The death of privacy in open-plan offices

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23502251

by equilibrium • 13 years ago

57 59 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

greenyoda• 13 years ago

That link gives me a 404 error.

This URL seems to be a copy of the same article - it has a reference to the original BBC link at the bottom:

http://www.newsofthenation.com/2013/07/31/the-death-of-priva...

Edit: The original URL seems to be working again.

Here's a seemingly related article at the BBC:

"The pleasures and perils of the open-plan office"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21878739

thejosh• 13 years ago

I also find it super distracting when developing.. However when doing frontend website stuff (HTML/JS/etc) I don't.

Anything that requires concentration usually broken quite easily in open plans for me.

agilebyte2• 13 years ago

When I do design I actually do not want people to see my monitor. Too often someone just interrupts because they have to say "ooh, great logo" or something like that.

When I develop, nobody cares about the wall of characters that mean nothing to them.

touristtam• 13 years ago

weird, from the link greenyoda provided (thanks by the way).

publication date: "July 31, 2013"

and at the footer: "This piece is based on an edited transcript of Lucy Kellaway’s History of Office Life, produced by Russell Finch, of Somethin’ Else, for Radio 4. Episode nine, Whatever Happened to the Paperless Office?, is broadcast at 13:45 BST on 1 August"

So is the radio show to be listen to tomorrow at quarter to two BST? O_O

keithpeter4• 13 years ago

The recording already exists, and someone decided to push out the transcript. The date is the date the recording is to be played on the radio.

javindo• 13 years ago

Quite a few Radio 4 shows are pre-recorded segments, usually available beforehand as a podcast download and afterwards on iPlayer.

andyking2• 13 years ago

Unlike a lot of music radio stations, which are just a man sitting in a room playing songs off a computer and chattering between them, Radio 4 has a lot of well-researched, pre-recorded content that would be impossible to broadcast live.

toyg• 13 years ago

It's called synergy: BBC website promotes BBC radio programme, BBC radio programme promotes BBC tv programme, which in turn promotes BBC website and so on...

DanBC• 13 years ago

Lucy Kellaway's series is great, and well worth listening to.

I think the radio content is available worldwide. (Something weird about UK subjects not needing to pay licence fee to listen to radio?)

lucaspiller• 13 years ago

This is part of a series, you can (at least in the UK) listen to previous episodes online:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b037kz7w

bentaber• 13 years ago

And the alternative is? This article does a good job of complaining while proposing no other solution.

lobotryas• 13 years ago

What makes you think the onus is on the complainer to provide solutions?

georgemcbay• 13 years ago

"And the alternative is?"

Uh, traditional office spaces? Or at the very least, real cubicles?

I guess the under 30 crowd may not be aware, but open offices in the US are a relatively new phenomenon for tech workers. I'm 40 and when I first started working as a programmer, suggesting implementing a modern open-plan office would get you laughed out of the building. Now it is nearly impossible to get away from them, much to my chagrin.

Nursie2• 13 years ago

Hell no!

As a UK worker that's always worked open plan, I find cube farms extremely oppressive.

rubinelli2• 13 years ago

Team offices. Take two of those cross-shaped workspaces, plop them down in a relatively narrow room, and you have a decent office for a team of eight.

rafitorres• 13 years ago

The article has a sidebar explaining "hot-desking":

"Hot-desking - the idea that employees don't retain a fixed desk in an office - is a key part of organisations' move towards cheaper, more flexible workplaces. The more employees work from home, the more organisations can shrink their offices to accommodate only the number of people who are in every day."

In addition to the telecommuting angle, I've seen open plan offices like this that also have a limited number of closed rooms where employees can go for a while if they want some privacy, or if they need to work with a colleague for a while. That seems like a good compromise.

willyt3• 13 years ago

The reason why open plan offices are here to stay is because they are much more space efficient than traditional offices and therefore cheaper. Traditional offices use up lots of space for corridors, door swings and duplicated circulation routes to desks etc. Also, only the offices on the perimeter of the building have a view to the outside so it limits the depth of the plan, unless you run the kind of business which has miserable employees. They also require more complicated a/c, fire alarms, lighting.

keithpeter4• 13 years ago

I take your point but schools and colleges seem to manage the 'large number of medium sized rooms each with some daylight, corridor, escape route' problem. Classrooms can be converted into 10 to 12 person offices relatively easily. There has been quite a lot of new building in schools and colleges in the UK, so I'll try to find costings.

