8 ms·

I like that he specifically mentioned open floor plans. This is the number one reason why I don't want to return to the office. I kinda do want to go back. But

• abledon 4y ago
  you don't like doing PDD? Panopticon-driven-development?
  • throwanem 4y ago
    They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If so, you should be flattered indeed, because I'm stealing the hell out of this.
  • Aeolun 4y ago
    Oh yes, the boss can sit in the center and see everyone, and everyone can see the boss, but nobody can see each other. This is perfect.
• cube00 4y ago
  It always annoyed me that they couldn't even be honest and say it was save rent, they had to make it seem like open floor plan was a positive thing because it "increases collaboration" It's not enough you want to be cheap but you want to make it seem like you're doing it for our benefit.
  • vmception 4y ago
    I think a lot of founders and their friends are using the office as a replacement for a healthier separate social circle and social life that they lack (a lot of people lack that, and they do too), so for them they're really just hanging out and like the potential for “increased collaboration” for that reason
    • hindsightbias 4y ago
      Whatever people think of Myers-Briggs, the three I’ve been involved with the managers were always the extroverts. So your choice is WFH micromanaging or keeping that seat in the cube warm.
      • sdoering 4y ago
        I don't understand the dichiotomy you're setting up here. > So your choice is WFH micromanaging or keeping that seat in the cube warm. Can't WFH work without micromanagement? At least I can say that I never felt more free than during the work from home phase in the pandemic.
        • hindsightbias 4y ago
          When you’re 50 and have 10-50 reports, get back to us. :)
        • PeterisP 4y ago
          I guess the point of that post is that the same type of managers who want to keep the cube seat warm are the same type of managers who'll want to micromanage WFH; switching to remote won't change their desires and expectations.
      • cipheredStones 4y ago
        Introversion/extroversion isn't a distinctive feature of Myers-Briggs - it shows up in more scientifically-respectable personality measures, like the five-factor (OCEAN) model.
        • CamperBob2 4y ago
          Isn't it the very first letter?!
          • dudeman13 4y ago
            I mean, Myers-Briggs is bollocks anyway so we shouldn't be using it for anything but funsies. I have a dream that one day we will shit hard on that sort of stuff instead of validating it. See also "alpha male".
  • akhmatova 4y ago
    Actually I think they were sufficiently self-deluded to believe that "increases collaboration" rap all along.
    • mirntyfirty 4y ago
      Hard to tell sometimes. Every now and again I meet some or that seems genuinely sincere while being corporate
      • akhmatova 4y ago
        Agreed. It's like they don't really know what they believe.
    • wardedVibe 4y ago
      the easiest way to lie to others is to lie to yourself and not look to critically at your reasoning.
  • andrei_says_ 4y ago
    Announcing that it’s “for our benefit” over our screaming about how much we hate it and how harmful it is to comfort, productivity and deep work. It is beyond insulting.
  • fsloth 4y ago
    Amen. Nobody has ever proved any benefits to open plan offices. Their pathologies however are well documented e.g. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2017.023... Teams can thrive in same room. High cadence communication needs same room (NASA flight control). If the work is not actually about a team delivering value together - concretely, and the only rationale for open space is "hypothetically it would be nice if they collaborated more" open office will create negative multipliers to everything (except facility costs). The pathology is statistical. On average open offices are bad. Individuals can love and thrive in open offices. I suppose that's why it's so hard to kill them - you can always find a few persons who claim honestly it's the best place for them.
    • sokoloff 4y ago
      The benefit of open floor plan is very well established: you can get far more employees into a given amount of space (and therefore rent) than you can with cubes or offices.
  • me_me_mu_mu 4y ago
    Pretty sure the open office was a response to the cubicle hell that was prevalent in so many offices. As a child my dad took me to his bring your kid to work day. We sat in his cubicle all day and I felt like I was in prison. I feel bad that my dad had to deal with that BS. He went full remote as soon as he was able.
  • raldi 4y ago
    You're telling me that the reason sweatshops were designed around open floor plans had nothing to do with facilitating serendipitous interactions?! :O
  • wollsmoth 4y ago
    Man I'd love a return to cubicles at the least. With enough space open floor plans can feel less terrible but sound just carries across these big open rooms.
• dinvlad 4y ago
  Can't agree more. Privacy of a small room but having people around when you _need_ them is the best of both worlds.
  • nevermindiguess 4y ago
    Start your own company. Get your “boss” office, and roam the staff shared office when you want. Problem solved. Don’t ask your employer to fulfill your capricious dreams.
    • dinvlad 4y ago
      Exactly my thoughts, thanks for noting it! The only thing I don't agree on is that these dreams are somehow "capricious" (esp. given they were the norm just a little over 10 years ago or so; in that respect, "open office" is the capricious dream of the "modern" management) ;)
    • brynjolf 4y ago
      I don't owe my employer anything. They pay for my services and that is it. If I don't get enough back in terms of pay and comfort I go somewhere else. Dreams? You are stuck in some weird emotional place.
