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High-performance employees need quieter work spaces

151 points by fn 10y ago

w_t_payne 10y ago
Why do we think that we need only one kind of workspace that meets all of our criteria? Can't we have an office with a variety of different workspaces that we can move between as our needs change?
- iamdave 10y ago
  Can't we have an office with a variety of different workspaces that we can move between as our needs change? This would require companies to invest in their people beyond "Here's your paycheck, here's your healthcare, be glad we're giving you this much". Granted, some companies do-and some probably do come with a variety of workspaces. I used to work at one, but I don't know how many people would answer in the affirmative if polled how commonplace they expect that sort of workplace to be.
  - robalfonso 10y ago
    For a long time people could spend their whole career at one company - now not so much, do you think we may be swinging back to that? From a business perspective its better to keep your high performers as long as you can - pay them what they are worth since someone else will any ways.
    - madengr 10y ago
      I've been at the same place for 21 years, though each year I swear I'm going to quit. I could be here another 21 until I'm 67.
  - madengr 10y ago
    Healthcare? Hell, we just had our dental insurance dropped. Healthcare is now a $10k OOPM at rates 3x what they were 10 years ago. The open office plan could work with tall, fabric cubicles. My place now uses short, glass & aluminum ones. Not to mention people chit chat too much. I'm an EE and have to think about complex stuff; I can't think with the chit-chat; breaks my squelch. Fortunately I have a lab I can retreat to. Thinking about moving in there permanently.
    - ConceptJunkie 10y ago
      Those fabric cubicles absorb a lot of sound. I miss them.
      - noir_lord 10y ago
        Cubicles where original marketed as "Action Offices" there is a book on the history of them called Cubed: A secret history of the workplace. The creator of them came to regret his creation as they where subverted in a direction he never expected. I've often wondered what a modern cubicle if designed today would look like, we've done wonders in computer modeling and such since even sound dampening designs would be much easier.
        iamdave 10y ago
        A desk with a single wall in the front, behind where your displays would sit, and a frosted glass pane demarcating rows. "We're not an open design", but you don't exactly have anything remotely resembling a private workspace either.
        Arizhel 10y ago
        I used to have a private cubicle, around 2000-2004. I didn't like it too much at the time. I really miss it now. Life was better back then.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Same reason companies only hire 10X employees. It is spelled n.a.r.r.o.w.m.i.n.d.e.d.n.e.s.s.
- endorphone 10y ago
  I would argue that changing your work environment constantly is a key ingredient on maintaining an energy level- https://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2017/03/20/mindful-software-development/ https://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2017/03/20/mindful-softwar... -supporting exactly what you are saying. This notion that we each have a static workspace seems archaic, and an ideal world is one where people work in varied situations according to need: Sometimes privacy and quiet is ideal, and sometimes noise and chaos is invigorating. As much as the private office/anti-open plan thing appears on here, it's amazing how often tech workers love working in cafes, libraries, or accelerators that are like open plan offices to a few magnitudes.
jldugger 10y ago
> We need to understand high-performance employees based on what they are tasked with and their core principles, not how much they produce, or even worse on standardized personality traits. So high performance employees are whoever thinks they're important enough to be one?
- collyw 10y ago
  I am assuming it isn't people stacking shelves in a supermarket.
  - lawless123 10y ago
    I miss that, i worked evenings when the recession had just hit. plenty of room to think while you stack shelves on autopilot.
realharo 10y ago
The source for the claim in the title is: >My latest anonymous survey shows that 58% of HPEs need more private spaces for problem solving, and 54% of HPEs find their office environment “too distracting.” Seems kinda weak.
robalfonso 10y ago
Not much discussion of the anonymous survey - are these "High Performing Employees" Self selecting? My gut says quiet spaces are a boon to productivity - but why not prove it instead of a research methodology with holes so large I could drive a truck through them.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  > Self selecting? Yes, probably. http://bit.ly/high-performance-survey http://bit.ly/high-performance-survey Though some of those questions might be input as weights/qualifying factors in the results.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  Who's going to pay for the research to prove your idea that quiet spaces improve productivity? Especially when all the current consultants are hyping open-offices, which aligns nicely with managers/executives who want to save money on floor space and cubicle furniture so they can get bigger bonuses?
solaris_7 10y ago
The obsession for open plan offices continues to amaze me. Companies that invest huge amounts in staffing and other strategic programmes don't seem to spend much time challenging the default suggestion that 'openness = collaboration'. This article mentions high performance employees - but most knowledge workers (designers, programmers etc.) that I know all struggle with open plan office environments irrespective of their performance level. If anything, an open plan office is maybe less worrisome to the more executive people I know - their core work processes of communication & meetings are less negatively impacted by the inability to regularly get large blocks of quiet productive space. Some companies obviously get this need (e.g. FogCreek) but it really feels like sugar consumption or smoking. Once people really interrogate the status quo they are quick to realise how negative it is - but despite this the sub-optimal default approach has an unbelievable amount of momentum. My condolences to all the 'high performance people' surveyed who are desperately wishing for less disturbed work spaces!
