
High-performance employees need quieter work spaces - fn
https://qz.com/936077/high-performance-employees-need-quieter-work-spaces-but-companies-arent-making-the-effort/
======
solaris_7
The obsession for open plan offices continues to amaze me. Companies that
invest huge amounts in staffing and other strategic programmes don't seem to
spend much time challenging the default suggestion that 'openness =
collaboration'.

This article mentions high performance employees - but most knowledge workers
(designers, programmers etc.) that I know _all_ struggle with open plan office
environments irrespective of their performance level. If anything, an open
plan office is maybe less worrisome to the more executive people I know -
their core work processes of communication & meetings are less negatively
impacted by the inability to regularly get large blocks of quiet productive
space.

Some companies obviously get this need (e.g. FogCreek) but it really feels
like sugar consumption or smoking. Once people really interrogate the status
quo they are quick to realise how negative it is - but despite this the sub-
optimal default approach has an unbelievable amount of momentum.

My condolences to all the 'high performance people' surveyed who are
desperately wishing for less disturbed work spaces!

~~~
mason240
Our company is currently relocating to new office, and they want an open
office plan in the space. We will pack in tight, and our cube walls will all
be 3.5 feet high. We have adjustable standing desks that will coming with us,
so when standing we will towering over every one and I already know it's going
to be awkward for me.

The best part is our 5 person IT team will be right next to 25 people who work
phones for customer service.

~~~
ratsz
Be lucky you have cube walls. Many open plans don't even have those!

~~~
gozur88
3.5 feet is barely higher than a desk (a normal one). That's like leaving your
waiter a penny tip.

~~~
chrisbennet
Yeah, but at least people can't see your junk on "wear a kilt to work" day...

I get that for a startup money is tight. Instead of telling employees:

"You folks really deserve a your own offices but we just can't afford it."

Instead they tell you the big lie; that they are doing it because it
"increases collaboration".

~~~
Arizhel
If money is really that tight, you can just have people work from home. That's
a lot cheaper than renting commercial office space.

------
kafkaesq
Rubbish. It is exactly through their ability to "soldier on" in spite of
intense and sometimes challenging surroundings that high-performing employees
distinguish themselves as such.

And on top of this, remember that the other way your best performers
distinguish themselves is in the fact that they most definitely are not
complainers. So if any of your employees start yapping about your proposed
move to an open plan environment (or even have the temerity to suggest that if
you are going to have an open plan environment, people at least "try to keep
down their voice down a bit"), then congratulations -- you've just identified
an employee that's definitely not right for your organization, and will likely
because more trouble and distraction for your team down the road -- for as
long as you keep them on board, that is.†

† Of course I'm being facetious. But this but a slightly cheeky paraphrase of
the _exact_ logic I've actually had used on me, to my face, to justify not
just the hyperdense, pack-em-in-like-it's-veal-slaughtering-pen office plans
which are apparently a peak popularity, these days -- but a whole range of
obnoxious environmental factors --- e.g. loud TVs, loud muzack (or _any_ TV or
muzack in "the pen", for that matter); or just loud, gratuitously chatty co-
workers -- in plenty of environments I've had the misfortune of being stuck
in. Until I realized I just wasn't "a fit" for these places, that is.

~~~
aezell
You got me. I was reading and thinking, "This person just couldn't be more
wrong." Nicely done.

------
pklausler
I guess that I fall into this characterization. Over my 36-year career, I've
sat in solo offices with doors, shared offices, cubicles with progressively
shorter walls, and wall-less high-density desk arrays. I've easily been twice
as productive with a door as I am in a noisy environment -- all the other
arrangements _suck_ if there is even one inconsiderate human in the space
making a phone call, moving a pound of mucus from one sinus cavity to another,
playing desk bongos along with their headphones, or any of the thousand other
ways that normal humans can be distracting.

Good headphones help, if only to take control over my own distraction, but
honestly this is a _management_ problem. If you want me to be extremely
productive, and my productivity is a function of my ability to concentrate,
then please just allow me to concentrate.

~~~
adrianggg
I do wonder why I have to purchase good headphones and wear them to combat
this problem?

What are the long term impacts of wearing headphones? bacteria growth and
hearing loss? Can't be good for my health long term.

Flow is a state of concentration, breaking flow take a longtime to get back
in, shouting questions across the room is a context switch and not an
asynchronous choice for me if I'm in the middle of something important.

The one inconsiderate person is the worst. The person unaware that their
constant sniffing of mucus is awful. Usually the least intelligent person in
the office IMO.

Usually the loudest and most obnoxious member of every team I've worked for
seems to have the most production problems....coincidence?

