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

Post by danjayh » Sat, Jan 03, 2015, 6:52 AM UTC

jackmaney wrote: post #127

logfromblammo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm bothered by people who prioritize synchronous communication over asynchronous. On a recent project, I worked with someone who was remote. Every time I sent an e-mail, he picked up the telephone. Then he took a long time to get to the point, and couldn't ever seem to disengage cleanly. Open floor plans would probably work great for people like that. I prefer to not be pre-empted from my current task, and to have a…

> 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."

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 03, 2015, 2:17 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #158

r00fus wrote: post #122

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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…

Hoping for one random interaction a week, and torpedoing productivity the rest of the week, is a net loss.

Post by puredemo » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 1:46 AM UTC

localhost wrote: post #53

badmadrad wrote: post #13

Open offices are type A/extroverted personality wet dreams. Everybody they need is within earshot and they can see EVERYTHING so they can properly control everything. However for introverts, people with noise sensitivity, or people with ADD this is an absolute nightmare. I find a lot of engineers tend to be either introverts or have some type of manageable ADD so it doesn't surprise me that many people would be negat…

As someone with a mild amount of ADD, I disagree completely here. The Internet is way more distracting than people moving around in my field of vision. Having a private office gives me the privacy that I need to "Internet" and that winds up driving down productivity more than I would care to admit. While I haven't actually experienced an open office plan recently, I actually welcome the change to see what effect it w…