
The Open-Office Trap (2014) - jseliger
https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap
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charia
I'd wager that in twoish years we'll see articles talking about the Remote
Office Trap.

Over the years we've seen a huge surge of individuals talking about the
benefits of remote work and there are many. I'm not trying to ignore those
benefits in any way, but there are downsides and I have little faith in most
corporations to do a good job of addressing these new found problems in an
optimal manner. And what works for some portion of the workforce (some amount
of workers like open offices), might not be optimal for another significant
portion of the workforce.

Speculating on possible problem points in articles about remote work:

I would guess they will simply see the savings in office costs and pass on
very small portion of that, leaving employees with the need to now rent/buy
bigger houses to allocate space for a permanent home office situation. Other
problems include a possible increase in always on-call attitudes in that,
managers will feel even more open to ask employees to work on something at
non-standard hours since it's simply a matter of walking a couple steps to
their desk. Workplaces are filled with humans and without causal interaction
outside of standard work related meetings, I wonder how people will care about
each other. Will employees have less empathy for each other since bonds
between them are weaker? Things like asking for help someone on a task is
harder if you're not as familiar with them. I wonder what other changes we'll
see.

~~~
cuddlybacon
> Things like asking for help someone on a task is harder if you’re not as
> familiar with them.

Anecdotes are anecdotal, but I’m seeing this in my peers. In particular newer
and shyer peers are telling me this the most. They are also telling me their
hours worked have gone up as well. One has specifically said their increase in
hours is too make up for the lack of help.

I think wfh will prove to be beneficial for the confident engineers at the
expense of the shy. EDIT: and those who are active in Slack at the expense of
those who aren’t.

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dchuk
The only people who like open offices are typically the folks in higher up
positions who still have their own private office.

One silver lining of covid I suppose is it should at least bring some sanity
with dividers/cubes back in the mix.

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dang
Three threads from back then:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024488)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7832209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7832209)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8696391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8696391)

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highwind
From my experience, only people who prefer open offices are junior devs who
need lot of help from peers/mentors and managers who often likes to check on
team's progress. I personally hate open office for the similar reasons
mentioned in the article.

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vangelis
Rebrand them as Libre offices

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haspoken
[http://archive.is/e7On1](http://archive.is/e7On1)