- organsnyder 10y ago
  The collaborative nature of my open office environment helps me to generate tons of great ideas that I'll never have the focus to implement.
  - taurath 10y ago
    Why don't you just stay late or come in early, don't you care about the company?!!
    - arca_vorago 10y ago
      You sound like my old boss. I'm a combat vet, and he said to me, before memorial day, "What's a holiday? I don't take holidays. I'm here all the time.." Pissed me off. Dude is the CEO and partial owner, so it's completely different. If they want to pretend to be Elon Musk and want me to as well, they better at least pay like it to justify the lack of work/life balance. I am a human being whose existence is entirely indepedent of whatever job I currently have. Crazy thought, I know. I am only a bit salty because having consulted across a wide array of industries and been the miracle worker one man show in some of them, I have seen it everywhere. Oh, and back on subject, of course at this place I was shoved into an open office with the devs...
codemac 10y ago
I get page not found?
- Artemis2 10y ago
  Not sure why, here is the original post: https://hackernoon.com/58-of-high-performance-employees-say-they-need-more-quiet-work-spaces-4381241a6453 https://hackernoon.com/58-of-high-performance-employees-say-...
- rogov 10y ago
  The link now shows "This article was published inadvertantly"
  - jey 10y ago
    I like the new version better. Now it sounds like a QZ staff writer who's disgruntled about their noisy open office.
binaryzeitgeist 10y ago
No Shit, Sherlock !
pklausler 10y ago
I guess that I fall into this characterization. Over my 36-year career, I've sat in solo offices with doors, shared offices, cubicles with progressively shorter walls, and wall-less high-density desk arrays. I've easily been twice as productive with a door as I am in a noisy environment -- all the other arrangements suck if there is even one inconsiderate human in the space making a phone call, moving a pound of mucus from one sinus cavity to another, playing desk bongos along with their headphones, or any of the thousand other ways that normal humans can be distracting. Good headphones help, if only to take control over my own distraction, but honestly this is a management problem. If you want me to be extremely productive, and my productivity is a function of my ability to concentrate, then please just allow me to concentrate.
- ConceptJunkie 10y ago
  My career sounds similar to yours, just not quite as long, and as someone who's been introduced to an "open office" just this week (and we're not talking low-walled cubicles, but no-walled desks) I hate it, and it's definitely affecting my productivity. Maybe I'll get used to it, but the only improvement I can see is that other teams we work closely with are nearby... but this has nothing to do with an open office and everything to do with the arrangement of teams relative to each other. I've been hiding in the machine room. I may find myself doing that a lot more.
- adrianggg 10y ago
  I do wonder why I have to purchase good headphones and wear them to combat this problem? What are the long term impacts of wearing headphones? bacteria growth and hearing loss? Can't be good for my health long term. Flow is a state of concentration, breaking flow take a longtime to get back in, shouting questions across the room is a context switch and not an asynchronous choice for me if I'm in the middle of something important. The one inconsiderate person is the worst. The person unaware that their constant sniffing of mucus is awful. Usually the least intelligent person in the office IMO. Usually the loudest and most obnoxious member of every team I've worked for seems to have the most production problems....coincidence?
  - deleted 10y ago
drcongo 10y ago
I find it very odd that these articles make the front page of HN on an almost daily basis. I'm currently working at home with twin toddlers with chicken pox playing at full volume, yet I'm having little trouble concentrating. Why do techs seem to obsess over this so much?
- lwlml 10y ago
  That's because you live with your twin toddlers nearly 24/7, the "activation" of distraction is much different than in an office when any noise might be something you need to pay attention to. When it is just your two toddlers' the distraction threshold is much lower-- after all, isn't the sound of your own children playing a pleasing sound? You're only having to filter for "Is that sound going to require a trip to the first aid kit or more?" This is much different than the office environment. Imagine: Someone's else half-duplex conversation with their significant other about what colors to paint the bathroom this weekend or how much fun a guy had at the bar with the girls from the other division or the hen-pecked husband accepting orders for what to bring home from the Pret-a-manger don't even come close. Then there are the custom ring tones and chatter from random cell phones, the rustling of strangers between the cubicles as new employees are given the tour. A random maintenance person wanders around holding a ceiling tile and pack of fluorescent bulbs knocking the step ladder about having another half-duplex conversation about last night's sporting event. Your kid's "play" don't even come close to this, because you're not working in the traditional office environment, you're working at home.
- imauld 10y ago
