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The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

mattblodgett.com

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Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#81

Post by michaelochurch »

There's one place where an open-plan office makes sense: a trading floor. This applies even to many species of algorithmic trading. That's because you have cases where a message (such as "our quotefeed is giving us stale data") needs to get out quickly.

The trading day is also, I'll note, only 6.5 hours long. And people who don't get 25% raises (or more) per year leave. It's a stressful job and unless you're making $750k+ after 6-8 years in, it's not worth it to deal with the negatives of being on a trading floor.

Open-plan began to go into vogue as a backdoor mechanism for age discrimination, due to studies showing that older people were quick to associate them (and visibility from behind) with low status and therefore leave. Two decades later, I doubt the intention behind tech companies using these plans (and almost all do) is so negative as that. I don't think there's any negative intent anymore; it's just something that's done because (a) it's cheaper, (b) it's more tolerant of rapid growth, and (c) it's how things have "always" been done.

As long as people can step away without stigma or punishment, I don't think that open-plan offices are inherently evil. The problem is that few offices have enough quiet space to allow for that.

As for "the extrovert ideal", I don't know what to do about that. It seems to be human nature. People with families, non-drinkers, introverts, women except through the immense effort needed to be socially available but not seen as available in other ways... are never going to be "the cool kids". What I've learned, though, is that while "cool kids" get a quick start, they don't hold it and "cool" doesn't last. It's not useful to envy them because, while they may appear to be moving fast at one time, the 5-year picture is not especially desirable.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#82

Post by Marcus316 »

There are a few comments here and directly at the article which mention the concept of a balanced work area, with open spaces as well as private spaces. So far, nobody has given an example of this.

I happen to work in a balanced office. Our desks are all located in a former warehouse. We're all mostly developers in my area here. There's a culture of ambient noise and conversations, frequent interruptions for collaboration, etc ... all WITHIN the warehouse area.

HOWEVER, we also have dozens of small phone booth (one person) rooms where people can go to take calls or work independently PLUS dozens of 4-6 person collaboration rooms PLUS adequate meeting rooms for larger groups PLUS a couple quiet rooms where anything louder than typing is heavily frowned upon PLUS a reasonable work-from-home policy when employees require it.

Yes, this is Enterprise (so not that exciting, but they can afford to provide such a location). Yes, there are tradeoffs (you are still expected to be in the office a reasonable amount of time, dependent on your individual manager and management chain; sometimes the warehouse noise is pretty distracting; etc). Given all that COULD go wrong here, I have been pleasantly surprised by how RIGHT this company has gotten it. A good chunk of this has been the work culture allowing employees to adapt the available space to what is needed for each individual team.

I'm sorry so many of you have experienced the horrible implementations of open office. I've been there previously. I only hope that more companies see wisdom in mixed and balanced work environments in the future.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#83

Post by VLM »

tbrownaw wrote: post #52
hapless wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practical solution is to spend more money . That means high-wall cubicles (6'-8') or private offices. Those have been the known solutions for forty years. I doubt other solutions exist. Yes, this will cost more. No, there isn't a shortcut.

As much as I think I'd like my cubicle to be tall enough to have a standing-height monitor (so, ~6'), I also have heard it's important to have line-of-sight to something "far" as in 20 feet or more away, and suspect that too-tall walls would also make it too dark.

This is a very interesting comment. I won't work open office (have found a new job specifically to get out of that environment) and all the cube jobs I've had over the years have had very high ceilings. I wonder what it would be like to work in a 6ft cube with only 8 ft ceilings, perhaps in a very tall skyscraper. I have a window cube right now and can see the sky from my chair, pretty nice and that takes care of the 20 foot rule...

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#84

Post by eitland »

bitwarrior wrote: post #5

As someone with the authority to make the necessary changes to our office environment, it frustrates me to read these kind of blog posts. I have read a couple dozen similar posts which merely complain about open offices, but offer absolutely nothing in the way of practical solutions. We don't have the opportunity or space to give everyone their own dedicated office, and cubicles I'm sure would be a living hell. I've…

I think some of the suggstions here were great.

Don't know if this will ever be read since it seems this post was flagged off the first page or something, but:

> As someone with the authority to make the necessary changes to our office environment,

I'd say that is a bit of a stretch. The older I grow the more I try to point out that I cannot be given responsibility without authority. If you aren't allowed to

* get some kind of silent offices for those who need it

* or agree with people to work remotely

then you don't have "the authority to make the necessary changes to our office environment", do you?

> We don't have the opportunity or space to give everyone their own dedicated office,

That sounds reasonable. Have you considered trying to balance the advantages so that dedicated office doesn't also mean nice view, status, etc etc? E.g. "That end has open floor plan, coffee machine, gets new gear first and has a nice view. The other end looks straight into the industry but has single or double offices."