Mind you, the new college buildings at least in UK also have open plan offices for teaching and admin staff. Many of my colleagues do prep work in unoccupied classrooms or work at home or do prep at odd times when the staff room is quiet. This, of course, short circuits the interaction argument for open plan offices.

agilebyte2• 13 years ago

Yeah, can't imagine how you are supposed to have a 1-on-1 private convo with a student in an open environment like that either. Perhaps there always needs to be a bunch of break out rooms for use too.

VladRussian2• 13 years ago

Many of my colleagues do prep work in unoccupied classrooms or work at home or do prep at odd times when the staff room is quiet. This, of course, short circuits the interaction argument for open plan offices.

yep, looking at the number of empty desks in our newly converted (with big pompousness touting increased collaboration and innovation) offices i see the same effect. Personally, i also decreased my office hours and when in the office i usually with headphones on enjoying 80ies metal

willyt3• 13 years ago

You're right, research shows that about 10 people is the best number of people in a team and therefore if it was just a question of doing a good design you would design spaces around these units. But, as I explained in my other comment below, design is unfortunately driven by the market economics of land values much more than the needs of end users.

James_Duval• 13 years ago

Cheaper, but also worse for employee health and morale, is not necessarily cheaper in the long-term.

Movable glass walls and partitions address most of your other concerns, I think.

willyt3• 13 years ago

As an architect and as a human that has had to work in these kind of offices, I completely agree. But the spec of offices is usually decided by a developer to maximise rental income, not the convenience of the end user. It's pretty unusual for a company to have it's own headquarters built to a custom design these days. In fact, you usually have different architects designing the shell and core to those designing the fit out. The developers architect designing the shell and core will have been instructed to maximise the lettable area based on the assumption that the fit out will most likely be open plan as that what the rental market is asking for. The fit out design will typically be done by the the lessor's architect after the shell and core is under construction. So yes, you can fit out partitions for lots of cellular offices but they will cost you a massive amount of money in rent as you will waste quite a lot of Net Office Area in doing so. Bear in mind that typical Cat 1 office rents in London are about £500 to 700/m2/year. If you really cram people in like call centres you allow about 6m2 per person out of Net Office Area. Boutique corporate lawyers more like 12-15m2. Resulting cost per staff member of £3000 to £10000 per year just to rent their desk space. So a company like Google with a progressive attitude and more money than they know what to do with will fit out to maximise productivity, but most others will fit out to minimise rental costs.

keithpeter4• 13 years ago

Quote from OA

"If you want a private conversation at work, you're better off having it in a public place - the stairwell or coffee shop - than in the goldfish bowl in the office."

There is a coffee shop in the centre of Birmingham where I now avoid sitting downstairs in the cellar. Too many groups of managers sitting round talking in some detail about what are obviously personnel matters. They have paperwork on the tables as well for heavens sake...

andyking2• 13 years ago

As a case in point, I opened up this BBC News page in an Elinks text-mode browser, so that I can read the content without the person at the other side of the office knowing I'm reading BBC News instead of doing whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing.

I'm far, far more efficient in my work when I have a bit of privacy, and I can relax and get on with things without thinking my screen is constantly being overlooked by colleagues. The constant feeling of being watched doesn't lead to more efficient work, just pointless stress.

A lot of people have 'strategically-placed' objects on their desks, between their monitors and other staff. Bags, boxes, and so on. No one wants to be in this type of office.

Nursie2• 13 years ago

I've even seen people with wing-mirrors attached to the monitor!

That said, I tend to get over it and browse what I feel like, even if my screen can be seen. Accusations of timewasting have rarely been forthcoming because I'm still very productive.

speeder6• 13 years ago

I remember when I worked into a large open plan office, people were obviously very "alt-tab jumpy" or were good in wasting time (ie: leave code on screen, and then do their best to not work while looking that they were working).

But soon one junior guy got tired of this, and decided to not even hide it, he just browsed comedic blogs and youtube at will...

Soon other people followed...

Soon the entire office was improductive with lots of people getting their attention drawn to other people youtube videos.

Then the firings started... and then the quittings started in retaliation to the firings. Yay, problem solved, because now there are so few employees that the empty computers are enough to block the vision of each other.

I wonder how they are doing now.

