5 ms·

The author's argument is basically "I don't like open offices, so they're bad." Yawn. I would have liked to see some studies on actual productivity level fluct

The author's argument is basically "I don't like open offices, so they're bad." Yawn. I would have liked to see some studies on actual productivity level fluctuations based on these moves. Otherwise, it's simply another variation of "I'm not used to it, so it's bad."

db48x 11y ago
Find a copy of Peopleware.
crazy_geek 11y ago
Study after study show that open distraction office plans are bad for productivity, and increase stress and sick days -- even among those who like open office plans.
- threeseed 11y ago
  Sure. It is intuitive that this would be the case. However those aren't the only important factors in a workplace. Team cohesion, collaboration, minimising politics etc. It also seems intuitive to me at least that these would be improved by an open plan office. Personally I have seen private and public ways of working succeed for different styles of projects which seems to be the newest trend i.e. having mix use spaces.
  - hvidgaard 11y ago
    My experience tells me that the open office plan, enables poor work ethics to ruin it collectively. I've been in open officies that worked just fine, because everybody had enough deciplin to make it work, and it was okay to tell people to move to a meeting room if they got too noisy. The best model I've heard about is "work rooms" for everyone, with facilities to move to when you're collaborating.
- joelrunyon 11y ago
  That wasn't my point (I don't have a side here). I'm mostly asking to see those studies & have a nuanced breakdown of them (rather than simply saying they exist or (as the author did in their piece) saying they had a bad experience)).
  - Hytosys 11y ago
    The article has two direct links to supporting studies[1][2] and a link to an article giving roughly a dozen sources[3]. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413000340 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413... [2] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/255498?uid=3739696&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103198134427 http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/255498?uid=3739696&uid... [3] http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-t...
    - john_butts 11y ago
      Yeah but still. Yawn.
- hanspeter 11y ago
  Your links to the studies aren't clickable.
  - mattmanser 11y ago
    It's kinda tiresome, on HN there's is this rabid pro-open plan brigade, even though all the studies show otherwise. It's the same as the "I can work 60 hours productivly" brigade. All the studies, for over a century (yes, century, not decades) have shown otherwise. They are studies that show that people delude themselves into thinking they are more productive than they are. And yet, no matter how many articles and papers you post, nope. HN insists. They are ingrained memes on HN that won't, despite all the evidence you ever post, go away. So why bother? You can google it yourself, and then promptly ignore all the professional studies and still believe in open plan offices. It's simply not worth the effort.
    - ramblerman 11y ago
      It's a conspiracy, and you have proof of this. But are reluctant to show us as we wouldn't believe you anyway. Interesting.
      - mattmanser 11y ago
        It's not a conspiracy, what tend to happen is you post a bunch of articles and then the parent starts picking at 1 point in 1 article as if that invalidates all of them and you get drawn into this long tiresome discussion with what is nothing but a crackpot using loads of anecdotes or worse, blog posts, against large scientific studies. And quite often it's nonsense any way, they just misunderstand it. For some reason working conditions and working hours are incredibly emotive subjects, similar to women in tech, that tend to bring out the irrational side of otherwise lucid HN posters.
  - Ygg2 11y ago
    Here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139.2013.871064#.VWXFfNKqpBc http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139.2013.871... ---------------------------- But seriously, how can NOT putting large number of people together for long times not cause diseases? That's one of major reason flu starts during the winter...
mrweasel 11y ago
As pointed out: "Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco. I would like to see the studies that show ANY positive benefit from open office plans, other than: "They are cheaper to built and run".
- threeseed 11y ago
  https://hbr.org/2014/10/workspaces-that-move-people https://hbr.org/2014/10/workspaces-that-move-people "data suggest that creating collisions—chance encounters and unplanned interactions between knowledge workers, both inside and outside the organization—improves performance" Just one of many notable quotes from the article. It isn't a formal study but it is pragmatic i.e. "Managers might be tempted to simply build big social spaces and expect great results, but it’s not that simple. Companies must have an understanding of what they’re trying to achieve (higher productivity? more creativity?) before changing a space"
  - CHY872 11y ago
    BUT frequently this is actually done. One of my old professors works on positioning, and a client he did consulting for wanted to track their employees around the office; and then design new offices based on what came out of it. If you're a company with hundreds of worldwide branches, then the potential benefits make asking questions like this a worthwhile endeavour. Very large companies actually try to design their buildings around what will lead to the greatest productivity. If you're a smaller company, then you might want open plan offices for very different reasons (a perception of cohesion etc). Data can and is applied to this, but it typically isn't because the companies aren't large enough for it to matter too much in terms of productivity; the benefits start to be dwarfed by more pressing matters.
  - GFischer 11y ago
    Peopleware also suggests having open ("communal") spaces as part of the solution, I really like their approach. http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13 http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13 Tom de Marco quotes Cristopher Alexander, his first rule is that there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution :) but there are patterns :) Alexander identifies the need for all three of - a communal space - a semiprivate/team space ("war rooms", etc) - a private space Also: "Each team needs identifiable public and semiprivate space and each individual needs protected private space." They also say that: "enclosed offices need not be one-person offices. The two- or three- or four-person office makes a lot more sense, particularly if office groupings can be made to align with work groups. Even in open-plan offices, co-workers should be encouraged to modify the grid to put their areas together into small suites. When this is allowed, people become positively ingenious in laying out the area to serve all their needs: work space, meeting space, and social space. Since they tend to be in interaction mode together or simultaneously in flow mode, they have less noise clash with each other than they would with randomly selected neighbors." http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces

db48x 11y ago

Find a copy of Peopleware.

