6 ms·

"Yodle’s chief executive, Court Cunningham, so values being close to other employees that he does not want a private office." I've had a few bosses/CEOs who sa

by GuiA 12y ago

"Yodle’s chief executive, Court Cunningham, so values being close to other employees that he does not want a private office." I've had a few bosses/CEOs who said they loved open space and forced it on everyone. What always ended up happening is that said CEO/boss would then informally requisition the shared conference/meeting room as their own personal office (when they spend 90% of the day in there, it's hard to see it as "the conference room" rather than "X's unofficial office"), and people would be stuck taking Skype calls/meetings in the open space, contributing to ridiculous noise levels (oh and my favorite part was the CEO who'd then step out of his meeting room to tell us we were making too much noise). She became a convert. “It’s fun,” she said. “That’s the reason I wouldn’t want an office. It’s fun — if you like the people you work with.” Terrible way to end the article, dismissing all of the concerns that were raised. But it's probably a submarine article planted by the architecture firm anyway. I have a private office now, and I'd put it in the top 3 of the best things about my job. I have a hard time imagining going back to open space without losing most of my sanity and productivity.

zzalpha 12y ago
I've had a few bosses/CEOs who said they loved open space and forced it on everyone. What always ended up happening is that said CEO/boss would then informally requisition the shared conference/meeting room as their own personal office Well, there's another possible alternative: they love microing their team and an open space makes it really easy to poke their nose into the day-to-day lives of their engineers. Fun! I have a private office now, and I'd put it in the top 3 of the best things about my job. I have a hard time imagining going back to open space without losing most of my sanity and productivity. The company I work for has three major offices, and the one I work in is the only one with dedicated two person offices for the engineering staff (not due to policy so much as practical matters of space availability and cost). When I have to travel and work on-site at the other offices I rapidly find myself searching for any way to block out the noise and nuisance as my concentration is continually broken.
- freehunter 12y ago
  Bingo. If a manager wants to sit out with their employees and the manager is not doing the same work as the employees, they're there to micromanage. But they'll phrase it as "it helps communication" (translation: I can bother them any time I want) or "it helps with morale" (translation: the employees make it look like they're working harder because the boss is watching over their shoulder). As an employee, I don't need a private office. But I sure as hell need my boss to have one.
  - morganvachon 12y ago
    >If a manager wants to sit out with their employees and the manager is not doing the same work as the employees, they're there to micromanage. Exactly. My boss (the owner/CEO) has a bad habit of coming by my desk or work bench and saying "Son, whatcha workin' on?", knowing full well I'm juggling three or four tasks he's given me that day on top of my daily workload. I don't like to be rude, but I don't have time for idle chit-chat when I'm that busy, and I certainly don't have time for him to come by and try to mentor me on something he doesn't understand himself. I've gone so far as to tell him "Look, you hired me to handle the computers and network here, right?" "Right." "And you did that because you have no idea how to do it yourself, right?" "Right, but..." "So please, trust me when I say that I've got this handled. You don't have to check up on me, and I promise you'll get a status report when I'm done." That usually sinks in for about half a day, then he's back to pestering me or another employee, making sure we're doing what we're supposed to. I honestly don't see how he finds the time to do his duties if he's always looking over our shoulders. A manager who feels he has to micromanage is redundant and unnecessary, as far as I'm concerned.
    - WalterBright 12y ago
      On the other hand, I've known employees who needed the manager to drop by once a day and ask what they're working on - because they'd go off topic otherwise. Some employees need micromanaging, others do not. There is no one rule to rule them all.
      - 12y ago
Washuu 12y ago
That is pretty much what happened at my current job. We had tall semi-private cubicles that provided a decent amount of sound dampening. Suddenly we were moving to new cubicles there were half the size and half the height in an open format. The only people who were allowed to vote on the office changes were all the managers who had their own private offices. Enough hell was raised over the decision that all the managers ended up moving out of the offices to sit with their teams. They get to be miserable with us in all the noise. However, the overall team relations have improved to some degree. Our new plan is to move to a new location and build team rooms for up to eight people instead of large floors with lots of people. Clarification Edit: We now also have a single shared private office that be requisitioned by any employee for up to a day regardless of their position as long as they have a good reason.
- nickbauman 12y ago
  > build team rooms for up to eight people instead of large floors with lots of people. This is the right way to do open office planning. Consider Conway's Law. Teams are organized horizontally by how the system is designed by logical or physical system boundary. And you let people move from team to team to get good cross-functional ability and understanding.
  - Washuu 12y ago
    Yep! Definitely why it is "up to eight people". A team may only have four people, but if a designer needs to move in from another team then there is space to allow it happen. After eight people on the team there really needs to be a decision if the tasks being handled can be split into separate teams. Such as separating a desktop and mobile client team into two teams.
- joshstrange 12y ago
  > The only people who were allowed to vote on the office changes were all the managers who had their own private offices. After leaving my previous job they moved to a similar half-wall open workspace (that the employees nearly universally hate) and they 2 people that had the most say in the decision both have offices. Also before the move the 3 partners got close parking spaces (<1 block) while all the employees had to walk 3+ blocks from a dimly-lit, rundown parking "structure" (if it could be called that).
geebee 12y ago
Wow, your story about the conference room is almost identical to what Joel (Joel on Software) wrote about CEOs who work in open offices "like everyone else". http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDevelopers.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDeveloper... "A fairly common Silicon Valley phenomenon is the CEO who makes a big show of working from a cubicle just like the hoi polloi, although somehow there’s this one conference room that he tends to make his own (“Only when there’s something private to be discussed,” he’ll claim, but half the time when you walk by that conference room there’s your CEO, all by himself, talking on the phone to his golf buddy, with his Cole Haans up on the conference table)." Thing is, even if a CEO isn't converting a conference room into a private office, even if the CEO is sincerely working in the same office space as everyone else, it still doesn't work. PG wrote about this on a related note in the makers vs managers's schedule. Mild interruptions don't seem like a big deal to managers, and the nature of their jobs means that they'll place constant communication far above quiet, focused, uninterrupted work.
