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CEOs Want Their Offices Back
- geff82 9y agoOh really? How many hundred years will it take until they find out that "regular" workers also have declined performance in large offices? I find them a disgrace. I don't need a single office for me - but 3-6 People is enough.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agohttps://outline.com/b4muXW https://outline.com/b4muXW
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ziikutv 9y agoThanks. People should just stop using WSJ as source now...
- eli 9y agoYou don't want them linked as a source but you want to read their articles?
- ziikutv 9y agoWho said I want to read them? Most people will not pay a subscription fee to read the article. So it does little use to that demographic. I am not implying they are not credible source of information. It's just that we will be restricted. That's all. But thanks for the downvote, reminds me that I should have given this reasoning before.
- coffeeski 9y agoThis works and looks great!
- avemg 9y agoHow is this not just stealing their work?
- snakeanus 9y agoHow is it "stealing"?
- paulgb 9y agoI'm not here to defend it, but as a paying digital subscriber to WSJ (and other papers), this link is useful! WSJ signed me out (they often do), and to sign in again I have to re-enable JavaScript which means their site gets slower and the text bounces all over as things load. I'm happy to pay for quality content but news sites have to stop degrading the digital experience if they want me to keep forking over $30/month. Edit: for science, I enabled JavaScript and loaded the WSJ page with a cold cache. The text jumped 3 times over the 22 seconds it took to fully load the page.
- eeZah7Ux 9y agoPeople often confuse copyright infringement with theft, also thank to the silly Hollywood scare ads.
- avemg 9y agoI admittedly used 'stealing' as a shorthand for copyright infringement so I'll rephrase: How is it not copyright infringement?
- nobleach 9y agoCEOs also typically believe they are the only resource that isn't replaceable or outsource-able. But, if they're good at what they do, and the buck truly stops with them... I'm fine with that level of responsibility vs benefit. This is mostly because I imagine the CEO doing a bunch of jobs that I do not _want_ to do. I like popping on my headphones and going to town... but I'll admit, distractions often overcome even my headphones. That's where working from home comes in.
- ageofwant 9y agoIs there a HN facility where I could just block these pay-walled articles? I have nothing against someone trying to make a buck, but there is insignificant chance that I will 'subscribe' or login to read a wsj article. I just want to save me some time and wsj some bandwidth. OK maybe I just need to learn to look at the link.
- coffeeski 9y agoBuy a subscription? Theres a link to the free version
- nsxwolf 9y agoThat's great - what about everybody else? The problems he described apply to everyone in the office. Why leave them in that mess?
- chmars 9y ago'Slave ownership by companies has traditionally taken very curious forms.' http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/07/nassim-nicholas-taleb-how-to-own-a-slave.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/07/nassim-nicholas-taleb...
- andrewingram 9y agoCuriously, in my experience it's been senior management (including CEOs) who've fought for open plan offices in the first place. Cost benefits aside, they do wax lyrical about all the reason why open plan is great.
- maxxxxx 9y agoSame here. Interestingly their meeting rooms whre they spend most of their time aren't open space and have nice big windows. They also have nice offices for themselves.
- walshemj 9y agoBecause they have allowed tail functions like HR and Building Services to set company policy with no thought to the wider effect on the company. Aka I got my bonus and I don't care if I have F%$Ked up the company
- mytec 9y agoAt a previous job, I was sent to a partner company who was building a web site we'd take over. This company had a wide open floor plan (except for the execs). I remember one day our HR VP visiting and exclaiming how wonderful this is. She said she wanted to implement it where we worked. She asked me what I thought with this beatific smile, and I said I found the never ending movement and ad-hoc meetings around me to be distracting. The smile on her face dropped and she said, "You'll get used to it", as she walked away.
- dredmorbius 9y ago"At a previous job ..." Quite.
- valuearb 9y agoCFO's don't get bonuses for increasing productivity. They get bonuses because they "saved" the companies millions by cramming more workers in a smaller space. Then they get another bonus to figure out how to cram more workers in, because for some weird reason productivity has gone downhill.
