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Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

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Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#31

Post by jacques_chester »

SCdF wrote: post #27
RogerL wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I am in my own office. I've more or less been in a single office since, oh, 95 or so. It's impossible to think in bullpen/cubes. Well, that's hyperbole, but it is both wearying and distracting. I'm sure there are personality types that thrive in that situation, but it is just really hard for me to be in an environment like that for long. There's a reason there's a "no talking" rule at libraries, after all.

That's what my closed cans headphones are for :P

I have ADHD. I find what's on my own computer distracting enough. Put me in a room of people moving and screens flicking and changing and

-- SQUIRREL! --

... I won't be very productive.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#32

Post by bluedino »

Are you in an environment where you're often working together and collaborating on shit? Open plans are great.

Do you need quiet time where you're thinking for 5 hours a day and coding for 1? You need your own office.

Graphic designers, phone support, this kind of stuff seems to work great in an open office. Crazy team trying to crank out something fast? Also works great.

But they just add to burnout and aren't a good fit for writers or programmers. If this is the case, give everyone a small, modest office with drywall and a drop ceiling, and then have LOTS of common areas or meeting rooms so people can get together to chat or bang stuff out.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#33

Post by aimhb »

fishtoaster wrote: post #18

I don't think open offices are necessarily bad, but that they're harder to get right. What you need is: - A a decent cultural protocol around it. One place I worked had the very strong rule that you start all non-emergency communication asynchronously (usually text chat), even if the person is right next to you. Another place I worked at strongly respected headphones as the "don't bother me" signal. - A reasonable nu…

> One place I worked had the very strong rule that you start all non-emergency communication asynchronously (usually text chat), even if the person is right next to you.

A little bit off topic, but I too have experienced this, and I have to say, it's awful for productivity, team building, and team assimilation. As a new hire, I would send my mentor a question and it might be ten minutes to fifty minutes before I would get a reply. By then, I'd all but forgotten what I was asking about in the first place, since I had moved on because of not knowing how long I'd have to wait. That led to wasted time and an overall loss of focus.

No matter the environment, text-based and asynchronous communication just aren't very effective compared to spoken communication, even when considering the interrupted party momentarily losing their flow.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#34

Post by flax »

baddox wrote: post #7

I guess I should be saying "it's hard to argue with the numbers," and yet my temptation is precisely to argue against the numbers at least for my job (programming for a tech company). I just don't understand what I would be doing in my own office, other than wasting space and spending more time leaving my office to find coprogrammers I have questions for.

You would be NOT annoying the guy next to you with your loud chewing/constant throat clearing/conversations/talking through problems/music heard through your earphones.

I've worked in open plan, cubes, and my own office. Open plan is by far the worst. For me, it comes down to perceived privacy more so than noise.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#35

Post by pnathan »

baddox wrote: post #7

I guess I should be saying "it's hard to argue with the numbers," and yet my temptation is precisely to argue against the numbers at least for my job (programming for a tech company). I just don't understand what I would be doing in my own office, other than wasting space and spending more time leaving my office to find coprogrammers I have questions for.

You would spend the time orienting on your personal tasks, as opposed to filtering out the chatter of your coworkers, the movements that distract you, the sound of a hundred fingers tapping away at the keyboards... you would have time to mentally turn a problem over and over for as long as your mind could stand it.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#36

Post by jacques_chester »

mahyarm wrote: post #30
mathrat wrote: post #15

I used to think this. And then I went to work in an open plan office... and discovered I love it! The office is surprisingly quiet, considering there's about 50 people in the open plan. When conversation does spring up, it's often really interesting and worth listening in on. When it's not, I find I have no trouble tuning it out. Other people seem to more trouble, and they bring noise-canceling headphones. Not saying…

This really is organization dependent. Do your managers look over your shoulder and micromanage you? Would they get upset if they see HN in your web browser more than once or twice a day? Do you worry about them 'catching' you? Are you surrounded by 4 dozen people with multiple loud passionate discussions guaranteed to happen per day? Possibly in a language you don't understand most of the time? And whenever they do…

> This really is organization dependent.

There are also personal factors at play. Different people thrive under different combinations of stimuli. I'm not a psychologist but I think it'd be related to the intraversion-extroversion axis of personality.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#37

Post by saosebastiao »

I love my open plan office because it is open plan for my team, but still has walls between us and other teams. It definitely facilitates collaboration.

I think the holy grail of offices would be to let you choose at any time where you want to work...grabbing an isolated office some times and being in an open area at others.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#38

Post by SCdF »

jacques_chester wrote: post #31
SCdF wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what my closed cans headphones are for :P

I have ADHD. I find what's on my own computer distracting enough. Put me in a room of people moving and screens flicking and changing and -- SQUIRREL! -- ... I won't be very productive.

Heh, so the music I listen to tends to be pulsing non-vocal quiet electronic music (currently listening to: Done by Robot Science) because it's not music I'm going to sing or sitting-dance along too, and it's entirely ignorable, but it also cuts out the noise of everything around me.

I can still see my coworker hacking SQL into some XML (wtf is he doing) out of the corner of my eye, but I'm not sure wearing horse blinkers to work would be socially acceptable.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#40

Post by jacques_chester »

aimhb wrote: post #33
fishtoaster wrote: post #18

I don't think open offices are necessarily bad, but that they're harder to get right. What you need is: - A a decent cultural protocol around it. One place I worked had the very strong rule that you start all non-emergency communication asynchronously (usually text chat), even if the person is right next to you. Another place I worked at strongly respected headphones as the "don't bother me" signal. - A reasonable nu…

> One place I worked had the very strong rule that you start all non-emergency communication asynchronously (usually text chat), even if the person is right next to you. A little bit off topic, but I too have experienced this, and I have to say, it's awful for productivity, team building, and team assimilation. As a new hire, I would send my mentor a question and it might be ten minutes to fifty minutes before I woul…

This isn't really a feature of the environment, except accidentally. What's really at stake here is striking the balance between the short term cost of integrating a new team member and the long term cost of failing to integrate them well.
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