
The Solution for Open Office Frustration - HillaryBriss
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20161128-the-solution-for-open-office-frustration
======
redwards510
Don't bother reading this article. The "solution"presented is to install
red/green lights at your desk to signal to people not to walk up and interrupt
you.

That isn't the problem. The problem is NOISE, NOISE EVERYWHERE!

~~~
sean_patel
The solution is to penalize the offenders, in a nice way.

I interned at Goldman Sachs on an FX trading floor (very open plan). We had an
Interrupter Jar. Everytime someone interupted another person, the interrupter
was required to put 20$ (yes 20$, it's chump change for FX Traders) into it.
When it filled up, we'd go out and buy beers for the entire team.

It worked quite well until we had a fratboy from Boston College. He would
interrupt me just so he can fill up the jar and we go drinking.

~~~
tedmiston
> He would interrupt me just so he can fill up the jar and we go drinking.

Now that's a pathological case.

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Twirrim
I've got an amazing idea.

Go away from open plan offices. I'm really baffled that that wasn't one of the
solutions in the article. Red and Green coloured cubes? Lights? Ugly attempts
to mask the symptoms, rather than fix the real problem: Open plan offices suck
for productivity.

~~~
greenshackle2
That's what I was thinking, especially reading this line:

> With the vast majority of us now working in open concept offices — some
> studies have said that 70% of US workers work in this kind of environment —
> companies are being forced to come up with novel ways to ensure we stay
> productive and don’t find ourselves driven delirious from the noise and
> chaos.

They are being _forced_. Who chose the open office concept in the first
place!?

~~~
angusp
they're being 'forced' insofar as they're usually locked in to continuing to
occupying their current office.

~~~
flukus
Cubicle walls are cheap and you can keep the current office.

------
mmanfrin
I don't care about people coming up to talk to me. It usually means they have
something they need help with or an answer to. What bothers me is the noise,
and no noise cancellation set of headsets work because they block out white
noise _but not people talking_. In fact, noise cancellation headphones tend to
_enhance_ voices, since there is no background noise to dull it.

Lights don't solve this. Hats don't solve this. Walls and space solve this.

~~~
pawelwentpawel
I've got beats in-ear headphones. They manage to block out enough noise for me
not to unwillingly listen to someone else's conversation. How many consecutive
hours can you wear headphones though? I don't think that having something
stuck in your ear for 40+ hours a week brings any health benefits.

~~~
loco5niner
For me, it brought on tinnitus....

------
cle
I am getting so sick of open office plans. I have a colored light (a Blink(1),
for those curious), and I have keyboard shortcuts for turning the light
red/green, with a large sign next to the light that says "If light is red, I'm
busy." I also wear very visible (and expensive) noise-cancelling headphones.

Even these very direct techniques don't work--people ignore the light and
interrupt me anyway. It's gotten to the point where I straight up tell them
that they're being rude and interrupting me, and to just ping me on IRC or
email. They continue interrupting.

It's really sad that one of my main motivations for getting promoted is so I
can get an office and avoid all these completely avoidable distractions.

Between the ops culture's endless interruptions, "Agile" ceremony, and open
office plans, I don't know how we manage to get _anything_ done.

~~~
tedmiston
It sounds like a cultural solution might be more helpful than a tech solution
in this case. Something like a standardized headphones policy. Or separating
the people whose work is mostly quiet vs mostly talkative.

------
atemerev
The best solution is to never even use open office layouts.

Realistically, though, interruptions happen when they are unplanned. Need many
meetings? Set the time slots and schedules.

------
drewg123
_Some workers take to building their own symbolic barriers for privacy_

At Google. somebody went as far as to build a little hut around his cube using
cardboard boxes that he'd glued together. I wish I had a picture..

~~~
sean_patel
> build a little hut around his cube using cardboard boxes that he'd glued
> together.

Like this => [https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/564x/bc/17/61/bc17615c9...](https://s-media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/564x/bc/17/61/bc17615c92b9920407fa184c8e9d0a54.jpg)

~~~
drewg123
No, not nearly that nice.

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hprotagonist
Based entirely on the title, I thought i was about to read about markdown
and/or google docs.

Since it's the other kind of open office, I suggest noise-cancelling
headphones and the freedom to publicly shame loud eaters without reprisal.

~~~
lj3
That reminds me of the novel jPod. Anybody who brought McDonalds (also known
as 'the taint') into the office was shunned for the day.

~~~
hprotagonist
reheating fish in a microwave is another classic horror.

------
brennen
I echo every other "stop building open floor plans" comment in here.

