The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal • Hacker News Board

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#31

Post by AndrewKemendo » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:22 PM UTC

engendered wrote: post #25

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practical solution is to spend more money. This is immensely frustrating because it is clear the OP doesn't have the money. So how do you do this if you don't have money for anything but Lucite tables and chairs?

This is immensely frustrating because it is clear the OP doesn't have the money. Many organizations pay headhunters tens of thousands of dollars for a hire. Each person costs $100K+ (often significantly more) fully loaded. Yet somehow the price of some tall cube walls is the issue? It's flawed math, people scrimping on the environment and then maximizing head count, getting less out of the latter by cheaping on the f…

This is hilarious because in other places you'll hear that salary is the most important thing and that as long as you're getting paid well then nothing else matters.

Main takeaway: Find the best people who will work for the salary and environment you can offer.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#32

Post by dasmoth » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:23 PM UTC

NickPollard wrote: post #15

bitwarrior wrote: post #5

As someone with the authority to make the necessary changes to our office environment, it frustrates me to read these kind of blog posts. I have read a couple dozen similar posts which merely complain about open offices, but offer absolutely nothing in the way of practical solutions. We don't have the opportunity or space to give everyone their own dedicated office, and cubicles I'm sure would be a living hell. I've…

Here's (part of) a solution: Let people work from home. I have to work in a loud, noisy, open plan office with barely enough room. At home, I have a nicely decorated, well set-up, spacious office with all the equipment I need, sitting unused. If you let people work from home, those that want to get can quiet, isolated environments in which to work. The people who still want to work in the office can do, and they now…

It still amazes me that this doesn't get tried more often.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#33

Post by drivingmenuts » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:24 PM UTC

ejk314 wrote: post #21

bitwarrior wrote: post #5

As someone with the authority to make the necessary changes to our office environment, it frustrates me to read these kind of blog posts. I have read a couple dozen similar posts which merely complain about open offices, but offer absolutely nothing in the way of practical solutions. We don't have the opportunity or space to give everyone their own dedicated office, and cubicles I'm sure would be a living hell. I've…

>and cubicles I'm sure would be a living hell. That's a rather bold assumption. I bet if you just asked employees, you'd get mixed responses. The best part about cubicle walls is that they're easy to put up and tear down. Why not let team leaders choose whether or not to have cubicles for their team (with team member input of course)?

I'll take cubicles over open-plan any day. It's not ideal, but it does cut down on line-of-sight distractions and noise.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#34

Post by wlesieutre » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:24 PM UTC

bitwarrior wrote: post #5

As someone with the authority to make the necessary changes to our office environment, it frustrates me to read these kind of blog posts. I have read a couple dozen similar posts which merely complain about open offices, but offer absolutely nothing in the way of practical solutions. We don't have the opportunity or space to give everyone their own dedicated office, and cubicles I'm sure would be a living hell. I've…

(Full disclosure, I work for The Lighting Quotient)

A generally overlooked factor in the open plan is lighting. When you dump a bunch of desks under a grid of 2x4 troffers or direct/indirect pendants, it becomes a very impersonal space. And the employees all know their offices went away as a cost cutting measure, the "promoting synergy" talk isn't fooling anybody.

One of our product lines is Tambient (contraction of task and ambient), a series of light fixtures that take all the lights out of the ceiling and attaches the general lighting to the office furniture. It won't solve noise problems, but having a light that's yours gives back some ownership of your personal space. It gives you personal dimming too, so you have some control over your environment instead of dealing with whatever the overhead pendant wants to do to your area (and the 8 adjacent desks).

Really energy efficient, works with benching or panel based systems (we even have one that mounts to VESA arms), and looks great too. A couple of pictures and our quick start guide for reference:

http://thelightingquotient.com/files/portfolio/OpenPlanOffic...

http://www.flipdocs.com/showbook.aspx?ID=10014685_237854

I'm more on the engineering side so I don't have the whole sales pitch down, but I'm happy to answer questions if you're interested.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#35

Post by pavel_lishin » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:26 PM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #14

hapless wrote: post #4

We don't need pages of workplace psychology to explain the open plan office. Open plan just has lower visible costs. Twice as many workers per square foot is very compelling math. The cost of lost productivity is hidden. The reduced cost of your office lease is very visible.