  There are other factors besides just volume. I find it easier to concentrate in a cafe than I do in the office and it's not exactly quiet in the average coffee shop. What people are talking about around you also has an impact. The conversations in a cafe for example just seem to blend together and become a sort of white noise. The discussions in the office however are sometimes related to what I'm working on. So hearing bits and pieces of them stands out in my mind and can get me thinking about that instead. People in cafes are also very unlikely to come up and tap me on the shoulder and start asking questions about completely unrelated topics. YMMV of course and some people concentrate just fine in loud places. On the other hand the people that say "I don't mind the open office plan, it doesn't bother me" might just be the people who are disrupting everyone else.
watmough 10y ago
There's no mention of the bare fact that: * Cubicles are 'furniture' and therefore receive advantageous tax treatment (accelerated depreciation, increasing profits), * Walls, not so much.
- ghostly_s 10y ago
  Sure, but there's no reason you can't use this approach to create fully private spaces. In fact, most of the cube manufacturers have a fully-enclosed product line, also. [0] Of course, twice the wall height will always ~= twice the price. 0. https://www.steelcase.com/products/walls-work-walls/privacy-wall/ https://www.steelcase.com/products/walls-work-walls/privacy-...
- ww520 10y ago
  Just build floor to ceiling thick walled cubicle, getting the benefits of both sides.
  - lloyd-christmas 10y ago
    And then you're in a dungeon with no natural sunlight. Glass helps, but it still feels like a prison.
throwaywgsid 10y ago
The most obvious and effective sounding way to divide offices is per-team. That way groups of people working on the same thing can talk easily. My current company has every dev and most managers in the same room. 7 scrum teams, over 60 people in one room. It's madness and I can't fucking stand the noise. You get written up for talking "excessively" during work hours because 3/4 the company can hear you when you try to collaborate. Peer programming is impossible. I have no idea why idiotic management consultants are promoting whats basically a sweatshop environment. The stupidest part of this is that my company just cut the walls down to a few feet. You can clearly see that the dividers between each team used to be full height walls. What a tragedy
- iamacynic 10y ago
  uh well, you still work there don't you? that's why. because it's cheaper and you still need the paycheck.
  - Balgair 10y ago
    Literally, the entire thread in a nutshell. Bravo.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    Username checks out.
- greedo 10y ago
  I work in a team of 12. The idea of having all of us in one room would result in several homicides. Even with cubicle walls, in the past, homicide has been a course of action contemplated by most of the team. This idea the groups need to be able to talk easily is just idiotic. We're not in kindergarten sharing what our cats did or why the sky is blue, we're professionals working on complex tasks. Written communication is abundant, whether it's chat/slack/irc/email/remedyforce etc. If anything, we're drowning in communication. Comprehension is the issue. So screw working side by side in pair programming, or such crap. It's all a part of companies that view employees as a cost center, or a "resource" to be managed, like you would a herd of cattle.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Imagine how many more "high-performance"[0] employees you'd have if it were quiet. [0] Really? That's what they're called now? Also: "This article was published inadvertently."
oxryly1 10y ago
Article has been removed. The original source (https://hackernoon.com/58-of-high-performance-employees-say-they-need-more-quiet-work-spaces-4381241a6453 https://hackernoon.com/58-of-high-performance-employees-say-...) appears to be a PR piece.
- ucaetano 10y ago
  From the original one: "→ Are you a high-performance employee? Please help me better understand you by contributing to a 30-second anonymous survey. Thank you! http://bit.ly/high-performance-survey http://bit.ly/high-performance-survey ←" This can only be a joke...
nsxwolf 10y ago
I made the mistake of thinking "open plan" meant low-walled cubes. Because I've been working longer than this fad existed. I think we had even used the term back then. I didn't get why people were suddenly whining about them. Then I saw a real "open plan" office. Holy shit. Why aren't workers violently revolting?
- st3v3r 10y ago
  Because workers have seen their rights and their station in life vastly eroded over the past 30-40 years.
  - nsxwolf 10y ago
    But seriously, if I ran a company and set up the office that way, and a bunch of people came up to me and said "Hey man, this office layout is bullshit", I'd say OK and get on the phone and order some cubes. It really shouldn't be a big deal.
    - WorldMaker 10y ago
      But you spent a lot of money last year on consultants that hyped you up on the creative and innovative energy that open plans bring and your CFO made a nice spreadsheet on how much you save on office furniture versus the cost of a new yacht. Who are you going to believe, your sunk cost friends or your ongoing cost employees that should be much more grateful to even have a job in this economy?~
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      Cubicles take up more space per employee than a typical open office plan. You won't be able to fit the cubes in there. Also, cubicle furniture is extremely expensive, so your manager or the company executives will not look kindly at this purchase request. Expect a poor review.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- 10y ago
kafkaesq 10y ago
