
The collaboration curse - makaimc
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688872-fashion-making-employees-collaborate-has-gone-too-far-collaboration-curse
======
poof131
People’s obsession with Slack and chat apps (applies to open offices too)
seems overly done in Silicon Valley. Career switching from the military to
development has been interesting in this regards. The military uses chat, but
only when needed—realtime communication is critical and people are distributed
geographically. On duty on the carrier keeping track of planes and other
issues happening “in country”, chat is great. On the ground in Iraq scheduling
airborne assets and keeping track of SF missions, chat is great. But for most
things, chat is more of a distraction and slows down the real work.

I understand chat if you are working in operations, but for pure development,
it feels like a college dorm, more about the community and less about the
work, where people still confuse time at the office with getting your work
done. After a decade of 70+ hour work weeks, you really appreciate what is
work and what isn’t. Building camaraderie is important, but chat probably
isn’t the best way. And putting everyones communications in a single channel
isn’t helping communication, it’s increasing distraction.

In my ideal dev team, you have chat, use it for one-on-one communication, and
for anything that is time sensitive which goes into group channels. Anything
that not everyone needs to know or isn’t time sensitive should go in an email
or a message or a shoulder tap. Cluttering a few group channels with a ton of
individual conversations, meaningless alerts, and random banter is downright
juvenile and a detriment to productivity. I recognizing that promoting free
flowing communication is important, but dorm room chat isn’t the solution.

~~~
niels_olson
> On duty on the carrier keeping track of planes and other issues happening
> “in country”, chat is great.

Very similar observations from 10 years ago and now. And in the hospital, chat
has no role. It's curious watching the Dev community obsess about how many
things could theoretically do without getting off their butts, and then swear
the latest standing desks.

~~~
kbenson
> It's curious watching the Dev community obsess about how many things could
> theoretically do without getting off their butt

I understand the sentiment, but it's important to consider the people in
situations where it's not feasible to meet physically. It's not about "getting
off your butt" if you live multiple hours away from the office.

------
imgabe
The collaboration excuse is a red herring. I'm sure some of the managers
believe it, but it's not really the point.

Office space is leased by the square foot. $/sf/ year. Building a new building
is usually budgeted in terms of $/sf. (Aside from some base unavoidable costs,
it more or less scales linearly with floor area in terms of square feet.)

The fewer square feet you need, the less your lease is, which immediately and
directly decreases your overhead and increases your profit margin.

Open offices fit more people in fewer square feet. There's a specific dollar
amount a manager can point to and say "I'm saving that much money".

Maybe the productivity gains of private offices would more than offset the
extra cost of needing more space, maybe not. It's not as easily quantifiable.
Keep in mind that office leases are often signed for 10+ years and if you're
building your own building you're stuck with it for even longer. Plus once you
sign a lease you have to pay to build out the office. This can easily cost
several million dollars in itself.

If you're a manager making this mutli-million dollar decision, are you going
to go with the guaranteed overhead savings of minimizing square footage or are
you going to risk millions of dollars on a vague promise of maybe increased
productivity? Unless your company has the money to spare I don't see any
rational person opting for the latter, much as I would rather have a private
office myself.

~~~
tdaltonc
As I understand it though, open office is a trend. Your mechanism doesn't
explain why there was ever a time without open offices. So what's changed to
make office managers more penny-wise, or have there always been "open
collaborative offices" just under a different name?

~~~
woah
My guess is that the big issue at play here is land price and zoning issues in
the big cities where companies need to be headquartered to attract top talent.
It's hard to build new buildings, and it's hard to build them tall. Building
out in the suburbs is no longer seen as attractive. So, the solution is to
maximize the space available while providing other perks like catered lunches
and snacks etc.

~~~
AlexandrB
But what's the purpose of attracting top talent if you proceed to waste said
talent's time and productivity in a distraction-rich environment?

Feels like cargo-cult management.

------
noir_lord
I've worked in open offices, they made it impossible for me to program, so I
spent all day "collaborating" and doing scutwork until everyone went home at
5, then I'd stay til 9 to get the stuff I needed to get done done.

I'd never do that again, if a company puts me in a position where I can't work
during work hours I simply won't, will raise concerns and if not resolved
leave.

Life is too short to do 70 hour weeks when you are only getting 30 hours work
done.

