Re:Remote Work Can (and Does) Boost Employee Productivity
by eshyong on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @12:41PM
(#22750658)
IMO the real reason open floor plans persist is because it's cheaper for the company than the alternatives (cubicles, offices). The more people you can pack into work "pods" the better.
Re:Remote Work Can (and Does) Boost Employee Productivity
by opo on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @02:46PM
(#22752192)
The usual cost argument for open floor plans is that by devoting less square feet to each employee, you save money on rent. (The costs to actually put in a door and some sheet rock walls is a one time expense that isn't very high in comparison to the monthly costs for rent.)
The reality though is that if employees are less productive, any savings in rent will be small compared to the costs associated with lower worker productivity (assuming you have expensive employees like engineers etc).
Yeah, I wish this was more normal to aim for, "It depends". Everyone is always trying to come up with a silver bullet that works for everything, and once they find something that works for them, they try to shove it down everyone's throat.
Same happened when "open floor offices" gained popularity, the cargo culting began and now you're a bad company unless you have a open floor office. Same is happening with remote work.
As someone who mostly does frontend, I need to be able to work tightly with product and design teams, to communicate and ask questions during implementation.
But back when I did backend work, I could mostly just receive requirements from product and frontend team, spend time in isolation to fulfill those requirements and my work was done (most of the time at least, not always).