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The Open-Office Trap

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Re: The Open-Office Trap

#191

Post by lgas »

VLM wrote: post #59
waterlesscloud wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But does a plus that happens once or twice a year outweigh minuses that happen multiple times per day?

And would the plus have even been necessary if the environment were not highly distracting? The best way to fix a bug is to prevent it from happening.

There are also other solutions to this problem, such as encouraging discussions like this to take place on something like HipChat. Now all the discussions are archived and searchable and even the people that are home sick that day have the chance to overhear something important, not just the guy that happened to be walking by.

And while yes, some discussions will still take place outside of the chat rooms, if this is your default way of working then there should be enough discussion of anything critical that everything makes it's way to chat eventually.

Once everyone's comfortable working this way you can encourage a lot more working from home (or working from wherever in the world you want to be, if your employees aren't all married with kids yet), etc. And that will save you even more on office space.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#192

Post by shortstuffsushi »

shortstuffsushi wrote: post #169
varelse wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to work in an open floor plan that was without barking dogs, nerf guns, loud meetings, and the occasional R/C helicopter. I work from home 75% now. When I'm in the office, I get next to nothing done.

Perhaps this is more of the norm in the Bay Area (I assume that's where you're from, from your other comment), but I've never seen anything as open as that (dogs at least). I don't think anyone would claim that a "bring your dog to work and let it roam around freely" sort of environment would be productive. I'm surprised they would allow that at all, seems like it could cause other problems as well. I still don't thi…

I guess I can't add an edit to my post, but ironically, a day later, a friend of mine posted on Twitter about having his dog at work. So maybe I am the one with the unusual office.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#193

Post by hugs »

ebiester wrote: post #81
untog wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a team chatroom? Are you ever distracted by messages you receive in it? For me the two are very similar. I work in an open plan office and enjoy being able to talk to my co-workers - often someone will pull their chair up to someone else's to pair program for a while, or just discuss the issue they're having. If you don't want interruptions, you put headphones on. It works well.

Have you figured out "eye headphones" to remove the visual noise as well?

Check out the "Laptop Compubody Sock" by Becky Stern. http://www.instructables.com/id/Laptop-Compubody-Sock/

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#194

Post by briandear »

pbreit wrote: post #86
briandear wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bravo! My productivity (and motivation) is orders of magnitude higher when I can work in my house in the South of France or at my mother in law's house on the Mexican Riviera.) I will give you 10 hours a day of full productivity if you can save me from my old Jersey City-NYC commute. I don't need to play ping pong with you to build great software for you.

There are very few companies that enjoy outsized success with such a setup. So I think the retort to your final sentence is likely "Yes, you do".

How many have actually tried it?
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