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Open offices are as bad as they seem–they reduce face-to-face time by 70%
- jordigh 8y agoIs anyone arguing in favour of open offices? I thought they existed because they were cheaper and then management tries to justify them after the fact by saying they foster collaboration. Aren't these blog posts just preaching to the choir?
- nkrisc 8y agoOpen offices are a success because they achieve their goal of reducing costs. The "collaboration" was wishful thinking that didn't pan out.
- lord_ring_111 8y agoIts measurable vs non measurable. Cost saving is easy to measure. You can always claim collaboration increased with hand waving.
- s3r3nity 8y agoAnnecdotally from experience of advocating for less-open offices and more cubes / mini-offices, there's not a lot of concrete data out there from reputable sources to counter research from strong sources like HBS and the like justifying open-office collaboration to convincingly make the case to Management Execs. I personally like seeing articles like this because it helps add to my backlog of research to point to for when I make the case yet again in the future.
- jakelarkin 8y agocheaper yes but I think they are also perpetuated because they satisfy the egos of leadership. There's the visual satisfaction of seeing rows and rows of their diligent workers, and managers can easily inspect anyone's availability, walk up and demand instant attention.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Joky 8y agoHaving worked on a floor with individual (or dual) offices, and now being in an open-space for over a year, I personally feel a lot more collaborative in an open-space environment.
- IOT_Apprentice 8y agoMostly startups and then to management types in Silicon Valley, which has been picked up spread beyond corporations and educational institutions used to justify more cramming people together in the interests of "collaboration". I saw it over at PayPal, where they were pushing it as a means for "fostering creativity and collaboration". Tore down cubicles and put in long rows with 1 ft high partitions. Just awful for concentration, focus work, staying in a flow and getting work done.
- duxup 8y agoThere have to be jobs where it works better than the typical coder focused world we see in hacker news. I would think.... At the same time I think every world requires everyone to have SOME space.
- aantix 8y ago>the use of email increase between 22 percent and 56 percent Less about email, more about Slack these days. I think someone on Twitter pointed this out (maybe DHH?) : it's quite hilarious to walk into an office in SF that rents for 10's of thousands of dollars a month and see everyone glued to their laptop screens sending messages over Slack.
- s3r3nity 8y agoI think this is the most frustrating paradox of Silicon Valley : we're living in a time where humanity is connected via virtually instant communication services more so than any other time in our existence, building tools to enable this in real-time and even through video (!), but no: you need to be centrally located physically in the most expensive place to live & work on the planet for...reasons? And yet, you'll be doing exactly the same stuff, using the exact same tools, that you would be if everyone were remote. /rant
- frozenport 8y agoIn the future we'll learn that pheromones interactions are essential for productivity.
- carleverett 8y agoIt's the classic "butts in seats" theory of management.
- Skunkleton 8y agoPersonally, I think you are right and have similar feelings about the subject. That said, the big success story companies have been mostly (all?) been built on the butts in seats model. Maybe there is something to it that we are missing?
- loco5niner 8y ago> That said, the big success story companies have been mostly (all?) been built on the butts in seats model. Not sure about that claim... but certainly they weren't built on the open-office model.
- misterbowfinger 8y agoI can't find the article anymore, but the "open office vs. cubicle" debate suffers from the same thing that so many of these hot-buttons topics suffer from: nuance. The original "action offices" by Herman Miller were a lot more similar to the "open offices" you see today. There's space to collaborate, but still enough to have your own privacy. People can engage and disengage how they see fit. However, corp overlords took the "action office" to its logical extreme and created the oft-loathed cubicles to cram as many workers in one space, like cattle. Then, the backlash. Open Offices! So cool! Everyone talks to each other! This, too, was taken to its logical extreme, with long tables and 0 privacy. Similarly, this was born out of short-term objectives around the bottom line instead of thinking about the employees and getting work done. The real solution, I think, is to get out of the frame of open vs. closed vs. cubicles vs. whatever, and start thinking about not only your corporate culture, but how your company plans to get work done on a day-to-day. Great offices are really expensive, at the end of the day. If your employer makes a lot of money but still treats you like an expense, rather than an owner, then perhaps consider looking elsewhere. Here's a video I found that's related to the afore-mentioned article that I couldn't find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgDHifV62WI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgDHifV62WI
- Skunkleton 8y agoPersonally I find that I do best if I work from home some percentage of time, and work from the office for the remainder. That way I can get my face to face stuff done, and my concentration-based work done.
- loco5niner 8y agoI would love to have 2 days to WFH per week.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pwaai 8y agoUsed to work for this startup who was spending 25% of their revenues on a fancy open office....needless to say it was very hard to focus when people are yapping and socializing next to you.
- Apocryphon 8y agoI still firmly hold that VR will become mainstream and mundane once someone can create seamless virtual offices, so you can get the verisimilitude of interacting with your coworkers face to face both in meetings and down digital hallways, while living anywhere in the whole dang world.
- duxup 8y agoWorking with people is hard, getting them to cooperate and work better as teams is hard. At the same time gimmicks like an open office is no solution, quite the opposite.