5 ms·

Everybody needs a balance between productive alone time and creative brainstorming time. Most companies I've seen achieve this with an open space and plenty of

by fridek 11y ago

Everybody needs a balance between productive alone time and creative brainstorming time. Most companies I've seen achieve this with an open space and plenty of WFH for all employees. Basically we meet 2-3 times a week to organize and share ideas, and spend there rest of the week heads down at home, coding in whatever pace and setting we like. Closed private offices enable people to slack at work and pretend to work 80h week while actually dozing off most of the day. I'm not saying everybody does that, but it's certainly a possibility and something I have observed few times. Once I was tasked with "doing something about" a manager who played competitively StarCraft at work. In reality that's a symptom of a larger issue, where we are (consciously or not) evaluated on how long we stay at the office over how productive we are. IMO it's nobodys business if I play StarCraft at work, as long as it helps me, or doesn't prevent me from achieving my objectives.

hvidgaard 11y ago
I would argue that if you cannot restrain yourself to be productive in a closed office, why would you be it from home? That said, I agree, evaluating on time at the office is the wrong metric, but for the vast majority of managers, they have no idea how to evaluate it otherwise because they do not understand the tasks at hand.
- fridek 11y ago
  At home nothing prevents me from not working and I often don't. The difference is, at home you can spend your time with a book, cooking, with kids or spouse - which all is refreshing and in general will improve your performance once you get back to work. In the office not working constitutes mostly of playing dumb games or reading hacker news, the latter being kind of ok, but certainly it doesn't leave me refreshed and willing to go back to my not-so-hip-after-the-latest-js-framework code. I don't think it's realistically possible to put a metric on one's performance, that would allow us to break from time-based evaluations completely. That being said, I see how my colleagues are progressing with their work and it has nothing to do with which are working from home, which from office and there is also no clear time-value correlation either. It has more to do with how motivated they are, what internally drives them and how skilled they are. I have a friend at work who believes deeply in software craftsmanship principles and it's a privilege to see how he works. He stays at home more than most of us, but provides a steady and consistent stream of small, high-quality pull requests, all day, every day. I watch how not slacking at work can have a great impact on the project and on the team morale. It has very little to do with an open space, WFH, what kind of laptop you work on and what blend of coffee you are given. I grew to believe those are just excuses I (and others) are giving themselves to not fully focus on work. Once I admitted that to myself, I decided to spend my slacking time in a way that improves my performance later. I hope one day it will go away completely, or I will get organized enough to be consistent in my output regardless of interruptions.
analog31 11y ago
Closed private offices enable people to slack at work and pretend to work 80h week while actually dozing off most of the day. I'm not saying everybody does that, but it's certainly a possibility and something I have observed few times. I observe this often. My workplace has closed offices for the middle managers, with windows so you can see in, and you can tell from their body language that they're either slacking off or socializing. But like you say, it's not my business, what it takes for them to get their jobs done, and I wouldn't begrudge them a few breaks during the day. It makes me more sympathetic to lower level workers who also seem to waste time. I also realize that management is a highly collaborative activity, so it is done better in closed offices because you can have substantive conversations without having to think about being in front of an audience. Given that most management decisions are based on social consensus, I want the managers above me to have good relationships with their peers. When discussing it with managers, I compare the open office plan to multi-tasking: Being within earshot of 5 colleagues is like working on 6 tasks at once. So the open environment is good for workers who multi-task well.
- fridek 11y ago
  Well, for this very reason an open space office should have enough conference rooms for everybody. I dread the moment when I will need to "walk through the door" to speak with a manager. That's intimidating and discourages people from communicating with them. While private rooms help them do the job on the same and above level, I don't believe it works well for their teams.
  - analog31 11y ago
    At my workplace, a little conference room was provided for one of the open office spaces... it lasted for a few months, whereupon one of the managers decided that she needed it.

by fridek 11y ago

hvidgaard 11y ago

I would argue that if you cannot restrain yourself to be productive in a closed office, why would you be it from home? That said, I agree, evaluating on time at the office is the wrong metric, but for the vast majority of managers, they have no idea how to evaluate it otherwise because they do not understand the tasks at hand.

fridek 11y ago
At home nothing prevents me from not working and I often don't. The difference is, at home you can spend your time with a book, cooking, with kids or spouse - which all is refreshing and in general will improve your performance once you get back to work. In the office not working constitutes mostly of playing dumb games or reading hacker news, the latter being kind of ok, but certainly it doesn't leave me refreshed and willing to go back to my not-so-hip-after-the-latest-js-framework code. I don't think it's realistically possible to put a metric on one's performance, that would allow us to break from time-based evaluations completely. That being said, I see how my colleagues are progressing with their work and it has nothing to do with which are working from home, which from office and there is also no clear time-value correlation either. It has more to do with how motivated they are, what internally drives them and how skilled they are. I have a friend at work who believes deeply in software craftsmanship principles and it's a privilege to see how he works. He stays at home more than most of us, but provides a steady and consistent stream of small, high-quality pull requests, all day, every day. I watch how not slacking at work can have a great impact on the project and on the team morale. It has very little to do with an open space, WFH, what kind of laptop you work on and what blend of coffee you are given. I grew to believe those are just excuses I (and others) are giving themselves to not fully focus on work. Once I admitted that to myself, I decided to spend my slacking time in a way that improves my performance later. I hope one day it will go away completely, or I will get organized enough to be consistent in my output regardless of interruptions.

analog31 11y ago

Closed private offices enable people to slack at work and pretend to work 80h week while actually dozing off most of the day. I'm not saying everybody does that, but it's certainly a possibility and something I have observed few times. I observe this often. My workplace has closed offices for the middle managers, with windows so you can see in, and you can tell from their body language that they're either slacking off or socializing. But like you say, it's not my business, what it takes for them to get their jobs done, and I wouldn't begrudge them a few breaks during the day. It makes me more sympathetic to lower level workers who also seem to waste time. I also realize that management is a highly collaborative activity, so it is done better in closed offices because you can have substantive conversations without having to think about being in front of an audience. Given that most management decisions are based on social consensus, I want the managers above me to have good relationships with their peers. When discussing it with managers, I compare the open office plan to multi-tasking: Being within earshot of 5 colleagues is like working on 6 tasks at once. So the open environment is good for workers who multi-task well.

fridek 11y ago
Well, for this very reason an open space office should have enough conference rooms for everybody. I dread the moment when I will need to "walk through the door" to speak with a manager. That's intimidating and discourages people from communicating with them. While private rooms help them do the job on the same and above level, I don't believe it works well for their teams.
- analog31 11y ago
  At my workplace, a little conference room was provided for one of the open office spaces... it lasted for a few months, whereupon one of the managers decided that she needed it.