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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

#91

Post by bermanoid »

klochner wrote: post #11

Ways this could be biased: - higher skilled workers are in closed offices more often * and satisfaction varies by skill level - p(open office) varies by industry * and satisfaction varies by industry - people feel more comfortable doing non-work items behind a door * and they like getting personal tasks done As a developer I'm happy in an open office, as long as I have enough space, and I'm separated from the sales (…

I happened to read this right after the article on Simpson's Paradox, and you put your finger on exactly what I was thinking - it's almost certain that there are many hidden variables that predict whether or not you work in an open office, and many of these likely correlate very strongly with job satisfaction, potentially inverting the relationship just based on relative employment rates in different areas. Just knowing that satisfaction correlates with open floorplans doesn't tell us anything solid about whether you should choose one or not.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#92

Post by 5teev »

abalone wrote: post #64
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…

You mentioned headphones. Headphones seem to be an essential part of open plans. Not only do they send a don't-bother-me signal, they also drown out the noise. But that's also a really annoying part of it. I don't want to have to put on headphones all the time.

I bet I'm not the only one who sometimes puts headphones on with no music, solely to broadcast that don't-bother-me signal.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#93

Post by jacques_chester »

mindcrime wrote: post #76
jacques_chester wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that the X-shape exists as described, though not for all buildings: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ImageGallery/ImageDetails... Some buildings aren't strictly cross-shaped but still use right-angled wings for a similar effect: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ImageGallery/ImageDetails... Compare STL/SVL: http://www.nfbcal.org/~anordley/IBM/Air/SVL/ IBM published a paper on STL/SVL in 1978; I haven't go…

F%!#, what a ripoff. IEEE want $31.00 for that paper.. and sadly, it's the same price whether you're an IEEE member or not. So much for the idea that one of the advantage of being an IEEE member is that you get better pricing on papers from journals you don't already subscribe to. Even sadder, IBM used to publish their journal archives online, available to anyone, for free. IBM Systems Journal wasn't always behind so…

I agree. It's extremely annoying how IEEE carefully segment their library access to maximise revenue instead of member value.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#94

Post by jacques_chester »

MartinCron wrote: post #90
simplexion wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the evidence for these claims though? I know Joel Spolsky makes the argument about "A door that shuts" but it's purely anecdotal. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html

The study in Peopleware was individual coders working on well-defined toy projects. Whatever evidence taken from that may or may not translate to your real-world development organization.

You're right software engineering literature is not as strong as, say, physics -- where you can relatively easily strip out confounding factors. Or medicine, where you can get funding for very large samples. We have to work with the limits of the subject and the research funding.

However it seems that there is a growing body of supporting literature coming from other fields that open-plan is usually a decision with unseen costs. The linked article is an example.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#95

Post by Buzaga »

Bad:

having your back surrounded, creates axiety, as a Ted talk told, generally, the more experienced/dominant will grab the 'more privacy' spots, of course.

Absolute worst:

Sitting at a table trying to do work, and some other dude trying to do the same across the table in front of you, the laptop screens are just high enough for you to be with minimal visual contact with the other and both become tense because you sort of have to lock view INSIDE the damn screen so you're not making eye contact with dude all the time. Still, it will happen tens of times. Impossible to concentrate, feel worn out at the end of the day. Random feelings of hostility and awkwardness.

The constant chit-chat is probably just a way to relieve the anxiety these places build.

Now I was just remembering of another shitty place I worked at: experienced/dominant dude controlled the AC, put it to freezing everyday, underground office, no natural light. When 6pm hit, it felt weirdly pleasant to leave because inside, with the artificial light + cold AC air, it felt like it was way later, my eyelids felt heavy from the ressecation and I felt like it was night because of the cold(sometimes I'd bring a jacket, even), then I went out and it was still day and still somewhat warm. Weird. And it was also somewhat open plan. God, it sucked!

