How to survive an open office

Re:How to survive an open office by Cthulhu_ on Thursday July 18, 2019 @10:22AM (#20470057)

Do they work better, or do they just feel better about it? I mean I can imagine that there's a segment of people who feel that time spent on discussing things can also be productive. And to a point / in certain situations that makes sense - why waste eight hours writing code when you could also talk for five minutes and do half of it?

But I get it, I too tend to measure my productivity and whether I've had a good day by the amount of code or functionality I added, not so much the softer skills.

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Re:How to survive an open office by tomtheelder on Thursday July 18, 2019 @10:36AM (#20470226)

I'm one of those people. I've done two jobs where I wasn't in an open office, one was a cubicle, one was a private office. Both times I felt very lonely and disconnected, and my motivation suffered greatly.

If I needed maximize output for a single day then I'd probably choose a private office, but over a long period of time it definitely hurts me. So the answer to "do I work better or just feel better about it" is: both.

That said, I feel I'm on the extreme end here as I would also cite loneliness and isolation as the single biggest drawback of being an engineer. I think many engineers would list the ability to work alone on your own stuff as a plus.

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Re:How to survive an open office by tombert on Thursday July 18, 2019 @10:28AM (#20470131)

I will admit that there is the occasional benefit of the "off the cuff" conversation that you overhear which allows you to add or receive input that you wouldn't have otherwise before, but I think that the amount of times that this is actually useful is a lot less than reported.

I also think that those benefits get quickly offset the second that I get a cold that I wouldn't have otherwise, or get pulled away from something for a triviality.

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