How is it expensive to solve the bullpen issue? Tell people to STFU or build a wall in the office, or at least put up some dividers. It’s not rocket science.

Most CEOs and VPs are idiots, handing money around to each other in a circle jerk of old white guys club, backslapping each other for hiring each other and keeping the hegemony going.

These idiots do not know what they are doing, they have just been conditioned to ooze confidence and ignore critics.

I tried, and nearly got fired for this. Well, not fired, but I'm currently a contractor, and was told because of this that I may not become an actual hire. (This has since settled down, but I'm still not hired because of unrelated issues —they're still waiting for a government grant.)

The story is simple: we have a prefab building with 3 stories, a beautiful interior, 52 desks on each floor. All open, but for 2 closed meeting rooms per floor. And the toilet. The desks are arranged close to the window. The centre of the floor holds a couple meeting spaces, and the coffee machine. It was, unsurprisingly, very noisy.

I talked about the issue during a sprint's retrospective, and was told to lay out my proposals to HR. I had plenty, most of which didn't involve actually chopping up the "lovely" open space into actual desks. It was mostly about putting dividing half walls and generally muffling the whole thing, while mostly preserving that "open" look that is so dear to whoever doesn't actually work there (funny how most people who condoned the open plan end up spending most of their time in meetings).

I had indirect feedback later (through my team's product owner). Turned out the head HR was surprised to see me raise the subject—I was the first to do so. So she asked around. The feedback she got was mostly "well, yeah, it's an open plan, but it's okay", which she translated by "there is no problem, it's just a single contractor being difficult". I guess she was oblivious to the biases introduced by her being in a position of power. That nobody will say to her face that the noise is not okay, lest she thinks they can't fit in. (I no longer have that fear, for better or worse.)

I have later learned that a "Life in the Open Plan" group formed because of the noise issue.

> I'm currently a contractor, and was told because of this that I may not become an actual hire

They are never going to hire you. The contract is, in a way, a more airtight way of paying you under the table. Depending on the size of the business, labeling everyone as 1099 can reduce taxes for the business quite a bit. Thing is, though, is that it's illegal. But it's usually up to the worker to report it, so it is extremely under-enforced.

Bottom line is that you're being abused. I encourage you to file Form SS-8 as soon as possible with the IRS and check into your state's labor office to see what they can do.

https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-ss8

Source: I left a contractor role in October after realizing that I was a victim of misclassification.

First, I live in France. The practices you speak of are familiar, but legislation may be different. Second, several contractors did got hired before me. Third, the terms of the grant they seek compels them to have very few contractors. They are expected to hire en masse if they get it.

Fourth, my contractor status is actually secondary to me. More important is being allowed to work part time (4 days a week), which I'm currently negotiating.

I honestly don’t know why so many companies are clinging to open offices with a death grip. Who does this benefit???

Accounting. Open offices take less space, which is cheaper. The real costs are hidden, so they tend to be ignored.

It also looks good from the outside.

Yeah, the funny thing is that the accountants and HR all had private offices with doors that locked because they dealt with confidential matters.

In our case, even the higher ups have their desk in the open plan. Closer to the corners of course, but still. And I think this actually contributes to the delusion of harmlessness of this environment.

Having their desk in the open plan, they're more be inclined to think they are as affected as everyone else. Except they're not, because they spend way more time in meetings, and live on the manager's schedule.

As far as I can tell, the higher ups actually do mean well. I'm not sure what drew them to the open plan, but I think cold blooded cynicism explains only a fraction of their error.

I am surprised no companies offer noise cancelling headphones for staff. They are relatively cheap (compared to restructuring an office building) and could increase productivity a lot for some people.

Those headphones only block constant background noise, not conversations. In order to do that you have to put your hearing at risk with enough actual noise to overwhelm the rest.

I have tried some decent quality ones. They don't block out conversations completely, but it does sound a lot quieter. They are definitely an improvement over not wearing them.

I tried this, and my problem was that I would end up with "listening fatigue" or whatever you want to call it after 6 hours of listening every day.

I think he meant "conversations" as in someone walking up and interrupting you to have a conversation

Yep.. my Bose QC35's are amazing!

> He and HR were like "you should have let us know before it got to this point."

Why is this so common? What kind of brain dead morons are becoming managers?

Why do they even become managers if they don't want to manage. At my firm, it was the same. Some people were automatic fits and managed to do fine. The others were left to fend for themselves. No mentorship, no management, nothing.

I'm fairly aware that the about half the management at this job thought I was inscrutable. Someone who kind of knew me was interviewing for a position and asked my boss about me. His reply was something to the effect of "He's the genius who we leave alone in the corner while he does mad science experiments."

I guess it's complimentary in a way, but I can articulate exactly what I did in a way that my mom, who is an artist and barely uses a computer, can understand.

I think a lot of the problem is that some managers are really inflexible. They only know one way of management, and if that doesn't work they don't know what to do. They are a lot like teachers in that regard. We've all had teachers who could only explain things one way, and they constantly confused students who didn't grasp that explanation.

I even got my boss and HR to admit that I was really self-aware, and was able to articulate what I needed to succeed. It was like that meme where you break a logical explanation down into atomic parts and get them to agree with every step along the way, but they just said "no" to the conclusion.

I guess it's maybe an example of the Peter Principle in action.

> That's because fixing 1 and 2 are really expensive.

Re point #1, I simply don't understand how, long term, it is more cost efficient to hire and train someone entirely new than it is to build a culture of valuing current staff. Maybe I'm naive? Maybe it is difficult in ways I don't perceive?

Different budgets. Raises are continual, ongoing costs but the cost for hiring a new person can be considered one off costs, even though you are performing the "one off" task repeatedly

Some managers also seem to only respond to crises. Being down an employee is a crisis. Making sure that your employee gets an appropriate raise isn't, especially since most people aren't going to leave their boss know that they are looking for another job

This is why you take notes.