- _cudgel 12y ago
  Mild interruptions don't seem like a big deal to managers, and the nature of their jobs means that they'll place constant communication far above quiet, focused, uninterrupted work. The above is the case for flipping the "current" model on it's head: put the folks whose job it is to constantly communicate in the open space, and give the folks who need quiet, focused, uninterrupted work time in offices with doors. It's an extremely hard sell for a culture that rewards status with corner offices, but it definitely _seems_ like the right thing to do. Edit: formatting!
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- rbcgerard 12y ago
  I used to work on a trading floor where the boss sat in the middle of his group (about 40 people in 5 rows) he had an office that i don't think he ever used (except one-on-one bonus talks with employees). so its not all managers that do that. he also moved everyone around every 4-6 months (especially in terms of who was sitting on either side of him) i liked the system - and i thought it was great/smart to have people sit next to the "boss" for a few months at a time as you definitely were able to build a better relationship/communicate). The funny thing was is that if you polled the people who didn't need to be on the floor (i.e. the BD people), the introverts hated it, and the extroverts loved it...so i feel personality type is just as important in this analysis
spiritplumber 12y ago
I have a workshop with an office-y looking corner that barely ever gets used. If you aren't using a machine tool, and are coding or doing paperwork, please stay home and do it from home. There's a catch-up meeting once a week, usually on Wednesday afternoon because that's when it works for everybody, and everything else is via video call. The people operating the machine tools talk to me directly, but they're mostly there to build what I design. Seems to work OK for everyone except for one lady who I've let go because she kept showing up to work stoned (I don't care if you do drugs off the job, but if you want to operate a lathe or a drill press, you must be sober. If you can't, I can't get any work of you for the day, so go home).
fma 12y ago
At my last job we had open floor plans. The top boss has his own corner office. It was all glass so he can keep an eye on everyone.
discardorama 12y ago
> What always ended up happening is that said CEO/boss would then informally requisition the shared conference/meeting room as their own personal office .. ... and it's followed down the chain, by VPs requisitioning "war rooms". If your bloody "war" is lasting more than a week, it's not a "war" anymore!
larrys 12y ago
"But it's probably a submarine article planted by the architecture firm anyway." Agree, and to those who don't know that means see this[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html [1] It's PG's phrase not a common reference.
- jacques_chester 12y ago
  The more common expression in media is "advertorial".
andlarry 12y ago
But it's probably a submarine article planted by the architecture firm anyway. Yup, see a very similar one from 2012 [1] (I knew this sounded familiar), same firm, NBBJ. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/business/new-office-designs-offer-room-to-roam-and-to-think.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/business/new-office-design...
abalone 12y ago
Wouldn't an architecture firm be advocating for more space? Cornell did a study awhile back that found that employees with their own private offices collaborate less often with their colleagues. A lot less. In fact their very perception of what constituted "frequent" interaction plummeted from several times a day to a few times a week. And it happened in scheduled meetings whereas it was more ad hoc in an open plan office. They also noted something very interesting: we tend to prioritize our own personal productivity over team productivity, probably because most of us are compensated and promoted based on personal accomplishments. You can see why management struggles with balancing these two objectives in space design. I think most of the comments here are very cynical but not very well reasoned. They tend to have not very well thought through conspiracy theories, like architecture firms wanting smaller spaces (what?) or pinning it all on cost cutting. Cost cutting? Businesses pay engineers HUGE salaries; if there was clear evidence that a given office plan was significantly less productive it would logically be a huge waste of money to put their highly paid employees in it. The reality is there is a balance of individual and team productivity that organizations need to achieve. We have learned a lot about the drawbacks to purely private office layouts (like lower team collaboration and depressingly poor social interaction). We are learning about the drawbacks to purely one big open plan layouts (like noise as it scales beyond a handful). There is no one easy solution. Source: Organizational Dilemmas and Workplace Solutions ‐ Work Effectiveness, Communication, and Office - Cornell University International Workplace Studies Program https://web.archive.org/web/20140615182702/http://iwsp.human.cornell.edu/file_uploads/office_ex2_1238259706.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20140615182702/http://iwsp.human...
- hammerandtongs 12y ago
  There are actually a large number of these studies of which the one you linked is...one. Your logic as to why management makes these choices suggests you think organizations operate on logic vs institutional habits, trends and intra organization conflict. Citation needed ;). Your survey of sentiment of the comments here (or the thousands made in similar posts) doesn't seem particular rich or nuanced, perhaps you are working deliberately with a supposition that your current situation is "just fine"?
  - 12y ago
tn13 12y ago
I have generally found that being "one issue fundamentalist" is always counter productive but people often write pieces that "hey this works great always". I too work at a place which has open desk not by design but that is how we rented the office. But I am personally more productive when no on is around so I either prefer to go to a conf. room and work or simple work at odd hours when no one is around. I am far more comfortable when I can talk to myself, sing to myself and do some weird things which I wont dare do in public. I am pretty sure there are many more people like me out there.
derekp7 12y ago
A number of years ago when I had my first large corporate job (systems admin type work), they had most of my team (4 people) in a bullpen area with desks pointing to the corners (and some dividers in place). But everyone could lean out to the aisle and have a quick pow-wow session. Meanwhile, I was stuck in an old directors-sized office that had been converted to cubicles, which is where some periodic contractors would normally sit. But it was empty most of the time, except for me. In that case, I felt really out of place and left out of the loop most of the time. Now I'm in an open office with 4-ft high dividers (tall enough that you can almost see over them when sitting down), and I hate that too.
blister 12y ago
I'm in a similar boat. This is my first job where I work from home 98% of the time. I don't think I could ever go back to an office. It's so freaking quiet and perfect here during the day, my productivity is amazing right now. And I can wear comfortable clothing... and no commute... and eat whenever I want... and I have a private bathroom... Honestly, you'd probably have to pay me 2x what I make now for me to even consider a non-remote position. I can go into the office every once in a while for a meeting or something, but for everything else, remote is where it's at.