- novia 9y agoHe has since moved to a 5-by-8-foot pod in the company’s innovation center. He retreats to it when he needs to focus or switch mental gears between meetings. [...] “It’s not about status or privilege,” he says of the pod, a prototype with still-exposed two-by-fours. “This is a space where you do certain kinds of work.” Yeah, sure. Ok.
- wlesieutre 9y agoGood thing none of his lower status employees ever need to do certain kinds of work!
- arkitaip 9y agoWhich is so very weird because you would think that the genius CEO would want his people to work as efficiently as possible, like himself. But no, open offices are a must so productivity be damned. How do CEOs become this blind to obvious organizational cruft?
- coffeeski 9y agoWhy do CEO's think they're alone in the need for quiet spaces where they can focus? Sure some people can work in the noisy space where interruptions abound. The only thing in my office that works well with interruptions is my CPU. I'd rather have a Cube farm, but better yet, a small tiny phone booth as an office.
- adamnemecek 9y agoIt's from wsj. They consider you replaceable.
- coffeeski 9y agoI would take a 10% paycut to have a small office that fits 2 monitors, a filing cabinet and some pictures, rather then dealing with constant clattering of the guy behind me that decided converting a type writer into a digital keyboard was a good idea.
- amykhar 9y agoNotice you don't see them giving most other employees private space back. Just themselves and some 'senior employees'
- snakeanus 9y agoWhy on earth would I need to "log in" in order to read an article?
- philip1209 9y agoIndividual contributors want private offices. Companies want "openness and collaboration". As I've been at WeWorks lately, I've noticed that they have all glass walls on the offices. This means that everybody has natural light and a sense of openness, but with a locking door and quiet. A more general question to people in such all-glass private offices - is it the best of both worlds? Or, is more privacy needed than all-glass walls?
- tlrobinson 9y agoThey make glass that can be turned opaque electronically. That's probably ideal (albeit more expensive) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_glass https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_glass
- valuearb 9y agoThe "downside" of private offices is that management doesn't know what you are doing in there. Lots of glass is an attempt to keep people connected and restrict the net surfing, game playing and time wasting that management fears will happen with private offices. I think it's a reasonable trade-off. It attempts to give the best of both worlds, incorporating one advantage of open office spaces is there is more team motivation because it's more obvious if you are slacking.
- mindcrime 9y agoI think it's a reasonable trade-off. Meh, I completely disagree. Management doesn't know what you're doing if they're standing behind you the entire work day. That's why they're managers. And more to the point, net-surfing, playing 2048, chatting, etc. are not things that need to be restricted. The reality is, no developer (or probably any creative person) is going to be productive for 8 solid hours a day, straight through. We need idle time to separate the bursts of productivity and give the brain time to reset. is more team motivation because it's more obvious if you are slacking. There are much easier ways to tell if someone is slacking. You don't even really need to do anything special. The team will know who is carrying their weight and who isn't.
- rayiner 9y ago> The lofty building Jordan Hamad moved his tech-advisory firm into four years ago had the trappings of a startup idyll: open floor plan, polished concrete floors, custom-built communal tables. Decisions like this make me seriously question the whole idea that our economy is populated by rational actors. Obviously polished concrete floors are a terrible idea in an office. Even if you believe that open plan works, there is no rational basis for having floors that will reflect rather than dampen noise.
- chii 9y agobut it fits the decor so well! When investors come, they wow at the decor, and that makes them feel we are worth investing in!
- throwaway76543 9y agoI worked in a highly visible operations center at a particular Fortune 50 company during the first dot-com go-around. Dedicated NOC designed to look somewhat like NASA MCC. Fishbowl facing a common area; very much on display for visiting executives who would often cluster outside the glass and watch Operations Being Done. The relevant twist: An office manager felt the adjustable height desks weren't aesthetically pleasing. He set them all to the same height, removed the adjustment cranks, and sent out an email instructing us to not adjust the desks or to change monitor heights. This policy lasted about a week before disgruntled employees with neck pain got in contact with folks responsible for employer liability. I have never forgotten the lesson that workspaces are not always constructed with employees in mind.