Rubbish. It is exactly through their ability to "soldier on" in spite of intense and sometimes challenging surroundings that high-performing employees distinguish themselves as such. And on top of this, remember that the other way your best performers distinguish themselves is in the fact that they most definitely are not complainers. So if any of your employees start yapping about your proposed move to an open plan environment (or even have the temerity to suggest that if you are going to have an open plan environment, people at least "try to keep down their voice down a bit"), then congratulations -- you've just identified an employee that's definitely not right for your organization, and will likely because more trouble and distraction for your team down the road -- for as long as you keep them on board, that is.† † Of course I'm being facetious. But this but a slightly cheeky paraphrase of the exact logic I've actually had used on me, to my face, to justify not just the hyperdense, pack-em-in-like-it's-veal-slaughtering-pen office plans which are apparently a peak popularity, these days -- but a whole range of obnoxious environmental factors --- e.g. loud TVs, loud muzack (or any TV or muzack in "the pen", for that matter); or just loud, gratuitously chatty co-workers -- in plenty of environments I've had the misfortune of being stuck in. Until I realized I just wasn't "a fit" for these places, that is.
- aezell 10y ago
  You got me. I was reading and thinking, "This person just couldn't be more wrong." Nicely done.
- oxryly1 10y ago
  Yet another of the many ways a company will say "shut up and make me a shit-ton of money" without really realizing it... although sometimes they do realize it. They also like to say "don't force me to actually manage people and projects properly... I don't know how."
superioritycplx 10y ago
Diversity, mixing departments in the name of collaboration are all at fault here. Walls just make things better.
mathogre 10y ago
I work an odd schedule that includes 10 hours on Saturday. I could work from home on Saturday, but almost always work from the office as I've got the place to myself (bad weather notwithstanding). It means driving 30 minutes each way, as well as everything else with going out to work. The peace and quiet is priceless as I've got an essentially empty 6 floor building all to myself. Security passes by once or twice during the day. Generally there are no phone calls, no meetings, no messages, no one stopping by to interrupt me. I can go on a think walk and - get this - think. If instead I work from home on Saturday, I am interrupted each time I leave my "cave" to get a coffee. Sometimes it's my daughter, sometimes my wife. The phone will invariably ring and will either be a spam call or a call for one of them. There is no opportunity for a think walk.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  >The phone will invariably ring and will either be a spam call or a call for one of them. Simple solution: get rid of the phone. Why do you have it anyway? I haven't had a landline phone for probably 10 years now, and I was a little late to that party. This line of yours looks like something out of the 1990s: a phone call for someone else? How quaint! Do these people not have their own phones?
madphrodite 10y ago
One open plan work environment story. One and only. Lasted three months there. Noisy, smelly (kitchen nearby), and the head counters would come by every couple hours to see who was at their seat and who wasn't. You don't have to be uber employee to fail to appreciate the master plan and want out of this type of thing.
NamTaf 10y ago
My current office has 475mm high dividers. Next year they plan to relocate us to the 'workplace of the future' with barriers that in some instances are sub-300mm. They have 3 setups - a 4x desk each getting a 90 degree partition, a 3x each getting 120 and a 6x flat rectangular thing with no dividers. We will all be expected to hotdesk (what happens to my desktop workstation is anyone's guess?) and will get a single ultra-widescreen attached to a laptop dock (bye productivity gains from 2 monitors). Each of the configurations has less overall desk real estate which is going to be fun when we have to roll out A0 drawings. I already get constantly distracted and find it hard to work. I'm placed next to a corridor just near where one of 3 entryways from the foyer into the office area is. Previously, I was next to 1 of 2 printers, at a junction to a hallway holding the toilets, which doubled as a spot for people to strike up conversation. I rarely get any extended periods of focus here which is infurating when my job is structural analysis, maths, etc. We are currently given a grand total of 8 meeting rooms per floor (200+ people), most of which are permanently tied up with meetings so you can't even use them for private workspaces. This is something they claim they'll fix in the new office but in reality you will be lucky to get one. The new place sounds and looks (when I checked out their examples of the desks) like it's going to be a nightmare even worse than this. At least here I can sort of sink into my seat and fall below the dividers, and at least I also get my own space as a desk that I can customise to suit my own needs/ergonomics/etc. and have it feel like it's my own space where I have some miniscule hope of focusing. I'm already polishing my CV in anticipation of bailing because of it.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  >My current office has 475mm high dividers. Next year they plan to relocate us to the 'workplace of the future' with barriers that in some instances are sub-300mm. >I'm already polishing my CV in anticipation of bailing because of it. Crap, it looks like this infection has spread to Europe too. :-( I really wish Europe would stop copying all the stupidest ideas and trends from America.
  - NamTaf 10y ago
    Don't worry, I'm in Australia. Also not sure how my original post got downvoted since it's just recollecting my opinions on open-plan offices. Maybe the Open Plan Cabal hates me speaking ill of their utopia. Go figure.