~~~
floppydisk
Indeed. One gig I was at consisted of spending 9-5 doing nothing but
meetings/groupwork/collaborating/email and dealing with bosses who kept asking
why the coding wasn't getting done and behind schedule in one breath while
dragging me into a 3hr+ meeting the next. Getting work done meant getting in
before the boss, coding as much as possible until the boss showed up, waiting
for the boss to leave, then coding again for another 2-3 hours to keep up. It
does get ridiculous.

The problem is we've turned asynchronous communication and decision making
into a near-real time short loop without considering the cognitive costs.
Switching from my editor to email, parsing the 30 new messages, identifying
the content to reply to and fabricating the correct reply costs the mental
software model being used to guide the coding and it takes time to get it back
into place. Switch in/out all day and your only bit of peace comes when the
email writers go home.

~~~
arielweisberg
If you have 3+ hour meetings that sounds like a bug. Maybe figure out why they
take so long or why there are so many and address that.

Maybe get fewer people in the meeting? Push as much discussion as possible out
of the meeting so it only involves the people who care? More delegation and
indirection?

Managers and leadership should be showing up to more smaller meetings not
front line people showing up to fewer longer meetings.

I think a reasonable scheduled meeting budget is averaging 1-1.5 hours per
week and that is an upper limit not a target. Unscheduled (as in does not
repeat every week at the same time) are something to be avoided for a product
development team.

~~~
noir_lord
Sounds nice in theory but the managers set the meeting.

What they never seem to realise is a 2 hour meeting with 10 people means they
use two hours of their time and 20 hours of their subordinates, most of which
is spent waiting for the other 9 to finish.

Lots of those managers simply don't see the inefficiency since from their
point of view it looks OK.

~~~
abawany
My theory pertaining to non-technical supervisory staff is that meetings for
some fill up an otherwise very empty day. All the technical managers that I
have worked for never seemed too eager for meetings - they were too busy
building real things to waste time in meetings.

------
fishnchips
That resonates a lot with me. A few years back my manager in a big-co with a
lofty motto would not allow me to work remotely for a week or two to stay
closer to my dying parent. As she pointed out, "a lot of innovation happens at
the watercooler".

~~~
verisimilidude
You should've quit on the spot. "Jobs come and go, but I only have one/two
parents who deserve better, etc. Bye." She would've relented and let you go.
I've called this bluff several times in my career and I've never lost.

But of course, you don't want to work for someone like that in the first
place, if you can help it.

~~~
fishnchips
It was my first 'real' job and the company was (and still is) considered
extremely prestigious in our line of work. So for a junior engineer quitting
that job was suboptimal at that stage. I ended up going without permission.
Contrary to my expectations I wasn't fired. But was never promoted again,
either - no matter how hard I would work for it.

