6 ms·

The prevailing wisdom, previous to Covid, was that you had to be colocated in an open floor plan, sitting next to each other, and overhearing conversations, in

The prevailing wisdom, previous to Covid, was that you had to be colocated in an open floor plan, sitting next to each other, and overhearing conversations, in order to facilitate collaboration. Now many companies that spearheaded this (not including Apple, apparently) are saying you don't even have to be in the same building -- or even in the same city! What a turn around! Was the open floor plan thing erroneous?

ddingus 5y ago
The open floor plan was cheap. Seriously.
- nightcracker 5y ago
  It was cheap only in the "penny wise" way.
bibabaloo 5y ago
I think something that's not readily apparent with the success so far of remote work during COVID, is that organizations are operating on the organizational 'shared context' that was created before remote work started. It's why I think outsourcing often doesn't work out. Outsourced workers lack an understanding of this shared context which makes for a high level of friction and impairs their ability to deliver the work as imagined by the organization. Right now, IME we're still in the sweet spot of being able to work from this shared context, which I think means the benefits of working from the same physical space are not appreciated. It'll be interesting to see how things play out if remote work becomes the norm. I do think remote work can be successful, if the effort is put in to make sure that collaboration etc. still occurs. However, if companies stay remote and try to run on the fumes of the previously held shared context from pre-COVID then I think it will mean disaster for them.
- cma 5y ago
  Maybe companies could cycle into a building every 3 years or so like cicadas.
  - swader999 5y ago
    Every three years seems to long a gap. But two week stretches every few months might be perfect.
  - beckingz 5y ago
    I think every 3 months is optimal, but I like the metaphor.
- flowerlad 5y ago
  Agree regarding shared context. The question though is, how close do you have to be to your coworkers, to create that shared context? Do you have to be in the same room and overhearing conversations? Is it enough to be in the same building? Or is it enough to video conference several times a week? In my experience, video conferencing several times a week is enough to build shared context. Open floor plan not needed.
  - the_snooze 5y ago
    I think it varies on the organization and individuals. For me, "shared context" is a general feeling that people can ask questions and ask for help and can expect to get a productive response in a reasonably timely manner. Organizations have absolutely managed to establish that online using tools like video conferencing (as you mention). For me though, I find relying heavily on asynchronous communications insufficient, and synchronous remote communications deeply frustrating (i.e., natural turn-taking cues aren't present in video calls). I end up feeling disconnected from the people I work remotely with, even though they didn't do anything wrong. I can only establish "shared context" with people who have spent enough time with me in the same space with ample frictionless face-to-face conversations.
  - curun1r 5y ago
    One crucial bit of shared context that gets mostly missed…lunch. Not having lunch together has been, IME, the single biggest indicator of a dysfunctional team. The neat thing about lunch is that the conversations are entirely non-directed without feeling like the time is being wasted in a meeting. Conversations can cover a specific project, when a high degree of coordination is necessary, generalized venting, when there are shared frustrations or just be about non-work topics that help a team bond and get to know each other as people rather than workers. It’s like a meeting that doesn’t feel like a meeting that can be strategic or therapeutic as needed. There’s really no way to replicate the beneficial effects of eating lunch together when workers are remote. As a manager, this has also been one of my go-to tricks for successful cross-team projects lasting any significant amount of time. I tell one of my team members to setup a lunch with at least one member of the other team on a weekly basis and use the incentive of authorizing the company to pay for it. For ~$20/person/week, the cross-team communications issues basically disappear. It’s ridiculously cost effective and almost magical in how well it works.
- smichel17 5y ago
  Mixed onsite/remote doesn't work because the remote folks become second class citizens. Missing out on conversations that happen in person prevents them from working as effectively. Fully remote takes more explicit focus on making sure necessary communication happens. It's harder to make work than in person. But I don't think it's impossible. Also, in my opinion, remote work works better when team members have met in person. It's easier to pick up on certain ways that they communicate, which help understanding in online communications.
  - dagmx 5y ago
    Mixed can work if either some higher up employees are remote or some meaningful percentage of employees are remote (even if a minority). It's about the communication paradigm. If people consider communication to be only local, then it falls apart when people are in multiple locations (including multi site offices). However if people default to remote compatible communication, it scales really well to people working from home and multi site offices.
    - calvinmorrison 5y ago
      Depends on the type of company. At a sufficient size you end up with offices worldwide and where you are matters less
      - dagmx 5y ago
        I think that largely depends on the location of leadership. If all leadership is in one location, yes, it'll get one sided. If leadership are spread out, I think it works out fine. I've spent the last decade working with large multi site companies in the "lesser" location, and was able to move up from a junior to senior/supervisor roles at each company. Obviously my anecdote doesn't scale out uniformly, but I've seen it work out fine for many employees as long as leadership was adequately spread out.
  - danenania 5y ago
    Does anyone have thoughts on hybrid? Like 1-2 days per week in the office. You lose the geographic flexibility, but apart from that, it seems like it could potentially offer the best of both worlds?
- seibelj 5y ago
  My company is hiring Remote Forever https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358696 We have shared office pods in cities where we reach critical mass, currently Boston and Miami. The experiment right now is between companies that stick to office requirements and those that decentralize. I hired a high-level Amazon engineer because they did not want to commute back into the office. We pay good money for top talent. The best time for startups to poach high-end talent is now!
- naravara 5y ago
