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"Open offices lets me be around my colleagues and inspires me to focus on my work and get access to help promptly when I need it. " Actually any co-location sc

by fsloth 12y ago

"Open offices lets me be around my colleagues and inspires me to focus on my work and get access to help promptly when I need it. " Actually any co-location scheme allows this, walls or no walls. It's a matter of culture, not of vertical dividers. But I concur, it's a bit over the top to say that "everyone" hates open offices since clearly some people don't. Personally, to me it feels like a quarter suffers, of which there is a vocal minority, half don't give a damn and quarter thinks it's ok. Personally I think open office is the worst to happen to the modern workplace. I like being around my team but I don't enjoy being consciously aware of the doings of the four other teams who share the space I'm in. Team rooms. Those are golden. Better yet, rooms of 2-3 persons.

stevesearer 12y ago
I run an office design website and I hardly ever see team rooms, which is very surprising and they seem like a good balance between collaborative space and privacy. One of the offices I like to show as an example is Ubiquiti Networks, particularly images 3 and 4 (pardon the link to my own website): http://officesnapshots.com/2014/03/12/ubiquiti-networks-san-jose-engineering-offices/ http://officesnapshots.com/2014/03/12/ubiquiti-networks-san-...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- fsloth 12y ago
  That huge whole wall whiteboard in the teamroom is awesome.
  - stevesearer 12y ago
    If you navigate to the photos section, there is a collection of photos 'brainstorm rooms' displaying a variety of ways those are installed. One important thing ton consider is not wasting $$$ on coating the walls above about 7' or below 3' as it is basically unusable without those funny library ladders.
- makeitsuckless 12y ago
  Those glass walls give me nightmares. I currently work for a company where once in a while I have to spend a whole day in an office with glass walls everywhere. By the end of the day I just want to lock myself in the bathroom, the feeling of constantly being on view and constantly seeing movement drives me completely nuts.
  - stevesearer 12y ago
    Glass walls are mostly used to ensure natural light is able to get into the innermost parts of the building. But your nightmare is my joy. This diversity in humans is one of the things which makes creating the idea work environment for all so difficult.
- moe 12y ago
  Sorry, but to me that office has the charme of a morgue. The choice of materials and colors (metal, stone, glass and black) feels more suited to a parking garage than an office. Also glass walls do not help with visual distractions. They can in fact make them worse due to reflections.
- edejong 12y ago
  It certainly has an expensive ambiance. Personally I don't like glass-windows because of their acoustic properties. Another thing I wonder: are office plants totally out of the picture nowadays?
- icebraining 12y ago
  Is that an anechoic chamber? Why would they need that?
  - brandon 12y ago
    Ubiquiti makes wireless equipment, so this is not the traditional sort of anechoic chamber: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_chamber#Radio-frequency_anechoic_chambers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_chamber#Radio-frequenc...
zwily 12y ago
In my experience, your proportions seem pretty correct. Hard to tell that from this crowd though.
geon 12y ago
> Team rooms That explains why I don't recognize the horrors of open offices I read about. I work for a small company with only 10 people spread over 2 rooms.
notahacker 12y ago
The "quarter that thinks its OK" is something of an understatement. Some of that quarter are self-employed people who still think it's so much better for their productivity to be around other people that they're prepared to pay money and sacrifice an hour commuting in order to sit at a desk in a big, trendily-decorated room with an assortment of other entirely-unrelated microbuses-owners rather than a desk in their own bedroom. Other people have no choice whatsoever about where they work, but still enjoy their coworker interaction to the point they get bored and demotivated when the office is quiet. They might not be the most popular people in the office with programmers who also have no choice where they work, but from their point of view the open plan office is much better than sitting in a dreary box wondering if the question that's on their mind is actually worth getting out of their seat to go to ask a colleague about, whether marketing are in today and whether anyone else has made a sale yet.
- fsloth 12y ago
  "...to sit at a desk in a big, trendily-decorated room..." I think that sounds more like a team room and not an open office. Team rooms are awesome. I value spontaneous human interaction very much. I just don't value being aware of the spontaneous human interaction between 40 different people around me. The key to understanding why open offices suck is that the amount of disturbance - statistically - is relative to the number of conversations that can spontaneously happen. If we take n people then the number of spontaneous interactions is (back of the envelope) k * n * (n - 1) where k is some scaling factor. It looks like this: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=y+%3D+x+*+(x+-+1)+from+0+to+40 https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... The point is, the more people there are, the more disturbances there are - exponentially. It's totally different to work in a space with 10 people than with 20 people - in the latter there is a 4 times more likelihood there is a disturbance than with 10 people. If we compare a room with 4 people with 40 people then the room with 40 people have relatively 130 times more disturbing events despite there are only 10 times as people around. This is of course a ridiculously simple model but I think it essentially captures the fact that very large rooms have different dynamics than just large rooms. And I want that people communicate and ask things spontaneously! But I don't appreciate the fact that without walls people like me need to suffer from noises coming from four different teams. And I don't mean suffer in an aesthetic sense, but in a very gut wrenching, unhealthy, "I cannot concentrate on this algorithm and it pisses me off like no other thing in this earth" way. "...they get bored and demotivated when the office is quiet." Do you mean you get bored and demotivated or are you describing how someone else feels specifically about their job? Could it be rather that their job is just not that meaningful to them? If that is the case then I would hold that as a point against open offices - give people tiny meaningless jobs and remove all the walls so they are peer pressured to perform. I'm obviously exaggerating here to make a point.