~~~
everybodyknows
You may find it hard to find audiophile headphones that suppress voices
adequately. I had better results with ear muffs from the local hardware store
intended for leaf-blowers. Get the biggest, ugliest ones you can find.

~~~
Arizhel
I have some of these that I use for lawn work, which are designed for shooting
guns. They isolate sound pretty well, but they're also not terribly
comfortable. They're OK for driving around on my lawn mower for 30 minutes,
but there's no way in hell I'd wear them for 8 hours.

------
oxryly1
Article has been removed. The original source ([https://hackernoon.com/58-of-
high-performance-employees-say-...](https://hackernoon.com/58-of-high-
performance-employees-say-they-need-more-quiet-work-spaces-4381241a6453))
appears to be a PR piece.

~~~
ucaetano
From the original one:

"→ Are you a high-performance employee? Please help me better understand you
by contributing to a 30-second anonymous survey. Thank you!
[http://bit.ly/high-performance-survey](http://bit.ly/high-performance-survey)
←"

This can only be a joke...

------
robalfonso
Not much discussion of the anonymous survey - are these "High Performing
Employees" Self selecting?

My gut says quiet spaces are a boon to productivity - but why not prove it
instead of a research methodology with holes so large I could drive a truck
through them.

~~~
Arizhel
Who's going to pay for the research to prove your idea that quiet spaces
improve productivity? Especially when all the current consultants are hyping
open-offices, which aligns nicely with managers/executives who want to save
money on floor space and cubicle furniture so they can get bigger bonuses?

------
nsxwolf
I made the mistake of thinking "open plan" meant low-walled cubes. Because
I've been working longer than this fad existed. I think we had even used the
term back then. I didn't get why people were suddenly whining about them.

Then I saw a real "open plan" office.

Holy shit. Why aren't workers violently revolting?

~~~
Clubber
Being able to yell across the room while sitting down is more efficient than
having to stand up first. Efficient collaberating.

This is a good metric. It's also the only metric we track. Science!

/s

What you are referring to is a "cube farm." Businesses have somehow discovered
how to make working conditions worse.

~~~
rdiddly
Ironically, part of the reason for the ascendancy of the open plan, was the
popular negative reaction against cubicles. Cubicles were so Dilbert, so
80s/90s IBM/Microsoft/Intel, so "Office Space." OK, maybe they didn't capture
the imagination of every special unique snowflake who would've rather been
extreme kite-para-heli-wind-surf-skiing. But at least it was a wall. At least
it was a space.

~~~
Clubber
The best method (for maximum sustained productivity) I've experienced is 2
developers to an office. For me, it's actually best if the developers aren't
on the same team so they won't often interrupt each other. Either way is
better than a cube farm and certainly open office. It's significantly cheaper
than an office per developer, but nearly as good.

It's great to collaborate and all, but that should be done at a scheduled time
in a scheduled place.

The negatives of open space is why libraries have a STFU rule.

~~~
nsxwolf
I've had that arrangement before too, and it wasn't bad.

------
realharo
The source for the claim in the title is:

 _> My latest anonymous survey shows that 58% of HPEs need more private spaces
for problem solving, and 54% of HPEs find their office environment “too
distracting.”_

Seems kinda weak.

------
w_t_payne
Why do we think that we need only _one_ kind of workspace that meets _all_ of
our criteria? Can't we have an office with a variety of different workspaces
that we can move between as our needs change?

~~~
iamdave
_Can 't we have an office with a variety of different workspaces that we can
move between as our needs change?_

This would require companies to invest in their people beyond "Here's your
paycheck, here's your healthcare, be glad we're giving you this much".
Granted, some companies do-and some probably do come with a variety of
workspaces. I used to work at one, but I don't know how many people would
answer in the affirmative if polled how commonplace they expect that sort of
workplace to be.

~~~
madengr
Healthcare? Hell, we just had our dental insurance dropped. Healthcare is now
a $10k OOPM at rates 3x what they were 10 years ago.

The open office plan could work with tall, fabric cubicles. My place now uses
short, glass & aluminum ones. Not to mention people chit chat too much. I'm an
EE and have to think about complex stuff; I can't think with the chit-chat;
breaks my squelch.

Fortunately I have a lab I can retreat to. Thinking about moving in there
permanently.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
Those fabric cubicles absorb a lot of sound. I miss them.