~~~
enraged_camel
It would have been very easy to explain in interviews however. "They wouldn't
let me spend two weeks with my dying mother" is quite a valid reason for
quitting a job in my opinion.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
Doesn't this run afoul of the 'don't badmouth previous employers' rule?

~~~
cookiecaper
It's expected that you aren't going to be gumdrops and rainbows about your
prior employer in an interview. The point of this rule is that you don't look
like you're bitter or holding a grudge; if the new company thinks you create
vendettas whenever there's a problem, they're going to want to stay away from
you for fear that you'll be unfair to them if such a misunderstanding arises
in the course of your employment with them (e.g., hurting their reputation in
the marketplace, leaking source code because you're mad at your boss).

It'd be reasonable to say something like "We had different perspectives on the
structure of the workplace and it just wasn't really what I was looking for".
They'll probably ask "Oh, what was the issue?" and you'll say "I needed to
work remotely to be at the bedside of an ailing parent and they said they'd
fire me if I tried, so I quit".

You don't want to look like you're blaming them for making you miss your
parents' final moments (we're grownups and take personal responsibility for
things like that, don't allow people to stop you from participating in
important life milestones), which is why it's a good idea to allow them to dig
a little bit before getting at the real dispute. This is a good principle when
discussing previous employers anyway. You always want to sound like you're
over whatever the slight was, that you see and understand their perspective
and don't blame them for having it, but simply don't agree with it. You won't
be faulted for that.

------
lettergram
I work in an open office, and would consider myself a knowledge worker. The
easiest way to manage it is to work from home, however I also positioned my
desk in a corner facing the window (so my back to the room) I also by default
put wvery meeting invite to tenative and ubless its absolutely necessary i
dont show up.

All that has put me at odds with management to a degree. However, im given all
the hard problems and churn out solutions. Based on projects completed, im
doing the work of 4 employees at the same level. I should also add that I
still answer 5 - 20 questions from coworkers a day, and am the go-to guy to
fix many issues (so I dont completely shut myself off). This has put me in a
position where my manager has hinted that im going to get promoted if I keep
it up.

Of course the company I work for has "non-management management" i.e. you can
become a VP without having to manage people. This lets the anti-social hard-
core workers still move up in rank and pay.

~~~
verisimilidude
You will not get promoted. As long as you're super valuable in your current
role, they only have incentive to keep you put. I got strung along with that
bullshit for years at my first job before I learned this lesson.

It's not a total loss though. If they do find you valuable, play hard on your
salary.

~~~
lettergram
I tried to explain that in my original comment, but did a poor job. They can
promote you, but you keep your role. i.e. you can be promoted to "VP of Web
Development" essentially. So your role doesn't change, but your
responsibilities related to engineering can increase.

This can lead to some pretty weird hierarchy where a people manager at the
director level is managing an engineering manager at the VP level. However, I
feel it is a pretty interesting environment and lets both "knowledge works"
and "people managers" be rewarded on equal footing.

~~~
st3v3r
Does the "VP of Web Development" get paid on par with the VP of Marketing or
VP of Sales?

------
skewart
Sadly, there really is a lot of collaboration cargo culting these days.

But it's interesting because in the large majority of fields the best outcomes
really are in some ways collaborative efforts. The lone genius is actually
extremely rare.

I'm inclined to say the key to effective collaboration is that it has to be
driven entirely by the collaborators, and it is only actively happening for a
very small percentage of the time spent on a project.

A cargo culting middle manager might think she's helping by setting up hours
of meetings with different people to get their "perspective". Those people
probably can add value. But the best way to do it is to let the project lead
go to them with questions or asking for feedback when they think it makes
sense.

Management can help by fostering a culture where people are willing and eager
to talk to their colleagues when they need help, or to get new ideas. To some
extent communication tools can help, but there are other much bigger factors:
Don't make people feel like they'll be penalized in performance reviews for
not knowing things or needing help. Cultivate a sense of shared ownership of
projects and outcomes. Give people maxuimum autonomy over their schedules.

------
abalone
I really want to figure out which plan is better. I honestly feel that people
with bad experiences with open plan get on here and gripe, and it makes open
plan sound horrible. But there are bad experiences with offices too. Like
rarely interacting with colleagues outside of scheduled meetings. And there's
a natural bias towards one's own productivity vs helping the team.

Maybe it's just because open plan is more the norm nowadays, now we hear all
the downsides of that. But it's worth considering it was adopted in response
to the downsides of offices and cubes (shudder), not some shortsighted
irrational plot to cut costs at the expense of productivity.

