131–140 of 234 posts
I'd be curious how things are in other places where costs per square meter are high and there is not a huge tech culture. In other words, San Francisco is probably an outlier.
I've worked in every possible configuration, and I've watched teams work in every possible configuration. I don't like open-plan, but it tentatively appears to be most effective for organizations as a whole. Some initial conclusions: - We'd be wise to distinguish what we'd all like to have as an office from what actually functions best in a larger system. It is erroneous to think that simply because you like somethin…
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…
I'm tired of these kind of generalizations. Our open plan office is geared towards developers and quiet and peaceful 95% of the time. Standing rule is, you wanna talk, you take it outside into the kitchen or the meeting room. Simple. Also, people can work from home whenever they want. Most prefer to be in the office because it's nice and quiet . The problem isn't open spaces, the problem is the people in it.
Not to mention that there's a psychological pressure just from being around people who are in the same room all the time - difficult to give yourself permission to relax and focus in on one thing when someone might come and interrupt you at any point.
Earlier 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…
I don't see much difference between open plan and high-walled cubes in a large room. Noise and distractions are about the same. I think if you're going to talk about private space vs. open you have to be talking about real offices with walls from floor to ceiling, doors that close, and which are (reasonably) soundproof.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see office environment as a proxy for willingness to expend effort and time in making high performance teams and letting them get on with it. If a management tier is unwilling to spend money arranging desks to avoid constant interruptions that common sense tells us will be detrimental, then it is a management tier that is unlikely to have been a blip and then make all other decisions well. Google Ed Catmull, the qu…
I'm not sure we're disagreeing. I'm simply saying that performance -- as measured by the team itself -- may be maximized by the team deciding to do things that it finds uncomfortable. You also don't always optimize overall performance by optimizing individual performance. There's also the issue of communication versus productivity. Communication is a far greater obstacle to many technology team's success than individ…
Not too sure about the optimising for individual vs team performance. Teams seem to do best when it's obvious everyone has to play their very best game. The times when it's necessary to sacrifice for the good of the team are a hell of a lot less frequent than the times you just need to know task A will get done because Fred is on the case and Fred has a history of delivering. Stops everyone trying to worry about everything.
Edit: the sentence I'm not sure we are not disagreeing either does not make enough sense to keep.
Some things have changed, though. Coders don't need a bookshelf when they can get a Safari subscription. Nobody needs a fixed-line phone. For 90% of coding a laptop is fast enough. So I would think that a "hotelling" style arrangement would work now, before, a coder might be holed up with a pile of books, big, heavy CRTs, and desktop computers. Now that Drive has a "scan" command, even the whiteboard can come along with an engineer between work and home.
I've worked in every possible configuration, and I've watched teams work in every possible configuration. I don't like open-plan, but it tentatively appears to be most effective for organizations as a whole. Some initial conclusions: - We'd be wise to distinguish what we'd all like to have as an office from what actually functions best in a larger system. It is erroneous to think that simply because you like somethin…
"I don't like open-plan, but it tentatively appears to be most effective for organizations as a whole." The original article is quoting peer-reviewed research that tends to support the opposite of your opinion. What do you think is wrong with the methodology employed in the OA?
Again, my sampling is based on the good fortune of working on really good, highly talented and focused teams. It's not perfect and certainly after months and years on the same team, you can lose perspective and think some things are worse (or better) than they really are. But I've been on really disfunctional teams as well, and some teams that I'd say were "in between". For those latter teams, I wouldn't recommend open-plan. To me, open plan is a high-risk, high reward proposition that takes commitment from the top down to make work over the long haul. But in my experience, the reward is high, and I really do prefer it.
I gave a talk on this topic [1], and about 60% of the audience was cheering and totally for this. But I got a small number of people coming up afterwards and saying they much preferred open plan. So I think there's definitely a downside: developers enjoy work less because it's less social, and less collaborate. I think overall the benefit is there though. Does anyone know how much it costs to have private offices all…
- You have to put up walls and doors: studs, wallboard, painting, running cables through walls. And once you put up those walls and doors, you need to knock them down again to reconfigure the space.
- A closed office needs its own dedicated heating and air-conditioning ducts, power/network distribution, overhead lighting, smoke detector, sprinkler, etc. In an open plan, these can be shared among several work spaces.