by GuiA 12y ago

zzalpha 12y ago

I've had a few bosses/CEOs who said they loved open space and forced it on everyone. What always ended up happening is that said CEO/boss would then informally requisition the shared conference/meeting room as their own personal office Well, there's another possible alternative: they love microing their team and an open space makes it really easy to poke their nose into the day-to-day lives of their engineers. Fun! I have a private office now, and I'd put it in the top 3 of the best things about my job. I have a hard time imagining going back to open space without losing most of my sanity and productivity. The company I work for has three major offices, and the one I work in is the only one with dedicated two person offices for the engineering staff (not due to policy so much as practical matters of space availability and cost). When I have to travel and work on-site at the other offices I rapidly find myself searching for any way to block out the noise and nuisance as my concentration is continually broken.

freehunter 12y ago
Bingo. If a manager wants to sit out with their employees and the manager is not doing the same work as the employees, they're there to micromanage. But they'll phrase it as "it helps communication" (translation: I can bother them any time I want) or "it helps with morale" (translation: the employees make it look like they're working harder because the boss is watching over their shoulder). As an employee, I don't need a private office. But I sure as hell need my boss to have one.
- morganvachon 12y ago
  >If a manager wants to sit out with their employees and the manager is not doing the same work as the employees, they're there to micromanage. Exactly. My boss (the owner/CEO) has a bad habit of coming by my desk or work bench and saying "Son, whatcha workin' on?", knowing full well I'm juggling three or four tasks he's given me that day on top of my daily workload. I don't like to be rude, but I don't have time for idle chit-chat when I'm that busy, and I certainly don't have time for him to come by and try to mentor me on something he doesn't understand himself. I've gone so far as to tell him "Look, you hired me to handle the computers and network here, right?" "Right." "And you did that because you have no idea how to do it yourself, right?" "Right, but..." "So please, trust me when I say that I've got this handled. You don't have to check up on me, and I promise you'll get a status report when I'm done." That usually sinks in for about half a day, then he's back to pestering me or another employee, making sure we're doing what we're supposed to. I honestly don't see how he finds the time to do his duties if he's always looking over our shoulders. A manager who feels he has to micromanage is redundant and unnecessary, as far as I'm concerned.
  - WalterBright 12y ago
    On the other hand, I've known employees who needed the manager to drop by once a day and ask what they're working on - because they'd go off topic otherwise. Some employees need micromanaging, others do not. There is no one rule to rule them all.
    - 12y ago