crazy_geek 11y ago

Study after study show that open distraction office plans are bad for productivity, and increase stress and sick days -- even among those who like open office plans.

threeseed 11y ago
Sure. It is intuitive that this would be the case. However those aren't the only important factors in a workplace. Team cohesion, collaboration, minimising politics etc. It also seems intuitive to me at least that these would be improved by an open plan office. Personally I have seen private and public ways of working succeed for different styles of projects which seems to be the newest trend i.e. having mix use spaces.
- hvidgaard 11y ago
  My experience tells me that the open office plan, enables poor work ethics to ruin it collectively. I've been in open officies that worked just fine, because everybody had enough deciplin to make it work, and it was okay to tell people to move to a meeting room if they got too noisy. The best model I've heard about is "work rooms" for everyone, with facilities to move to when you're collaborating.
joelrunyon 11y ago
That wasn't my point (I don't have a side here). I'm mostly asking to see those studies & have a nuanced breakdown of them (rather than simply saying they exist or (as the author did in their piece) saying they had a bad experience)).
- Hytosys 11y ago
  The article has two direct links to supporting studies[1][2] and a link to an article giving roughly a dozen sources[3]. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413000340 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413... [2] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/255498?uid=3739696&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103198134427 http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/255498?uid=3739696&uid... [3] http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-t...
  - john_butts 11y ago
    Yeah but still. Yawn.
hanspeter 11y ago
Your links to the studies aren't clickable.
- mattmanser 11y ago
  It's kinda tiresome, on HN there's is this rabid pro-open plan brigade, even though all the studies show otherwise. It's the same as the "I can work 60 hours productivly" brigade. All the studies, for over a century (yes, century, not decades) have shown otherwise. They are studies that show that people delude themselves into thinking they are more productive than they are. And yet, no matter how many articles and papers you post, nope. HN insists. They are ingrained memes on HN that won't, despite all the evidence you ever post, go away. So why bother? You can google it yourself, and then promptly ignore all the professional studies and still believe in open plan offices. It's simply not worth the effort.
  - ramblerman 11y ago
    It's a conspiracy, and you have proof of this. But are reluctant to show us as we wouldn't believe you anyway. Interesting.
    - mattmanser 11y ago
      It's not a conspiracy, what tend to happen is you post a bunch of articles and then the parent starts picking at 1 point in 1 article as if that invalidates all of them and you get drawn into this long tiresome discussion with what is nothing but a crackpot using loads of anecdotes or worse, blog posts, against large scientific studies. And quite often it's nonsense any way, they just misunderstand it. For some reason working conditions and working hours are incredibly emotive subjects, similar to women in tech, that tend to bring out the irrational side of otherwise lucid HN posters.
- Ygg2 11y ago
  Here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139.2013.871064#.VWXFfNKqpBc http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139.2013.871... ---------------------------- But seriously, how can NOT putting large number of people together for long times not cause diseases? That's one of major reason flu starts during the winter...

mrweasel 11y ago

As pointed out: "Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco. I would like to see the studies that show ANY positive benefit from open office plans, other than: "They are cheaper to built and run".

threeseed 11y ago
https://hbr.org/2014/10/workspaces-that-move-people https://hbr.org/2014/10/workspaces-that-move-people "data suggest that creating collisions—chance encounters and unplanned interactions between knowledge workers, both inside and outside the organization—improves performance" Just one of many notable quotes from the article. It isn't a formal study but it is pragmatic i.e. "Managers might be tempted to simply build big social spaces and expect great results, but it’s not that simple. Companies must have an understanding of what they’re trying to achieve (higher productivity? more creativity?) before changing a space"
- CHY872 11y ago
  BUT frequently this is actually done. One of my old professors works on positioning, and a client he did consulting for wanted to track their employees around the office; and then design new offices based on what came out of it. If you're a company with hundreds of worldwide branches, then the potential benefits make asking questions like this a worthwhile endeavour. Very large companies actually try to design their buildings around what will lead to the greatest productivity. If you're a smaller company, then you might want open plan offices for very different reasons (a perception of cohesion etc). Data can and is applied to this, but it typically isn't because the companies aren't large enough for it to matter too much in terms of productivity; the benefits start to be dwarfed by more pressing matters.
- GFischer 11y ago
  Peopleware also suggests having open ("communal") spaces as part of the solution, I really like their approach. http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13 http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13 Tom de Marco quotes Cristopher Alexander, his first rule is that there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution :) but there are patterns :) Alexander identifies the need for all three of - a communal space - a semiprivate/team space ("war rooms", etc) - a private space Also: "Each team needs identifiable public and semiprivate space and each individual needs protected private space." They also say that: "enclosed offices need not be one-person offices. The two- or three- or four-person office makes a lot more sense, particularly if office groupings can be made to align with work groups. Even in open-plan offices, co-workers should be encouraged to modify the grid to put their areas together into small suites. When this is allowed, people become positively ingenious in laying out the area to serve all their needs: work space, meeting space, and social space. Since they tend to be in interaction mode together or simultaneously in flow mode, they have less noise clash with each other than they would with randomly selected neighbors." http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces