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Open offices are bad for us

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Re: Open offices are bad for us

#281

Post by majewsky »

BjoernKW wrote: post #176
majewsky wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Working remotely not only is more healthy in every possible way, it's also much more environmentally friendly. You sure about that first part? Everyone working at their home office sounds like the next step of neoliberalism-induced isolation, with its horrible effects on mental health: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/12/neolib...

People had social lives before there was large-scale use of offices. There are several ways in which a home office allows for a richer social life: - You're not stuck on your commute for several hours a day. That time can be spent much more beneficially, for example for having social interactions. - Working remotely actually requires you to communicate more and better than when everyone's sitting in the same office.…

> - You're not stuck on your commute for several hours a day. That time can be spent much more beneficially, for example for having social interactions.

My commute is 20 minutes. I can barely read my newspaper, so I'd not mind a longer commute, actually (as long as I can use public transit).

> - Working remotely actually requires you to communicate more and better than when everyone's sitting in the same office.

I have to do that anyway. My team is spread across multiple cities.

> - Remote work has the potential to do away with the "contiguous 8 hours, preferably from 9 to 5" notion of work.

But why? That's the killer feature of an office for me. When I leave, I leave the job behind and focus on my personal life until next morning.

Of course that's just personal taste. It shall just be noted that some people genuinely prefer working in an office.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#282

Post by keithpeter »

garrettdimon wrote: post #149

A lot of the comments here seem to focus on socialization and feeling like you're in a community, but closed offices don't preclude this. I work at Wildbit (the company referenced in the article), and we have family-style lunches around a big table and plenty of common areas where socialization happens in the mornings, during lunch, when people make coffee, and plenty of other times. The key is that when folks are wo…

OA mentions that the boss moved you all back into a 10,000 sqft space with offices.

What was the space before the move? i.e. in Open Office phase?

A data point as to alleged space saving might be useful ammunition.

Best of luck with it all.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#283

Post by amag »

nawitus wrote: post #210
jasode wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We need some kind of vaccine to combat it. The vaccine is a startup that is 10x (or even just 2x) better than everyone else because they use private offices. Since that hypothetical business hasn't yet proven that idea, all the articles from journalists writing about "open offices bad" are just preaching to the choir. Even the common cited reason for open offices being "saves real estate costs" is questionable. As a…

An "open office" for 5-7 persons is different from an open office for 30+ people. In fact, I think an "open office" for 5-7 persons (e.g. the typical software development team) is quite ideal.

I disagree. I've worked in 1,2,3,5-7 and 30+ ppl offices and my view is that 1 is superior in every way, 2 is possible (but it's quite easy to talk away hours if you have common interests), 3 starts to be quite disturbing (especially since it's now possible for three completely different discussions taking place at the same time) and the difference between 5-7 and 30+ is minimal since it's the 5-7 ppl closest to you in a 30+ office that are the most disturbing anyway, the rest are just white noise.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#284

Post by prefect42 »

Paul-ish wrote: post #151
a1a wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the main takeaways from the story tho. In an open office those who need silence cannot get it, even if there are private rooms available: "Some of us even feel that escaping to a quiet room is a sign of weakness" and "it can feel as if we’re not pulling our weight if we’re not present"

One thing that that would bother me in that situation is I do not enjoy doing work on laptops. I prefer to work from a desktop where the monitor (1) reasonably sized, (2) at eye level. I also prefer a full sized mouse and keyboard, as I feel handicapped by a trackpad. Most quiet places do not have this, so I am effectively chained to my desk, where my desktop is.

At my company, we are fortunate to have quiet spaces that have dual monitors, keyboard, and mouse, for your laptop. I agree, it's a necessity.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#285

Post by [deleted] »

Paul-ish wrote: post #151
a1a wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the main takeaways from the story tho. In an open office those who need silence cannot get it, even if there are private rooms available: "Some of us even feel that escaping to a quiet room is a sign of weakness" and "it can feel as if we’re not pulling our weight if we’re not present"

One thing that that would bother me in that situation is I do not enjoy doing work on laptops. I prefer to work from a desktop where the monitor (1) reasonably sized, (2) at eye level. I also prefer a full sized mouse and keyboard, as I feel handicapped by a trackpad. Most quiet places do not have this, so I am effectively chained to my desk, where my desktop is.

