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Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

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Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#121

Post by beart »

RivieraKid wrote: post #84

For me the problem is not really distractions (I don't care if people interrupt me from time to time, in fact I like it). My problem is the mental strain that stems from lack of privacy, the knowledge that people can see me and my monitor all the time, it's like there's a background process in my mind that checks whether what I want to do (move a lot in my chair, comment on HN, eat something) is ok with people around…

One thing that helped me get past this feeling was looking around at other desks and realizing that either a. no one cares what you are doing because they are too busy working on their own stuff or b. half the office is watching youtube anyway.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#122

Post by jdmg94 »

praptak wrote: post #69
LanceH wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand you're joking about Agile, but the previous holy path was waterfall, which was a hideously expensive way to get to failure.

Except that Waterfall was never really advocated: https://davesquared.net/2008/01/contentious-myth-of-waterfal... It was conceived as a straw man which was being dissed so vigorously that people started believing it was real.

waterfall wasn't advocated because there hadn't been a movement for alternatives yet, it was just the default, like the iphone 2G, nobody called it iphone 2g when it came out, but in the context of newer models that's how we differentiate it

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#123

Post by Hamuko »

0xffff2 wrote: post #110
ken wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's just another public rationale. Programmer salaries are much more expensive than even private offices. In a past life, when I wrote software for a living, I would ask my managers how much it cost, so I could pay out of pocket for my own private office. In every case, when pressed, they admitted it wasn't about the money at all. They just needed me to be a Team Player. It wasn't even about built-out cost. Th…

I am in no way advocating for open offices in any circumstance, but one common complaint I've heard from open-office dwellers is how they sit right next to the sales team who are always on their phones.

We have sales people in a room, but there's support people next to the developers. And Bose sells another pair of QuietComforts.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#124

Post by commandlinefan »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #106

The dumbest thing about open office plans is everyone puts on headphones and wants to communicate through Slack. I've got an idea. Let's all commute to the office and pretend we're remote!

> puts on headphones

In addition to which, music in your ear can be just as distracting when actually trying to focus on learning something new as a co-worker blabbing on a conference call. The assumption behind open offices is that nobody will ever need to learn anything new: the exact opposite of what this new “knowledge economy” was supposed to be about.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#125

Post by ericwood »

agentultra wrote: post #80
ericwood wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not necessarily just to idly chat with other people, but has more to do with where you get your energy. I find I'm most productive and energized when surrounded by other people. Conversation is a part of it, and the ability to collaborate on the fly is great. If I'm heads down on something it's fine to be isolated every so often, but if it's for more than a few days my energy level is sunk and my productivity ac…

I get it and I totally appreciate my extrovert colleagues. I think the ability to have both is good. Sometimes I do like to work with others. It's just that often open-plan offices are an all-or-nothing affair. It's a weird way to construct a space for people to work and collaborate given how different we all are.

These conversations always seem to be extremely one-sided, and it's frustrating. I wouldn't even classify myself as an extrovert; it's a continuum and people fall all over the place. Ultimately, though, an ideal office needs to cater to everyone.

Some of my favorite offices have been ones that have the typical open office structure, but also lots and lots of "hiding places" and different areas. I'm super ADHD and changes in scenery were helpful, and being able to adapt my environment to the task at hand, or even give people having impromptu conversations a refuge so the desk areas weren't noisy.

The startup I work at currently encourages everyone to work from home tuesdays and thursdays. It makes for a great mix; when I'm in the office I can engage with my coworkers, catch up, or have those deeper discussions that inevitably come up face-to-face. Work that requires intense concentration can be batched for those days, or I can opt to take additional time at home if necessary.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#126

Post by duxup »

I worked in an office that was redesigned several times.

After the last round of absurdly low / no cube walls. I bought myself some shooting earmuffs to block out the noise / a socially friendly way of signaling to others I should not be interrupted.

It was telling that within a week half the team had amazon boxes on their desk and similar earmuffs.

Now for very small teams with EVERYONE handling the situation properly. I think the open space can work, but it has to be VERY specific to department and folks who work well together.

Eventually I ended up in a quiet corner of the office with half a dozen folks who were really good about talking to each other and it was super efficient ... but MAN that is not something you can just "make happen" and if one person / manager (especially managers) is bad about it... it's a mess.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#127

Post by codyZ »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #72

I've worked in a variety of settings, and my favorite is a small team in a conference room/tiny open office. 3-8 people. People tend to be respectful of each other's concentration at that number of people. And since you're in the same team, most interruptions are likely to be useful to other members of the team. But if we wanted to just bother 1 specific person, we would just use instant message. Our manager worked i…

This is by far the most effective workplace environment and arrangement I have experienced as well, for teams and large companies - almost like physical 'pod' structures

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#128

Post by BoorishBears »

moron4hire wrote: post #70
dehrmann wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of my office time was in cubicles, which are pretty good. I remember watching "Office Space" circa 2000 and it looked pretty soul crushing, and working in pre-FAANG big tech around 2006, it felt very mechanical and depressing. I get your gripes, but I think some is also rosy retrospection.

I understand what you're saying, but it's really more that we didn't know just how bad it could get. Cubicle farms were "soul crushing", because they came about from the same management practices that eventually led to open-floor plans: treating people as cost centers rather than people, micromanaging measurable real-estate costs at the expense of unmeasurable productivity. And while one can theoretically make good s…

You know what, if I'm going to be downvoted for an opinion, it should at least earn it:

Too bad open offices are here to stay, if you were worth it you could get an office, maybe invest in some good headphones :)

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#129

Post by bradlys »

Androider wrote: post #48
monkeynotes wrote: post #7

I am not sure why employees would message and email more if they can just turn their chair around to chat about something they are working on. Does anyone have experience of this? I have worked in open plan offices since 1999 and I've never experienced productivity problems. If anything I'd expect working in a cube would lead to more time wasted cruising websites since your screen is more obscured. I dunno, I've only…

Simple, when you go visit someone in a private office you can close the door and have a long conversation about your topic and really hash out the details. If you turn around and start blabbering to one of your teammates in an open office plan, everyone within hearing distance will want to murder you. If you're not aware of this, I guarantee everyone within 30 feet of you is already wearing headphones and hates you.…

Honestly, I don't see this as a thing once you get to a certain size. It used to be a thing at my workplace when we were smaller. However, now, the place is just so loud with conversation/whatever on a daily basis that people are less bothered by individual conversations near them. It's like complaining about conversation next to you when you're in a cafeteria full of it already.

Everyone wears headphones at my place if they're trying to focus. Last job literally handed out construction ear muffs.

Also, all the rooms are taken up by meetings. Mostly by business/product. There's no rooms left for engineers to hash things out, frequently.

Re: Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study

#130

Post by johnminter »

I had a cubicle before they were popular - at Florida State U as an undergraduate from 1973-1977. They were great for studying and I could monitor my experiments in the lab just outside my cubicle.

I had a small office in grad school and in my first job I shared an office with another scientist for a couple of years before I got my own. Having a space of my own made it easier to concentrate. Because I worked in a analytical sciences lab, interruptions were frequent (clients dropping of samples ), so I learned to get in 1-2 hrs before most others so I could focus on critical projects.

The commotion in open bull-pens really interrupts one's train of thought and greatly reduces productivity.

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