
The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration - tosh
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/1753/20170239
======
ThomaszKrueger
I joke that my career went downhill from when I started. At first I had my own
office, with a door, desk, computer desk, bookshelf with books, two chairs in
front of my desk for small meetings. Then I had a large, tall cube, with
reasonable space. Next I had a small, short walled cube I could barely fit in
and would bump into my neighbor. Finally I was in a open space, with tens of
other people yapping in their speakerphones many times in the same online
meeting, with maddening echo. One person got sick, everyone got sick. If you
want to get any work done you need to wear Bose cancelling headphones. Finally
I managed to work from home. Once again I have my private office, silence,
communicate via Slack and email, and never been more productive in my life.

~~~
some_account
Still waiting for the joke part...

Programmers have also lost a lot of respect, and are now seen as simple
factory workers who glue things together according to best practice.

~~~
ProAm
Programmers are a trade worker the same as plumbers and electricians, etc....
There was a bit of 'magic happens here' in the industry for a while but
nowadays we're pretty much a skilled trade.

~~~
ken
Trade _means_ "skilled work", so programming has always been by definition a
trade. That's not disparaging in the least. There's absolutely nothing wrong
with trade work.

My only issue is the matter of supplies. If you hired me as an electrician but
wouldn't let me have any wire cutters, I would have a very difficult time
doing my job. Likewise, a quiet space to think is one of the necessary
reagents for programming.

------
steve_taylor
Office rents are based on floor space. Open offices require less floor space
than closed offices, which means they’re cheaper. They’re also more scalable
and agile. You can rearrange desks and even cram in more employees per desk
when you need to quickly ramp up. Increasing collaboration is just the
bullshit excuse.

Everywhere I work is an open office and we all wear our noise cancelling
headphones, playing whatever music doesn’t break our concentration, and
communicate via Slack.

~~~
JoachimS
I wish employers could realize that they employ grownups and could at least be
honest to them.

~~~
sametmax
If you expect people to do the right thing, you are going to live in a world
of disappointment.

The only way to avoid this is to have the chance (e.g financial and social
opportunity) and to use the chance (e.g by working and choosing) to set
yourself in the right environment for you. Wanting the environment you are in
to change does not work.

Just like you don't get more money by negotiating with your current boss, but
by negotiating with bosses in other companies.

You can, and my, decide it's your mission to change your environment. It's
possible. But you usually can only one mission in life, so choose carefully.

~~~
sixdimensional
I'm this person right now. I'm living in a world of disappointment, always
trying to encourage people to communicate, collaborate, work together, do
things better together. It seems I'm always doing it in places that don't
appreciate it.

I've learned the hard way that you appear to be right, one can't change this
alone and doing so is maddening, depressing and frustrating. Especially when
the verbal outward presentation by people is that they want and value the
things I mentioned, but the actions don't match up.

I think I need to change, but, I can't help feeling cynical, like I'm giving
up and running every time I see such a situation. And then I wonder, if
everyone follows the same pattern, how are we actually improving the situation
on a bigger scale?

I guess a question is, is it better to stand whatever ground you are on to
help encourage positive growth and values, or just find new ground, as you
seem to be saying.

I'm getting older and I still haven't figured it out. I think you might be
right, but it seems depressing to me to accept it.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
I've had _precisely_ the same experience as you're describing.

I don't have a total answer, but I suspect a basic problem is that we have too
simplistic an understanding of human psychology.

It's also possible that it's a chasm you and/or I can never cross, because to
effect the kind of improvements you're describing requires having a particular
persona.