  > I think something that's not readily apparent with the success so far of remote work during COVID, is that organizations are operating on the organizational 'shared context' that was created before remote work started. Strong agree here. My company has hired a bunch of new people over the course of the pandemic and the same level of acculturation into the internal culture and way of doing things is just not there for them. A fair number of our team has actually been 100% remote all along before the pandemic, but I think having a core contingent of (particularly operation and project management) people sharing space over the workday did a lot to spread that shared context around and loop the fully remote members of the team in. Over the COVID period I’ve noticed newer team members just having a lot more trouble adjusting and settling in because all that in acknowledged cultural and context dissemination wasn’t happening. I can’t think of the last time I actually spoke to anyone on our UI/UX team because I literally have zero reason to set up a meeting with them and if there isn’t a work reason to interact it doesn’t happen anymore. For me that’s less of a deal but, for example, imagine being in the shoes of a junior business development person. For them their career progression and skill development depends on picking up a lot of the lingo and philosophy around how development works by osmosis. The absence of that is pretty fatal for cross team collaboration. Lots of big companies are heavily silo’d in this way where everyone just does their specific job description thing, and I’ve worked in many such companies. I really didn’t like it. Those environments have always felt less dynamic and creative to me. Obviously that’s just one man’s opinion and experience, but I really don’t think I’d be as happy in a fully remote team.
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    > I can’t think of the last time I actually spoke to anyone on our UI/UX team because I literally have zero reason to set up a meeting with them and if there isn’t a work reason to interact it doesn’t happen anymore This is what I really dislike about remote work. I was looking forwards to mingling with non-programmers, but when you're new to the company and working remotely that's basically impossible.
    - remoquete 5y ago
      That’s simply not true. It’s as easy as joining their channels in Slack.
- ilaksh 5y ago
  Outsourcing usually doesn't work out because of poor management, such as the first principle and primary driver of a project being to cut costs. And the reason for that is often because budgets are insufficient. They try to find cut-rate programmers by going overseas, then try to save more money by finding the less expensive outsourcing agency. Then, instead of engaging with the problem, they hire a third party middleman who takes a big cut and has no stake in the actual outcome. This is a horrible incentive structure and usually results in poor communication. The fact that they are from another country is irrelevant. The language skills could be very relevant, but again it is usually so poorly managed that none of the people that should be communicating directly with developers even try or are given an opportunity.
owenmarshall 5y ago
It always was. “Collaboration” was a weak excuse given by managers who want a panopticon and companies that need to densely pack floor space to save money.
- acover 5y ago
  That's not universally true. I've been in buildings where the employees had their own private offices and shared spaces. A majority of people used the shared space.
  - glhaynes 5y ago
    Any idea what nudged them toward spending their time in shared spaces? It’s been a while, but I remember working in buildings where most employees had offices (or, at least, cubicles) and they mostly used those instead of shared spaces.
    - acover 5y ago
      I think it was just the socialization and being in the loop for what your team was doing. I don't really know though.
anothernewdude 5y ago
The open office has a chilling effect on collaboration. People go to meeting rooms to collaborate, and that's the biggest sign that the open office isn't working out.
iambateman 5y ago
The people who design and pay for open floor plans…don’t sit in open floor plans.
- geodel 5y ago
  This is so true and a pithy statement. I am gonna use it in many conversations going forward!
jayd16 5y ago
If we're forced to wfh everyone is going to say they're doing great and stock holders shouldn't worry. We're doing better than ever! Just like every quarter. It'll be interesting to see where we actually land in a year.
rsj_hn 5y ago
> The prevailing wisdom previous to Covid, was that you had to be colocated in an open floor plan, sitting next to each other, and overhearing conversations, in order to facilitate collaboration. That may have been the prevailing trend, but programmers were pretty clear in pointing out how destructive for performance and focus this open office trend was. There is an avalanche of data pointing to how harmful the openoffice layout is for everything from declining morale to decreasing productivity hits to faster spread of disease and increasing worker stress levels. This clear and unambiguous data was widely disseminated in the popular press. The only reason firms ignored all the data and did this was to save on real estate costs and to mimic other firms. To anyone who bothered to spend 10 seconds googling the topic, all the research was obvious, except no one bothered to do that very basic due diligence and see if there was any data whatsoever to support the openoffice thesis. https://www.workfront.com/blog/what-science-says-about-open-offices https://www.workfront.com/blog/what-science-says-about-open-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2019/06/30/open-plan-work-spaces-lower-productivity-employee-morale/?sh=16605d1d61cd https://www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2019/06/30/open-plan-w... https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-workers-chat-70-less-are-less-productive-and-email-more/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-work...
donnythecroc 5y ago
The open floor plan thing was to make commercial real estate costs cheaper. Having individual offices requires 2x to 3x space. Then you have significant additional fit out costs - for example you now have to air condition say 1000 small spaces instead a couple of large ones. You have to pay for partitioning, separate cable runs, your door costs. Might sound silly but if a 100m office fit out can easily double or triple. So overall 2/3x fit out cost + 2/3x annual rent. All of a sudden why wouldn't you promote open plan working?
- geodel 5y ago
  And these are all good points. If companies stop treating employees as ignorant chumps and explain them costs, I think it would go long way in increased mutual understanding. But then employers feel scared that if an employee comes back and say how about I set up a home office? Win-Win right? So now employers comes with cost saving plan but smothers with bullshit of "next generation collaborative workspace" or whatever.
gregwebs 5y ago
open floor plans and remote are both good at scaling up employees without having to move the company to new office space.

