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The Open-office Trap

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Re: The Open-office Trap

#121

Post by theg2 »

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.

I work in a news organization. Seating is scarce, the environment is loud and distracting, and going on vacation means you just might be moved to a new desk when you return. Fortunately as a developer my computer is off limits to most but the open office layout completely wrecks my anxiety and pushes my stress levels through the roof while my productivity plummets from distraction.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#122

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Open-office Trap

#123

Post by collyw »

pbreit wrote: post #97

I've already bought in to the notion that open arrangements may have short-comings. But in the Bay Area circa 2014 what arrangements are being tried out and seeing advantages? Low cubes, high cubes, fully enclosed offices, bull pens, mini bull pens, periodic re-arrangement, unassigned?

bull pens? I assume this is the name of some office arrangement. It isn't very inspiring though.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#124

Post by [deleted] »

rjbwork wrote: post #6

Would love it if my company would get us each an office. We have the money for it. I feel like since we've expanded and I moved out of the 2 person office I shared with one of the front end devs (I'm back end) and into the 5 person back end space, my productivity has plummeted.

[deleted]

Re: The Open-office Trap

#125

Post by GFischer »

rl3 wrote: post #115

It's clear that both open and closed office plans have their advantages and disadvantages. Ditto hot desking. I'm surprised that no hybrid solution to this problem exists, or at least one that's taken hold. The best solution we currently have seems to be giving everyone a private office and augmenting it with really good team collaboration software. In most cases however, this does not eliminate the need for direct h…

In "Peopleware", Tom de Marco tries to solve the problem, based on Christopher Alexander's observations:

http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13

Edit: see also the discussion at

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces

His first rule is that there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution :) but there are patterns :)

He does identify the need for all three of

- a communal space

- a semiprivate/team space ("war rooms", etc)

- a private space

Also:

"Each team needs identifiable public and semiprivate space and each individual needs protected private space. "

Re: The Open-office Trap

#126

Post by collyw »

rwallace wrote: post #54
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?

You are likely to spend more than half of your time awake in your workplace. You might as well try to make it a pleasant place to be. And being sociable at work is hardly likely to exhaust you to the point of preventing an social life outside work.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#128

Post by waps »

emsy wrote: post #43

Open-offices are downright dangerous. We had an Indian colleague who had tuberculoses. After it was diagnosed, every employee had to get an examination. One colleague got infected. Worst of all, the management handled the matter rather unserious and kept jamming everyone in the same office (including the infected colleague!) Gladly, I worked remotely for that company.

I hope he sued the company and got a $10 million settlement. Companies respond really well to getting sued even once.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#129

Post by waps »

dalek_cannes wrote: post #9
bitwize wrote: post #5

Open-plan offices are a cost-effective panopticon: cheap, effective way to ensure that not only the boss, but other co-workers are aware of where you are and -- more or less -- what you're doing. The "other co-workers" bit is crucial because even if the boss can't find Dave himself he can ask anyone in the space "hey, have you seen Dave" and be led to a meaningful answer. Companies will get rid of open-plan offices w…

First, the answer to "Hey, Have you seen Dave?" should be "In his cubicle/office". If a coworker (or worse yet, the boss) does not know this, then there is a different problem. But yes, it does work well for management-by-surveillance. Whether that's a good thing is yet another different problem. Second, not all readers of HN are American. Nor do they subscribe to the same political/ethical/social beliefs. The articl…

Open plan offices are even more popular outside of America everwhere I've been. This is not an American phenomenon at all.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#130

Post by waps »

VLM wrote: post #36
dalek_cannes wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, the answer to "Hey, Have you seen Dave?" should be "In his cubicle/office". If a coworker (or worse yet, the boss) does not know this, then there is a different problem. But yes, it does work well for management-by-surveillance. Whether that's a good thing is yet another different problem. Second, not all readers of HN are American. Nor do they subscribe to the same political/ethical/social beliefs. The articl…

There is tangentially a correct aspect to it, in that playing geolocation and SPOF games are non-productive so they fit well with an open office. If you need to talk to Dave, first of all Dave being a SPOF is a bug or management failure to be worked around. Secondly geolocating Dave is almost certainly non-productive. If you need to converse with Dave you call/text his phone to maximize productivity. This is an insig…

> Its unpleasant, perhaps even inhumane for a large segment of the population, and unproductive for everyone but in a cause and effect relationship the bug is in the core values of the organization, that productivity doesn't matter. Its not that they don't know its non-productive, its that they don't care that its non-productive.

No the problem is that most management activity, including program management, project management and the like is fundamentally unproductive. People who don't know what they're doing (ie. middle managers, project managers and program managers) can't productively contribute to real efforts.

The problem is the people judging whether this is true or not are exactly those middle managers/project managers and program managers.

Once management infects a company, it always just keeps increasing in my experience. A European bank I worked at had 3 project/program managers or architects per developer. You were lucky to get 2 hours of actual work in on a day. They were actually working to expand, not the developer team, but the management team.

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