One thing I know: If anyone says rarely interacting "sounds great", they
shouldn't be trusted. Yes you will absolutely maximize your coding focus. Yes
that is an invalid argument. Team collaboration is important too. I suspect
that to make either plan work you've got to pair it with a solid culture that
shores up its weaknesses: minimize distractions in open plan, fight isolation
in offices.

My straw man ideal is an open plan that is relatively quiet, but let's you
look at each other and leverage body language and enhanced awareness to gague
when it's a good moment to interrupt. That's the only way that a whole class
of "quick questions" and "crazy ideas" get fielded that would otherwise not
cross the interrupt bar of a door-knock or even an IM-ping. And that stuff can
be super valuable esp. to a startup team. And it actually can get those
handled quicker!

But I suspect it has to be paired with a culture of minimizing extended
subcritical conversations at your desk and taking them over to separate
meeting areas that are less disruptive.

------
zymhan
At my new job, I've really started pushing back against meetings that seem
superfluous. Often times I'll find myself saying the same exact thing at 3
different meetings, and it almost never affects anyone else in the room.

~~~
hashkb
What form does this pushing take? How is it working? I ask because I've failed
at this before; managers have great power to defend their habits and
processes.

~~~
zymhan
>What form does this pushing take?

I've asked my manager specifically what it is I and others are supposed to be
getting out of each meeting

> How is it working?

Well, I only got out of one meeting so far, but I'll be damned if I don't keep
trying!

------
marknutter
Is it possible that there's no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem? I
get the feeling that if cubicles were still in fashion people would be
complaining just as loudly about them as others are complaining about open
offices. I think a good balance between the two extremes combined with
allowing people to work from home on days they need to focus is the best
answer we have to this problem today.

------
hashkb
We can keep writing these articles and reading them and knowing we are right
and get nowhere.

1) Say I'm an engineer with a manager who doesn't get it. How can I
empathetically (that is, without spontaneously developing a "political
performance problem" on my next review) help my manager improve?

2) Say I'm that manager, and I want to improve but meetings and spreadsheets
are all I know. What can I do?

~~~
mojuba
There was a post today about Stanley Kubrick, which got me thinking:
programming is like making a movie in many ways. So you can tell your boss:
"if I were a film director and you knew I'm busy at the film set making a
feature film for you, with some Hollywood stars, would you be calling me out
for your shitty meetings as often as you do otherwise?"

Or: "If you were Stanley Kubrick's boss, would you interrupt him as often?"

~~~
cookiecaper
I don't think this will get through to anyone. The only reason people can
respect the time used up by a director is because every minute of filming has
a _massive_ directly attributable dollar cost to the company. In normal
employment, the company is going to spending that money on either yourself or
your replacement, so there's not an obvious, immediate economic incentive in
allowing you to do what you consider "real work" (building something) instead
of allowing the manager to do what he considers "real work" (sitting around
and talking about stuff).

------
trjordan
My read on pushing collaboration is that it's a hedge against doing the wrong
thing. In startups (say, <100 people and in grow-or-die mode), I think you
have to focus on producing revenue on a 3-9 month timeframe. If you have a
bunch of people working on their own, a lot of them will do things that are
valuable, but won't show value to the company for 2-5 years. That not really
OK, unless everybody agrees it's OK.

So, everybody collaborates constantly, so when you do something like run a
pen-test before you have a customer with a CISO, there's agreement that it's
OK to do it early. Otherwise, you might end up with a bunch of interesting
work that doesn't have any coherence, and with only 25 people, that's not
enough to sustain a company.

Of course, if everybody is working on the right things, and you have manager
drive-bys via Slack/email/daily standups 3 times a day, that's a separate
issue. It's the fear of working on the wrong thing that's motivating that
pattern.

------
pbreit
I'm shocked that SV ingenuity has ended up at such a horrific solution for
office environments. The "open" plan hardly delivers any collaboration either,
just a continuous stream of distractions or creepy silence with a room full of
headphones. Surely we can do better?