It's kind of hard to overstate the sad hilarity of so many orgs with vast
resources being constitutionally incapable of using technology like _walls and
doors_. There are few more concise arguments for the intellectual bankruptcy
of cool-kid business practice.

------
chtfn
I thought mainstream media was finally going to recommend OpenOffice users to
move to LibreOffice.

------
zitterbewegung
The solution for open plans offices is to give everyone a real office.

~~~
bigiain
I think the pendulum still has a way to swing yet. Quite a few places I know
of are touting their new "activity based working" arrangements - which is
HR/PR/Marketing speak for "hot desking, because rent is too expensive to even
give you all your own desk in an open plan office, so you get to share desks
and fight over what's left whenever you run late".

Many of the people I know who I consider to be in the "10x
developer/PM/designer" category start picking up all the recruiter calls as
soon as that's announced. I _strongly_ suspect whoever got "implement ABW to
reduce real estate costs" as one of their KPIs also snuck "reduce renumeration
costs by organically cutting headcount" written into their end-of-year-bonus
goals, while explicitly leaving out anything to do with productivity (or more
likely, ensuring the "productivity" KPI got dropped onto a career-ladder-
rival...)

~~~
flukus
I could see hot desking work for companies that are mostly work from home. For
some reason (probably the ones you listed) it gets cargo culted by companies
that don't allow remote work.

------
Zikes
> Carpenter says that the red-green block has made a huge difference. [...]
> “It’s amazing. Just by flipping something I can say I’m busy,” he says. “And
> I need that.”

I'm not convinced this article isn't satire.

------
molecule
_> The Solution for Open Office Frustration_

Offices.

------
scblock
There's no solution here. Red lights, seriously?

~~~
Haydos585x2
Such a bad solution. The guy is complaining about a loud sales team, his team
making phone calls and talking and a goddamn gong. The red light solves none
of those problems. Sound travels regardless of whether or not you have a red
light on or not. Headphones only go so far too. I don't WANT to listen to
music or have my ears covered all day!

~~~
mywacaday
Agree on not wanting to listen to music all day. I listen to music for
pleasure and not work, I can't listen to my music as I find myself drifting
into the music and not work. The only think I've found that works for a
reasonable period is an app called white noise that I play a storm with
thunder rolling through it.

------
sien
Has anyone worked in a place that used transparent office partitions to kill
the noise while keeping some light around?

Like these: [https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/transparent-office-
partitio...](https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/transparent-office-
partition.html)

Or has anyone been able to actually choose such things because they had enough
power in their organisation?

They would still enable lots of people to be packed in but noise could be cut
substantially.

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thwackxter
This does nothing about being visible from behind, nor the insane surveillance
culture that programmers have to endure these days.

It seems like another case of engineering types addressing the symptom (noise)
rather than the underlying problem, which is the low social status that got
programmers into open plan cattle pens in the first place.

------
fsloth
Is there anyone reading this who has been involved/got the inside scoop in
implementation of an open office plan. Was the change in productivity an
issue? Did it happen? Was cost savings the only driving force?

~~~
officialchicken
Working in Arch firms, I have had conversations with business owners about
ambient noise and I've never met one who cared - once the conversation moves
to estimates.

Yes, cost is the major driving force, Lead time/schedule isn't really an
issue... outside of coordinating power, lan, HVAC, and server racks. The ADA,
IBC, NFPA, and life-safety codes require slightly larger spaces than you might
expect in an office setting (e.g. 36" doors and 60" wide hallways typ.) When
you compare how many people 'fit' into the open space vs walls, you might be a
bit underwhelmed as an owner.

Basically, doors are only for those who need closed-door conversations or
security.

~~~
fsloth
Aha - so the building codes force a company to use considerably more
floorspace for a group of people if those people are divided by walls? I
hadn't really thought of that before - I thought someone was saving just the
price of walls and the difficulty of organizing people.

------
wolfgke
Why not simply implement the policy: Only say a word while in the open office
if it is an emergency that is a matter of life and death (say fire). Whoever
violates this policy must put a significant amount of money into the kitty for
each violation (say, 50 €/$ per violation - it really should not be cheap).
This should reduce the noise problem by a lot.

~~~
TeMPOraL
When the first offender will be asked to put the money down, he will laugh it
off, everyone will look at each other, crack some jokes, and the kitty will
just become a paperweight.

If you could actually coordinate well enough in the office to enforce such a
rule, you wouldn't need the kitty - a gentlemen's agreement would be enough.

------
brokenmachine
Why would I ever want to make my light green?

And how does a red light on my desk stop noise?

------
serge2k
I have a solution.

Give people offices, or proper cubicles.

Holy shit I'm a genius.

