High-performance employees need quieter work spaces
qz.com
qz.com
This article mentions high performance employees - but most knowledge workers (designers, programmers etc.) that I know all struggle with open plan office environments irrespective of their performance level. If anything, an open plan office is maybe less worrisome to the more executive people I know - their core work processes of communication & meetings are less negatively impacted by the inability to regularly get large blocks of quiet productive space.
Some companies obviously get this need (e.g. FogCreek) but it really feels like sugar consumption or smoking. Once people really interrogate the status quo they are quick to realise how negative it is - but despite this the sub-optimal default approach has an unbelievable amount of momentum.
My condolences to all the 'high performance people' surveyed who are desperately wishing for less disturbed work spaces!
Pissed me off. Dude is the CEO and partial owner, so it's completely different. If they want to pretend to be Elon Musk and want me to as well, they better at least pay like it to justify the lack of work/life balance. I am a human being whose existence is entirely indepedent of whatever job I currently have. Crazy thought, I know.
I am only a bit salty because having consulted across a wide array of industries and been the miracle worker one man show in some of them, I have seen it everywhere.
Oh, and back on subject, of course at this place I was shoved into an open office with the devs...
It's a great relief to be here and see a different mindset outside that of the "all work no holiday" cultures you can find in the states.
In this day and age I feel like all many people want is retired-style life but then they entangle themselves in debt and job quagmires they don't excape till they are 65. I also highly disagree with the characterization that retirement is sitting around doing nothing. Retirement to me is the chance to pursue your true passions and interests unencumbered by an unrelated need for finances supplied by a wage-slavery job.
Come on over man. :)
I kid, I kiiid... no really that was both sarcastic and joking.
Is the "all work no holiday" necessary for successful tech startups on the order of those?
You can underpay and underwork, and have low turnover and medium-high return on talent, or you can overpay and overwork, with a high turnover but a high return on talent, but to underpay and overwork is a recipe for hemmoraging talent.
1 - have a plan 2 - FOCUS for 8 hours during the workday 3 - go home and play/rest
Seems to me that doing this would create a good company, but it's damned hard to find any examples.
Drives me effing nuts! Salaried exempt doesn't mean slave labor. It means the work I do requires thinking and since I am always thinking it makes more sense to just pay me a predetermined amount instead of going hourly and trying to figure out if I should be compensated for the commute to and from the office when some of my greatest ideas and innovations occur. God forbid my idea comes while not on the clock! I might not choose to assign the IP over to you! I still only anticipate implementing ideas and performing tasks for approximately 40 hours per week. You're paying for my brains not my key pushing skills.
You'd be rich before the end of the day just from the revenue off of HN readers alone!
:)
The best part is our 5 person IT team will be right next to 25 people who work phones for customer service.
Because everyone likes to be the CoA.
> The best part is our 5 person IT team will be right next to 25 people who work phones for customer service.
Time to polish that resume.
Lemme guess, your company is the type of company that thinks the entirety of IT equals help desk, and therefore will be on the phone all day fielding tickets, so to whoever made this god awful decision, sticking IT right next to CS "just makes sense".
I'm with the other guy here, run.
I get that for a startup money is tight. Instead of telling employees:
"You folks really deserve a your own offices but we just can't afford it."
Instead they tell you the big lie; that they are doing it because it "increases collaboration".
Everyone I know who went on to an industry position is working in an open plan office... and it is not unusual to hear stories about people putting in a few days of home office to get some actual work done.
This is obviously anecdotal, but based on other responses in this thread and elsewhere there is more than enough evidence to justify doing a real study. It is not difficult to measure changes in productivity over time accross a sufficiently large population and the amount of money being spent on engineers means that even a marginal increase in productivity will be worth the cost.
The best permutation of open spaces and privacy that I've seen is a wide open space with quiet rooms and sharable offices. Work in the open space when you want, or work in the quiet room when you need some privacy.
I wish that more companies would adopt this.
Assume you mean private office. Isn't that a pretty compelling argument that the majority don't see big advantages to open plan?
That's a one time cost. Amortize that out over a 5 year office lease and it is peanuts compared to the productivity gains and lower turnover.
Also once you go with a private or semi private office you won't want to go back. Any employee from there interviewing at places with open offices will probably think how much they will hate it there.
I know the occasional person will pop up with the "I love hearing other people jibber jabber throughout the day!" But 9 out of 10 people I talk with would rather not.
Quiet rooms don't help, not everyone has a laptop, nor wants one. You end up with a crappy, un-ergonomic desktop environments. And there are only so many quiet rooms possible. If you use one continually, you get marked as the social deviant.
Shareable offices? How is that any different than the old "hoteling" concept? Sharing an office is going to be first come first served, same as your quiet rooms. No diff.
