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Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#81

Post by jlengrand »

twic wrote: post #63
jlengrand wrote: post #6

I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. I'm against open plan offices at large corp level. I have 300 people on my floor, the group closest to us is from business and spends 2/4 hours a day on the phone. It saddens me because the largest openly claimed benefit of Open Plan offices is "increase collaboration". What I literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide in…

> I'd like team size cubicles. Upvoting and quoting to emphasise this point. The alternative to open plan is not individual offices, it's team offices.

I wasn't there to experience it first hand, but it seems like that's how it started as well. Extra collaboration in between teams, but small enough panel size in your direct surrounding. Were not meant to evolve constantly around 100s of people all day

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#82

Post by jlengrand »

cyphar wrote: post #68
jlengrand wrote: post #6

I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. I'm against open plan offices at large corp level. I have 300 people on my floor, the group closest to us is from business and spends 2/4 hours a day on the phone. It saddens me because the largest openly claimed benefit of Open Plan offices is "increase collaboration". What I literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide in…

> I'd like team size cubicles. That would sound to me like a good compromise between collaboration, and deep work. I agree, but isn't that just a room? When I was doing research at my university, all of the offices were laid out this way -- each group had one room where they all worked so they could discuss things (and the building is one of the older buildings in our 200-year-old university). Also (though I work fro…

I'm not an expert on the matter, but I read that originally Bell Labs opened up those 'rooms' to create inter disciplinary collaboration.

In other words, exactly a room yes, but making sure that you as as chemist run into a geologist once in a while, or a computer scientist gets to meet a biologist. It was about alleyways and corridors, rather than rooms itself.

Of course, things have evolved with time and get used for other reasons (saving costs is indeed a big one) and we also tend to idealize the past so I won't make facts out of what I read but it makes sense to me.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#83

Post by jlengrand »

twic wrote: post #71
jlengrand wrote: post #6

I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. I'm against open plan offices at large corp level. I have 300 people on my floor, the group closest to us is from business and spends 2/4 hours a day on the phone. It saddens me because the largest openly claimed benefit of Open Plan offices is "increase collaboration". What I literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide in…

How about something like the 1972 Centraal Beheer offices: http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/central_beheer.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_xHQjBKbjo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT1VQHcZOj0 https://www.ahh.nl/index.php/en/projects2/12-utiliteitsbouw/...

haha, het ziet zeker goed uit! I like the whole 'factory' look of it.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#84

Post by peterhi »

When I work in an open office I am always been up to date with what is going on. We have been able to squash problems when they were small because we could overhear people having problems with the systems. Problems that would be too small to bother us with if we are working from home. Communication in the office is quicker, we can get to the root of something fast. People who might known something will overhear and chip in

Lots of small things get fixed and fail to grow into big things

When I work from home I get uninterrupted focus on the task at hand which is something that is almost impossible in the office but only get to hear about problems when they get big and urgent

I also feel that I am dropping out of the loop. There are too many messaging systems that I need to keep an eye on, email, chat, texts, whatsapp, slack to keep in touch. In office communications is basically email for clients or in person

If I have a solid piece of work to do the office is not the best place but only if you can do it by yourself. In the office I can see when I can or cannot interrupt someone. When working from home I have no idea if it is a good time to interrupt someone

But for me the open office is only 12-15 people. Large than that and communications become impossible and the noise to signal get worse. Also managers seem to do more 'managing' in bigger offices :(

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#87

Post by me_me_me »

peterhi wrote: post #84

When I work in an open office I am always been up to date with what is going on. We have been able to squash problems when they were small because we could overhear people having problems with the systems. Problems that would be too small to bother us with if we are working from home. Communication in the office is quicker, we can get to the root of something fast. People who might known something will overhear and c…

> But for me the open office is only 12-15 people.

Yeah, that's called redefinition. And it muddles the conversation. Open office space is a whole floor converted into stripped down cubicles.

What you are describing is an office for a team. I worked in similar environment (bit smaller) and it is indeed great for collaboration and productivity.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#89

Post by xtracto »

I am against it because I have worked in a closed office environment before: I worked in Germany academia (Leibniz institute) for 3.5 years. I shared an office with 1 other person and later had my own office. It was GREAT for productivity / thinking and had no impact whatsoever in my interaction with other people when I needed that

For the last 8 years I've been working for "silicon valley culture startups" all of which push open offices, and even though when you have 3 to 6 ppl it makes sense, once you are more than that it becomes hell for people that need to focus.

In reality they are used because closed office space is more expensive.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#90

Post by sunaurus »

The constant "threat" of interruption is exhausting. Even on quiet days, it's mentally very difficult to force myself to focus when I know that somebody can break my focus at any moment.

I'm lucky because I have an awesome home-office, so when I need to focus more, I can just work from home. But many people don't have that luxury, so open offices probably end up being quite harmful to overall productivity.

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