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Companies consider abandoning open office layouts to prevent disease spread
- LatteLazy 6y agoBetter turn off the air con too.
- james_pm 6y agoAnd ban meeting rooms, boardroom-style tables, lunch rooms, etc.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoLunch rooms! Don't get me started. My son got exposed in the lunch room at work. Masks and gloves everywhere in the plant, except of course that doesn't work in the lunch room.
- the-dude 6y agoFor the non-native speakers, what does 'exposed' mean in this sentence?
- tyingq 6y agoSince you can't wear gloves and masks when eating, the person was less protected, so...more "exposed".
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago...and spend time confined in there with a dozen other people at a time, breathing the same air and sitting at the same table.
- AuthorizedCust 6y agoAnd that was probably it. The language from credible authorities is typically that surface transmission is much less of a factor than breathing in what someone else just breathed out. E.g., "Transmission of coronavirus occurs much more commonly through respiratory droplets than through fomites." (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cleaning-disinfection.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...) Sorry for the weasel words, but there's so much the science isn't clear on that they remain necessary.
- rtx 6y agoIt might be more to do with eating.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoHis co-worker he was closely confined with (small plant; small lunch room) has tested positive and is hospitalized. The plant was closed, and some massive sterilization procedure underway. And of course my son the line Engineer was called in to help close the plant (stop all the machines since the operators were sent home; unload and purge the materials; pickle the storage and computer systems). So his exposure there was 100X everybody else's as he had to visit every machine and every place in the plant.
- itronitron 6y ago'potentially infected' (exposed to the virus)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- __s 6y agoOh my the chills I have when I get into the office, I walk to work & sweat, so I have walk in a light t-shirt & wear a coat indoors. But then eventually the coat's circulation is bad & I'm sweating more So glad to be working from home now, get my own private bathroom & can manage my heat dressed in a blanket
- Vrondi 6y agoI truly do not miss the HVAC at work, where the thermostat is controlled by a company in another city, and I have to layer up in winter clothes all summer, some of us wear coats and gloves at our desks in the summer, and then randomly the entire system dies, leaving us to suddenly roast in a building where none of the windows can be opened. Sometimes my supervisor has to leave her painfully frigidly cold office and go stand in the restroom (always far too warm) for a few minutes in order to thaw out.
- mnm1 6y agoAnd in the winter, 80F+ degrees, making sure to weaken the already weak systems people have in winter and ensuring that people get sick. The one job like that, I quit after two weeks, but not before getting the worst flu I've ever had as an adult. I'm sure this will work out wonderfully this winter with coronavirus. Frankly, companies asking employees that can wfh to return before a vaccine or cure exists are nothing short of committing murder. I doubt anyone will stop them though. I've never had a job I was willing to die for and I'm certain I never will. Better fired on unemployment than dead.
- joncrane 6y agoMy, how the pendulum swings! I'm firmly in the camp of hating open office plans. My first job out of college making $50k per year in Washington DC, I had my own office. It was all downhill from there. In my career (I'm 45 now), there is literally a direct negative correlation between how much money I make and the quality of my office surroundings (specifically, the privacy and quiet all go down as my pay goes up). I used to rail against it but I figured that's how the world works and always insisted on enough money to make up for the crappy office space. I would be THRILLED if COVID reverses this (IMO) awful trend. However, I do not have my hopes up.
- 7thaccount 6y agoOpen floor plans make concentration nearly impossible. Headphones and music is a must. It's also deeply unsettling to have people walking behind you 24/7. I think human evolution makes you not happy about this. A coworker of mine left for a company where all employees have offices and according to him the gain in productivity was wild.
- russfink 6y agoHaving intentional collaborative workspaces, while maintaining private space for concentration or just personal retreat, is optimal. Forced collaboration is suboptimal.
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y agoPrivate officies are perfect for collaboration. There is no need to schedule meeting rooms. Just talk in your office.
- ghaff 6y agoYes. I worked at a company for many years that was offices (mostly for managers) and cubicles. Collaboration was fine. Culture was open door unless you specifically didn't want to be disturbed/overheard for some reason. I imagine it's different at other places but private office shouldn't be equated to private office with always shut door.
- spacephysics 6y agoI much prefer having a private area to work efficiently without distraction (rather minimal distraction) vs a large shared desk where the weakest attention-span “link” at the table would take everyone off task frequently.
- ashtonkem 6y agoNow this is interesting. All of the reasons provided for open plan offices have been disingenuous; the reason why open plan offices are a thing is that it drastically lowers the land cost per employee. This is why they were popularized in NYC and SF; two cities with famously high land costs. But of course, abandoning the open plan office is expensive. Companies will need more space, driving up the cost per employee. One can’t help but wonder if this’ll push for more permanently remote positions.
