8 ms·
Open-plan offices reduce face-to-face interactions (2018)
- breakpointalpha 7y agoI'm considering an offer that would introduce a 30+ minute commute and an open office plan back into my life. I've been working 100% from home for the last 8 months and rather enjoy it. Should I just hold out for another remote job? I have about 10 months of burn left in my bank account...
- lqet 7y agoI am not surprised. I was working in an open-plan office for a few years, and I also preferred talking to colleagues sitting only a few meters away via mail. It's incredibly stressful to talk to a person face-to-face knowing that everyone on the team listens to the conversation. Not only do you have to constantly weight and evaluate your sentences, you also have the constant feeling that you are disturbing other team members just by talking. On the other hand, you also don't want to drag a person into another room for privacy if you just want some quick update on something. Some team members might use noise-cancelling headphones to keep out the typing noise and occasional conversation, but these headphones are an additional barrier for face-to-face talk. You don't want to snap them out of a musical experience, and getting a person with noise-cancelling headphones to notice you are standing behind him/her might get very awkward. If you are convinced that stuffing people into a room with little to no privacy leads to increased social interaction, you should start riding public transit during rush hour.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- TeMPOraL 7y agoTotally. At my last $dayjob, we had a group chat for the room, where we would type stuff instead of saying it out loud. This way, conversation only flowed between people who were willing to participate at the moment. (It didn't work perfectly. Typing is silent, but laughing at what you just read isn't.)
- inetknght 7y agoTyping isn't always silent; not everyone has quiet keyboards.
- matz1 7y ago>It's incredibly stressful to talk to a person face-to-face knowing that everyone on the team listens to the conversation. Not only do you have to constantly weight and evaluate your sentences, you also have the constant feeling that you are disturbing other team members just by talking Fortunately I don't have this physiological barrier. I don't care if everyone on the team listens to the conversation.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoYou are probably also oblivious to the very real consequences of other people knowing various things or having partial information, etc. It's stressful because it has consequences. If you don't find it stressful, you probably are failing to connect the dots and see that x outcome is related to y behavior.
- matz1 7y agoOf course there is consequences for everything, I just embrace it. Having to be stressful because of this is in itself stressfull.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mercer 7y agoDo you also do this when the 'conversation' is just you making statements about yourself that serve no purpose other than providing you with the pleasure of making statements about yourself?
- kylia 7y agoHonestly this article comes as no surprise. I work for a company that not only has an open plan office, but no assigned seating either. It's honestly the worst, mostly because I like to have my own environment at work. I can't bring in my keyboard or any of my other stuff, and as corny as it is i can't even bring in photos to keep at my desk since there's no assigned seating! As much as i like open spaces, i miss at /least/ having my own desk.
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoThis ensures that you know you're nothing more than a lineworker in a digital factory. Open offices are the first half of that, and open desks are the other half. Who does it benefit? The company in cost per person of space. Any other metric applied shows gross inadequacies of open offices.
- kylia 7y agoYeah, they market it as "even the CEO doesn't have his own office!" Oh, cool, he works from home or is travelling the whole time and doesn't need one. Maybe i'm just being a baby, but a work desk doesn't feel complete without at least a picture of my dog at it, haha.
- gray_-_wolf 7y agoHm, I would definitely miss second and third monitors and docking station for my laptop..
- ok_coo 7y agoI'm not saying you're able to do this at your current workplace, but if I was stuck in this type of situation, I would heavily advocate for the ability to work from home at least 1-2 days a week. Having worked in an open office like environment before, it was the only way I was able to get a lot of stuff done. These types of open offices are a deathknell for productivity and great for people who use work as their only social outlet.
- anbop 7y ago
- docker_up 7y agoI'm probably an outlier, but I love open-office. I've worked in all the different environments over the last 25 years, single office, shared office, cubicle, remote and open office. Open office was weird at first, but I find it much more social. I don't get distracted by noise or movement so that could be a big factor, so I can code without any problems. The least social for me was the single office. I would stay in there all day long and I would have privacy but I would literally not see anyone. The worst was a cubicle where it had none of the privacy (couldn't eat fish or fart or have private conversations) but you still have the lack of social interaction.
- awestroke 7y agoSome people can work even though they get interrupted and disturbed all day, others are very averse to being distracted and try to reach deep work or get in the zone. The problem with an open office is the first group.
- nimrody 7y agoThe effect also depends on the type of work you are currently doing. Some work requires more concentration and is more easily disturbed. Other, more routine work, can tolerate more noise (be it audible or visual.)
- jpindar 7y agoAnd some people don't want to work any more than they absolutely have to, and can't understand why anyone would want to be able to concentrate.
- jpindar 7y agoTrue example of the above: I had been given a task by my manager, in such a way that my coworkers could hear that it was something important I had to get done ASAP. Half an hour later, I'm heads down working, with earphones in. Very obviously coding. Coworker taps me on the shoulder. "Yes?" "Why aren't you chatting with us?" I'd like to say I made some clever remark, but at the time I was speechless. (Please note that I do engage in normal small talk at other times. )
- formalsystem 7y agoI found open offices to be an incredibly alienating experience, felt about as personal as a a cubicle since everyone is pretty much using headphones and "deep working" and you can't really make much noise since you're disturbing an entire org if you are. My favorite experience was working on a team where the open office was essentially a large office for about 6 people only. That felt great since there was a more communal vibe and I had sufficient personal space. We had a couch, a table with a chessboard and some people brought snacks over.
- alexgmcm 7y agoThe latter one you describe is basically what I had in grad school and it worked really well. The former is what I have in industry and if I forget my noise cancelling headphones I might as well go home.
