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The Open-office Trap

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Re: The Open-office Trap

#51

Post by matwood »

greggman wrote: post #13
pbiggar wrote: post #4

We've just moved into our first place where everyone has a private office. It's absolutely amazing! I had been complaining for years about open-plan offices [1], but I was actually surprised at just how much more productive it is to have a door that closes! [1] http://blog.circleci.com/silence-is-for-the-weak/

I've personally had the opposite experience. I'm far more productive in a team environment. In video games my most product times are when an artist and/or designer and I sit together and work together. Even when we are not directly interacting with each other seeing stuff on each other's screens lets us see what each other is working on and communicate early and often. I understand that some people in certain roles w…

I'm far more productive in a team environment.

As others have mentioned this is where the definition of open breaks down. Team environments are great. Many open office advocates are small companies who, because of their size, are really advocating team environments.

Now grow that same company to 100s of people and see if the open office still works. What I have seen is that even the biggest open office advocates start putting up walls (even if movable) and segmenting once again into a teams.

TLDR; Team != Open

Re: The Open-office Trap

#52

Post by rwallace »

amake wrote: post #45

I wonder how dependent all this is on culture and expectations. I've spent my entire career in Japan, and have never not worked in an open office. To my knowledge, non-open offices basically don't exist in Japan. So is every Japanese company just leaving productivity lying on the floor by insisting on open offices? I wonder if there have been studies on switching to closed floor plans in Japan. (Of course traditional…

> I wonder how dependent all this is on culture and expectations.

The actions people take depend on these things. The results of those actions typically do not.

> So is every Japanese company just leaving productivity lying on the floor by insisting on open offices?

Yes.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#53

Post by joverholt »

VLM wrote: post #26
InclinedPlane wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So go hang out in other people's offices to regain that experience. Back when I worked in offices I'd do that or have coworkers do that all the time.

The once mandatory "visitors chair" in every workspace and most people had two or three. Folks younger than a certain age miss out knowing the social etiquette relating to visitors chairs, such as stacking "stuff" or coats on your visitor chair is anti-social and very strongly frowned upon. Also it was socially acceptable, standard even, to simply walk into someone's cube and sit down in their (visitor) chair and wai…

"Back in the old days" we had huge cubes with plenty of desk space and cabinets. One time, way before all this "collab-friendly" stuff hit, some guys put masking tape on the floor of a fellow coworkers cube, with corners outlining a fairly small rectangle. When he came back and saw the tapes, he's like "What is this? Why is this tape on the floor?"

"Oh, some guys from floor support were doing that, something about the new cubicles."

"WHAT!! Where the hell am I going to put my books! This isn't enough space, blah blah blah". He was a hot head and immediately flew off the handle, much to our pleasure. Well, a year or two later, we did actually go to smaller cubes, and then a few more years later to the "open" floor plan (un-ergonomic tables with no kind of adjustments). People way to close to each other. While it does come in handy when we are discussing problems and bringing new people up to speed, I definitely think the negatives outweigh the positives. Sometimes I just don't want to be around people!

Re: The Open-office Trap

#54

Post by rwallace »

NikhilVerma wrote: post #27

Like anything taken to the extreme open offices are bad for you. I personally have worked in an open office and a semi-open office (where your team is in a part enclosure/room with a door). And I much prefer to have a semi-open office rather than a private office. A private office for me would totally kill any social interaction I have with anyone. A semi-open office keeps it private on the team level.

> A private office for me would totally kill any social interaction I have with anyone.

Perhaps a better working environment would allow your day to be spent more efficiently and leave you with spare time and energy to get an actual social life, instead of requiring your job to double as your social life and end up performing both functions badly?

