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Open offices are bad for us

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Re: Open offices are bad for us

#21

Post by smelendez »

Open offices are awful, but they're here to stay for the same reason more adults are living with roommates and relatives: high real estate prices.

Working remotely is one solution, but many companies don't think it would work for them.

Personally, I'd make the shared area for solitary work only: no work discussions longer than a minute at work areas (use a conference room, take a walk or Slack), no eating at work areas, no audible media. I'd physically isolate people who have to make calls from their desks from other employees as much as possible. I'd also provide a break room for eating and install some retro phone booths in it for semiprivate personal calls on breaks. Also, a private room--not necessarily big--for breast feeding and pumping, taking medication, calling doctors' offices, and the like.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#22

Post by wakkaflokka »

I'm in the corporate world, and my managers were thinking about jumping on the open-office bandwagon (albeit a decade too late). I'm very glad it never materialized, because I love having my own cubicle without distraction. Unlike my open lab in academia, where it was difficult to work because I could hear the guy next to me eating nachos while I was trying to work on my thesis project.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#23

Post by amyjess »

bobbark wrote: post #12

Unfortunately, a large (if not the largest) reason for open office plans that rarely comes up is space efficiency, ie packing more people into the same space. Sure, there are might be some folks who also think about creativity, but in my experience, a large portion of open space layouts have been driven by real estate cost considerations.

This is one reason I prefer to work in suburban office parks rather than urban mixed-use areas. Real estate is cheaper in the burbs, and I like my cube farms.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#24

Post by peatmoss »

kbart wrote: post #17
jMyles wrote: post #4

Am I the only one left on HN who prefers open plan? I've done some of my best work for open plan companies. I have a particularly fond memory of when Reelio rented space at Blueprint (healthcare incubator in NYC). We stayed up very late, listened to loud music, and did some of the best work of our lives. I remember one night in particular, listening to the soundtrack from "O Brother Where Art Thou," when asynchrony a…

"We stayed up very late, listened to loud music, and did some of the best work of our lives." No offense, but that sounds like some kind of boys club, not professional working environment. Staying up late = no respect for private life (unless you've signed for it), loud arbitrary music = forced culture implications (why do I have to listen to the music you like?). Yes, probably our work place expectations differs imm…

"Hey let's all take turns picking the music that gets blasted. I choose Arnold Schoenberg."

5 minutes later...

"Everyone, we've decided that music is a personal taste, and that to maintain a professional working environment, we will not be playing music over the sound system."

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#25

Post by bogomipz »

bobbark wrote: post #12

Unfortunately, a large (if not the largest) reason for open office plans that rarely comes up is space efficiency, ie packing more people into the same space. Sure, there are might be some folks who also think about creativity, but in my experience, a large portion of open space layouts have been driven by real estate cost considerations.

Indeed and I agree with you but that might also be false economy in the mid to longer term. The savings in real estate can come at the expense of productivity and workers sense of well being as that open space starts to feel like a train car during rush hour.

The other option of dealing with real estate constraints is to embrace a distributed work force in addition to an office in places where office space is a premium.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#26

Post by nine_k »

white-flame wrote: post #8
grokas wrote: post #3

"Nearly 50% of people working in open offices are dissatisfied with their sound privacy" Should be: Nearly 50% of people working in open offices don't have good over-ear headphones.

The stability described in the article seems to be more visual, not aural. There's constant mental interruption when the mind has to process stuff going on all around you visually, determining if somebody's going to bump in you, vibrations through any shared desk structures, etc.

Having 2-3 screens completely occupying your field of view helps! Maybe this is one of the key advantages multiple screens provide, besides displaying useful information.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#28

Post by nine_k »

bigmanwalter wrote: post #14
grokas wrote: post #3

"Nearly 50% of people working in open offices are dissatisfied with their sound privacy" Should be: Nearly 50% of people working in open offices don't have good over-ear headphones.

Except prolonged exposure to headphones makes you go deaf. I've got enough hearing loss as it is.

Good headphones for such a setup are tightly closed, DJ-style ones. They isolate you from outside noise, so you can listen to e.g. quietly playing piano pieces (don't like Schubert? try Rick Wakeman) and concentrate.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#29

Post by amyjess »

kdamken wrote: post #5
grokas wrote: post #3

"Nearly 50% of people working in open offices are dissatisfied with their sound privacy" Should be: Nearly 50% of people working in open offices don't have good over-ear headphones.

No. Fuck that. I don't normally curse on here, but I think it's warranted. I own a great pair of over ear, noise cancelling headphones. But I shouldn't have to risk damaging my hearing because management thinks having developers sit in the middle of a bunch of salespeople and project managers is a good idea.

> having developers sit in the middle of a bunch of salespeople and project managers

So, about that...

I work in a cube farm, and I love it. But because we're running out of space, they stuck me in the only open cube they had, and so I'm not sitting anywhere near my team or even my department. I'm in network engineering, but the other people on my row are sales engineers (for a product I have nothing to do with), the inside sales department sits on the three rows to my left, and the marketing department sits on the two rows to my right.

As such, I'm now quite familiar with our sales pitches, and I pick up all kinds of juicy gossip from the inside sales team's daily standup. I'm at the point where "Net Promoter Score" no longer sounds like a real phrase (yay, semantic satiation!). I do have to admit that I've taken to listening to music on my headphones... not super loud, but it helps me get in the zone when the inside sales team is firing on all cylinders. I don't mind it too much... they're all fun people to talk to during our downtime, and I've actually become really close with one of the marketing guys, who I probably wouldn't have met if we didn't have space issues.

And it's not going to last much longer. We just took over another suite in our building, we're putting the finishing touches on renovations, and as soon as that's done the whole sales organization is moving there (the move will probably happen next week, or maybe even this Friday), and my department will move to where sales used to be. I'm hoping I'll get to sit in mostly the same place (marketing isn't moving, and I like those people), though I'd love to take over the window cube behind me.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#30

Post by JoeAltmaier »

smelendez wrote: post #21

Open offices are awful, but they're here to stay for the same reason more adults are living with roommates and relatives: high real estate prices. Working remotely is one solution, but many companies don't think it would work for them. Personally, I'd make the shared area for solitary work only: no work discussions longer than a minute at work areas (use a conference room, take a walk or Slack), no eating at work are…

Strangely, open offices with cubicles can be more expensive than building drywall walls to make closed offices. And the much-vaunted flexibility of cubicles is way, way overrated. In my experience, cubicles sit in the same place for years. Any benefit of re-using them is lost. Also if the company is growing, new ones get bought all the time, so old ones aren't re-used anyway.

Its obvious on the face of it: re-usable walls and shelving are going to be more expensive than simple stick construction. You have to be re-using it constantly (reformatting office space every month or quarter) to make it pay. And then you're tanking everybody's productivity.

I think open-office is some brain virus that keeps infecting managers everywhere. We need some kind of vaccine to combat it.

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