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How this was framed irked me, so to play devil's advocate, I looked at your comment outside of corporate life - the analogies I'm using in my head are factories

How this was framed irked me, so to play devil's advocate, I looked at your comment outside of corporate life - the analogies I'm using in my head are factories and kitchens. You need Steel-Toed boots and Earplugs for some locations - I'm not sure how much of that is compensated. For waste processing, you either "deal with it" or have a purchase some form of smell-cancelling equivalent (peppermint oil on a cotton swab is an example I've heard used in a hospital). What about slip-resistant shoes for cooking in a kitchen? By all means, I don't enjoy the open office layout - I literally spent 20 minutes this morning talking to my immediate neighbor about NOTHING. HOWEVER, I suppose what I'd like to ask is - "what makes a white-collar job's comfort more important than other occupations, to the point they should be either compensated for purchasing items to maintain it or isolated with [cubicle] walls put up?" [Slippery slope fallacy incoming] Maybe that music or podcast is distracting you from work, I mean we wouldn't want you to see a 20, but think 10 because your podcast was simultaneously playing their 10% Squarespace ad. You are right, noise is distracting and corporate is now providing all employees with noise-cancelling earplugs. EDIT: Since I've been downvoted, can I have an explanation, or is this a simple I'm saying something the HN community disagrees with?

Rooster61 8y ago
I did not downvote you (and in fact can't since its a direct reply), but I'll bite. Steel-Toed boots and earplugs are necessary because of safety requirements. You can crush your toes and lose your hearing as a result of that job. Waste processing smells because of the fact that, well, waste smells. There is utterly nothing the company or the individual can do other than mask the smell for them self. Programming has no such utterly-unavoidable noise aspect (unless you count meetings and around-the-desk discussions, things which I personally can deal with to a reasonable extent). There is absolutely, positively no reason that a company of a decent size can't format their office in a way that is less distracting than an open-office format. Drawing a line between white and blue collar jobs in this manner is a false equivalence and a strawman.
- wccrawford 8y ago
  I'd argue that companies can provide everyone offices for the same reason that companies can't provide everyone robots that do the dangerous labor: It's expensive.
  - ken 8y ago
    None of the managers I've ever worked for would have agreed with you. I've offered to pay for private offices out of pocket, and when pushed, to a one, they've admitted "OK, it's not really about the money." Is there a tech company which has an open floor plan for programmers only because they're cheap?
- tsumnia 8y ago
  I will agree that I did form somewhat of a strawman in my original post. Many of my examples were not for comfort, but for safety. That said, I would still say that there are plenty of ways to improve (what I would consider) "comfort" in your work environment; however, they do not need to be reimbursed by the company (moving this back to your original post). Likewise, as the other reply to this post mentions - cost. Simply put, what is the cost involved and relative productivity gained/lost from each layout design. What about experimental designs? Without this type of information, it is difficult to convince a decision maker to improve these conditions. Those metrics need to be quantifiable, not anecdotal (I get more work when there aren't conversations around me vs. I resolved 10 bugs in the open office environment and 25 equivalent bugs in a cubicle). This gets into more the MBA and Information Systems world of quantifying intangibles in tech (like productivity), but to obtain this in an environment that would be deemed acceptable for experimentation, you'd need a corporate culture interested in experimentation - because not every layout will work for every group or every person in said group. Even then, being a group that opts into experimentation is not indicative to a real work environment, and so better results would require a new cohort for each experimental layout. Regardless, without decision maker buy-in and quantifiable metrics that can beat the cost/productivity metrics of open-office, articles like this only serve to form an echo chamber.
  - fixedd 8y ago
ken 8y ago
> You need Steel-Toed boots and Earplugs for some locations - I'm not sure how much of that is compensated. For boots, compensation is not required as "this type of equipment is very personal, is often used outside the workplace, and that it is taken by workers from jobsite to jobsite and employer to employer" [1] -- though I know some employers who offer a "Footwear Reimbursement", and/or loan out steel toe guards when requested. Earplugs, yes, by law in the US. [1]: https://www.osha.gov/dte/outreach/intro_osha/7_employee_ppe.pdf https://www.osha.gov/dte/outreach/intro_osha/7_employee_ppe.... > "what makes a white-collar job's comfort more important than other occupations, to the point they should be either compensated for purchasing items to maintain it or isolated with [cubicle] walls put up?" First, it has nothing to do with money. I've offered at several jobs to pay to escape the open office space, and I've always been refused permission. Other jobs are often isolated, when there's a possibility for distraction, even at these same companies. Second, it's not about "comfort", either. Distractions make it impossible to concentrate, which is literally my only job. If they hired me to do a job, they can't simply put me in a situation where I can't apply my skills, and then judge me based on my performance there. You're being downvoted because you're trying to steer the conversation into "compensation" and "comfort", neither of which are the issue here.
notacoward 8y ago
> what makes a white-collar job's comfort more important than other occupations It's not necessary to assume that it's more important to express a personal dislike or suggest that it's counterproductive. So the fallacy here is strawman.
flukus 8y ago
> "what makes a white-collar job's comfort more important than other occupations, to the point they should be either compensated for purchasing items to maintain it or isolated with [cubicle] walls put up?" It's intellectual work that requires a high degree of concentration. Not all white collar work is like that and not all blue collar work isn't, but programming requires keeping a lot more in your head at once than someone on an assembly line and noise inhibits this. There's also the type of noise, people talking is a lot harder to filter out than other background noise, I can sleep with a train track a few meters away and can concentrate with music playing but I can't work in an open office.

