9 ms·

The problem with open office plans is that it takes just one noisy person to spoil it for everybody. If managed carefully and actively, they can work -- it jus

The problem with open office plans is that it takes just one noisy person to spoil it for everybody. If managed carefully and actively, they can work -- it just takes an manager willing to correct bad behavior or send sick people home. Where I work, I have a budding tupperware percussionist, three imminent victims of whooping cough, some parents managing high-maintenance offspring over cell phones, and one guy who conducts teleconferences with his desk phone. So I often sneak off to empty conference rooms with a laptop if I'm trying to concentrate.

pasbesoin 10y ago
It's often worse in that the noisy person hinders their coworkers, while no one hinders them -- particularly in a work culture that lauds "open" and discourages a limiting response on the part of others towards that person. Meanwhile, the quiet people are not keeping the noisy one from their work or working effectively if and when they choose to concentrate. Result? The noisy people "succeed". I consider it a cousin of bullying. And, it explains a lot about contemporary Western corporate culture -- to its detriment, in my opinion.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- developer2 10y ago
  Right, blame the worker who has no choice but to work surrounded by another 100 people. Don't blame the business who cut corners on structural costs. Open offices don't exist because it's "better" for anyone; they exist because businesses save millions of dollars in building costs, and conveniently label it as a "cultural" thing.
  - jpindar 10y ago
    Just because we're both forced to work in the same room doesn't mean my coworkers have no choice but to force me to listen to their political rants etc. If I complained, I'd be labeled as "antisocial". That IS bullying.
    - scottmf 10y ago
      How is it bullying any more than if you were to complain about him being too social? Your perceived antisociality could be almost as bothersome to him as his sociability is to you. I don't mean to dismiss your concern, and I can relate even, but workplaces are social environments and (apart from political rants which might border on offensive) I see no reason why you're a victim here.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - pasbesoin 10y ago
        I didn't call it bullying. I called it a "cousin" of bullying. And, for the record, I include in this work communication, not necessarily -- nor even primarily -- personal, "social" communication. The loud guy I remember who would stand up, raise his voice, and shout conversations across aisles of cubes. The "best practice" that shrunk our cubes to "corners", sitting almost shoulder to shoulder with 3 - 4 feet between us. People nonetheless holding hour long cube meetings and in-person screenshares and whatnot. Getting a project completed and passed by a coworker, to find multiple, obvious bugs within the first five minutes. Because that person had no depth of attention whatsoever. The best developers leaping at nascent work-from-home, because it was the one time they could really, consistently get stuff done. But challenge HR on any of this, and "best practice" and a mark on your own record. Asking a coworker, very politely and directly, if they could be a bit quieter -- in this case, in fact, when they were engaged in extensive, repeated personal communication of a non-urgent nature (talking with friends, on the phone and in cube visits, sometimes for 2 - 3 hours, day after day) -- and having this come back to you as a formal complaint to and "correction" -- to you -- from HR for your having asked. Consistently, I observed the loud people "winning" by dint of being loud. Those top developers were more senior and from a time when the company was smaller and provide private offices. That was how the company attracted and held them, in the first place. They were "vested" in their careers and families and technical debt and, in this technologically conservative area, somewhat "trapped" in their current positions. Like a frog in the pot, new senior management and HR kept making things more miserable. If remote work hadn't come on the table when it did, I suspect they would have lost more of them in the near future. As it was, being senior, they were provide this opportunity and had the leverage to use to to escape what was becoming an untenable office environment. For those stuck at the office, it became a matter of working around "shouting guy", neighbors' cube meetings, and the like. A culture increasingly of interruption, distraction, and superficial attention.
6DM 10y ago
I feel your pain. One thing that used to really irk me was a manager (with an office) that would have loud speakerphone conversations with the door wide open... I used to use ear buds to block it out, but I don't recommend it. It actually does damage your hearing. I didn't figure that out for a while. Luckily my hearing has seemed to improve a bit. I highly recommend over the ear noise cancelling head phones. They get rid of the office A/C sounds, turn the volume down on voices and are less damaging.
- pzh 10y ago
