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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

#181

Post by RDeckard »

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…

jroseattle, great post, what firm did you take over as mgmt of VP/Engineering? just curious.

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

#182

Post by wtvanhest »

kabdib wrote: post #146
rhizome wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much my worst working experience was in an open plan office (the boss had their own office, natch), where the boss would walk into the room, "Hey guys...", everybody takes their headphones off and looks up, and he starts talking about something that is relevant to two, maybe two and a half, people. This would happen about once per hour. Policy against headphones, is that a thing? Shudder.

Intel had (and maybe still has) a "no headphones" policy. Even at night, with no one else in the office. Idiocy.

I worked there a few years ago and everyone was wearing headphones.

I worked in Santa Clara.

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

#183

Post by YZF »

rscale wrote: post #148
lmg643 wrote: post #39

Earlier 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…

Facebook's engineering director Jocelyn Goldfein spoke about open office plans during her recent talk at Stanford. She explicitly stated that it decreases her team's productivity, but that it was embraced because it promotes "openness" which is a core value at Facebook.

How about working naked? Would that also be in line with the core value of "openness"?

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

#184

Post by YZF »

tsotha wrote: post #154
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 ki…

The thing is that I think healthy teams need to have those conversations as well. I.e. ones that not everyone is privy too. Team cohesion requires trust and I found the inability to have private conversations easily is a problem.

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

#185

Post by tbrownaw »

geoka9 wrote: post #72
davesims wrote: post #63

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…

> 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".

Don't try to think large complicated thoughts in your head, think them written down on paper. Typing doesn't work as well (as far as I can see), I would guess that a large enough tablet with a stylus would work better.

This will increase your capacity for involved/interesting ideas, make recovering from interruptions faster, and slow you down slightly (but not enough to completely offset the benefits).

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

#186

Post by tensor »

paulhodge wrote: post #171
keithpeter wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

I can help with that: "Workers in open-plan offices get sick more often" - Only supported by one study done in Denmark. Not enough research. "Open-plan offices are less productive" - Supported by a study which only identified some of the negative effects of a open-office plan (such as the effect of irrelevant speech). That study didn't attempt to measure the benefits of an open office, or attempt to exhaustively list…

On the other hand, I'll trust even one peer reviewed well done study over someone's passionate anecdote any day. Even the best of us can fool ourselves into believing incorrect things. Experience doesn't help in this either. Unless, of course, your experience involves doing proper testing of ideas. But of course, then you have data.

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

#187

Post by novaleaf »

the header picture in the article is terrible. of course that kind of "open office" is awful.

1) looking at your (single) monitor, you have 4 to 5 people inside your field of vision. talk about distraction city.

2) no desk space. bad for ergonomics, and no "thinking space" either.

3) no personal space. stretch our arms to your sides, and you'll whack your coworker's head.

talk about cramming them in like sardines. i run my office as an "open plan" but we have a good 1.5 meters separating people, and people are either facing wall, or window. (not facing each-other)

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

#188

Post by stygiansonic »

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…

Agreed - there is no one "true" solution, as is the case with many things.

There are times when I value the (semi) privacy of my cubicle for getting into a focused flow for hours. At this time, I do not want to be interrupted.

At other times, I value being able to take my laptop into a conference room with a bunch of other developers.

Each layout has its own strengths. When interpersonal communication is paramount (i.e. a new project getting started, lots of unknowns, trying to define who's going to do what, etc.) then the conference room approach works.

When I have a well-defined feature to implement, the hunkered-down approach works well.

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

#189

Post by kabdib »

wtvanhest wrote: post #182
kabdib wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel had (and maybe still has) a "no headphones" policy. Even at night, with no one else in the office. Idiocy.

I worked there a few years ago and everyone was wearing headphones. I worked in Santa Clara.

That's good to hear. I must have been hearing stories from the 80s.
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