Re: The Open-office Trap

#55

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

matwood wrote: post #49
aeberbach wrote: post #35

Why stop at having an office merely "open"? Hot desking is the new thing - it's nothing to do with cost saving, it's all about "flexibility". Except that your organisation might also have a policy against working from home. There's no implicit message that you are simply a replaceable functional unit, not at all. You might even find there's no desk left when you arrive at work - who doesn't love the suspense of arriv…

Hot desking is the new thing I visited a place that was a giant room of ~100 people working. No one had their own computer, instead you just sat down and whatever computer was there and started working. The guy running this insanity said they re-image all the machines all time taking settings from one of the machines that has been in use. His theory was that over time everyones preferences would merge. It was interes…

There is no middle ground between my desktop settings and the crazy cat lady.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#56

Post by bluedino »

I can't believe we're still having this debate, how many years has it been?

You can't simply take a closed-office environment and just knock the walls down, pass out headphones and cram everyone in one room.

You need to change the work culture so that open offices work. You have to adapt things like pair programming and remove things like phones and email. Put everyone on a certain project at the same table. Switch partners out.

You can't have people who sit by themselves, don't communicate and don't work together in an open office environment. You're nuts if you think that's going to work.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#57

Post by chrisgd »

Interesting article. My favorite sentence is this though, "Open offices may seem better suited to younger workers, many of whom have been multitasking for the majority of their short careers."

Despite what I want to believe and what I have been told (all companies only want to hire multitaskers!), multitasking is neither productive nor really possible. You can really only do one project at a time.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#58

Post by Touche »

aeberbach wrote: post #35

Why stop at having an office merely "open"? Hot desking is the new thing - it's nothing to do with cost saving, it's all about "flexibility". Except that your organisation might also have a policy against working from home. There's no implicit message that you are simply a replaceable functional unit, not at all. You might even find there's no desk left when you arrive at work - who doesn't love the suspense of arriv…

This reminds me of the hip news organization on House of Cards where everyone is sitting around on stair steps and such. I wonder how productive such an environment is for anyone, and whether the decision to design an office in such a way is solely for the sake of image.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#59

Post by eloisant »

matwood wrote: post #49
aeberbach wrote: post #35

Why stop at having an office merely "open"? Hot desking is the new thing - it's nothing to do with cost saving, it's all about "flexibility". Except that your organisation might also have a policy against working from home. There's no implicit message that you are simply a replaceable functional unit, not at all. You might even find there's no desk left when you arrive at work - who doesn't love the suspense of arriv…

Hot desking is the new thing I visited a place that was a giant room of ~100 people working. No one had their own computer, instead you just sat down and whatever computer was there and started working. The guy running this insanity said they re-image all the machines all time taking settings from one of the machines that has been in use. His theory was that over time everyones preferences would merge. It was interes…

At my university, 15 years ago, we had network profiles. So you would log to any machine in the university, your home directory would be your own. That worked with dual boot Windows and Linux, so you'd get the same files on either platform.

The machines were pretty much stateless. When you booted a machine you could choose between Windows, Linux, or reset the whole machine. The third one was what you did when the machine acted funny, it would wipe the hard disk and reinstall both OS' from a network image. The whole process was completely automatic and was done in 20 minutes.

So it was real hot desking, and it worked great. You sat at any computer, it became your computer. Way before Google started to talk about stateless computers and their chromebook.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#60

Post by matwood »

eloisant wrote: post #59
matwood wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot desking is the new thing I visited a place that was a giant room of ~100 people working. No one had their own computer, instead you just sat down and whatever computer was there and started working. The guy running this insanity said they re-image all the machines all time taking settings from one of the machines that has been in use. His theory was that over time everyones preferences would merge. It was interes…

At my university, 15 years ago, we had network profiles. So you would log to any machine in the university, your home directory would be your own. That worked with dual boot Windows and Linux, so you'd get the same files on either platform. The machines were pretty much stateless. When you booted a machine you could choose between Windows, Linux, or reset the whole machine. The third one was what you did when the mac…

That's not what this was. I was specifically told that over time their settings would all merge together.
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