3 ms·

If the purpose of open-plan offices is to intimidate people into working, they backfire. I fuck around way more in an open-plan office than when I have privacy.

If the purpose of open-plan offices is to intimidate people into working, they backfire. I fuck around way more in an open-plan office than when I have privacy. There are many reasons for it. The first is that I have a fixed amount of "goofing off" (which is just giving my mind some rest) that I'll do per day. In a private office, it might take 20 minutes and I'm done and back to work. In an open-plan office where I have to intersperse it with the appearance of working and it takes longer (and the goofing off is less mentally restful, so I do more). The second is that, contrary to what a lot of people say, I find that 15- to 30-minute slivers of time (between other engagements) can be very productive, but not in an open-plan office. So the meeting multiplier is more severe. If lunch is 12:00 then a meeting from 10 to 11 kills the rest of the morning, whereas with private offices you'd still have 45-55 minutes of useful time. The third is that I've always felt like if getting work done efficiently were important, I'd have a legitimate working environment to get it done in. Being visible from behind suggests low status, which suggests that the work isn't that important. So if I'm intellectually engaged or the work is helping my career, I'll do it very well... but if neither is true, the surrounding physical environment supports me in not caring. Fourth, of course, is the anxiety caused by the aggravating and unreliable work environment. It would be bad to deal with a constantly noisy environment, but that would at least be predictable. Open-offices add to the evil by failing you at unpredictable times. Someone might tap you on the shoulder. Broken. Someone might pair with the person sitting next to you. Broken. The person behind you might get a phone call. Broken.

manigandham 11y ago
Yep. Open-plan benefits are few and far between and to me just feels like forced teamwork and socialization. It certainly depends on the industry/team but most of the time, people don't need to chat with each other all day and instead need to just get shit done. I remember getting interrupted by jokes or background chatter or just physical movement from people walking around but the worst is how easy it becomes for people to ask minor questions that were far better suited for email/chat. Lots of communication can be async but this setup actively encourages interruptions so we can all "collaborate".
stevesearer 11y ago
Is the purpose of open-plan offices ever to intimidate people into working? If so, I'd love to read a case study on it. From everything I've read they are mostly built because of the lower costs, better flexibility, and associated collaboration benefits.
- michaelochurch 11y ago
  So, part of it is certainly that they're the cheap 'n' shitty option. However, when you weigh the money saved against the loss of productivity, they're not worth it. Open-plan offices aren't collaborative. Open-Plan Syndrome actually makes people more selfish and misanthropic. When people don't feel in control of their space (and what makes open-plan so bad isn't just the awfulness of the environment, but how fucking unreliable it is) they tend to be more jealous and territorial, not less. They also aren't egalitarian. Let's say that you're two seats away from the CEO, and between you and him is a junior who needs to pair a lot. Whose space is going to be invaded when that happens? Not the CEO's. That's just human nature. It's not even conscious, most of the time. Open-plan offices actually reinforce status differences. The main reason for the open-plan trend is that these offices photograph well. The act of getting work done is abstract and hard to prove for the camera. Open-plan offices look busy and energetic and (gahh) youthful. Unfortunately, they're also awful places to work for 8-10 straight hours, in the same way as one would not want to live in Times Square (as opposed to the Upper West Side or Brooklyn Heights) even though it is visually impressive.
  - curun1r 11y ago
    There are different kinds of collaboration and you're taking a very narrow view of it. Open offices might suck for explicit collaboration, like pairing, but for the type of collaboration that happens somewhat randomly, they're basically the only option. What I'm talking about mostly manifests itself in overheard conversations where someone who wasn't initially part of the conversation realizes they can add valuable context and joins in. It's really hard to quantify the benefits of something like this but, especially in software development, it can be very useful in leveraging past experiences of the entire team to avoid going down too many wrong paths. It also means that you don't have to put nearly as much effort into communicating context around your organization because employees pick it up naturally from conversations around them. I'm generally in favor of a somewhat hybrid approach, where small teams have their own cubicle or office and everything is open inside because I've seen what happens when that sort of organic communication doesn't happen either because people work in individual offices or because too many people work remotely.
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
Intimidating people into working simply fails if you're hiring the kind of people your company ought to be hiring. The intimidation is a distraction - you get people to focus on the problem of social pressure at work rather than the technical problems they want to work on. I think a related issue is that putting pressure on subordinates is a thing that managers can point to in order to justify their position. It's a lot harder to mostly stay out of the way.

manigandham 11y ago

Yep. Open-plan benefits are few and far between and to me just feels like forced teamwork and socialization. It certainly depends on the industry/team but most of the time, people don't need to chat with each other all day and instead need to just get shit done. I remember getting interrupted by jokes or background chatter or just physical movement from people walking around but the worst is how easy it becomes for people to ask minor questions that were far better suited for email/chat. Lots of communication can be async but this setup actively encourages interruptions so we can all "collaborate".

stevesearer 11y ago

Is the purpose of open-plan offices ever to intimidate people into working? If so, I'd love to read a case study on it. From everything I've read they are mostly built because of the lower costs, better flexibility, and associated collaboration benefits.

michaelochurch 11y ago
So, part of it is certainly that they're the cheap 'n' shitty option. However, when you weigh the money saved against the loss of productivity, they're not worth it. Open-plan offices aren't collaborative. Open-Plan Syndrome actually makes people more selfish and misanthropic. When people don't feel in control of their space (and what makes open-plan so bad isn't just the awfulness of the environment, but how fucking unreliable it is) they tend to be more jealous and territorial, not less. They also aren't egalitarian. Let's say that you're two seats away from the CEO, and between you and him is a junior who needs to pair a lot. Whose space is going to be invaded when that happens? Not the CEO's. That's just human nature. It's not even conscious, most of the time. Open-plan offices actually reinforce status differences. The main reason for the open-plan trend is that these offices photograph well. The act of getting work done is abstract and hard to prove for the camera. Open-plan offices look busy and energetic and (gahh) youthful. Unfortunately, they're also awful places to work for 8-10 straight hours, in the same way as one would not want to live in Times Square (as opposed to the Upper West Side or Brooklyn Heights) even though it is visually impressive.
- curun1r 11y ago
  There are different kinds of collaboration and you're taking a very narrow view of it. Open offices might suck for explicit collaboration, like pairing, but for the type of collaboration that happens somewhat randomly, they're basically the only option. What I'm talking about mostly manifests itself in overheard conversations where someone who wasn't initially part of the conversation realizes they can add valuable context and joins in. It's really hard to quantify the benefits of something like this but, especially in software development, it can be very useful in leveraging past experiences of the entire team to avoid going down too many wrong paths. It also means that you don't have to put nearly as much effort into communicating context around your organization because employees pick it up naturally from conversations around them. I'm generally in favor of a somewhat hybrid approach, where small teams have their own cubicle or office and everything is open inside because I've seen what happens when that sort of organic communication doesn't happen either because people work in individual offices or because too many people work remotely.

ThrustVectoring 11y ago

Intimidating people into working simply fails if you're hiring the kind of people your company ought to be hiring. The intimidation is a distraction - you get people to focus on the problem of social pressure at work rather than the technical problems they want to work on. I think a related issue is that putting pressure on subordinates is a thing that managers can point to in order to justify their position. It's a lot harder to mostly stay out of the way.