ddingus 5y ago

The open floor plan was cheap. Seriously.

nightcracker 5y ago
It was cheap only in the "penny wise" way.

bibabaloo 5y ago

I think something that's not readily apparent with the success so far of remote work during COVID, is that organizations are operating on the organizational 'shared context' that was created before remote work started. It's why I think outsourcing often doesn't work out. Outsourced workers lack an understanding of this shared context which makes for a high level of friction and impairs their ability to deliver the work as imagined by the organization. Right now, IME we're still in the sweet spot of being able to work from this shared context, which I think means the benefits of working from the same physical space are not appreciated. It'll be interesting to see how things play out if remote work becomes the norm. I do think remote work can be successful, if the effort is put in to make sure that collaboration etc. still occurs. However, if companies stay remote and try to run on the fumes of the previously held shared context from pre-COVID then I think it will mean disaster for them.

cma 5y ago
Maybe companies could cycle into a building every 3 years or so like cicadas.
- swader999 5y ago
  Every three years seems to long a gap. But two week stretches every few months might be perfect.
- beckingz 5y ago
  I think every 3 months is optimal, but I like the metaphor.
flowerlad 5y ago
Agree regarding shared context. The question though is, how close do you have to be to your coworkers, to create that shared context? Do you have to be in the same room and overhearing conversations? Is it enough to be in the same building? Or is it enough to video conference several times a week? In my experience, video conferencing several times a week is enough to build shared context. Open floor plan not needed.
- the_snooze 5y ago
  I think it varies on the organization and individuals. For me, "shared context" is a general feeling that people can ask questions and ask for help and can expect to get a productive response in a reasonably timely manner. Organizations have absolutely managed to establish that online using tools like video conferencing (as you mention). For me though, I find relying heavily on asynchronous communications insufficient, and synchronous remote communications deeply frustrating (i.e., natural turn-taking cues aren't present in video calls). I end up feeling disconnected from the people I work remotely with, even though they didn't do anything wrong. I can only establish "shared context" with people who have spent enough time with me in the same space with ample frictionless face-to-face conversations.
- curun1r 5y ago
  One crucial bit of shared context that gets mostly missed…lunch. Not having lunch together has been, IME, the single biggest indicator of a dysfunctional team. The neat thing about lunch is that the conversations are entirely non-directed without feeling like the time is being wasted in a meeting. Conversations can cover a specific project, when a high degree of coordination is necessary, generalized venting, when there are shared frustrations or just be about non-work topics that help a team bond and get to know each other as people rather than workers. It’s like a meeting that doesn’t feel like a meeting that can be strategic or therapeutic as needed. There’s really no way to replicate the beneficial effects of eating lunch together when workers are remote. As a manager, this has also been one of my go-to tricks for successful cross-team projects lasting any significant amount of time. I tell one of my team members to setup a lunch with at least one member of the other team on a weekly basis and use the incentive of authorizing the company to pay for it. For ~$20/person/week, the cross-team communications issues basically disappear. It’s ridiculously cost effective and almost magical in how well it works.
smichel17 5y ago
Mixed onsite/remote doesn't work because the remote folks become second class citizens. Missing out on conversations that happen in person prevents them from working as effectively. Fully remote takes more explicit focus on making sure necessary communication happens. It's harder to make work than in person. But I don't think it's impossible. Also, in my opinion, remote work works better when team members have met in person. It's easier to pick up on certain ways that they communicate, which help understanding in online communications.
- dagmx 5y ago
  Mixed can work if either some higher up employees are remote or some meaningful percentage of employees are remote (even if a minority). It's about the communication paradigm. If people consider communication to be only local, then it falls apart when people are in multiple locations (including multi site offices). However if people default to remote compatible communication, it scales really well to people working from home and multi site offices.
