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Open offices are bad for us

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Re: Open offices are bad for us

#301

Post by amag »

jimbokun wrote: post #268
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…

"no eating at work areas" Coworker eating with mouth open at desk next to mine, a special kind of torture.

Yeah! And then burping loudly in between the loud chews. Gotta love your open office!

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#302

Post by paulryanrogers »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #295

Frustration with open offices is perfectly understandable -- I work in an open office and overall I would prefer to have my own office (most people would). But the outrage about the trend towards open offices reeks of entitlement. Think of the assembly line worker -- he/she has even less privacy. And don't tell me that working on an assembly line isn't mentally exhausting. Try one shift and let me know how that goes.…

"Think of the assembly line worker..."

While I'm grateful to service workers who must be on-site because of the nature of their work, there is a case to be made that some workers are more productive and happy private settings. And if the overall costs are similar then why don't information workers have a choice?

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#303

Post by jrs235 »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #295

Frustration with open offices is perfectly understandable -- I work in an open office and overall I would prefer to have my own office (most people would). But the outrage about the trend towards open offices reeks of entitlement. Think of the assembly line worker -- he/she has even less privacy. And don't tell me that working on an assembly line isn't mentally exhausting. Try one shift and let me know how that goes.…

I don't think the complaint is about difficult working environments but rather non-conducive working environments for knowledge workers. Programmers need the ability to focus and minimal distractions in order to keep the conceptual and logical model of their work loaded in their head. Anything that causes a momentary data dump and reboot is detrimental to their core function. A hot roof in the summer for a roofer is expected. If that roofer has to think about how to solve a [non standard] roofing issue while on the roof while thinking about the entire building's (complex) roof and how his solution will affect the other roofs he works on then I understand the complaint. And he should get down off the roof and sit someplace where he can reason and think out a proper solution with minimal distractions and external/physical stress.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#304

Post by deadbunny »

jimbokun wrote: post #271
mwfunk wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I know that noise-cancelling headphones are a solution to noisy offices for some people, but for me at least it's almost as distracting to have something (anything) strapped to my head for hours on end. And yeah, no one should have to do that in the first place. There is a huge overlap in my experience between people who like open offices because it's easy for them to socialize and ask questions, and people w…

Same thing goes for availability over Slack, HipChat, etc. "We should all be on the Slack/HipChat channel so we can get instant answers to all of our questions!" - the people who have lots of questions "Great, all I need, another source of interruptions!" - the people who get asked lots of questions (Guess which one I consider myself to be?)

Il take async communications over interuptrupts any day of the week. Just disable notifications and check it when you're not balls deep in something.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#305

Post by wott »

majewsky wrote: post #126
BjoernKW wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Working remotely is one solution, but many companies don't think it would work for them. My prediction is those companies will go out of business eventually. Working remotely not only is more healthy in every possible way, it's also much more environmentally friendly. It's a key solution to a whole lot of societal problems in industrialised countries, not the least of which is traffic and all the negative side effe…

> 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...

Gathering large number of humans in the same place (factories then offices), well away from their homes, is a relatively new thing. For hundreds and thousands of years, they have been working in (craftsmen) or around their homes (farmers), seeing mostly family and close neighbours.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#306

Post by RachelF »

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…

It's not just high real-estate prices, it is also short term savings by squashing everyone together - the execs save money.

Strangely enough, top management in most places I work at always have their own offices.

The cost is also that of reduced productivity and reduced code quality. I know that if I can't concentrate properly, I write buggier code, designed for the short term.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#307

Post by wolfgke »

logfromblammo wrote: post #155
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The vaccine already exists. It was introduced to the US in 1786. Metaphorically speaking, many of our peers believe that this vaccine causes autism. It occasionally does cause illness more severe than those vaccinated against. It's collective bargaining through a cartel of skilled laborers. Unions. But like Brundlefly, those infected managers don't believe they have a disease. They're not getting worse , they're gett…

> It's collective bargaining through a cartel of skilled laborers. Unions.

We don't need unions - we need developers who strongly refuse to work in open offices. Since there is a shortage of developers, this should suffice. The large problem is that too many developers are willing to compromise.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#308

Post by RUG3Y »

mikestew wrote: post #178
dx034 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why good managers will tell their employee to go home when they're ill. There are companies that have strict policies for that, to avoid exactly this problem. Even though it's a problem that probably mostly affects flexible working space. If you don't share your desk with anyone else, you should usually be >3ft away from other people, lowering the risk for contagion.

That's why good managers will tell their employee to go home when they're ill. And that's why the employee under the "all time off comes from one bucket" PTO plan will say, "that's okay, boss, I feel fine" so that they can save their time off for that trip to Europe.

I hate these types of plans...awful.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#309

Post by smnplk »

mti27 wrote: post #140

Open offices SUCK SUCK SUCK. The worst thing is when someone wants you to answer a question which requires a few moments of concentrated research. So then they stand there waiting on you but talking to the person in the next cube about their weekend or the weather or whatever. You can't tell them to leave because they are not in your office, but it's majorly distracting.

this. Oh am I glad that I will never ever ever work in an open office again.

Re: Open offices are bad for us

#310

Post by wolfgke »

amag wrote: post #297
athenot wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, open offices are ok when they are treated like libraries, where quietness is enforced. "Shared area for solitary work only" describes this very well. In some rare teams, there can be oubursts of goofiness at predictable afternoon times without it affecting productivity, but it takes the right team for that to happen, otherwise it's just a source of frustration.

But it's so unnatural. If I need to discuss something with a colleague and (s)he's sitting right there, I have to hit myself not to just blurt out loud what I wanted to say. A lot of times the mouth is quicker than the mind and I'll upset ppl. If OTOH we're sitting in separate offices I have to physically leave my office and enter my colleague's office to do that. A lot of the times I realize that I can figure out a…

> A lot of times the mouth is quicker than the mind and I'll upset ppl.

Let's introduce a policy: Talking even one word in such a public space (except for emergencies like fire hazzards etc.) costs 100$ each time. This way everybody should learn the lesson very soon.

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