Can ‘Pods’ Bring Quiet to the Noisy Open Office? | Hacker News Reader

Can ‘Pods’ Bring Quiet to the Noisy Open Office?

citylab.com

7 pointsingve14 comments

The thing that a lot of these articles miss—probably because it doesn’t matter at all to bean-counters—is personalization. The idea of spending all day tapping away at a laptop keyboard makes my wrists ache thinking about it, and the idea of being limited to a laptop display is pretty bad too. A real desk with a real keyboard (and no keyboard is one-size-fits-all!) and a real display is key to productivity, and wholly missing from all of these “just work from a couch/phone booth/privacy pod/hot desk” designs. People need individuality in their workspace equipment, to say nothing of the ability to personalize their environment to make it human with things like pictures and plants. The inability to claim any part of the work environment as uniquely yours is dehumanizing, and only serves to make people less attached. If companies want people to be attached to their employers (whether or not they actually should be), they might try harder to make the workplace less generic and depersonal.

Is $3.5k per engineer really any cheaper than hiring a bunch of guys to throw up drywall and a prehung door? I suppose ventilation ductwork (even in a drop-ceiling) will probably put you over, but we are still working in the same order-of-magnitude of a high-end workstation.

A few years ago we converted a large area to offices and drywall was actually cheaper than 70"+ height cubes (nobody wanted the "gopher" effect of the 4-5 foot cubes).

The final pricing of the drywall ended up slightly higher than the initial cube estimate, but only because network/phone/electricity was run into the walls for convenience.

Open office is the future on average, just because it's the best you can do for dollar/worker/sqft. Offices with doors, we are told, are too expensive, because they're accounted for differently as part of the building, not part of depreciating furnishings and equipment.

Under that constraint, I don't understand why soundproofed full height cubicle walls with closing doors aren't the obvious compromise between what can be sold and what can be installed. Is it fire code? Do businesses who care about productivity spring for actual offices?

There appears to be a niche here, and I don't see why it's not filled.

Ah, I had wondered about offices not being used more. I wonder if demountable walls[1] might count as furnishings.

1: http://e2walls.com/p2/ultrawall/

The commercial real estate owners are also to blame. They used to have to build out the office space to a tenants wishes to attract tenants. It is much cheaper and easier for them to take out the walls/offices and tell the clients to furnish it how you want. While open offices are cool and there are more tenants than space, the owners refuse to do anything else.

So, cubicles? I’m game for that. I thought I hated cubicles, once upon a time. Then they took them away and gave us open office plans. Now, I miss those 5’ tall cubicles I once loathed so much.

Never underestimate the ability of managers presented with a bad situation to make it worse.

I dunno. The one pictured up at the top is maybe 6' x 6' and the one in the middle seems closer to a claustrophobic 4' x 4'. I suppose they're better than open plan but they seem more like cages than office space.

A pox on all the bean counters. I want to go back to the days when I had an 8' x 8' office with a door that I could lock.

Yeah I was thinking cubicles as well. What's the end goal of this trend anyway? Let's take it to its logical conclusion: stacked anechoic cubicles 4 or 5 deep and 2 or 3 high, like a server farm.

... And you'll pay for the privilege to sit in them too!

And so we come full circle, as the cubicle was invented as a way to give the workers some rights and privacy and sense of "own space" at a time when open offices were the norm (just look at a movie from the 50s or 60s and you'll see the white collar non-execs all worked in open plan offices).

Just stick cotton in your ears...

Only something like 7 dB of sound attenuation so if someone comes over to talk to you you can still hear them. That 7 dB (about a quarter) really takes the edge off the noise and makes for a less stressful day. Comfortable and breathable. You can jamb it in so it is hard to see, if for some reason that bothers you.

Works outside the office as well to take the edge off traffic noise and even airplane noise in a pinch.

I forgot and left the cotton in for a trip to the supermarket and even that was improved. The annoying muzak seemed far away.

Hearing protection is mandatory in the workshop where I work.

Somehow I managed to start wearing earplugs most of the time while I drive, and more recently have been leaving them in when I go to the supermarket and when I get home. I'll occasionally sleep with them in too.

It certainly does make a difference, in my experience.

You wish to make your glass hot desk prison even smaller and more confining?

Remind me why you would want to do that?

Nope. But they can further marginalize people with mobility issues.

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