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

inc.com

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

#371

Post by logfromblammo »

JohnFen wrote: post #189
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.

> It was conceived as a straw man which was being dissed so vigorously that people started believing it was real. So much this. I've been in the industry for about 30 years, and I've never once seen a place that used a methodology that could be called "waterfall" as described by many agile proponents.

I worked in a place that called it "spiral". Because they did the phases of waterfall over and over again, until finally drilling down through the roof of Hell.

Yes, it was horrible.

Yes, it got worse when they added the mandatory omnibus all-hands standup scheduled for 8:45-9:00 every morning, that always somehow lasted until at least 9:30, because everyone was continually justifying their existence.

And it was redundant with the spreadsheets that recorded the time spent on any particular task, down to the second.

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

#372

Post by LeonenTheDK »

deepsun wrote: post #327
anon9001 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There has to be a better way to aggregate than having this same article (effectively) pop up every other week. I disagree. I think this is actually the best way HN can bring about change, even though the arguments haven't changed in years. IMO the reason these posts get upvoted is out of protest and to raise awareness. HN is probably the most influential source in tech. If every time you look at HN there's threads…

Well, HN votes are (at least designed) not for liking/protesting, but to give feedback that something was interesting and curious.

IIRC it's similar for Reddit (I believe it's meant to be if the comment contributes to the discussion or not). Few people seem to follow it though.

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

#373

Post by erik_seaberg »

dkersten wrote: post #156

The best office I've experienced (but sadly only visited for two week, the branch I worked at had typical open plan garbage) had the building split into sections where along both sides were small single-person offices (large enough that two people could sit at a desk and work, or 3 to 4 people could sit for a meeting) with closing sliding doors. In the space between the two rows of offices was a small amount of hot-d…

That looks so much like https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Workshop_desi... that I kinda want potential employers to start publishing their office designs as Dwarf Fortress saves.

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

#375

Post by dsr_ »

0xffff2 wrote: post #110
ken wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's just another public rationale. Programmer salaries are much more expensive than even private offices. In a past life, when I wrote software for a living, I would ask my managers how much it cost, so I could pay out of pocket for my own private office. In every case, when pressed, they admitted it wasn't about the money at all. They just needed me to be a Team Player. It wasn't even about built-out cost. Th…

I am in no way advocating for open offices in any circumstance, but one common complaint I've heard from open-office dwellers is how they sit right next to the sales team who are always on their phones.

As a person who is frequently called by that sales team: I can tell immediately when I'm talking to someone who is in an open-office, and I associate them with phone spammers.

So, sales people: you're losing money because of that open-office environment.

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

#376

Post by cmsonger »

For the first time in a VERY long career, I joined Google a few years ago, which is an open office company.

The thing I noticed in the first week: Everyone avoided eye contact all the time. The thing I noted after six months: I'd learned to avoid eye contact at all times.

So I'm kind of not surprised. It was counter intuitive to me that open office was less social; but personal experience suggests that open office is less social.

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

#377

Post by leto_ii »

Since I started following HN I've seen these types of articles being posted with some regularity.

The findings usually point in the same direction and the press write-up always tries to come up with explanations for why companies decide to do open space offices, how these were thought to improve collaboration etc.

At my previous job I have worked for 4 years exclusively in an open space, sometimes even with hot-desking (including for developers and data scientists!).

The impact on my ability to focus and on my mood has been catastrophic. Over time I ended up losing a lot of my ability for deep focus and I became stuck in this mode of superficial thinking that pushed me to switch between a bunch of menial tasks all the time.

My firm belief is that open plan offices are used simply because they're the cheapest way to cram people in a space. The lack of walls and barriers makes it really easy to add desks, the cost of furnishing the place is minimal, management can always walk up to people to delegate tasks or ask questions etc.

I think that this so-called fad is here to stay as long as employees (and especially those in tech) do not collectively demand some changes.

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

#379

Post by cbo100 »

mgolawala wrote: post #260
Izkata wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Standing desks are better for your health anyway.

But you need a desk to stand at first.

One company I was at switched to "hot desking" after carefully monitoring the usage rate of desks throughout the building.

Come time to do the switch, and unless you are at the office by 7.30-8.00 it's musical chairs and people end up working in the kitchenettes.

Turns out they did their desk usage survey during the holiday season. So of course there was tons of spare desks at the time.

Also ignoring the fact that developers are going to be in the office every day - they budgeted on everybody being like sales people and out of the office half their time.

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

#380

Post by whalabi »

dkersten wrote: post #318
floren wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my favorite kind of setup. I call it the "Unix Room" model, because it's sort of like what I saw at Bell Labs: Private offices for staff, but people would also work in an open area often (it helped that they just had terminals scattered around and you could sit at any one of them). I've worked in such an environment and loved it, but of course it costs more space than any of the other alternatives.

Yeah, it really was the best of both worlds. People tended to keep their doors open to signal it was ok to interrupt them, but if they needed to get work done, they just close the doors. People also spent a lot of time in the center areas, when it made sense to do so, eg when they were doing something that could be done in a more relaxed environment, or to brainstorm or chat with others.

Letting people choose how they work, how revolutionary!
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