High-performance employees need quieter work spaces • Hacker News Board

Re: High-performance employees need quieter work spaces

#111

Post by Arizhel » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 7:04 PM UTC

pzh wrote: post #61

Clubber wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see the conversation now. "If we build this as an open office, it's cheaper AND better? That's a slam dunk!" 6 years later ... "Turns out it's only cheaper, not better. Hey, cheaper is better right?"

Penny-wise and pound-foolish. If cheaper means throwing the time of your most expensive resource (engineers) down the drain to save some money on rent and Ikea furniture, then sure.

How is this foolish? This saves the company money, and helps executives get bigger bonuses. This might cause the company some problems in 5 years, but who cares? By then, the executives have already collected their bonuses and left.

Re: High-performance employees need quieter work spaces

#112

Post by Arizhel » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 7:11 PM UTC

pklausler wrote: post #15

I guess that I fall into this characterization. Over my 36-year career, I've sat in solo offices with doors, shared offices, cubicles with progressively shorter walls, and wall-less high-density desk arrays. I've easily been twice as productive with a door as I am in a noisy environment -- all the other arrangements suck if there is even one inconsiderate human in the space making a phone call, moving a pound of mucu…

>in the space making a phone call, moving a pound of mucus from one sinus cavity to another, playing desk bongos along with their headphones, or any of the thousand other ways that normal humans can be distracting.

Most of this stuff is not "inconsiderate"; it's just how humans are. People need to make or take phone calls sometimes; how else are you supposed to schedule doctors' appointments and do other life tasks, unless you have a personal secretary (which these companies no longer provide us)? People get sick and need to blow their noses. People get bored and need music (the presence of music in all human cultures, from the dawn of civilization, shows it to be pretty close to a primal need).

The fundamental problem is that humans are not biologically designed to be packed into seated arrangements for hours on end, working quietly without distracting each other. We invented "rooms" for largely this reason, and having separate homes instead of living in one giant communal space, because when we pack ourselves into denser arrangements, we still value having some privacy from one another.

Re: High-performance employees need quieter work spaces

#113

Post by Arizhel » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 7:16 PM UTC

adrianggg wrote: post #71

pklausler wrote: post #15

I guess that I fall into this characterization. Over my 36-year career, I've sat in solo offices with doors, shared offices, cubicles with progressively shorter walls, and wall-less high-density desk arrays. I've easily been twice as productive with a door as I am in a noisy environment -- all the other arrangements suck if there is even one inconsiderate human in the space making a phone call, moving a pound of mucu…

I do wonder why I have to purchase good headphones and wear them to combat this problem? What are the long term impacts of wearing headphones? bacteria growth and hearing loss? Can't be good for my health long term. Flow is a state of concentration, breaking flow take a longtime to get back in, shouting questions across the room is a context switch and not an asynchronous choice for me if I'm in the middle of somethi…

>What are the long term impacts of wearing headphones? bacteria growth and hearing loss? Can't be good for my health long term.

For the hearing loss, not necessarily. Get some good noise-canceling headphones that completely cover and enclose the ears, and then either play no music at all or something quiet, at very low volume. With the noise-canceling on and the noise-isolation from the muffs themselves, you'll find you don't need very much volume to hear the music extremely well (human hearing is logarithmic).

However, even the best headphones do have a little weight, which is on your head, and there's always going to be a comfort factor. Wearing them 8 hours straight, day in and day out, may be too much.

>The person unaware that their constant sniffing of mucus is awful.

How are they supposed to help that? It's not their fault that they're sick; people get sick sometimes. It's management's fault for providing you a workspace where there's no privacy at all, so you're forced to see and hear every little thing from your cow-orkers like that. And you can't guarantee that you'll never have a workplace without an annoying or less-intelligent coworker; again it's management's fault for not setting up a work environment that mitigates that factor by giving you some privacy and isolation.

Re: High-performance employees need quieter work spaces

#114

Post by Arizhel » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 7:17 PM UTC

everybodyknows wrote: post #105

adrianggg wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder why I have to purchase good headphones and wear them to combat this problem? What are the long term impacts of wearing headphones? bacteria growth and hearing loss? Can't be good for my health long term. Flow is a state of concentration, breaking flow take a longtime to get back in, shouting questions across the room is a context switch and not an asynchronous choice for me if I'm in the middle of somethi…

You may find it hard to find audiophile headphones that suppress voices adequately. I had better results with ear muffs from the local hardware store intended for leaf-blowers. Get the biggest, ugliest ones you can find.