- Neliquat 9y agoDepends on the other surfaces. If the ceiling is hang tiles, rough wood, or fabric panels, there is such thing as too well damped. Most rooms have a happy zone of about 30-60% reflectivity. More sounds like a bathroom, but less can be equally unnerving to people. Also, polished concrete is ubiq due to it being cheap, easy, and looking decent for a long time. That 4x4 carpet is not much better, and is the similarly priced, equally soulless, alternative.
- revmoo 9y agoDon't post paywalled content
- stevage 9y agoPolished concrete. Does anyone actually like it? It's super noisy. It's become pretty popular in cafes around here, and they're almost unbearable at busy times.
- jesseryoung 9y agoIt seems like when "Open Office" articles come out there seem to be quite a few people talking ill of them. I recently switched jobs and with it switched from an open concept (large room with whiteboards separating teams) to an office (shared with one other coworker.) Maybe I was conditioned to like it (I certainly didn't like it at first) but I really did prefer the open concept when working on a team of 8 or 9 people. I never missed a conversation my team was having and if I ever needed anything all I needed to do was turn around. I guess I get the noise issues, but even in an office with my door open I can still hear conversations in the hallways so I still wear my noise canceling headphones.
- jdc0589 9y agoThis is why I actually like cubicles. you are physically close to your team, if your space is organized well you are on a common isle with people you work with, but you still have at least a little bit of isolation in your personal workspace. I DO NOT understand why cubes get so much hate.
- Danihan 9y agoAs someone with ADD (who immediately drops focus when someone walks by or when music has lyrics) cubicles are much better than most open office plans. They just don't look as "cool" or "hip" as a long, open table.
- jesseryoung 9y agoI should add that we did not have long open tables. Each person had their own mobile sit/stand desk and mobile filing cabinet for personal belongings. There was quite a few people who positioned themselves facing a corner for that reason.
- tpeo 9y agoPossibly because having cubicles for each employee creates the expectation that each employee will stay at their cubicle. Walking up to a colleague's cubicle to chat about a work-related project can be misconstrued by an uninformed observer as "not working". This incentivizes employees to stay in their own cubicles. That is the simplest way I can think of by which we might come to the usual "cubicle hell" scenario where workers are stuck from 9 to 5 in their cubicles while being occasionally nagged by management (as in Office Space).
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoWe all do, buddy! Well, actually, I WFH, but I sympathize with open floor plan workers.
- yalogin 9y agoSometimes I wonder if this open office thing is pushed on people because of the high real estate cost in San Francisco. Anything can be spinned into a great thing.
- acdha 9y agoI think that's globally true: it's been known since the 1970s that open-plan offices aren't good for productivity but they're undeniably cheaper and, in many cases, also has the unstated advantage of making it clear where people rank on the status hierarchy in organizations where only management above a certain rank are allowed offices.
- jpalomaki 9y agoTheory: open space fosters communication, because you can easily engage in discussion with others. Reality: everybody is sitting with their headphones on. The only way to get their attention is via Slack or by throwing objects at them.
- atemerev 9y agoIn the academia, where good communication and idea sharing are essential, there are no open offices. Said communication happens where it ought to be: in rec room or cafeteria.
- rexpop 9y agoI thought Academics jealousy hoarded ideas, carefully ensuring that they weren't stolen by competing researchers — especially in the same department.
- QuantumRoar 9y agoNo. Usually you talk to your colleagues and you help each other -- especially in the same department.
- Paul-ish 9y agoI'm a PhD student, and I am in an open office floor plan at the moment. Albeit smaller than I have seen at tech companies, offices in my program have 8-10 people in them.
- atemerev 9y agoWell shit :( We were 3, and it was possible to work from anywhere in the building.
- santaclaus 9y agoWhaaaat? We had eight PhD students crammed into a tiny open space. It was pretty stinky.
