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The Open-Office Trap

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Re: The Open-Office Trap

#111

Post by Florin_Andrei »

mhurron wrote: post #101
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered what would happen if I told management "you guys made us work in a Dickensian sweatshop floor plan? Okay, how about I bring my own cubicle from home, and install it around my place here? I'm pretty good with DIY projects, you guys don't have to spend anything, I'll just fix the problem on my own. I'll paint it in the corporate colors and all, don't you worry."

You don't sound like a team player.

To be honest, I read that in the voice of a character from the Office Space movie. You know, the guy with thin-rim glasses and suspenders.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#112

Post by nucleardog »

trusche wrote: post #93

I find it interesting that in all these articles and studies about open plan offices, the distraction from noise levels is always so prominent, but the other side of that issue rarely gets mentioned. In my experience of open offices, everyone is so aware of potentially disrupting their colleagues by striking up a conversation that nobody does it . So instead of fostering an atmosphere of collaboration, the open offic…

Depends on who gets crammed together. A bunch of developers in a room are possibly going to be pretty considerate about noise.

I was in an 'open plan' office where there were four of us developers at a large desk with a sales guy at one end, a sales guy sitting at the other end of our desk, and another sales guy ten feet behind him at a desk.

We were generally pretty quiet, but the sales guys liked to shout across us all day. That is, when they weren't on loud phone calls.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#113

Post by nucleardog »

dpark wrote: post #24
AlisdairSH wrote: post #15

Why does it have to be either/or? Is it really that hard for an employer to offer both? If each team (of 7-10 people) has a scrum room/war room, plus some number of cubes (4-5) available on an as-needed basis, wouldn't that meet the needs of employee happiness, collaboration, etc? Need to make a call? Go to a cube. Deadline to meet? Go to a cube. Mid-project, lots of design/analysis occurring? Stay in the open room.…

Cubes still suck. They have most of the same noise issues as open floor plans. Assholes on speakerphone conference calls... Also your plan requires that everyone work primarily on laptops (unless you expect to lug your desktop and monitors to a cube when you need to concentrate). And you've basically allocated double the space (cubes for half the team plus a room big enough for the whole team). Why not just cut the s…

> Why not just cut the space up more efficiently and give everyone a private space? ... Workers still feel like they have no privacy and are constantly distracted

Maybe it's just me, but for me it's not just about the privacy, it's about having a place for my things.

Having a desk and some drawers, some desktop space that is mine to leave papers on, etc. makes me feel a lot more at home and productive. Having to keep everything in a bag I can tote around leaves me feeling kind of uneasy and like the situation is impermanent, much like staying somewhere and living out of a duffel bag.

I'm a lot more inclined to do good work if it's for a company I feel like I'm at home at, that I'm going to stay at, than one that feels like I'll be gone from any moment now.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#114

Post by Dewie »

johnward wrote: post #89
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, nobody wants to be a corporate drone. But the "hatred" is also based on scientific evidence. Programming and other creative jobs make it necessary, that the level of distraction is low. There might be differences in different people, some like music, others could also hear radio or the like. But everybody should be able to decide himself, how much distraction is acceptable for his task or his level of conc…

For some reason everyone in here hears "open office" and thinks "cube farm". There are open offices where you don't even have to privacy of a cube. I work in one. We have groups of 4 desks, two on each side facing each other, with some frosted glass in between. So you basically are in a 'cube' with 4 other people (since two people from the next group over are back to back with you). I worked in cube farm and it's not…

> For some reason everyone in here hears "open office" and thinks "cube farm".

Not to be pedantic, but I did mention in my original post that they aren't necessarily the same. :)

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#115

Post by nilkn »

owenmarshall wrote: post #6
shijie wrote: post #3

Being in my late 20s and having only worked in open-office environments, the thought of having my own office seems archaic and counter-intuitive to productivity and communication. If I have my headphones in, I'm busy. If I don't, I can answer questions or talk to my colleagues about something. Projecting how I would feel in a "closed office" environment, I can honestly say I'd feel trapped and isolated. My experience…

>Being in my late 20s and having only worked in open-office environments, the thought of having my own office seems archaic and counter-intuitive to productivity and communication Being in my late 20s and having worked in cubicles, open-office environments, and now with my own office, the thought of not having my own office sends shivers down my spine. For me, an office with a door is mandatory. It's now the second o…

I think this can be summed up fairly easily. Among those who've never had offices, there's a fair amount of disagreement about the value of offices. But among those who have private offices, you'll virtually never find someone who would want to give it up in exchange for a seat in an open floor plan.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#116

Post by sfronczak »

dpark wrote: post #11
shijie wrote: post #3

Being in my late 20s and having only worked in open-office environments, the thought of having my own office seems archaic and counter-intuitive to productivity and communication. If I have my headphones in, I'm busy. If I don't, I can answer questions or talk to my colleagues about something. Projecting how I would feel in a "closed office" environment, I can honestly say I'd feel trapped and isolated. My experience…

> If I have my headphones in, I'm busy. If I don't, I can answer questions or talk to my colleagues about something. This comes up every time people discuss open floor plans. Inevitably someone says that the solution is headphones. Except that a lot of people don't want to wear headphones all the time. I find it uncomfortable, and I also find that music significantly reduces my productivity (unless I'm doing somethin…

I'm with you... headphones are not comfortable. I've tried all sorts to either listen to music with or to just block out the noise and after a while they are almost as distracting as the noise.

With the wonderful weather we've had in the Midwest this past week I've been working from home and I have realized how much I hate our office setup. I'm very much dreading going into the office tomorrow.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#117

Post by gress »

bane wrote: post #99
scrabble wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Team leads must work in the team rooms to keep things from degenerating to antics. Why? Why can't we be adults and get the job done? And if we have shown that we get the job done with the desired level of quality in the desired time frame, what's wrong with having fun as well?

It benefits both the workers and the manager/lead to be in the same space. Having your manager float in once a day or so and then take time out of your work to get them up to speed on what they would know if they were just in the room is silly. It also makes the manager more cognizant of issues faster and forces them to keep production moving forward. Nobody said it can't be fun, the occasional break is fine. But I'v…

That's what firing is for.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#118

Post by hkmurakami »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #111
mhurron wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't sound like a team player.

To be honest, I read that in the voice of a character from the Office Space movie. You know, the guy with thin-rim glasses and suspenders.

why didn't you turn in your TPS reports last week Andrei? ;)

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#119

Post by fuckpig »

In an open office, anyone at any time has the right and ability to interrupt what you're doing.

People seem to love the idea of openness, but what it really means is that you the individual are wide open to the demands of any other individual.

Offices were probably invented in the first place with a twofold purpose: first, to separate the worker from the herd and interruptions when work was being done; second, to visually separate them to aid in concentration.

What broke that down was the telephone. You could call right into the office... so why not just walk in?

At some point, smart agents are going to serve the same role secretaries did back in the day: filtering access to workers.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#120

Post by fuckpig »

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #28

I have seen, that despite the fact, that open offices are criticized for I think at least 20 years (somebody mentioned the book Peopleware that is a real classic) the idea is keeping coming up in big companies. First time it was presented to me, it was as big "new invention" that has proven to better communications .... that was already at least 10 years after Peopleware ... (so much about new "invention"). Then, som…

Isn't this true of all the really insane ideas since the French Revolution?
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