I'd _love_ to hear any ideas people have on solving this issue.

~~~
dougmwne
My experience is that environment vastly trumps individual psychology. If you
aren't in some way empowered to reshape the environment then the best you can
do is swap environments. Environments resist change so it takes sigifigant
leverage to change them.

------
olliej
"What is surprising is that more open, transparent architecture prompted such
a substitution."

Why is that surprising? You removed offices so of course people don't talk
anymore - politeness dictates that you don't want to interrupt other people.

And performance declined, which they blamed on switching to email rather than
talking, while ignoring the even more obvious: now every time your coworkers
have a conversation it interrupts you.

The use of cubicles and open plan has been shown in every actual study to have
a negative impact on performance.

I have friends in open plans, and literally the best thing I have heard is
that if you get the right place there isn't that much distraction.

My opinion is that if managers and executives are convinced open plan is
"better" they should be placed in an open plan environment for at least 12
months before /any/ employees are moved into it. Of course that will never
happen because the real purpose of open plan is to make sure that non-
management employees know their place: they [and their health] are not
individually important, and are just fungible units that can be replaced at
will.

~~~
joezydeco
I've seen executives agree to such a plan and then commandeer a conference
room for months at a time because they're always on an "important call" or
something else.

~~~
olliej
Right? The arguments I have is that there a “meeting rooms” for conversations,
to which I say: there are hundreds of employees and 5 such rooms. If they’re
for conversation they should be limited to maybe 30 minute stints, and cannot
be functionally boomed for longer.

Of course again the purpose is to denigrate the employees who actually do
work, rather than to be a better work environment.

And as other people have pointed out: the turn the office into an experiment
in the spread of contagious diseases

------
inertiatic
I just left the office after failing to concentrate on a method that took 6
booleans as an argument and constructed a set of > 10 SQL queries, despite
blasting Chopin on my headphones, because there were 3 different conversations
being held behind my back.

My current employer has a "strict" no WFH policy.

And this is the best working environment I've had. By the time I left my
previous jobs I was almost clinically depressed and a big part of that was the
horrible open office culture.

Can't wait till the entire industry goes mostly WFH so it's easier for your
average dev to get such a job.

~~~
2bitencryption
> Can't wait till the entire industry goes mostly WFH

when and why would this ever happen?

~~~
inertiatic
This is my gut feeling. It's a combination of it being trendy (because people
love it, and companies love to seem hip), saves companies money (one of the
reasons for open office plans incidentally), and as more and more workers
prefer working that way, it will be a good perk to have. Once something like
this reaches critical mass (ie. after a few success stories) I feel companies
will jump on it.

Of course, all this because we generally, since we invented the internet, seem
to avoid commuting to things we would rather spend less time on and don't
require out actual physical presence. Same reason we pay our bills online, do
our shopping online etc.

------
bane
Outside of the discussion about the cheapness of open floor plans. I think the
heart of the matter is that companies are looking for passive collaboration
creators. This is because actively collaborating: reaching out, holding team
sessions, scheduling meetings, following up, etc. is _hard_.

These companies ask themselves, why put energy into a system when we can
foster serendipitous collaboration?

There is something to it, and especially with putting people geographically
near each other, but I think reliance on this kind of form actually is a
detriment to most white-collar type jobs. There needs to be a _reason_ for
people to interact in a work context, to find common or linking skills or
activities.

I think it would be better served if most companies just had a once a month
mixer and the rules were that you had to sit at a table with all strangers,
introduce yourselves, your background, what you did and what you were
currently working on. In my experience that exchange seems to bring for more
promise of future collaboration than any number of passings at the coffee
machine or trying to drown out your neighbor 3 cubes over with headphones and
loud music.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
A communal eating area tries to follow the same logic - let's get everyone
eating at the same place and collaborating that way. Instead it's the same
group of extroverts talking loudly and the majority of the office scampers
back to their desks to eat while they work.

I feel like a once a month mixer would be social anxiety hell. It would be the
one introvert per table making noise.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
FWIW, I've had the opposite experience. In the one office I've been at that
had this, it was a really nice experience.

It was cool to break daily bread with the CEO. It probably was one of the keys
to avoid having org-chart hierarchy become social hierarchy.

------
mlazos
From my personal experience having been in both offices and open workspaces I
notice that when we had offices people would go in, close the door and have a
conversation. With an open space either people wanted to have private
conversations (and didn’t want to make the other person have to move) or were
afraid of disturbing others so IM became more commonplace.

