Cubicle offices make people less happy, open-plan offices make people less happy.. Maybe it's just working that makes people less happy.
Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
121–130 of 234 posts
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Joel Spolsky has written extensively about peopleware: "Ever wonder why everybody at Microsoft gets their own office, with walls and a door that shuts? It's in there. Why do managers give so much leeway to their teams to get things done? That's in there too. Why are there so many jelled SWAT teams at Microsoft that are remarkably productive? Mainly because Bill Gates has built a company full of managers who read Peop…
I've tried working in a cubical, an individual office with a door, and open plan offices. By far my favourite is open plan. I like being able to turn to my co-workers and ask quick questions, I like the atmosphere, and if things are too noisy or distracting I just put headphones on and get in the zone.
I find it impossible to work with music on when I need to concentrate. Any sort of noise on a persistent basis just about kills productivity for me.
Worked in an open plan office before, wouldn't again, not for any sort of reward. Went home every night feeling like I'd been run over by a bus. Go home go to sleep. Not my idea of a good time. There were times when I'd catch myself starring off into space.
Working from home has been much better for me. If someone interrupts, then they have to put a bit of effort in, so they're less likely to do it just because they're too lazy to find an answer themselves or something like that. And the absence of noise and the constant pressure of being available to people all the time has dramatically increased my quality of life.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#123Anyone 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…
This definitely resonates. One of my most productive periods as an engineer was when I was in an open-plan office but had the option to go use a small conference room with no windows to do deep work. I spent about 50% of my time in each location and it worked extremely well-the time in the open office made collaboration easy, and the sealed off time made it easy for me to execute on the ideas I'd heard.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#124Thanks to open-plan office I developed anxiety, high-blood pressure and stress. I could not concentrate in the office and I had to finish most of my work at home over evenings. I nearly divorced thanks to open-plan office.
I already quit 3 long term jobs a few weeks after company moved to open-plan. At end I just had to start my own business. Now I am single-handily competing with multi-billion companies (and I dare to say with good success).
Open-plan comes with lot of bullsh*t. But at end it is just about a few bucks which company moves from operating cost to management bonuses.
Many developers care about stuff like free soda. I would strongly recommend to care about your working environment and mental health. It takes about 10 years of stress-free work to develop and reach your full technical potential. Working for peanuts and burning-out after 15 years is really bad carier plan.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#125I'd imagine the effect of open-plan offices on productivity greatly depends on the nature of the company and how the company operates. If a company mainly produces software in a non-mission critical domain where, say, a 5x gain in productivity is more valuable than a 1.5x gain in reliability, they're likely to have very short release cycles à la agile development. That kind of operation relies heavily on communication and collaboration within and across teams, so an open-plan office is likely going to be much more productive. If you don't have a collaboration-based development strategy, I'd buy that open-plan offices might often make employees less productive, but even then there will be multiple factors at play.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Couldn't agree more. What people complain about is not necessarily an indication of what's not working . My last two gigs have been open-plan, and I prefer it much more than closed-cube spaces. If your team is working as it should, and is in close proximity to project/product management, with a good process and a healthy level of trust between the stakeholders and between the various engineers, then in my experience…
> high-functioning teams tend to thrive on the cross-talk and constant communication that open plan creates organically. I wonder how programmers in such environments can get in the "zone" and stay in it for extended periods of time, if they are being "constantly communicated with".
This is a key question. Also everyone considers two alternatives, open and cube, forgetting that individual offices is also an option
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#127This topic is discussed at length in Peopleware: http://www.librarything.com/work/17188 "If your organization is anything like those studied in our last three annual surveys, the environmental trend is toward less privacy, less dedicated space and more noise. Of course the obvious reason for this is cost. A penny saved on the workspace is a penny earned on the bottom line, or so the logic goes. Those who make such a…
I've been meaning to read this for some time now, and just noticed that the third edition is being released in just over a month (July 1). Should be interesting to see the updates from the current edition, printed in 1999.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#128Cubicle offices make people less happy, open-plan offices make people less happy.. Maybe it's just working that makes people less happy.
A cubicle is not a real office.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#129At Spotify, we have a lot of team-rooms which seat 8-10 people. They all have a lounge area with whiteboard walls as well as a small conference room for design discussions, 1-1:s etc.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've tried working in a cubical, an individual office with a door, and open plan offices. By far my favourite is open plan. I like being able to turn to my co-workers and ask quick questions, I like the atmosphere, and if things are too noisy or distracting I just put headphones on and get in the zone.
I wonder whether your coworkers enjoy being interrupted frequently.
When working on a project that needs to be extremely reactive and accomodate functionality at short notice often requires quick, on target communication.
If my coworkers aren't able to communicate quickly, and efficiently with myself and the other team members then the project will lose agility.
Often we will have tasks that require not being disturbed and in the stand up meetings we flag this.