- carsongross 9y agoI was dead wrong about the open office layout: I was an advocate, but I now see that over time, for any company larger than a garage startup, it ends becoming a way to cut costs and pack more employees per square foot. It isn't worse than cube-farms, but it isn't much better. I wonder if per-team offices of 2-5 people around a central hub would actually hit the right balance between interaction and think time.
- jdc0589 9y agoI think its worse than cube farms, way worse. In a cube you have some modicum of isolation, even if its just a physical barrier to keep from seeing 100% of the movement/traffic around your workspace. In an open environment, literally everything is a distraction. The only time I've been content-ish in an open environment is when I happened to be facing a corner.
- acallan 9y agoIncidentally, Steelcase CEO Jim Hackett quoted in this article was just named CEO of Ford.
- valuearb 9y agoI think it's the previous CEO of Steelcase. But also note that the Steelcase CEO's quotes are shaped to help sell their office pod systems. He's really not going to share his personal preferences, he's going to push their product.
- technofiend 9y agoWhen I was at Shell we were in the Houston medical center (near it, really) so Shell built a hospital and jammed their people into it in case they ever needed to sell the building. The company didn't bother buying real desks: we used full sized party tables and two people sat in a space designed to be a private hospital room. It was so tight I had to get up and leave to let my office mate in or out. I'd still rather sit there over a dog bone or trader desk setup you find today. As one of the old farts who started when even the lowliest peon had an office the fact CEOs are discovering forcing people to do their work in a large, loud, noisy space doesn't work isn't terribly surprising. Nor does the fact that 30+ years later almost everyone above a certain level still gets an office even in the cube farm environments. At Shell you could instantly tell the rank of a person by the size of their office. Fast forward to today and you must be an ED to rank an office where I work now. It's a status symbol.
- rb808 9y agoI've worked in open offices my whole career. To me its normal and I'm used to it, probably I dont want an office locked away. I have found the next step down though where I work - hot desks. Basically you get a locker for your stuff, no reserved desk location and a virtual terminal to a desktop on a server. This really does suck.
- iplaw 9y agoI've worked at a few places with open workspaces. In the field of law, open workspaces make zero sense. You're always on the phone or always attempting to fully concentrate on the task at hand. Open workspaces allow distractions to fester. One open workspace was intentionally planned so that the micro-managing CEO could readily see if the employees -- mostly attorneys, mind you -- were hard at work or hardly working. Nothing was private, especially not the condescending beratement from said CEO. I quit and started my own law firm, requiring work from home for my subsequent hires and leasing shared office space. That firm was acquired by a client, and I was again forced to commute to work since I would be directing a large on-site team of attorneys and paralegals. It was another open workspace but, thankfully, the C-suite enjoyed perimeter offices. I don't understanding why they realized that we needed offices to avoid distractions and to keep confidential conversations in confidence, but failed to consider the effect of the open space on other employees -- also mostly attorneys and licensing guys. I've since had a successful exit and again get to enjoy "working" from home.
- mmaunder 9y agoOpen plan offices suck for everyone who needs to think. I don't know anyone who doesn't know this.
- nibs 9y agoThe penjulum of "things startups are wrong about" and/or "you succeed despite this rather than because of it" open plan offices will shift back the other way in the next decade to "deep work" and "closed door productivity". Joel Spolsky & co are just two decades ahead.
- traviswingo 9y agoNo paywall: http://archive.is/tSeuX http://archive.is/tSeuX
- jkoll 9y agoThanks!
- tradesmanhelix 9y agoFor over a year, our dev team has been begging management to fix our open-office. It's loud, distracting, and negatively impacts our productivity. The team wants 1/2 height cloth cubicles that would provide a limited measure of privacy and personal space while also helping to dampen the noise. Their response: Buy on-desk semi-transparent plastic partitions that just provide another noise-amplifying hard surface... Thankfully, I was recently hired onto a 100% remote development team and put in my 2 weeks. I'm done with open office floor plans and hope to never again work at a company that uses them for developers.