151 points by fn 10y ago

Why do we think that we need only one kind of workspace that meets all of our criteria? Can't we have an office with a variety of different workspaces that we can move between as our needs change?

iamdave 10y ago
Can't we have an office with a variety of different workspaces that we can move between as our needs change? This would require companies to invest in their people beyond "Here's your paycheck, here's your healthcare, be glad we're giving you this much". Granted, some companies do-and some probably do come with a variety of workspaces. I used to work at one, but I don't know how many people would answer in the affirmative if polled how commonplace they expect that sort of workplace to be.
- robalfonso 10y ago
  For a long time people could spend their whole career at one company - now not so much, do you think we may be swinging back to that? From a business perspective its better to keep your high performers as long as you can - pay them what they are worth since someone else will any ways.
  - madengr 10y ago
    I've been at the same place for 21 years, though each year I swear I'm going to quit. I could be here another 21 until I'm 67.
- madengr 10y ago
  Healthcare? Hell, we just had our dental insurance dropped. Healthcare is now a $10k OOPM at rates 3x what they were 10 years ago. The open office plan could work with tall, fabric cubicles. My place now uses short, glass & aluminum ones. Not to mention people chit chat too much. I'm an EE and have to think about complex stuff; I can't think with the chit-chat; breaks my squelch. Fortunately I have a lab I can retreat to. Thinking about moving in there permanently.
  - ConceptJunkie 10y ago
    Those fabric cubicles absorb a lot of sound. I miss them.
    - noir_lord 10y ago
      Cubicles where original marketed as "Action Offices" there is a book on the history of them called Cubed: A secret history of the workplace. The creator of them came to regret his creation as they where subverted in a direction he never expected. I've often wondered what a modern cubicle if designed today would look like, we've done wonders in computer modeling and such since even sound dampening designs would be much easier.
      - iamdave 10y ago
        A desk with a single wall in the front, behind where your displays would sit, and a frosted glass pane demarcating rows. "We're not an open design", but you don't exactly have anything remotely resembling a private workspace either.
      - Arizhel 10y ago
        I used to have a private cubicle, around 2000-2004. I didn't like it too much at the time. I really miss it now. Life was better back then.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Same reason companies only hire 10X employees. It is spelled n.a.r.r.o.w.m.i.n.d.e.d.n.e.s.s.
endorphone 10y ago
I would argue that changing your work environment constantly is a key ingredient on maintaining an energy level- https://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2017/03/20/mindful-software-development/ https://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2017/03/20/mindful-softwar... -supporting exactly what you are saying. This notion that we each have a static workspace seems archaic, and an ideal world is one where people work in varied situations according to need: Sometimes privacy and quiet is ideal, and sometimes noise and chaos is invigorating. As much as the private office/anti-open plan thing appears on here, it's amazing how often tech workers love working in cafes, libraries, or accelerators that are like open plan offices to a few magnitudes.

jldugger 10y ago

> We need to understand high-performance employees based on what they are tasked with and their core principles, not how much they produce, or even worse on standardized personality traits. So high performance employees are whoever thinks they're important enough to be one?

collyw 10y ago
I am assuming it isn't people stacking shelves in a supermarket.
- lawless123 10y ago
  I miss that, i worked evenings when the recession had just hit. plenty of room to think while you stack shelves on autopilot.

realharo 10y ago

The source for the claim in the title is: >My latest anonymous survey shows that 58% of HPEs need more private spaces for problem solving, and 54% of HPEs find their office environment “too distracting.” Seems kinda weak.

robalfonso 10y ago

Not much discussion of the anonymous survey - are these "High Performing Employees" Self selecting? My gut says quiet spaces are a boon to productivity - but why not prove it instead of a research methodology with holes so large I could drive a truck through them.

wyldfire 10y ago
> Self selecting? Yes, probably. http://bit.ly/high-performance-survey http://bit.ly/high-performance-survey Though some of those questions might be input as weights/qualifying factors in the results.
Arizhel 10y ago
Who's going to pay for the research to prove your idea that quiet spaces improve productivity? Especially when all the current consultants are hyping open-offices, which aligns nicely with managers/executives who want to save money on floor space and cubicle furniture so they can get bigger bonuses?

solaris_7 10y ago

The obsession for open plan offices continues to amaze me. Companies that invest huge amounts in staffing and other strategic programmes don't seem to spend much time challenging the default suggestion that 'openness = collaboration'. This article mentions high performance employees - but most knowledge workers (designers, programmers etc.) that I know all struggle with open plan office environments irrespective of their performance level. If anything, an open plan office is maybe less worrisome to the more executive people I know - their core work processes of communication & meetings are less negatively impacted by the inability to regularly get large blocks of quiet productive space. Some companies obviously get this need (e.g. FogCreek) but it really feels like sugar consumption or smoking. Once people really interrogate the status quo they are quick to realise how negative it is - but despite this the sub-optimal default approach has an unbelievable amount of momentum. My condolences to all the 'high performance people' surveyed who are desperately wishing for less disturbed work spaces!