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#96

Post by jacques_chester »

vectorjohn wrote: post #74
debt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My lord this is truth. I don't care what you did yesterday, what you're doing tonight, what you're doing this weekend, why you're wearing what you're wearing, who got you that thing, when you got in, when you leave, why you hate brad, why you hate brad but love donna, why donna's nice but you'd prefer to be home studying. did you get an extra $30 deducted from your paycheck? doesn't that suck? it only takes me 20 min…

Well, it sounds like you're mostly just an antisocial kind of person. I mean, if you decide to put an arbitrary wall between you and your co-workers where you are simply not allowed to make friends with anyone, that's a pretty sad existence. I mean, this job takes up ~50% of your waking life, and during that time you can't treat anyone around you as a friend? If all your co-workers are such uninteresting people, mayb…

First, some people are introverts. They genuinely do not work well under conditions of heavy social interaction. This does not mean that they are "antisocial" or that they are sad; it means that they are more sensitive to some kinds of stimuli and so are more easily distracted and exhausted by it.

Such people should be understood and given the distance that allows them to work, not browbeaten into keeping up with the extraverts.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#97

Post by debt »

vectorjohn wrote: post #74
debt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My lord this is truth. I don't care what you did yesterday, what you're doing tonight, what you're doing this weekend, why you're wearing what you're wearing, who got you that thing, when you got in, when you leave, why you hate brad, why you hate brad but love donna, why donna's nice but you'd prefer to be home studying. did you get an extra $30 deducted from your paycheck? doesn't that suck? it only takes me 20 min…

Well, it sounds like you're mostly just an antisocial kind of person. I mean, if you decide to put an arbitrary wall between you and your co-workers where you are simply not allowed to make friends with anyone, that's a pretty sad existence. I mean, this job takes up ~50% of your waking life, and during that time you can't treat anyone around you as a friend? If all your co-workers are such uninteresting people, mayb…

Whether or not my coworkers have unique and interesting lives shouldn't really matter in a work environment, no? Shouldn't the thing we're all working on and the goal were all striving towards be number one?

My bend at work is definitely more towards the antisocial simply because I would like to focus on work. Bother me if it's work related otherwise maybe wait until 5pm or whenever we're all wrapping up.

I'm down for making friends, but we don't need to talk all week long about the camping trip we're all going on this weekend. It's a thing, it's happening. Why don't we talk about it after it happens?

Honestly, I know it sounds cheesy, but I wish so bad to have worked on an Apollo mission or the Manhattan project. In my fantasy, those engineers just showed up and talked about the most interesting and fascinating and craziest shit and then went and built it. At lunch people talked about the minutiae of putting a dude on the moon or what the hell Rutherford scattering was and NOT the perfect temperature to roast a coffee bean or why the iphone sucks.

I know, I know, some people want to decompress and unwind throughout the day and not be so preoccupied with that intense shit all the time. I just think it'd be cool if people were more like that.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#98

Post by jacques_chester »

twistedpair wrote: post #82
biot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you have to spend a lot of time with other programmers asking questions raises another question: why is this? If the other programmers were better able to concentrate and churn out specs/documentation for their work that you could consult at your leisure, would there be as much need for constantly interrupting each other with questions? If you had all the information you needed at your fingertips, why couldn't y…

Hmm... sufficiently define everything so that human contact is unnecessary? Genius idea. Now if only the customer knew exactly what they wanted a year out and the BA's perfectly captured that in absolutely unambiguous prose, and of course if nothing ever failed to go according to plan.

You're both right. It's a spectrum. Perfect documentation is impossible, but good documentation is valuable.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#99

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ams6110 wrote: post #70
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 of the worst things for me in open plan offices is you can hear people eating at their desks. For me nothing is more annoying and distracting than to hear someone crunching on cookies or popcorn or potato chips at his desk. That's an instant headphones-on for me. It's worse than all the other background noise/conversations put together.

I work in China in a semi-open office, every afternoon they make fruit available for consumption. Whenever the fruits are relatively juicy (e.g. Chinese pears), I can't get any work done due to all the smacking and slurping around my work area; I have to go to Starbucks.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#100

Post by ktsmith »

gametheoretic wrote: post #88
abalone wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mentioned headphones. Headphones seem to be an essential part of open plans. Not only do they send a don't-bother-me signal, they also drown out the noise. But that's also a really annoying part of it. I don't want to have to put on headphones all the time.

If the top post indicates anything, it's the high precedence the psyche places on framing. Switch around your default- and exception cases and see if that helps take your mind off it. It's a real thing. This summer, because my room would get hot at night, I had to leave a fan on. At first, I couldn't sleep with the noise. But now that it's getting colder, I've tried leaving it off, and guess what. Ha. Now I need the…

I have worked in an open office plan and simply can't work with people around me talking. I had to wear my headphones all day every day. I would never accept a job in an open office again.
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