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The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

economist.com

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Re: The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

#41

Post by VLM »

shubb wrote: post #2

I don't... like the author of this piece. He writes like he doesn't really understand what he is discussing. For instance, he conflates the move to open plan offices, which is seen as increasing communication within teams, but also enables an almost oppressive level of employee monitoring, with googles propensity to space hoppers. These are quite different things, coming from quite different places. Open plan offices…

>is making people like Schumpeter feel under threat

Schumpeter won't care, he's been dead 60+ years now. The Economist has a habit of naming their departments after famous people in the field to make a political statement. Schumpeter was kind of the anti-Marx and anti-Keynes of his era. Read into that what you may about the editorial board of the Economist. Somehow I don't think Fox is in any danger of having their "fair and balanced" motto stolen by the Economist LOL

He had his good points and his bad points as an economist. They're probably not all over his biorhythm / astrology based business cycles, although given how crude understanding was at the time, he did push the field forward at least a little. On the other hand he was kind of the first wise old men of technological innovation and the entrepreneurs so on HN of all places I would expect people to at least pretend to have heard of him. I would expect this crowd would not give a pass on someone who had no idea who Turing or Babbage was, so its kinda a bad scene that I seem to be the only person on HN who knows who Schumpeter was.

As for the specific claim about management being replaced, he was of the opinion that in groups people cannot self govern themselves successfully, and they pretty much need a loosely controlled republic at most, not referendums and democracy. So not knowing much about his views on management, but knowing his views on govt, he'd probably find that tool-mediated management is not going to work any better than mass media-mediated government. But who knows, someone who knows more econ than me, might dredge up an essay by the man on this very specific topic.

Re: The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

#42

Post by hippee-lee »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

We're open plan at Blekko and it has its plusses and minuses. Rich (our CEO) had the experience of taking an open plan group to a mix of offices and open plan that went very badly as communication dried up. At Google quad cubes were the norm, doubles were the minimum (even for VPs who in theory would need to be talking at times about material things). The benefit is it is easier to communicate, and the downside is th…

> and culturally if you're typing away with your headphones on its very similar to working with your door closed.

True. But, as with all things that have pros and cons, if your culture doesn't respect that you have headphones on it's not at all like working with your door closed. There is no barrier to a tap on your desk or shoulder with 'a quick question.' This happens quite often where I work and I find myself guilty of doing it as often as it is done to me. Speaking for myself, a cultural barrier is much less inclined to stop my behavior than a real physical barrier be it a cube with walls or even better an office witha door.

I have worked in a variety of situations the past 10+ years some cubes, once I had an office to myself and open floor plans the past several years. I think my optimal preference would be the shared office approach, with 2 or three individuals in the office. In a small group, it's much easier to request and establish a smaller customized set of things related to mutual respect for differences in how we all work.

Re: The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

#43

Post by VLM »

sentenza wrote: post #38
coolsunglasses wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Economist pieces are written by try-hard underpaid 20-somethings desperate to be taken seriously. Keeping that in mind helps to contextualize nonsense like this. It's also why the Economist operates the way they do.

Oh boy, are you right. I have an Economist subscription which I got after foolishly assuming that the quality of Charlemagne and Bagehot are representative of the whole product. What enrages me most is that the "leader" opinion pieces (at the very front of every issue) are so catastrophically bad. I recently wondered if there might be a positive correlation between how bad a political decision has played out and whet…

I know what you mean, but its all in the interpretation. "Here's the most important PR spin we can present at this time." They usually make the right decision about it being the most important PR message. Being important, influential or loud seems to have little bearing on if the spin is actually correct or not.

Whats on the inside front cover of Make Magazine? That means its probably worth talking about; doesn't mean its necessarily the right thing for everyone to buy all the time.

Look on the bright side, at least the Economist isn't as bad as getting your biz/econ news from CNBC; as a legacy media its pretty good.

Re: The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

#44

Post by erikpukinskis »

> "Morten Hansen of the University of California, Berkeley studied 182 teams who were trying to win a contract on behalf of a professional-services firm. He found that the more time they spent consulting others, the less likely they were to win a deal. This shows, he says, that collaboration has costs as well as benefits."

This quote is everything that's wrong with science journalism. I'm sure there are some narrowly defined conclusions to be drawn from the study, but "collaboration had costs as well as benefits" is a truism, not a finding.

And I'm highly skeptical that Hansen said any such thing (that the results somehow say something new about the scale of costs relative I benefits of collaboration). Though if he did he and his reviewers bear some responsibility.

Re: The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

#45

Post by bane »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

We're open plan at Blekko and it has its plusses and minuses. Rich (our CEO) had the experience of taking an open plan group to a mix of offices and open plan that went very badly as communication dried up. At Google quad cubes were the norm, doubles were the minimum (even for VPs who in theory would need to be talking at times about material things). The benefit is it is easier to communicate, and the downside is th…

Having worked in a variety layouts, I'd say the small team room setup is among the best. It's open layout within the team room, but the team gets their own room, sets their own culture etc. The lead for the team is the interface into the room. When the team is heads down on work it'll get quiet, and the room doubles as a conference room saving floor space. The only hard part is sizing the rooms and teams appropriately so you don't end up with stragglers sitting away from the team -- they'll never ever integrate into the team.

