Open plan offices are a nightmare
Working in an open plan office is a nightmare. I can't stand it. Agilists, on the other hand, advocate it as an environment that improves collaboration. Even outside of software development someone is trumping open plan offices:
As Professor Sull points out, open-plan offices bring many benefits. They allow for informal interactions in real time, as opposed to staged and ritualised episodic encounters in scheduled meetings and conference calls. They also allow serendipity to happen: chance encounters in common spaces, the bouncing back and forth of ideas, odd connections that can lead to breakthroughs in thinking.
There are 17 people in our office, which is divided into two main groups, separated by a walkway. There are no partitions between workstations, so a conversation between two is a conversation between all. To make matters worse, there isn't one but two radios playing, one on each side, each tuned to a different radio station. Moreover, we develop software for embedded devices, which have a habit of beeping to indicate success, failure, or termination. Even when it is quiet, the sound of 17 people typing on a keyboard is anything but relaxing.
There is a lot of evidence supporting my feeling that open plan offices are a nightmare. A research paper entitled "The influence of workplace environment on workers' welfare, performance, and productivity" by Emmanuel Majekodunmi Ajala reported the following:
Noise is one of the leading causes of employees’ distraction, leading to reduced productivity, serious inaccuracies, and increased job-related stress. According to Bruce (2008), study showed that workplace distractions cut employee productivity by as much as 40%, and increase errors by 27%.
The following TED talk entitled "The 4 ways sound affects us" by Julian Treasure puts the productivity loss as high as 66%:
Some will argue that it's something you will get used to; however, this study found no evidence of employees becoming accustomed to the distraction:
Out of the sample, 99% reported that their concentration was impaired by various components of office noise, especially telephones left ringing at vacant desks and people talking in the background. No evidence for habituation to these sounds was found.
Please don't get me wrong. I understand the importance of good communication in the workplace. I don't believe developers should be shut away from their peers; software development is a collaborative process. That being said, our work is plain difficult. Peace and quiet is required so we can concentrate on the intricacies of the complex systems we're trying to build.
I think it's about time office space was designed to facilitate both collaborative team-based work and please-let-me-concentrate rooms.
!cheetah whitelist
Okay, I have whitelisted @jonblack. I won't bug them.
Thanks. Does this also count as verification of do I need to post a photo with a white piece of paper?
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I'm the original author. You can verify by comparing my profile image with the twitter account image for the blog. I also realise now what the tags are for. Could you make "programming" the main tag for me? Editing it doesn't change a thing.
The main tag will be the first tag. :)
Would you mind actually tweeting something like "I am @jonblack on steemit"?
Done. :)
Thanks. Does this also count as verification of do I need to post a photo with a white piece of paper?
Totally. So glad to see a study being referenced! Also, it really should be obvious that open plan offices are a nightmare. If you feel like it, you can read my explanation below of why I think obviously stupid layouts are so common.
During my interior architecture education I was surprised to discover how little canon is based on studies. Ideas of what works tend to come from designer preferences and to run in trends as designers are often trend-conscious.
As a fish out of water, a writer studying design, I noticed there are styles of working, such as in little clusters of desks, that just seem more natural to designer types. Having come from a seminar world, where the tables tend to be arranged into a big rectangle so everyone can participate in central discussion, I found myself constantly questioning assumptions about environmental psychology. Those studies are expensive to fund and their findings are stodgy. One sad reality is that decisions made to save money or cram in more workers are often arrived at and justified by design concepts that don't have any idea how to consider user experience.
For instance, I saw a fancy office design for workers who would often travel between offices, so there were lots of these little perching spots in nooks and crannies along the hallways. It actually looked great with its sleek curves and hip minimalism, unless you thought about it as your life. So, you just came from the airport and what you really want is to scrunch on a stool in a hallway at an admittedly very gorgeous tiny desk to remind you how much the company values your physical presence? Did no one think this through? Probably not. Seriously. They thought about giving tours to investors.
Great comment. I think usability takes a back seat in a lot of domains. Perhaps is an urban legend, but I heard that an architect designed a building and didn't add paths. After a few months of people walking across the grass leaving bald patches, the paths were added to match where people had been walking.
I believe it! In fact, it's even more believable if adding the paths where people wore down the grass was the plan. Very high concept. :)
I completely agree with you, this is often very ineffective. Moreover, sometimes there are many departments and even a sales department that constantly need to make calls or other negotiations. In general, there seem to be solutions for this too. I recently read about office pod - https://hushoffice.com/en-us/private-pods-what-does-privacy-actually-feel-like-in-an-office-pod/
Although for open-type offices, each person needs to create a capsule.
Hi! I am a content-detection robot. This post is to help manual curators; I have NOT flagged you.
Here is similar content:
http://blog.humblecoder.com/open-plan-offices-are-a-nightmare/
NOTE: I cannot tell if you are the author, so ensure you have proper verification in your post (or in a reply to me), for humans to check!