However, I do like having a private office to eat lunch.
Let's hypothesize that 60% of people work better in private offices, and 40% work better in open offices. You force everyone to work in a private office, and they perform slightly better than if you force everyone to work in an open office--that perfectly explains the results of the studies.
But obviously if this hypothesis is true, then the best solution would be to let the 40% who work better in open offices work in open offices, and let the 60% who work better in private offices work in private offices.
Sure, if you're going to force everyone into one style of office, the evidence probably says we should force them into private offices. But why are we forcing everyone into one style of office?
Win - Win situation. Unfortunately it seems too hard to understand for the majority of managers.. (most likely because they represent the later)
Sounds good to me!
The only way to find out if you are right is to test it. Until that is done, it makes most sense to go with, majority of studies.
That said, you suggestion (about having both types) might work in ideal world. In real world you wouldn't really have a choice most of the time, because if your team mostly works in open office, you will miss* out on a lot if working in closed office. And if majority of people work in closed offices, then you loose all the benefits that open offices bring anyway.
So you would end up in whatever team lead decided that its best.
* And likely be considered antisocial.
If you Google around, you will find lots of studies that tested which office style you should force everyone into, without considering the possibility that forcing everyone into the same office style might be a bad idea. That doesn't address my point at all.
> The only way to find out if you are right is to test it.
My entire career has been a test showing that I can't get much done in isolation. Open offices work great for me, and at this point, I will not take a job that requires me to work in isolation.
Again I'm going to ask: why are we forcing everyone into one style of office?
I addressed that in my reply: "That said, you suggestion (about having both types) might work in ideal world. In real world you wouldn't really have a choice most of the time, because if your team mostly works in open office, you will miss* out on a lot if working in closed office. And if majority of people work in closed offices, then you loose all the benefits that open offices bring anyway.
So you would end up in whatever team lead decided that its best.
* And likely be considered antisocial. "
> My entire career has been a test showing that I can't get much done in isolation. Open offices work great for me, and at this point, I will not take a job that requires me to work in isolation.
Well if the rest of the team, is in their own offices and you are alone or with people from other groups/teams how exactly will that work for you, you might as well be in coffee shop across the street.
I am not trying to say that you should like individual offices, but you can't really mix both of them together, unless your teams are huge (which I personally dislike).
Edit: Not sure if I explained myself correctly (I am not trying to say that some people don't work better in open offices), and I come of across as a bit of a jerk, which was unintentional.
Edit2: and its a moot point mostly anyway, because open offices are cheaper, so there will always be plenty of companies with open offices, whatever studies show.
That's poor leadership on their part.
> Well if the rest of the team, is in their own offices and you are alone or with people from other groups/teams how exactly will that work for you, you might as well be in coffee shop across the street.
If the rest of the team is in their own offices, sure. That hasn't been the case for most teams I've worked on, however (which may be self-selection on my part--but it's never been hard for me to find a team I work well with).
> I am not trying to say that you should like individual offices, but you can't really mix both of them together, unless your teams are huge (which I personally dislike).
1. What's huge to you? The only team I've worked with which had a really mixed open/private space ranged from 6-10 people while I was there. There were 2-3 people who worked consistently together (let's call these extroverts, which includes me), 3-5 who worked consistently on their own (let's call these introverts) and 1-2 who floated back and forth (let's call these ambiverts). The shared space was mixed with other teams--it's also worth noting that even if the people around you aren't on your team, there still needs to be some collaboration between teams, so even if you're the only extrovert on your team, working in a shared space that still isn't the same as working in a coffee shop across the street. A team of 10 is starting to get a bit bigger than I like personally, but 6-8 feels pretty ideal to me.
Now I work for myself and I'm not seated with my client's team at all. But I tend to work in coworking spaces[1] frequented by other people working in my field, with people who frequently bounce designs and coding questions off of each other. This is a lot like your coffee shop idea, so that has some validity. But it isn't super ideal for me--if I continue getting consistent business, I may hire some people just to have some more direct collaboration in my life.
2. There also doesn't need to be this kind of diversity in the same team. You can have a team that's all introverts, or a team that's all extroverts, and in those cases, picking a completely private layout or a completely open layout, respectively, is fine. The point is to assess the needs of your team and build your workspace around their needs instead of looking for a one-size-fits all solution for some "normal" team that doesn't exist.
I'll note that it's harder to integrate one extrovert into a team with a lot of introverts than the opposite. I don't really have a good solution for that problem.