~~~
maxxxxx
I miss having private quiet conversations about things. Now it seems to be all
about meetings where only the loudest people get a word in. There is no time
to develop a thought slowly.

~~~
LaGrange
It's really frustrating. I'm an anxious, big person with a naturally loud
voice and poor perception (not due to bad hearing, but due to being very
easily overwhelmed). Talking in open spaces makes me really self-conscious,
and, conversely, trying to be "moderate" is about as efficient as not speaking
all — which is the option many of my coworkers choose.

------
JanisL
Lately I've been thinking about this and I feel that it's a prime example of a
situation where it's better to measure than assume. I get the impression that
there's a particularly compelling assumption to be made that getting people
into closer proximity will lead to more social interactions, this tends to be
unquestioned however. It has always seemed to me that more interactions
doesn't imply a higher quality of interactions, but the underlying assumption
that it leads to more interactions might not even be true.

The other day I was in the city and I noticed that there's large crowds of
people and that people _not_ interacting as much unless they already know the
other people. And this is in absolute terms not just percentage terms for some
people. In regional areas there's fewer people but the times you bump into
people you tend to have much higher quality interactions, even if the people
you bump into are strangers you tend to say hello at the least. I wonder if
open plan offices have some of this sort of effect going on.

~~~
Cthulhu_
More social interactions can be a goal itself - in making e.g. a workplace a
fun place to work. However, that comes at the cost of productivity. If there
is a pressure on the employees to perform, they'll get grumpy because the open
workspace stifles productivity.

~~~
AmericanChopper
I work in a high pressure, open plan office, and I quite like it. I think
stopping a few times a day to have a chat with someone is good for my
productivity. You don’t work at full capacity for every minute of the day, and
breaking work up with a distraction every so often seems to work for me.

I think the biggest difference between where I am now, and other places I’ve
worked is that all my colleagues like and respect each other. I like talking
to the people I sit near, because I like them.

~~~
watwut
Occasional chat is great and everyone needs break. However, when everyone's
break is interrupting me because it is too close and loud, then it sums up to
too many breaks and situation in which it is hard to concentrate. No matter
how I like the people - it might be even more interrupting when I like them
and I am interested in what they say.

~~~
AmericanChopper
I’m not bothered by the background noise in my office. The sales floor is a
different story, but the engineers I work with speak at a reasonable volume.

------
misja111
"an F2F interaction was recorded when three conditions were met: two or more
badges (i) were facing each other (with uninterrupted infrared line-of-sight),
(ii) detected alternating speaking, and (iii) were within 10 m of each other."

I wonder if condition (i) makes sense. From my experience in open offices,
communication mostly happens when I and some colleague are both sitting behind
our pc's. So there is no uninterrupted line of sight.

~~~
jordandeang
I was thinking the same thing.

Based on the image of the Sociometric badge and how it lays on your chest, it
seems like this condition would miss a large portion of the communication that
an open office incentivizes including talking over your computers, turning
your head to the side and speaking, and speaking without being face to face.

EDIT: grammar

------
AlexandrB
If this result is replicated a few times it really puts to bed the idea that
open office environments are about "increasing collaboration". Hopefully, at
that point management can at least be honest and say: "We need to cut costs,
so we're not buying any cubes."

~~~
AlanSE
Do people really like cube farms? Honest question.

~~~
ThomaszKrueger
"Gosh can anything be worse than a cube?" Management: "hold my beer"

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
One of the rare moments that I miss Slashdot's "+1 Funny" rating.

------
tombert
I sadly got into the developer game a bit too late to know the paradise of
private offices or even cubicles, and have had an open office my entire
career.

Personally, I find them incredibly distracting; there is a TV right behind me
playing the World Cup right now, and people cheering every couple minutes
whenever something happens. I work relatively close to the eating area, so I
have to hear lunch conversations.

