Open offices make people talk less and email more | Hacker News Reader

Open offices make people talk less and email more

bbc.com

18 pointsnkc4077 comments

> Open-plan offices have taken off because of a desire to increase interaction and collaboration among workers.

Open-plan offices have taken off because of a desire to decrease real-estate costs and stuff more employees into the same space.

I think open offices are mostly based on extroverts logic, i.e. they think it forces more introverted people to communicate more, supports the team spirit and that it is super awsome to solve problems by just talking to the person sitting next to you.

More fundamentally, there's an assumption that more talk = more collaboration.

I've found the opposite tends to be true. Person-to-person talk is inefficient and tends to promote siloing. Email and (well planned) meetings help people stay on the same page, which makes it easier for them to work co-operatively. And it gets you there with less actual time spent communicating.

Another hypothesis: open offices emerged due to an archaic perception of single closed offices. It’s not about the function, but about the implied communication of the perception of closed offices. In other words: marketing.

I swear we should introduce a monthly thread like "Who's hiring" about open plan offices just to let people vent. Thread predictions:

1 highly voted chain saying "but I like open-plan offices".

1 highly voted chain saying "I hate open plan offices".

1 highly voted thread saying "Actually they really do this to save money".

Open plan offices do have some advantages:

- being able to put more employees in the space AKA being able to scale efficiently as the company grows

- easily able to group related employees together (perhaps on a per project basis)

- ad-hoc collaboration can occur

- easier/cheaper maintenance

How much of these advantages are actually leveraged in practice can vary greatly. (eg: If your company culture is cut throat or demoralised no open plan office is going to foster greater collaboration).

There are of course downsides to the open plan office, which I am confident other people will list on this thread.

edit: formatting

This study would be interesting if it compared same size/ same indusry companies to each other

It’s easy to imagine more old industry company where technology penetration isn’t high using traditional office space don’t send too many emails in general

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