81–90 of 123 posts
A real story: a given company moved to new, but existing, installations. The original facilities were organized in small rooms. The boss ordered a full redesign of the interior into a single large open space, with one exception: a closed office for himself.
This ancient philosophy of "what's good for others doesn't suit me" never convinced me. :)
Open offices are primarily designed to save money, and they save a ton of money when compared with private offices combined with collaborative working spaces (fancy word for conference rooms/areas). It is very easy to quantify this cost difference, and this cost savings is immediate. It is much more difficult to quantify productivity impact vs costs, and this would not be realized clearly and immediately. So 10/10 ti…
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"Open offices lets me be around my colleagues and inspires me to focus on my work and get access to help promptly when I need it. " Actually any co-location scheme allows this, walls or no walls. It's a matter of culture, not of vertical dividers. But I concur, it's a bit over the top to say that "everyone" hates open offices since clearly some people don't. Personally, to me it feels like a quarter suffers, of which…
I run an office design website and I hardly ever see team rooms, which is very surprising and they seem like a good balance between collaborative space and privacy. One of the offices I like to show as an example is Ubiquiti Networks, particularly images 3 and 4 (pardon the link to my own website): http://officesnapshots.com/2014/03/12/ubiquiti-networks-san-...
Another thing I wonder: are office plants totally out of the picture nowadays?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Open offices lets me be around my colleagues and inspires me to focus on my work and get access to help promptly when I need it. " Actually any co-location scheme allows this, walls or no walls. It's a matter of culture, not of vertical dividers. But I concur, it's a bit over the top to say that "everyone" hates open offices since clearly some people don't. Personally, to me it feels like a quarter suffers, of which…
I run an office design website and I hardly ever see team rooms, which is very surprising and they seem like a good balance between collaborative space and privacy. One of the offices I like to show as an example is Ubiquiti Networks, particularly images 3 and 4 (pardon the link to my own website): http://officesnapshots.com/2014/03/12/ubiquiti-networks-san-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Busywork shouldn't be the goal. Busywork is what is given to children when the adults don't want to deal.
You're projecting, no one said anything about busy-work. Busy does not mean doing unproductive work. Busy != busy-work.
Not-busy != not-productive
Open floorplans are worse than cubicles. Not worse than four people crammed into a sweaty two-person cubicle, but worse than 1-2 people in a cubicle. Significantly, obviously worse. We've gone from half-walls to no walls.
I've recently entertained the heretical thought that cubicles, as much as everyone seems to love to hate them, represent a good compromise between private offices and open floor plans. Particularly when you talk about cubicles with "medium height" walls (around 53", from a little Googling), there's some acoustic and visual privacy from your neighbors, but there's still a good sense of openness. Also, a cubicle provid…
It's lucky that I can work from home and not be too distracted, but for some people with kids/stay-at-home partner, it may be difficult. It would be great if employers at least gave people the option to have an office.
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If the work can't keep your attention, perhaps you should find better work.
This is an age-old problem. * In a survey of more than 3,200 people conducted by Salary.com, 64% say they visit websites unrelated to work daily. Source: http://business.time.com/2012/03/13/youre-wasting-time-at-wo...
I think this has been a discussion going on for a long time now. What I believe to be true is it really depends on the person. If you're someone who is self-conscious then yes you'll feel like everyone is judging you all the time. If you have the ability to stay focused on your work without being around colleagues then you should be allowed to work from home. I've worked in open offices, offices with high partitions…
> When I work from home what's stopping me from opening up news or playing video games? Being an adult. Really, do you require a baby sitter to keep you busy?
No, most of us can't fully control ourselves on everything, which is why we set up systems that help us. A shared office is one such a system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an age-old problem. * In a survey of more than 3,200 people conducted by Salary.com, 64% say they visit websites unrelated to work daily. Source: http://business.time.com/2012/03/13/youre-wasting-time-at-wo...
And the other 36% are liars?