311–320 of 468 posts
a single room that fits thousands of people. What a nightmare. These "glass palace" offices may work for bankers or marketing teams. For programmers you could just as well plant their desks into the middle of a mall.
This room looks huge but the facebook one must be several times the size.. http://www.radialsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/UBS-tr...
I'm not going to get into the debate of open floor plans vs individual offices since most people already have their opinions and I see pros & cons to both. That debate aside, I think that roof top green space is absolutely awesome. I would love to see more of those being built into new buildings.
The fact that there is even a debate means not everyone likes it, therefore, it shouldn't be forced on everyone.
Having worked as researcher/dev in both private office and open space setup, I am absolutely convinced that private offices are way more productive than open office setup for researchers and developers. Most, if not all, of my colleagues feel the same. In fact, I don't think I will ever accept an offer from a mature company (not startup) which houses its developers in open space.
You and all the research seems to agree. Of course, the anecdotal evidence outliers will disagree, but I don't see how there's a debate anymore when you look at productivity.
Mainly, I'm curious about how they define productivity. An office full of people performing completely independent tasks is almost certainly less productive than having separate offices; the advantage of open offices comes when everyone's work is interrelated. In an open environment, whenever I need to make a decision on implementation, I can easily ask someone intimately familiar with the area my code effects, and vice versa. The result is that people are more likely to make the better choices for the long-term future of the code base.
I'm also curious if there are any longitudinal studies that address moral. I wouldn't be surprised if people in open offices feel less like a cog in the system. I could also imagine it's a lot harder to develop a hatred of your coworkers and your boss if they're working right in front of you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's as a result of prolonged headphone use, not loudness.
Source? I've only heard of sound intensity (not duration of sound) contributing to eventual hearing loss.
I will never work in an open office plan. It's one of the items on my "prima donna" list. Despite the name I'm pretty serious, and while some of this list represents things that others might not be able to avoid, or even agree with because they are personal preferences, all of the items are the result of bad experiences or missteps I've experienced directly at a job in the past. I know some may object to these. That'…
People always talk about the terrible NOISE in open office plans. For me, I hate the feeling of BEING WATCHED. It's just unnerving. There's people all around me with low cube walls... * I want to stare ahead as I focus - someone's looking at me. * I have my big headphones on and am rocking to the music - someone's looking at me. * I wanna put my head down on desk and think - someone's looking at me. * I check gmail -…
I would literally switch jobs (and perhaps careers, if every company was like this) if forced to work in an open office like this. I cannot work that way; I can't focus. I realize that I'm adding nothing constructive to this thread; I don't care. Maybe some manager somewhere will see this and a hundred other anecdotal opinions and think twice about open offices. I am the opposite of a prima donna. I just want to work…
People always talk about the terrible NOISE in open office plans. For me, I hate the feeling of BEING WATCHED. It's just unnerving. There's people all around me with low cube walls... * I want to stare ahead as I focus - someone's looking at me. * I have my big headphones on and am rocking to the music - someone's looking at me. * I wanna put my head down on desk and think - someone's looking at me. * I check gmail -…
I second this. For me it's not even about being watched. It's that unnerving feeling of presence of other people that often makes me unable to focus in open-space setting at work. I had that since forever - even as a kid I aways closed the door to my room. I'm usually the last person to leave the office and when I see a cow-orker of mine staying late I start to feel irritated (saying in my head "hey, this was suppose…
The problem is that some of the areas of the brain that do that processing are also used when handling other complex tasks such as programming. This overloading of processing areas will vary from person to person, of course.
This problem is the main reason I could never work in an open office, and have serious productivity problems even ion an office shared with only one other person. It's not that they are interrupting constantly or otherwise distracting in the commonly-used sense. If there are people around, I have to be aware of them, which wastes mental CPU time and introduces cache-flushing context switches at annoying times.
I currently work with people across the world, Indians, Chinese, French and people from various other nationalities. This open office thing makes it just worst. The most annoying thing I have come to face until now is the part where people from the same country start aggregating in groups over the floor talking in their own native languages. Constant chatter over simplest and silliest of the issues, previous night's…
The fact they're not speaking English is not relevant, so I think this just boils down to "having to hear other languages makes me uncomfortable". If you just didn't want to have distracting talking happen around you, then you would not have included the bit about the languages. Simply from a distraction standpoint, foreign languages that sound nothing like English are probably better, since you lose your ability to…