What a finding! People knows for ages that open space is beneficial for a manual, drone work, while for tasks in which so-called intellect must be involved, quietness or even solitude is absolutely necessary. This is why a workshop or a Mc. Donald's kitchen is a tightly packed open space, while academics work productively in an isolated pairs or alone.
Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
201–210 of 234 posts
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#202[deleted]
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#203Six years ago I designed a mixed-mode alcove based office plan. Long conference table with 12 chairs. On opposite sides are four to six offices just large enough for pair programming, doors facing the conference table. For heads down go to your office and close the door. 1:1 collaboration go join your partner. Max3 cram on in. Passive collaboration open your door. Larger team meet at conf table. Active teamwork move…
Have you written a blog post or something more about this setup? I'd certainly like to know more about it.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Peopleware is among the best books about teams that I encourage all aspiring managers to read. One point to emphasize is why the authors believe individual offices work: quiet . There is a story about about a programming competition, and in the narrative programmers in quiet spaces performed better than their peers, even controlling for experience and skill. Back then there weren't headphones or django (I kid, I kid!…
I went and visited a friend at the New York Times building last year. Between TV and my own experience working around writers, I expected it to be a busy and loud environment as I walked into the beautiful ENORMOUS OPEN FLOORS that building seems to consist of. They had a made the best hack of all time in my opinion: everyone worked in dead silence . I was around a hundred people but you could hear a pin drop and I q…
And that still highlights the problem with open plan: acres and distraction, but no way to collaborrate without disturbing others. Might as well take phones away if you can't use them.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#205Quartz not working in my Steam browser makes me less happy. What kind of high tech is qz.com using?
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#206Personally, in the past, an open office speeds up the rate at which I begun to dislike my co-workers, which lead to a dislike of my employment, and hence reduced how long I would stay in a job.
That image in the article of the women (could be men) all lined up like battery hens looks like my worst office night mare. You almost couldn't stretch your arms/wings with out assaulting your co-workers. Its considered bad form for animals to just exist like that, why is it OK for humans engaged in work?
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wha…
I don't think they've made that public. But such systems do exist. Check out Figure 1 right above this link: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9742/products_tech_not... There's probably a third-party vendor that can take that interface and integrate it with your Exchange / LDAP directory services to update physical location. Given the rather unique structure of Valve, however, I'd be more inclined to think they r…
Yeah, I have this thing stuck in my head that I can't track down now. It was something similar to HP's CoolTown but less 20th century (no explicit IR, etc.). I can't remember if it was a group at PARC, Lucent, etc. That's why I was interested in the path Valve took.
It appears from interviews with Valve staff and photos of their office that the desks are mobile, with the office built around a flexible arrangement, including freight elevators. In that case, it's extraordinarily easy to identify where someone is, or at least where their desk is, and whether they are at it.
Now I'm going to toss and turn tonight, waking up at 5am with the organization I was thinking of. :-)
[Edit] It was Olivetti Research. There's a good reason it was difficult to recall.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#208Does somebody has experience and tips how to effectively organize workspace in a growing early stage startup. When your headcount is growing steadily, flexibility of an open office space is a big plus, but are there good solutions that combine open layouts with private workspace? Headphones, moveable desks, working from home. Anything else? Share your experiences.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#209My last job had a pretty open office. It was great actually, really social.
Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
#210After nearly 25 years, I've worked in almost every known office layout. My opinions, based solely on my subjective experience: --open-plan offices can work great for small teams of maybe 4-6 max. Beyond five or six people though, productivity starts to drop significantly. Also, the people on the team have to like each other, be working on the same problem/goal, and have a comfortable environment (whiteboards, comfy a…
Yeah, I'd really like to try offices in "pods" of 4-8 with a roll-up wall (like a garage door) on one side of each, opening into a private "team space". And maybe a roll-up wall on the public side, too.