  I'm curious... could you explain what you specifically meant by ear-buds being damaging to your hearing? Were you blasting the volume to drown out environment noise or were you talking about noise-canceling earphones? (I personally use noise-canceling earphones a lot, and the only bad thing I've heard is that they may cause vertigo in some people...)
  - 6DM 10y ago
    I was turning the volume up loud enough to drown out the loud conversations when using ear-buds. By damaging, I mean I was constantly asking people to repeat them selves because while I could hear them I couldn't distinguish their words. Not everyone was like that, just moderate to soft spoken people or those with deep voices. I didn't make the connection until I happened across one article about it, which I think was posted here. The only thing I don't like about noise-canceling headphones is that I can't just wear them without sound. It creates a kind of pressure on my ear drums that just feels weird to me.
    - zzalpha 10y ago
      In-ear headphones? All the benefits of passive noise cancellation without big hefty cans on your head. I switched to them mainly to protect my hearing (I tend to listen to music on the bus or on airplanes where there's a lot of ambient noise, and with open-air buds I had to crank the volume) but they're also a godsend in the workplace when I really need to focus (and I have a private office).
    - 10y ago
InclinedPlane 10y ago
> "If managed carefully and actively, they can work -- it just takes an manager willing to correct bad behavior or send sick people home." That's not a solution though, that just removes the entire benefit of the open office while also removing all the benefits of having individual offices. It's important to have places where people can socialize and collaborate, the major downside of open offices is that this has to happen in the same space where everyone else is trying to work, with obvious deleterious effects on productivity. The appropriate alternative is not to simply instill a library type atmosphere of deathly quiet, the alternative is to make it easier for people to choose whether they want to collaborate, socialize, or work, which is easiest when everyone has their own office.
speeder 10y ago
I have ADHD, meaning that open office is great to distract me... But also, one of the symptons of ADHD, with the "H" there, is that people must move, in my particular case one of the things I tend to do is tap my nails on the desk, use tupperware as drums, or if a actual musical instrument is nearby, even if I dunno how to play it, I play it. So, ADHD person in open office not only has terrible productivity due to other people disrupting, but also disrupts everyone else. To me this is terrible, since now that I know all this (and I've been fired multiple times), I've been trying, and failing, to find remote work.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  It's too bad people like you can't sue for millions because these stupid companies have such intolerable office environments. I can't think of anything else that's going to get these stupid companies to change their ways. Things used to be a lot better 15+ years ago, when we had cubicles. It wasn't a panacea (since you could still hear your neighbors), but the cube farms I've worked in were much quieter than these idiotic open-plan offices, and it was so much easier to concentrate.
  - compuguy 10y ago
    Those in some places are going away (cubicles) because of companies consolidating spaces to pack more people in.
  - Jaruzel 10y ago
    Here in the UK, they just skipped the cubicle stage altogether and cut from smaller offices to massive open-plan floors in one fell swoop about 20 years ago ... :(
- silencio 10y ago
  I have ADHD too. Have you looked into fidget toys? They dramatically cut down on my toe-tapping and fidgeting. Also the incidence of distracting fidgeting goes down when I'm at a good level of meds+therapy. I might also add that (this obviously depends on local laws but) you can see if there's any disability protections you can take advantage of. Where your company can work with you to help you work better, or at worst, at least, not fire you just over a disability.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
droopyEyelids 10y ago
If you have to outlaw default human behavior for a system to 'work' then it doesn't work
- closeparen 10y ago
  I dunno, university libraries work pretty well.
- wruza 10y ago
  Default human behavior is mating, dominating and searching for food.
  - draugadrotten 10y ago
    So, corporate christmas party, eh.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  I agree with you, but I don't understand which point you are making. Are you saying it is a default human behaviour to be the loud person or to be the quiet person? Loud people disrupt the quiet people, and quiet people can't work with loud people around. Either kind of behaviour makes the system not work.
prefect42 10y ago
Not to mention half the office on hissing, squeaky teleconferencing headsets with multiply-delayed echoes. And the folks who graze nonstop at work. Empty rooms are your friends. And Metallica when no rooms available, or some good construction hearing protectors, they don't kill all sounds, but deaden a fair amount.