  - calvinmorrison 5y ago
    Depends on the type of company. At a sufficient size you end up with offices worldwide and where you are matters less
    - dagmx 5y ago
      I think that largely depends on the location of leadership. If all leadership is in one location, yes, it'll get one sided. If leadership are spread out, I think it works out fine. I've spent the last decade working with large multi site companies in the "lesser" location, and was able to move up from a junior to senior/supervisor roles at each company. Obviously my anecdote doesn't scale out uniformly, but I've seen it work out fine for many employees as long as leadership was adequately spread out.
- danenania 5y ago
  Does anyone have thoughts on hybrid? Like 1-2 days per week in the office. You lose the geographic flexibility, but apart from that, it seems like it could potentially offer the best of both worlds?
seibelj 5y ago
My company is hiring Remote Forever https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358696 We have shared office pods in cities where we reach critical mass, currently Boston and Miami. The experiment right now is between companies that stick to office requirements and those that decentralize. I hired a high-level Amazon engineer because they did not want to commute back into the office. We pay good money for top talent. The best time for startups to poach high-end talent is now!
naravara 5y ago
> I think something that's not readily apparent with the success so far of remote work during COVID, is that organizations are operating on the organizational 'shared context' that was created before remote work started. Strong agree here. My company has hired a bunch of new people over the course of the pandemic and the same level of acculturation into the internal culture and way of doing things is just not there for them. A fair number of our team has actually been 100% remote all along before the pandemic, but I think having a core contingent of (particularly operation and project management) people sharing space over the workday did a lot to spread that shared context around and loop the fully remote members of the team in. Over the COVID period I’ve noticed newer team members just having a lot more trouble adjusting and settling in because all that in acknowledged cultural and context dissemination wasn’t happening. I can’t think of the last time I actually spoke to anyone on our UI/UX team because I literally have zero reason to set up a meeting with them and if there isn’t a work reason to interact it doesn’t happen anymore. For me that’s less of a deal but, for example, imagine being in the shoes of a junior business development person. For them their career progression and skill development depends on picking up a lot of the lingo and philosophy around how development works by osmosis. The absence of that is pretty fatal for cross team collaboration. Lots of big companies are heavily silo’d in this way where everyone just does their specific job description thing, and I’ve worked in many such companies. I really didn’t like it. Those environments have always felt less dynamic and creative to me. Obviously that’s just one man’s opinion and experience, but I really don’t think I’d be as happy in a fully remote team.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  > I can’t think of the last time I actually spoke to anyone on our UI/UX team because I literally have zero reason to set up a meeting with them and if there isn’t a work reason to interact it doesn’t happen anymore This is what I really dislike about remote work. I was looking forwards to mingling with non-programmers, but when you're new to the company and working remotely that's basically impossible.
  - remoquete 5y ago
    That’s simply not true. It’s as easy as joining their channels in Slack.
ilaksh 5y ago
Outsourcing usually doesn't work out because of poor management, such as the first principle and primary driver of a project being to cut costs. And the reason for that is often because budgets are insufficient. They try to find cut-rate programmers by going overseas, then try to save more money by finding the less expensive outsourcing agency. Then, instead of engaging with the problem, they hire a third party middleman who takes a big cut and has no stake in the actual outcome. This is a horrible incentive structure and usually results in poor communication. The fact that they are from another country is irrelevant. The language skills could be very relevant, but again it is usually so poorly managed that none of the people that should be communicating directly with developers even try or are given an opportunity.

