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Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

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Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#91

Post by SatvikBeri »

michaelochurch wrote: post #78
SatvikBeri wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is regularly exposed to these types of decisions, I don't think cost is the reason. Everyone recognizes that engineers are more expensive than office space. Private offices result in engineers getting more done but working on the wrong things, or solving problems in slightly the wrong way. The goal is to expose developers to the organization more so they have a stronger sense of what users/customers va…

I think it's better to have a culture where engineers naturally feel comfortable leaving their offices. I worked at a company that had 3:00 tea time, like in academic departments. People drank coffee and played board games, but after half an hour, they were talking about work again and the cross-department communication that was needed would happen organically. That's a lot better than subjecting engineers to a 24/7…

Agreed, open offices as a solution to lack of collaboration is like nuking a mosquito from orbit.

The most individually effective tactic I've found is to eat lunch/play games/get coffee with people in order departments as much as possible. A lot of the best communication occurs in a relaxed setting-I'm convinced that a major key to success is to encourage/enable people who don't normally spend time together to hang out informally.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#92

Post by artmageddon »

zeroexzeroone wrote: post #57
usea wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need much. National Institutes of Health recommends 5-30 minutes of daytime exposure, twice a week. [1] http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional...

Sorry but I don't trust anything with .gov to tell me what my body can already tell me. We have to learn to listen to it.

> tell me what my body can already tell me

Your body doesn't always exhibit signs of something wrong, and there are many instances in which that's it's true and it's too late to take action. I had to get a birthmark removed from my back last summer because it could've been a malignant type of skin cancer. I certainly didn't "feel" anything from it, and wouldn't have known about it until a dermatologist pointed it out to me.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#93

Post by 31reasons »

Why do we need offices ? office-less is the new paper-less! with tools like google hangout and google glasses, it makes less and less sense everyday. Why come to the same physical space everyday and stare at the computer screens to do the work you can do from anywhere.

Offices were invented to reduce the transaction cost of communication between employees, which was true 20 years ago but not anymore. I guess we have to wait till the net generation moves in to management to be truly comfortable with the mobile workforce. The time of long tail of work environment is upon us.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#95

Post by keithpeter »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #37

Water wet, sky blue, Pope Catholic, Bear excrement in forested areas Knowledge workers of the past who have had money and power work in quiet campus colleges or oasis of calm like Londons Lincoln's Inn or Temple. No power or influence - and work in chicken farms. There is an advantage - for companies willing to put in the effort to make a sane work environment, to grow and support honesty and team support - well it's…

"Knowledge workers of the past who have had money and power work in quiet campus colleges or oasis of calm like London's Lincoln's Inn or Temple."

The average Oxford JCR isn't that calm, and both the Inns of Court support people who are performing in the open shout mosh pit that was the Georgian courtroom.

I take your well-made point, but somehow we need to balance calm reflection with connection.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#96

Post by keithpeter »

jstalin wrote: post #28

Like so many things, it seems as though people are looking for "the one" best way of doing things. Obviously some people like cubicles. Some like offices. Some like open space. How about letting people choose?

And possibly change their choice from day to day depending on task. Could be expensive?

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#97

Post by jroseattle »

pullo wrote: post #56
jroseattle wrote: post #40

Anyone who has worked in enough office environments for a while will recognize that the "best" environment is a flexible one. Sometimes it's working in the open, sometimes a quiet office with the door closed, sometimes at home or a coffee shop. When I took a mgmt role as VP/Engnring at a firm a few years ago, the first thing I did was assess and address morale, which was not good. One of the obvious things was that t…

how did you resolve the frustrations of the product management team and other non-engineers who interact with the engineers? can you elaborate?

First thing to address those frustrations was to set expectations with the product management team. In their approach, they really wanted to have a lot of drop-in interaction with the engineers, which worked...well, about as well as one would expect it to work.

So, what it took me doing was learning more about the product management daily process. It turned out that what drove a lot of the communication needs of the product management team was a desire for status updates because (drum-roll please) they couldn't articulate it sufficiently to the executive team.

We drove toward what information was needed and how timely, then figured out how we in engineering could supply product mgmt with that info while staying in the wheelhouse of our own flow. So, evaluation of things like JIRA (Atlassian), Redmine and other tools to coordinate product management actions with engineering actions. It took a little while, but it required everyone all around to work together in expected ways to lower those frustration barriers.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#98

Post by mgkimsal »

Was just having a discussion on this topic with a friend a couple nights ago. Seems that "management" and "HR" always seem to have traditional desks and offices with closable doors. Always. For software developers, they often get lumped with the same desk/working environments that people doing call center or phone support work get.

It got me thinking why that might be, and I had a thought I hadn't had before. Management types typically have their days broken up in to short 30-60 minute blocks - that's their standard work process - meeting, meeting, meeting, planning, etc. I don't think they can really understand people focusing for 2-3 hours at a stretch, and that there's often a big increase in productivity for some people working under those conditions.

Thought-workers are somewhat alone in this, and because the people who make office seating decisions don't work that way, they can not fathom anyone else might need to work that way (except, of course, they still need their doors to be closed for quiet/private work conditions).

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#100

Post by zeroexzeroone »

artmageddon wrote: post #92
zeroexzeroone wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but I don't trust anything with .gov to tell me what my body can already tell me. We have to learn to listen to it.

> tell me what my body can already tell me Your body doesn't always exhibit signs of something wrong, and there are many instances in which that's it's true and it's too late to take action. I had to get a birthmark removed from my back last summer because it could've been a malignant type of skin cancer. I certainly didn't "feel" anything from it, and wouldn't have known about it until a dermatologist pointed it out…

Should have gotten a double mastectomy, that would have made more sense.
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