~~~
noir_lord
Cubicles where original marketed as "Action Offices" there is a book on the
history of them called Cubed: A secret history of the workplace.

The creator of them came to regret his creation as they where subverted in a
direction he never expected.

I've often wondered what a modern cubicle if designed today would look like,
we've done wonders in computer modeling and such since even sound dampening
designs would be much easier.

~~~
iamdave
A desk with a single wall in the front, behind where your displays would sit,
and a frosted glass pane demarcating rows. "We're not an open design", but you
don't exactly have anything remotely resembling a private workspace either.

------
jldugger
> We need to understand high-performance employees based on what they are
> tasked with and their core principles, not how much they produce, or even
> worse on standardized personality traits.

So high performance employees are whoever thinks they're important enough to
be one?

~~~
collyw
I am assuming it isn't people stacking shelves in a supermarket.

~~~
lawless123
I miss that, i worked evenings when the recession had just hit. plenty of room
to think while you stack shelves on autopilot.

------
watmough
There's no mention of the bare fact that:

    
    
      * Cubicles are 'furniture' and therefore receive advantageous tax treatment (accelerated depreciation, increasing profits),
    
      * Walls, not so much.

~~~
ww520
Just build floor to ceiling thick walled cubicle, getting the benefits of both
sides.

~~~
lloyd-christmas
And then you're in a dungeon with no natural sunlight. Glass helps, but it
still feels like a prison.

------
JustSomeNobody
Imagine how many more "high-performance"[0] employees you'd have if it were
quiet.

[0] Really? That's what they're called now?

Also:

"This article was published inadvertently."

------
mathogre
I work an odd schedule that includes 10 hours on Saturday. I _could_ work from
home on Saturday, but almost always work from the office as I've got the place
to myself (bad weather notwithstanding). It means driving 30 minutes each way,
as well as everything else with going out to work. The peace and quiet is
priceless as I've got an essentially empty 6 floor building all to myself.
Security passes by once or twice during the day. Generally there are no phone
calls, no meetings, no messages, no one stopping by to interrupt me. I can go
on a think walk and - get this - think.

If instead I work from home on Saturday, I am interrupted each time I leave my
"cave" to get a coffee. Sometimes it's my daughter, sometimes my wife. The
phone will invariably ring and will either be a spam call or a call for one of
them. There is no opportunity for a think walk.

~~~
Arizhel
>The phone will invariably ring and will either be a spam call or a call for
one of them.

Simple solution: get rid of the phone. Why do you have it anyway? I haven't
had a landline phone for probably 10 years now, and I was a little late to
that party. This line of yours looks like something out of the 1990s: a phone
call for _someone else_? How quaint! Do these people not have their own
phones?

------
codemac
I get page not found?

~~~
rogov
The link now shows "This article was published inadvertantly"

~~~
jey
I like the new version better. Now it sounds like a QZ staff writer who's
disgruntled about their noisy open office.

------
madphrodite
One open plan work environment story. One and only. Lasted three months there.
Noisy, smelly (kitchen nearby), and the head counters would come by every
couple hours to see who was at their seat and who wasn't. You don't have to be
uber employee to fail to appreciate the master plan and want out of this type
of thing.

------
NamTaf
My current office has 475mm high dividers. Next year they plan to relocate us
to the 'workplace of the future' with barriers that in some instances are
sub-300mm. They have 3 setups - a 4x desk each getting a 90 degree partition,
a 3x each getting 120 and a 6x flat rectangular thing with no dividers. We
will all be expected to hotdesk (what happens to my desktop workstation is
anyone's guess?) and will get a single ultra-widescreen attached to a laptop
dock (bye productivity gains from 2 monitors). Each of the configurations has
less overall desk real estate which is going to be fun when we have to roll
out A0 drawings.

I already get constantly distracted and find it hard to work. I'm placed next
to a corridor just near where one of 3 entryways from the foyer into the
office area is. Previously, I was next to 1 of 2 printers, at a junction to a
hallway holding the toilets, which doubled as a spot for people to strike up
conversation. I rarely get any extended periods of focus here which is
infurating when my job is structural analysis, maths, etc. We are currently
given a grand total of 8 meeting rooms per floor (200+ people), most of which
are permanently tied up with meetings so you can't even use them for private
workspaces. This is something they claim they'll fix in the new office but in
reality you will be lucky to get one.