- rhizome 9y agoTheir response: Buy on-desk semi-transparent plastic partitions that just provide another noise-amplifying hard surface... LOL. "Isn't there some gadget at OfficeMax we can use instead?" The most bizarre part of these stories is that cheap, used cubicles are as common as tennis shoes.
- Corrado 9y agoOur solution was to use flattened cardboard boxes as extra walls in our way-to-small cubes. It looked horrible but it worked. Management didn't seem to mind...
- therealdrag0 9y agoI hope you mention the dissatisfaction with the environment in your exit interview.
- lightedman 9y agoI do want my office back. My office is the land around us, and NIMBY idiots along with people that don't understand individual-level mining (which is very low impact) keeps me out of that office.
- matchagaucho 9y agoUltimately, each team has its own optimal cadence that oscillates between face-to-face and secluded concentration. Open space implies that cadence is "daily", but for workers who create intellectual property, that cadence is more realistically every 5-10 days. The need for in-person "check and balance" varies with experience. I work with remote teams of Sr Engineers that meet in-person 1-2 times per year. Minimal communication issues. But if apprentice-level Engineers are being groomed, then the frequency of in-person meetings needs to be daily/weekly/monthly.
- basicallydan 9y agoMate I'm not even a CEO and I want my office back
- dbcurtis 9y agoAt the risk of repeating myself, I will recommend that people read Cal Newport's blog, and his book: Deep Work. Here is a good blog post on office design that supports deep work: http://strongproject.com/blog/how-cal-newports-deep-work-concept-will-influence-office-design/ http://strongproject.com/blog/how-cal-newports-deep-work-con... If I ever get a chance to design an office, it will be something like the above. Small risk of that, however. At the risk of sounding like I want to dehumanize work (quite the opposite, actually), I'd like to point out that anybody thinking of adding, say, a new milling machine to a machine shop, would look at how much space you need for it and around it to work productively and have quick access to the necessary accessories. Yet, we don't put any analysis at all into what it takes to maximize the productivity of people. And too often, we go for one-size-fits-all solutions. I can imagine a high-functioning dev-ops team really benefiting from the instantaneous communication of having all 8 people on the team sitting within a short chair roll of each other in a common space. For the people who need long blocks of unbroken concentration, that kind of space is not as functional. "Interrupt driven" work and "deep though" work are two different kinds of work, and it should be no surprise that a single space is not optimal for both.
- khazhoux 9y agoWe have an open floor plan, and it works like this: * Desk area is for getting work done. Everyone agrees on this. * We have "phone rooms" for small discussions. But we limit those usually to 1:1s or discussing office politics. * Try to limit all discussions at the desk area to 5 people or less. * If someone sighs loudly as they put on their headphones when you're having a discussion right behind them, then that is their signal to you to keep talking loudly, as their noise-canceling headphones will eliminate any trace of your conversation. * You can usually carry a conversation at your desk at any volume, because other engineers will let you know if you're being too loud. Engineers tend to be extroverted and won't hesitate to let you know if you're bothering them. * When someone first sits at their desk, it's polite to immediately engage them in a 30-minute conversation about their weekend or what they did last night. It eases their transition into work. * A person working without headphones on, signifies that it's ok to tap them on the shoulder to ask them a question. * A person working WITH headphones on, signifies that it's ok to tap them on the shoulder to ask them a question. * If someone usually works off in quiet parts of the building, one should always remind them "you're never at your desk" with an accusatory tone.
- andrewingram 9y agoThe progression of this list is beautiful.
- rajeshp1986 9y agoAll the items in this list are assumptions. I don't think it makes any sense to make them as rules.
- piinbinary 9y agoPoe's Law?
- draw_down 9y agoNoise canceling headphones don't really work that way in my experience. They're good at canceling out droning background sounds to make the overall sound quieter, but they can't "predict" and cancel out less repetitive/droning sounds sounds like conversations and those godawful clacky keyboards some people insist on. In effect, noise canceling headphones make those sounds louder, relatively speaking, because they quiet other sounds.
