Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace • Hacker News Board

Re: Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace

#141

Post by sheepmullet » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 9:49 PM UTC

bachmeier wrote: post #95

I'm not a big fan of these articles. It depends on what you're doing. I'm a professor, and in order to get certain tasks done, you need a private space. I don't even know how you could grade exams, for instance, without a private space in order to concentrate and prevent others from seeing what you're doing. When I'm working on a paper, on the other hand, it's way more productive to have my coauthors right next to me…

"When I'm working on a paper, on the other hand, it's way more productive to have my coauthors right next to me"

And this is why a lot of startups work well in an open plan. When there are only 5 people in the company it can work well.

It is a completely different situation than the typical 80-150 people per floor open plans of larger companies.

Re: Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace

#142

Post by sheepmullet » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 9:52 PM UTC

kyleashipley wrote: post #24

I'll play contrarian for a moment: the most productive office I've ever worked in was an open office layout. What worked for us: * Separate clusters by function / noise level -- We didn't put sales people and developers next to one another. People who spent all day on the phone were near other people who spent all day on the phone. * Keep clusters small -- We had 4 person "pods" of desks for most of our early lifecyc…

What positives are you gaining that you wouldn't get from being in team based offices or private offices?

Your entire post is about how you can minimise the negatives, but anyone who has been to a library before already knows you can make an open plan almost noise free.

Re: Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace

#143

Post by ryan90 » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 9:56 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #86

ryan90 wrote: post #75

This article is a classic case of "link journalism". Not a single study she linked to is conclusive and applicable to all situations. The studies merely suggest that there may be drawbacks to open offices. Additionally, she mentions the camaraderie among teammates masking lost productivity. Who's to say that this doesn't contribute to the overall well being of the office? Even if it does mean some near-term productiv…

"Near-term productivity"? What can that mean? If you are in an open office all day, every day, the it means "all productivity" is lost.

Note, that I was and am raising a question, not making an argument.

Let's assume that open office floorplans result in a decrease in productivity. The author mentioned that the open office plan did create a sense of camaraderie. Suppose that people attrited or you lost out on recruiting talent because your office felt too old-school, or they left because other startups felt more fun. This is one instance where long-term productivity could suffer for the sake of near-term productivity.

I'm not saying that this happens, but it's something to consider. In fact, we're in the process of selecting office space right now, and it's a lot easier to find law firm style offices with only rooms - no open space. We've decided against it - and are going with open space (plus a few quiet rooms) for a couple reasons. First, we don't want to lose out on the fun factor. Being able to shoot the shit with your friends may be distracting, but it makes the workday a lot more bearable. Our particular dev team actually agrees with this, but I could definitely see the counter argument. The other reason is that it makes much more sense for our sales team, call support, and operations guys to be able to shout questions to each other in real time. Try giving an inside sales rep his or her own office - their numbers plummet because they are no longer immersed in the competitive environment of a sales floor.

Any way, I'm just trying to make the point that there are downsides to having a traditional cubicalized office that could erode the immediate benefits.

Re: Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace

#144

Post by rys » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 9:57 PM UTC

ryandvm wrote: post #138

jackmaney wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm bothered by people who prioritize synchronous communication over asynchronous. Amen. My voicemail greeting for my work phone is "Hi, you've reached the voicemail box of Jack Maney. Instead of leaving me a voicemail, please leave me an email. Thank you."

I don't get it. They're both async.

He's just funnelling people into his preferred method of communicating. They can still leave him a voicemail if they prefer.

Re: Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace

#145

Post by sheepmullet » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 9:58 PM UTC

chrisbennet wrote: post #30

At some point, open-offices will be the only thing that the majority of software developers know. If you've never experienced the productivity that comes from being able to think without interruption, you won't know what you are missing. At that point, the trend will probably be irreversible. For me personally, this trend isn't all bad: When I work someplace with this setup it's kind of nice to "hang out with my frie…

"If you've never experienced the productivity that comes from being able to think without interruption, you won't know what you are missing."

I keep a diary of learning notes and have throughout my career. It's interesting to go through it and see that in my university days I was picking up concepts, tools, and techniques far faster than I do now despite the fact that I am considerably better and more experienced. I chalk it up to the fact that I can't just "go dark" for a week to properly learn something distraction free even if it would be in my companies best interests.

Re: Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace

#146

Post by cookiecaper » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 10:55 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #54

kyleashipley wrote: post #24

I'll play contrarian for a moment: the most productive office I've ever worked in was an open office layout. What worked for us: * Separate clusters by function / noise level -- We didn't put sales people and developers next to one another. People who spent all day on the phone were near other people who spent all day on the phone. * Keep clusters small -- We had 4 person "pods" of desks for most of our early lifecyc…

Your advice is on the same level as "eat healthy" and "exercise more". It's nice, we should all do it, however for some people it never happens. And here's the problem - some people just cannot be respectful of other people's time or flow and also you can find a lot of variation between communication styles (e.g. synchronous vs asynchronous) or noise tolerance of people. For example, some people only want to work fro…

>And I'm probably labeled as being a jerk, yet I cannot help being one, because contrary to other people, I really, really need to be left alone when focusing on something.

