Or we could just work remotely, which is far more productive.
I particularly enjoyed a recent company meeting that spent considerable time talking about the importance of flow state. It had an awkward pregnant pause when someone (usually very quiet) unmuted to ask, “is the policy to increase the number of days we must spend in our open-plan office kind of undermining this?”. Literally all of our directors just shifted on their seats hoping another would answer that.
Eventually, HR director stated “Not at all, that’s what headphones are for!”
Which was particularly delightful, as our tech director had only 20 minutes before stated how he would like to discourage people sitting in the office in silos with their headphones on.
I know it’s their job, but I’m still amazed how how completely tone deaf HR always sounds when they’re actively contradicting the obvious better option with vapid enthusiasm.
Another benefit from working from home: I will happily spend my own money on a good chair, keyboard, etc. I spent 20 years working in an office and there’s no way I would’ve ever brought in my own chair during that time… I would’ve had to become the chair police to prevent it from getting “reappropriated”
I wish that was a panacea. If you work remotely, but they require you to be available via some messenger, they can and will interrupt you just as much as if you were in a physical office with a door.
Get a reputation for being unreliable, mute notifications, purposefully refuse to respond for an hour…
Untrain your coworkers from relying on you replying with an answer faster than they can find it themselves.
Looking at you Teams Messenger. Oh, how I hate thee…
But you can choose when to reply at least.
It all depends on the task you are currently doing and how good your managers are. A good one can understand the need to have a quiet time to concentrate on the task, and another will insists of micromanage you to death. Worked with both types.
Then you throw in a little ADHD
I always thought about this. What about those with disabilities, like ADHD? Can companies really maintain their “equal opportunity employer” position while stripping privacy in the workplace? That’s an over generalization for moving to an open office.
They will make a few exceptions then at some point say “that’s enough” when all the employees need is less stimulation and more privacy
So you can lock them in.
If I remember correctly there was a Japanese videogame studio who did that in the 80’s they locked their development team in the office. I can’t find the anymore article though.
So they can listen to Aphex Twin at max volume with their robot ears and not frighten all the non-robots.
And that’s why I like working from home
Joke’s on me. 100% wfh, but hours of zoom meeting a week.
What a great article. Practical and poetic.
It would have been nice to have a connection made to Flow, since that’s what was being alluded to throughout, but maybe excluding Flow was deliberate in some way I’m missing?
Sounds a lot like what Joel Spolsky was advocating for since 2003, although now it’s easier since most people already have a private office, just not in “the office”.
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