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So one thing that bothers me about this is they talk about not going back to cubicles and creating transparent dividers. I do not like this not one bit, I enjoy
by hpoe 6y ago
So one thing that bothers me about this is they talk about not going back to cubicles and creating transparent dividers. I do not like this not one bit, I enjoy the privacy and distraction blocking of a cubicle, an office would be optimal but a cubicle is preferable to the open office hellscape that was looming before Corona stopped it.
But going from open office to plexiglass dividers seems to be far worse than a cubicle in every conceivable way.
- trhway 6y ago>from open office to plexiglass dividers seems to be far worse it would allow to even more increase density, even beyond open floor office, so it is "better" for a specific corporate definition of "better". The definition that has been driving the density increase during the last 3 decades from private offices to open space. If not for coronavirus, the next density increase would have taken like a decade too. Now we're going to jump straight into it. Into our personal cozy aquariums. Office dress code - goldfish. Or crabby.
- hpoe 6y agoVoice over the speaker Rockstar JavaScript Software Engineer #2293 You have forgotten the cover sheet to your TPS report. A company message was sent by the corporate friendly bot on Friday regarding including cover sheets on the TPS report. We have contacted the corporate friendly bot to email you a new copy of the email. If you fail to place your cover sheet on further TPS reports this will be noted. This has been an automate message from the compliance and reporting bot Carl. We value you as an employee, you are the life blood of Initech!
- vidanay 6y agoThis sounds best if you read it in The Borg voice.
- kanzenryu2 6y agoDing dong... "IT, clean up on rack five!"
- kabdib 6y agoI used to work in an office where there were speakers in the ceiling. The company used them, too. "Call for Mr. Gibber on line 10, call for ..." all day long. ALL DAY LONG while you're trying to concentrate on writing code. Funny how the speakers always seemed to be failing in the engineering areas. Simply cannot imagine why :-)
- onemoresoop 6y agoYeah, the transparent modern panopticon. They think that when people feel watched produce more. Im in no way more productive this way. I have to make a hard effort to zone out into coding, and this effort is consuming a lot of energy in itself. I think its our time to bargain and not allow this to happen when we all go back to work. I hope for partial or full time work from home setup. The value extraction machine should keep that in mind
- itronitron 6y agoIf people feel that they are being constantly watched then it also provides them an incentive to hire coworkers who will make them look good by comparison.
- ken 6y ago> I think its our time to bargain If only there were some sort of organization that would enable us to do this collectively!
- pmiller2 6y agoYou mean some sort of organization where workers unite to advance their common interests?
- M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y agowhy the unnecessary obscurity?
- dvtrn 6y agoPlease don’t reduce talks of worker collective action into a shibboleth of “%online_community% is turning into Reddit”. We can do better than that. Like supporting collective worker action.
- M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
- jakevoytko 6y agoI'm hoping that the crisis will be a forcing function into offices with more privacy. Companies will be competing with an increasing number of "remote first" or "ultra flexible" workplaces. These companies may think they want plexiglass dividers now. But new candidates will have offers between "work from wherever" or a plexiglass labyrinth that looks like a modern supermarket checkout on steroids. Why would a candidate choose the plexiglass open office? If the company had a flexible arrangement between the plexiglass jungle or a chill WFH environment, who would work in the open office? As companies realize that many don't want to live in their city, and many others don't want to go to their office, they're going to have to compete to make their office more enticing if they want a world where people still go to an office. Of course, this depends on the broad WFH trend coming closer to gaining critical mass.
- walshemj 6y agoNot it will be the tail functions like building services, hr and accountants trying to externalise the costs of office space and the pay quanta down.
- walshemj 6y agohttps://om.co/2020/05/23/real-reasons-why-tech-giants-are-hugging-remote-work/ https://om.co/2020/05/23/real-reasons-why-tech-giants-are-hu...
- commandlinefan 6y ago> creating transparent dividers I'll definitely be hanging as many database model posters as I can fit on my transparent dividers.
- nine_k 6y agoDon't forget some sound dampeners (felt pads, staircase / waves foam textures, etc). Hard, unobstucted, parallel walls are going to resonate quite noticeably and unpleasantly every time you speak.
- mortenjorck 6y agoA why-not-both option would be translucent dividers that let in light while offering some privacy and isolation.
- Shivetya 6y agoplexiglass dividers with or without being combined with low height dividers just brings up feelings of being in some television show call center. Both provide the image of a seating arrangement created to allow management to scan for people not working as management expects them too, they are not designed for sharing among each other.
- mc32 6y agoIt’s maddening and idiotic. People are human. The most productive people are working 40 or 50% of the time. Most people are productive even less of the time. They also need some privacy. So, what they’re doing is making people work harder at being lazy-taking away from productive time! But it’s easy for managers to fall into a pattern that has them lording over their paiges and feeling good.
- baron_harkonnen 6y agoOpen offices are, and have always been about, control. Not about productivity, but exclusively about control (well maybe with a touch of thrift thrown in there). We say this all the time but act as if it's some secret, or just a cynical remark, but it's not either of these. As a general rule your boss likes that you can feel their perpetual gaze as you work, even if in practice it means you are working less. Because of course you aren't working all the time, and of course you are not 100% being productive. Everyone knows this. It is not a secret that even the most productive engineer spends a huge amount of office time doing nothing. No worker (as I general rule, I know there are exceptions) prefers open offices to either cubicles or real offices (I wonder how many HN have ever had these?). Nobody feels that they work their best when someone is watching them. Everyone knows that part of working in an open office is figuring out how to create the illusion that you are working. The only reason to have an open office is because the people making the decision for how the office should be, and the people reporting to them, do in fact like to watch you work, because they like the control that they feel when they do this. Please let's stop pretending that we don't all understand exactly what open offices are about.
- taphangum 6y agoWell said.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kylecazar 6y agoMaybe, but I think for an awful lot of businesses it's also just about simplicity. It's easy and cheap to set up an open office, which is why startups did it first.
- techslave 6y agolol. open office existed before startups were ever a thing. https://k2space.co.uk/knowledge/history-of-office-design/ https://k2space.co.uk/knowledge/history-of-office-design/
- trianglem 6y agoWhat’s the change from open office if the separators are transparent?
- systematical 6y agoI think the biggest problem with cubicles is they seemed to either come in the colors of prison gray, 1980s beige, or 1970s green. Cubicles were fine for all the reasons this poster mentioned. Just try not to make them look like despair is all. And yes, fuck open design.