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The Open-Office Trap

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Re: The Open-Office Trap

#71

Post by bane »

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #44
bane wrote: post #17

I've written here quite a bit about my basic hatred for open offices. My personal opinion is that open offices are masked in lots of terms about "information flow" and "collaboration" when the reality is that it's about companies being cheap. I also went to a high school built originally on a completely open plan. At some point they realized teachers shouting over each other didn't work, or the teacher next door givi…

Why do 1-3 people offices inhibit communication? I can't see it. You can also have a central or conference room for communications, or coffee corners connecting the offices. I think, Joel Spolsky has shown a real good example: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html His office does give both: Everybody can retreat, but also a huge area to communicate, live and exchange in community.

I think there are lots of quick and subtle communications that happen in a team while they're working. The quick "hey where did you check in the change for foo?" or "Let's do this task first, then the other tomorrow" or whatever, that happen in a team very quickly that I think happen better in a physical space then an IM chat or an email. Isolating a team from each other in separate spaces prevents that. But I can appreciate the need for single rooms for people to use on occasion when they need to really concentrate.

Central conference rooms are critical, but don't lend themselves well to casual, quick communications.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#72

Post by greenyoda »

jdotjdot wrote: post #23

Is it possible there's any difference in productivity in open-office environments between introverts and extroverts? I've always wondered that.

In her book Quiet[1], Susan Cain claims that introverts are more sensitive to external stimuli[2]. This would probably make them less able to tune out distractions and thus more stressed out by noisy workplaces where there are lots of people talking.

She also explicitly discusses workplace issues as they relate to introverts and extroverts.[3]

It's an interesting book, especially for tech people, a lot of whom tend to either be introverts or work with lots of introverts.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet:_The_Power_of_Introverts...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet:_The_Power_of_Introverts...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet:_The_Power_of_Introverts...

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#73

Post by PythonicAlpha »

bane wrote: post #71
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do 1-3 people offices inhibit communication? I can't see it. You can also have a central or conference room for communications, or coffee corners connecting the offices. I think, Joel Spolsky has shown a real good example: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html His office does give both: Everybody can retreat, but also a huge area to communicate, live and exchange in community.

I think there are lots of quick and subtle communications that happen in a team while they're working. The quick "hey where did you check in the change for foo?" or "Let's do this task first, then the other tomorrow" or whatever, that happen in a team very quickly that I think happen better in a physical space then an IM chat or an email. Isolating a team from each other in separate spaces prevents that. But I can ap…

I think, it depends largely on how people work together. In some occasions, when people really work on similar problems on the same part of a project, it could really be like you described. But I have seen that in really rare cases and seldom with more than may be 3 or 4 persons. Not ten persons and also not scrum teams. In scrum teams (as I have seen them), the tasks of the persons are so different, that you seldom have that kind of communications. Also when the micro-communications, that you talked about are between two or may be three people -- there it would be better, if the three work together in one office or if they could go out of the office and meet somewhere where they don't disturb others. In such cases, I would opt for offices of 3-4 persons that work in the same areas.

I would really opt for offices of 3-4 persons. Scrum offices, or team of ten offices are to noisy for my opinion and most of the discussions will be non-interesting for the other peoples (for example developers are not interested in the managers talk or the product owner will not be interested in details from developers work .... also documentation people will not be interested in). If others could be interested or should say something about a topic, it is always better to have a spontaneous meeting.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#74

Post by tptacek »

mrweasel wrote: post #12

This isn't really new, we known about issues regarding open office plan since the 1980s. I think it's mentioned in Peopleware at least. So why is it that companies keep building open office spaces? Are people really so focused on short term savings that they do not care that it will cost more in the long run?

Because closed offices are expensive, limit your options, and are less flexible. A company with 10 people now can scale up to 15 or even 20 in the same space with an open plan, but would have to move offices and break leases with a closed plan.

