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The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

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Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#211

Post by sidlls »

adrienne wrote: post #206
sidlls wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife chooses to have a job that she does full time from home. We are very much of means to provide a full time live-in nanny or day care for our children on our current income. If she chose she could get a much better paying "butt in the seat" job and we'd have even more means. She doesn't "put up" with anything in the pejorative sense you mean, and is most certainly not being exploited by me. Shame on you. Howeve…

If you had a full-time nanny you'd just be exploiting someone else , and that's not really better! (Although at least she'd be getting paid.)

Paying someone to perform work is exploitation, is it? I'm not talking some minimum wage less "room and board" situation.

You assume too much and know too little about the situation to make the comments you're making.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#212

Post by rb2k_ »

jdbernard wrote: post #157
rb2k_ wrote: post #23

I seem to be the odd one out in that I actually enjoy an open office setup. I've had both and I feel there's so much more collaboration happening in an open office. I almost see it weekly that there's a LOT of learning through osmosis, listening in to conversations, ... I guess I have a pretty easy time keeping up concentration/flow. So in this case, it "works on my machine" :)

> I feel there's so much more collaboration happening in an open office. The problem is that every time we have tried to study it, the opposite has been true. Are you sure your feelings translate into actual productivity improvements?

I doubt anyone actually correctly measured this without giant amounts of residual confounding. (As usual with most social sciences)

That being said: I am having a better time compared to sitting in a 1-2 person office room. So for me it's a win :)

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#213

Post by donw »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #179
davidmr wrote: post #55

I think we've lost the war. I was even asked to meet with my company's architects and designers about a new space we were building out. I basically spent an hour telling them in every different form I could that what I wanted was a place I could go where people could find me, but they would have to knock on a door and open it to talk to me, and these people looked at me like I was from fucking Mars. They'd never hear…

>When I die and get to hell, there will be a Hermann Miller chair in an open office waiting for me. With free snacks and drinks in the kitchen. You'll be allowed to wear headphones, and Hell will have a Slack channel, but instead of using the Slack channel, everyone will just walk over to your desk and talk to you. While you're debugging.

The good news is, you'll only end up there if you are guilty of the sin of writing unreadable code.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#214

Post by didgeoridoo »

adrienne wrote: post #207
adrienne wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had a full-time nanny you'd just be exploiting someone else , and that's not really better! (Although at least she'd be getting paid.)

More seriously: You complain that your kids bother you any time you try to work from home, and how that's just intolerable. But your wife apparently puts up with it every day. They probably bug the shit out of her too - she's just doing that without whining to you about how haaarrrd it is. Implying that what makes her a "saint" isn't "putting up with her kids" so much as it is "putting up with you ".

Is this a parody account?

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#215

Post by ScottBurson »

adrienne wrote: post #207
adrienne wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had a full-time nanny you'd just be exploiting someone else , and that's not really better! (Although at least she'd be getting paid.)

More seriously: You complain that your kids bother you any time you try to work from home, and how that's just intolerable. But your wife apparently puts up with it every day. They probably bug the shit out of her too - she's just doing that without whining to you about how haaarrrd it is. Implying that what makes her a "saint" isn't "putting up with her kids" so much as it is "putting up with you ".

It seems like you have an issue you need to discuss with someone, and that someone is not the person you're addressing here on HN.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#216

Post by mycompanysecret »

tps5 wrote: post #26

My office is switching to an open design. And none of the people who work there are happy about it. It was decided by the folks who own the company, several thousand miles away. I think the real allure of open offices is how they look. Open offices look modern . They look like the kind of working area a hip, young, collaborative, industry-disrupting company would favor. But that's all bullshit. It's just a fairy tale…

> I think the real allure of open offices is how they look. Open offices look modern. They look like the kind of working area a hip, young, collaborative, industry-disrupting company would favor.

(I'm using a throwaway because my main is tied to my real-life identity, and I'm not comfortable talking about my current employer where anyone can google my username and find out what that employer is. And that goes double when I'm talking about my employer's politics. I hope that's OK with the mods.)

I guess this is why I'm strongly drawn to companies that are socially and culturally conservative.

I work in a cube farm at a mid-size (~500 employees) company in a conservative industry (B2B telecom). The TVs in the break room and the reception area are constantly tuned to Fox News. At the last holiday party, the VP of HR gave a speech where he went out of his way to say it was specifically a Christmas party.

And I love working here. While I'm politically liberal myself, it is my experience that the most conservative companies are the best companies to work for. They actually, you know, take care of their employees. That my company is conservative makes me like them more. I'd rather work in a cube farm at a conservative company than in an open office at a liberal company (because I love cube farms and hate open offices). It's a great working environment. And you know what? They never had a single problem with me being trans, which is more than I can say for the freewheeling liberal startup I worked for two and a half years ago.

I look for liberal politics in my friends and conservative politics in my employers. It's worked out pretty well for me, in terms of both friends and employers.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#217

Post by prewett »

donw wrote: post #213
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When I die and get to hell, there will be a Hermann Miller chair in an open office waiting for me. With free snacks and drinks in the kitchen. You'll be allowed to wear headphones, and Hell will have a Slack channel, but instead of using the Slack channel, everyone will just walk over to your desk and talk to you. While you're debugging.

The good news is, you'll only end up there if you are guilty of the sin of writing unreadable code.

Uh oh. Is there forgiveness available? When I was a kid, I tried to write all kinds of games in BASIC (including an ASCII version of Super Mario Bros, a distinct disappointment). Thing was, I had only ever seen one letter variables. So all my variables were the first letter of what they stood for, and if that letter was taken, I used the next available letter. I never finished any of the games, because at some point I'd run into a bug, or have not worked on it for a few weeks, and I had no idea what anything was doing. It was only after getting a Peter Norton book for my birthday that I discovered variables could be more than one letter. I found the programs really annoying to type out, because of all the long variables, but it was a whole lot more readable...

Although, I kind of like open office plans. Definitely better than cubicles, which have relational isolation but no sound isolation. So you feel disconnected with everyone, but you have to hear them anyway.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#219

Post by dang »

adrienne wrote: post #207
adrienne wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had a full-time nanny you'd just be exploiting someone else , and that's not really better! (Although at least she'd be getting paid.)

More seriously: You complain that your kids bother you any time you try to work from home, and how that's just intolerable. But your wife apparently puts up with it every day. They probably bug the shit out of her too - she's just doing that without whining to you about how haaarrrd it is. Implying that what makes her a "saint" isn't "putting up with her kids" so much as it is "putting up with you ".

This sort of personal attack is a bannable offense on HN, and you've done it repeatedly. Your comments to HN have also frequently been uncivil, often egregiously so. Since we asked you to stop breaking the site rules and instead the problem has gotten worse, I've banned your account, at least until we get some indication that it won't happen again.

Re: The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

#220

Post by dang »

adrienne wrote: post #182

Women who put up with this aren't "saints", they're just being exploited by their partners.

Personal attacks are a bannable offense on Hacker News. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13577142 downthread.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13575388 and marked it off-topic.

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