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These are all great points, but unfortunately they detract from the main reason employers choose open offices: cost. You can fit more employees in less space.

by imgabe 11y ago

These are all great points, but unfortunately they detract from the main reason employers choose open offices: cost. You can fit more employees in less space. Office leases are written in terms of dollars per square foot. Fewer square feet = Fewer dollars. Yes there's all this nonsense about "increasing communication" and so on. Bullshit. It's cheaper, end of story.

fsk 11y ago
That's why it's so hypocritical and annoying. They really are just being cheap on office space, but they justify it with some nonsense excuse about how they are more productive environments. If proper offices make workers 10%-20% more productive, it would obviously be worth it, because the office space expense is still small compared to salary and other overhead.
contingencies 11y ago
That's exactly right - but what's the one option that's guaranteed cheaper than renting an office? Not renting an office, or renting a smaller office. Hence, remote work. Your employees also save all that commute time, consequently get better (and cheaper) fed and rested.
frostmatthew 11y ago
> the main reason employers choose open offices: cost True, but I don't think the ~$10K a year[1] they're saving (per dev) outweighs the productivity loss. [1] http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-floor-plans-in-tech-companies.html http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-flo...
- derefr 11y ago
  If companies actually thought in terms of optimizing for ROI per invested employee-salary-dollar, there's so many things they could do. As it is, most companies (big or small) work to a model that feels more like they want to have valuable highly-skilled employees (and so they go to a lot of trouble to acquire them), but they don't actually need anything accomplished that requires 100% output (even for a short period) from said highly-skilled employees. Instead, everyone gets stuck doing lowest-common-denominator tasks. Really, I'm beginning to hold the belief that, for most companies, their highest possible ROI savings would be to just replace their entire programmer workforce with recent college grads, interns, low-bid contracts, or outsourced labor. They don't need anyone with higher skills than that for their junky glue-FOSS-to-do-CRUD problems; they just think they do.

by imgabe 11y ago

fsk 11y ago

That's why it's so hypocritical and annoying. They really are just being cheap on office space, but they justify it with some nonsense excuse about how they are more productive environments. If proper offices make workers 10%-20% more productive, it would obviously be worth it, because the office space expense is still small compared to salary and other overhead.

contingencies 11y ago

That's exactly right - but what's the one option that's guaranteed cheaper than renting an office? Not renting an office, or renting a smaller office. Hence, remote work. Your employees also save all that commute time, consequently get better (and cheaper) fed and rested.

frostmatthew 11y ago

> the main reason employers choose open offices: cost True, but I don't think the ~$10K a year[1] they're saving (per dev) outweighs the productivity loss. [1] http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-floor-plans-in-tech-companies.html http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-flo...

derefr 11y ago
If companies actually thought in terms of optimizing for ROI per invested employee-salary-dollar, there's so many things they could do. As it is, most companies (big or small) work to a model that feels more like they want to have valuable highly-skilled employees (and so they go to a lot of trouble to acquire them), but they don't actually need anything accomplished that requires 100% output (even for a short period) from said highly-skilled employees. Instead, everyone gets stuck doing lowest-common-denominator tasks. Really, I'm beginning to hold the belief that, for most companies, their highest possible ROI savings would be to just replace their entire programmer workforce with recent college grads, interns, low-bid contracts, or outsourced labor. They don't need anyone with higher skills than that for their junky glue-FOSS-to-do-CRUD problems; they just think they do.