The reason I slack people who are ten seconds walk from my desk is mostly because, if I walk up to them and talk to them, I'm generating noise which will disrupt the other hundred people in my open plan office
Which when you think about it is absurd really. Here we are in this open plan office that is meant to encourage communication and collaboration and yet we're communicating over Slack because we don't want to disturb our other colleagues.
As a manger who has had to support moves to these environments, I can share that it is also about money. Higher density offices, cheaper to furnish and easier reconfigure.
Less fixed wiring. No desk phone, no pabx.....and collaboration.
i miss having an office. and lately i've started to miss having a desk, as it seems they are always shuffling people around, or someone is trying to have a bullpen meeting over your head. or as someone mentioned those awful group video conferences which make me resent having even bothered to commute.
seriously, lets just give up on the notion of assigned spaces, idk what value there is when we cant even collaborate because the 4 tiny meeting rooms for 100 people are sitting at the margins of the giant open office. and there aren't any other whiteboards or projectors to use to have conversations. everyone is already wearing headphones so they can try to have a thought to themselves.
there are lots of alternatives. assign rooms to projects and have the principals mostly hang out there. couch areas and pub areas and cubby areas...rooms where you really aren't supposed to talk or hum or do anything out loud.
we've given up any actual utility of the office and are just hanging on to the barest trapping.
>there are lots of alternatives. assign rooms to projects and have the principals mostly hang out there. couch areas and pub areas and cubby areas...rooms where you really aren't supposed to talk or hum or do anything out loud.
Having worked at a company, where they had couch areas: Management will place the couch areas in the middle or adjacent to the desks and it will all be done in an open floor. A couch area with no walls is an invitation to have loud conversations/phone calls in the middle of the office.
