It really depends on your role at work. I wear many hats, so I've seen see how for project management an open office is a really productive and dynamic environment. However, for creatives, it is 180 degrees in the wrong direction.
In teaching you talk about time on task, and how to get everyone in the classroom to focus on the work.
The open office environment can work in certain circumstances (roles) but if you are paying someone to focus on work, then provide them with an environment where they can focus on the work.
At least these days, ear phones that subdue external sounds are available and folks can usually figure out how to block visual distractions.
"Orbiting the Gaint Hairball" has a good example of someone setting up an office that is outside of corporate guidelines that serves the people that work in it.
Depends on the kind of work... If I'm working out the math on a new design for a robot, I prefer to be completely alone (in an individual office, or simply working from home). Later, when I'm building the robot and just tightening bolts (no major thinking required), I prefer to be around others in an open area.
Sound in general makes it so hard to concentrate; human voices are worse. I suspect brains are built to pay attention to human voices, or at least mine seems to do so. Noise attenuating headphones don't help; they work ok at blocking out trucks but poorly on voices. Earbuds plus music do an ok job, but the studies I've seen show decreased performance when listening to music. Even if you think you aren't, part of your brain is paying attention. And really, why do I have to listen to music all day to drown out the noise of people.
And let's not forget visual distractions -- all the shit waving around in my field of vision doesn't help either.
Like I suspect many of you, I'm consistently far more productive late at night. In my case, that's because it's the only time I have where it's quiet and I'm left alone.
Absolutely agree. Some of my most productive periods in the last decade were when I was sharing an office with one other person, with closed doors. Problem with late work, much as I like it, is that it screws with family life :-/
Yes, they suck. I'm lucky enough to have an arrangement where I can remote work twice a week, and I routinely get more thinking done on those days than I do the rest of the week.
That being said, there is a lot of merit in having people interact with each other to cover issues and problems and ideas involved in the overall design of the product you're building.
I have noticed my office working habits to follow a pattern: I could usually be productive working with 1 or 2 person around (well isolated group cubicle or private office), but I would make that only about half my day and work the other half by myself. When I wouldn't have any space at my disposal to do that, I would end up arriving after noon and staying until 9 or 10pm when everyone is gone and that's when most of the work gets done.
I've just moved into a truly open office for the first time. I hate it so much - even a little privacy helps. I'm a big fan of chest height walls onto the 'public' areas then those table tennis height things between people. But I do not like feeling that every man and his dog is watching me all the time.
I prefer team rooms. Don't care if they are real or virtual, but it's much easier to collaborate if the people involved in a project are together somehow.
I think that there should be two open office options to this poll. One of the big problems in discussing this issue is that 'open-office' can mean 200 people in one big room, or a team of 16 people sharing an open office. These are obviously completely different working conditions, but both of them are called 'open-office'. Without two separate definitions, people bring their own experiences to how they view this phrase.
I say this, because I have worked in a 16 person team open office, and while there was some adjustment to it, it was a pretty ok working environment. Right across the hall, the rest of the company worked in one big room. We were lucky that we were 'noisy enough' that we got our own team open-office, but the poor guys on all the other teams got to work in the so-called 'collaborative environment' where talking in groups was basically banned. It got nicknames like 'The Tomb' and (sarcastic) 'Happy-land'.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 39.9 ms ] threadIn teaching you talk about time on task, and how to get everyone in the classroom to focus on the work.
The open office environment can work in certain circumstances (roles) but if you are paying someone to focus on work, then provide them with an environment where they can focus on the work.
At least these days, ear phones that subdue external sounds are available and folks can usually figure out how to block visual distractions.
"Orbiting the Gaint Hairball" has a good example of someone setting up an office that is outside of corporate guidelines that serves the people that work in it.
Sound in general makes it so hard to concentrate; human voices are worse. I suspect brains are built to pay attention to human voices, or at least mine seems to do so. Noise attenuating headphones don't help; they work ok at blocking out trucks but poorly on voices. Earbuds plus music do an ok job, but the studies I've seen show decreased performance when listening to music. Even if you think you aren't, part of your brain is paying attention. And really, why do I have to listen to music all day to drown out the noise of people.
And let's not forget visual distractions -- all the shit waving around in my field of vision doesn't help either.
Like I suspect many of you, I'm consistently far more productive late at night. In my case, that's because it's the only time I have where it's quiet and I'm left alone.
That being said, there is a lot of merit in having people interact with each other to cover issues and problems and ideas involved in the overall design of the product you're building.
I say this, because I have worked in a 16 person team open office, and while there was some adjustment to it, it was a pretty ok working environment. Right across the hall, the rest of the company worked in one big room. We were lucky that we were 'noisy enough' that we got our own team open-office, but the poor guys on all the other teams got to work in the so-called 'collaborative environment' where talking in groups was basically banned. It got nicknames like 'The Tomb' and (sarcastic) 'Happy-land'.