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The Open Office Is Destroying the Workplace
HughPickens.com writes: Lindsey Kaufman reports in the WaPo that despite its obvious problems, the open-office model has continued to encroach on workers across the country, with about 70 percent of U.S. offices having no or low partitions. Silicon Valley has led the way — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg enlisted famed architect Frank Gehry to design the largest open floor plan in the world, housing nearly 3,000 engineers within a single room that stretches 10 acres. Michael Bloomberg was another early adopter of the open-space trend, saying it promoted transparency and fairness. Bosses love the ability to keep a closer eye on their employees, ensuring clandestine porn-watching, constant social media-browsing and unlimited personal cellphone use isn't occupying billing hours.
But according to Kaufman, employers are getting a false sense of improved productivity. A 2013 study showed many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Nearly half of the surveyed workers in open offices said the lack of sound privacy was a significant problem, and more than 30 percent complained about the lack of visual privacy. The New Yorker, in a review of research on this nouveau workplace design, determined that the benefits in building camaraderie simply mask the negative effects on work performance.
While employees feel like they're part of a laid-back, innovative enterprise, the environment ultimately damages workers' attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction says Kaufman. "Though multitasking millennials seem to be more open to distraction as a workplace norm, the wholehearted embrace of open offices may be ingraining a cycle of underperformance in their generation," writes Maria Konnikova. "They enjoy, build, and proselytize for open offices, but may also suffer the most from them in the long run."
But according to Kaufman, employers are getting a false sense of improved productivity. A 2013 study showed many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Nearly half of the surveyed workers in open offices said the lack of sound privacy was a significant problem, and more than 30 percent complained about the lack of visual privacy. The New Yorker, in a review of research on this nouveau workplace design, determined that the benefits in building camaraderie simply mask the negative effects on work performance.
While employees feel like they're part of a laid-back, innovative enterprise, the environment ultimately damages workers' attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction says Kaufman. "Though multitasking millennials seem to be more open to distraction as a workplace norm, the wholehearted embrace of open offices may be ingraining a cycle of underperformance in their generation," writes Maria Konnikova. "They enjoy, build, and proselytize for open offices, but may also suffer the most from them in the long run."
The "open office" is just cost-reduction masquerading as some sort of innovation.
It's the march towards ever less expenses to allow more profit to funnel to the few.
And the many embrace it. The few have managed to get the many to embrace their own destruction.
Mostly random stuff.
Managers have no confidence in themselves-- they know they are incompetent at motivating people so they have to resort to big-brother intimidation techniques and vacuous pep rallys with inane slogans and sports metaphors. It then becomes self-fulfilling for the most part, you get what you pay for...
Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour.
Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Besides the distracting perpetual background noise, the feeling of being constantly on display is fairly unnerving.
Web browsing on company time is a self correcting problem. It's accepted (at least where I work) that quick breaks throughout the day are almost a necessity. I usually do so when I get hung up or frustrated by something. A quick glance through any one of several sites I frequent gives my brain a break, and then I find I can get back at it. People who abuse this excessively become less productive.
You don't need an open office to notice the guys who arn't pulling their weight. Whether it's because they are on facebook all day, or because they just arn't very good doesn't matter much. If they are still doing an appropriate amount of work for their grade, they'll probably stay on anyway but their career is going nowhere. If they arn't, they're probably out the door sooner or later. Ultimately the first performance enhancement meeting (not making that up) is usually a wakeup call.
15 years ago the president of the company was all "This is the future! Ad hoc meetings when necessary everyone shuts up and does their work otherwise!"
Now it's incessant screaming over each other at the phone as people are trying to conference call, speaker phone call, crack up at jokes and argue with each other while trying to be louder than everyone else. And the president comes and paces back and forth behind me for minutes on end before I finally crack and ask him what he wants.
"Though multitasking millennials seem to be more open to distraction as a workplace norm.
More open to distraction, sure, but not more productive because of it. The brain just doesn't work that way.
Surprisingly there is not a one size fits all solution for laying out peoples work environments!
Believe it or not there are some jobs where open plan offices are significantly better than cube farms or closed personal offices. And there are jobs where half way setups, ie small open plan offices of teams work better than large spaces or singular offices.
If you are in a sales role then open plan works a large amount of the time. If you are in a role where you are primarily focussed on your screen and writing something then smaller offices tend to work better.
If you can realise that not everyone's job is even similar, let alone the same, you will be able to understand that different layout will suit some more than others.
