Open Offices and How They Ruin the Workplace

Just saw an article about the detrimental effects of the open office that has become popularized in recent years. I’ve been dealing with open offices for some time now since roughly 2009 (I worked in one Japanese office). Here, I want to share my evaluation of them and where they belong (or not).

The biggest complaint people have stated in the open office environment is the decrease in productivity. This is horribly true. I remember when I first started working in one (Demand Media) and how people would throw footballs over our area while people shouted across the room. It was a train wreck. I felt like I was back in college at someone’s frat party. Amazingly, I managed to be productive enough to earn a paycheck but the style was just not for me. Since that point, I’ve pretty much never have gone back unfortunately.

Another office had long tables where room was a premium. Later on, as the number of employees grew, the tables grew more cramped and there was no spot to place your belongings, not even a drawer. As a tech worker, this is awful since you might have something stolen like notes. But again the real factor in the situation was the sheer noise factor. At one point, it was so infuriating that I told people that I was going to work from home until I got some code written just because it was becoming impossible to get anything done.

The following company was no better, although we did have drawers. But there was a constant sense of chaos with people interrupting you all the time. It might not just be from your coworkers but others in the vicinity because of the whole incubator culture. Sure, you have more energy in that type of environment, but it doesn’t mean the energy is necessarily positive.

Later on, I worked over at another spot (Quest Nutrition) where we were placed in an open area. Across one side were the sales team while behind us were customer service. As an engineer, those have to be the two worst teams to be positioned near (as well as marketing). Customer service would constantly badger developers directly rather than talking to the correct channels while sales might do the same. Eventually, they built walls around our group but that did little to mitigate the situation.  Later, we were placed into a room but it was too little, too late. Worse yet our desk were facing with our backs to the center, meaning once again zero privacy. I knew this move was done by the PM to enforce her Big Brother stance.

Later on, at the digital agency, I once again faced another open environment. This one was too horrid as my group was situated in the back. But it could get very loud due to the small quarters. For myself, I would talk with my coworkers quite a bit since they were extremely accessible. This I didn’t mind so much but I knew that my productivity would suffer since some of the conversations were irrelevant to the job.

I mean, I could go on and on about this situation. I have yet to encounter a situation where an open environment would ever beat a proper layout in an office space. I’ve done the cubicles in Japan at two different companies and with one company they simply had our tables positioned such that my group would face each other with a small table in the center for quick meetings. It wasn’t perfect by any means but it still afforded me generous space and privacy.

Something that the article had failed to mention was the health implications of an open environment. Companies love being cheap when it comes to how they spend for their employees. But many fail to realize the impact cutting cost creates. In this case, having an open environment where people are stored fairly tightly next to each other means that during the flu season, the entire office can easily get sick. The cubicle won’t help that greatly overall but it’s the space that matters. I heard at my new spot that a bunch of people got sick (mostly due to the party bus from the weekend). But I’m certain that once people start returning to work, the flu is going to be passed around for a good month or so just because of the structure of the place.

Lastly, the whole privacy thing is huge to me. Sure, I like to browse the web. But there’s this constant implied nagging where you have some sort of Big Brother issue of companies disliking spending for hours they waste on employees being unproductive. If you ask me, creating an open environment does nothing to alleviate this issue. If anything it makes the issue worse.

The real issue is a matter of trust. I recall my manager from Nikko Citigroup once telling me that people simply want to be treated like adults. If you treat people like adults then they will most likely act like an adult. That means you don’t hold their hand and micro manage them at every single turn. That’s an insult and a problem with the way work is delegated. If a person persistently is browsing the net, it means they’re bored and lack engaging work or that they’ve completed their tasks. I can never truly just blame employees for the faults of improper processes, communication and management.

Overall, I hope that the open environment becomes passe in the future. Companies should really start looking towards permanent remote offerings, especially in technology. It makes virtually zero sense to me why so many tech companies refuse to allow remote workers. The biggest insult is when you see a tech company hire an offshore team then require their tech workers to be onsite without providing a rational answer. Again, to me all that boils down to piss poor management and a lack of trust. A lot of this simply are archaic principals taught in schools and the older industries that do not work effectively for the technology wave.

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