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

#231

Post by kamaal » Mon, May 27, 2013, 7:44 AM UTC

mh- wrote: post #228

kamaal wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having the luxury to be interrupted frequently and yet not get frustrated is likely a indication that you are doing a lot of small tasks that don't require long hour focus. If you are doing something important that needs you to be focused on on particular a thing for long hours,without any interruption, frequent interruptions are disastrous. There are also more ways to look at it. If you are doing too many small time…

If you are doing too many small time tasks that don't demand any serious focus. Its likely you have taken the wrong direction with regards to your career. Great way of putting that. Can I borrow this? :)

Sure. :)

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

#232

Post by snambi » Mon, May 27, 2013, 4:34 PM UTC

Oh god! its obvious. Not sure why companies creating a noisy, chaotic workplace instead of a calm serene one. One reason may be to cram more people into a small space.

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

#233

Post by silverlake » Mon, May 27, 2013, 8:50 PM UTC

akurilin wrote: post #6

As an interesting example, the people in charge at Facebook seem to be well aware of the downsides of open plan offices. They however consciously choose to lower engineer productivity in exchange for higher openness and visibility. It's actually refreshing how they don't try to pass it as "much better for the developer". It's better for the company as a whole, not so much for the individual: http://ecorner.stanford.e…

I listened to the snippet (thx for link). That wasn't an explanation, that was a slogan. If the Facebook product already promotes openness, they should dogfood it by having everyone work from home.

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

#234

Post by fizzbuzzd » Sun, Jun 02, 2013, 8:43 PM UTC

Another very frustrating thing about open-office plans is that it makes me seem like an asshole. There are many days where I'll be annoyed or frustrated debugging something, and generally being a buzzkill while everyone else shoots the shit. I have no problem with everyone else shooting the shit, but I can sense people are afraid of the look I have on my face. Some days I just need to be away from people.