Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open offices are a dead end

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 307 posts

Re: Open offices are a dead end

#181

Post by kerkeslager »

martinpw wrote: post #158
kerkeslager wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been at companies where I spent perhaps 7 out of 8 hour in a day pair programming, and it was the most productive I've ever been. As the parent comment said, it's not for everyone. Nothing is for everyone--there are many different work styles.

That sounds like a great argument against open offices. I could not handle sitting near two people pair programming the whole day. If they went to a private office to do it that would seem ideal.

> That sounds like a great argument against open offices. I could not handle sitting near two people pair programming the whole day. If they went to a private office to do it that would seem ideal.

I don't understand. You can't handle working in an open office, so your solution is to force people who work well in an open office to work in a private office?

Why can't you go work in a private office if that works well for you, and let people who work well in open offices work in open offices?

Re: Open offices are a dead end

#182

Post by neogodless »

kerkeslager wrote: post #165
ivl wrote: post #57

I think I'd have a less negative reaction to open offices if it weren't for the attempt to sell it as a productivity booster . The article even mentions how they're "sold to workers as a boon to collaboration — liberated from barriers, stuffed in like sardines, people would chat more and, supposedly, come up with lots of brilliant new ideas". Thankfully the author also quickly refuted that. Yet the insanity remains,…

Open offices are a productivity booster for some people (myself being one). Of course, WeWork being a company with one product, they try to sell it to everyone, even the people who it doesn't work for. That's a valid criticism of WeWork, but not really a valid criticism of open offices.

How do you measure your productivity?

What do you attribute to your increase in productivity in an open floor plan?

Re: Open offices are a dead end

#183

Post by nemetroid »

kerkeslager wrote: post #176
nemetroid wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think you can argue against the fact that a significant portion of the population works well in open offices Can you cite a study which asserts this fact ?

You've got numerous people on this page saying they work better in open offices. Do you have some reason for disbelieving them?

You said "significant portion of the population".

Re: Open offices are a dead end

#184

Post by tempguy9999 »

dtech wrote: post #142
chomp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the problem is that (in my experience) open offices actually do boost productivity somewhat, but only when the office is a small 2-5 person pod. I lose productivity when I get dropped in a huge floor of people chatting and talking about things not related to what I'm working on.

I wouldn't call that an open office though, just a team room. A shared space is fine with <5 people, can become problematic at 5-10 people and the frequently 20+ large floor spaces are just unworkable without noise cancelling headphones.

Agreed, it's just a small room with people in it. BTDT.

I worked in london in an open plan office maybe 40ft wide and getting on 200 ft long. That's open plan.

It's fine except for the noise. It's always the noise as the problem, all else is ok.

(edit: not a single company, a collection of small and medium businesses)

Re: Open offices are a dead end

#185

Post by BoorishBears »

pwinnski wrote: post #155
patejam wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an important distinction to say that is isn't a space issue, it's a money issue.

Yes and no. Ultimately, any space issue can be solved with enough money, so yes. But space usually isn't easily expanded. My company has the 7th floor of a 10-floor building. When we hire people as we've been doing, we can either fit them into the existing space somehow, or... move the entire office? Rent space on the floor above or below? It isn't as easy as just "spend a bit more money, get a bit more space," so no…

Yes and yes is what I got out of your answer.

>When we hire people as we've been doing, we can either fit them into the existing space somehow, or... move the entire office?

Yes. Exactly.

My office did it with 0 days down time combining 3 separate locations spread out around a city downtown. We labeled our stuff on Friday, a company was contracted to make sure on Monday our stuff would be in a new office, and it was.

It's a money issue through and through, until the lost productivity is greater than the cost to move, more people get crammed in. Simple as that.

Re: Open offices are a dead end

#186

Post by cameronbrown »

smt88 wrote: post #79
cameronbrown wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not gonna happen. Working in an office is cultural, and as long as the majority of jobs require presence (read: almost every non knowledge-worker job) it won't change. Personally I don't like the idea of remote work anyway - I think we're missing a lot of valuable bandwidth. We're social creatures and no amount of technology will change that. That being said, I think the option should be there for those who disagree…

> Working in an office is cultural Culture changes, and there's a such thing as subculture. Many individual companies have created remote-only subcultures, and they'll become more influential over time. (Wearing suits to the office used to be cultural and "never going to change".) > we're missing a lot of valuable bandwidth But you're also missing lots of destructive bandwidth (interruptions, gossip, etc.) Remote wor…

> But you're also missing lots of destructive bandwidth (interruptions, gossip, etc.)

These things are a component of being around others though. Gossip never goes away, it just migrates.

> People socialize outside of offices all the time. There's nothing stopping remote coworkers from meeting in the same place every day, going out to lunch, etc.

True that, but arguably the best benefit of remote work is to.. well.. live remotely. If you're all states or countries apart (as remote teams tend to be) then this is obviously not an option.

