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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

#441

Post by dkersten »

reificator wrote: post #414
dkersten wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, thanks for that! :D That would be fun, alright. Completely off topic, I just got Tarn Adams' latest book (procedural storytelling) today. I'm looking forward to reading it when I get time.

I've added that book to my list of possible reads. I must say I am actually disappointed that it doesn't appear to have been written in an algorithmic fashion.

At a quick flip through the pages, it also doesn’t cover that much in terms of technical details, code or diagrams, but seems to be mostly a discussion of techniques and case studies.

I’d personally like a more technically focused book because some of the struggles I have is that I can hack together a grammar-based system (eg an L-system) easily enough, but turning it into a production quality reasonable performance/memory system is much harder. Eg I made an L-system using a string as the data and characters as the nodes and I was doing string matching and manipulation to implement the production rules. It worked great as a little demo, but was much much too inefficient for a real system. Converting it into something more efficient was too much work for me at the time. Perhaps time I try again though!

I’ll see. I have a train journey tomorrow so I’ll start reading it then :)

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

#442

Post by mirimir »

BoorishBears wrote: post #435
mirimir wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's exactly the point, in a way. Sitting in an open-plan office lets you know that you're not "worth it". That you're not respected. And you're way too distracted to actually get much done. So you zone out with music, watch YouTube, hang out on HN, etc. And then, because you're not productive, you're condemned to an open-plan future :(

Every person I work with daily could work at a place with a private office if they wanted. Hell, I'm pretty sure if they asked seriously for a private office, the company would jump over itself to make it happen. If you need to do passive aggressive stuff like refuse to work because you're in an open office that's rather unfortunate, a lot of very successful, productive, people work in open offices.

> Every person I work with daily could work at a place with a private office if they wanted.

That seems counterintuitive. Or at least from what I've read. Such as TFA.

> If you need to do passive aggressive stuff like refuse to work because you're in an open office that's rather unfortunate ...

TFA actually presents evidence that there's a productivity hit.

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

#443

Post by mirimir »

JohnFen wrote: post #409
mirimir wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never worked in one, unless I count schoolrooms. But I can imagine that I'd be so jumpy and angry that I'd refuse to talk with anyone. And that I'd wear humongous headphones, and blast death metal or whatever.

The dynamic in the spaces that I worked was that all of the devs want to be respectful of the other devs. Part of what that means is that you want to avoid making noise. The result is that speaking is kept to the bare minimum.

Ah. So that's why meatspace collaboration goes down, yes?

But then there are the loudmouths :(

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

#444

Post by nswest23 »

cosmodisk wrote: post #436
andrei_says_ wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

While this is hardly an unknown fact amongst HN readers, a lot of people get very surprised when told about this.I've seen some of my colleagues going to private mode to browse something not work related, and when I explain that tbis won't help at all, they are almost shocked.

you mean everyone doesn't just use their phones for browsing non-work related things?

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

#445

Post by monkeynotes »

Androider wrote: post #48
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…

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.…

I think I need to know what kind of businesses actually have people working in discrete offices of 2-3 people. The only place I've really seen this is at Kodak/Creo. It was horrible and stagnant.

White noise generators and proper office design mitigate nearly all of your concerns. There is obviously etiquette to having quick conversations around colleagues and meeting rooms are always available for deeper collaboration. For the most part our work is planned out carefully, most problems can be resolved via a couple of quick Slack messages.

I feel socialized and look forward to coming to work. If I worked in a small 2-3 person silo I'd feel like an instrument of industry rather than a family member. I know that sounds trite but it's true, feeling part of a larger team / the business as a whole is incredibly motivating.

I admit my concept of small private offices is marred by my own experiences of those work environments which have all been just soulless bad places to work. I know that is not the rule for cube/small office workplace design.

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

#446

Post by Gravityloss »

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…

I wonder how much lower salary people would accept if they got a much sparser work environment?

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

#447

Post by loco5niner »

montagg wrote: post #321
falcolas wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The way we thought about it was primarily butts in seats. For simplicity, if open office = about 1000, a reasonable closed office environment for us would have housed about half of that. If we needed 1000 to deliver product X, we’d either deliver product X over double the time or for double the (real estate) cost plus the non-local collaboration cost (not insurmountable, but it’s part of the tradeoff). We’d need to s…

> giving teams more control over their space

Unfortunately, in an open environment, the most important factors are uncontrollable.

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

#448

Post by andrei_says_ »

cosmodisk wrote: post #436
andrei_says_ wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

While this is hardly an unknown fact amongst HN readers, a lot of people get very surprised when told about this.I've seen some of my colleagues going to private mode to browse something not work related, and when I explain that tbis won't help at all, they are almost shocked.

I’m wondering if the new Brave browser’s Tor-based private mode makes a difference.

Many companies have systems circumventing https via additional certificates—effectively a man in the middle attack.

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

#449

Post by madmax108 »

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…

This resonates so much with me. One of the advantages of being an early engineer at my company has meant that I was able to choose my spot in office: right at the back, next to a window, in the corner.

Sure, it feels like I'm being a bit anti-social at times, but I'm very comfortable in my corner :)

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

#450

Post by ta_4661 »

krn wrote: post #438
ta_4661 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've lived with chronic depersonalization and the resultant anxiety which had kept me hamstrung in my one and only job after a couple personal breakthroughs i finally gained the confidence to earn a promotion to my very modest dream role, only to find out a couple months in that we'd be transferring to open plan after the move i almost immediately started experiencing esteem-crumbling health issues caused by the cons…

> eventually i provided enough dirt on file for them to force me to resign, so i'm now unemployed in my 30s with no references i have any confidence in and enough shame and guilt to put me in the ground should my extreme mental fog ever clear again Have you considered working for a remote-only company, such as GitLab, DuckDuckGo or Buffer? For someone with a chronic depersonalization / derealization disorder a formal…

i have no formal qualifications to speak of and i was in operations so my knowledge is already years out of date, all over the place and not at all relevant to any business operating that way

i've struggled learning anything since i left because as bad as people affect me the less time i spend around them the worse the mental fog gets, which makes my ability to focus on any one topic pretty much non-existent

attaining the delicate balance i require to feel functional is not happening in any formal environment, you are completely right about that and i've come to accept it over the past few years

apologies for not getting back to you before, got stuck in a mental loop just writing a response.. sounds like you know exactly what i'm talking about so i appreciate it

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