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I think I'd have a less negative reaction to open offices if it weren't for the attempt to sell it as a productivity booster. The article even mentions how the

• nilkn 7y ago
  I think I'd have a less negative reaction if people actually had a decent amount of personal space in these floorplans. In the photo at the top of the article, two people could scarcely yawn and stretch at the same time without making physical contact. If you're towards the end and you want to just take a bathroom break, you'd have to physically weave around people and chairs to get out. My home office that I use for playing video games is nearly as large as that space that houses presumably four working professionals. How is this reasonable? How does anyone think this is a good way of investing in your expensive staff? If this is all the space you can afford, I absolutely sympathize, but maybe at that point it's time to let people work from home.
  • mukti 7y ago
    That's the kicker for me - when I talk to people who are complaining about open floor plans, they typically work in a place similar to the one pictured in the article. Now, that's not to say that more space necessarily makes it better for productivity, but it will certainly make some difference (at least, to me). Where I work, we have an open floor plan, and we have a good amount of space around our desks. I personally like it, but I can see how its not for everyone. If I were crammed in a tiny space, I would definitely be clamoring for an office.
    • badestrand 7y ago
      Same for me, I currently sit in an open floor with a lot of space and people are considerate of others (i.e. not chatting much/loud). And I actually like it a lot. I don't want to sit in a separate room all day, I enjoy being around people and to interact from time to time.
    • jtcruthers 7y ago
      Agreed, same with my current workplace. Big open office with enough space and its amazing. I wouldn't trade this to go sit in a grey cubicle for anything. But that picture from the article looks like a nightmare, so I get why people complain about that situation. Open offices have a ton of variation and they can be nice, but can also suck. It's all about the implementation.
  • Aeolun 7y ago
    > If this is all the space you can afford I think, I saw in an earlier article, and after repeating the calculation myself, that just a 1 or 2% increase in productivity would save you so much salary it’s criminal not to invest in a decent working space.
• chomp 7y ago
  I think part of the problem is that (in my experience) open offices actually do boost productivity somewhat, but only when the office is a small 2-5 person pod. I lose productivity when I get dropped in a huge floor of people chatting and talking about things not related to what I'm working on.
  • mey 7y ago
    A pod is a lot different than an open office from my experience. Since the only background noise is your team and your problems, while distracting it at least it's focused on things you care about. Open offices you get bled over from everything. Made worse by the modern industrial design that hates noise insulation.
  • dtech 7y ago
    I wouldn't call that an open office though, just a team room. A shared space is fine with <5 people, can become problematic at 5-10 people and the frequently 20+ large floor spaces are just unworkable without noise cancelling headphones.
    • tempguy9999 7y ago
      Agreed, it's just a small room with people in it. BTDT. I worked in london in an open plan office maybe 40ft wide and getting on 200 ft long. That's open plan. It's fine except for the noise. It's always the noise as the problem, all else is ok. (edit: not a single company, a collection of small and medium businesses)
      • toyg 7y ago
        > It's fine except for the noise. And the utter lack of privacy. Want to tell your colleague that Alex is a dick? Better do it in another building, or the entire office will hear it.
        • tempguy9999 7y ago
          It's probably best not to use such language at work or one may be labelled a dick oneself. Keep it polite and any complaints formal.
• vonmoltke 7y ago
  > I could buy into it if the rational is it's far cheaper to fit more employees in less space. That's a fine reason. It sucks to work in, but I can at least hear that without rolling my eyes and dismissing everything else that person says as incredulous. Raytheon, for all its other faults, was at least largely honest about why they were shrinking cube sizes and experimenting with open floor plans. There was some half-hearted mentions of increased collaboration, but they pretty much said it was a space issue.
  • patejam 7y ago
    I think it's an important distinction to say that is isn't a space issue, it's a money issue.
    • pwinnski 7y ago
      Yes and no. Ultimately, any space issue can be solved with enough money, so yes. But space usually isn't easily expanded. My company has the 7th floor of a 10-floor building. When we hire people as we've been doing, we can either fit them into the existing space somehow, or... move the entire office? Rent space on the floor above or below? It isn't as easy as just "spend a bit more money, get a bit more space," so no. Ultimately, when they moved into this building, they spent quite a bit more than they needed to for the entire floor, knowing they expected to grow. Now they're cramming people in too closely and will probably have to move to a larger building in the future. In the meantime, however... So yeah, it's a space issue first and foremost, and a money issue only secondarily.
