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Comment by tritium | Hacker News Reader

The power differential implicit in the voice of managers.

The competitive aspect of operating alongside co-workers.

The fairness of slacking off, letting one's mind wander, contemplating a hard problem while staring off into space and refraining from typing at a keyboard, maybe running late in the mornings, versus doing "real" work, ass in chair, on time, contributing ideas in meetings and phone calls, producing visible progress...

Whether or not people (who can affect your ability to put a roof over your head) ARE NOTICING YOUR EVERY MOVE.

This is what an open office is does to me. The anxiety induced by others, and their potential for influencing where the rubber meets the road.

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> Whether or not people (who can affect your ability to put a roof over your head) ARE NOTICING YOUR EVERY MOVE.

I think what matters is whether I think I am being watched by my coworkers (superiors or otherwise). This uses up some part of my brain that needs to focus on my "visual performance" and thus creates stress. But when I do not think I am watched, my creativity goes up and stress drops. For example, I contribute much better in an audio conference or Slack (just text) meetings, than in a video conference or a face to face meeting. In the former case, I am more relaxed and am able to focus on the problem being discussed and in the latter case, not so much. This might be specific to certain personality types but is true for me for sure.

Absolutely. Being social creatures means we are always at least somewhat aware of how we're presenting ourselves to others. If there are other people in the room (even moreso when those people "matter" in some way), some portion of our cognitive power is attending to this process.

> For example, I contribute much better in an audio conference or Slack (just text) meetings, than in a video conference or a face to face meeting. In the former case, I am more relaxed and am able to focus on the problem being discussed and in the latter case, not so much. This might be specific to certain personality types but is true for me for sure.

I work remote from my team and thus far I've found that being in person forces me to focus and contribute more, and that I tend to slack off on audio conferences.

Different strokes for different folks?

The year and a half or so that I spent in a bullpen style open-office made me feel like I was an inmate in a panopticon style environment. I could constantly feel managements eyes on the back of my head even though I knew it wasn't literally happening. It was miserable, I'm glad that I got away from it and I will hopefully never find my way there again.

It's that feeling of being watched - yes. I can't quantify it but since I've been accidentally promoted into an office (only managers are supposed to have offices in this company but my department's been budded off from the mothership) from the bullpen I feel more productive, stay later each day, and generally feel more confident and at peace all day long. One of my cow-workers who's still under the all seeing eye has a mirror on the aisle-facing wall of his cube. That would probably help had I tried it. My old cube was not only on the middle aisle but had one of those smokey camera housings mounted on the ceiling allegedly facing the door to the outside.

>one of those smokey camera housings

Sometimes these are empty, designed to create the appearance of an all seeing eye without having the overhead of storing data, wiring, etc.

>The year and a half or so that I spent in a bullpen style open-office made me feel like I was an inmate in a panopticon style environment.

I would have replaced 'environment' with "prison" for literary effect. But well said nonetheless. Spot on.

I am in a panopticon open-office currently and it is really bad. People shooting nerf darts all the time (one hit me in the eye when I stood up, luckily I wear glasses). People are exceptionally loud. Yesterday the guy in the half-cube next to me was blasting reggae music for 3 hours even after I said "no one wants to hear that". Last Friday our dispatch manager was walking around all the cubes for 2 hours talking as loud as she could because she just got back from vacation. So I told her "Can you stop talking so loudly? I can't concentrate on my work." Her response: "You just started here what 2 weeks ago?" As if that somehow justified being a huge distraction, ok, I am the bad guy cause I don't want to hear you basically shout for hours on end, sure. Then I got asked by my boss if I said all the women in the office are loud. Then I overheard her complaining to another manager, about being told she was being too loud (talking loudly so everyone in the office can hear). They were essentially indirectly taking a jab at me. It is just petty office garbage and totally unprofessional.

I have already started looking at other companies and I've only been here 3 weeks.

I'm no fan of open offices but your workplace sounds like it has more issues than just the floor plan.

Yes, that's only about half of what I've noticed so far because I didn't want to write a novel on HN.

I'd be interested in reading your "novel" if you care to make a post. I try to learn what I can from others in these cases, and grow to recognize similar patterns... companies can be hard to read from the outside.

That said, I hope your luck turns and something better works out.