Rooster61 8y ago

I did not downvote you (and in fact can't since its a direct reply), but I'll bite. Steel-Toed boots and earplugs are necessary because of safety requirements. You can crush your toes and lose your hearing as a result of that job. Waste processing smells because of the fact that, well, waste smells. There is utterly nothing the company or the individual can do other than mask the smell for them self. Programming has no such utterly-unavoidable noise aspect (unless you count meetings and around-the-desk discussions, things which I personally can deal with to a reasonable extent). There is absolutely, positively no reason that a company of a decent size can't format their office in a way that is less distracting than an open-office format. Drawing a line between white and blue collar jobs in this manner is a false equivalence and a strawman.

wccrawford 8y ago
I'd argue that companies can provide everyone offices for the same reason that companies can't provide everyone robots that do the dangerous labor: It's expensive.
- ken 8y ago
  None of the managers I've ever worked for would have agreed with you. I've offered to pay for private offices out of pocket, and when pushed, to a one, they've admitted "OK, it's not really about the money." Is there a tech company which has an open floor plan for programmers only because they're cheap?
tsumnia 8y ago
I will agree that I did form somewhat of a strawman in my original post. Many of my examples were not for comfort, but for safety. That said, I would still say that there are plenty of ways to improve (what I would consider) "comfort" in your work environment; however, they do not need to be reimbursed by the company (moving this back to your original post). Likewise, as the other reply to this post mentions - cost. Simply put, what is the cost involved and relative productivity gained/lost from each layout design. What about experimental designs? Without this type of information, it is difficult to convince a decision maker to improve these conditions. Those metrics need to be quantifiable, not anecdotal (I get more work when there aren't conversations around me vs. I resolved 10 bugs in the open office environment and 25 equivalent bugs in a cubicle). This gets into more the MBA and Information Systems world of quantifying intangibles in tech (like productivity), but to obtain this in an environment that would be deemed acceptable for experimentation, you'd need a corporate culture interested in experimentation - because not every layout will work for every group or every person in said group. Even then, being a group that opts into experimentation is not indicative to a real work environment, and so better results would require a new cohort for each experimental layout. Regardless, without decision maker buy-in and quantifiable metrics that can beat the cost/productivity metrics of open-office, articles like this only serve to form an echo chamber.
- fixedd 8y ago

ken 8y ago

> You need Steel-Toed boots and Earplugs for some locations - I'm not sure how much of that is compensated. For boots, compensation is not required as "this type of equipment is very personal, is often used outside the workplace, and that it is taken by workers from jobsite to jobsite and employer to employer" [1] -- though I know some employers who offer a "Footwear Reimbursement", and/or loan out steel toe guards when requested. Earplugs, yes, by law in the US. [1]: https://www.osha.gov/dte/outreach/intro_osha/7_employee_ppe.pdf https://www.osha.gov/dte/outreach/intro_osha/7_employee_ppe.... > "what makes a white-collar job's comfort more important than other occupations, to the point they should be either compensated for purchasing items to maintain it or isolated with [cubicle] walls put up?" First, it has nothing to do with money. I've offered at several jobs to pay to escape the open office space, and I've always been refused permission. Other jobs are often isolated, when there's a possibility for distraction, even at these same companies. Second, it's not about "comfort", either. Distractions make it impossible to concentrate, which is literally my only job. If they hired me to do a job, they can't simply put me in a situation where I can't apply my skills, and then judge me based on my performance there. You're being downvoted because you're trying to steer the conversation into "compensation" and "comfort", neither of which are the issue here.

notacoward 8y ago

> what makes a white-collar job's comfort more important than other occupations It's not necessary to assume that it's more important to express a personal dislike or suggest that it's counterproductive. So the fallacy here is strawman.

flukus 8y ago

> "what makes a white-collar job's comfort more important than other occupations, to the point they should be either compensated for purchasing items to maintain it or isolated with [cubicle] walls put up?" It's intellectual work that requires a high degree of concentration. Not all white collar work is like that and not all blue collar work isn't, but programming requires keeping a lot more in your head at once than someone on an assembly line and noise inhibits this. There's also the type of noise, people talking is a lot harder to filter out than other background noise, I can sleep with a train track a few meters away and can concentrate with music playing but I can't work in an open office.