      • BoorishBears 7y ago
        Yes and yes is what I got out of your answer. >When we hire people as we've been doing, we can either fit them into the existing space somehow, or... move the entire office? Yes. Exactly. My office did it with 0 days down time combining 3 separate locations spread out around a city downtown. We labeled our stuff on Friday, a company was contracted to make sure on Monday our stuff would be in a new office, and it was. It's a money issue through and through, until the lost productivity is greater than the cost to move, more people get crammed in. Simple as that.
• turk73 7y ago
  Our place is this format. I hate it. It's so bad that days I have a lot of coding to do I just wfh. BTW, our company knows it is a productivity killer, they don't really give a damn. They have a lot of real estate to manage and hotel desks solve a problem.
• BurningFrog 7y ago
  Well, the fair comparison is to an wall separated space using the same area. If you compare an open space office with a walled office that 3x the size, of course the bigger office will win out. An open office 3x the size would also be a big improvement.
• hellisothers 7y ago
  I dunno man, I (software engineer for 21 years) like the open office, at my last job we had real offices and my coworker and I cut a huge window sized hole in the drywall between our offices so we could easier communicate/chat. I can’t count how many times a random casual conversation saved the day or generated new ideas. If I need to focus I put on headphones. Logistically it seems unlikely open offices will go away, software heavy business can’t just spread their workforce over 3x the space, especially in dense urban areas. Better to come up with novel solutions for deep work, like dedicated open area library/dark dungeon rooms.
  • dlp211 7y ago
    There's a balance that needs to be struck. Team spaces probably make the most sense.
  • joezydeco 7y ago
    we had real offices and my coworker and I cut a huge window sized hole in the drywall Yeah, that's not an open office.
  • castwide 7y ago
    A workspace shared between two people, or even three or four, is a little different from an open office. I've worked in rooms I shared with small groups and can definitely see the benefits. After a certain point, like maybe ten or twelve, I think it becomes too distracting.
• kerkeslager 7y ago
  Open offices are a productivity booster for some people (myself being one). Of course, WeWork being a company with one product, they try to sell it to everyone, even the people who it doesn't work for. That's a valid criticism of WeWork, but not really a valid criticism of open offices.
  • neogodless 7y ago
    How do you measure your productivity? What do you attribute to your increase in productivity in an open floor plan?
    • kerkeslager 7y ago
      > How do you measure your productivity? The same way everyone measures productivity: subjectively. With software development, measuring productivity objectively is very much an unsolved problem (which is one of the major problems with studies on productivity of different floor plans, incidentally). > What do you attribute to your increase in productivity in an open floor plan? 1. Generally feeling happier, more energized, and more focused (I'm an extrovert). When I work alone I find myself getting restless, irritable, and distracted. 2. Collaboration. Catching mistakes, soliciting creative ideas, getting information when I don't know something. But really #1 is a much bigger factor for me.
  • regularfry 7y ago
    So on a team with roughly half introverts and half extroverts, you'd expect it to be a wash - only it's not, because there's a low ceiling to how much productivity you can add, and the noise from the productive extroverts drives introverts' productivity into the floor. It's net negative.
    • kerkeslager 7y ago
      It sounds like the very easy solution is to let the extroverts work together and let the introverts work in private. Your post is a valid criticism of forcing introverts to work in open offices, but it isn't a valid criticism of letting extroverts work in open offices.
• Florin_Andrei 7y ago
  > I think I'd have a less negative reaction to open offices if it weren't for the attempt to sell it as a productivity booster. But isn't that how you sell anything politically? Take some real or alleged positive aspect, blow it up out of all proportion, be loud and keep the pressure up, ram the agenda down all throats as deeply as it goes.
• geodel 7y ago
  Great point. I feel the same. If employees are told that company can spend X dollars on office space and hence open office is only thing we can afford, it will be quite better than buzzword productivity bullshit. After all in my experience companies are reasonable straightforward in term of expenses they plan to have on office supplies, hardware/software etc.