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Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

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Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#211

Post by EliRivers »

greghinch wrote: post #47
jroseattle wrote: post #40

Anyone who has worked in enough office environments for a while will recognize that the "best" environment is a flexible one. Sometimes it's working in the open, sometimes a quiet office with the door closed, sometimes at home or a coffee shop. When I took a mgmt role as VP/Engnring at a firm a few years ago, the first thing I did was assess and address morale, which was not good. One of the obvious things was that t…

Ultimately, in my experience, it always seems to come down to "how do we keep the non-technical people from meddling with the engineers?" This is as much about org structure as it is office layout

That's not the only possible problem. I once started at a company that occupied a big building and had few employees; lots of offices, and those that didn't have them had a lot of space. Everyone had a nice big desk at the window (which was floor to ceiling, all the way around); the desk was "U" shaped, so everyone sat facing the window (if they wanted to) and the outer parts of the "U" had tall partitions. You couldn't see over them. It was fantastic for getting work done. I didn't have a desk so much as a bay; a good ten feet or so from my chair to the point at which people might walk past.

Then they closed some other sites and moved their people in, and by the end of it we were all jammed into a single huge room (big enough that if there was someone standing at the other end, I couldn't see who it was) with so many desks that there was only one way from any one desk to any other - if I wanted to get to the desk of the guy sitting directly in front of me (who spent the day facing me) I had to walk all the way out to the long corridor and then weave in and out of pods of desks to get to him. He was an FPGA designer, as I recall. He ended up "borrowing" some of the industrial noise-suppressing headphones from the catapult lab in the basement so he could block out the noise of everyone working. Because it could take over a minute to walk to the desk of the person ten feet away from you, people phoned a lot or just had conversations over the top of partitions. A particularly inspiring move was the demand that the tall cupboards some people had (six foot tall ones) that broke up the sightline a bit and created shields be replaced with smaller ones. So that they wouldn't break up the sightlines.

I quit that job without having another job to move on to (which, to be honest, I thought was normal and was how I'd always done it, but this time the boss was so surprised he explained that it's not the way people normally do things). I think everyone I worked with there had quit within a year, leaving the lifers to it.

Ironically, I once spent some time at one of the offices in France and it was gorgeous. Floors were basically all enclosed offices with one to three people in them. Proper offices with proper walls and doors; none of this moveable partition stuff. With wine at lunch.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#212

Post by VLM »

ams6110 wrote: post #132
davesims wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. What people complain about is not necessarily an indication of what's not working . My last two gigs have been open-plan, and I prefer it much more than closed-cube spaces. If your team is working as it should, and is in close proximity to project/product management, with a good process and a healthy level of trust between the stakeholders and between the various engineers, then in my experience…

I don't see much difference between open plan and high-walled cubes in a large room. Noise and distractions are about the same. I think if you're going to talk about private space vs. open you have to be talking about real offices with walls from floor to ceiling, doors that close, and which are (reasonably) soundproof.

"Noise and distractions are about the same"

I found interrupt rate increased for open plan by, oh, probably a factor of ten. Look, VLM isn't talking, therefore he must not be doing anything, lets ask him about last nights TV episode. If the cube wall is high enough that you can't see if the worker drone is in there much less on the phone (aka working) or actually working as in thinking, then you don't just yell at the guy across the room.

I notice a massive impedance bump between the "knowledge workers" and the "talkers". Engineering and Finance and operations got along nearly perfectly because both know that not talking does not mean not working aka ready for interrupt please bug me. On the other hand management / customer service / sales, if they're not talking they're not working, so interrupt rate was horrible from those types, hmm I have a problem and those three are talking about football so they're busy, and that guy's talking to his wife on the phone so he's busy, I know I'll bug that guy looking at a component datasheet, obviously he's the only one here not doing anything. Marketing types were kind of in between, some understand that thinking is work, some don't.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#213

Post by VLM »

rhizome wrote: post #120
mcphilip wrote: post #14

I really struggle to get in the 'zone' where I can do the creative aspects of software engineering (e.g. researching graph databases like neo4j and determining if our startup can benefit from it) when I'm in an open environment. I have been diagnosed with ADD for the past 8 years, but am working towards a medication free approach to dealing with it. Open spaces really hurt my productivity because my mind naturally tr…

Pretty much my worst working experience was in an open plan office (the boss had their own office, natch), where the boss would walk into the room, "Hey guys...", everybody takes their headphones off and looks up, and he starts talking about something that is relevant to two, maybe two and a half, people. This would happen about once per hour. Policy against headphones, is that a thing? Shudder.

"Policy against headphones, is that a thing?"

This is normal.

We (mgmt) went to great effort to eliminate the possibility of concentration amongst the workers because all wisdom comes from above at our organization and we don't concentrate so you shouldn't either. Furthermore we intentionally designed this for easy collaboration / talking and your wearing headphones is a directly insubordinate act against our intentional management decision to encourage collaboration. As a class observation we are an engineering organization not a customer service organization so I do not want to see my people wearing "customer service" headphones, unless you want to transfer out of engineering and into 1st level support. Finally we occasionally escort outside visitors past this area on sales calls and what would they think if they saw you wearing headphones, that we are not observant, or we tolerate insubordination, or ?