Bad idea, created by "Twitter Generation"
You really need to review your history. The open office has been around for centuries, if not millennia. Mind you back then the Monks weren't allowed to speak. And that doesn't even touch on Dicksian nightmares and the middle of last century. What is new is people not shutting the fuck up and annoying everyone else.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I've found that the only 'open' floorplan that works is when it's grouped for small teams with their own walls separating them from other teams. That allows the team to communicate effectively when they need to without having to get up and walk to someone else's office, but also gives a degree of privacy to the members of the team, so long as they're comfortable with each other.
That last statement is critical, I've seen some groupings work very poorly because of particularly boisterous people that could be heard through multiple closed doors as they didn't understand that their outside voices weren't necessary for a telephone call, or people that conduct way too much personal business on the phone while in the office. I've also seen teams whose work areas became the hangout for the department, which also destroys productivity.
It can work, but it requires conditions to be right to make it work.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Scrums are nothing but a waste of time and an annoying micro-management tool created by people who need to pretend that they have control over a project.
We had that discussion at work today over that article. Several people pointed out they were far more productive alone, with the lights off, in a corner, than at their desk and that it proved the open floor plan was bad.
(We're talking software engineers)
My personal take is: almost anyone (who doesn't need babysitting) will be more productive alone in a distraction free area. That is, more productive doing the part of the job that a monkey can do. I can bang out thousands of lines of code very quickly if no one's bothering me, sure.
But here's the catch: that's not the hard part of the job. (almost) anyone could do that. The hard part is the design, architecture, problem solving. Most of the time, those are better done in group. They may seem worse sometimes: arguing feels counterproductive and a waste of time. But no one's perfect and no one knows everything, so being able to bounce off ideas from the person next to you at will can prevent million dollar mistakes. Once the problem is solved, and just typing code as quick as possible is the only thing left to do, sure, work from home if you want, but don't fool yourself that you're doing anything worth a lot.
Then, let's go with the assumption the above is not true: you're a god developer who never makes mistake and figures out everything on their own instantly. There's a lot of people who could use bouncing ideas off of YOU, who could discuss things with you, and may waste time, get blocked, or worse, make mistakes, if they can't get a hold of you in a timely manner. Sure, it will feel like you can't get anything done, but again, once the problem is solved, anyone can implement it: those "n00bs" that are pestering you will be able to do the easy part once they got the info they needed off of you.
And once an office reach a certain size, sending an email or an instant message then waiting 10 minutes so you can be in a good spot to answer adds up to a lot of wasted time. In the end, there's a reason some very successful businesses keep paying a fortune in engineer salaries in SF, Boston, NY or Seattle to keep a critical mass of devs together. There's no substitute and it can often be worth the insane markup.
Now there does come a time when you have to get the easy shit done, and there's a lot of easy shit to do. Library atmosphere sections in an office can take care of that. But if you're always there, or even if you're not but always have the noise cancelling headphones on because you're "OMG SO MUCH MORE PRODUCTIVE", you're honestly part of the problem. You're gonna look good in your yearly review, people may think you're fucking awesome. But as a small part of something bigger, you're just fucking everyone else over.
Every manager I've questioned about the shortcomings of cubicles has said that it's good for intra-office communication and creative collaboration . . . before walking into their private office and shutting the door behind them. Even in an organization where they made a point that managers didn't have private offices (though, senior managers and executives, of course, still did) most of the managers camped out in the few small conference rooms where employees were supposed to be able to go for "spontaneous collaborative sessions."
I guess this meant that they realized that they have nothing to offer intellectually or creatively to the work of the office.
you sound like a person who talks about work instead of DOING work.
It has nothing to do with productivity. I have seen so many start ups in Silicon Valley use this open office model; it's absurd. No privacy! Imagine working for 10-12 hours every day in a crowded room, with the same people. It's almost inhumane. I don't care how many ping-pong tables or couches or other perks are made available, people need their own space. These cheap-ass, SOB, VCs and their ohurdes of young wannabe "entrepreneurs" are all on the same bandwagon; the VCs and shithead CEO's all want to look "hip" and be "just like 'that there other successful startup!' Idiots! Walk into any respectable VC (an oxymoron) office; do you see an open office plan? Duh! The swine with all the money in start up land feed at their own private troughs. The young, wannabe CEOs of "Start Up X" can leave the office any time they want; the developers, and QA, and marketing, and all the other drones can work in cattle car conditions - who cares? The media in Silicon Valley is just as stupid and idiotic as the VCs and wannabe young CEOs; they write articles about this of that "cool" open office in San Francisco's SOMA - yadda yadda. Fools! I would love to see the gaggle of lemming investors, wannabe CEO's, and pretend media completely disrupted. Idiots!
well you could burn the place down.
Then I'd have to move again.