I'm also not innocent of office annoyances; occasionally I will argue with my
coworkers about a design or how some code should be written, and I'm sure that
that is annoying to the other people sitting on my floor, not to mention me
typing on my IBM Model F keyboard noisily.

I live in the NYC area, so I guess rents are expensive enough to where private
offices are out of the question until you're a CTO or something, but I would
definitely prefer if this trend of open offices were to die. It's gotten to a
point to where I'm thinking that my next job will have to be remote so that I
can work in my guest room on my desk.

------
bloak
I've heard it claimed that offices with about 6-8 people are best for people
being able to talk to each other in a productive way. Any larger, and most
people will use e-mail to avoid disturbing other people. The effect might vary
depending on country, age group and so on.

~~~
greggman
can the same be said of slack?

------
at-fates-hands
I've been in all kinds of office setups. The one office I had the most
collaboration between developers had cubes with a high side wall and the wall
between the cube behind you was lower.

The cubes were very similar to these:
[https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.sZX3B6yJTUoJHOJ-
t_3-TQHaF...](https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.sZX3B6yJTUoJHOJ-
t_3-TQHaFj&pid=Api)

At the time, we had a fairly small group. Four front-end devs, three back-end
devs, and a two designers. The devs all sat together on one side in a row and
the designers on the other side. When the back-end guys had a JS or styling
issue, they could just stand up and walk around the desk. If they needed a PM
or a designer, they would use the interoffice IM system. We had a ton of back-
end and front-end collaboration since we had several large whiteboards on the
wall next to our cubes. A lot of time, you would be working and hear two devs
talking about a problem. It was easy to just swivel in your chair and see if
you had any input or ideas. We solved a lot of issues just with devs
overhearing something and chiming in.

In the open space I'm in now, people won't even look at you when you're
sitting next to them. Everything is done over IM. It's like there's invisible
walls around everybody, even though we're all working shoulder to shoulder and
on the same team. Our team is scattered throughout the building we're in so in
person collaboration is really rare. It's practically the exact opposite of
what they were hoping for.

------
borplk
The "benefits" of open offices are just PR/marketing speak and corporate white
lies because they don't want to state the real (and ugly) reasons.

------
kentt
Well we know this right, but we're still subjecting ourselves to these bizarre
environments that make us less productive and less happy. On top of that, this
is just one area that we're sure is obviously stupid and it's measurable.
There's about 100 other things at work that are also obviously stupid but
might not be as measurable or popular to critique.

------
douglaswlance
There is no floor-plan that compensates for strong leadership and effective
management.

~~~
borplk
And contrary to common belief there's no development methodology that makes up
for incompetence and lack of trust.

------
oneshot908
I will work for the first tech executive who takes all of this data and uses
it as evidence to crush the open office BS once and for all. I remember when
Jensen Huang started pitching this folderol as "the office of the future-ture-
ture-ture-tire..." back in 2009 during one of his NVIDIA quarterly revival
meetings. It was a dumb idea then and nothing has changed about in the
intervening 9 years except that he was indeed right that it was "the office of
the future-ture-ture-ture-tire..."

Die Open Office Die...

------
acd
Open Office spaces is another prevelence from startups copied elsewhere in
corporations without thought. For a startup in Silicon valley where rents are
high it makes sense to save cost on office space to decrease cash burn rate.

Just because it is good for Silicon Valley startups does not mean its a good
fit for the rest of the world.

As a programmer you need peace and quiet when solving problems. You also need
non interrupt time. Working in open office space is both loud and interrupt
driven.

As the article shows open office space decrease collaboration which is not
what was intended.

------
monkeynotes
Where I've worked before we had a hybrid of open/closed. We had 'pods' of 4-5
people and single cubes at each end of them for tech leads. There were
traditional door offices scattered around the office for those that really
needed focus or for reasons of seniority etc. This system worked really well.
It was quiet but we had lots of easy collaboration within our team pods.