pasbesoin 10y ago

It's often worse in that the noisy person hinders their coworkers, while no one hinders them -- particularly in a work culture that lauds "open" and discourages a limiting response on the part of others towards that person. Meanwhile, the quiet people are not keeping the noisy one from their work or working effectively if and when they choose to concentrate. Result? The noisy people "succeed". I consider it a cousin of bullying. And, it explains a lot about contemporary Western corporate culture -- to its detriment, in my opinion.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
developer2 10y ago
Right, blame the worker who has no choice but to work surrounded by another 100 people. Don't blame the business who cut corners on structural costs. Open offices don't exist because it's "better" for anyone; they exist because businesses save millions of dollars in building costs, and conveniently label it as a "cultural" thing.
- jpindar 10y ago
  Just because we're both forced to work in the same room doesn't mean my coworkers have no choice but to force me to listen to their political rants etc. If I complained, I'd be labeled as "antisocial". That IS bullying.
  - scottmf 10y ago
    How is it bullying any more than if you were to complain about him being too social? Your perceived antisociality could be almost as bothersome to him as his sociability is to you. I don't mean to dismiss your concern, and I can relate even, but workplaces are social environments and (apart from political rants which might border on offensive) I see no reason why you're a victim here.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - pasbesoin 10y ago
      I didn't call it bullying. I called it a "cousin" of bullying. And, for the record, I include in this work communication, not necessarily -- nor even primarily -- personal, "social" communication. The loud guy I remember who would stand up, raise his voice, and shout conversations across aisles of cubes. The "best practice" that shrunk our cubes to "corners", sitting almost shoulder to shoulder with 3 - 4 feet between us. People nonetheless holding hour long cube meetings and in-person screenshares and whatnot. Getting a project completed and passed by a coworker, to find multiple, obvious bugs within the first five minutes. Because that person had no depth of attention whatsoever. The best developers leaping at nascent work-from-home, because it was the one time they could really, consistently get stuff done. But challenge HR on any of this, and "best practice" and a mark on your own record. Asking a coworker, very politely and directly, if they could be a bit quieter -- in this case, in fact, when they were engaged in extensive, repeated personal communication of a non-urgent nature (talking with friends, on the phone and in cube visits, sometimes for 2 - 3 hours, day after day) -- and having this come back to you as a formal complaint to and "correction" -- to you -- from HR for your having asked. Consistently, I observed the loud people "winning" by dint of being loud. Those top developers were more senior and from a time when the company was smaller and provide private offices. That was how the company attracted and held them, in the first place. They were "vested" in their careers and families and technical debt and, in this technologically conservative area, somewhat "trapped" in their current positions. Like a frog in the pot, new senior management and HR kept making things more miserable. If remote work hadn't come on the table when it did, I suspect they would have lost more of them in the near future. As it was, being senior, they were provide this opportunity and had the leverage to use to to escape what was becoming an untenable office environment. For those stuck at the office, it became a matter of working around "shouting guy", neighbors' cube meetings, and the like. A culture increasingly of interruption, distraction, and superficial attention.

6DM 10y ago

I feel your pain. One thing that used to really irk me was a manager (with an office) that would have loud speakerphone conversations with the door wide open... I used to use ear buds to block it out, but I don't recommend it. It actually does damage your hearing. I didn't figure that out for a while. Luckily my hearing has seemed to improve a bit. I highly recommend over the ear noise cancelling head phones. They get rid of the office A/C sounds, turn the volume down on voices and are less damaging.