- cmsonger 6y ago> One can’t help but wonder if this’ll push for more permanently remote positions. I think that's right. Currently these companies are learning to effectively remote work under the duress of COVID-19. How long until they start to ask themselves "what do I do with all this expensive office space." Returning to pre-COVID-19 life requires a vaccine, of which there is no guarantee. But a path forward with dramatically reduced office space requirements will look sure -- and offer value to employees who like the flexibility. There are some really good reasons to want to have an office and face to face interactions; but right now they all look pretty fragile.
- zozbot234 6y ago> All of the reasons provided for open plan offices have been disingenuous; the reason why open plan offices are a thing is that it drastically lowers the land cost per employee. Then why not make those rationales explicit and have the same norms around noise and distractions as you'd find in a library reading room. Keep a reduced number of separate private offices, small meeting rooms, cubicles etc. in case people need to do something that would annoy or distract others. Being disingenuous about these things is pointless, it just keeps people from reaching good compromise solutions.
- ashtonkem 6y agoThere are a small number of companies that do that, including 37signals. I think that few companies do that because setting cultural norms and rules like that is very hard, especially when companies are growing.
- danielrpa 6y agoThe best way to prevent spreading diseases at the office is to not require your employees to go to the office - assuming WFH is compatible with the company's business. I work at a FAANG company which was aggressively opposed to WFH before the covid-19 crisis. As matter of fact, I recently changed teams within said company and during the informational interview I asked about the team's policy on WFH - the answer was that "our team has a strong 'collaborative in-the-office' culture, so we don't encourage WFH" I am not kidding, we're talking about one of the most advanced companies in history and they required domestic travel+hotel for trivial half-day, mostly passive interview training that could have been done easily over teleconference, that's how much this company values physical presence. Fast forward a few months, everybody is WFH in the company and the sky hasn't fallen. Actually, my productivity vastly increased because I'm fortunate to have a solid WFH environment at home (despite kids/wife around). While I'm not proposing mandatory WFH for tech companies, neither saying that it works for everybody, I believe our top companies could lead and finally allow people who demonstrate that they can be productive at home to just stay home - permanently.
- Analemma_ 6y agoI’m curious which FAANG you worked at that strongly discouraged WFH. I’ve worked at two now, including the one that’s sort of notorious for treating employees terribly, and both of them were fine with WFH when necessary. I sort of got the sense that they were all more or less OK with it.
- m3kw9 6y agoEven without COVID-19 sickness gets passed around like crazy in open layouts
- ken 6y agoYes but that's not their concern. It never was. We can now clearly see what the threshold is for management making such decisions. Workers complaining of work conditions? Research showing decreased productivity? Nope. Not going to do anything until there's live video on the 5 o'clock news showing body bags being loaded onto refrigerator trucks. The saying goes, "Safety regulations are written in blood". This is one of the many reasons unions are useful even if you make a great salary. It gives you someone on site whose job is to look out for you, and it gives you a lever with which to institute necessary workplace changes.
- SlipperySlope 6y agoUse UV-C air cleaners to kill all airborne virus and bacteria in each closed office. Very inexpensive. Look for HEPA air cleaners. Conference rooms, and lunchrooms can have a personal UV-C air cleaner quietly blowing sterile air at each face. Closed offices are healthier and much more productive. Employees deserve the increased floor space cost - especially outside urban cores.
- cletus 6y agoSo I was last in the office in early March. First it was a week of recommended WFH followed by a predictable shift to mandatory WFH but I'd already decided that NYC was not the place where I wanted to be when this all played out so I exiled myself. I honestly don't know what going back to the office looks like at this point, both in timing and the logistics. The fact of the matter is that we have open plan layouts with minimal space per employee (basically a desk plus chair) because of cost. An office per employee simply doesn't scale for the size of the big tech companies if they want to have offices in coastal urban areas. I haven't run the numbers on this but I'd guess it averages out at about 60sq ft per employee in the desk area and probably twice that once you factor in all the meeting rooms. It may even be as high as 150sq ft. As an example since there are public numbers on this, Google's building on 111 8th Ave is, I believe, 2.1 million square feet of rentable space divided over 16 floors. Higher floors have smaller footprints so for the lower floors that's probably around 160,000 sq ft. I don't know the number of employees per floor but I believe it's around 1500 give or take so this would fit the estimate of 120-150sq ft per employee. Google bought that building for $1.9B. It's probably appreciated some since then but probably not hugely, being commercial. Let's say it's $3B. That's a value of $1400/sq ft. Assume an 8% gross yield then 140sq ft of space costs ~$2M and has an opportunity cost of almost $160,000. Doubling that space gets real expensive. Even if you're prepared to pay it, having room for the ~8000 employees you have gets impractical. 111 8th Ave is already one of the largest buildings in NYC (by rentable square feet). Google have already overflown to Chelsea Market and 85 10th Ave and probably more by now (I left ~3 years ago). Social distancing is going to be a thing for the foreseeable future. People have this weirdly optimistic view that we can just develop a vaccine or an effective treatment for this. There are many diseases that have killed millions and been around for decades that still have no vaccine (eg HIV, malaria, dengue fever). In fact, no coronavirus to date has had a vaccine developed for it. It's unclear what will happen with Covid-19. will it mutate and become something you seasonally just "get" like the flu? We have flu vaccines but they're partially effective and the virus mutates such that you need a different vaccine every year. Generally speaking, viruses tend to get less deadly over time (eg Spanish flu evolved into H1N1 eventually) but it doesn't seem like Covid-19 is particularly deadly now. You might point to the number of deaths in each country but the number of infections in almost all cases is underreported. Some don't even realize they've had it. Or will herd immunity kick in at some point? But I look at all this and wonder if I'll get back into the office this year. Even when I do, I just don't think more space or private offices are in my future. I also don't foresee a WFH revolution. So it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out.