------
grandalf
There's a cultural aspect to collaboration, and an office layout aspect.

Culturally, collaboration can be great. Getting someone from sales involved in
a product meeting could be revolutionary, or getting a product person on a
sales call etc. etc.

It's possible to design an open floor plan with plenty of private spaces, but
most companies don't do this because the people making the decisions are not
introverted enough or their jobs don't involve achieving and maintaining "flow
state".

Ideas like pair programming have created the misunderstanding that programming
should always be done in a social way. There are many times when a problem
demands focused thinking, and the ideal office space offers places to do that.

------
mabbo
Fittingly, I'm having trouble focusing on reading this article because the
team next to mine is having a conversation. They aren't speaking overly
loudly, but there's nothing between me and them so I can hear everything.

I have a pair of these to help:
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000X6L78/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000X6L78/)

~~~
kentt
I brought ear plugs to work in an open office. Apparently, that makes me 'not
a team player'.

~~~
siphor
If you like music, I can't recommend enough Bose qc-25 headphones. They make
it so I can actually focus in a noisy environment.

~~~
mabbo
I can only focus on one stream of words at a time, and can't filter very well.
What this means is that if my wife is watching a TV show, I can't have a
coherent conversation with her. If guys next to me are talking too loudly (and
not rudely it anything, it's just an open office) I have trouble reading.

The other result: if music has lyrics, I can't read very well. Headphones like
that are great, as long as you appreciate classical or EDM, lol.

~~~
siphor
I listen to the same playlist over and over again (used to be pandora, but
changed to spotify discover weekly). Literally don't hear a single song until
i listen to it at the end of the week at home.

------
amyjess
I work in what might as well be an open plan: I share an office with three
other people, and the desks are arranged so none of us have our backs to the
wall (at least I get a really nice view of a highway out of the deal, though).
The whole company is set up like this, with every 3-4 employees grouped into
large offices.

It could be worse because I get along with my officemates, but it's easily the
worst office arrangement I've been part of. The vulnerability of not having my
back to the wall seriously gets to me, and it can get really, really annoying
when multiple conversations are taking place at the same time. One of my
officemates wears headphones 90% of the time specifically because of this.

Before this job, I've worked in cubes, I've had my own office, and I've shared
an office with one other.

Of all those, I preferred sharing an office with one other, with desks
arranged so our backs are to the wall. I had some degree of privacy, but I'm
not totally isolated from other people.

~~~
dasmoth
I've recently moved from a 4-5 person office somewhat as you describe to open
plan. It's a BIG difference.

------
Futurebot
I agree with the article and many of the comments here. I'd add that there's
another thing: a one-size-fits-all design. Open plan offices are very good for
workers for whom collaboration is constant; I've seen sales, marketing, some
ops, and a few other departments who would constantly interact no matter what
kind of office layout they had. For work that requires lots of concentration
and little collaboration, though, that layout is counterproductive. Companies
should start thinking about _role_ needs and the space required to support
maximum productivity, rather than just having a single layout because it's
easier/cheaper. How about a ring of private offices for those that need it
surrounding a shared collaboration space? I worked at one place like with that
layout and it worked very well.

------
jm_l
The Harvard Business Review reports "an overlap of only 50% between 'the top
collaborative contributors in any organisation and those individuals deemed to
be the top performers.'"

That's a pretty high percentage, if you ask me. I wonder what other traits you
could identify in the set of top performers that would be equally or more
prevalent. The article seems to equivocate more collaboration with more
distraction. These two are perhaps related when policy aims to encourage
collaboration through shared office space, Slack, and meetings which interrupt
deep work. But let's be clear; collaboration is a good thing and we shouldn't
act like it's wrong to encourage it, just that perhaps there are better, less
distracting ways to do it.

------
zachrose
It's one thing to put multiple people on the same task or question and have a
focused, active collaboration. This would include things like brainstorming
and pair programming.

It's another thing to give people their own tasks but put them in an
environment of ambient chatter and real time notifications. This would include
things like open floor plans and Slack. (I'm not arguing that these things are
bad, just that they're not genuine collaboration.)

It's pretty easy to make an office look and feel like a collaborative space.
It's quite a bit harder to find a few tasks that would benefit from real
collaboration and invest double or triple the "hourly rate" for that one
thing. Then again, maybe it's totally worth the cost?

------
xyzzy4
First of all, forcing collaboration onto people by making them sit together
isn't proven to be effective. There is no evidence to show it's in the
company's best interests to have an open office environment. Doing it just
because Facebook does is cargo cult thinking.

Second of all, it's also against the employees' best interests and pursuit of
happiness. Employees should ideally want to choose the sort of office they
have, and also be able to work from home whenever they want. Having happy
employees leads to the highest productivity and employee retention.

I've worked in many different environments, and I dislike open office the
most.

------
madengr
I'm about finished with the book:

[http://calnewport.com/books/deep-work/](http://calnewport.com/books/deep-
work/)

I have already tuned off my email client, only checking it in the morning and
after lunch. Contemplating moving me workstation (computer) into my lab where
I can get away from the open (short cubical wall) floor plan.

Of course, I am reading HN now, but only because it's taking quite a while to
generate Gerbers for a PCB.