For some of us the point about an separate office isn't the status, -my last office looked straight into two containers and I was really happy because that meant nobody needed that office.

> and cubicles I'm sure would be a living hell.

There are quite a few ways to do cubicles wrong, yes. For a lot of people I guess they would be a whole lot better than a similarily bad open floor plan.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#85

Post by bjourne »

bitwarrior wrote: post #5

As someone with the authority to make the necessary changes to our office environment, it frustrates me to read these kind of blog posts. I have read a couple dozen similar posts which merely complain about open offices, but offer absolutely nothing in the way of practical solutions. We don't have the opportunity or space to give everyone their own dedicated office, and cubicles I'm sure would be a living hell. I've…

How about telling people that they should treat the office area as if they were at the library? Well kept libraries are fairly silent places because everybody knows that they should keep their voices down and not unnecessarily disturb the visitors.

You could lead by example by keeping a low voice and going to a meeting room if you need to have a long discussion with someone.

Your superiors probably wouldn't be fond of the idea. Whispering isn't natural to them and having them adapt to the programmers, which they out rank, would be tough.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#86

Post by CedarMadness »

organsnyder wrote: post #77
CedarMadness wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sennheisers tend to clamp down pretty hard. Especially the 280's and 380's. Maybe another brand would work better.

Thanks for the tip. I do have a big head (physically and metaphorically). Any particular brands you would recommend? I love the sound quality of the pair I have.

Beyer Dynamics Dt770 is extremely comfortable, but you'll need an amp. The isolation isn't quite as good as the HD 380 Pro.

The ATH-M50 is a popular choice, but I haven't personally tried them.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#87

Post by strangetimes »

engendered wrote: post #64
a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally would be fine with an open office if it were truly quiet. A monastic level of sound courtesy. No talking in the main room. No phone ring tones. No desk phones or phone conversations. Put sound isolated phone booths somewhere for calls. If there are doors or elevators nearby make sure they don't bang or beep when used. I used to study in a big open, well lit room at the university library that was filled…

I've encountered the "truly quiet" environment a few times, and really found that the worst of all: Every noise of the most meek activities, from the clicking of a mouse button to the quiet clearing of a throat, rings throughout the area. After you realize that, concerns that your own minor noises are irritating others puts you on edge, as you try to click the mouse button as softly as possible, ignore that tickle in…

I agree that absolute silence is a bit stifling. The spot I'm working in currently is very quiet and I actually prefer when the HVAC kicks on and covers up all the little sounds (mouse clicks, chairs creaking, etc.) with a base layer of white noise.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#88

Post by strangetimes »

kabdib wrote: post #14
hapless wrote: post #4

We don't need pages of workplace psychology to explain the open plan office. Open plan just has lower visible costs. Twice as many workers per square foot is very compelling math. The cost of lost productivity is hidden. The reduced cost of your office lease is very visible.

We had a presentation on the new "Studio" buildings at Microsoft. A snappy team from the folks responsible for designing them told us about color schemes and that each building had a theme, in stone and wood and so forth. They waxed eloquent about carpet and the cafeteria and I was thinking, what are they hiding? Then they got to the places where we were going to work. "We call these six-packs." Pods of six people cr…

This is the kind of shit that makes me angry. Microsoft should know better. Slick presentations about bullpens being the future of work, like it's self-evident. A generation of software engineers are going to come up with the belief that these sorts of working environments are standard, and then wondering why they're so stressed out and tense all the time.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#89

Post by strangetimes »

michaelochurch wrote: post #81

There's one place where an open-plan office makes sense: a trading floor. This applies even to many species of algorithmic trading. That's because you have cases where a message (such as "our quotefeed is giving us stale data") needs to get out quickly. The trading day is also, I'll note, only 6.5 hours long. And people who don't get 25% raises (or more) per year leave. It's a stressful job and unless you're making $…

> Open-plan began to go into vogue as a backdoor mechanism for age discrimination, due to studies showing that older people were quick to associate them (and visibility from behind) with low status and therefore leave.

Do you remember where you read this? The bit about visibility from behind being associated with low status is especially interesting.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#90

Post by weirdkid »

methodover wrote: post #71

Someone at Dropbox made a great suggestion to me the other day. What about having something like the Quiet Car? ( http://www.amtrak.com/onboard-the-train-quiet-car ) Basically, you'd have a part of the office where you could take your laptop and go work in complete quiet. No conversations louder than a whisper, no music playing, no bringing food back to your desk. If you need to do any of those things, you go elsewhe…

I've seen this before. Capital Factory in Austin had a quiet room just like you describe. It was full of people when I was there.
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