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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

#421

Post by Aeolun »

cbo100 wrote: post #379
mgolawala wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

My wife has the same thing... has to leave the house by a certain time if she wants to work on the same floor as the rest if the team.

I never thought the hot desk policy at a company I wasn’t even working at would affect my morning...

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

#422

Post by kmstout »

bitwize wrote: post #412
JohnFen wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, we have collectively forgotten why cubicles were invented, and why office workers originally hailed them as wonderful things: they ended the open office workspaces that were dominant at the time.

Indeed. This was a common office layout through much of the 20th century: https://youtu.be/5cNJNKkCQ2E

That was unexpected. Holy crap. I think it's time for a beer.

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

#423

Post by opo »

0xff00ffee wrote: post #406
opo wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...Because offices with doors are extremely expensive compared to wide-open spaces. No not really. In the bay area (and likely lots of other places), the costs of employee salary, benefits, etc are a lot more than the costs for rent.

I said compared to wide open spaces, not compared to employee costs.

The usual cost argument for open floor plans is that by devoting less square feet to each employee, you save money on rent. (The costs to actually put in a door and some sheet rock walls is a one time expense that isn't very high in comparison to the monthly costs for rent.)

The reality though is that if employees are less productive, any savings in rent will be small compared to the costs associated with lower worker productivity.

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

#425

Post by mikelevins »

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…

The best office I was in as very much like this. It was in the Bubb Road office of Apple's Newton team. Each person had a walled office with a door that closed, a full-length window next to the door, and an exterior window on the building's grounds. The office was just about big enough to fit two people to sit or stand in front of the whiteboard.

Each half a dozen or so offices were arranged around common areas with sofas and gaming tables, and next to kitchens. We called the common areas "living rooms". Rolling whiteboards were stationed in or near the living rooms.

It was close to ideal. If you needed privacy to think, you could close the door. If you were receiving visits, you could open it. If you needed contact with others, or a serious discussion, you could join people in the living room and roll in a whiteboard if it was needed.

I also worked at NeXT, which had a similar arrangement, except that its common areas weren't as inviting as Newton's living rooms.

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

#426

Post by flukus »

Velofellow wrote: post #96
ksd482 wrote: post #77

I am a millennial (born in '88) and I would LOVE to have a cubicle. My first job was at Cisco in San Jose, California which had cubicles. I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the corporate environment with cubicles. I loved my cubicle. Like you said: just enough privacy to get things done. People would come by only if absolutely necessary otherwise they would mind their own business. Having cubicles also preven…

I think people's experiences and what they consider cubicles vary widely. When I started, I had a true cubicle with a standing 'U' shaped desk around the cube perimeter, which could've housed two employees. The cubicles had tall walls (7ft) so there was some actual privacy. those were Cubicle Nirvana, but for density reasons have seen two iterations of smaller, and smaller cubes. 'drive-by' type meetings were easy to…

There's also the floor size to consider, cubicles or team sized cubicles where everyone has windows or at least some natural light are very different from cubicles in a massive (wide/long) dilbertesque building with only artificial light in the center. In my neck of the woods these large buildings in industrial/technology parks are becoming a thing of the past and a lot of newer offices buildings are very thin which makes cubicles much more appealing.

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

#427

Post by LordFast »

tylerjwilk00 wrote: post #410
LordFast wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote work is still challenging though. The nature of not being able to get person-to-person time (regardless of how good video calls get) will always remain a challenge in its own right. The space issue is fundamental: there just aren't that much space around cities as they stand today. The only pragmatic solutions are: 1) Build up. Everyone wants to live in these areas, so build as tall of buildings as possible an…

> Remote work is still challenging though. The nature of not being able to get person-to-person time (regardless of how good video calls get) will always remain a challenge in its own right. Even as a remote worker, I used to think this was true. I no longer believe this is the case. In remote video calls each human is like an augmented cyborg integrated with their computer and the internet. The nature of IRL meeting…

Hmmmm. I believe you. I haven't had enough remote experience yet to know for sure, but it sounds reasonable to me.

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

#428

Post by andrei_says_ »

beart wrote: post #121
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…

One thing that helped me get past this feeling was looking around at other desks and realizing that either a. no one cares what you are doing because they are too busy working on their own stuff or b. half the office is watching youtube anyway.

Also remember that your company likely logs everyone’s web activity in an easily searcheable format.

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

#429

Post by cmsonger »

devmunchies wrote: post #388
cmsonger wrote: post #376

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…

I've been working remote and i don't remember this. Is it because you don't want people to talk to you? Kind of like avoiding eye contact with someone who is going to ask you for money?

I seek (or sought) eye contact. When I first joined it was crazy how much walking through the halls and around the desks people avoided eye contact.

Then I figured out it was because you saw them too much. There are so many times a day you can look at and say hello to co-workers without it just being weird.

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

#430

Post by Mountain_Skies »

LordFast wrote: post #396
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Remote work is still challenging though. The nature of not being able to get person-to-person time (regardless of how good video calls get) will always remain a challenge in its own right. The space issue is fundamental: there just aren't that much space around cities as they stand today. The only pragmatic solutions are: 1) Build up. Everyone wants to live in these areas, so build as tall of buildings as possible an…

Work life in Japanese cities is difficult to compare with it in the United States because Japanese culture is so much different. Diversity is not prized, conformity and harmony are. A large open space with 300 workers in Japan operates very differently than an open space with 300 workers in an American city.

Build new cities, you're on the right track though I doubt it will happen from scratch like in China. Rather mid-tier cities such as Huntsville and Boise will grow into larger cities.

Remote work has its up and down sides. I've been doing it for two years. Most of the time it is better but there are occasions when collaborating on some idea or document would work better in person at a whiteboard. But those get fewer all the time and the remote collaboration tools get better over time. I'd love for all of us to have Surface Hub whiteboards but they're still too expensive to have a reasonable ROI. Over time though, the price will go down, as will that of other high fidelity collaboration tools.

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