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The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

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Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#111

Post by ThinkBeat »

I was re-reading Snowcrash (a novel by Neal Stephenson). In this book there is a tangent about how aweful it is in the future to work for the government.

He goes over how horrible the work conditions were, with open offices, bosses always watching you, no fixed assigned spacing, first come first serve everything being tracked by computers. If you are late everyone knows it because your sit in the boonies.

When I read it for the first time I remember feeling a revulsion at it. Now when I read it, I was like "Um.. that is my job now"

At my company they have, /on purpose/ too few spaces for the number of employees. So early birds get all the spaces with powerplugs, monitors, network etc. The rest must fight it out on bench seats with no power etc.

I guess for the big bosses who spend all days in meetings its ok, but for grunts it sucks.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#112

Post by maxxxxx »

rm999 wrote: post #32

The best work setup I've ever had by far was not private offices or cubicles (and definitely not an open office); it was a hybrid where our team of 3-5 people sat in a large private office. This increased collaboration while enforcing respect. It allowed our team to create a work culture democratically (how do we arrange seating? what noise levels are ok?) that simply isn't possible in an open seating arrangement. I…

That's my favorite setup too. Three people sharing a room. You can collaborate and also have some good private conversations without the whole company knowing.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#113

Post by maxxxxx »

nayuki wrote: post #22

On a related note, I noticed that cubicle offices are hardly better than open offices. The cubicle walls are tall enough to completely obscure the faces and bodies of your neighbors, but do nothing to block the sound. With no eye contact or awareness of your neighbors, it's easy to mistakenly believe that no one else can hear your sounds. As a result, on a typical day at the office I would hear one coworker yap on pe…

Cubicles are terrible. No privacy, a lot of noise and still no good way for talking to people. I also like to see something other than a gray wall the whole day.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#114

Post by rb2k_ »

alistairSH wrote: post #43
rb2k_ wrote: post #23

I seem to be the odd one out in that I actually enjoy an open office setup. I've had both and I feel there's so much more collaboration happening in an open office. I almost see it weekly that there's a LOT of learning through osmosis, listening in to conversations, ... I guess I have a pretty easy time keeping up concentration/flow. So in this case, it "works on my machine" :)

How large a space and are you all colocated? My employer is moving to an open office. Truly open, one giant space for 100+ developers, plus managers. Half my team is remote, as are about half of the teams I work with. So, we are all on the phone/Skype/something all day long. And not with the same people. It's going to be like the Tower of Babel in the new space. I'm not looking forward to it.

Lots of people. There are some cozies (Think 4 thick curtains and a few sofas inside) or walls with meetings rooms between every 4-5 rows of desks.

Also: nobody really takes calls from their desk. If you want to do a VC call, you get a conference/interview room. Same for long-winded discussions or whiteboard sessions. You start conversations in the common area, but if it's a larger undertaking people might move into a designated space.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#115

Post by YZF »

Ralfp wrote: post #103
facepalm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The place you are looking for exists: it is called home :-)

That may fly if you are single. Otherwise everybody will assume that if you are at home, you are here to go shopping, take care of kids, let in guests, cook meals, do cleaning, take out trash, etc. ect, and lets not start about other household members distracting you with loud noises.

I work from a home office with a family. You close the door and as long as the boundaries are clear there's no problem. If you want to take a break and go shopping you can do that... It's doable.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#116

Post by vvanders »

rm999 wrote: post #32

The best work setup I've ever had by far was not private offices or cubicles (and definitely not an open office); it was a hybrid where our team of 3-5 people sat in a large private office. This increased collaboration while enforcing respect. It allowed our team to create a work culture democratically (how do we arrange seating? what noise levels are ok?) that simply isn't possible in an open seating arrangement. I…

That's exactly how Valve[1] sets up their office, for similar reasons.

[1] - http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#117

Post by maxxxxx »

tps5 wrote: post #26

My office is switching to an open design. And none of the people who work there are happy about it. It was decided by the folks who own the company, several thousand miles away. I think the real allure of open offices is how they look. Open offices look modern . They look like the kind of working area a hip, young, collaborative, industry-disrupting company would favor. But that's all bullshit. It's just a fairy tale…

And often the people cooking this up have a nice window office and their meeting rooms are along the windows.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#118

Post by VLM »

Ralfp wrote: post #103
facepalm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The place you are looking for exists: it is called home :-)

That may fly if you are single. Otherwise everybody will assume that if you are at home, you are here to go shopping, take care of kids, let in guests, cook meals, do cleaning, take out trash, etc. ect, and lets not start about other household members distracting you with loud noises.

Depends how close you live to operations / devops / pager rotation. If the boss trusts you not to have both of you drive in at 2am for every little problem (you to work and him to hover over you to make sure you work), they'll trust you to also actually work at 2pm from home on a normal day.

You also have to be realistic about slacking. I can let in service people and rotate the laundry and cook dinner in less time than my (few) smoking coworkers spend on smoke breaks. Also the world is full of people who take an entire sick day to let the cable guy in or something like that, so a work at home dude stealing 5 minutes is 7 hours and 55 minutes more productive than the fake sick day slacker.

I guarantee my coworkers are going to waste at least two hours tomorrow talking about the superbowl. Working at home, I have no one to talk to, and if instead I post for an hour on HN I'll still be ahead of the office grinders.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#119

Post by perseusprime11 »

Just read the entire article. It feels like an opinion column but no real data to back it up. Open office or not, cubes do not facilitate collaboration. I am curious if anybody really cracked the ultimate workspace, and maybe the real answer is hire employees you can trust and let them work from anywhere.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#120

Post by enraged_camel »

Ralfp wrote: post #103
facepalm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The place you are looking for exists: it is called home :-)

That may fly if you are single. Otherwise everybody will assume that if you are at home, you are here to go shopping, take care of kids, let in guests, cook meals, do cleaning, take out trash, etc. ect, and lets not start about other household members distracting you with loud noises.

I do all of those things when I work from home.

Just like people at the office dick around in a hundred different ways while they work.

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