Office design can be as creative and unique as you need it to be, there is
absolutely no reason to have the black and white approach to open plan /
cubes.

~~~
ryanianian
This is the way some Amazon offices are laid out more or less. Team areas
seating 5-10 are "open areas" (with the stupid door-desk things inside) but
have half- or full-walls between each team area. Most team areas have 1-2
doored offices for manager-types or some are used as a quiet space. Older
implementations of this use those cubicle half-wall things between the team
areas which is better than nothing. Seems like a nice compromise and lets each
team decide how they want to balance the distraction-versus-collaboration
equation.

------
kashyapc
Last night I randomly decided that today I'd like to work from the cosy city
next door. (It's a one hour train ride.)

Before heading out, I did a bit of homework about coffee shops from where I
can work from. I woke up early, biked to the station and took a pleasant one
hour train ride to my destination city. After a small walk, I arrived at a
good Coffee Bar / Roastery (with a decent internet connection). Spent three
hours of my productive morning work day there.

Then, a longer walk for lunch break at a not-too-expensive vegetarian place.
Following that, walk to a calming and tastefully designed book café that I
already researched about; it was one of the most relaxing and productive
coffee shops I've ever been to. I worked a good three-ish hours there. During
my break time there, I also discovered a wonderful book. Then I walked back to
the station, took the return train, and biked back home.

It was a long day, but a nice change in scenery. Glad I work remotely.

~~~
abledon
Do u get lonely?

~~~
kashyapc
Occasionally, like any other human. I keep healthy work hours. And I try
maintain a decent life besides work, with hobbies that doesn't require me to
sit like a vegetable and stare at a screen.

------
InclinedPlane
Back when I worked in a place where everyone having an office was common it
was probably the peak level of collaboration I've experienced in my career.
When everyone has an office it's easy to have small meetings with people
(either scheduled or impromptu), and small meetings are where a lot of stuff
can get done. You can gain and exchange context effectively, you can safely
talk about institutional problems, even heavily critically, without worrying
about what management might think, you can easily cover multiple topics
because you don't have to worry about keeping your talk short or on an agenda
(which is more of an imperative if you are having a chat in an open plan
office or having a planned meeting in a conference room). You can also develop
camaraderie and friendship more easily because you don't have to worry about
your talk about "trivial" things (like tv or video games or whatever)
interrupting everyone within earshot.j

P.S. One of the most fantastic things about offices is learning from your
peers. This doesn't happen to the same degree in open plan office that I can
see, but with the privacy of offices it's much easier to have a conversation
open up into talk about various subjects. And those can take the form of a
lecture (here's how this system/algorithm/process/whatever works) or a
conversation (here's an opinion I want to share about the fundamentals of
software development, or such-like). That sort of thing is pure gold in terms
of personal development and career advancement, it not only shares knowledge
between people and opens up people's eyes to different takes on "the craft" in
general, but it clues people in to the idea that it is worth caring about and
thinking about fundamental questions like best practices, people management,
interpersonal relationships, and so on. Some of the best and most lasting
insights and advice I've had in my career have come from impromptu
conversations in offices with small groups of people.

------
fipple
Counterpoint: I joined a company in a senior role and had a private office. I
started getting more and more depressed about life and thought it was the
company. I was planning on quitting when due to a hazardous condition in the
building we all had to move to a new building into open space temporarily. I
loved it and now work by choice in open space.

~~~
el_cid
Counterpoint to your counterpoint :) What about smaller offices - say 4-6
people. Not as noisy, not as lonely.

------
starbugs
I actually read the paper and I have a question for someone who really
understands this kind of research or maybe even worked in similar related
research.

The paper states that one criterion for an F2F interaction to be counted is
that the devices ("sociometric badges") used to collect the data must be
facing each other with uninterrupted infrared line of sight.

From my experience, in an open workspace this is most of the time not needed
to conduct a short F2F conversation. It's possible to quickly talk to people
walking by, standing behind one's chair or sitting on the other side of the
table. None of these requires an uninterrupted line of sight.

Also the device seems to have been located at chest height so a visual line of
sight between eyes has not been recorded.

I wonder whether these considerations have been taken into account. The paper
doesn't say anything about that.

