This is me. I’m a multitasking fiend and am usually working on one or two projects and websurfing simultaneously (well, technically I task-switch like a fiend). We have MS Windows where you can use different programs simultaneously for a reason, right? Don’t judge me because I have SDMB up in firefox on my secondary monitor for hours (with email up next to it, and then two different Word files up on the primary monitor).
You know, I know this is the theory, but I have never, ever seen any company reconfigure cubicles. What I’ve seen is that they do a wild ass guess as to how many managers they have, and how many people work for each manager, do a floor plan accordingly and then layout the cubicles. As teams grow and shrink and grow again, various cubicles become empty, others get multiple people stuck in them, and new people get put into whatever cube is available at that moment regardless of the official workspace size is. For example, the last place I worked, when they did the office layout they had manager cubes that were 100sqft (picking numbers out of the air), employee cubes that were 50 sqft and contractor cubes that were 25sqft. At the time I was hired, there were no empty employee cubes near my new manager, so I was put into a tiny contractor cube. Fortunately I don’t need a lot of space, but you always wonder if anyone still sees workspace size as a seniority perk. I think managers and above do, so I’m surprised they seem to think that peons aren’t status conscious. Lots of us are!
I’m in a semi-open floorplan. Multiple large rooms of between 9-20 people. Each room has 4 meeting rooms and there are phone rooms for private convos. Each room also has a little “lounge” area with chairs, couches, whiteboards and the like.
At first I was hesitant but I eventually got used to it and don’t mind it. If I had a choice I’d want an office, sure. But so long as everyone acts like a human being there are rarely issues. People try to be courteous about sound. there’s a don’t look type unspoken agreement in relation to monitors. In a few circumstances it did make it easier to resolve urgent problems.
Because we were guinea pigs on this new floorplan they also provided us free Bose noise cancelling headphones. I use those pretty often too.
They have converted some areas at my work to open floorplans and I get anxiety just looking at them. I’m a coder and can really only do good work if I can quietly contemplate what I’m working on. I’d find it very hard to get anything done with coworkers so close to me.
However, I notice that I can get work done in crowded areas if I don’t know anyone around me–like at an airport or coffee shop. Because I’m anonymous, I tune everything out. But when I have coworkers around, I’m constantly paying attention to what’s going on and have trouble thinking creatively. This makes it difficult to write good code or debug hard problems. If I was forced to work in that environment, I would seriously consider quitting.
I hate open office plans. If I’m trying to focus on getting work done, the last thing I need is a daily scrum meeting taking place ten feet from me, or several people collaborating next to me, or a group of people who are just shooting the breeze. No one has indoor voices, and now I have to crank my music up to 10 so I can focus.
What has saved me at my current employer is that we have an extremely flexible work from home policy. I work 2 days from home normally; more if I’m doing something tricky where interruptions are a bad idea.
I would have a very, very hard time working 40-hours a week in an open plan office.
Hmmm, Microsoft did a big experiment to convert one of their old office for everyone floors into open seating. Let’s say it’s tolerated. There are a lot of breakout rooms, and private phone call rooms. That said, if you’re a remote sales person that lives on the phone every day, then there are never enough private call rooms, and you need to take your laptop with you, and it’s not as efficient as just shutting the door or hunkering down in your cubicle.
It wasn’t cheap to renovate the office, and AFAIK office #2 has never been renovated, thus implying that for a variety of reasons that it wasn’t exactly a success. I didn’t work there but I did visit folks and had numerous meetings there…
A few jobs back, I had a desk in a hallway. Right next to an intersection, too, so I could get clipped regularly by people taking the corner and not paying attention.
When that’s your baseline, open office isn’t all that bad.
I will update my previous answer to say that if I was ever in a job that required a lot of talking on the phone, I’d probably dislike open offices a whole lot more than I do. That aspect seems like it could be a big problem.
This must be the newest management trend. My previous employer went from cubicles to an open plan - long tables where we sat crowded next to each other with monitors and keyboards in front of us and little room for anything else. On top of that, there was another long table right up against ours with people arranged the same way, but facing us. At least the monitors were big enough that you weren’t staring at someone else’s face all day. I hated it.
