5 ms·

I've never really worked in a cubicle (once had a mid tower PC and dual monitors acting as partitions to the front and left) but wouldn't an advantage of an ope

I've never really worked in a cubicle (once had a mid tower PC and dual monitors acting as partitions to the front and left) but wouldn't an advantage of an open plan office over a cubicle be that you can see your manager walking towards you from a mile off and be able to quickly look like you're working.

t-writescode 7y ago
These issues sound a lot like managers not trusting employees to get work done, which sounds like a bigger issue.
- LeSaucy 7y ago
  Not to mention that as knowledge workers, a lot of the value+ideas you provide come from reading and research that is not explicitly work related. I encourage my team to spend time doing non-related research and work/tinker on finding new things they are interested in, and to not feel guilty if I walk by and they have reddit or hn open/visible. That being said, working in an open office is like being stuck in a plane of purgatory.
- lxcfan 7y ago
  This, but, for both sides. Managers should trust their employees to get stuff done, and not micromanage their time. Employees should get stuff done whether their managers are watching their every move or not, and, trust their managers to not be micromanaging their time. We both need to create a trustworthy relationship. I have no sympathy for employees who do not do work without being forced to any more than I do for bosses who want to micromanage every minute of employee time or every website they visit. You're both hurting all of us.
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    Here's another perspective: mercenary-leaning personality types may be able to compartmentalize micromanagement, but highly intrinsically-motivated minds are totally disrupted by it. The anxiety of observation lingers even when the boss isn't looking and all work begins to carry the sting of coercion. Effort for these people grows out of aligning personal agency with meaningful production, so forced conformity to arbitrary management practices (or worst of all, counterproductive ones) actively kills all but the minimal output to remain employed and put food on the table. But personalities who don't experience the world this way interpret it under the simplistic moral judgment of "laziness", thus perpetuating the very incentive structure that causes it in the first place. I find it highly dubious that there's a significant fraction of humans who are basically not industrious. That just doesn't seem possible or adaptive in the context of a tribe of hunter-gatherers eeking out survival on the savannah. Rather it seems that we're clinging to unsophisticated organizational structures from the Industrial Revolution, which enabled a highly technical society to emerge in the first place but were never iterated to handle things like psychological diversity or the explosion of highly specialized knowledge work. That’s why we have insanities like software designers working factory shifts, in noisy distracting settings, taking marching orders from people who have no idea what they do.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Like all relationships it is reciprocal notably. Demotivated or stressed employees are more likely to "full slack" (not doing any work as opposed to say switching to a lower intensity duty). Bosses who distrust their employees are more likely to micromanage and stress and demotivate. Proper results oriented approaches can help for both parties. At the end of the day throughput is what matters for productivity not how hard they work. But that is logistically nontrivial to set up and calibrate properly, let alone other temptations and pressure to try to "optimize" beyond the ability to be sustained. Knowledge work in even the lowliest sense isn't optimal like an assembly line. Making matters worse as usual for any would be reformers are inertia and politics of course. It is the ultimate "dancing monkey" but instead of being between security and the monkey choosing the latter, the choice is practical and wise decisions or politically pleasing ones.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

t-writescode 7y ago

These issues sound a lot like managers not trusting employees to get work done, which sounds like a bigger issue.

LeSaucy 7y ago
Not to mention that as knowledge workers, a lot of the value+ideas you provide come from reading and research that is not explicitly work related. I encourage my team to spend time doing non-related research and work/tinker on finding new things they are interested in, and to not feel guilty if I walk by and they have reddit or hn open/visible. That being said, working in an open office is like being stuck in a plane of purgatory.
lxcfan 7y ago
This, but, for both sides. Managers should trust their employees to get stuff done, and not micromanage their time. Employees should get stuff done whether their managers are watching their every move or not, and, trust their managers to not be micromanaging their time. We both need to create a trustworthy relationship. I have no sympathy for employees who do not do work without being forced to any more than I do for bosses who want to micromanage every minute of employee time or every website they visit. You're both hurting all of us.
- homonculus1 7y ago
  Here's another perspective: mercenary-leaning personality types may be able to compartmentalize micromanagement, but highly intrinsically-motivated minds are totally disrupted by it. The anxiety of observation lingers even when the boss isn't looking and all work begins to carry the sting of coercion. Effort for these people grows out of aligning personal agency with meaningful production, so forced conformity to arbitrary management practices (or worst of all, counterproductive ones) actively kills all but the minimal output to remain employed and put food on the table. But personalities who don't experience the world this way interpret it under the simplistic moral judgment of "laziness", thus perpetuating the very incentive structure that causes it in the first place. I find it highly dubious that there's a significant fraction of humans who are basically not industrious. That just doesn't seem possible or adaptive in the context of a tribe of hunter-gatherers eeking out survival on the savannah. Rather it seems that we're clinging to unsophisticated organizational structures from the Industrial Revolution, which enabled a highly technical society to emerge in the first place but were never iterated to handle things like psychological diversity or the explosion of highly specialized knowledge work. That’s why we have insanities like software designers working factory shifts, in noisy distracting settings, taking marching orders from people who have no idea what they do.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Like all relationships it is reciprocal notably. Demotivated or stressed employees are more likely to "full slack" (not doing any work as opposed to say switching to a lower intensity duty). Bosses who distrust their employees are more likely to micromanage and stress and demotivate. Proper results oriented approaches can help for both parties. At the end of the day throughput is what matters for productivity not how hard they work. But that is logistically nontrivial to set up and calibrate properly, let alone other temptations and pressure to try to "optimize" beyond the ability to be sustained. Knowledge work in even the lowliest sense isn't optimal like an assembly line. Making matters worse as usual for any would be reformers are inertia and politics of course. It is the ultimate "dancing monkey" but instead of being between security and the monkey choosing the latter, the choice is practical and wise decisions or politically pleasing ones.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]