Let’s Take This Open Floor Plan to the Next Level | Hacker News Reader

Let’s Take This Open Floor Plan to the Next Level

mcsweeneys.net

79 pointssmacktoward13 comments

Open floor plan mimicry is a physical equivalent to those management bibles read, or at least propped on the desks, by management.

Take successful company, ignore the root causes and context ov their success, and mimic those things they did and used during their successful run because transplanting those wholesale without much thought or understanding should definitely result in our own success, or, in the least, we did something different to try to succeed. And if we failed, well, we just didn't try hard enough. Obviously there wasn't enough buyin.

It could be time to overhaul the team with new members who don't have the baggage of how it was before and start anew.

That's a common fallacy. "Our business is profitable. Therefore, every decision we make is correct."

I could see the idea of randomly projecting employee desktops to a large, central screen gaining traction in management circles.

What if we collage ALL employee desktops up on several projectors so we can see them all at once. Then throughout the day a (or a few) main projector brings up random / important ones for easier viewing.

Kind of like a sports bar, but for spying on people's desktops.

"Radical Transparency" -- right?

Well written and funny! ...but I'm weary of the first world whining about open plans. I spent many years in traditional floor plans and many with open. I prefer open and find that headphones and slack provide 90% of the privacy I need without sterile cubes or isolated offices. YMMV. It also makes business sense: it's cheap and flexible like cubes without feeling like a filing cabinet for people. Again, just my opinion, but if the worst part of your job is that you don't like the floor plan, you should count yourself as very lucky.

Clearly you don't have the issues other people have. There are real productivity hits to being interrupted constantly, and we can't all substitute music/headphones because that's just as disruptive for some. Its disingenuous to imply they're just lazy whiners.

Nope, I'm not calling anyone lazy! It is certainly whining. Maybe it is justified whining for some, but in my experience it is not. Either way, I think there needs to be some perspective here.

To your point: there are noise-cancelling headphones that don't require music. Constant disruption is a cultural issue. I work in an open layout where I am rarely disrupted because people know better than to bug that guy with the intense look on his face and his headphones clamped on. The open layout means that they can see clearly when it is ok to engage me and when it is not.

Yeah I work in a 4-person office and its ok. Definitely more chatter than being alone. I can live with it. Not a private-office guy. But a big room is very different.

Forget valuations, perhaps the best sign of a bubble is when satire begins to resemble reality.....

"The CEO will prod creativity with a designated creativity prod."

This is great! CEO now stands for “Creative Energy Oracle.”

I lost it at DJ Deliverables.

The text in the article could use its own open floor plan, so it isn't smothered by blank walls.

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