------
emodendroket
It's not really surprising that people communicate less when half of them feel
compelled to put on headphones

------
dbllxr
From my limited experience, I find some factors affect face-to-face
collaborations more than others. For example:

\- how introverted is your workforce - a lot of the developers I've worked
with are introverts. Whenever new devs join the team it takes a while to
integrate the new people. Even with veterans, most of the coworkers prefer
Slack over calling for a meeting or walking over to someone's desk (maybe
laziness too?)

\- how friendly and tolerant are employees who share the same open space? -
I've had complaints from a different team that our team was talking too loud
and too much, I don't blame them, I find conversations around me distracting
too. If we absolutely need to meet now, we need to find a meeting room, so the
face-to-face time is now limited by the availability of those meeting spaces

*Edit: formatting

------
doodhwala
Won't asking people to wear these sensors, and the subconscious feeling that
you are being tracked automatically cause you to not interact as much?

Are the conclusions really as reliable as they claim it to be?

I do agree that there are a lot of people whose productivity takes a hit
because of increased distractions and they would prefer to ensure that
whatever time they do get is used well (and not spent in going to talk to
others). But I feel that the study seems to push their conclusion onto you
without highlighting other factors that could lead to the same observations.

What are your thoughts?

------
RandallBrown
I must be in a small minority that enjoys open workspaces. I've had my own
office before and found it extremely lonely and isolating. I didn't feel like
a part of my team at all and I found it very easy to get distracted.

The next job was completely open, pair programming stations without even
having our own desks. I LOVED it. I got to know my team better. We got
together to solve problems quickly and easily. You always knew what was going
on with the rest of the team. It's not an environment for everyone, but I felt
like I could thrive in it.

------
linsomniac
I love our open office, but I will admit that it does stifle communication
rather than aid it. Sure, sometimes I overhear something that I want to
participate in. But more often I use electronic communication so that I don't
break the quiet, peaceful office vibe.

The place that communication really blossoms is in the kitchen, and I can see
it from my office so I can wander over and chat when someone is in there I
want to chat with.

------
joelcornett
I’m probably in the minority here, but I prefer open offices. I prefer open
spaces in general and try to work outdoors as often as possible when the
weather permits. So to me, an open office is the ideal work environment with
the minor concession that I need to share it with 4-6 others.

~~~
fsloth
"I need to share it with 4-6 others."

That's not an open office. That's a team room and they are fantastic.

Open office where you share the same hall like space with tens of other
people, are constantly interrupted by random guffaw and noise from people you
hardly would have any need to interact in any way, and people constantly
navigate around your space on their way to somewhere.

------
banku_brougham
The financial incentive for corporations is surely the driving the trend, but
I can’t help observing:

\- corporate management is broadly lacking ideas (for example the largest use
of capital is stock buybacks) \- rearranging the chairs may save money but its
no substitute for a winning business strategy

------
amelius
There's a market waiting out there for modular components that allows one to
build their own customized cubicle in an open workspace. The components should
be small enough to be able to be brought into the office without raising
suspicion.

------
DoofusOfDeath
This conversation seems very one-sided.

Apologies if I missed it, but I'd love to hear the perspective of a manager /
executive who decided _in favor of_ open workspaces.

~~~
watwut
Our company had open space. Manager openly said that it was cheapest and
simplest to manage as team sizes changed frequently during that period.

When the company was better off financially and more stable, we moved
elsewhere to have office per team. The consensus seems to be that it is more
effective this way. Management said it is more expensive (we asked).