Silhouette• 13 years ago

Your position seems strange to me. I'm all for keeping things light-hearted at the office and having a bit of downtime and socialisation during the working day, but if people are doing that all the time and not doing the job they are paid for, why shouldn't they be fired? Their attendance at the office and collection of pay is basically fraud. If others quit voluntarily in retaliation at firing people who don't do their job, then it's not a huge stretch to guess that the additional quitters weren't the most diligent staff in the organisation either. Maybe the employer is better off without them.

johnward2• 13 years ago

"No one wants to be in this type of office." I didn't want to be in a cube farm when I was there either but at least there was a bit of "privacy" even though someone was logging everything I did on my computer. The open office plan of my office doesn't bother me too much. I just started to ignore people seeing me browse. If someone says something (which no one has) I plan on making a point that I still get all of my work done. I still end up getting the most work done when I'm at home.

alexfarran• 13 years ago

You might also want to listen to The Search For The Perfect office, another BBC documentary on the subject http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036wfzv

eloisant• 13 years ago

I believe walls made of glass also have a legal purpose. If 2 coworkers (say a male boss and a female subordinate) can go completely isolated in a room, the female risks actual harassment while the male risks a false accusation on harassment.

The wall made of glass removes this liability. It can still have a phonic isolation.

atirip2• 13 years ago

You are trolling or joking, right? Or where do you live?

speeder6• 13 years ago

You are very naive to believe this won't happen in most of the western world.

Currently with feminism all the rage, and sue happy people all the rage, there are lots of good reasons to avoid getting sued.

For example, I know a couple of taxi drivers that refuse to drive women, specially a single woman, because of repeated problems with false rape accusations. (likewise, there are lots of real rape cases with taxi drivers involved).

EDIT: I remembered when my dad worked at a church helping people, and kicked out of his office any women that asked him to lock the door, no matter the reason. Then he explained to me he has a personal rule of never locking himself alone with a woman in a room, unless it is my mom.

weland• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, he isn't. The world is that fucked up.

SomeRandomUser• 13 years ago

According to the internet, man + woman = InstaRape or at least FakeRape.

I sincerely don't know if they really think this way or if it is an internet-y thing to say but they behave like normal people in their real lifes.

tokipin• 13 years ago

lmao @ woodrank

edw519• 13 years ago

The "deadly trio" of open office plans for programmers:

1. We are very often judged by superficial appearance by others because they have no idea what we do or how we do it. This can include our own managers and influential others.

2. We can appear to be doing absolutely nothing (or worse if on the internet) when we are actually thinking. In this mode, we are often contributing much more value when it appears we are slacking off.

3. Conversely, we can appear to be very busy typing into an IDE when we are just spinning our wheels and getting nowhere. We don't know what to do but feel compelled to act instead of think because people are watching.

hga• 13 years ago

Indeed; I once lost what might have otherwise been a good job at a startup because the other non-founder programmer, who got his job through nepotism, was a constant fury of coding and debugging.

Compared to him I appeared to be a slacker, I spent a lot more time thinking, much less time coding, and very little time debugging. And produced a lot more working code per unit of time. But this was in 1984 using PCs with no server, there was no way to objectively measure what I was accomplishing vs. him.

BillyMaize• 13 years ago

As I read this article I sit in an open office environment where us engineers trying our best to focus on what we are doing. We use to have our own offices but those are now empty because the interior designer told our CEO that packing everyone into a big open space was, of course, cheaper but also happens to be a great environment for knowledge workers to "work together to solve problems". The engineer that acts as support for common problems and constantly gets phone calls and loud talking floor workers sits right in the middle of us. Being on the edge of the open area and having a wall to my back wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for said wall having big huge windows so people can see what I'm doing and I can't hear them walking up behind me.

Ever since the move over to this open space I have honestly thought about quitting my job. One guy already has left after they moved him from his office with a nice view out the window to sitting facing a corner. I always feel like I'm being watched and that I can't even check my email really quick without being thought of as a slacker. A part of me wants to build a case from research to show my boss how bad this kind of environment really is but I know that nothing will change (even though the last CEO is long gone).

yuhong• 13 years ago

but I know that nothing will change (even though the last CEO is long gone).