owenmarshall 5y ago

It always was. “Collaboration” was a weak excuse given by managers who want a panopticon and companies that need to densely pack floor space to save money.

acover 5y ago
That's not universally true. I've been in buildings where the employees had their own private offices and shared spaces. A majority of people used the shared space.
- glhaynes 5y ago
  Any idea what nudged them toward spending their time in shared spaces? It’s been a while, but I remember working in buildings where most employees had offices (or, at least, cubicles) and they mostly used those instead of shared spaces.
  - acover 5y ago
    I think it was just the socialization and being in the loop for what your team was doing. I don't really know though.

anothernewdude 5y ago

The open office has a chilling effect on collaboration. People go to meeting rooms to collaborate, and that's the biggest sign that the open office isn't working out.

iambateman 5y ago

The people who design and pay for open floor plans…don’t sit in open floor plans.

geodel 5y ago
This is so true and a pithy statement. I am gonna use it in many conversations going forward!

jayd16 5y ago

If we're forced to wfh everyone is going to say they're doing great and stock holders shouldn't worry. We're doing better than ever! Just like every quarter. It'll be interesting to see where we actually land in a year.

rsj_hn 5y ago

> The prevailing wisdom previous to Covid, was that you had to be colocated in an open floor plan, sitting next to each other, and overhearing conversations, in order to facilitate collaboration. That may have been the prevailing trend, but programmers were pretty clear in pointing out how destructive for performance and focus this open office trend was. There is an avalanche of data pointing to how harmful the openoffice layout is for everything from declining morale to decreasing productivity hits to faster spread of disease and increasing worker stress levels. This clear and unambiguous data was widely disseminated in the popular press. The only reason firms ignored all the data and did this was to save on real estate costs and to mimic other firms. To anyone who bothered to spend 10 seconds googling the topic, all the research was obvious, except no one bothered to do that very basic due diligence and see if there was any data whatsoever to support the openoffice thesis. https://www.workfront.com/blog/what-science-says-about-open-offices https://www.workfront.com/blog/what-science-says-about-open-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2019/06/30/open-plan-work-spaces-lower-productivity-employee-morale/?sh=16605d1d61cd https://www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2019/06/30/open-plan-w... https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-workers-chat-70-less-are-less-productive-and-email-more/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-work...

donnythecroc 5y ago

The open floor plan thing was to make commercial real estate costs cheaper. Having individual offices requires 2x to 3x space. Then you have significant additional fit out costs - for example you now have to air condition say 1000 small spaces instead a couple of large ones. You have to pay for partitioning, separate cable runs, your door costs. Might sound silly but if a 100m office fit out can easily double or triple. So overall 2/3x fit out cost + 2/3x annual rent. All of a sudden why wouldn't you promote open plan working?

geodel 5y ago
And these are all good points. If companies stop treating employees as ignorant chumps and explain them costs, I think it would go long way in increased mutual understanding. But then employers feel scared that if an employee comes back and say how about I set up a home office? Win-Win right? So now employers comes with cost saving plan but smothers with bullshit of "next generation collaborative workspace" or whatever.

gregwebs 5y ago

open floor plans and remote are both good at scaling up employees without having to move the company to new office space.