- neom 9y agoAs a CEO I mostly don't work from the same space as the rest of the team as my work tends to be multi-person meetings and phone calls. We mostly share our meals together, however.
- rajeshp1986 9y agoI think this whole collaborative workspace bullshit was oversold and overbrought. The only thing it does serve is the ego of an insecured management who doesn't trust its employees that they are working in closed spaces. That is the reason they want open office spaces and support Agile. I fail to understand why do you need your team to sit next to each other when you have modern day collaboration tools like Slack, hipchat etc. The management folks who argue that open office increases collaboration fail to understand that engineers don't collaborate whole day long. They collaborate for an hour or so and then they need to focus and build things. The ideal ratio would be 80:20. An engineer wants 80% productivity and 20% collaboration. By this it makes sense to have a closed office spaces and have collboration areas around the office. Having an open office and few personal areas scattered around the office promotes 80% collaboration and 20% productivity. As an organization are you really aiming for that?
- goeric 9y agoI think people forget, or maybe don't realize, open floor plans were popularized in the startup world because of their cost savings. It's very hard/expensive to rent office space with enough rooms for everyone, or build one out that way. It's way easier to put a bunch of IKEA desks next to each other. I'm not saying there's not a better way, but that's the justification. Anybody trying to convince others that open floor plans are more productive is living in crazy town.
- stretchwithme 9y agoI can handle one conversation. Or many. But two or three going on is really annoying. And I think it's because we natural pay attention to humans and look for patterns. You can't really do that when there are multiple conversations. And the brain doesn't bother trying when there are too many voices. So one conversation is fine. If there's already one conversation and you need to speak to somebody, use Slack or get a room or set up a meeting or wait.
- achou 9y agoA very small startup team does benefit from an open plan, such as shared desks or a shared office. This scales to maybe 6 people. I think this is the environment that larger companies are trying to capture. But at scale, this is a ridiculous setup and one that breeds interruptions. In a small team, what one person knows is often useful to another. In a larger team there are many more independent parts, and entangling communication is a waste of attention. Worse, I think it causes people to deliberately adopt a default-closed mentality to avoid overload. Companies don't easily outgrow their early cultures; they think what got them there will continue to serve them -- in fact, they want to go back and "capture the magic" that were there in the early days. It's a form of corporate nostalgia that is one symptom of becoming sclerotic. It's not really about open floor plan vs. cubicles. I recall the first time I visited HP's vast cube farm at their silicon valley headquarters. It was vast, drab, mostly quiet, and absolutely soul-deadening. OTOH the Dropbox headquarters in SF was open floor plan and absolutely cramped, yet buzzing with youthful energy. Lots of people were using headphones. I could see how it would be an exciting place for a young person. On the one hand the buzzing energy is a potential distractor, but it's also an energy booster. It makes your heart beat a little faster. It makes you feel like you're in a place where things are happening. With age, my powers of concentration have waned a bit and I cannot power through distractions like I did when younger. A cube farm would be very demotivating. An open floor plan would be highly distracting, but likely somewhat better. But the best is to avoid large environments like that entirely, and stick with a smaller group where the interruptions are actually useful, where a shared office and a shared mission produce energy and focus.
- abalone 9y agoI really want to know how Apple's laying out the new campus. I've read something about different types of "pods".[1] Is the idea you can float among different types of spaces (quiet vs collaborative)? Who gets a door? Does anyone know more details? [1] https://www.wired.com/2017/05/apple-park-new-silicon-valley-campus/ https://www.wired.com/2017/05/apple-park-new-silicon-valley-...
- maruhan2 9y agoSolution is simple. "Make sure you reply to company wide messenger. Make all open area conversation via messengers. Make any conversations that benefit vocal speaking in a separate room. Give everyone an option to book private rooms for occasions where you need long phone conversation"
- mizchief2 9y agoAt a minimum you need to isolate teams that do actually collaborate together in their own private space. In my office we had many conference rooms that were pretty much taken up all day by teams working in them for sprint plannings and whatnot, so we just converted the conference rooms over to their work spaces.