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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

#121

Post by debt »

thomaslangston wrote: post #116
debt wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

I think you answered your own question. If you're saving babies or firing a moonshot, yes work is number one. Otherwise work is a priority, but not the only priority and maybe not the top priority. I love building things my customers love, but that's not the only thing I love. I expect to share some of who I am and learn some about my coworkers during the 9 to 5. The ability for my coworkers and I to click, on multip…

I agree. The problem occurs when the chatter occupies nearly 30% of my working day. I'm okay if it's 10-15% I guess. But not really. Ideally it'd be like 0-5%.

I don't like feeling like an unproductive schlub at work.

Y'all are paying me all this money to work, not to socialize.

Sorry it took so long to get to that point, but ultimately that's it. I'm getting paid a lot of money to work. Not to socialize. And I will gladly work my ass off so don't think I need to socialize a whole bunch throughout the day to get shit done or to enjoy myself.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#122

Post by lotyrin »

Domenic_S wrote: post #58
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…

> what you did yesterday, what you're doing tonight Good Lord, now we're doing social-life standups. Agile really has taken over.

God yes. Particularly when part of the team has no real life outside their job and they get to spend the social-life meeting handwaving around that fact. It's useless and sad. So glad I don't work there anymore.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#123

Post by perlpimp »

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…

Open office does not scale beyond 6-10 people. There was an article though about a firm that did have open office but had special function areas - like quiet work area or meeting room are. If you are in quiet room area, you don't talk there at all. Huge open office I think is bad as it invites distraction.

Many companies grow from open offices as startups but then they have to change they way they do the open office if they want to preserve the "open office". my 2c.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#124

Post by jarjoura »

I was lucky enough to have my own office at Apple even during all of the pairing up when the company doubled, tripled, etc. the size of the engineering team.

My most productive moments were when I could close the door and turn my music up on my high end speakers and blast through the work.

My office was also cozy with an old chair that people came in and sat down for impromptu meetings. No need to schedule conference rooms and we all had our own white boards.

Jumping to startups that tout open spaces and the engineers I've met since who've praised them, I wonder if it's because these engineers haven't worked at companies who have actual real offices for everyone.

The collaboration is definitely different for sure, in open spaces you can share in the tension and keep pace with everyone. Yet I find I need a day or two a week to work from home to get in those purely productive days.

I'd love it if engineering culture went back to demanding offices as a perk, but I fear those days are gone now that we demand living and working in expensive cities.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#125

Post by tsotha »

jacques_chester wrote: post #29
jyrkesh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you implement all of that perfectly, doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of having an open office? (I.e. to stimulate more spontaneous collaboration)

The actual purpose of open offices is to save money. The collaboration stuff is marketing nonsense managers tell themselves to try and ease the cognitive dissonance of lying about it.

Depends on the kind of work you do. If you're in sales or marketing the open office plan may indeed stimulate creativity or whatever.

But for people who have to concentrate (like software developers) it's a productivity killer. Joel Spolsky used to touch on this occasionally - he claims all sorts of research shows the most productive arrangement is to put everyone in his own office with a door.

Where I work that will never happen, because there are corporate-wide rules about who gets an office and who doesn't. You have to be a director to get your own office, which is two levels above non-managers. They're so anal about it one time I worked on a floor with no directors and they left all the offices unoccupied. They crowded everyone into cubes and even doubled one up when they ran out of (cubicle) space.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#126

Post by dredmorbius »

sliverstorm wrote: post #104
5teev wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good headphones are comfortable. I actually prefer them sometimes to no headphones, 'cause they keep my ears warm.

I've got the reverse problem: I'm _always_ warm. Keep a fan at my desk, on at all times. Over-the-ear phones trap a _lot_ of heat.

Instead I use earplugs.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#127

Post by dredmorbius »

ktsmith wrote: post #101
nikatwork wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partitions can still be installed between the work pods to provide a measure of privacy. Many of the open-plan offices I've seen have no partitions, the only thing between you and everyone else is a computer monitor. It's insane.

Partitions don't do much to cut down on noise unfortunately.

It depends on the partitions and how other surfaces are finished.

With sufficiently high walls (about 6'), carpeting, and acoustic ceilings, you'll actually cut noise quite a bit. Lower and sound travels in straight lines.

One of my gigs had a "pod" style cubical layout with 6' high walls, glass in the upper 2' or so, arranged in groups of four (see diagrams below). It's still one of the best workspace designs I've seen, period.

https://plus.google.com/photos/104092656004159577193/albums/...

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#128

Post by sateesh »

tempestn wrote: post #114
ams6110 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 worked in an open office situation once with a co-worker across from me who listened to sports talk radio all day - no headphones. I literally can't imagine a more distracting work environment.

Maybe you could have requested him/her to use headphones. Many a times in a situations similar to above I have requested my coworkers to use earphones, and usually they would comply.

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#129

Post by hudibras »

niels_olson wrote: post #50

Work spaces I have had * High school: desk in bedroom. Unaware there are worse options: Productivity: 9. * College, year 1: dorm with roommate, cop-style desks facing each other. Shut up! Productivity: 4. * College, years 2-4: two roommates, desk under bed. Vaguely cramped, but not bad. Productivity: 6. * First ship: Flight of the Intruder style aluminum desk/dresser/bookcase measuring 24" wide, aligned athwartships,…

First ship photo

My favorite part of the setup was the utterly useless desk safe, easily jimmied open (and then permanently broken) by using two Navy-issue pairs of scissors. Then, invariably, someone would forget to wedge their safe door open and you'd have to barge through staterooms in officer country during heavy seas at 3 a.m. to look for the offending thunk, thunk that was driving everyone insane.

Oh, to be 23 again...

Re: Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

#130

Post by henrik_w »

tempestn wrote: post #114
ams6110 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 worked in an open office situation once with a co-worker across from me who listened to sports talk radio all day - no headphones. I literally can't imagine a more distracting work environment.

Me neither! Did you ask him to use headphones?
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