Why, BTW?

michaelochurch4• 13 years ago

Open plan offices (in technology; there are plenty of work environments where they make sense and there's nothing negative to read into it) were originally designed with malicious intent. Now it's the default, and even touted as a perk, if you believe that. But the original purpose was pretty depraved. There's also quite a strong discrimination thread to that story. Those people who get pregnant are a lot more likely to leave if they have an open-plan office during that time.

One of the things to keep in mind about white-collar sociology is that all of the things that seem like irritating inefficiencies-- the pointless busywork, the loyalty tests, the focus on sacrifice rather than contribution, and the illness-inducing open-back visibility-- are actually designed to make people sick. Why? Because there's literally no other way, in most companies, to figure out who deserves to advance. In the white-collar world, the manager types who run it will never know who's good at his job and who's not, so the only way to test people is to load them up with pointless unpleasantness and see who departs or breaks first.

Not all individual managers actually people to break. In fact, the middle managers generally don't want it, because it makes messes they have to deal with. However, the only way to resolve the contest for limited advancement opportunities is for people to get so fed up or sick that they cannot continue.

That's also why mainstream corporate work will never be able to accommodate depression or anxiety disorders. Those illnesses, especially when they occur in the previously healthy-- burnout and nervous breakdown-- are intrinsic features of the game. It'd be a different sport without them, and the people who've been winning one game for the past few decades aren't about to change the rules.

johnward2• 13 years ago

"That's also why mainstream corporate work will never be able to accommodate depression or anxiety disorders." I've always dealt with this to some extent since I was about 12 years old. It really became an actual problem after working for a mega corp. My soul was crushed. I was working crazy shifts and having needless stress piled on by my manager for things that weren't even a big deal. When I had to work weekends 1 person had to be manning the phone at all times (since it was a support role). I ask my boss "what about when I go to the bathroom". His answer was that you "must take the phone and answer it at all times". I left that job and landed in startup that ended up getting purchased by another mega corp. Still having trouble dealing with it.

notacoward• 13 years ago

The people who push for cube farms never like to see this mentioned, but one of the major motivations is taxes. In some jurisdictions, property tax (paid directly or passed on as rent) is based in part on built space - including offices with real walls/doors but not cubes. Therefore, the cube farm is taxed less or not at all, lowering overhead costs. It has nothing to do with productivity, communication, or any such.

yummyfajitas2• 13 years ago

I work in an open-plan office and none of the stuff in this article rings true. The office is open-plan for everyone, from the lowliest intern to the CEO. Desks are not categorized by rank - the new CTO occupies the desk formerly held by a 3 day/week freelancer. A few people are stuck in marginally smaller desks due to a space crunch, but apart from that all the desks have the same model #.

As for the risk of my boss sneaking up on me while I'm looking at baby elephants on /r/aww, I'm sure it's happened since I make no attempt to hide it. It's a complete non-event.

The lack of outward signs of power is actually confusing. A person who sits in the vicinity of accounting recently came over and started asking for progress reports from a developer. It took about a week before that developer's manager informed him that the "accountant" was actually the CEO.

Don't get me wrong - I can make criticisms of open office plans, mainly about the distractions and the ease with which one can be interrupted. But the pseudo-marxist critique of power dynamics embedded in this article doesn't ring true for me.

michaelochurch4• 13 years ago

There are still power dynamics in an open-plan-for-everyone arrangement.

The CEO may sit in open view, but:

1. He can leave any time he wants for a cafe, a conference room, or even take a drive and go home for the day. Open plan isn't horrible for people who can escape it any time they wish. It's the peons who are expected to be there 8 hours per day-- the ones that people will say shit about if they spend an hour or two (no matter how productive) away from the desk-- who are going to get sick.

2. He can do whatever the fuck he wants. If he wants to spend the whole day playing video games, he can. He has nothing to fear from other people seeing his daily activities. If he has stinky farts, the rest of the office will start eating beans and cheese to match the stink of his flatus.

yummyfajitas2• 13 years ago

He can leave any time he wants for a cafe, a conference room, or even take a drive and go home for the day...If he wants to spend the whole day playing video games, he can.

Why do you think a developer can't do these things?

I don't disagree that there are power dynamics and office politics. They are just orthogonal to the seating arrangement.

I've occasionally wondered if it might be better if there were outward signs of power. At the very least, it would give us apolitical developers a visual clue that ignoring or talking down to person X might be something to avoid.

The death of privacy in open-plan offices

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