This is a paraphrase of the conversation I had at a former employer. I'm shocked any open plan office allows headphones, it is blatantly insubordinate to go directly against your bosses orders and 1) think and 2) block out your coworkers. If they wanted you to think they certainly wouldn't sabotage you by putting you in an open plan office.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#214

Post by VLM »

Nobody discussed on call?

Would I get away with "Sorry boss I can't fix the emergency this afternoon, home is too quiet and comfortable and spacious, but thank god my kids are coming home from school and once they start screaming at each other, playing video games, and watching TV, I'm sure I'll be able to get right to work on the problem."

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#215

Post by mgkimsal »

tsotha wrote: post #154
mgkimsal wrote: post #98

Was just having a discussion on this topic with a friend a couple nights ago. Seems that "management" and "HR" always seem to have traditional desks and offices with closable doors. Always. For software developers, they often get lumped with the same desk/working environments that people doing call center or phone support work get. It got me thinking why that might be, and I had a thought I hadn't had before. Managem…

There's more to it than that. Management and HR people need to have conversations that not everyone else is privy to. Having everyone listening to a coworker being asked by her boss to wear more appropriate clothing to the office is just asking for a lawsuit, as is a conversation between HR and an employee discussing leave for an embarrassing medical problem. Of course you can have small conference rooms for those ki…

Yeah, that's another aspect I'm aware of, but I don't buy it as much. The majority of time I've seen mgt in their offices, it's not being used for that.

Regardless, I'm not advocating for people to not have private offices - I'm arguing for more people to have private offices, and I think decision makers simply aren't capable of putting themselves in the shoes of people who do 'thought work' as their primary task.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#216

Post by MikeTLive »

mindcrime wrote: post #150
monkeynotes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried working in a cubical, an individual office with a door, and open plan offices. By far my favourite is open plan. I like being able to turn to my co-workers and ask quick questions, I like the atmosphere, and if things are too noisy or distracting I just put headphones on and get in the zone.

Conversely open-plan is my least favourite. It appears to be a system designed to maximize interrupts, distractions and context switches, and to minimize productivity, morale and concentration. As far as I'm concerned, "open plan" is the Evil incarnate. I would never willingly subject a group of knowledge workers to that environment. When we grow Fogbeam to the point that we have employees and actual office space, my…

Your dream is my award winning design. It does work spectacularly.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#217

Post by BryantD »

mgkimsal wrote: post #98

Was just having a discussion on this topic with a friend a couple nights ago. Seems that "management" and "HR" always seem to have traditional desks and offices with closable doors. Always. For software developers, they often get lumped with the same desk/working environments that people doing call center or phone support work get. It got me thinking why that might be, and I had a thought I hadn't had before. Managem…

Actually not always. My current work environment is open floor plan for everyone, up to and including HR, vice presidents, and so on. (Several hundred people in the office, not a startup.)

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#218

Post by ghotli »

jquery wrote: post #87
ghotli wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.amazon.com/Shure-SE210-Sound-Isolating-Earphone/d... Those effectively eliminate auditory ADD in an open environment. Nothing has been more effective than these for me.

Careful. Daily use of in-ear headphones can lead to impacted ear wax. Your hearing will gradually degrade until you can't understand people at all. Then one morning you wake up and realize you're deaf and you make a trip to the doctor where they pull out a block of ear wax the size of a lozenge and just as hard. Happened to me twice before I ditched using in-ear headphones at work.

Just as a data point I've been using these for nearly six years and I have never had a problem with earwax or build quality.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#219

Post by ghotli »

raverbashing wrote: post #62
endianswap wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to sound like I'm trivializing your disorder, but have you tried a good pair of closed-ear headphones? I sit in a room of 40 or 50 chatty computer folks, and everything is silent when I put on my Sennheiser headphones. It lets be effectively choose whether or not I want to be distracted by sound, which I do sometimes (hearing conversations I want to be a part of it quite important to me).

This With noise cancelling for when someone decides to vacuum the office or finds out it's a nice day to use a power drill

My boss used to say that he felt like he could have shot off a gun behind my head and I wouldn't notice with those Shures in.

Re: Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick

#220

Post by wpeterson »

jroseattle wrote: post #40

Anyone who has worked in enough office environments for a while will recognize that the "best" environment is a flexible one. Sometimes it's working in the open, sometimes a quiet office with the door closed, sometimes at home or a coffee shop. When I took a mgmt role as VP/Engnring at a firm a few years ago, the first thing I did was assess and address morale, which was not good. One of the obvious things was that t…

I agree with having a variety of public spaces (conference rooms, lounges) for the right context.

I've also found that open plan is great up until you hit the size of your team. One large, open room with only people you work directly with is perfect. Giant hanger-like engineering floors with 100+ people and little dividing the space is a disaster.

A large open plan floor with central, quiet conference rooms anyone can use or phone booths is great. The outer space should be divided into team rooms with their own open layout of 10-15 people or less.

My startup currently shares a large, open-plan loft space with 3 other companies. We each cordoned off one corner of the space with hanging dividers. It's just about perfect.

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