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The Open-office Trap

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Re: The Open-office Trap

#151

Post by dredmorbius »

t_pascal wrote: post #150
YTowOnt9 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So when you plan your next office, leave the kitchen > open too - the scrape of chairs on the tiles, the > sound of the dishwasher being unloaded, the happy > PING of the microwave - not to mention the aromas of > hot food - all these things will make employees feel > right at home. This is an accurate description of lunchtime at the digital shitshow where I work. An open plan kitchen really is the handiwork of the…

When I was in prison, we had open plan shitting. It was very morale-boosting synergy.

Wait, you made your release date and didn't tell me?! I've missed the party!

Re: The Open-office Trap

#152

Post by t_pascal »

dredmorbius wrote: post #151
t_pascal wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in prison, we had open plan shitting. It was very morale-boosting synergy.

Wait, you made your release date and didn't tell me?! I've missed the party!

I used to be in prison. I still am, but I used to be as well.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#153

Post by dredmorbius »

Previously posted to HN: "Creativity is Not a Team Sport"

http://fixyt.com/watch?v=QfMvqkrQkYQ

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494705

One of the best lectures I've seen on the topic.

[There's] a very long and well-established literature in psychology that getting groups of people together is no way to come up with ideas. Creativity is not a team sport. What you're looking for is somebody's individual, intellectual trunk to make new connections and come up with something new.

Let's imagine billions of neurons in my head communicating with stuff they've been talking about all their lives together: there's a high probability that occasionally they'll come up with something new. Let's now think of the line of communication that you and I have got between each other, which is impoverished, because we have to try and translate complex ideas into language, and how many times do you find you've got a good idea, it's almost in symbolic thought inside your head, and you really can't articulate it to someone. And when you do, they get the wrong idea, because really, language can't encapsulate it until it's fully formed. There's no good evidence that I know of that these brainstorming sessions will come up with a solution or a new idea.

What they might do is improve a little bit of team spirit, or show some of the people in the group, "well, if that's the best they can come up with then I'm doing OK". The idea that you can marshal creativity is an error. I'd go a little bit further than this: if there is somebody who's spending 80 hours a week running a creative team, I'd stop them right there and tell them "you don't run a creative team, you allow a creative team to run". That would be the first thing I would jump on. People ask themselves "how do I make a team be creative?" You don't. You allow a team to be creative.

(Emphasis in original.)

More: http://redd.it/21qgiv

Re: The Open-office Trap

#154

Post by psychometry »

waps wrote: post #128
emsy wrote: post #43

Open-offices are downright dangerous. We had an Indian colleague who had tuberculoses. After it was diagnosed, every employee had to get an examination. One colleague got infected. Worst of all, the management handled the matter rather unserious and kept jamming everyone in the same office (including the infected colleague!) Gladly, I worked remotely for that company.

I hope he sued the company and got a $10 million settlement. Companies respond really well to getting sued even once.

Hell, companies respond pretty well to merely receiving letters from lawyers.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#155

Post by psychometry »

austinz wrote: post #8

I am thoroughly disillusioned with open offices. Headphones are a paper-thin barrier against being interrupted while in the midst of thinking; a good, solid, closed door might do the job better.

Sounds like you just need some better noise-isolating headphones. If you're like me and basically listen to music for 8+ hours/day, spending $200 or more on good headphones is more of a necessity than an indulgence.

And you need not listen to distracting music; prerecorded white noise works well for a lot of people.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#156

Post by emsy »

waps wrote: post #128
emsy wrote: post #43

Open-offices are downright dangerous. We had an Indian colleague who had tuberculoses. After it was diagnosed, every employee had to get an examination. One colleague got infected. Worst of all, the management handled the matter rather unserious and kept jamming everyone in the same office (including the infected colleague!) Gladly, I worked remotely for that company.

I hope he sued the company and got a $10 million settlement. Companies respond really well to getting sued even once.

That was the worst part for my: Nothing happened afterwards! The infected colleague even worked remotely when she (it was a female colleague) was sick. Probably in fear for her position.

The whole story was very WTF-worthy and obviously, I don't work with them any longer.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#157

Post by Spooky23 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #133
Spooky23 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fully loaded cost of IT people is $50-75/hr. I worked in office space in NYC a few years ago that was $80/sqft. 6x6 cube is $3k/year. Using your assumption that an office is 5x bigger (not sure if that's accurate or not), you're looking at around $15k/year for an office. So the delta is $12k/year, equivalent to 160-240 hours/year or 8-16% of a salary. IMO, with many developers you'll regain productivity far in ex…

What do you mean by taxes?

Cubes and other modular arrangements are easy to quickly depreciate, which reduces taxes.

Buildouts and other capital expenses depreciate over longer periods.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#158

Post by collyw »

capisce wrote: post #135
collyw wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are likely to spend more than half of your time awake in your workplace. You might as well try to make it a pleasant place to be. And being sociable at work is hardly likely to exhaust you to the point of preventing an social life outside work.

Do workers prefer spending more than half of their awake time in their workplace in order to make more money, or do they simply not have enough bargaining power to negotiate for a shorter work day?

Its been discussed on this site that competition for remote work is fierce. That would suggest a lack of bargaining power.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#159

Post by russgray »

matwood wrote: post #49
aeberbach wrote: post #35

Why stop at having an office merely "open"? Hot desking is the new thing - it's nothing to do with cost saving, it's all about "flexibility". Except that your organisation might also have a policy against working from home. There's no implicit message that you are simply a replaceable functional unit, not at all. You might even find there's no desk left when you arrive at work - who doesn't love the suspense of arriv…

Hot desking is the new thing I visited a place that was a giant room of ~100 people working. No one had their own computer, instead you just sat down and whatever computer was there and started working. The guy running this insanity said they re-image all the machines all time taking settings from one of the machines that has been in use. His theory was that over time everyones preferences would merge. It was interes…

That is inspired. I use VsVim and remap certain keyboard chords that I rely heavily on, whereas the rest of my office have very vanilla setups. Days where my settings are the baseline would be glorious.

Re: The Open-office Trap

#160

Post by spb »

fish2000 wrote: post #104
cookiecaper wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering it's not a real office, yes, it's purely for image. It's meant to communicate "Slugline is so creative and forward-thinking that they don't even need non-beanbag furnishings!", and contrast against the Post's button-down, cubicle hell style. The sad part is that some people see things like that in TV shows and try to duplicate them in the real world, without realizing that devices that work to communicate…

Funny that – I often imagine that a nicely productive compromise would be a scheme like the SCDP office on “Mad Men“: mostly private offices, but with a pseudo-open “Creative Lounge“ that facilitates collaboration but retains basic human stuff like doors, for some sense of sonic isolation. That particular plan is far from perfect – they have often used the lack of isolation (e.g. people peeping on neighbors through c…

> like the SCDP office on “Mad Men“: mostly private offices, but with a pseudo-open “Creative Lounge“ that facilitates collaboration but retains basic human stuff like doors, for some sense of sonic isolation.

Except SCDP's creative lounge doesn't have doors, see the floor plan: http://www.jordanorlando.com/other/scdp/

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