[deleted]

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#286

Post by amag »

hvidgaard wrote: post #163
jasode wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We need some kind of vaccine to combat it. The vaccine is a startup that is 10x (or even just 2x) better than everyone else because they use private offices. Since that hypothetical business hasn't yet proven that idea, all the articles from journalists writing about "open offices bad" are just preaching to the choir. Even the common cited reason for open offices being "saves real estate costs" is questionable. As a…

They may work when people have enough work diciplin to not interrupt with irrelevant things. Which it looks like they can manage in the pictures. But when you have a constant stream of people interrupting with things that should just have been an email or slack message, it kills productivity.

Email and slack are interruptive.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#287

Post by yannickt »

jimbokun wrote: post #277
jasode wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they've managed to do well I think you're inadvertently undermining your point. Trello wasn't profitable.[1] They were "cash-flow break even" which is also another way of saying they still had not earned enough "free cash flow" to pay back their past internal investments that got them where they currently are. Trello has private offices. Atlassian has open offices.[2] They are also profitable.[3] Atlassian was the o…

Wouldn't you also need to include things like, time from founding, revenue per employee, growth rate, return on investment, etc. to evaluate whether Atlassian or Trello has been the more productive business?

The GP's point still stands: closed offices _may_ make for more productive employees (for some classes of employees), but it is not obvious that they translate into a more productive _business_.

Instead of using Trello, you could compare Atlassian against Fog Creek. Fog Creek was founded two years before Atlassian, and both companies are more or less in the same space - they make productivity tools for developers. And yet it's hard not to look at Atlassian as the more successful business so far.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#288

Post by danellis »

stuntmachine wrote: post #137
cnagele wrote: post #41

Hey everyone, Chris Nagele here from Wildbit. For some background, I wrote about our reasons for moving to a private office plan. In short, it's more than putting on some headphones. http://wildbit.com/blog/2015/03/06/wildbit-hq-ending-the-ope... And a tour of the office itself: http://wildbit.com/blog/2015/08/05/wildbit-office-tour

I had the privilege of working in this environment and I can vouch for Chris here. The design of the Wildbit space works exponentially better than any open office layout could ever work. Communication was isolated to where it was needed, and conference rooms exist for when communications need to be had in private. It's the perfect mix. It may have cost more to do it right, but the bottom line wasn't money, it was pro…

> The design of the Wildbit space works exponentially better than any open office layout could ever work.

By what metric?

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#289

Post by dasmoth »

nilkn wrote: post #134
Someone1234 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that was cubicles are designed to solve? You take a large inexpensive space, pack in staff densely, than rely on cubicle walls to isolate everyone.

This is a good point. The psychology of office design is surprisingly nuanced and complex. Practically speaking, cubicles solve a lot of the problems with open office floorplans. On the other hand, they introduce new issues. A big, silent cube farm can feel incredibly dehumanizing. Somehow a large open space feels more lively and human-friendly even if it's actually a way less efficient design for productivity. Whene…

A fair few "open office" shops still have private offices for executives. Not all, admittedly -- and it may be a little easier to stomach if everyone gets the same deal -- but the "office lords" thing is still common.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#290

Post by brian_cunnie »

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…

I prefer the open plan — I love it! In my 30+ years of corporate life, I have the smallest working space ever (36 inches of desk space), and I think it's awesome.

I work at a place that does pair programming, so I'm always engaged in some form of communication.

I worked from home on occasion, but I didn't like it: I got lonesome, and was easily distracted and my productivity suffered.

Sometimes it gets really loud. Yesterday my pair said, "It's too loud; I can't think." I hadn't noticed.

I'm not an epidemiologist — I don't know whether working closely makes people sick more often — but I do know that in the last 5 years I only took 3 hours of sick leave when I didn't feel good one afternoon. Other than that I've been has healthy as ever.

I'm not a one-size-fits-all guy — I realize that an open plan doesn't work for many people (one of my talented peers is now working at Uber partly for that reason), but for some of us it's a godsend.

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