Open floor plans with offices are among the most caustic I've ever encountered as everybody jostles and resents those that get offices. Inevitably some criteria for office assignment will get set and then you'll run out of offices and some various persons who've worked long and hard to "earn" an office won't be able to get one and now you have a senior disgruntled bad apple in among your rank and file.

Open floor plans are terrible too, but a step down from open with offices. They often backfire in weird ways as well. In one place I worked the dev area was an open office with breakout conference rooms. The unwritten culture was that it had to be as quiet as a tomb. Which also meant there was no communication happening...so it was pointless as a communication mixer. People stopped checking their email and communication deadlocked.

Re: The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

#46

Post by zhemao »

bane wrote: post #45
ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

We're open plan at Blekko and it has its plusses and minuses. Rich (our CEO) had the experience of taking an open plan group to a mix of offices and open plan that went very badly as communication dried up. At Google quad cubes were the norm, doubles were the minimum (even for VPs who in theory would need to be talking at times about material things). The benefit is it is easier to communicate, and the downside is th…

Having worked in a variety layouts, I'd say the small team room setup is among the best. It's open layout within the team room, but the team gets their own room, sets their own culture etc. The lead for the team is the interface into the room. When the team is heads down on work it'll get quiet, and the room doubles as a conference room saving floor space. The only hard part is sizing the rooms and teams appropriatel…

Wait, why did people stop checking email? I don't see how that relates to the open plan office. I've worked in open-plan offices and team rooms before, and people were generally pretty responsive on email and IM.

Re: The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

#47

Post by mahyarm »

ams6110 wrote: post #22
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #16

It seems like the author is mixing the idea of an open floor workspace with a casual atmosphere at work. I'll be the first to rail against a lot of contemporary Silicon Valley/tech culture, but running your business like 1950s IBM has nothing to do with producing a quality software/hardware product. If you don't have a public facing job, then does it matter if you wear a t-shirt and jeans to work, and have video game…

If you don't have a public facing job, then does it matter if you wear a t-shirt and jeans to work I think it can. I've had a couple of jobs where I needed to wear a suit to work (or at minimum, dress shirt, tie, and slacks) even though my job was not customer-facing. It had its annoyances but in some ways I think I took everything a little bit more seriously when I was at the office. Probably for the same reasons th…

A big part of uniforms is so kids (mostly girls) don't play clothing status oneupmaniship bullying on each other.

Re: The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

#48

Post by shubb »

VLM wrote: post #41
shubb wrote: post #2

I don't... like the author of this piece. He writes like he doesn't really understand what he is discussing. For instance, he conflates the move to open plan offices, which is seen as increasing communication within teams, but also enables an almost oppressive level of employee monitoring, with googles propensity to space hoppers. These are quite different things, coming from quite different places. Open plan offices…

>is making people like Schumpeter feel under threat Schumpeter won't care, he's been dead 60+ years now. The Economist has a habit of naming their departments after famous people in the field to make a political statement. Schumpeter was kind of the anti-Marx and anti-Keynes of his era. Read into that what you may about the editorial board of the Economist. Somehow I don't think Fox is in any danger of having their "…

Thanks. I stand by case, addressed at the author not Schumpeter. But feel rather silly.

Re: The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

#49

Post by bane »

zhemao wrote: post #46
bane wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked in a variety layouts, I'd say the small team room setup is among the best. It's open layout within the team room, but the team gets their own room, sets their own culture etc. The lead for the team is the interface into the room. When the team is heads down on work it'll get quiet, and the room doubles as a conference room saving floor space. The only hard part is sizing the rooms and teams appropriatel…

Wait, why did people stop checking email? I don't see how that relates to the open plan office. I've worked in open-plan offices and team rooms before, and people were generally pretty responsive on email and IM.

Like I said, it can backfire in weird ways. I think it happened because the silence rule made people stop verbal communications, which is the most natural thing in an open office, and it never switched to using email because well...it seems weird to email somebody who's right there. So email clients stayed closed and the communications culture just generally shut down.

Re: The backlash against running firms like progressive schools has begun

#50

Post by andrewflnr »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #34
andrewflnr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you describe in more detail what went wrong with the mix of offices and open-plan? That always seemed to me like the obvious compromise: an office for when you want to get away, and shared open space when you want to work together. Were the problems fixable without going fully open-plan? For me, headphones would help but wouldn't be enough. I hate having people moving around behind me. I could have my back to a w…

I wasn't there so I'm not comfortable relating the specifics, his comments about it indicated that people who had offices sort of disconnected from the rest of the population. Can you say more about the challenges of people moving behind you? I felt similarly but it had more to do with whether or not people would correctly interpret what I was doing / not doing. So for example I'll read something from a different sub…

My dislike of people moving behind me stems more from instincts related to physical security than fear of people seeing what's on my screen (though that's there too). Rationally, I know I'm as safe at work as anywhere, but then I try not to take security for granted anywhere else either. I'm not sure if I'm paranoid or everyone else is too optimistic. It's not a huge issue. At one internship my back was to a minor thoroughfare and I managed to be productive; it was just a minor discomfort.

If some people had offices and others didn't, I can totally see how that would cause issues. In my ideal scenario everyone has some hidey-hole, at least. Do you think that would work better, as long as there are other ways they are encouraged to communicate?

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