> If you start with onsite-by-default and try to transition to remote, the people who stay onsite become resentful of the remote workers, and everyone assumes the remote workers are lazier, distracted, etc.

If it's optional and actually sponsored by top execs into the company culture, why would this resentment exist?

Obviously this is just my opinion, but I'd really hate to live and work in the same place. It's the same for me with side projects: if you get burned out of uncomfortable in your space, that doesn't go away when work's over. You risk disliking your own place.

Personally I just prefer a strict division between work/life and remote heavily fragments that relationship.

Re: Open offices are a dead end

#187

Post by scarface74 »

ryandrake wrote: post #171
scarface74 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably pay should / can be lower in a place where you actually want to work for than in a shitty work environment? My major want is to get money deposited into my account. I'm at an age where I need to focus on building wealth. But that's the other dilemma -- I could go into working for a consulting company as a "digital transformation consultant"/"cloud consultant" where I would be travelling or working from hom…

I’ve always considered the technology treadmill to be optional. You can ride it and be successful, or you can become a good generalist on old technologies and be successful too. I’ve never even thought about messing with Rust or React or Angular or Ember or Node or Haskell. I don’t know what a Kubernet is and I think Docker is what happens when you take “it works for me” and turn it into a software deployment tool. I…

Are you willing to move "anywhere on earth" to find a job? It doesn't matter whether anyone will hire you, what matters is if anyone will hire you in a place that you are willing to move or allow you to work remotely and at the pay you want.

Also how old are you? I've seen too many people in their mid 40s who couldn't get a job because they called themselves "generalists" when a company could just as easily hire someone cheaply that could hit the ground running. Also there is a difference between the "right job" and the "right now" job. The "right job" for me would be architect, consultant, team lead, or consultant. But those jobs aren't as abundant. If I have three or four months to plan and look, I can get the "right job". If circumstances dictate that I need to get the "right now" job or contract (and get on my wife's insurance), I need to find a job quickly and be marketable.

Re: Open offices are a dead end

#188

Post by unionpivo »

kerkeslager wrote: post #175
unionpivo wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you google around, you will find lots of studies on that subject have already been done, and most of them find, that open offices are for the most part are less productive. The only way to find out if you are right is to test it. Until that is done, it makes most sense to go with, majority of studies. That said, you suggestion (about having both types) might work in ideal world. In real world you wouldn't really h…

> If you google around, you will find lots of studies on that subject have already been done, and most of them find, that open offices are for the most part are less productive. If you Google around, you will find lots of studies that tested which office style you should force everyone into, without considering the possibility that forcing everyone into the same office style might be a bad idea. That doesn't address…

> Again I'm going to ask: why are we forcing everyone into one style of office?

I addressed that in my reply: "That said, you suggestion (about having both types) might work in ideal world. In real world you wouldn't really have a choice most of the time, because if your team mostly works in open office, you will miss* out on a lot if working in closed office. And if majority of people work in closed offices, then you loose all the benefits that open offices bring anyway.

So you would end up in whatever team lead decided that its best.

* And likely be considered antisocial. "

> My entire career has been a test showing that I can't get much done in isolation. Open offices work great for me, and at this point, I will not take a job that requires me to work in isolation.

Well if the rest of the team, is in their own offices and you are alone or with people from other groups/teams how exactly will that work for you, you might as well be in coffee shop across the street.

I am not trying to say that you should like individual offices, but you can't really mix both of them together, unless your teams are huge (which I personally dislike).

Edit: Not sure if I explained myself correctly (I am not trying to say that some people don't work better in open offices), and I come of across as a bit of a jerk, which was unintentional.

Edit2: and its a moot point mostly anyway, because open offices are cheaper, so there will always be plenty of companies with open offices, whatever studies show.

Re: Open offices are a dead end

#189

Post by scarface74 »

panopticon wrote: post #179
pojzon wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said "all", but its not really all without "payment up to date with the market" ;). Ps. I would not care so much for payment if I was born 5-10 years earlier. I would already have a big house with nice big garden and few cars. Now to get the same - have to pay 15x as much as my brother who is older than me :) Great times we live in..

I suppose it depends if you're defining the market locally or globally. A fraction of a FAANG salary in a small town can go a long way in the local market.

Heck a fraction of the salary in Atlanta, can get you the nice big house in the burbs, with the good school system, and the white picket fence.

Re: Open offices are a dead end

#190

Post by turk73 »

scarface74 wrote: post #16

If I could craft the perfect job for me, the one I work at would be it - an intelligent straightforward manager who will speak his mind bluntly and can take it just as well as he can dish it out. He’s mostly concerned with results not whether you kiss his ring. - small company without a lot of bureaucracy -- I have full access to our entire AWS infrastructure - relatively generous PTO - a decent free family health pl…

Welcome to never. You might as well fly to Vegas with all your money and lay it all on black at roulette. Save you some time.
Post reply on HN