- weinzierl 6y ago> Some companies have begun mentioning a return to one of history’s more derided office-design concepts: the cubicle. There is talk also of the cubicle’s see-through cousin, known as the sneeze guard. So we will replace open office layouts with transparent single person cubicles.
- greedo 6y agoWe have sneezeguard cubicles where I work. So when I return to the office, I'll have three people within about 4ft of my face, breathing, sneezing, coughing in my direction. The cubicle walls aren't even the old school high ones, these are 60" high. Then I have three people actually in my cube with me. Oh, we're also in an enclosed "secure" NOC so we all rebreathe the same stale air. I'm thrilled to return to the office...
- UseStrict 6y agoThat would be a welcome improvement in my workspace. A glass cube would grant me a little extra space, a bit more peace and quiet, and protect me from all of my neighbours breathing on me constantly.
- grishka 6y agoWhy does it have to be see-through, though? So the worst thing about open spaces — absolute lack of privacy — stays?
- trhway 6y agoWith see-through it is possible to increase density without it being obvious coffins. Instead - behold the cozy aquariums. So, yes it stays. Anybody thinking/celebrating that we'll get less density because of covid are dreaming a nice dream:)
- kortex 6y agoWe have a pretty optimal layout, imho. We have several "pods" which are an open 30'x30'x14' room that opens to the main corridor, which get divided into up to 7 cubes via 7' dividers (very modern and colorful, not the vertical carpets of yore). The center usually has whiteboards and chairs for collabs. So you get interaction with coworkers, but can bury yourself in work readily (also everyone has noise cancelling headphones). Kinda miss it, it's way nicer than my home office. There's definitely way less structure now and I am suffering for it.
- clarry 6y agoWe have a pretty optimal layout, imho. Everyone has their own office, some have two to support different kinds of work.. My office is next to my bedroom.
- beager 6y agoThat sounds relatively fantastic. I interviewed with a few larger companies many years ago that had a similar thing. Each "pod" (or scrum team, or what have you) had an office with a door that closed, semi-private cubes within, their own collaboration space, and autonomy over much of their environment. Interestingly, all of these companies ran outmoded spec and dev waterfall processes. And every truly agile place I've worked at or experienced has been everyone in an open room on each other's nerves. Weird correlation!
- efiecho 6y agoI have seen movies from the 80's were each private office had a bathroom and often wondered if that was a real thing. Anyone who have worked a place with both a private office and bathroom?
- EForEndeavour 6y agoTechnically, I'm entering my ninth week of working at a place like this. It has its ups and downs, but overall I'm liking it.
- efiecho 6y agoHa, didn't think of that, the same for me then. Not as much cocaine in mine as I had expected though.
- madcaptenor 6y agoI have a bathroom adjacent to my office. But my office also is a bathroom for two cats.
- monknomo 6y agoI've only seen that for executive spaces, never mere professionals. Definitely a real thing though.
- closeparen 6y agoIn academia you see suites of several offices - bigwig and 3-4 support staff - with a bathroom for the suite. Not quite private but almost as nice.
- Eric_WVGG 6y agoPrivate bathrooms were rare, but individual offices very normal. I’d point to Mad Men as the model of the typical company office through the early eighties. (Note that there was still an open floor plan, the "secretarial pool," where they put most of the women) By the end of the eighties, the set of _Office Space_ was the norm.
- chadlavi 6y agoIt's amazing that it takes a deadly global pandemic for companies to finally abandon this very poor organizational tactic, not years of reduced productivity, increased worker stress, and (in environments where it wouldn't endanger workers' careers) constant complaints.