~~~
kentt
That looks like a really good book. Thanks for mentioning it. That'll be next
of my list of books to read.

------
Demoneeri
I see a lot of people bitching about meetings.

But what about people that their job is to collaborate an be in meetings. For
example, I'm a business analyst, my job is to meet with users and devs.
Eliciting requirements don't take me that much time. All my time is spent on
being on meeting to understand what users want and review with them what have
been done and make sure that's what they want.

That being said, I always try to make the meeting shorter and people thank me
for that.

~~~
st3v3r
Then those people can go be in meetings all they want. Let the rest of us get
our work done. I guarantee that they'll have no qualms about leaving at 6, but
if we do without getting stuff done cause we spent all afternoon in a
pointless meeting, they'll start yelling, and schedule another all afternoon
meeting to discuss why we're still behind.

------
thebouv
Most of the office where I am moved to being an open floor plan, with managers
getting offices. The main area is quite noisy and I'm glad I'm not over there.
Headphones would do me no good -- sure, I like to listen to music while
developing, sometimes, but I also just like quiet. Probably lean more towards
wanting quiet than music.

------
methehack
I find that the asynchronous nature of chat programs can actually help this
problem. Email takes too much time because it's overly formal. Meetings, well,
don't get me started. But asynchronous chat is a pretty good balance of
informal, prompt enough, and not overly intrusive. ymmv.

------
kjaer
Huh, the website won't show you any content if you're blocking cookie request
notifications. You need to disable your adblock / cookie notification remover
to be able to allow the site to use cookies, and only then will it show you
the article.

Goes to show how ridiculous this EU law is...

~~~
kuschku
Well, the EU law only is about tracking cookies. Technical cookies are always
allowed – like, a sign-in cookie is automatically allowed if you click "sign
in".

That means 99% of websites don’t need a cookie warning.

~~~
kjaer
_Far more_ than 1% of sites use Google Analytics, or similar services. I don't
get why this wasn't mandated as a native browser notification, or something
else that is opt-out.

The worst part is that I block tracking scripts and therefore also cookie
notifications, and I still got a blank page. These blocks totally broke the
website for me.

------
grb423
When I see a modern-day, first-grade classroom I shudder and am thankful that
when I was a kid in the 1970s we had desks in rows facing the teacher. Today
there are no desks and everybody sits in a circle on the floor. Primary
education: For extroverts, by extroverts.

------
rogersmith
But...but... Collaboration makes us agile! /s

------
volume
I would like to be what appears to be the 1st person on this thread to point
out one key idea:

we have these things called "laptops" with "wifi" access technology. Typically
you should be able to unplug your power cord, stand up and move your feet to
quieter areas.

My mac laptop also has command-Q technology built into all my programs --
including chat and email.

Also I have these things that go over my ears and delivery music.

