Open Plan Offices Kill Productivity. Here's What to Do Instead. | Hacker News Reader

Open Plan Offices Kill Productivity. Here's What to Do Instead.

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22 pointswalterbell10 comments

> Thankfully, you don’t have to play the guessing game when it comes to your team’s productivity. Time-tracking software like Time Doctor lets you keep a watchful eye on your employees from afar. This software monitors workplace activity by tracking time use, taking screenshots of employee computers and providing analytics on potential poor time use. Through this data, you can glean insights into your team’s productivity and even monitor your workers – without paying for an office.

Earlier on the author cited research that open office architecture makes everyone more observable or 'transparent', which dampens office productivity. And then suddenly this? I couldn't take the author seriously after I got to this part.

Completely agree.

Working from home is not a silver bullet for solving the "open office problem", sufficient privacy afforded to employees is, although for individual employees, flex time and WFH days have their advantages.

For small businesses without offices, what would an appropriate solution be, cubicles?

I'm personally not someone who can work from home every single day. I enjoy going into the office and often get more done despite losing two hours to public transit.

The best office space I worked at was divided in 6-8 persons rooms. Each team had their own conference room isolated from the rest. It was kind of a mix between cubicles and open space. It isolated us from other parts of the business (sales, management, etc) but allowed fast & easy collaboration between team members.

What was the average size of those teams?

Sounds like a nightmare for the new guy that gets hired, and there is no place for them to sit in the team room. Yes, I was that new guy, when a team I was hired into expanded. The office had high cubical walls separating different areas, and within those areas were pits that held 4 - 8 people depending on the particular layout. I was person number 9 on the Unix team, but was put in another pit a little way off that held contracted Informix 4GL programmers. (this was about 20 years ago)

The team I was on however was really good, they made sure to grab me for coffee several times a day so we could have a bantering session down in the cafeteria.

This is similar to what we built at MP3.com 20 years ago. Offices with two to four work areas, maybe a table in the center, and grouped people by function and overlap. The Systems & Networking team was next door to the DBAs and in the same hallway as the developers on the content acquisition, management, and delivery teams. We also had a number of open areas with seating and whiteboards for casual conversations. I even recall designing the new storage management system on a paper table cloth at the local greek restaurant and posting it in a common area to start the design conversation. It was quite productive and many of the team members remain great friends to this day.

The article is mentioning remote work as the solution. But I was expecting to see an office design solution after reading the title.

How about letting employees choose themselves?

Certainly there are those who are super-productive in open-space, and those who are more efficient in closed offices, cubicles or working from home.

This is 2019, we have and enormous selection of tools that makes it possible to work from just about anywhere.

This felt like a sly advert for Time Doctor.

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