- folkhack 6y agoIt was never about productivity or the worker. It's a well studied thing that there's a steep drop in productivity when moving from closed-offices to open plans. I think it's a foggy cloud of reasons this came to be such a fad, from cost savings in floorspace/etc., to managers wanting to micro-manage butts-in-chairs, to the cargo-cult-esque promotion of it, etc. In America, color me "not surprised" that it takes something outstanding like COVID to move the needle in the corporate sector.
- hedora 6y agoAny company large enough to track software engineer productivity is seeing an uptick in output. If you’re keeping score: open floor plans are quantifiably worse for productivity than global pandemics. I miss my office. It had a couch and a door.
- castratikron 6y agoVery persuasive to use your manager's own metrics (sprint velocity, etc.) to show that you're more productive WFH.
- riyakhanna1983 6y agoA friend of mine has furnished his garage, and is renting it out as a private working space in his neighborhood.
- lm28469 6y agoUnless you have self washing surfaces, filtered air systems and a single office for each of the employees I don't see how this would help for something like the current virus. They're all most likely going to eat in the same areas, use the same bathrooms, doors, elevators, meeting rooms, use public transports to come to the office, &c. You know what's a good way to prevent disease spread ? Paid sick leaves
- trynewideas 6y ago9th paragraph: > Other research shows that one of the best ways to reduce transmission in the workplace is to provide paid sick leave that encourages ill employees to stay home.
- acd 6y agoOpen Office space never was smart except for saving rent. Open Office space causes more distractions lower productivity and less cooperation. Diseases spread more easily too. The only good thing I can think of is startups where costs needs to be saved.
- renewiltord 6y agoWe call it Libre Office now, by the way ;) To be honest, I think the true innovation is WFH. Bypass all these things and make a full-mixed city where folks can work without commuting and walk to their diner spots and everything. It's what they made the future look like in sci-fi. I can't wait. Combine that with my personally highest desired innovation: work times. In California, the most beautiful time of day is right now morning to noon, and afternoon to evening. I want to be out. Fortunately, I can be, but so many people are missing out on this. With WFH will come a competitive advantage - the worktime shift. And we will live our best lives.
- sersi 6y agoAnd this right here is why I've been working remotely with american companies while living in Asia. I can go, take advantage of the beautiful weather in the afternoon and hike or feel refreshed, then get to work until the middle of the night.
- simiones 6y agoI'm always amazed that in discussions about offices vs open floor plans there is no mention of sunlight. To me offices buildings are always associated with 24h fluorescent-only lights for all but the best offices (usually top managers/senior engineers), whereas most open offices have ample sunlight, regardless of whether you have a sit by the window or are working in the center. Not to say that there aren't all sorts of disadvantages to open offices, but I still feel sunlight counts for a lot.
- save_ferris 6y agoEh, I’ve only had solid sunlight in about 50% of my open office layouts. I agree that it’s super important, but open office != guaranteed sunlight in my experience.
- samkater 6y agoI would echo the sibling comment (save_ferris) that in many places open offices do not encourage sunlight - especially those places where the offices are on the outer perimeter (capturing the sunlight) and the interior is stuck with fluorescent lighting (a previous experience of mine). To add to your sunlight comment, though, is I also rarely, if ever, see notes about ventilation. Converting an open-space office into a private-space office (or potentially even cubicles) is non-trivial as far as ventilation is concerned. Not that I think it is an excuse for an open office, but it isn't as simple as throwing up some temporary walls in an open space. Do I believe it is worth it? yes. Would most places see the work required and want to deal with the hassle of coordinating everything with the building owner to get the work done? probably not.
- ubercow13 6y agoFor a lot of the year in the UK, the grey sky you can see out of the open office windows is not especially invigorating.
- fullshark 6y agoI hate open offices, but i think those aquariums might be even worse.
- ck2 6y agoAre you in the same closed air-circulation? Is someone sick even without symptoms? Well now someone else is sick. And they are going to get the next person sick. Virus doesn't care what your office plan is, you are all in the same circulating air.
- buboard 6y agoconsider?
- siruncledrew 6y agoFunny... for all the points against open office layouts that have been previously raised (and ignored), now it’s infectious disease that has finally struck a cord against the office paradigm. (“Funny” in a cynical sense).
- takanori 6y agoThere is no mention of the elevator. Until they solve this the open/closed floor isn’t going to matter.
- sequoia 6y agoWhy companies have open floor plan offices: * Reasons 1-9: it costs A LOT LESS than offices or cubes * Reason 10: Collaboration :)
- kyuudou 6y agoWow, if there was one good takeaway from this whole COVID-19 mess, getting rid of open office layouts would be grand. Or at least having a hybrid of small pods of teams and a few larger meeting areas for less frequent, larger meetings. When not working remote.
- titzer 6y agoOpen office plans are so disrespectful of employees. It was always a brazen move to save money on commercial real estate. Not being able to poop because your building is overcrowded was maddening to the point that I contemplated revolt.