I have some of these that I use for lawn work, which are designed for shooting guns. They isolate sound pretty well, but they're also not terribly comfortable. They're OK for driving around on my lawn mower for 30 minutes, but there's no way in hell I'd wear them for 8 hours.

Re: High-performance employees need quieter work spaces

#115

Post by Arizhel » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 7:18 PM UTC

iamacynic wrote: post #48

throwaywgsid wrote: post #22

The most obvious and effective sounding way to divide offices is per-team. That way groups of people working on the same thing can talk easily. My current company has every dev and most managers in the same room. 7 scrum teams, over 60 people in one room. It's madness and I can't fucking stand the noise. You get written up for talking "excessively" during work hours because 3/4 the company can hear you when you try t…

uh well, you still work there don't you? that's why. because it's cheaper and you still need the paycheck.

Username checks out.

Re: High-performance employees need quieter work spaces

#116

Post by Arizhel » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 7:21 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #64

st3v3r wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because workers have seen their rights and their station in life vastly eroded over the past 30-40 years.

But seriously, if I ran a company and set up the office that way, and a bunch of people came up to me and said "Hey man, this office layout is bullshit", I'd say OK and get on the phone and order some cubes. It really shouldn't be a big deal.

Cubicles take up more space per employee than a typical open office plan. You won't be able to fit the cubes in there.

Also, cubicle furniture is extremely expensive, so your manager or the company executives will not look kindly at this purchase request. Expect a poor review.

Re: High-performance employees need quieter work spaces

#117

Post by Arizhel » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 7:22 PM UTC

robalfonso wrote: post #6

Not much discussion of the anonymous survey - are these "High Performing Employees" Self selecting? My gut says quiet spaces are a boon to productivity - but why not prove it instead of a research methodology with holes so large I could drive a truck through them.

Who's going to pay for the research to prove your idea that quiet spaces improve productivity? Especially when all the current consultants are hyping open-offices, which aligns nicely with managers/executives who want to save money on floor space and cubicle furniture so they can get bigger bonuses?

Re: High-performance employees need quieter work spaces

#118

Post by Arizhel » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 7:24 PM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #38

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those fabric cubicles absorb a lot of sound. I miss them.

Cubicles where original marketed as "Action Offices" there is a book on the history of them called Cubed: A secret history of the workplace. The creator of them came to regret his creation as they where subverted in a direction he never expected. I've often wondered what a modern cubicle if designed today would look like, we've done wonders in computer modeling and such since even sound dampening designs would be muc…

I used to have a private cubicle, around 2000-2004. I didn't like it too much at the time. I really miss it now. Life was better back then.

Re: High-performance employees need quieter work spaces

#119

Post by Arizhel » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 7:27 PM UTC

mathogre wrote: post #91

I work an odd schedule that includes 10 hours on Saturday. I could work from home on Saturday, but almost always work from the office as I've got the place to myself (bad weather notwithstanding). It means driving 30 minutes each way, as well as everything else with going out to work. The peace and quiet is priceless as I've got an essentially empty 6 floor building all to myself. Security passes by once or twice dur…

>The phone will invariably ring and will either be a spam call or a call for one of them.

Simple solution: get rid of the phone. Why do you have it anyway? I haven't had a landline phone for probably 10 years now, and I was a little late to that party. This line of yours looks like something out of the 1990s: a phone call for someone else? How quaint! Do these people not have their own phones?

Re: High-performance employees need quieter work spaces

#120

Post by Arizhel » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 7:30 PM UTC

imauld wrote: post #36

drcongo wrote: post #17

I find it very odd that these articles make the front page of HN on an almost daily basis. I'm currently working at home with twin toddlers with chicken pox playing at full volume, yet I'm having little trouble concentrating. Why do techs seem to obsess over this so much?

There are other factors besides just volume. I find it easier to concentrate in a cafe than I do in the office and it's not exactly quiet in the average coffee shop. What people are talking about around you also has an impact. The conversations in a cafe for example just seem to blend together and become a sort of white noise. The discussions in the office however are sometimes related to what I'm working on. So hear…

There's another factor to the coffee shops IMO: who the people are.

In an open-plan office, the people around you are usually your coworkers, the people you see every day and know personally. In a coffee shop, they're usually total strangers, people you might see occasionally at that shop at best, and very likely you'll never see them again.

Also, the strangers at the coffee shop don't care what you're looking at on your laptop, or if you're getting any work done. Coworkers might. Also, strangers at a coffee shop are unlikely to interrupt you; coworkers are very likely to. So at the coffee shop, it's entirely possible to be around other humans without being forced to socialize with them, but not at work.