Employers are rethinking open-plan office design

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by onemoresoop on Friday May 22, 2020 @03:41PM (#23276045)

Yeah, the transparent modern panopticon. They think that when people feel watched produce more. Im in no way more productive this way. I have to make a hard effort to zone out into coding, and this effort is consuming a lot of energy in itself. I think its our time to bargain and not allow this to happen when we all go back to work. I hope for partial or full time work from home setup. The value extraction machine should keep that in mind

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by itronitron on Friday May 22, 2020 @03:54PM (#23276189)

If people feel that they are being constantly watched then it also provides them an incentive to hire coworkers who will make them look good by comparison.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by ken on Friday May 22, 2020 @04:45PM (#23276768)

> I think its our time to bargain

If only there were some sort of organization that would enable us to do this collectively!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by pmiller2 on Friday May 22, 2020 @04:51PM (#23276837)

You mean some sort of organization where workers unite to advance their common interests?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by dvtrn on Friday May 22, 2020 @06:09PM (#23277641)

Since the other comment where I replied trying to unpacking these two comments got flag-killed and it seems some are haranguing over the stylistics of the posts here, let me try running with this:

I think workspace design and office ergonomics are a potentially easy win for collective bargaining in the information workforce, especially now-as stated by others this is a unique opportunity and in my opinion the incentives align between worker productivity and public health.

Interested to hear more thoughts.

Edit: oh. This one flag killed too. Never mind.

[ Parent | on HN ]

[dead]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by mdturnerphys on Friday May 22, 2020 @05:58PM (#23277546)

From the HN guidelines:

Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by M5x7wI3CmbEem10 on Friday May 22, 2020 @06:34PM (#23277841)

ha, thanks. I’ll fix it now.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by dvtrn on Friday May 22, 2020 @05:49PM (#23277458)

Please don’t reduce talks of worker collective action into a shibboleth of “%online_community% is turning into Reddit”. We can do better than that.

Like supporting collective worker action.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by grogenaut on Friday May 22, 2020 @06:01PM (#23277567)

They mean chains of memes and call response waves and not just saying what you mean. eg the leading jokes about collective.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by dvtrn on Friday May 22, 2020 @06:05PM (#23277602)

Ok.

I still think they bring an interesting bit of salt and pepper to the discussion: open-workspaces bring out a lot of opinions from workers and employees, and in my opinion are pretty low hanging fruit for a newly collectively-organized white collar workforce in 2020.

Your thoughts?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by grogenaut on Friday May 22, 2020 @07:22PM (#23278237)

I think you're not getting many responses because few people agree with you or don't care. or because you are threadjacking. you may think your post is on topic but I don't think a lot of people would.

Also I can't parse most of your message. I think you are so far into your belief in this premise that no one can follow what you are saying; you are making a LOT of assumptions that others aren't.

For instance I have no idea what "newly collectively-organized white collar workforce in 2020" means. or "open-workspaces bring out a lot of opinions from workers and employees"

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by rhizome on Friday May 22, 2020 @07:19PM (#23278209)

open-workspaces bring out a lot of opinions from workers and employees

...thoughts?

Yes. It brings opinions out from people with certain personality traits.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by M5x7wI3CmbEem10 on Friday May 22, 2020 @05:52PM (#23277485)

[deleted]

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by dvtrn on Friday May 22, 2020 @05:56PM (#23277528)

You’re certainly free to clear up what you were referring to versus being intentionally vague, but instead of a protracted debate over unclear drafting versus poor reading comprehension, let’s just get back on topic:

Do you think collective worker action is a valid path to take during this pandemic to improve working conditions as areas consider reopening and lifting quarantine restrictions?

I do, and I agree with others who say this opportunity is a good one to explore some of those options and begin having some of those dialogues to build effective coalitions.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by citizenkeen on Friday May 22, 2020 @06:02PM (#23277583)

I'm not who you're responding to, but I agree with you completely. I just wish the posts upthread hadn't cluttered up the thread with vague dance-around-the-subject language, instead of just stating what they thought and why they thought it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by M5x7wI3CmbEem10 on Friday May 22, 2020 @06:32PM (#23277819)

[deleted]

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Employers are rethinking open-plan office design by dvtrn on Friday May 22, 2020 @07:07PM (#23278109)

I apologize if asking for your opinion on unionization was read as having made the assumption that you were full-on against unionization, the purpose of me asking for your input was a precise attempt to avoid assuming what your opinions were.

If that’s what you thought I said, then this is on me to phrase myself better in the future.

[ Parent | on HN ]