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Let's Take This Open Floor Plan To the Next Level
theodp writes: In response to those of you who are unhappy with your Open Office, McSweeney's has some ideas for taking the open floor plan to the next level. "Our open floor plan was decided upon after rigorous research that primarily involved looking at what cool internet companies were doing and reflexively copying them," writes Kelsey Rexroat. "We're dismayed and confused as to why their model isn't succeeding for our own business, and have concluded that we just haven't embraced the open floor plan ideals as fully as we possibly can. So team, let's take this open floor plan to the next level!" Among the changes being implemented in the spirit of transparency and collaboration: 1. "All tables, chairs, and filing cabinets will be replaced by see-through plastic furnishings." 2. "All desks will be mounted on wheels and arranged into four-desk clusters. At random intervals throughout the day, a whistle will blow, at which point you should quickly roll your desk into a new cluster." 3. "Employees' desktops will be randomly projected onto a movie screen in the center of the office." 4. "You can now dial into a designated phone line to listen in on any calls taking place within the office and add your opinion." Some workplaces might make you question just how tongue-in-cheek this description is.
...everybody should get naked. There...I said it.
It's the logical end state of this whole open office thing. Complete transparency and no place to hide.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
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"Those of you who are?" You are implying that there are people out there that have to endure open office and do enjoy the experience.
Open Office is an aberration and is a direct result of management-by-trend-chasing practice.
Companies where the open office approach succeeded had something in common: the population of the office chose it for themselves, early on. They had an open office environment because that's how they wanted to work, and because the dynamic that existed between the employees was compatible with it. Then later, a lot of other companies had executives look at both the success of those companies and the lower real estate costs that the model uses, and decided they would "choose" it for their own staff. And that's not quite how it works. It's rather like deciding that your goldfish would be better off in a salt water tank because of how big the fish were in some other tank you saw, and then finding yourself confused as to why the fish all died. Not all cultures are the same, and you can't change the culture by imposing something upon it that is toxic.
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Back in the 80s my company was designing a new building for us to move into. Management was excited about the idea of a round lab in the middle of the building, with glass walls so everyone could see the engineers at work. Us guys were pretty unhappy with the idea, but the idea wasn't fully torpedoed until a female engineer said "so you don't want us wearing skirts anymore, huh?"
When something isn't working according to the theory, it's not because it's an incorrect theory, it's because people NEED TO TRY HARDER! More WILL needs to be applied. That is all.
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I worked at an office which specified the objects you could have on your desk. Leave your stapler on your desk, and Lumberg would come by and tell you to put it away and tidy up.
I was told it was part of their arrangement with the interior designer. Talk about form over function!
Obviously they should have seen Einstein's desk.
Here's a pretty good picture of what it typically looked like:
http://blogs-images.forbes.com...
I worked for a place that moved to new office space, from cube land, into "modern" open office land.
The CEO said it was "cool" and "techie" and "everybody in 'the valley' was doing it."
It sucked wind. I mean, it blew, hard. Cube land was no bargain, the cubes were about 7 by 6 feet, but at least you could pretend you had a bit of privacy to make a phone call, to send an email, to generally have your own space. Open office land was 24 inch deep, 5-foot wide desks with a foot tall divider between you and the next person. You could swivel your head and see heads in all directions, and hear and see what everybody was doing, and it was loud. You could not roll your chair back too fast for fear of clobbering the person behind you. It sucked. (Did I mention that it sucked?)
It was no place to concentrate -- it was quite focus-proof.
The open office was not chosen for the "cool" factor, it was chosen for the "cheap" factor, because it could better than double the employee per square foot density. This was a growing, profitable, privately held company, and there was no need for it, except to make the owner's take better.
Open office can work in places where it is not done for the wrong reasons. Give people some personal space, install acoustic treatments and dividers, and it can work. Treat people like sardines, and those that can swim away, will.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
FTFA:
Program Intellivision!
Those of us unlucky enough to find ourselves working for Canadian banks in tech don't even have desks of our own. I, for example, work in a hot-desking dungeon where I have to book a desk by the day and carry my meagre belongings around in an old shoe-box. I had a manager for a while who even made us move desks during the day, because that was agile! I long for an office environment only as unpleasant as an open plan one, I really do.
my blog of work misery - http://beastofbaystreet.com
Um just because you don't want to be "social" at work, doesn't mean you arent social. And the fact that you equate "social media" with being social shows what a driveling nitwit you are.
We - large Canadian bank - have X-30%, and I think that's fairly normal. We also have an on-line booking system for desks that is only accessible from the office - which forces people to come into work every day and, effectively, sign-in. If there's no desk then you can either camp out in a meeting room, go find a nearby cafe with free wifi or go home again. It's a total nightmare.
my blog of work misery - http://beastofbaystreet.com
I certainly get the appeal of everyone having a nice office, but in a lot of cities that's simply not going to happen - the space is just far too expensive. So you end up with the choice between a more compact layout, firing a bunch of people, or moving to the burbs.
I work at a tech company in Manhattan, we have open plan offices because there's really no other option here. But there are things we do which I think help alleviate some of the common complaints I hear:
I think there are advantages to the open layout over an all office setup - I do like being able to hear what people are talking about because many, many times I've been able to get involved in something I can help with, or learn about something useful. Overall I'm pretty sure if offered the alternative (moving out of the city) pretty much everyone there would vote to stick with what we have.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
I interviewed at Analog Devices a year back (didn't get an offer, sadly). At this particular design center all design engineers had offices. It was specifically understood that good hard design work required periods of intense focus with no distractions. Their model was to encourage folks to leave their door open when they could, but to encourage folks who really needed to focus to close it, or if discussions/phone calls in your office would distract others to encourage folks to close the door.
There were still some cubicles, but those were for the secretary, and for setting up test equipment.
Where I went to is a good company and all, but boy are there days I really wish I could close off the rest of the office din and distraction. I still get more done on weekends during my kids nap time than I can get done in a full work day more of the time.
Cubes are cheap, but I think the real cost in lost productivity vastly outweighs savings in building materials for those doing the really complex stuff.