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I was really sympathetic to the distractions caused by an open plan office. I saw the statistics that people get sick more often. I knew it would be annoying
by frisco 12y ago
I was really sympathetic to the distractions caused by an open plan office. I saw the statistics that people get sick more often. I knew it would be annoying to have it potentially be really loud (or have everyone need to be quiet to keep it not loud). My company's new office is going to be open plan, though. Why? Because an office costs about $15k to build. We're already spending six figures on construction (ha ha biotech) and there was just no economically reasonable way around an open plan office.
I think the real reason many offices are open plan now is simply that it's much, much cheaper. The rest are kind of just-so stories, for or against. Interior designers will come up with these justifications when prompted but really I think it's that the people who actually get to make the decisions look at the general contractor estimates and say, "okay open plan it is."
- mabbo 12y agoLet's assume my office employs 100 people, at around $100,000 per year each. If a $15k office would make us 10% more efficient, then it would pay for itself in 18 months. Open plan offices are penny-wise and pound-foolish.
- frisco 12y agoThat's a $1.5M investment up front. Maybe it will make you 10% more efficient, but I have to look at all of the different things I could spend $1.5M on. Hopefully there's something in there for a growing company with an expected IRR of more than 10% over 18 months. In parallel, how many months of runway do you have? I'm guessing it's not 18, much less the 36+ you'd want to really see those benefits pay off even if it were the most efficient use of the capital.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoYet iF you want to save time then the only critical resource is your employees. 10% is an extremely low estimate of the disruption open-plan offices engender. In some cases they can completely disrupt some employees, resulting in 0 or negative return.
- mabbo 12y agoI'm talking about a 100 person office, not some start-up living off VC. At 100 people, you're going to be spending $10m on salaries alone each year. $1.5m isn't nothing, but it's close. And for a company with 100 employees, a 10% gain for that price is worth every penny. Mind you, the 10% figure is totally made up. Maybe it's 50%, maybe it's 0.5%. But if I had to guess a number, I'd call it 10% on average.
- hollerith 12y agoAm curious whether you will work in the open-plan office. In other words, when the new office is ready, will you get a room with a door that closes?