organsnyder 10y ago
The collaborative nature of my open office environment helps me to generate tons of great ideas that I'll never have the focus to implement.
- taurath 10y ago
  Why don't you just stay late or come in early, don't you care about the company?!!
  - arca_vorago 10y ago
    You sound like my old boss. I'm a combat vet, and he said to me, before memorial day, "What's a holiday? I don't take holidays. I'm here all the time.." Pissed me off. Dude is the CEO and partial owner, so it's completely different. If they want to pretend to be Elon Musk and want me to as well, they better at least pay like it to justify the lack of work/life balance. I am a human being whose existence is entirely indepedent of whatever job I currently have. Crazy thought, I know. I am only a bit salty because having consulted across a wide array of industries and been the miracle worker one man show in some of them, I have seen it everywhere. Oh, and back on subject, of course at this place I was shoved into an open office with the devs...

codemac 10y ago

I get page not found?

Artemis2 10y ago
Not sure why, here is the original post: https://hackernoon.com/58-of-high-performance-employees-say-they-need-more-quiet-work-spaces-4381241a6453 https://hackernoon.com/58-of-high-performance-employees-say-...
rogov 10y ago
The link now shows "This article was published inadvertantly"
- jey 10y ago
  I like the new version better. Now it sounds like a QZ staff writer who's disgruntled about their noisy open office.

binaryzeitgeist 10y ago

No Shit, Sherlock !

pklausler 10y ago

I guess that I fall into this characterization. Over my 36-year career, I've sat in solo offices with doors, shared offices, cubicles with progressively shorter walls, and wall-less high-density desk arrays. I've easily been twice as productive with a door as I am in a noisy environment -- all the other arrangements suck if there is even one inconsiderate human in the space making a phone call, moving a pound of mucus from one sinus cavity to another, playing desk bongos along with their headphones, or any of the thousand other ways that normal humans can be distracting. Good headphones help, if only to take control over my own distraction, but honestly this is a management problem. If you want me to be extremely productive, and my productivity is a function of my ability to concentrate, then please just allow me to concentrate.

ConceptJunkie 10y ago
My career sounds similar to yours, just not quite as long, and as someone who's been introduced to an "open office" just this week (and we're not talking low-walled cubicles, but no-walled desks) I hate it, and it's definitely affecting my productivity. Maybe I'll get used to it, but the only improvement I can see is that other teams we work closely with are nearby... but this has nothing to do with an open office and everything to do with the arrangement of teams relative to each other. I've been hiding in the machine room. I may find myself doing that a lot more.
adrianggg 10y ago
I do wonder why I have to purchase good headphones and wear them to combat this problem? What are the long term impacts of wearing headphones? bacteria growth and hearing loss? Can't be good for my health long term. Flow is a state of concentration, breaking flow take a longtime to get back in, shouting questions across the room is a context switch and not an asynchronous choice for me if I'm in the middle of something important. The one inconsiderate person is the worst. The person unaware that their constant sniffing of mucus is awful. Usually the least intelligent person in the office IMO. Usually the loudest and most obnoxious member of every team I've worked for seems to have the most production problems....coincidence?
- deleted 10y ago

drcongo 10y ago

I find it very odd that these articles make the front page of HN on an almost daily basis. I'm currently working at home with twin toddlers with chicken pox playing at full volume, yet I'm having little trouble concentrating. Why do techs seem to obsess over this so much?

lwlml 10y ago
That's because you live with your twin toddlers nearly 24/7, the "activation" of distraction is much different than in an office when any noise might be something you need to pay attention to. When it is just your two toddlers' the distraction threshold is much lower-- after all, isn't the sound of your own children playing a pleasing sound? You're only having to filter for "Is that sound going to require a trip to the first aid kit or more?" This is much different than the office environment. Imagine: Someone's else half-duplex conversation with their significant other about what colors to paint the bathroom this weekend or how much fun a guy had at the bar with the girls from the other division or the hen-pecked husband accepting orders for what to bring home from the Pret-a-manger don't even come close. Then there are the custom ring tones and chatter from random cell phones, the rustling of strangers between the cubicles as new employees are given the tour. A random maintenance person wanders around holding a ceiling tile and pack of fluorescent bulbs knocking the step ladder about having another half-duplex conversation about last night's sporting event. Your kid's "play" don't even come close to this, because you're not working in the traditional office environment, you're working at home.
imauld 10y ago
There are other factors besides just volume. I find it easier to concentrate in a cafe than I do in the office and it's not exactly quiet in the average coffee shop. What people are talking about around you also has an impact. The conversations in a cafe for example just seem to blend together and become a sort of white noise. The discussions in the office however are sometimes related to what I'm working on. So hearing bits and pieces of them stands out in my mind and can get me thinking about that instead. People in cafes are also very unlikely to come up and tap me on the shoulder and start asking questions about completely unrelated topics. YMMV of course and some people concentrate just fine in loud places. On the other hand the people that say "I don't mind the open office plan, it doesn't bother me" might just be the people who are disrupting everyone else.

