151–160 of 165 posts
I completely agree with you but without an open layout how do I control my employees?
And:
With an open layout I can put more people in less space.
This is what business people think. All the rest is poetry.
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> 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.
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I went from private office to open floor plan when I switched jobs last. It was towards the bottom of things I cared about when I was considering the move. Private offices are definitely nice, but I also enjoy the positives of an open office
I could see going from a private office to, say, a well-designed cubicle, but I definitely think for a lot of folks the transition to an open floor plan could be incredibly disruptive. I suppose it depends on the personality. Generally, though, with private offices, well-designed communal areas, and huddle rooms (plus larger conference rooms), it's hard to see how an open floor plan has any advantages other than supp…
In my office, they have small "conference rooms" which really only have space for 2-3 people that you can reserve if you want to hide away in somewhere quite. I usually fall back to these if I need to go heads down on something.
The best part of the office is the ability to close/lock the door to prevent the annoying "walk ups" that really disrupt work.
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>Your job sounds horrible if people can just walk up any time for any reason. I think this speaks more to what you think about your coworkers than actually weighing in on open floor plans.
I adore my coworkers, I agree with the post you're replying to. An environment that encourages random "walk up" interruptions is a terrible environment in many ways. With an office with a door it's easy enough to shut the door to indicate "I need to be left alone now" and open the door when you're in an "it's OK to interrupt me" frame.
The best office setup I've ever worked in was a narrow building that had smallish offices (big enough for two people) on the outside (each had a small window) and open meeting space in the middle. Everyone had their own space (like to leave junk on your desk? clean freak? everyone is happy) and if you wanted to hang out or hold an impromptu meeting the common area was literally outside your door. Most of the time peo…
The best one from my history was a startup (aprox. 15 people at this time) simply in house which was designed as home for 2+3: 2-3 people in a room, normal kitchen, front-yard and even attic for stuff. I don't get why we stuck in cookie-cutter office spaces which leads to everything expect producitivty.
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"occasional spontaneous fun interruptions" I would prefer to choose when to have my interruptions.
Then it's not spontaneous. Hell, if you choose it it's not even an interruption.
"A factory pattern, you say? Well.. Oh, look, a squirrel!"
I wouldn't attribute the movement to Google, strictly speaking. I worked at a large insurance agency for a few year. They had partially open cubes (low walls). I don't presume they've ever been influenced by what Google does. The low walls were a blessing and a bane. My team worked well like that. None of us are particularly loud people. We all had headphones and quiet music. The flow of the pen allowed easy communic…
> large insurance agency > she would talk to her mother for hours in her cube Hello HR, they would be all over that.
On the plus side I have firing range headphones now. So I can go to the actual firing range a few blocks from my house. I am also prepared if I ever have a child. Crying gets to me. So I'll put those on and be one of the most loving fathers ever. I'll probably have music earbuds in too.
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"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.
Sounds like an extreme position you're taking. Anecdote to disprove your negative - one day I was talking with a customer about an issue, one of my open-office coworkers heard me then IM'd me an internal forum page that helped me seamlessly resolve the issue. Were I working from home or out of that persons earshot, I would have dug around for potentially hours or days before finding my solution. Were I heads down wri…