- cs702 7y agoNot surprising in hindsight. See lqet's and kylia's comments elsewhere on this thread for first-hand accounts.[a] In my view, Steve Jobs had the right idea when he helped design Pixar's headquarters: plenty of private and semi-private working areas interconnected by multiple larger, more central, common areas through which everyone would have to travel throughout the day, increasing the odds of spontaneous interaction and collaboration with colleagues from different areas: https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-designing-pixar-office-2015-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-designing-pixar-o... https://bcj.com/projects/pixar-animation-studios-emeryville https://bcj.com/projects/pixar-animation-studios-emeryville Think of it as "privacy when you need it, sprinkled with spontaneous interaction throughout the day, when you take breaks from private work." -- [a] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683405 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683419
- exelius 7y agoI agree that open-plan offices drive the opposite behavior than they are touted to. They make it impossible to have impromptu discussions that have any sensitive aspect to them. I have a lot of those conversations. I work from home or a coffee shop down the street from my office as a result and almost never even see my coworkers faces. But the main driver of open-plan offices is usually density / cost. I suspect many of the cost savings of the most recent wave of office design are coming from employees who no longer come into the office because the conditions aren’t conducive to working.
- freehunter 7y ago>They make it impossible to have impromptu discussions that have any sensitive aspect to them. The only place I ever worked with an open floor plan, I worked as a security analyst/engineer. Behind me were contracted programmers from various outsourcing firms who could see my screens and hear my conversations when discussing sensitive security issues. So much time was wasted trying to find an empty conference room for an impromptu discussion about an active security incident.
- rightbyte 7y agoWe use MS Teams to chat with people at the next desk. Especially since some uses headphones and you would have to scream. How much space does a indoor wall take in comparation to the space between the desk there are anyway in open offices. You have to put cabinets on the floor since shelves can't hang on walls. Whiteboards are on feet in the "hallway". I have never been in an open office and though "Jeez look at all the space they save by not having walls" if you would compare to 6 or 4 person offices.
- exelius 7y agoSo imagine a single 6x12 table. You can comfortably seat 8 people at a table that size. Even if you packed those people into 4 person offices, 2 offices take more space than a big table in the middle of a floor that shares walking space with the other stuff around it. They’re awful for productivity, but they definitely are cheaper.
- glhaynes 7y agoBenefits Of Open Office Not Extended To CEO - https://local.theonion.com/benefits-of-open-office-not-extended-to-ceo-1834005155 https://local.theonion.com/benefits-of-open-office-not-exten...
- SonicSoul 7y agothis "study" is riddled with issues. only 2 companies studied. i can't imagine how different every place is depending on its culture. how comfortable are employees ? are the teams next to people they don't know? was this measurement amortized over project volumes after the move? are these companies designed with some private areas easily accessible on every floor for teams to discuss / have daily stand ups if needed? seems one could easily come up with 2 new companies example where the opposite is true given a different design / team layout / project types and so on
- scottlu2 7y agoWhy are open plans (among software engineers) so common in the industry? Is it really that most software engineers like them?
- api 7y agoThey're cheaper, faster to set up, and pack more people into less space?
- plutonorm 7y agoPeople feel more stress when they feel watched. Stress increases productivity in the short term, before you burn out. But who cares about that right?
- matz1 7y agoThe trick is to just don't care, they want to watch go ahead watch. For example, I browse youtube/fb whenever I want, of course not something extreme like browsing porn. Whats the worse that could happen ? Some coworker complain that I'm not doing my job ?
- commandlinefan 7y agoWhat experience has ever led you to believe that what software engineers like or dislike factors into how their work environments are set up? The Important People consider us, at best, a necessary nuisance.
- scottlu2 7y agoI’ve seen the open plan sold as what engineers are asking for, but anecdotally I don’t see them asking for that, so I wonder what drives it. Does it attract people right out of college? (if so, it would be important for recruiting?)
- loco5niner 7y agoIt's cheap. ... at least in the short term (less building costs), but more expensive in the long term (less productivity, less happy employees). The decision makers don't seem to care. My company changed to an open office right before selling. It was a short-term money-making decision.
- closeparen 7y agoI wish this happened in my office. Instead there are face-to-face conversations at desks all the time, and those looking to do quiet focused work are basically out of luck.
- sctb 7y agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17572141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17572141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17448187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17448187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17513843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17513843
- commandlinefan 7y agoWasn't discussed here very long this time - it's disappeared completely from HN.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cr0sh 7y agoMy favorite work environment I was initially skeptical about. I had done in the past cubicles, private office, shared office, etc - but this one was somewhat unique because the company that I was hired on with didn't have any other place to put me and the rest of the "new guys". So they stuck us in their small conference room. Which had terrible air flow (aka - none). We had this long table-like desk; there were four of us, two on each side. We all had a dual-monitor setup with regular PCs - nothing fancy there. It was crazy hot in there - we called it "the oven". But we made it ours while we had it. Our team lead played a crazy mix of music from spotify. We could easily collaborate as needed. We could keep the lights off and not be bothered with that. Eventually we got a portable AC unit to help with the comfort of the room. We got a lot of great work done in that room. About a year later, we moved offices, and the owners decided to go "open floorplan" (we later learned this was all a scheme towards selling the company). Things changed greatly. While our entire team could be together (we had a couple other members of the team who were outside of the oven at the old office) at one "desk" - the open office didn't facilitate talking amongst ourselves as much or collaboration, because sales was nearby, etc. Most of the time, we listened to music or whatnot on headphones, and just used Hipchat and email to communicate.
- Sutanreyu 7y agoIt's because you see so many people that you want to retract a bit and not have to directly deal with them...
- ghostbrainalpha 7y agoThe biggest downside of an open office for is that I type really fast and loud on a mechanical keyboard some of my colleges are bothered by. But other people find the noise relaxing, so maybe I need to just have all the loud clackers get together in a single room.