We had a presentation on the new "Studio" buildings at Microsoft. A snappy team from the folks responsible for designing them told us about color schemes and that each building had a theme, in stone and wood and so forth. They waxed eloquent about carpet and the cafeteria and I was thinking, what are they hiding? Then they got to the places where we were going to work. "We call these six-packs." Pods of six people cr…

This seems like less of a general open-plan problem, and 100% idiot management problem. Why would they separate people working on a single project, instead of corralling them into the same six-pack?

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#36

Post by wlesieutre » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:29 PM UTC

bmj wrote: post #26

tempAccount1235 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the solution. It's simple, and humanity used it for a few hundred or thousand years. If you want to see it in action, visit the University of Michigan law library. One of the top schools in the country. "Be quiet." A huge building, full of people working, being quiet. For the people who need to talk, put them in their own office(s), open or otherwise, separate from the people who need to be quiet to work.

This is a cultural thing, though. Since childhood, we are taught that you are absolutely always quiet in a library. Open office plans tell a very different story (with the OP underscores--collaboration), so I suspect it would be a long, difficult transition to move from a noisy, collaborative space to a quiet place.

In a lot of cases, not even possible. Maybe it's different if you're at a web startup that pulls the "we don't have a phone number, email us for questions," but part of my job is fielding technical calls and providing design guidance for clients over the phone.

I sometimes feel bad about being on the phone with other people trying to work in here, but that's the nature of the open office. At least we have low partitions.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#37

Post by jlarocco » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:31 PM UTC

bitwarrior wrote: post #5

As someone with the authority to make the necessary changes to our office environment, it frustrates me to read these kind of blog posts. I have read a couple dozen similar posts which merely complain about open offices, but offer absolutely nothing in the way of practical solutions. We don't have the opportunity or space to give everyone their own dedicated office, and cubicles I'm sure would be a living hell. I've…

I would take a cube farm (with decently high walls) over an open office any day, all other things being equal.

Saying you don't have the resources is a bit of a cop out, IMO. Pretty decent cubicles can be had for $1000-$3000 per person. For a tech company, it's the same ballpark as what you paid for people's computers. They take a little more space, but not so much extra space that it should be a big deal. If you lease 10k square feet, get 11k instead.

And not having the money is even more ridiculous for some of the larger companies using open floor plans. Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc., all have the money and the resources.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#38

Post by gklitt » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:32 PM UTC

Every time this debate pops up on HN, I find this quote from Bell Labs scientist Richard Hamming interesting to consider:

I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, 'The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.

Source: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#39

Post by pavel_lishin » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:33 PM UTC

bitwarrior wrote: post #5

As someone with the authority to make the necessary changes to our office environment, it frustrates me to read these kind of blog posts. I have read a couple dozen similar posts which merely complain about open offices, but offer absolutely nothing in the way of practical solutions. We don't have the opportunity or space to give everyone their own dedicated office, and cubicles I'm sure would be a living hell. I've…

My practical solution is a nice pair of noise-canceling headphones.

I don't know what your office culture is like, but at ours it's 100% acceptable for the developers to wear headphones at pretty much any point when we're at our desks.

Re: The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal

#40

Post by pavel_lishin » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:35 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #22

bitwarrior wrote: post #5

As someone with the authority to make the necessary changes to our office environment, it frustrates me to read these kind of blog posts. I have read a couple dozen similar posts which merely complain about open offices, but offer absolutely nothing in the way of practical solutions. We don't have the opportunity or space to give everyone their own dedicated office, and cubicles I'm sure would be a living hell. I've…

Drapes? Are you being facetious? The main problem with open offices is noise, not line-of-sight; specifically, the noise of conversation, because we're always trying to make sense of it, which prevents any other kind of intellectual activity. I think I would prefer working in a sewing factory with the sound of machines, than in a semi-open office where I can hear people talking. (I have worked in factories for short…

> Drapes? Are you being facetious?

I'm not sure if you are, yourself, but hanging fabric would actually block a lot of noise - it would cut down on noise reflecting from walls, and reaching you to begin with.

It wouldn't make things silent, but it would change the acoustics significantly.