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Ending the open office epidemic

wildbit.com

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Re: Ending the open office epidemic

#91

Post by trhway »

Chinjut wrote: post #81
trhway wrote: post #17

office -> cube -> open floor plan -> next? what can be even worse than the open floor? Transparent floors? No walls at all? I'm sure in a few years we'll know.

What's that you say? Transparent floors? No walls? See https://plus.google.com/photos/+google/albums/61205645517791... (and https://plus.google.com/photos/+google/albums/61205645517791... and such).

>freeing spaces from traditional architectural limitations like walls, windows and roofs.

that is truely a hundreds millions (or even few billions) sales pitch (cue architectural sales pitch from "How i met your mother"). Now even i understand that those walls/etc... happened to be just "limitations" which our internal caveman was hiding inside.

Re: Ending the open office epidemic

#92

Post by yaddayadda »

pakled_engineer wrote: post #84
lallysingh wrote: post #36

I guess I'm in a real minority here, but I'm pretty happy with open-office. Some qualifiers: - The team has a good culture of respecting each other, and we're busy enough not to want to banter too much outside of certain times (e.g., lunch, when we see it already going on, etc.). - I've got good headphones hooked to a 24-bit-DAC'd USB amp. I don't hear anyone unless I'm trying to. - My screen's big enough where visua…

Everybody with headphones on never notices how loud they are eating/drinking/coughing/murmuring/adjusting things however. Seems extremely petty but work beside somebody long enough like this and you end up joining the headphone club yourself to block it out. Where I work there's a group chat for low priority questions you can check whenever you're not totally immersed in something. It's also anonymous chat so nobody…

> It's also anonymous chat so nobody is embarrassed to ask "stupid" questions.

That's awesome!

Re: Ending the open office epidemic

#93

Post by josephschmoe »

kazinator wrote: post #23

Open offices instantly "out" anyone who comes late, leaves early, takes a 2.5 hour lunch breaks, or surfs the web instead of working. And that's really the whole point. It's why they are popular in Japan, together with the fact that thanks to the open structure, transgressor can apologize in front of everyone at once.

Except you're sitting next to your coworkers - not your boss. Your coworkers don't want to out you - that only hurts their reputation and gives them more work.

If anything, this prevents one person from being singled out because it's difficult to get mad at one person for slacking when everyone is slacking to a similar degree.

At least, that's my experience being in a 4 person cubicle. It built trust between coworkers and against the company.

Re: Ending the open office epidemic

#94

Post by ChuckMcM »

I hope they also publish a follow-up after living in their new office for a year.

Specific things that I'm interested in:

1) How would folks relate the understanding of what is going on at the company now, and compared to before?

2) How do folks compare their effectiveness in getting things done for themselves? for others? as a group?

3) What is the one thing they would change?

When I joined NetApp it had just acquired a caching company, the original company had open plan, NetApp had offices. They kept the open plan for the caching employees for the transition and then offered anyone who wanted to move into an office or a cube that option. A number of people took them up on that offer.

In the non-open plan version the same people got less done and felt more out of touch than they had when they were open plan, but they enjoyed their work environment with an office more than they enjoyed the open plan space. From a company perspective it was clear that it was in the company's interest in doing open plan, and in the employee's interest it was better to do offices. Of course as an anecdote it provides no statistically valid data to the debate. But it left me with the questions above which, in a different experiment like Wildbit's I would love to have another data point.

Re: Ending the open office epidemic

#95

Post by josephschmoe »

trose wrote: post #73
skriticos2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking someone a quick question while they are in the middle of something is a good way to break their focus. It takes a lot of effort to "get into the zone", so you will not only lower the productivity of the person you "ask a quick question", but you'll also make him frustrated. He may even get a head-ache. How can you live with yourself? This mostly applies to jobs which involve a higher degree of complexity, like…

I reject this assertion that people get ripped "out of the zone". What are you doing that is so complex that you can't jump right back into it? I've met plenty of people that like to act like they're some super elite programmer that is juggling complex class structures and debugging them inside their head. In my experience so far, those people are full of shit and make overly complex spaghetti code. Idk though, maybe…

Imagine you have a coworker who is always on the phone quite loudly nearby you with a very identifiable voice. That's what these people seek to avoid - specific distractions that humans have adapted for thousands of years to pick up on.

Re: Ending the open office epidemic

#96

Post by metaphorm »

lets talk practical concerns. this company is based in Philadelphia, where real estate is still relatively affordable. If your company is based in New York or San Francisco you simply cannot afford an office like the one described in this article.

Re: Ending the open office epidemic

#97

Post by marssaxman »

robotkilla wrote: post #86
Swizec wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still prefer to just stay home when I have to actually get stuff done. Offices are weird. It's not even about open or not. But I can only be really productive if I'm completely alone.

I have been working (programmer - contracting) from home for 3 years and these have been the most productive 3 years of my life.

Yes, the seven years I worked from home every day were without question the most productive of my life so far.

It was interesting to see how different coworkers liked to communicate. Some people strongly preferred phone calls, while I strongly preferred IM - I can carry on a conversation or two via text without fully dropping out of my flow, while engaging speech/hearing seems to require a full context transition.

Re: Ending the open office epidemic

#99

Post by diek »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #94

I hope they also publish a follow-up after living in their new office for a year. Specific things that I'm interested in: 1) How would folks relate the understanding of what is going on at the company now, and compared to before? 2) How do folks compare their effectiveness in getting things done for themselves? for others? as a group? 3) What is the one thing they would change? When I joined NetApp it had just acquir…

Can you quantify "got less done" in the non-open plan? Fewer projects?

My anecdotal data is that people in an open plan sling more code, but better architectural decisions that don't require as much rework down the line (and as a result smaller 'output') come from private offices.

Re: Ending the open office epidemic

#100

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

joesmo wrote: post #76

Another negative about open office plans that I don't see people mentioning is the hearing loss due to having to wear headphones up to eight hours a day. Headphones are generally not recommended to be used more than an hour a day and even then, they need to be at a low volume, something that's impossible in the open-office plans I've seen/worked in. "As a rule of thumb, you should only use MP3 devices at levels up to…

If you get big cans instead of little bitty earbuds you can keep the volume down lower, not to mention noise cancellers.

(I'm partial to sennheiser, but just get something nice)

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