I once took a job just because it came with a really nice office. With a door! One glass panel beside the door, that had blinds that could be closed but the office environment was such that nobody ever closed their blinds so I didn’t either. Most people also didn’t close their doors, but somebody else’s assistant in the bullpen was at a desk right in front of my door and she had a tendency to whistle–so I closed the door. (Really? And somebody else actually had a “Thank You For Not Whistling” sign on their bulletin board. She was oblivious. I’m not even sure she knew she was whistling.)
What I found was that I did like the privacy, but I also kind of missed the newsroom, because a newsroom has a sort of energy.
On the other hand this particular newsroom had got so crowded that when I wanted to get up from my desk I had to check with the guy sitting behind me so my chair wouldn’t crash into his, and he had to do the same.
It is strange the things you get used to and then you sort of miss them. It could get so quiet in my office that I wasn’t sure if I’d actually gone deaf. That never happened in the newsroom even in the middle of the night.
My company did a trial run of true open office space on a couple of floors, and it failed. Not only was it loud, but connectivity sucked, and it was expensive to do the conversion. And we also did hoteling, and that was massively unpopular.
So…instead we kept the cubicles in place, moved some people out of their offices, squeezed down some other offices, and kept the hoteling. kind of a cluster all around, but I told my managers to turn a blind eye to people leaving things overnight, and then the hoteling became much less of an issue. For various reasons it did end up saving rhe company a lot of money, but way more energy (and less thought) was spent on it than was necessary.
Isn’t this sad? I assume your job isn’t booking space. How much moolah is your company wasting by making you do these pointless ceremonies to find a space to work?
I’m salaried, so they probably aren’t losing a lot. And I was written up in my annual review for complaining about it, which infuriates me. You make my life miserable, but it’s my responsibility to put on a happy face so everyone else is happy about this? Screw that.
I’m gonna go ahead and fight this stereotypes. Yes, engineers have a reputation for introversion, but many of us are florid flaming extraverts who crave interaction with others. People call us introverts because our work betimes requires us to sit, reflect, think, ponder. That’s not a rejection of other humans, it’s a mandate of our calling. We want to enter the ring of ideas, duke it out as to which approach is better, lead with courage and valor, and then retreat to the corner to do our best work, and emerge triumphant to praise and accolades.
Management theorists are shit people with garbage brains who have never known the satisfaction of achievement, the pleasure of persuasion, the cameraderie of having arrived at a fulfilling journey beset by conflict and doubt ultimately resolved by the frank exchange of ideas.
I’ve worked in both. Had open office experiences that were wonderful, and some that were horrible. I’ve also had private offices where nobody talks and it takes forever to get things done. It’s less about the office plan and more about the work environment the company fosters.
Okay, I’ll clarify that “engineers are introverts” isn’t mean to be inferred as “100% of engineers are introverts”; however as an engineer with 24 years in the field, saying “engineers are introverts” is largely correct; you extroverts exist, but you’re largely the exception.
As an engineer with a comparable tenure, I’ll grant that techies attract more than their share of introverts and socially awkward people. But much of what’s mistakenly labeled “introversion” is just the built-in occasional need for occasional solitary, quiet work and reflection. The majority of teams I’ve been on have been happy to grab lunch or beers together for some social time, after we’re done with the deep-thinking.
I’m an extrovert but I have a reputation as an introvert because I am testy and outspoken about the stupid idea of magically creating extra productivity by forcing people into a collaborative mode 100% of the time. I like working with people, I just need to be able to hear myself think from time to time.
In my experience there are many people like this, we are falsely labeled as introverts, but we’re just engineers who are irritable at being forced into a journalist-like collaborative space because upper management likes to see people moving around and talking.
My current company went from high wall cubes for Directors and below with real offices for everybody else, to real offices for VPs and above with weird hybrid low-wall cubes / standing desk combos for Sr. Directors and below, to being bought by a new holding company and being merged with a sister division in a new location that’s 100% tables for everybody.
Theoretically the latest iteration is activity based workstations with no assigned seating, but you bet your ass the VPs have their favorite spots so we all sit in the same seats every day.
My least favorite was the standing desk / low wall combo. The people around are all in the same general division, but mostly on separate teams, and 95% of all of our teams are in different offices or offshore. Meaning anybody at the junior management level or above is on the phone at least 6 hours a day. Many of us are also loud talkers, and several of those loud talkers would use the fucking standing desks meaning their loud talk would project over the whole office.
Picture 10 people on different Skype meetings, six of whom are loud talkers, 4 of which are standing up while talking loudly, and you can imagine how deafening it could get.
The current purely open environment is marginally better, if only because you can’t stand and look at your computer screen any more.
Personally I like the office because my commute went from 30 minutes to 10 minutes. I’m willing to put up with a lot of bullshit for an extra 40 minutes of free time per day.
I had a private office for about 20 years before the new owner of my company imposed their open office ideology on us, spending money to completely tear down and rebuild every floor to make it look like the set of a J.J. Abrams movie.
It sucked. We were elbow-to-elbow, with no visual privacy or sound buffering. We were in jobs that required constant conversation, much of it on the phone. It was disruptive and annoying.
It affected employee health—constant passing around infections—and productivity. It discouraged collaboration, because people kept their headphones on to drown out noise. We were also surrounded by red-eye cameras, so we talked less, or fear of being perceived as goofing off.
It was demoralizing and dehumanizing. Personalization of our workspaces was discouraged. We were told to hide paper, which interfered in our work.
Well, my company announced that due to COVID-19, everyone is to work from home for the foreseeable future. I have been doing so for the past two weeks anyway. When this is all over, I may make this arrangement permanent.
You know what’s fucking awesome? These thought leaders are posting all over my LinkedIn feed today about how, thanks to coronavirus, everyone’s gone to full-time remote work, and it’s gone swimmingly well, with zero cost in productivity.
I guarantee 100% that as soon as the self-containment phase is over, these fuckers are going to terminate full-time remote work because it’s just not as productive as the open-office plan.
We have it on half of the floors of my building. I work for a very large international company and so far we still have cubes with a few offices for directors on my floor.
The open plan does at least have a short wall between desks which ends just above eye level so you don’t have to stare in the eyes of the person sitting across from you.
Most people hate it and there is currently a joke going around that this whole plan is to make working in the office so unpleasant that people will opt to work from home and we would save on facilities costs.
I am in my 50s and hate it as well but some of the younger workers have their beats headphones and just deal with it. (maybe that is the plan- get the oldsters with pension quit)
We have 2 “private rooms” on a floor of about 110 people so they are almost always in use. Also we have closed one location so now the building is filling up and conference rooms are in very short supply - causing 3-4 in a cube meetings to start to pop up.