[1] Not WeWork. They're so expensive and overcrowded! Just because I am an extrovert doesn't mean I want to be sitting on top of my neighbor.
I think the point many people are trying to make is that open offices decrease productivity for most people.
I don't think people stop there, however. Many people, including the author of the article, go the extra step to say that open offices are bad.
I don't think you can argue against the fact that a significant portion of the population works well in open offices, so when you say stuff like "open offices are a dead end", that's a direct attack on the work habits of a significant part of the population.
The combativeness, I think, comes from the fact that almost everyone has been forced to work in a situation that doesn't work for them. But the solution isn't to try to force everyone to use your favored office situation: that's just doing the same thing to others that was done to you. Instead, we should be focusing on finding office situations that work for each of us, and letting others choose office situations that work for them.
Can you cite a study which asserts this fact?
Is there some threshhold of significance where it becomes acceptable to force everyone into an office space that doesn't work for everyone? Or can we just agree that we don't need to force everyone to work the same way, and people should be allowed to work in the office space that works for them?
This comment strikes me as more malicious than is warranted.
Given actual productivity studies tend to show a big, big decrease in productivity among workers who have individual or small group offices replaced with open office plans, the "significant portion of the population" claim seems unlikely, since they're apparently not significant enough to move the needle in productivity studies.
That's not how statistics work. If 60% of people see a 20% decrease in productivity in an open office and 40% see a 20% increase, then: .6 x .8 + .4 x 1.2 = .48 + .48 = .96, so you'd expect to see a 4% decrease in productivity.
In fact, people who work in open offices could even be the majority if the effects have different magnitudes. Let's say 70% of people experience a 10% increase in productivity when working in an open office, while the other 30% experience a 50% decrease. .7 x 1.1 + .3 x .5 = .77 + .15 = .92. So you could see an 8% reduction in productivity in an open office, even if 70% saw an increase in productivity.
You would, of course, see an increase in productivity in both scenarios if you let people work in the office spaces that are appropriate for their needs.
So would I. Suggesting they're bad for most people means that they're likely "bad" (i.e. not the best available workspace).
> I don't think you can argue against the fact that a significant portion of the population works well in open offices
If you're defining "works well" as "gets their work done", then I won't dispute it.
That's not the issue though. Do they do their best work? Do they lose productivity to the open office? Do they try to find jobs without open offices?
Yes to all of those questions[1][2][3][4].
> Instead, we should be focusing on finding office situations that work for each of us, and letting others choose office situations that work for them.
That's the thing, though. Remote-only companies are exactly that. You can opt into an office if you want to -- just gather some coworkers or go to a coworking space.
The oppressive decision-making you're referring to is inherent to open-office-only companies, where they say, "If you want to work here, you'll work in a large, loud room full of distractions."
1. https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/new-harvard-study-you-o...
2. https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/harvard-research-op...
3. https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/success/tca-the-open...
4. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateharrison/2018/11/07/new-stu...
Why are we trying to force everone into a one-size-fits-all workspace to begin with? Why not let people work in the spaces that work best for them?
> If you're defining "works well" as "gets their work done", then I won't dispute it.
> That's not the issue though. Do they do their best work? Do they lose productivity to the open office? Do they try to find jobs without open offices?
> Yes to all of those questions[1][2][3][4].
What you have is an impressive collection of links that study how the majority of people work best. None of that disproves what I'm saying, which is that there's a significant minority who works quite well in open offices.
> That's the thing, though. Remote-only companies are exactly that. You can opt into an office if you want to -- just gather some coworkers or go to a coworking space.
Sounds great to me. I've no idea why you're bringing this up as if I would disagree with it--I think remote work with the option of coming in to an office is a great idea. It's an effective implementation of what I said: "[W]e should be focusing on finding office situations that work for each of us, and letting others choose office situations that work for them."
> The oppressive decision-making you're referring to is inherent to open-office-only companies, where they say, "If you want to work here, you'll work in a large, loud room full of distractions."
Okay, so why are you attacking the open office when the oppressive decision making is clearly the real problem?
The company I'm currently working for has an open office, and most of the company works from home most of the week. I, the extrovert, have spent exactly one day in the office ever (not by choice--I live too far away or I'd be there every day). So there's nothing inherent to open offices that suddenly turns management into authoritarians.
You are probably more productive at slacking off (for example, reading fast and with full concentration), in addition to more productive at actually working when you get around to it.