Another way to say the some of same thing is, for the same office budget, you can get a nicer place in open-plan format than closed-plan. When looking at offices, people tend to prefer the nicer offices and nicer locations. Hence: open plan.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#75

Post by VLM »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #67
VLM wrote: post #36

If open plan offices actually worked, all academic facilities would install dozens of TVs each showing a different cable TV channel and volume turned up to distracting level in each study tank. Oh wait, places where people have to actually think are pin-drop silent? Really? You mean most calculus homework isn't done at frat keggers? The root of the problem is a management primate dominance fad; the mere grunt laborer…

Quite a bit of calculus homework is done at the frat house, the coffee shop, or other such places. Many people work best in situations other than total isolation and quiet. I'm not sure about the dominance thing either - most open office plans I've seen have no offices for anyone. At my last job the incoming CTO inherited the desk of a freelancer who left the week before.

That is true, but unusual, based on research. However, those people are compatible with quiet offices because they can blast headphones, or talk at the coffee maker, or hang out in people offices/cubes and bug them. So quiet areas are not designed for loud people but are totally "loud people compatible". On the other hand quiet people (the majority) dropped into a loud open plan, are not compatible.

I've never seen or worked in an open plan that doesn't have private areas for the cool kids and bosses either formally or informally. Perhaps a site like that exists. They are apparently rare.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#77

Post by robotresearcher »

bane wrote: post #71
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do 1-3 people offices inhibit communication? I can't see it. You can also have a central or conference room for communications, or coffee corners connecting the offices. I think, Joel Spolsky has shown a real good example: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html His office does give both: Everybody can retreat, but also a huge area to communicate, live and exchange in community.

I think there are lots of quick and subtle communications that happen in a team while they're working. The quick "hey where did you check in the change for foo?" or "Let's do this task first, then the other tomorrow" or whatever, that happen in a team very quickly that I think happen better in a physical space then an IM chat or an email. Isolating a team from each other in separate spaces prevents that. But I can ap…

> "hey where did you check in the change for foo?"

... and you just took me out of the Zone.

I was about to be intensely productive on hard code for 30 minutes, but now I see it's only 15 minutes 'til lunch. Maybe I'll check email instead of building up that concentration level again.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#78

Post by al2o3cr »

Meh. YMMV - I work in a smallish office (20 people) which is entirely open and it works out pretty well.

I suspect the real problem is that if you take a dysfunctional office culture and change it from one-person-to-an-office to an open plan it's (shocker) still a dysfunctional office culture. See also "hey, if we just buy $SOFTWARE_METHODOLOGY_X our code will suddenly not suck anymore!"

Some factors that may help open-plan work in our case:

* we pair pretty much all the time, so that may be acting as cultural filter selecting against people who don't work well with a certain level of noise / distraction.

* the main office is open, but there are plenty of smaller conference rooms for times when the lab is too noisy / too distracting / etc.

* although we share an environment, we're still in control of it. The current layout was arrived at after a bunch of collaborative tweaking and furniture shuffling. I suspect having a layout imposed from on-high wouldn't work as well.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#79

Post by mindcrime »

al2o3cr wrote: post #78

Meh. YMMV - I work in a smallish office (20 people) which is entirely open and it works out pretty well. I suspect the real problem is that if you take a dysfunctional office culture and change it from one-person-to-an-office to an open plan it's (shocker) still a dysfunctional office culture. See also "hey, if we just buy $SOFTWARE_METHODOLOGY_X our code will suddenly not suck anymore!" Some factors that may help op…

I suspect the real problem is that if you take a dysfunctional office culture and change it from one-person-to-an-office to an open plan it's (shocker) still a dysfunctional office culture.

I believe this is probably true, but noise and distractions are still noise and distractions no matter what your culture is like. My feeling is that (almost) all teams would be better off with people in private offices, regardless of the culture.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#80

Post by mindcrime »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #56
bane wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's really weird is that lots of the new, VC funded startups that should be really progressive about coddling employee needs are building these kinds of offices.

Dominance. If the higher-ups have their own offices, whereas the plebes are amassed in the sweatshop, it gives the former a sense of dominance. It increases testosterone production, which makes them feel better, stronger, more energetic. It's very hard to change something in a place if it makes the decision-makers feel really good. "Rational actors" my ass. We are all a bunch of chimpanzees.

"Rational actors" my ass. We are all a bunch of chimpanzees.

I think it's a little bit more nuanced than that. My guess is that people are mostly rational in many ways, but far less than totally rational in many ways. Some economists and social-science types refer to the term "bounded rationality".[1] I think that's about right.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality

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