watmough 10y ago

There's no mention of the bare fact that: * Cubicles are 'furniture' and therefore receive advantageous tax treatment (accelerated depreciation, increasing profits), * Walls, not so much.

ghostly_s 10y ago
Sure, but there's no reason you can't use this approach to create fully private spaces. In fact, most of the cube manufacturers have a fully-enclosed product line, also. [0] Of course, twice the wall height will always ~= twice the price. 0. https://www.steelcase.com/products/walls-work-walls/privacy-wall/ https://www.steelcase.com/products/walls-work-walls/privacy-...
ww520 10y ago
Just build floor to ceiling thick walled cubicle, getting the benefits of both sides.
- lloyd-christmas 10y ago
  And then you're in a dungeon with no natural sunlight. Glass helps, but it still feels like a prison.

throwaywgsid 10y ago

The most obvious and effective sounding way to divide offices is per-team. That way groups of people working on the same thing can talk easily. My current company has every dev and most managers in the same room. 7 scrum teams, over 60 people in one room. It's madness and I can't fucking stand the noise. You get written up for talking "excessively" during work hours because 3/4 the company can hear you when you try to collaborate. Peer programming is impossible. I have no idea why idiotic management consultants are promoting whats basically a sweatshop environment. The stupidest part of this is that my company just cut the walls down to a few feet. You can clearly see that the dividers between each team used to be full height walls. What a tragedy

iamacynic 10y ago
uh well, you still work there don't you? that's why. because it's cheaper and you still need the paycheck.
- Balgair 10y ago
  Literally, the entire thread in a nutshell. Bravo.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  Username checks out.
greedo 10y ago
I work in a team of 12. The idea of having all of us in one room would result in several homicides. Even with cubicle walls, in the past, homicide has been a course of action contemplated by most of the team. This idea the groups need to be able to talk easily is just idiotic. We're not in kindergarten sharing what our cats did or why the sky is blue, we're professionals working on complex tasks. Written communication is abundant, whether it's chat/slack/irc/email/remedyforce etc. If anything, we're drowning in communication. Comprehension is the issue. So screw working side by side in pair programming, or such crap. It's all a part of companies that view employees as a cost center, or a "resource" to be managed, like you would a herd of cattle.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

Imagine how many more "high-performance"[0] employees you'd have if it were quiet. [0] Really? That's what they're called now? Also: "This article was published inadvertently."

oxryly1 10y ago

Article has been removed. The original source (https://hackernoon.com/58-of-high-performance-employees-say-they-need-more-quiet-work-spaces-4381241a6453 https://hackernoon.com/58-of-high-performance-employees-say-...) appears to be a PR piece.

ucaetano 10y ago
From the original one: "→ Are you a high-performance employee? Please help me better understand you by contributing to a 30-second anonymous survey. Thank you! http://bit.ly/high-performance-survey http://bit.ly/high-performance-survey ←" This can only be a joke...

nsxwolf 10y ago

I made the mistake of thinking "open plan" meant low-walled cubes. Because I've been working longer than this fad existed. I think we had even used the term back then. I didn't get why people were suddenly whining about them. Then I saw a real "open plan" office. Holy shit. Why aren't workers violently revolting?

st3v3r 10y ago
Because workers have seen their rights and their station in life vastly eroded over the past 30-40 years.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  But seriously, if I ran a company and set up the office that way, and a bunch of people came up to me and said "Hey man, this office layout is bullshit", I'd say OK and get on the phone and order some cubes. It really shouldn't be a big deal.
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    But you spent a lot of money last year on consultants that hyped you up on the creative and innovative energy that open plans bring and your CFO made a nice spreadsheet on how much you save on office furniture versus the cost of a new yacht. Who are you going to believe, your sunk cost friends or your ongoing cost employees that should be much more grateful to even have a job in this economy?~
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    Cubicles take up more space per employee than a typical open office plan. You won't be able to fit the cubes in there. Also, cubicle furniture is extremely expensive, so your manager or the company executives will not look kindly at this purchase request. Expect a poor review.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
10y ago