by fsloth 12y ago

stevesearer 12y ago

I run an office design website and I hardly ever see team rooms, which is very surprising and they seem like a good balance between collaborative space and privacy. One of the offices I like to show as an example is Ubiquiti Networks, particularly images 3 and 4 (pardon the link to my own website): http://officesnapshots.com/2014/03/12/ubiquiti-networks-san-jose-engineering-offices/ http://officesnapshots.com/2014/03/12/ubiquiti-networks-san-...

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
fsloth 12y ago
That huge whole wall whiteboard in the teamroom is awesome.
- stevesearer 12y ago
  If you navigate to the photos section, there is a collection of photos 'brainstorm rooms' displaying a variety of ways those are installed. One important thing ton consider is not wasting $$$ on coating the walls above about 7' or below 3' as it is basically unusable without those funny library ladders.
makeitsuckless 12y ago
Those glass walls give me nightmares. I currently work for a company where once in a while I have to spend a whole day in an office with glass walls everywhere. By the end of the day I just want to lock myself in the bathroom, the feeling of constantly being on view and constantly seeing movement drives me completely nuts.
- stevesearer 12y ago
  Glass walls are mostly used to ensure natural light is able to get into the innermost parts of the building. But your nightmare is my joy. This diversity in humans is one of the things which makes creating the idea work environment for all so difficult.
moe 12y ago
Sorry, but to me that office has the charme of a morgue. The choice of materials and colors (metal, stone, glass and black) feels more suited to a parking garage than an office. Also glass walls do not help with visual distractions. They can in fact make them worse due to reflections.
edejong 12y ago
It certainly has an expensive ambiance. Personally I don't like glass-windows because of their acoustic properties. Another thing I wonder: are office plants totally out of the picture nowadays?
icebraining 12y ago
Is that an anechoic chamber? Why would they need that?
- brandon 12y ago
  Ubiquiti makes wireless equipment, so this is not the traditional sort of anechoic chamber: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_chamber#Radio-frequency_anechoic_chambers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_chamber#Radio-frequenc...

zwily 12y ago

In my experience, your proportions seem pretty correct. Hard to tell that from this crowd though.

geon 12y ago

> Team rooms That explains why I don't recognize the horrors of open offices I read about. I work for a small company with only 10 people spread over 2 rooms.

notahacker 12y ago

The "quarter that thinks its OK" is something of an understatement. Some of that quarter are self-employed people who still think it's so much better for their productivity to be around other people that they're prepared to pay money and sacrifice an hour commuting in order to sit at a desk in a big, trendily-decorated room with an assortment of other entirely-unrelated microbuses-owners rather than a desk in their own bedroom. Other people have no choice whatsoever about where they work, but still enjoy their coworker interaction to the point they get bored and demotivated when the office is quiet. They might not be the most popular people in the office with programmers who also have no choice where they work, but from their point of view the open plan office is much better than sitting in a dreary box wondering if the question that's on their mind is actually worth getting out of their seat to go to ask a colleague about, whether marketing are in today and whether anyone else has made a sale yet.

fsloth 12y ago
"...to sit at a desk in a big, trendily-decorated room..." I think that sounds more like a team room and not an open office. Team rooms are awesome. I value spontaneous human interaction very much. I just don't value being aware of the spontaneous human interaction between 40 different people around me. The key to understanding why open offices suck is that the amount of disturbance - statistically - is relative to the number of conversations that can spontaneously happen. If we take n people then the number of spontaneous interactions is (back of the envelope) k * n * (n - 1) where k is some scaling factor. It looks like this: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=y+%3D+x+*+(x+-+1)+from+0+to+40 https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... The point is, the more people there are, the more disturbances there are - exponentially. It's totally different to work in a space with 10 people than with 20 people - in the latter there is a 4 times more likelihood there is a disturbance than with 10 people. If we compare a room with 4 people with 40 people then the room with 40 people have relatively 130 times more disturbing events despite there are only 10 times as people around. This is of course a ridiculously simple model but I think it essentially captures the fact that very large rooms have different dynamics than just large rooms. And I want that people communicate and ask things spontaneously! But I don't appreciate the fact that without walls people like me need to suffer from noises coming from four different teams. And I don't mean suffer in an aesthetic sense, but in a very gut wrenching, unhealthy, "I cannot concentrate on this algorithm and it pisses me off like no other thing in this earth" way. "...they get bored and demotivated when the office is quiet." Do you mean you get bored and demotivated or are you describing how someone else feels specifically about their job? Could it be rather that their job is just not that meaningful to them? If that is the case then I would hold that as a point against open offices - give people tiny meaningless jobs and remove all the walls so they are peer pressured to perform. I'm obviously exaggerating here to make a point.