pzh 10y ago
I'm curious... could you explain what you specifically meant by ear-buds being damaging to your hearing? Were you blasting the volume to drown out environment noise or were you talking about noise-canceling earphones? (I personally use noise-canceling earphones a lot, and the only bad thing I've heard is that they may cause vertigo in some people...)
- 6DM 10y ago
  I was turning the volume up loud enough to drown out the loud conversations when using ear-buds. By damaging, I mean I was constantly asking people to repeat them selves because while I could hear them I couldn't distinguish their words. Not everyone was like that, just moderate to soft spoken people or those with deep voices. I didn't make the connection until I happened across one article about it, which I think was posted here. The only thing I don't like about noise-canceling headphones is that I can't just wear them without sound. It creates a kind of pressure on my ear drums that just feels weird to me.
  - zzalpha 10y ago
    In-ear headphones? All the benefits of passive noise cancellation without big hefty cans on your head. I switched to them mainly to protect my hearing (I tend to listen to music on the bus or on airplanes where there's a lot of ambient noise, and with open-air buds I had to crank the volume) but they're also a godsend in the workplace when I really need to focus (and I have a private office).
  - 10y ago

InclinedPlane 10y ago

> "If managed carefully and actively, they can work -- it just takes an manager willing to correct bad behavior or send sick people home." That's not a solution though, that just removes the entire benefit of the open office while also removing all the benefits of having individual offices. It's important to have places where people can socialize and collaborate, the major downside of open offices is that this has to happen in the same space where everyone else is trying to work, with obvious deleterious effects on productivity. The appropriate alternative is not to simply instill a library type atmosphere of deathly quiet, the alternative is to make it easier for people to choose whether they want to collaborate, socialize, or work, which is easiest when everyone has their own office.

speeder 10y ago

I have ADHD, meaning that open office is great to distract me... But also, one of the symptons of ADHD, with the "H" there, is that people must move, in my particular case one of the things I tend to do is tap my nails on the desk, use tupperware as drums, or if a actual musical instrument is nearby, even if I dunno how to play it, I play it. So, ADHD person in open office not only has terrible productivity due to other people disrupting, but also disrupts everyone else. To me this is terrible, since now that I know all this (and I've been fired multiple times), I've been trying, and failing, to find remote work.

Grishnakh 10y ago
It's too bad people like you can't sue for millions because these stupid companies have such intolerable office environments. I can't think of anything else that's going to get these stupid companies to change their ways. Things used to be a lot better 15+ years ago, when we had cubicles. It wasn't a panacea (since you could still hear your neighbors), but the cube farms I've worked in were much quieter than these idiotic open-plan offices, and it was so much easier to concentrate.
- compuguy 10y ago
  Those in some places are going away (cubicles) because of companies consolidating spaces to pack more people in.
- Jaruzel 10y ago
  Here in the UK, they just skipped the cubicle stage altogether and cut from smaller offices to massive open-plan floors in one fell swoop about 20 years ago ... :(
silencio 10y ago
I have ADHD too. Have you looked into fidget toys? They dramatically cut down on my toe-tapping and fidgeting. Also the incidence of distracting fidgeting goes down when I'm at a good level of meds+therapy. I might also add that (this obviously depends on local laws but) you can see if there's any disability protections you can take advantage of. Where your company can work with you to help you work better, or at worst, at least, not fire you just over a disability.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

droopyEyelids 10y ago

If you have to outlaw default human behavior for a system to 'work' then it doesn't work

closeparen 10y ago
I dunno, university libraries work pretty well.
wruza 10y ago
Default human behavior is mating, dominating and searching for food.
- draugadrotten 10y ago
  So, corporate christmas party, eh.
brokenmachine 10y ago
I agree with you, but I don't understand which point you are making. Are you saying it is a default human behaviour to be the loud person or to be the quiet person? Loud people disrupt the quiet people, and quiet people can't work with loud people around. Either kind of behaviour makes the system not work.

prefect42 10y ago

Not to mention half the office on hissing, squeaky teleconferencing headsets with multiply-delayed echoes. And the folks who graze nonstop at work. Empty rooms are your friends. And Metallica when no rooms available, or some good construction hearing protectors, they don't kill all sounds, but deaden a fair amount.