    • Tao332 4y ago
  • Aeolun 4y ago
    It must be possible for all the remote workers to gather together and actually rent/make an office like this right (with like, 10 people in, 10 small offices and a shared lunchroom/kitchen)? If you’re not looking for a bunch of profit the rent would sort of remain bearable too.
    • dinvlad 4y ago
      Depends on the company, I think. Some companies are geographically remote, so that's not quite possible. For others yes, things like WeWork exist although might be a little pricey (but probably worth it!). Or just a warehouse-type location equipped with temporary walls that could be rented too :-)
• ajkjk 4y ago
  Obligatory reminder that this stance isn't universal and some people do like open floor plans (such as myself).
  • dinvlad 4y ago
    For sure - although it's always interesting to hear what people like or not about it, and how they work around issues like distractions/attention scatter and the pure "don't watch over my shoulder when I need to check HN". Maybe it all depends on personal sensitivity to such things and the ability to focus/zone in to the music, but that still feels like a coping mechanism rather than something that naturally comes to most (and I'm saying that despite being able to hyper-focus myself, after many years in an open environment).
    • ajkjk 4y ago
      I think it depends a lot on your emotional approach to work. For me, I'm a decently good engineer, but at my heart I'm quite extroverted and the thing I like most about working is being around smart people and making friends and stuff. The engineering itself is not the core of my existence, it's getting to live the role of the engineer. I guess I also don't mind putting headphones on and focusing, and I really like getting distracted out of that because, well, I like human interaction and helping people and stuff.
      • dinvlad 4y ago
        That's a good way to put it, thanks for sharing! Agreed that it may not be the same for extroverts vs introverts. I think it doesn't have to be "either-or" - both open-office and private-office plans need to co-exist, the trouble starts when everyone is bound to the same requirements.
      • Terretta 4y ago
        TL;DR: Try a “pair programming” company. “don’t mind focusing [but] really like getting distracted out of that … interaction … helping … and stuff” This sounds annoying to at least 50% of your peers, and destructive to focus for almost everyone. Engineering (as opposed to, say, “coding” that just transcribes requirements into code) usually requires building systems in one’s mind then factoring them into well-architected structure and describing that literately in code. This is not a social hang-out (“hey, wassup, can I help w anything?”) activity. Certainly system conception and architecture can happen great at a whiteboard, but the steps after that tend to go better focused, alternating with iterative collaborative feedback syncs that don’t break concentration for anyone in the system-to-literate-artifact time consuming phase. Think 3 to 4 hour cycles: 2 to 3 hrs uninterrupted focus, 30 mins break, 30 mins collab for ideation and review, back into focus. Shorten either the morning or afternoon focus cycle depending when you focus most productively, allocate the extra to lunch/learn/whatever. 2x3hrs+1hr lunch = 30 hr work, 5 hrs lunch, per week. Beyond that you probably don’t engineer productively and should enjoy non workplace environments to recharge / defrag. Since focus time is the phase with most time, it means at any given moment most people need library quiet, and the reflective syncs should be elsewhere. - Privacy by default with collab spaces allows focus and interaction, without interaction annoying or destructive to anyone. (It’s by-and-large only annoying to (a) profit-over-productivity accountants who think it’s expensive, (b) micro-managers who adore management by walking around, aka getting paid executive pay to chit chat everyone’s focus away, and (c) people who haven’t yet learned how to deep focus consistently.) - Collab by default without (or with only limited) private focus space prevents this beyond whatever threshold of private space availability. That said, allowing people to pick their own work-start times helps distribute focus and collab usage. The less private space, the more flexible working hours and location must be. Effectively zero people can translate systems to code while “human-interacting and helping people and such” the way you describe, advocating for that as default is literally counter productivity. There’s a solution though: devs craving continuous interaction can seek out a company (correctly) believing in “XP” aka eXtreme Programming or paired programming. In this model, the default private spaces have two engineers who program symbiotically. Research suggests 1+1 = 2.5 or 3 or more. For some problems, 10x. Not only co-thinkers thrive in XP. Standard deviations of engineers need fewer iterations till correctness, meaning, produce higher quality faster. It’s been shown this helps introverted thinkers too, even if they only pair with a rubber duck to explain their thinking aloud to!
• galaxyLogic 4y ago
  I went to this office one day a week. But guys in the neighboring cubicles were playing soccer. Not all day but during times of the day. They seriously had a soccer-ball they played with. I didn't know if I should laugh or cry but it was definitely a detriment to productivity. Collaboration. Soccer yeah
  • sateesh 4y ago
    You could request them to not to play and be quiet, right.
    • dazc 4y ago
      Or maybe he already knows that the only thing worse than annoying co-workers are co-workers you have asked to keep quiet? I once shared a space with a girl who played dance music quite loudly. I asked her to turn it down a bit and from her reaction you would think I had just kicked her new puppy to death. The following few weeks were frosty, to say the least, and I ended up moving elsewhere.