~~~
gedy
I was very surprised how difficult it was to find _any_ quiet place in our
rather large open office. Cafeteria has ping pong and sports TV blasting,
conference rooms would be reserved, etc.

------
tsunamifury
First hire good people, then just do whatever your team wants and it'll be the
most productive/happy solution. This doesn't have to be some universal human
rule. Humans are different.

I personally like times collaborating with short sprints alone.

------
mrcactu5
where is this Collaborative overload? Do I live on another planet? These
diseases seem to hit only places like Silicon Valley and the like

------
anthonybsd
I think a lot of this depends on the type of personality the person has. I've
worked in open offices my entire career (18 years). I've never had trouble
zoning out from distractions and concentrating on coding. A good pair of
headphones is big help in this regard.

~~~
harryf
With all due respect this argument makes me crazy. So the answer to shitty
office environments is drowning it out with noise? I have partial tinnitus
thanks to this kind of thinking. And every time you get management to the
point where they realize they should change something there's always that one
guy saying "where's the problem? Just wear headphones..."

~~~
anthonybsd
It's not really an argument. It's more of an observation that I've never had
an issue. And you don't have to "drown" anything with noise, that's what
noise-canceling headphones are for.

~~~
harryf
In my experience noise cancelling headphones are just as bad for tinnitus -
it's not medically clear but try googling "noise cancelling headphones
tinnitus" and judge for yourself

------
DanielBMarkham
Gee, another open space rant. We never see enough of that.

So let's review what open space helps with.

Open space helps with teams working on creative problems. It helps them by
allowing them, as a team, to own their collective space in such a way such
that they are constantly _socially_ interacting whether they would prefer that
or not. The theory is that a group of people, left alone to work physically
beside each other on something non-trivial, will eventually work through
obstacles that each of them working individually and trying to email would
not. In addition, people work through these problems on a non-verbal level,
using body language, obfuscation, and all the other social tools that nature
has given us to use when dealing with problems as a group (Insert long
discussion here)

In a room with 80 people all sitting at cafeteria tables? That's not it. In an
environment where teams don't have and own separate spaces? That's also not
it. Working on a grunt project that doesn't requires a lot of creative
problem-solving? Probably not for you -- and your job is in danger of being
taken over by robots. Not responsible for truly helping a business problem and
instead just being told what to do every day? You might as well work anywhere
in the world; office setup isn't going to change anything for you.

This is really powerful stuff, and I've seen it make a ton of difference to
how teams perform. But like everything else, it's been "re-branded", buzz-
worded, adopted-and-extended, and compromised to the point where it's a
disaster for a lot of folks. I can't help that. It's still a good idea in many
cases. (And, quite frankly, as a developer I'd rather just be left alone to
code. I do not care about creative solutions to interesting problems.
Unfortunately, the people who pay me? They pay me to work through tough
issues, not just try to spend the maximum amount of time in flow.)

So it's really getting hard to have an intelligent discussion about this. All
the time I hear my friends say "I hate X!" Then I look at what they're doing?
It's not X. I'm not sure whether to agree with them or not. I am reminded of
the old joke: "Doctor! It hurts when I do this!" "Well, stop doing that."

~~~
st3v3r
You're gonna have to provide some evidence of your assertions, there.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I'm providing a definition, not a list of assertions. My point was that the
phrase "open office" means so many different things in so many different
situations that it's no wonder people suffer under it. The phrase itself has
been destroyed as a useful concept.

Now it's fair to say that my definition isn't applicable here, but, well, it
is _my_ definition. I teach this stuff. I'm sure all the folks making these
cattle-call working spaces have their definitions as well. That's fine. It
sounds like we need to start disambiguating the concept to prevent more of
this cluster-fuckery.

