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I think what people miss most often is that this is NOT a "one solution fits all" kind of thing. For some office cultures one is better, and for some people on

I think what people miss most often is that this is NOT a "one solution fits all" kind of thing. For some office cultures one is better, and for some people one is better. I myself am very easily distracted, and I'm far more productive at home, where I have a private office set to my preferences, including sound (this sounds ridiculous, but my ear cartilage is sensitive, so I can't wear earbuds and over-the-ear headphones are only comfortable for an hour or two), light (most offices I've been in have had times of day when the sun causes painful glare), and lack of people moving around distracting me. And that doesn't even cover whether I have to listen to the conversations of dozens of people around me. I don't like being loud and distracting to other people, so WHEN I talk to co-workers in the office, it's either in a meeting room, or in clipped, hushed questions. I have one teammate that has a rather booming voice and no apparent concern for who hears him - I just decide not to ask him questions. Meanwhile, my current office has people in 3 states (2 neighboring time zones), so we have a culture of lots of business being conducted over slack or google hangouts. One of my coworkers and I have conducted a lot of business over slack...while sitting next to each other. In talking with others, I've discovered that some of us (including me) PREFER to conduct business over written media -it gives us something to consult later, and requires that people learn to not play the pronoun game. Others, perhaps because they either haven't figured out the pronoun game, or they really hate it, prefer face-to-face, which I've always found to have a poor signal-to-noise ratio. (They'd almost certainly disagree - you yourself said that "communication is faster and easier, less prone to misunderstandings, and I believe that's true for you despite each point being invalid in my experience). Every time I or others complain about open floor plans, someone (and it's usually just one or two) will talk about how nice it is to have face-to-face collaboration...and frankly, I just don't see that happening! In my last office, which was open floor plan but had no culture of resolving things online and our other locations were 12 hours offset, there was definitely more face-to-face collaboration - but we also had a lot more meetings (ugh), and IMNSHO very little got done, so I remain unconvinced that it actually is more efficient, I think it may just be more comfortable. From all of these anecdotes I have assembled my vision that for some office cultures, meetings are better, and for some people, meetings are better, but theses are hardly absolutes, and my personal bias is that it's a war between comfort level and actual efficiency.

dwc 10y ago
> I think what people miss most often is that this is NOT a "one solution fits all" kind of thing. Yes. There's a lot of hate for open offices, and I'm among the haters. But someone I have great respect for technically recently asked why, since they loved open office plans and that's what they currently used and it seemed perfect. Who's right? Both. Also, there's a wide range within any given solution. My current job has an open plan, but my teammates and I moved to the other side of the floor and the difference is like night and day. Everyone around us are heads down techies, and it's more than quiet enough. Before we moved we were near people who spent significant time on phones or in video conferences. And they were event driven, resulting in them having not very busy times where they'd all just sit and chat. So same company, same floor, same job, but a very different experience. Luckily we had the option to choose a location and move ourselves with very little hassle. Not everyone has that option.
apetresc 10y ago
I genuinely cannot figure out what "playing the pronoun game" means in this context.
- ergothus 10y ago
  Sorry - my bad for assuming the expression was commonly known. TL;DR: pronouns in a text exchange are easily confusing. In conversation, most people aren't actually understanding each sentence. Instead, we're mentally and subconsciously keeping a list of terms that we don't understand - usually pronouns - retroactively applying them as more clues come up to what they are. If you watch as an outsider to a short discussion between two people, you can usually see this in action. In text, with greater pauses between parts of the exchange (email) and/or out-of-sync replies (IRC/Slack/Hipchat/Discord), it becomes easier for a pronoun to remain unclear. Oddly, instead of saying "I don't know what 'it' is in that sentence" (because we're tracking subconsciously) we tend to just consider what they are saying as unclear in general and mentally skip over it. If you're communicating via text often, it pays to avoid most pronouns and bypass this sort of problem. Consider the first sentence of this post - had I said "my bad for assuming it was commonly known", you PROBABLY would have followed, because you had sent only one sentence. Had you sent three sentences, "it" would be less clear. Had you written at annoying length as I am, the word "it" would have been quite likely to be unclear. I'm sure you've had the experience where you send something like "Would it be better to do A? Or does it make more sense to do B?" and the person replies "Yes". Similar cause, though no actual pronoun, just an implied one. Take any email thread with management involved (because everyone top posts and doesn't trim) and you can usually find where people are talking past each other or repeating themselves because pronouns/subjects of sentences weren't clear to the other party. This post to the contrary, I've found that having SHORT posts but being explicit about subjects and direct objects greatly increases comprehension. I also tend to try and lead with what I need the person to do, or end with a single clear question or statement. Because communicating by text is a skill, not an automatic perfect ability.

dwc 10y ago

> I think what people miss most often is that this is NOT a "one solution fits all" kind of thing. Yes. There's a lot of hate for open offices, and I'm among the haters. But someone I have great respect for technically recently asked why, since they loved open office plans and that's what they currently used and it seemed perfect. Who's right? Both. Also, there's a wide range within any given solution. My current job has an open plan, but my teammates and I moved to the other side of the floor and the difference is like night and day. Everyone around us are heads down techies, and it's more than quiet enough. Before we moved we were near people who spent significant time on phones or in video conferences. And they were event driven, resulting in them having not very busy times where they'd all just sit and chat. So same company, same floor, same job, but a very different experience. Luckily we had the option to choose a location and move ourselves with very little hassle. Not everyone has that option.

apetresc 10y ago

I genuinely cannot figure out what "playing the pronoun game" means in this context.

ergothus 10y ago
Sorry - my bad for assuming the expression was commonly known. TL;DR: pronouns in a text exchange are easily confusing. In conversation, most people aren't actually understanding each sentence. Instead, we're mentally and subconsciously keeping a list of terms that we don't understand - usually pronouns - retroactively applying them as more clues come up to what they are. If you watch as an outsider to a short discussion between two people, you can usually see this in action. In text, with greater pauses between parts of the exchange (email) and/or out-of-sync replies (IRC/Slack/Hipchat/Discord), it becomes easier for a pronoun to remain unclear. Oddly, instead of saying "I don't know what 'it' is in that sentence" (because we're tracking subconsciously) we tend to just consider what they are saying as unclear in general and mentally skip over it. If you're communicating via text often, it pays to avoid most pronouns and bypass this sort of problem. Consider the first sentence of this post - had I said "my bad for assuming it was commonly known", you PROBABLY would have followed, because you had sent only one sentence. Had you sent three sentences, "it" would be less clear. Had you written at annoying length as I am, the word "it" would have been quite likely to be unclear. I'm sure you've had the experience where you send something like "Would it be better to do A? Or does it make more sense to do B?" and the person replies "Yes". Similar cause, though no actual pronoun, just an implied one. Take any email thread with management involved (because everyone top posts and doesn't trim) and you can usually find where people are talking past each other or repeating themselves because pronouns/subjects of sentences weren't clear to the other party. This post to the contrary, I've found that having SHORT posts but being explicit about subjects and direct objects greatly increases comprehension. I also tend to try and lead with what I need the person to do, or end with a single clear question or statement. Because communicating by text is a skill, not an automatic perfect ability.