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The Open-office Trap

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Re: The Open-office Trap

#61

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Open-office Trap

#62

Post by drzaiusapelord »

michaelochurch wrote: post #32

Backdoor age and disability discrimination. At some point, when an organization loses the purpose for its existence and selecting leadership comes down to office politics alone, the selection process becomes attrition. Since excellence no longer matters (there isn't real work for a person to excel at) the leaders are selected by subjecting people to artificial stresses and seeing who cracks (either a full-scale nervo…

When I was younger I could probably handle a weirdo office like this for a year or two. Now? No way. I need some level of quiet, non-social time, etc to be focused and get things done. I imagine environments like this are the equivalent of saying, "We don't hire anyone over 30."

Re: The Open-office Trap

#63

Post by npsimons »

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 sounds remarkably like my school; New Mexico Tech perchance? I was a UC, then SysProg at the TCC for a while.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#64

Post by cookiecaper »

Touche wrote: post #58
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.

Considering it's not a real office, yes, it's purely for image. It's meant to communicate "Slugline is so creative and forward-thinking that they don't even need non-beanbag furnishings!", and contrast against the Post's button-down, cubicle hell style.

The sad part is that some people see things like that in TV shows and try to duplicate them in the real world, without realizing that devices that work to communicate something on television don't necessarily actually work for doing the thing that the TV people are supposedly doing.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#65

Post by cookiecaper »

npsimons wrote: post #63
eloisant wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sounds remarkably like my school; New Mexico Tech perchance? I was a UC, then SysProg at the TCC for a while.

Systems like this were very common in universities, especially in the late 80s/early 90s. Thin client computing (or simulated thin client) went out of fashion after mid-late 90s implementations of similar things on top of Windows were massively disastrous.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#66

Post by Thriptic »

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…

Our laboratory actually employed hot desking for a bit, albeit out of necessity. We had a limited amount of desks (in an open office configuration no less) available, and they were distributed by seniority. All the graduate students, undergrads, and some post-docs were forced to share a small, hot room with long benches for doing computational work. There was also inadequate space in this room, so people would have to go elsewhere to do work at times. The results were literally disastrous. Tension built up among the people sharing the room, and also between people with and without desks. People stopped coming into work or would leave early etc. It was bad enough to warrant our purchase of another room to solely devote to personal cubicle space for these hot desking individuals, which also isn't perfect but it's better.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#67

Post by qwerta »

mrweasel wrote: post #37
qwerta wrote: post #7

I am ok with open-office if company provides paid sick leave. In Ireland there is at least one week every year, when 70% of company is at home with flu.

Would you really trade your health, physical and mentally for paid sick leave? I rarely get sick, but then again we're seven people in one office and only one have kids ( kids makes a difference ). Mentally it's different story. I can't begin to count the number of days where I get home stressed out due to the noise of my co-workers and people going in an out of the room to talk to one of my colleagues. Maybe I'm jus…

People in open-space are more sick, paid sick leave ensures that employer is not passing his cost savings on me. Non-paid sick leave indicates dysfunctional company and lack of trust (at least in Europe). It is a principle.

Open-space was major reason (together with new born children) why I quit corporate world and started my own business two years ago.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#68

Post by jcromartie »

wlesieutre wrote: post #44
bitJericho wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cubicle farm is not an open office. An open office is like a cubicle farm without the cubicles.

Depends on the cubicles. They used to be 78" high, but low panel heights are much more popular now. 42" panels don't afford much privacy.

Because... drumroll please: low panels are cheaper!

Re: The Open-office Trap

#69

Post by michaelochurch »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #62
michaelochurch wrote: post #32

Backdoor age and disability discrimination. At some point, when an organization loses the purpose for its existence and selecting leadership comes down to office politics alone, the selection process becomes attrition. Since excellence no longer matters (there isn't real work for a person to excel at) the leaders are selected by subjecting people to artificial stresses and seeing who cracks (either a full-scale nervo…

When I was younger I could probably handle a weirdo office like this for a year or two. Now? No way. I need some level of quiet, non-social time, etc to be focused and get things done. I imagine environments like this are the equivalent of saying, "We don't hire anyone over 30."

Moreover, "We don't hire anyone over 30" means "We don't hire anyone good".

That's not to say there aren't good people in their 20s. There are quite a few of them. But they want to learn from people who are better than they are. That's the trait of A players: they want to learn from the A+ players. If you don't have anyone over 30, then the good under-30 people you get will quickly leave.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#70

Post by derekp7 »

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…

My only stipulation would be to have my own keyboard/mouse, and my own chair. And some bleach wipes for the desk to take care of cold and flu season.
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