
Companies are still designing open plan offices - ohjeez
https://www.fastcompany.com/90285582/everyone-hates-open-plan-offices-heres-why-they-still-exist
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ChuckNorris89
> _Employees don’t like them. Research proves they’re ineffective. Why is it
> taking so long for us to get rid of them?_

Um, because they're the cheapest option and these decisions are done by some
bean counter not by the employees?

As a european dev I used to envy the people working in SV based on their
salaries until I saw picture with how the FB office looks like: cramped
seating, artificial lighting, no windows for fresh air, only AC vents.

Even though I barely make a 1/5 of a FAANG employee, I feel blessed to work in
a 4 man office, where I have a seat by the windows overseeing trees, external
blinds so I can control the amount of natural light I get and can open the
window to control the amount of fresh air I get. To me, you can't put a price
on these things.

Sadly, open plan offices are coming here as well, slowly but surely, marketed
as a hip SV import to attract juniors while seniors knows it's just cost
cutting BS.

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llampx
They're cheaper and they look good. The hidden costs of lower employee
productivity and happiness are just that, hidden. I've worked at places with
completely open offices and with smaller offices for teams of 4-6 people and
its much nicer to have some private space, especially when you need to sit
down and think through some problems.

One company handed out noise-canceling headphones but that's just a bandaid
over the problem.

One extra benefit to fail-fast startups and landlords is also that space can
be simply reconfigured by adding and removing desks. No pesky walls to knock
down or glass doors to add when your brand new pizza delivery app fails and
has to make room for a beauty box startup.

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tetha
I've found, anecdotally, that offices with 3-6 employees working on the same
area offers the best communication. If you're in a room with that amount of
coworkers, you do have a certain level of noise. People talk, someone usually
has a customer on the phone.

However, the background conversations tend to be on-topic and this seems to be
much less distracting opposed to lots of noise about everything. On top of
that, you pick up what the rest of the team is working or struggling on to
some degree. And this is really, really valuable we've found.

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sroussey
I agree. The problem is when you have an eight person team and a five person
team, etc. You start to lose a lot of space when there is a mismatch.

20 years ago I used to be in a 20 person group, multiple teams but not
everyone. I think I would have preferred 12 (there were a couple of those).
But managers had glass wall private offices.

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pfranz
Yep. I interviewed at a place with 3 tech leads were all in the same room. One
had given notice and I figured I'd be his replacement. When I showed up on day
one I found that they had hired an additional person who started the week
before. So the three of them were in one office and I was next door. After
awhile when I mentioned being left out of important decisions they offered to
have all of us move into the hallway...which would have sucked for everybody.

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toomuchtodo
> After awhile when I mentioned being left out of important decisions they
> offered to have all of us move into the hallway...which would have sucked
> for everybody.

Yikes. I started my career 20 years ago as a junior sysadmin in the networking
closet (seriously, my boss helped me pull a desk in there). I would take that
over an open office plan any day.

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closeparen
The fundamental idea that employees need different kinds of space throughout
the day is sound. But in practice we are amply provisioned with 8 different
kinds of collaborative space (desks, conference rooms, auditoria, nooks,
lounges, cafes, phone booths, libraries) and _no_ space for quiet work. We
even have Quiet Rooms, but they are for meditation and napping, no laptops
allowed.

Partly this is a question of social norms rather than physical plant. Make
_any_ of those spaces Library Rules and they would be great.

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WWLink
Open offices aren't so bad if you have a large personal space (eg, large desk
and some room to move around). If you have a small/standard desk, it gets a
lot worse.

~~~
TarpitCarnivore
Unfortunately many open offices are just desk rows, no dividers, and everyone
is on top of each other (in my experience). Extra bonus points if you've
outgrown the space and meeting rooms need to be booked 3 weeks in advance.

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Giorgi
CEO sits behind double doors.

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zaphod12
Really? I've never worked in an open plan in which the CEO didn't also have a
desk. Never there and always in meetings, but no special office

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ohjeez
I worked in one startup where the CEO worked in the open office "just like us"
but he usually worked in a conference room (the nicest one!), not only for
meetings. If he wanted the space, he got it.

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Antoninus
I consistently see criticism towards the space thats provided by an employer.
I think there needs to be params on the culture of working in an open space
environment. The truth is its just cheaper than everyone having their own
office. Headphones, Slack/Email and not having conversations in the open has
worked in my experience.

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coldtea
> _The truth is its just cheaper than everyone having their own office._

Crappy plastic chairs, $5 non-brand keyboards and recycled CRT monitors are
also cheaper.

If you want results from people working in a highly focus intensive and
cognitive loaded job, and care about their mental health, adding divider walls
is an irrelevant cost.

You already pay them 70K+ per year, it's not some 20K/year developing world
call center.

You also don't need to give everyone their own office -- you could have people
in smaller units of 2 to 4 persons.

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smacktoward
But this is only true if you plan on holding on to those people over the long
term, which you don't. You work them until they leave voluntarily or burn out,
at which point you replace them with a new crop of fresh-faced university
grads.

This has the added benefit of ensuring that the $70K/year or whatever you're
paying these people stays static. Experienced people have a bad habit of
expecting to earn more money as their skills deepen. By keeping your workforce
in a constant state of churn, you drive those people away before they can
start making demands.