My unsolicited advice on this is to just let yourself be distracted. As much as we may not like it, it's much more important to be liked among your peers than to have high raw productivity. Employment is a popularity contest (at least for popularity among the powerful segment of the corporate structure) and there's really no way around that. If we accept that, our future as employees becomes brighter.

Re: Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace

#147

Post by cookiecaper » Tue, Dec 30, 2014, 10:59 PM UTC

ryandvm wrote: post #138

jackmaney wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm bothered by people who prioritize synchronous communication over asynchronous. Amen. My voicemail greeting for my work phone is "Hi, you've reached the voicemail box of Jack Maney. Instead of leaving me a voicemail, please leave me an email. Thank you."

I don't get it. They're both async.

Voicemails require an onerous synchronous process to access -- you have to go through your access menus, entering your PIN and some arcane set of numbers before you get to the message you want, and then you have to listen to it at the speed it was left, and press another set of numbers to keep it for future reference or delete it if you don't need to refer to it later (which may not be immediately obvious). If you save the voicemail, it takes longer to access other saved voicemails when you need to refer to them.

It's faster and easier to get an email, click it, and read/skim it, and let it sit in your inbox until you're ready to decide what to do with it.

Re: Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace

#148

Post by luddypants » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 12:29 AM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #54

kyleashipley wrote: post #24

I'll play contrarian for a moment: the most productive office I've ever worked in was an open office layout. What worked for us: * Separate clusters by function / noise level -- We didn't put sales people and developers next to one another. People who spent all day on the phone were near other people who spent all day on the phone. * Keep clusters small -- We had 4 person "pods" of desks for most of our early lifecyc…

Your advice is on the same level as "eat healthy" and "exercise more". It's nice, we should all do it, however for some people it never happens. And here's the problem - some people just cannot be respectful of other people's time or flow and also you can find a lot of variation between communication styles (e.g. synchronous vs asynchronous) or noise tolerance of people. For example, some people only want to work fro…

> And here's the problem - some people just cannot be respectful of other people's time or flow and also you can find a lot of variation between communication styles (e.g. synchronous vs asynchronous) or noise tolerance of people.

Could it be that a solution or mitigation here is to directly address this problem? I think the idea that people are only capable of communicating in a certain way is probably too strict. Maybe it's just my experience but it seems to me that most people (with exceptions of course) don't give or get direct feedback about what type of communication works best for them, more typically they use some passive-aggressive move like brightly colored headphones or just acting annoyed and expect people to get the hint. This probably works to some degree but in a large open space it seems like you need everyone on the same page.

Re: Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace

#149

Post by abalone » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 12:47 AM UTC

Really, open office leads to more flu infections?? Based on her utterly anecdotal evidence of a bunch of her co-workers got sick. If that's the standard for evidence for the rest of the claims in this article, I would cast it aside.

Cornell did a study while back that found that communication gets worse with private offices. The pernicious thing is that employees' very perception of "frequent communication" changes depending on which kind of environment they're in. If they're in open plan it's several times a day often on the fly. If they have a private office, it plummets to "several times a week in a scheduled meeting". [1]

So that's consistent with private office people saying everything's fine -- because their very perception of the standard for team interaction has vastly diminished.

They also noted that office workers may be biased to favor plans that maximize their personal productivity even at the expense of team productivity, because their compensation is tied more to the former. Whereas management sees the bigger picture of both elements.

That may go a long way towards explaining why employees and management are often at odds over how to arrange the office.

(Having said that, by no means do I think that a constant barrage of noise in your face in a maximally open office is optimal. There are many degrees of openness, and I'm just pointing to evidence that private offices may swing too far in the other direction.)

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140615182702/http://iwsp.human...

Re: Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace

#150

Post by syllogism » Wed, Dec 31, 2014, 12:53 AM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #135

ianphughes wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The synchronous vs asynchronous communication argument is on par with a “best programming language” debate. The style of communication is just a tool that should fit the need and the tasks at hand. If you are working on a largely engineering driven project with a thorough spec where "heads down" development can be most effective than email/messages between team members probably will probably be effective. However, wh…

Not to wave my banner in the holy war, but that's just, like, your opinion, man. The thing I like most about async is that there must necessarily be a record of everything that was said. When appropriate, the record may be retransmitted. Things like internal wiki entries, message boards, e-mail chains, instant message groups, and issue-tracker tickets are all asynchronous. If you conduct most of your business with ep…

Another huge benefit: non-native speakers. If all your office processes rely on verbal conversation, it's really critical that everyone speaks perfect English. If the communication is async, that constraint can be relaxed slightly, which can give you a great pool of talent other companies are missing out on.