------
abledon
So many sitcom episode ideas in this thread... holy sh __

------
masonicb00m
Scientific proof of the need for DND Shades
([http://dndshades.com](http://dndshades.com))

------
afpx
Although, the results support my preferences and reflect my experiences, I
can’t help but wonder if the decreased F2F communication came from lack of
experimental controls. For instance, what effect did the explicit monitoring
and recording have on behavior? Or, how did the act of moving participants
into a completely new and different space effect behavior?

~~~
afpx
Some comment, at least?

------
aalleavitch
Basically, in an open office you use slack more, which is more or less my
experience.

------
emodendroket
The fact of the matter is that businesses like to tell themselves they're
data-driven, but they aren't. Consider the continuing popularity of the bogus
MBTI test.

(Whoops! I already left a top-level comment. Sorry, bad form)

~~~
alvern
Can you elaborate on this? I don't get the connection between open offices and
Myers Briggs.

~~~
emodendroket
They're pseudoscience that businesses continue to pay to bring into their
offices for questionable benefits. They may as well simply hire fortune
tellers.

~~~
MockObject
Some of MB (E-I axis) correlates with Big 5, which is the golden standard for
personality trait testing. Dismissing MB as complete voodoo is a hipster
affectation.

~~~
emodendroket
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator)

> Although popular in the business sector, the MBTI exhibits significant
> psychometric deficiencies, notably including poor validity (i.e. not
> measuring what it purports to measure, not having predictive power or not
> having items that can be generalized), poor reliability (giving different
> results for the same person on different occasions), measuring categories
> that are not independent (some dichotomous traits have been noted to
> correlate with each other), and not being comprehensive (due to missing
> neuroticism).

An inaccurate measure like this being used for things like career tracks is
worse than nothing.

~~~
MockObject
Scientific findings are that MBTI is flawed, but not completely uncorrelated
voodoo.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8458560](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8458560)

~~~
emodendroket
What I'm reading here is that the best thing it does is tell us whether
someone is introverted or extroverted. Well, that's also the most obvious one
and I don't agree that that justifies using such a flawed test. If you have a
test where half the results and half are bad the test is more or less useless.

Consider this also: [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/give-and-
take/201309...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/give-and-
take/201309/goodbye-mbti-the-fad-won-t-die)

> I began to read through the evidence, and I found that the MBTI is about as
> useful as a polygraph for detecting lies. One researcher even called it an
> “act of irresponsible armchair philosophy.” When it comes to accuracy, if
> you put a horoscope on one end and a heart monitor on the other, the MBTI
> falls about halfway in between. [...] Research shows “that as many as three-
> quarters of test takers achieve a different personality type when tested
> again,” writes Annie Murphy Paul in The Cult of Personality Testing, “and
> the sixteen distinctive types described by the Myers-Briggs have no
> scientific basis whatsoever.” In a recent article, Roman Krznaric adds that
> “if you retake the test after only a five-week gap, there's around a 50%
> chance that you will fall into a different personality category.”

~~~
MockObject
> Well, that's also the most obvious one and I don't agree that that justifies
> using such a flawed test.

I'm not debating what's justified and what isn't. I'm here dispelling the
pseudo-rigorous, fashionable stance that MBTI is 100% rubbish. It is not.

Instead of a blog post with one man's anecdote, how about some more science?

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2709300](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2709300)

~~~
emodendroket
That's among the sources cited by the article you're dismissing:

> As personality psychologists Robert McCrae and Paul Costa sum it up, “the
> MBTI does not give comprehensive information on the four domains it does
> sample.”

As I said, a sometimes-reliable survey with wild variance that poorly measures
what it purports to is worse than nothing because it gives false confidence in
someone's hunch. The MBTI test was not constructed in any scientifically
rigorous way and if it accurately correlates to anything it's an accident.

------
amriksohata
Tldr, can someone summarise

~~~
Wurdan
That's literally the point of putting an abstract at the start of an academic
paper. A single paragraph containing the most important points of the study,
such as (in this case) the sentence "Contrary to common belief, the volume of
face-to-face interaction decreased significantly (approx. 70%) in both cases,
with an associated increase in electronic interaction."

------
Florin_Andrei
> _Organizations’ pursuit of increased workplace collaboration has led
> managers to transform traditional office spaces into ‘open’, transparency-
> enhancing architectures with fewer walls, doors and other spatial
> boundaries_

Yeah, actually it's the pursuit of cheaper rent.