Washuu 12y ago

That is pretty much what happened at my current job. We had tall semi-private cubicles that provided a decent amount of sound dampening. Suddenly we were moving to new cubicles there were half the size and half the height in an open format. The only people who were allowed to vote on the office changes were all the managers who had their own private offices. Enough hell was raised over the decision that all the managers ended up moving out of the offices to sit with their teams. They get to be miserable with us in all the noise. However, the overall team relations have improved to some degree. Our new plan is to move to a new location and build team rooms for up to eight people instead of large floors with lots of people. Clarification Edit: We now also have a single shared private office that be requisitioned by any employee for up to a day regardless of their position as long as they have a good reason.

nickbauman 12y ago
> build team rooms for up to eight people instead of large floors with lots of people. This is the right way to do open office planning. Consider Conway's Law. Teams are organized horizontally by how the system is designed by logical or physical system boundary. And you let people move from team to team to get good cross-functional ability and understanding.
- Washuu 12y ago
  Yep! Definitely why it is "up to eight people". A team may only have four people, but if a designer needs to move in from another team then there is space to allow it happen. After eight people on the team there really needs to be a decision if the tasks being handled can be split into separate teams. Such as separating a desktop and mobile client team into two teams.
joshstrange 12y ago
> The only people who were allowed to vote on the office changes were all the managers who had their own private offices. After leaving my previous job they moved to a similar half-wall open workspace (that the employees nearly universally hate) and they 2 people that had the most say in the decision both have offices. Also before the move the 3 partners got close parking spaces (<1 block) while all the employees had to walk 3+ blocks from a dimly-lit, rundown parking "structure" (if it could be called that).

geebee 12y ago

Wow, your story about the conference room is almost identical to what Joel (Joel on Software) wrote about CEOs who work in open offices "like everyone else". http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDevelopers.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDeveloper... "A fairly common Silicon Valley phenomenon is the CEO who makes a big show of working from a cubicle just like the hoi polloi, although somehow there’s this one conference room that he tends to make his own (“Only when there’s something private to be discussed,” he’ll claim, but half the time when you walk by that conference room there’s your CEO, all by himself, talking on the phone to his golf buddy, with his Cole Haans up on the conference table)." Thing is, even if a CEO isn't converting a conference room into a private office, even if the CEO is sincerely working in the same office space as everyone else, it still doesn't work. PG wrote about this on a related note in the makers vs managers's schedule. Mild interruptions don't seem like a big deal to managers, and the nature of their jobs means that they'll place constant communication far above quiet, focused, uninterrupted work.

_cudgel 12y ago
Mild interruptions don't seem like a big deal to managers, and the nature of their jobs means that they'll place constant communication far above quiet, focused, uninterrupted work. The above is the case for flipping the "current" model on it's head: put the folks whose job it is to constantly communicate in the open space, and give the folks who need quiet, focused, uninterrupted work time in offices with doors. It's an extremely hard sell for a culture that rewards status with corner offices, but it definitely _seems_ like the right thing to do. Edit: formatting!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rbcgerard 12y ago
I used to work on a trading floor where the boss sat in the middle of his group (about 40 people in 5 rows) he had an office that i don't think he ever used (except one-on-one bonus talks with employees). so its not all managers that do that. he also moved everyone around every 4-6 months (especially in terms of who was sitting on either side of him) i liked the system - and i thought it was great/smart to have people sit next to the "boss" for a few months at a time as you definitely were able to build a better relationship/communicate). The funny thing was is that if you polled the people who didn't need to be on the floor (i.e. the BD people), the introverts hated it, and the extroverts loved it...so i feel personality type is just as important in this analysis

spiritplumber 12y ago

I have a workshop with an office-y looking corner that barely ever gets used. If you aren't using a machine tool, and are coding or doing paperwork, please stay home and do it from home. There's a catch-up meeting once a week, usually on Wednesday afternoon because that's when it works for everybody, and everything else is via video call. The people operating the machine tools talk to me directly, but they're mostly there to build what I design. Seems to work OK for everyone except for one lady who I've let go because she kept showing up to work stoned (I don't care if you do drugs off the job, but if you want to operate a lathe or a drill press, you must be sober. If you can't, I can't get any work of you for the day, so go home).

