He is missing the point of Open office plans. Frankly, the blog post comes off as a little entitled when he says "we all deserve office of our own" (paraphrasing). Really ? How about a bed to nap while we are at it (well ok google has the nap pods). The point of open office plan is to try and encourage a culture of equality (in my opinion). I love open office plan because I could be sitting next to a college graduate and an executive director at the same time. Imagine the level of access you have if you have the balls to actually utilize it. With closed doors, even if the person inside is welcoming, it just creates a senseless fear of rejection.
All this point about not being able to focus and getting disturbed all the time is hardly an issue. Most co-workers are respectful of your time whether they are in open office or closed office. The ones that are not respectful will bother you regardless of where you sit. Behind closed door ? No problem, I will give this guy an annoying phone call.
Now is there a binary answer to this ? Of course not. But claiming that Open office plans are completely useless is stretching it a little too far.
"Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away 15 minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff and Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal-fattening farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he asks Jeff. Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to save Mutt 15 seconds).
Now let's move them into separate offices with walls and doors. Now when Mutt can't remember the name of that function, he could look it up, which still takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which now takes 45 seconds and involves standing up (not an easy task given the average physical fitness of programmers!). So he looks it up. So now Mutt loses 30 seconds of productivity, but we save 15 minutes for Jeff. Ahhh!"
certainly. I am sure there are many points against open office plans. All I am saying that there is no binary or "my way or the highway" kind of solution to this. It has to be balanced. You just should not dismiss open office completely. My 2 cents.
> Imagine the level of access you have if you have the balls to actually utilize it.
Ugg. The thing I want the least is to chit chat with you about random bullshit, beer or overhear you talk about your christmas, your hanukkah or your puppy or child. If you and I need to have a conversation, we can set aside a time and talk. This applies equally to whether the "you" is the mentor or the "I" is a mentor.
Just because two people work side by side doesn't necessarily mean access magically changes.
My friends who did medicine get these. Apparently the hospitals have a number of quarters that the medical staff share where they can catch up on sleep if they need it.
All this point about not being able to focus and getting disturbed all the time is hardly an issue. Most co-workers are respectful of your time whether they are in open office or closed office. The ones that are not respectful will bother you regardless of where you sit. Behind closed door ? No problem, I will give this guy an annoying phone call.
Now is there a binary answer to this ? Of course not. But claiming that Open office plans are completely useless is stretching it a little too far.