49 ms·
I've found, anecdotally, that offices with 3-6 employees working on the same area offers the best communication. If you're in a room with that amount of coworke
by tetha 8y ago
I've found, anecdotally, that offices with 3-6 employees working on the same area offers the best communication. If you're in a room with that amount of coworkers, you do have a certain level of noise. People talk, someone usually has a customer on the phone.
However, the background conversations tend to be on-topic and this seems to be much less distracting opposed to lots of noise about everything. On top of that, you pick up what the rest of the team is working or struggling on to some degree. And this is really, really valuable we've found.
- sroussey 8y agoI agree. The problem is when you have an eight person team and a five person team, etc. You start to lose a lot of space when there is a mismatch. 20 years ago I used to be in a 20 person group, multiple teams but not everyone. I think I would have preferred 12 (there were a couple of those). But managers had glass wall private offices.
- pfranz 8y agoYep. I interviewed at a place with 3 tech leads were all in the same room. One had given notice and I figured I'd be his replacement. When I showed up on day one I found that they had hired an additional person who started the week before. So the three of them were in one office and I was next door. After awhile when I mentioned being left out of important decisions they offered to have all of us move into the hallway...which would have sucked for everybody.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago> After awhile when I mentioned being left out of important decisions they offered to have all of us move into the hallway...which would have sucked for everybody. Yikes. I started my career 20 years ago as a junior sysadmin in the networking closet (seriously, my boss helped me pull a desk in there). I would take that over an open office plan any day.