Another scourge of the slowlane: open offices

[wordwarrior]

'Nuff said:

Mark Allan Bovair on Twitter

 

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[C83SG95]

Some people think Stalin was the worst man to ever live I'd instead give that handle to the inventor of the "open office"

 

[msufan]

It was fun to see the open office concept get ripped to shreds in this new book from Jason Fried.

 

[The Abundant Man]

Open Office is a pretty good replacement for Microsoft Office. It's open source and it's free. Though the files aren't always cross-platform compatible.

 

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[jesseissorude]

Open Office is a pretty good replacement for Microsoft Office.

lol, brilliant

On the subject of open offices: I used to work for a tech startup and they got a new giant office. It really was a nice office, but of course everything was open (except for the higher-ups who all strategically placed their backs to walls).

It made for a fun atmosphere... but when I'm working I have to avoid as much fun as possible. If something's going on, I can't focus.
Just like if there's sound or light at night when I'm in bed, I can't go to sleep. If people are riding scooters across the office or throwing koosh balls (or even just talking loudly!) then suddenly my attention isn't on my work.

Me and one other guy usually showed up to the office earlier than everyone else, just so I could get some focused work time in.

 

[G-Man]

Between the people coming to my desk or calling every 5 minutes, I can barely complete a simple task. Add to that the approximately 60 whatsapp groups I'm in, and there is literally never a time when someone isn't distracting me. Most of the time they're asking questions that they could answer themselves if they were willing to take 5 minutes to look.

Managers have offices, but we can't close our doors, and were told to re-arrange our desks to have our backs to the door, so our furniture setup isn't "confrontational". All of this of course, from some chick consultant who I'm pretty certain has never had to manage any employees.

The real outcome of this is that I'm in the process of onboarding with a consulting firm to work from home. Will be about 80% of the money, but about 40% of the hours, and hopefully I won't get 80 emails a day with URGENT or ASAP in all caps in the subject line. Realized I was never going to get my product development finished with how much my job takes out of me anyway. We'll have to figure out how to live on less money for a while.

 

[wordwarrior]

The real outcome of this is that I'm in the process of onboarding with a consulting firm to work from home. Will be about 80% of the money, but about 40% of the hours, and hopefully I won't get 80 emails a day with URGENT or ASAP in all caps in the subject line. Realized I was never going to get my product development finished with how much my job takes out of me anyway. We'll have to figure out how to live on less money for a while.

Considering how much commuting sucks from my life, even commuting passively on the bus and subway, 80% of my current salary sounds like a sweet deal for a WFH setup.

 

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[B. Cole]

Our design standards for City of VB require an open office space as much as possible when we renovate or build. Most people absolutely hate it, but for energy efficiency and cost it’s way better. Takes a lot less equipment and energy to heat/cool/illuminate a large area than it does tons of small rooms. Much easier to control the HVAC and air quality also - not as bad on hot/cold spots, much better air movement.

That doesn’t sway opinions on the concept though lol. From dealing with it every day, I can tell you the single biggest reason people hate it, but won’t admit to -

- accountability.

 

[Doug Smith]

I've been in an open office environment for many years now. I'm generally not a fan because of all the interruptions and distractions around me, but I believe these problems to be more of a culture issue.

I'm the general manager of a marketing company and while I teach and encourage process and email/phone communication our CEO has a very "On Demand" mentality. He is constantly approaching employees (mostly me) with whatever is on his mind regardless of what they are working on. I handle this pretty well as I've learned this is who he is, but it spreads to the other employees and they are constantly interrupting each other with non-urgent things because this is how it's done at the top.

I've gotten pretty good at saying no, and shutting it down but in the process I've gotten a reputation of being cold, and uncaring of their concerns. I can live with this though.

I think in the right environment such as a sales bullpen the open office can be effective and even beneficial to the goals.

 

[Sadik]

Hmmm, what would be the reasoning for a company adopting an open office?

My mind says that it would be just done to save money, both in initial investment and in running costs. But then I think there are very well off companies who are also employing open offices so maybe there is a benefit I am not seeing.

 

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[Siddhartha]

Prayers for all the people that fight on in those hell-pits.

In my last job; my level of technician were all put in a literal glass-walled fishbowl smack in the center of all the other departments, completely visible to anyone in reception (guests usually only drove in to yell at someone), the management staff (whom all had offices with frosted glass), and the lowest tier of technicians who could simply look over and see everything we were doing at any time of day. What's worse is that there was no way for half the building to get to the bathrooms beside going through us.
Magnitudes of FTMs were had.
Thank god I'm out.
Thank god I'm working towards the fastlane.