The new place sounds and looks (when I checked out their examples of the
desks) like it's going to be a nightmare even worse than this. At least here I
can sort of sink into my seat and fall below the dividers, and at least I also
get my own space as a desk that I can customise to suit my own
needs/ergonomics/etc. and have it feel like it's my own space where I have
some miniscule hope of focusing.

I'm already polishing my CV in anticipation of bailing because of it.

~~~
Arizhel
>My current office has _475mm_ high dividers. Next year they plan to relocate
us to the 'workplace of the future' with barriers that in some instances are
sub- _300mm_.

>I'm already polishing my _CV_ in anticipation of bailing because of it.

Crap, it looks like this infection has spread to Europe too. :-(

I really wish Europe would stop copying all the stupidest ideas and trends
from America.

~~~
NamTaf
Don't worry, I'm in Australia.

Also not sure how my original post got downvoted since it's just recollecting
my opinions on open-plan offices. Maybe the Open Plan Cabal hates me speaking
ill of their utopia. Go figure.

~~~
Arizhel
Oh, I saw the millimeters and CV and assumed you were European; sorry!

Anyone from Europe care to comment on whether this plague has spread over
there too? From what little I've read, it has.

I think, unfortunately, open-plan offices are just now the reality world-wide.
Some cultures always had them (Asia), and now the cultures that had closed
offices have moved that way. The US has led the world for a long time with
software development, which does coincide with closed offices and then
cubicles, so I think we can look forward to being a has-been and other
countries becoming the leaders in software due to us adopting open-plan
offices. In a couple of decades it'll probably cause a complete economic
collapse and probably breakup of the US.

------
throwaywgsid
The most obvious and effective sounding way to divide offices is per-team.
That way groups of people working on the same thing can talk easily.

My current company has every dev and most managers in the same room. 7 scrum
teams, over 60 people in one room. It's madness and I can't fucking stand the
noise.

You get written up for talking "excessively" during work hours because 3/4 the
company can hear you when you try to collaborate. Peer programming is
impossible.

I have no idea why idiotic management consultants are promoting whats
basically a sweatshop environment.

The stupidest part of this is that my company just cut the walls down to a few
feet. You can clearly see that the dividers between each team used to be full
height walls. What a tragedy

~~~
iamacynic
uh well, you still work there don't you? that's why. because it's cheaper and
you still need the paycheck.

~~~
Arizhel
Username checks out.

------
superioritycplx
Diversity, mixing departments in the name of collaboration are all at fault
here.

Walls just make things better.

------
binaryzeitgeist
No Shit, Sherlock !

------
drcongo
I find it very odd that these articles make the front page of HN on an almost
daily basis. I'm currently working at home with twin toddlers with chicken pox
playing at full volume, yet I'm having little trouble concentrating. Why do
techs seem to obsess over this so much?

~~~
imauld
There are other factors besides just volume. I find it easier to concentrate
in a cafe than I do in the office and it's not exactly quiet in the average
coffee shop. What people are talking about around you also has an impact. The
conversations in a cafe for example just seem to blend together and become a
sort of white noise.

The discussions in the office however are sometimes related to what I'm
working on. So hearing bits and pieces of them stands out in my mind and can
get me thinking about that instead. People in cafes are also very unlikely to
come up and tap me on the shoulder and start asking questions about completely
unrelated topics.

YMMV of course and some people concentrate just fine in loud places. On the
other hand the people that say "I don't mind the open office plan, it doesn't
bother me" might just be the people who are disrupting everyone else.

~~~
Arizhel
There's another factor to the coffee shops IMO: who the people are.

In an open-plan office, the people around you are usually your coworkers, the
people you see every day and know personally. In a coffee shop, they're
usually total strangers, people you might see occasionally at that shop at
best, and very likely you'll never see them again.

Also, the strangers at the coffee shop don't care what you're looking at on
your laptop, or if you're getting any work done. Coworkers might. Also,
strangers at a coffee shop are unlikely to interrupt you; coworkers are very
likely to. So at the coffee shop, it's entirely possible to be around other
humans without being forced to socialize with them, but not at work.

