buy some desks and chairs from Ikea and let people arrange them 3. On the other hand, I wouldn't know where to start in order to procure cubicles/private offices. 4. Also,…

^- THIS. And to be fair, it's probably nearly always the right decision for a startup that has no idea if it will even be able to put out its first product. Sinking like $300k into an office build-out of any kind before you hire your first key staff would be nuts.

So a startup pretty much automatically is gonna start out looking like what you described in #2. And the inertia keeps them with that setup even after they have the funds to do it right. AND then the big companies wanted to "skin" their environments to look like a startup - so they opt for commercial open office furniture that, while the costs are still dramatically more than the IKEA route, usually offers little actual advantage over the $60 tables and chairs of the real early-stage startup.

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

#350

Post by commandlinefan »

0xffff2 wrote: post #87
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…

>There is Sonos in both open-office areas and people are pretty good about not hogging it or playing obnoxious/too-loud music If my only choices were working in this office and homelessness, I would honest to go choose homelessness.

There's always a third option of coming in before everybody else and smashing the Sonos into a thousand pieces with a sledge hammer.
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