Hacker News Reader

Open office plans are great if you want to plan a skiing trip with your coworkers who are incidentally also your friends. If you're the sort of person who wants to keep it professional in the office, they're a nightmare. Blurring the line between work and personal life is encouraged by companies because it gets people working longer hours (on paper anyway, since so much more time is burned socializing.) Thanks, but no thanks.

View on HN

Very ironic. People in my office work just 8 hours yet the open office plan leads to a lot of those 8 hours be some sort of socializing or chatting - wasting the company's time and money.

Great point. I never realized that open floor plans made it harder to keep things professional. You're absolutely right.

Think of it this way: everyone has a moment when they just want to take a break and goof off for a minute. It's normal, and a part of keeping a healthy and productive mind. Now consider how many other people will a person taking break affect. In a regular office, or even cubicle setting: probably just themselves, maybe someone else to whom they walk to. In an open-office plan? Everyone within earshot. With multiple people taking breaks at random, if you don't have someone with a strong personality telling everyone to shut up and get back to work, you can easily have half a day or more wasted just on talking bullshit. Individual cubicles or offices are a natural dampener for this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com