If managers, directors, and VPs are willing to use this type of setup, I'd be more tolerant. But in our latest update, they all have dedicated offices. They can't mingle with the hoi polloi, having an office is a signal of their power and prestige.
I recommend private offices for engineers so they can get heads down and do their work, but sadly that suggestion tends to get ignored :( .
When I had a review, my supervisor told me that people didn't find me approachable because I head my headphones on.
When I mentioned I need a quiet space, he told me to "deal with it". When I questioned him on whether he had worked in an open space, he said he had, because he had been a NOC manager.
Different worlds, I soon left. That was the moment I realized I hated traditional corporate culture. Improved to startup, which I loved, until the "CEO" proved he was incompentent and furloughed us...
"If we build this as an open office, it's cheaper AND better? That's a slam dunk!"
6 years later ...
"Turns out it's only cheaper, not better. Hey, cheaper is better right?"
Well, the decisions about these things are made by upper management (who probably get an office, and sit in meetings all day anyway) and/or facilities (who walk around a lot of the day dealing with various facility issues).
I know I'm generalizing and not all managers lack empathy, but this seems like a reasonable explanation for the pervasiveness of arrangements that waste resources and hinder higher levels of productivity--maybe they just don't get it.
I could never understand the cost argument since lower productivity means either more employees to do the same thing and/or a shittier product, which can translate into lost sales, more infrastructure, etc. (This might not apply to early stage startups and the like; I'm thinking of established organizations here.)
https://salfreudenberg.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/the-case-for...
http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/cucumber-podcast/cucumber/e/...
Do we need to? Sure, many projects need multiple people, but few end up needing the whole organisation. So with a little flexibility on project assignments I feel most organisations can accommodate a range of working styles -- if they want to.
And on top of this, remember that the other way your best performers distinguish themselves is in the fact that they most definitely are not complainers. So if any of your employees start yapping about your proposed move to an open plan environment (or even have the temerity to suggest that if you are going to have an open plan environment, people at least "try to keep down their voice down a bit"), then congratulations -- you've just identified an employee that's definitely not right for your organization, and will likely because more trouble and distraction for your team down the road -- for as long as you keep them on board, that is.†
† Of course I'm being facetious. But this but a slightly cheeky paraphrase of the exact logic I've actually had used on me, to my face, to justify not just the hyperdense, pack-em-in-like-it's-veal-slaughtering-pen office plans which are apparently a peak popularity, these days -- but a whole range of obnoxious environmental factors --- e.g. loud TVs, loud muzack (or any TV or muzack in "the pen", for that matter); or just loud, gratuitously chatty co-workers -- in plenty of environments I've had the misfortune of being stuck in. Until I realized I just wasn't "a fit" for these places, that is.
Good headphones help, if only to take control over my own distraction, but honestly this is a management problem. If you want me to be extremely productive, and my productivity is a function of my ability to concentrate, then please just allow me to concentrate.
What are the long term impacts of wearing headphones? bacteria growth and hearing loss? Can't be good for my health long term.
Flow is a state of concentration, breaking flow take a longtime to get back in, shouting questions across the room is a context switch and not an asynchronous choice for me if I'm in the middle of something important.
The one inconsiderate person is the worst. The person unaware that their constant sniffing of mucus is awful. Usually the least intelligent person in the office IMO.
Usually the loudest and most obnoxious member of every team I've worked for seems to have the most production problems....coincidence?
For the hearing loss, not necessarily. Get some good noise-canceling headphones that completely cover and enclose the ears, and then either play no music at all or something quiet, at very low volume. With the noise-canceling on and the noise-isolation from the muffs themselves, you'll find you don't need very much volume to hear the music extremely well (human hearing is logarithmic).
However, even the best headphones do have a little weight, which is on your head, and there's always going to be a comfort factor. Wearing them 8 hours straight, day in and day out, may be too much.
>The person unaware that their constant sniffing of mucus is awful.
How are they supposed to help that? It's not their fault that they're sick; people get sick sometimes. It's management's fault for providing you a workspace where there's no privacy at all, so you're forced to see and hear every little thing from your cow-orkers like that. And you can't guarantee that you'll never have a workplace without an annoying or less-intelligent coworker; again it's management's fault for not setting up a work environment that mitigates that factor by giving you some privacy and isolation.
Most of this stuff is not "inconsiderate"; it's just how humans are. People need to make or take phone calls sometimes; how else are you supposed to schedule doctors' appointments and do other life tasks, unless you have a personal secretary (which these companies no longer provide us)? People get sick and need to blow their noses. People get bored and need music (the presence of music in all human cultures, from the dawn of civilization, shows it to be pretty close to a primal need).
