4 ms·
How could it ever be a reason? Saving $1000's worth of rent by making your $25,000/month employee half as productive sounds insane at first glance but the tri
by VRay 6y ago
How could it ever be a reason? Saving $1000's worth of rent by making your $25,000/month employee half as productive sounds insane at first glance
but the trick is that the management chain "saving money" and the management chain that gets screwed by the reduced productivity are different
It's hard to measure productivity, too, so it might not be clear how much the open office is really costing a company
- evgen 6y agoThen perhaps the claimed productivity loss is not really as big as many claim on sites like HN? While it is not easy for an individual to measure any productivity loss, a large company or an entire industry would probably be able to put some serious numbers behind a cost/benefit analysis. Since many of the companies that have open plan offices have a rather large per-employee revenue I think it would be relatively easy for them to determine the impact. Since these companies have not only persisted in building open plan offices but have built entire campuses around such plans I think the evidence is quite clear that they are not actually the productivity sink claimed by many.
- rightbyte 6y agoSince it is so hard to estimate time needed for a task how would you even notice a 50% decrease in productivity?
- im3w1l 6y agoGive two people the exact same task. Enough times to get useful statistics. It would be very hard from observation only, you kind have to set up experiments like this to know.
- VRay 6y agoYou're making a good point, but it basically boils down to "Companies' leaders are smart and generally make good, well-researched decisions" So many great companies fall apart because that is just not true at all.