3 ms·

counterpoint: https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-teams https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-te... edit: In summary,

by gfodor 12y ago

counterpoint: https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-teams https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-te... edit: In summary, the more pairwise interactions between people your team has, the more likely they are to be a productive, successful team. Open office plans lend themselves to more serendipitous interactions between people. My 2c, is that open office vs closed office is simply a matter of tradeoffs. It seems easier to 'opt-out' of distractions (by putting on headphones) than 'opt-in' to interaction (by say wandering the halls talking to random people in their cubes.) People who complain about open offices probably are complaining about a culture where an open office results in distraction, not the office itself. If you have a culture where people can be sitting next to you but can signal they shouldn't be interrupted, or there is ample quiet space for private work to be done, you can have the best of both worlds.

pilgrim689 12y ago
I'm a big proponent of ~3 people offices as opposed to an open floor plan. There are many ways to "opt-in" to interactions: - lunch/dinner is done in a dining area - I invite people out for a coffee break - I can go hangout in a common area - I can just walk in to someone's office just like I would walk to someone's desk in an open floor plan - I bump into people while walking down the hall, grabbing a snack from the kitchen, etc. There's just so many ways I interact with people at the office, that making sure I'm surrounded by people I can't look away from or mute all the time is completely unnecessary. And I don't want to have to blast music into my ears all day and wear horse blinkers just to get some continuous hours of distraction-free creative thinking done.
HarryHirsch 12y ago
Open office plans lend themselves to more serendipitous interactions between people. Open offices with the inevitable Loud Howard from Dilbert lead themselves to serendipitous interactions? Do they? Throw in Angry Dude, who goes through a Model M keyboard per month as well. You get interactions all right, but it's not the productive kind. The serendipitous interations happen in coffee kitchens, a fact that the best architects already know.
vonmoltke 12y ago
> It seems easier to 'opt-out' of distractions (by putting on headphones) Very few people can actually 'opt-out' of distractions by any means except removing themselves from the vicinity of other people. > If you have a culture where people can be sitting next to you but can signal they shouldn't be interrupted, or there is ample quiet space for private work to be done, you can have the best of both worlds. I find that culture exceedingly rare and highly dependent on the nature of the work you are doing. A webdev on a Macbook Air on the company Wifi can easily pick up and go somewhere else. A dev tied to a hard line or physical resources (books, special hardware, etc.) can't. The latter also forces impromptu meetings at people's desks, since the discussion generally revolves around something that can't be picked up and taken to a breakout space. Assuming breakout spaces exist; my previous employer was creating open plans with only a handful of overbooked conference rooms.

by gfodor 12y ago

pilgrim689 12y ago

I'm a big proponent of ~3 people offices as opposed to an open floor plan. There are many ways to "opt-in" to interactions: - lunch/dinner is done in a dining area - I invite people out for a coffee break - I can go hangout in a common area - I can just walk in to someone's office just like I would walk to someone's desk in an open floor plan - I bump into people while walking down the hall, grabbing a snack from the kitchen, etc. There's just so many ways I interact with people at the office, that making sure I'm surrounded by people I can't look away from or mute all the time is completely unnecessary. And I don't want to have to blast music into my ears all day and wear horse blinkers just to get some continuous hours of distraction-free creative thinking done.

HarryHirsch 12y ago

Open office plans lend themselves to more serendipitous interactions between people. Open offices with the inevitable Loud Howard from Dilbert lead themselves to serendipitous interactions? Do they? Throw in Angry Dude, who goes through a Model M keyboard per month as well. You get interactions all right, but it's not the productive kind. The serendipitous interations happen in coffee kitchens, a fact that the best architects already know.

vonmoltke 12y ago

> It seems easier to 'opt-out' of distractions (by putting on headphones) Very few people can actually 'opt-out' of distractions by any means except removing themselves from the vicinity of other people. > If you have a culture where people can be sitting next to you but can signal they shouldn't be interrupted, or there is ample quiet space for private work to be done, you can have the best of both worlds. I find that culture exceedingly rare and highly dependent on the nature of the work you are doing. A webdev on a Macbook Air on the company Wifi can easily pick up and go somewhere else. A dev tied to a hard line or physical resources (books, special hardware, etc.) can't. The latter also forces impromptu meetings at people's desks, since the discussion generally revolves around something that can't be picked up and taken to a breakout space. Assuming breakout spaces exist; my previous employer was creating open plans with only a handful of overbooked conference rooms.