The fundamental problem is that humans are not biologically designed to be packed into seated arrangements for hours on end, working quietly without distracting each other. We invented "rooms" for largely this reason, and having separate homes instead of living in one giant communal space, because when we pack ourselves into denser arrangements, we still value having some privacy from one another.
Blowing noses? Isn't that what you're complaining about? Or just sniffling? If someone's sick with a cold, they're going to be doing a lot of both. It's not like you can blow your nose once and be good for the rest of the day; if it was like that, then you wouldn't have coworkers sniffling all day long. People get sick. Deal with it.
As for tapping fingers, how's that any more annoying that key clicks, foot tapping, or constant movement? People do all those things too. The fact is, people move. They cannot sit perfectly still and use the minimum necessary motion. Deal with it.
You're asking for people to be super-human. That isn't reasonable or possible. People are what they are, so you need an environment which accounts for that. If you don't have that, then it's management's fault, not the peoples' fault for just being what they are.
Honestly, you sound like someone complaining about cats licking their butts and dogs drooling.
You can predict that you will be talking on the phone if you are making a call (such as scheduling a doctor appointment). You can walk to a phone room when you receive a call.
By then, it's too late: you're now disrupted by the noisy phone ringer, and the start of the conversation.
And what if the phone room is occupied? If the company is really cheap with space, they probably didn't put enough private rooms in to satisfy demand.
"→ Are you a high-performance employee? Please help me better understand you by contributing to a 30-second anonymous survey. Thank you! http://bit.ly/high-performance-survey ←"
This can only be a joke...
My gut says quiet spaces are a boon to productivity - but why not prove it instead of a research methodology with holes so large I could drive a truck through them.
Yes, probably. http://bit.ly/high-performance-survey
Though some of those questions might be input as weights/qualifying factors in the results.
Then I saw a real "open plan" office.
Holy shit. Why aren't workers violently revolting?
This is a good metric. It's also the only metric we track. Science!
/s
What you are referring to is a "cube farm." Businesses have somehow discovered how to make working conditions worse.
I might be a little salty about that one.
It's great to collaborate and all, but that should be done at a scheduled time in a scheduled place.
The negatives of open space is why libraries have a STFU rule.
Also, cubicle furniture is extremely expensive, so your manager or the company executives will not look kindly at this purchase request. Expect a poor review.
>My latest anonymous survey shows that 58% of HPEs need more private spaces for problem solving, and 54% of HPEs find their office environment “too distracting.”
Seems kinda weak.
https://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2017/03/20/mindful-softwar...
-supporting exactly what you are saying. This notion that we each have a static workspace seems archaic, and an ideal world is one where people work in varied situations according to need: Sometimes privacy and quiet is ideal, and sometimes noise and chaos is invigorating. As much as the private office/anti-open plan thing appears on here, it's amazing how often tech workers love working in cafes, libraries, or accelerators that are like open plan offices to a few magnitudes.
This would require companies to invest in their people beyond "Here's your paycheck, here's your healthcare, be glad we're giving you this much". Granted, some companies do-and some probably do come with a variety of workspaces. I used to work at one, but I don't know how many people would answer in the affirmative if polled how commonplace they expect that sort of workplace to be.
The open office plan could work with tall, fabric cubicles. My place now uses short, glass & aluminum ones. Not to mention people chit chat too much. I'm an EE and have to think about complex stuff; I can't think with the chit-chat; breaks my squelch.
Fortunately I have a lab I can retreat to. Thinking about moving in there permanently.
The creator of them came to regret his creation as they where subverted in a direction he never expected.
I've often wondered what a modern cubicle if designed today would look like, we've done wonders in computer modeling and such since even sound dampening designs would be much easier.
From a business perspective its better to keep your high performers as long as you can - pay them what they are worth since someone else will any ways.
So high performance employees are whoever thinks they're important enough to be one?
* Cubicles are 'furniture' and therefore receive advantageous tax treatment (accelerated depreciation, increasing profits),
* Walls, not so much.0. https://www.steelcase.com/products/walls-work-walls/privacy-...
[0] Really? That's what they're called now?
Also:
"This article was published inadvertently."
If instead I work from home on Saturday, I am interrupted each time I leave my "cave" to get a coffee. Sometimes it's my daughter, sometimes my wife. The phone will invariably ring and will either be a spam call or a call for one of them. There is no opportunity for a think walk.
Simple solution: get rid of the phone. Why do you have it anyway? I haven't had a landline phone for probably 10 years now, and I was a little late to that party. This line of yours looks like something out of the 1990s: a phone call for someone else? How quaint! Do these people not have their own phones?