My manager wasn’t happy about the change. We had always had the option of working remotely if we chose to and he told his managers that what would happen is that everyone would probably start doing so to avoid the horrible seating arrangements. That’s pretty much what happened. Most of us stayed home. We even had our morning “standups” by Skype.
Why management didn’t ban or cut back the work from home option I’ll never know. It defeated their reason for the open plan, which they thought would lead to more interaction.
I just heard that after the open plan remodeling we will be prohibited from keeping our coats at our desks. They will be left in the cost room. Like in kindergarten.
I’ve had successful collaborations with people who didn’t even work in the same state, so I’m not in favor of forcing people to share close office space together. The only reason management doesn’t want to provide a private office for each employee is because of office space costs. First there were cubes and now this open office plan. Upper management has no idea how much noise and distractions are generated from the sounds and traffic of other people.
A friend of mine works for a large company which has cubes, but the team has selected one day a week where they all work from home. The employees find this is their most productive day when they work from home.
That’s what I’ve found. When I work remotely I don’t start work all tense from the commute. I also don’t have the distractions of the normal social chit chat, but with things like IM, Hangouts, Skype, etc., I can always communicate, share screens, etc. with whoever I need to.
That’s pretty much our arrangement except you can book your desk four weeks in advance (booking opens every Friday for the week four weeks hence) which means that I rarely have to switch seats. I’m not a fan or open plan because I’m easily distracted but it does facilitate team working, allows for flexible teams (we work on projects with different configurations on different projects) and of course it means that you can have fewer desks than people because someone is always on leave, working from home or on training.
Not here. The CEO and the Chairman get offices (and glass-walled ones at that). Everyone else, from administrators to directors, has open plan desks.
With all of this information KNOWN, why employers continue to rip out cubicles – which at least reduce visual stimulation – and decide we should all work together at cafeteria tables, I don’t know.
Oh, and apparently, open office plans make us sick.
Oh, Lordy, we re-stack constantly - to the point that is difficult sometimes to keep track of who sits where. In a building that is 950 feet long, that can be an issue. I have been here a little over 8 years and have moved 5 different times. This building sometimes seems like a living, breathing beast.
As to ‘status conscious’, that’s tough. At every level some people are, some aren’t. I am a level above “office eligible” (I manage mangers and high level analysts) and have had offices here, but currently sit in a manager (high wall) cubicle. It was my choice. I am not status conscious. OTOH, I know some entry level people who are. I don’t have a good idea how to balance that one.
I think the mistake with open floorplans is seeing how they work in very specific situations (internet startup with 5 guys in a basement) and thinking it will work in all situations. But even in the cases where it works, you only see the successes. The internet startups which failed because everyone hated each other never see the light of day. So companies see all these successes and think that making everyone work in that environment will lead to the same success.
If you have a small team of self-selected, highly motivated people working on a clear goal, then open floorplan can work great. But doing your day-to-day job with management created teams of random coworkers is not the same thing. I may have to interact with Janice from accounting as part of my job, but that doesn’t mean I want to sit two feet away from her forever.
In my case, it’s rows of desks with workstations on both sides, so you’re directly facing a colleague (they say “you’re looking at the back of a monitor, not a colleague” as if that’s much better?)
But in a bit of good news, my manager said he was totally fine with me working from home several days a week so I should be able to survive this.
It sucks. What is worse is the bald-faced lies to our faces from leadership about increased collaboration, efficiency, project sharing, experience cascading, blah blah blah. It’s cheaper for facilities, that’s it. Boss, you don’t really give a rat’s ass about true project quality or true productivity, admit it. Your critical thinking ability can’t grasp anything beyond a fallacious “heads / sq-ft = profit” business plan.
Exactly. It use to be that many managers didn’t like people working from home at all and some referred to it even for occasional use as being a “privilege”. Many managers were threaten by workers not being in the office even if they were doing productive work from home because it made them feel useless if they couldn’t walk around and do “bed checks” on employees.