      • galaxyLogic 4y ago
        Right in general you don't want people to hate you. You want to be polite. You don't want enemies. But if they behave that way to begin with it's not like a simple plea will change their behavior much except for a little while perhaps. Soon they'll be back to their antics playing maybe baseball (just kidding, sounds crazy right but so does playing soccer in the office). They're just not concerned about other people's productivity. The general point is that open-office floor-plan easily leads to distractions like these and can even lead to animosity between co-workers.
    • toraway1234 4y ago
    • hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
      I'm not sure if you're being serious or not. The kind of people who play soccer at work will definitely listen to you when you ask them not to do that.
• psyclobe 4y ago
  I hate open floor plans! Give me a proper cube, yes SPEND the money on your workers, don't just cheap out and throw in a picnic table in a big room and call it 'Collaboration', BS!
  • throwaway1777 4y ago
    If you’ve ever been to AirBnb’s office you’d know it’s nothing like that. The AirBnb office is fairly open but it’s way nicer than most people’s homes.
    • michaelt 4y ago
      Eh, I'll admit [1] looks very architect-designed but it seems more about looks than practicality. Where are the external monitors? The laptop chargers? The plants? The photos of family? The screens in meeting rooms? The whiteboards? They're missing all of those, there's a guy trying to work on a laptop while in a hammock? I'll stick with my home office, thanks. [1] https://officesnapshots.com/2019/01/29/airbnb-headquarters-san-francisco/ https://officesnapshots.com/2019/01/29/airbnb-headquarters-s...
• fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
  These days I’ve found the office is so empty that none of the normal downsides apply. It seems like an unstable equilibrium because why would they keep paying rent for this giant office but I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
• rob74 4y ago
  My company reduced floor space in 2020, so the open-floor office I was sitting in previously doesn't exist anymore, but after working from home for some time, you notice just how noisy an office building really is - even when you are alone in a smaller room, you can hear people talking in the hallway, in the office next to you etc. etc. So that needs some getting used to too...
• jollybean 4y ago
  Make it known to your employer/s. This is a hugely stupid move that companies made. It was done because the benefits are tangible and immediate, and the costs are soft and indirect. CFO wins over HR. People should recognize what a big deal this is. I won't do it either.
  • jethro_tell 4y ago
    lol, HR doesn't give a fuck.
    • jollybean 4y ago
      Yes, the HR 'org' does not care, I just mean the 'notion' of it.
• alkonaut 4y ago
  I have been blessed to have a private office for the first 10 years of my career and wfh the last 10. Neither is perfect and I’d really like to work from an office 1-2 days per week. If I did, I wouldn’t mind open plan tbh. The whole reason to come in one day per week would be to be interrupted and interrupt others. And meetings. I still have 4 days for focus work, it would be ok. Going to be office to sit alone used to feel great, now it seems pointless. I’d plan for zero peace and quiet and zero privacy at the office but I’d see it as the whole point of going there.
  • chuckSu 4y ago
    This is how I’m working currently. I go into the office 0-2 times a week depending on work load. When deadlines are really tight I work from home completely for focus when it’s more relaxed i go into the office once or twice a week which I enjoy because I get to spend time with my colleagues e.g having lunch together, shooting the breeze or even collaborating on work stuff.
  • magicroot75 4y ago
    2016 to 2018 I was at a company where most of the office was in person, but I was allowed hybrid unofficially. I'd end up coming in on most days, but usually around 11 or 12. And I'd occasionally leave early. When I was in the office I cherished seeing my coworkers, socializing, and solving problems together. I think that was my ideal work arrangement. Now I'm fully remote but it feels like I'm just paying the rent on my own office space. I'm chained to my desk for video calls and frequent Teams pings. My office is 2hrs away and I can't just go in. There's almost no camaraderie on the team. People do their jobs and log off. Not even basic water cooler discussion type stuff.
• tootie 4y ago
  On The Media did a great segment about remote work and office design last week: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/promise-and-perils-remote-work-on-the-media2 https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/promise-an... I'm in a situation right now where my office is near by and open, but attendance is mostly optional and ad hoc. I find that days when I have lots of meetings are the best days to WFH because it's so much easier to talk over Zoom and not have to rush back and forth to meeting rooms. Having a chat window secondary to the out loud talking is also invaluable. The in-person situation is most valuable when I'm working on some tactical problem (ie coding) and want a second set of eyes or just to complain for a minute. It can be done over Slack, but it's less natural.
• AlwaysRock 4y ago
  Honestly I started doing push ups and pull ups and squats at home during the pandemic. Not a ton. 6 sets of 8-12 during the day. A set takes me a minute or two. At this point I rarely break a sweat and just do them during the day whenever I get up for water or the bathroom. My health is significantly better overall because of this. I would feel very odd doing this in an office. I have lots of other reasons why I don't like going into an office (mostly losing 1-2 hours a day to commuting) but this is at the top of the list of why I wont go back.