That sounds a bit rough for an org. How was their interviewing process? Did they ask for an implementation of merge sort? Other strange signals of workplace value?

The process was pretty typical, met with ops manager and another engineer. Some red flags were they were floundering a bit on process when I asked them some specifics. Another red flag was in my first week my boss asked me to basically tell me everything I thought that was wrong with the company and employees there, which I thought was interesting. My direct superior is actually a really awesome guy and I like him a lot, it is the other managers that have this power struggle thing with him going on right now that is really awkward.

Plus, there is no clear direction on what my job role exactly is. I was told project engineer, then I was told Level III Engineer, then I was told I am Level III inside a 3-tiered system, being the level 3 of level 2? All within the span of the last week and a half. It is very off-putting and awkward.

The one perk is that I am salaried non-exempt, so I get paid for overtime. But it is just so disorganized and there seems to be a lot of weird politics going on.

I really don't like most of the team here except for my director. There is only one or two guys who are mature, everyone else acts like they're 15 (the nerf gun shooting, yelling).

I also have basically no control over anything network related or back-end stuff, which is super frustrating because there is so much inefficiency going on it's insane. They haven't automated anything here.

There is so much wrong, it's hard to synthesize it all in one post. But a quick example is that we have literally no automation in place, so level 1 and 2 techs are setting up workstations manually... It's 2017... I mean really?

I am getting micromanaged over stupid little things too by a manager who is not even my direct manager. It is just frustrating.

Oh one more thing, we have a 9:30 "huddle" every morning with the ops team (like 10 guys + manager [not my direct manager]) and we have to say what we're working on, if we're stuck on anything, and what our plan is for the day. Then they read this little quote that is submitted by at least one engineer into a box and we have to guess who it is. It is ultra, ultra cringe inducing and super weird. I've never been in a company that does this. It makes me feel like I work in a daycare.

Thanks, reading this was better than the book I’m reading in my kindle right now. Best of luck finding a new configuration

Haha, thanks, I should edit the formatting above, but last night I had the shower thought of abandoning IT and becoming a journalist.

This guy was a journalist, and then went into tech-startups as a 'marketing consultant' his take on it is hilarious, very woody-allen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7vrCpWbmDw

The unrestrained happiness and the necessity of reply to all for any little thing ('You sick? Aww, get well!') rings all too true from my experience in a startup.

Has working with headphones on worked for you?

Cans do help block out the noise yeah, but open-offices are also visually distracting as well because people are always by. Cans can only block out so much noise too. I don't like to wear them all day because my ears get tired of listening to music that long, nor would I want to. Sometimes I just prefer silence.

I can probably count on my hands the amount of times I browsed HN/non work related sites when I worked in an open office environment. Much like Agile, it's an effective tool to micro manage white collar workers.

I quit a job where a manager kept bringing up my web browsing during "office hours". During a conversation, my manager was more concerned about appearance of working than my steadfast project delivery and meeting attendance. Places like that can find other warm bodies and I can find places to pay me.

Interesting. The manager at my open office position brought up how I didn't get up and talk to other team members enough. So I made an effort to have casual conversation with others during the day.....and got criticized for talking too much in my next one on one. That was likely just bad mentoring but it opened my eyes as to how someone across a large room, ironically in an office, was presumably able to monitor my activity from afar all day long.

Yikes! As an Agile Coach, I'm sad to hear this. Though I can imagine where the perception comes from. Weaponized Agile is a real problem, one that I combat actively, but it's quite hard to convince leaders that self-management is the goal, not micro-management!

Expense on company dime monitor privacy screens. Helps with another open office issue too - sunlight hitting the monitor.

> Whether or not people ARE NOTICING YOUR EVERY MOVE.

Yeah, for me the feeling of being implicitly watched and judged all day causes low-level anxiety.

And it's an aggregating effect. I did not realize this was a problem until 4-5 months into my first job in an open office. It takes a toll on productivity for sure. I notice I work way more relaxed and get more done when the people near me are out of the office or if I work from home.

I am the only person with a standing desk in an open style office layout of a few dozen people, and i can tell you that this anxiety is increased by several orders of magnitude when everyone else in the room sitting down can see what you are working on at a glance.

Its actually the other way around.

Since you are standing, its easier for you to look at them. Its very likely most of your colleagues find that creepy.

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