
Open Offices Make You Less Open - bloomca
http://calnewport.com/blog/2018/07/06/open-offices-make-you-less-open/
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sbjs
"In the 15 days before the office redesign, participants accumulated an
average of around 5.8 hours of face-to-face interaction per person per day.
After the switch to the open layout, the same participants dropped to around
1.7 hours of face-to-face interaction per day."

Maybe it's because what used to take 3 hour meetings to settle, now took 3
minutes of talking with the guy next to you?

"productivity, as defined by the metrics used by their internal performance
management system, had declined after the redesign to eliminate spatial
boundaries.”"

Maybe their metrics are wrong? Maybe they measured lines of code written, and
maybe they used to do busywork writing lines of code that weren't really
needed, and now they're actually able to get things done? They don't say
anything about their metrics and expect us to trust that they were just less
productive.

~~~
lostcolony
5.8 hours of face to face interaction.

How did these people get -anything- done? They spent 3/4s of their day in
meetings.

After the switch, they spent 1/4 of their day in meetings.

WTF? I'm sorry, but how the heck did the adoption of an open office lead to
people getting half their day back?

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Raphmedia
All my life, I've done my programming work either alone at home, in the
silence of a library or with a small team in a quiet room. I consider that
open offices are a bane to my productivity. I honestly cannot focus without
headphones on. However, you have to keep an ear open at all time in order for
the benefits of such an office.

I often do unpaid overtime simply to have time alone and I consider that
during those times my productivity triples.

All open office plans should offer quiet private areas for employees where
they could go and focus on complicated issues. Sadly, I have yet to see anyone
offer it (except maybe the big names like Google and Amazon).

~~~
breischl
After they switched us to an open office there was so much complaining that
they then bought noise-cancelling headphones for everyone. So now we have an
open office in which everyone wears headphones in an attempt to emulate having
some privacy.

From my perspective it's the worst of most worlds, but they did manage to cram
a lot more people into the space so it does save on building/office costs.

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larrik
Open offices are cheaper, and they look a lot cooler than a bunch of hallways
and closed doors (and certainly cooler than cubicles). They're gonna be hard
to get rid of.