kafkaesq 10y ago

Rubbish. It is exactly through their ability to "soldier on" in spite of intense and sometimes challenging surroundings that high-performing employees distinguish themselves as such. And on top of this, remember that the other way your best performers distinguish themselves is in the fact that they most definitely are not complainers. So if any of your employees start yapping about your proposed move to an open plan environment (or even have the temerity to suggest that if you are going to have an open plan environment, people at least "try to keep down their voice down a bit"), then congratulations -- you've just identified an employee that's definitely not right for your organization, and will likely because more trouble and distraction for your team down the road -- for as long as you keep them on board, that is.† † Of course I'm being facetious. But this but a slightly cheeky paraphrase of the exact logic I've actually had used on me, to my face, to justify not just the hyperdense, pack-em-in-like-it's-veal-slaughtering-pen office plans which are apparently a peak popularity, these days -- but a whole range of obnoxious environmental factors --- e.g. loud TVs, loud muzack (or any TV or muzack in "the pen", for that matter); or just loud, gratuitously chatty co-workers -- in plenty of environments I've had the misfortune of being stuck in. Until I realized I just wasn't "a fit" for these places, that is.

aezell 10y ago
You got me. I was reading and thinking, "This person just couldn't be more wrong." Nicely done.
oxryly1 10y ago
Yet another of the many ways a company will say "shut up and make me a shit-ton of money" without really realizing it... although sometimes they do realize it. They also like to say "don't force me to actually manage people and projects properly... I don't know how."

superioritycplx 10y ago

Diversity, mixing departments in the name of collaboration are all at fault here. Walls just make things better.

mathogre 10y ago

I work an odd schedule that includes 10 hours on Saturday. I could work from home on Saturday, but almost always work from the office as I've got the place to myself (bad weather notwithstanding). It means driving 30 minutes each way, as well as everything else with going out to work. The peace and quiet is priceless as I've got an essentially empty 6 floor building all to myself. Security passes by once or twice during the day. Generally there are no phone calls, no meetings, no messages, no one stopping by to interrupt me. I can go on a think walk and - get this - think. If instead I work from home on Saturday, I am interrupted each time I leave my "cave" to get a coffee. Sometimes it's my daughter, sometimes my wife. The phone will invariably ring and will either be a spam call or a call for one of them. There is no opportunity for a think walk.

Arizhel 10y ago
>The phone will invariably ring and will either be a spam call or a call for one of them. Simple solution: get rid of the phone. Why do you have it anyway? I haven't had a landline phone for probably 10 years now, and I was a little late to that party. This line of yours looks like something out of the 1990s: a phone call for someone else? How quaint! Do these people not have their own phones?

madphrodite 10y ago

One open plan work environment story. One and only. Lasted three months there. Noisy, smelly (kitchen nearby), and the head counters would come by every couple hours to see who was at their seat and who wasn't. You don't have to be uber employee to fail to appreciate the master plan and want out of this type of thing.

NamTaf 10y ago

My current office has 475mm high dividers. Next year they plan to relocate us to the 'workplace of the future' with barriers that in some instances are sub-300mm. They have 3 setups - a 4x desk each getting a 90 degree partition, a 3x each getting 120 and a 6x flat rectangular thing with no dividers. We will all be expected to hotdesk (what happens to my desktop workstation is anyone's guess?) and will get a single ultra-widescreen attached to a laptop dock (bye productivity gains from 2 monitors). Each of the configurations has less overall desk real estate which is going to be fun when we have to roll out A0 drawings. I already get constantly distracted and find it hard to work. I'm placed next to a corridor just near where one of 3 entryways from the foyer into the office area is. Previously, I was next to 1 of 2 printers, at a junction to a hallway holding the toilets, which doubled as a spot for people to strike up conversation. I rarely get any extended periods of focus here which is infurating when my job is structural analysis, maths, etc. We are currently given a grand total of 8 meeting rooms per floor (200+ people), most of which are permanently tied up with meetings so you can't even use them for private workspaces. This is something they claim they'll fix in the new office but in reality you will be lucky to get one. The new place sounds and looks (when I checked out their examples of the desks) like it's going to be a nightmare even worse than this. At least here I can sort of sink into my seat and fall below the dividers, and at least I also get my own space as a desk that I can customise to suit my own needs/ergonomics/etc. and have it feel like it's my own space where I have some miniscule hope of focusing. I'm already polishing my CV in anticipation of bailing because of it.

Arizhel 10y ago
>My current office has 475mm high dividers. Next year they plan to relocate us to the 'workplace of the future' with barriers that in some instances are sub-300mm. >I'm already polishing my CV in anticipation of bailing because of it. Crap, it looks like this infection has spread to Europe too. :-( I really wish Europe would stop copying all the stupidest ideas and trends from America.
- NamTaf 10y ago
  Don't worry, I'm in Australia. Also not sure how my original post got downvoted since it's just recollecting my opinions on open-plan offices. Maybe the Open Plan Cabal hates me speaking ill of their utopia. Go figure.