fma 12y ago

At my last job we had open floor plans. The top boss has his own corner office. It was all glass so he can keep an eye on everyone.

discardorama 12y ago

> What always ended up happening is that said CEO/boss would then informally requisition the shared conference/meeting room as their own personal office .. ... and it's followed down the chain, by VPs requisitioning "war rooms". If your bloody "war" is lasting more than a week, it's not a "war" anymore!

larrys 12y ago

"But it's probably a submarine article planted by the architecture firm anyway." Agree, and to those who don't know that means see this[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html [1] It's PG's phrase not a common reference.

jacques_chester 12y ago
The more common expression in media is "advertorial".

andlarry 12y ago

But it's probably a submarine article planted by the architecture firm anyway. Yup, see a very similar one from 2012 [1] (I knew this sounded familiar), same firm, NBBJ. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/business/new-office-designs-offer-room-to-roam-and-to-think.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/business/new-office-design...

abalone 12y ago

Wouldn't an architecture firm be advocating for more space? Cornell did a study awhile back that found that employees with their own private offices collaborate less often with their colleagues. A lot less. In fact their very perception of what constituted "frequent" interaction plummeted from several times a day to a few times a week. And it happened in scheduled meetings whereas it was more ad hoc in an open plan office. They also noted something very interesting: we tend to prioritize our own personal productivity over team productivity, probably because most of us are compensated and promoted based on personal accomplishments. You can see why management struggles with balancing these two objectives in space design. I think most of the comments here are very cynical but not very well reasoned. They tend to have not very well thought through conspiracy theories, like architecture firms wanting smaller spaces (what?) or pinning it all on cost cutting. Cost cutting? Businesses pay engineers HUGE salaries; if there was clear evidence that a given office plan was significantly less productive it would logically be a huge waste of money to put their highly paid employees in it. The reality is there is a balance of individual and team productivity that organizations need to achieve. We have learned a lot about the drawbacks to purely private office layouts (like lower team collaboration and depressingly poor social interaction). We are learning about the drawbacks to purely one big open plan layouts (like noise as it scales beyond a handful). There is no one easy solution. Source: Organizational Dilemmas and Workplace Solutions ‐ Work Effectiveness, Communication, and Office - Cornell University International Workplace Studies Program https://web.archive.org/web/20140615182702/http://iwsp.human.cornell.edu/file_uploads/office_ex2_1238259706.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20140615182702/http://iwsp.human...

hammerandtongs 12y ago
There are actually a large number of these studies of which the one you linked is...one. Your logic as to why management makes these choices suggests you think organizations operate on logic vs institutional habits, trends and intra organization conflict. Citation needed ;). Your survey of sentiment of the comments here (or the thousands made in similar posts) doesn't seem particular rich or nuanced, perhaps you are working deliberately with a supposition that your current situation is "just fine"?
- 12y ago

tn13 12y ago

I have generally found that being "one issue fundamentalist" is always counter productive but people often write pieces that "hey this works great always". I too work at a place which has open desk not by design but that is how we rented the office. But I am personally more productive when no on is around so I either prefer to go to a conf. room and work or simple work at odd hours when no one is around. I am far more comfortable when I can talk to myself, sing to myself and do some weird things which I wont dare do in public. I am pretty sure there are many more people like me out there.

derekp7 12y ago

A number of years ago when I had my first large corporate job (systems admin type work), they had most of my team (4 people) in a bullpen area with desks pointing to the corners (and some dividers in place). But everyone could lean out to the aisle and have a quick pow-wow session. Meanwhile, I was stuck in an old directors-sized office that had been converted to cubicles, which is where some periodic contractors would normally sit. But it was empty most of the time, except for me. In that case, I felt really out of place and left out of the loop most of the time. Now I'm in an open office with 4-ft high dividers (tall enough that you can almost see over them when sitting down), and I hate that too.

blister 12y ago

I'm in a similar boat. This is my first job where I work from home 98% of the time. I don't think I could ever go back to an office. It's so freaking quiet and perfect here during the day, my productivity is amazing right now. And I can wear comfortable clothing... and no commute... and eat whenever I want... and I have a private bathroom... Honestly, you'd probably have to pay me 2x what I make now for me to even consider a non-remote position. I can go into the office every once in a while for a meeting or something, but for everything else, remote is where it's at.