Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by mindcrime » Sat, May 25, 2013, 8:57 PM UTC

monkeynotes wrote: post #130

absconditus wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm sorry, but that is a weak excuse. It is not necessary to have everybody sitting in one big open room, in an environment where anybody can interrupt anybody (or everybody) at the drop of a hat, to be agile.

I would also argue that if your project is being that reactive that it should be considered an anti-pattern, and that you should examine ways to make things less chaotic (erm, I mean, "agile").

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

#152

Post by mindcrime » Sat, May 25, 2013, 9:06 PM UTC

31reasons wrote: post #93

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…

That's a good point. And to carry on from what I said above[1] about what I hope we can do at Fogbeam eventually, let me add:

Letting people work from home (or wherever) with quite a bit of freedom. I do think there is some value in having people physically located near each other and coming into the office at least part-time, but I totally agree with giving employees a lot of autonomy in deciding where to work.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5768791

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

#153

Post by qwerta » Sat, May 25, 2013, 9:07 PM UTC

I wonder what is the next evolutionary step in sequence: private office -> cubicle farm -> open plan office.

I think it will be empty tank inside retired oil tanker. It could dock a few miles of the coast, so no problems with property taxes and imigration permits.Thousands of developers would fit into single tanker. Also steel hull absorbs radio waves, so no unauthorized tweeting or surfing during working hours :-)

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

#154

Post by tsotha » Sat, May 25, 2013, 9:07 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #98

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. Managem…

There's more to it than that. Management and HR people need to have conversations that not everyone else is privy to. Having everyone listening to a coworker being asked by her boss to wear more appropriate clothing to the office is just asking for a lawsuit, as is a conversation between HR and an employee discussing leave for an embarrassing medical problem.

Of course you can have small conference rooms for those kinds of conversations, but if it's a significant part of the job an office just makes sense.

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

#155

Post by swah » Sat, May 25, 2013, 9:24 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #119

One of the challenges I face is on temperature. The HVAC unit on our building was not really designed to do even temperature control of an open 60 x 100' space. So we get warm and cold spots, and adjusting one can screw up the others. I've done a bit of research on it and their are two challenges for our particular system, one the number of mixers in the ceiling which can change air temperature and the way in which t…

Even worse in when you seem to be the only one that notices/cares about the problem - making you look like a whiny bitch or perfectionist that can't adapt.

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

#156

Post by jasonlotito » Sat, May 25, 2013, 9:36 PM UTC

mikevm wrote: post #86

jasonlotito wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who also has ADHD and OCD, close-ear noise-canceling headphones aren't the solution. And they don't work. As someone else mentioned, visual noise is just as much a problem. Couple that with what an open office implies: easy access. Besides, I don't want to always be wearing headphones while I'm coding. I do enjoy quiet and peace while working, without needing my head and ears wrapped. Another issue with AD…

>Another issue with ADHD isn't just being distracted, but also getting back to work after being disrupted. It's easy to talk about getting into the zone, but for someone with ADHD, it's even more challenging. Since I've started medication, I've seen firsthand the dramatic difference. Did you have similar problems in College? That is, if you get distracted from homework assignments (say, friends are bugging you to go…

> Did you have similar problems in College?

Yes. And it was a struggle. I always chalked it up to procrastination. As a 33 year old learning you've had ADHD and OCD all your life, it kind of freaks you out. They say not to do it, but you can't help but think of what you could have done had you been properly diagnosed. Instead, they tell me I need to focus on what I have accomplished in spite of my condition (which, to be completely fair, is nothing that I can complain about).

> Unfortunately, the meds are giving me side effects (increased heart rate).

Try something different? =)

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

#157

Post by peripitea » Sat, May 25, 2013, 9:50 PM UTC

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 measure this productivity increase? That always seems like the hard part for me.

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

#158

Post by reeses » Sat, May 25, 2013, 10:17 PM UTC

pudquick wrote: post #117

reeses wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. How do they track it? Is it based on physical network drop or another method? Or is it just "Go into this room. If you can't find them, call out their name and admit you're a moron?"

In a well-designed building, that's not hard. All of your network drops would all be connected to the switches in advance (if network security was a concern, you could do 802.1X controlled VLAN / port-based authentication). In this type of setup, you've now made it "port on a switch = physical location in the building" (within the length of an ethernet cable - say 6-9 feet). With the right automation tools, when a po…

Doing it by port is easy if you know the MAC address (which, in this day of thunderbolt/usb/etc. Ethernet dongles can be a stretch, but you could block unknown MACs at the switch) because you can map sw01/Gi 3/02 to floor n, room x, port y. Similarly, you can get close with WAPs in each office. Getting closer would require a scanner.

I'm interested in something more comprehensive and definitive, and was wondering what Valve's actual solution was.

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

#159

Post by jroseattle » Sat, May 25, 2013, 10:23 PM UTC

peripitea wrote: post #157

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 measure this productivity increase? That always seems like the hard part for me.

Our productivity increase was rather easy to measure -- our ship dates moved up. Same amount of work completed in shorter amount of time.

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

#160

Post by coldcode » Sat, May 25, 2013, 10:32 PM UTC

At work I am crammed into a corner with about 16 sq feet to live in including my chair and table. At least I have a window but otherwise I am a sardine with a view. Our parent company (which occupies the other 8 floors) hate us so we are forced to live on one floor. I bet the density exceeds the fire code.