I already get constantly distracted and find it hard to work. I'm placed next to a corridor just near where one of 3 entryways from the foyer into the office area is. Previously, I was next to 1 of 2 printers, at a junction to a hallway holding the toilets, which doubled as a spot for people to strike up conversation. I rarely get any extended periods of focus here which is infurating when my job is structural analysis, maths, etc. We are currently given a grand total of 8 meeting rooms per floor (200+ people), most of which are permanently tied up with meetings so you can't even use them for private workspaces. This is something they claim they'll fix in the new office but in reality you will be lucky to get one.
The new place sounds and looks (when I checked out their examples of the desks) like it's going to be a nightmare even worse than this. At least here I can sort of sink into my seat and fall below the dividers, and at least I also get my own space as a desk that I can customise to suit my own needs/ergonomics/etc. and have it feel like it's my own space where I have some miniscule hope of focusing.
I'm already polishing my CV in anticipation of bailing because of it.
>I'm already polishing my CV in anticipation of bailing because of it.
Crap, it looks like this infection has spread to Europe too. :-(
I really wish Europe would stop copying all the stupidest ideas and trends from America.
Also not sure how my original post got downvoted since it's just recollecting my opinions on open-plan offices. Maybe the Open Plan Cabal hates me speaking ill of their utopia. Go figure.
Anyone from Europe care to comment on whether this plague has spread over there too? From what little I've read, it has.
I think, unfortunately, open-plan offices are just now the reality world-wide. Some cultures always had them (Asia), and now the cultures that had closed offices have moved that way. The US has led the world for a long time with software development, which does coincide with closed offices and then cubicles, so I think we can look forward to being a has-been and other countries becoming the leaders in software due to us adopting open-plan offices. In a couple of decades it'll probably cause a complete economic collapse and probably breakup of the US.
My current company has every dev and most managers in the same room. 7 scrum teams, over 60 people in one room. It's madness and I can't fucking stand the noise.
You get written up for talking "excessively" during work hours because 3/4 the company can hear you when you try to collaborate. Peer programming is impossible.
I have no idea why idiotic management consultants are promoting whats basically a sweatshop environment.
The stupidest part of this is that my company just cut the walls down to a few feet. You can clearly see that the dividers between each team used to be full height walls. What a tragedy
This idea the groups need to be able to talk easily is just idiotic. We're not in kindergarten sharing what our cats did or why the sky is blue, we're professionals working on complex tasks. Written communication is abundant, whether it's chat/slack/irc/email/remedyforce etc. If anything, we're drowning in communication. Comprehension is the issue.
So screw working side by side in pair programming, or such crap. It's all a part of companies that view employees as a cost center, or a "resource" to be managed, like you would a herd of cattle.
Walls just make things better.
The discussions in the office however are sometimes related to what I'm working on. So hearing bits and pieces of them stands out in my mind and can get me thinking about that instead. People in cafes are also very unlikely to come up and tap me on the shoulder and start asking questions about completely unrelated topics.
YMMV of course and some people concentrate just fine in loud places. On the other hand the people that say "I don't mind the open office plan, it doesn't bother me" might just be the people who are disrupting everyone else.
In an open-plan office, the people around you are usually your coworkers, the people you see every day and know personally. In a coffee shop, they're usually total strangers, people you might see occasionally at that shop at best, and very likely you'll never see them again.
Also, the strangers at the coffee shop don't care what you're looking at on your laptop, or if you're getting any work done. Coworkers might. Also, strangers at a coffee shop are unlikely to interrupt you; coworkers are very likely to. So at the coffee shop, it's entirely possible to be around other humans without being forced to socialize with them, but not at work.
This is much different than the office environment.
Imagine: Someone's else half-duplex conversation with their significant other about what colors to paint the bathroom this weekend or how much fun a guy had at the bar with the girls from the other division or the hen-pecked husband accepting orders for what to bring home from the Pret-a-manger don't even come close. Then there are the custom ring tones and chatter from random cell phones, the rustling of strangers between the cubicles as new employees are given the tour. A random maintenance person wanders around holding a ceiling tile and pack of fluorescent bulbs knocking the step ladder about having another half-duplex conversation about last night's sporting event.
Your kid's "play" don't even come close to this, because you're not working in the traditional office environment, you're working at home.
As a result I had to get a desk in a co-working space. Not cheap but I find grown ups bantering loudly far less distracting than my kids asking me to play.
My team used to be clustered into a corner of the building. Pairs worked quietly, louder teams weren't around to bother us, etc. It wasn't quite as nice as actual offices, but it was pretty close.
A full-on open plan office sounds terrible. Working most days with kiddos playing sounds terrible (when I work from home, I get most of my work done during his nap and after his bedtime). Working in cubes near noisy teams isn't great. Working in cubes secluded from noisy teams is fairly nice. I think I'd like to work in a team office to allow easy collaboration, while keeping away distractions.
I know of a couple coworkers that do not have trouble concentrating in our open office, while I continually struggle to get deep thought done.