[kazinator]

Open offices instantly "out" anyone who comes late, leaves early, takes a 2.5 hour lunch breaks, or surfs the web instead of working.

And that's really the whole point.

It's why they are popular in Japan, together with the fact that thanks to the open structure, transgressor can apologize in front of everyone at once.

[cnagele]

Chris from Wildbit here (author of the post).

Half of our team is remote. Using physical space for controlling productivity (or lack of) is not a solution. You and the rest of your team should keep each other accountable through performance metrics that are mutually agreed upon. Being a remote team for so long (15 years) has forced us to find alternatives to traditional office babysitting and it has helped us design our new office as well.

[greggman]

Is that really issue in SV?

I never noticed anyone caring that someone came in early, arrived late, left early or left late or taking a long lunch. They cared they got their work done in a reasonable amount of time.

That certainly the attitude I saw at Google. I assume it's the same at Facebook. Work wherever (office, home, coffee shop) and whenever you want. VC in for meetings if you're not on site. Get your work done.

Note: I also worked in Japan for 7 years. Both Japanese companies, both there was at most one other non Japanese employee in my division. One had strict hours, the other not. Of course the strict one effectively took roll call. But the other didn't. The strict one started with team cubes, switched to open office when they moved to a smaller place where there wasn't enough room for partitions. The other had personal-ish cubes. Most people had their own cube with partitions high enough you couldn't see over them when sitting down but could when standing up. A few at the ends of aisle shared a space for 3.

[trhway]

>Open offices instantly "out" anyone who comes late, leaves early, takes a 2.5 hour lunch breaks, or surfs the web instead of working.

that is what basically everybody is doing around me. In that respect open office has helped to get rid of any sense of shame we may have been able to feel before. "Mass presence effect reinforced behavior" i'd say.

[shawnhermans]

This is a crude way of handling low performing employees. It measures time spent at one's desk and not productivity. A good manager shouldn't be worrying about how their employees spend their time but should be worrying about whether or not their employees produce.

If there is an employee an employee who is constantly leaving early, coming in late, and not working, management needs to deal with this directly. An open office plan is not a good replacement for good management.

[JonLim]

At this point, I come in late and leave early without feeling any shame at all. I bang out the work I need to and get going.

Any office or managers who feel the need to make note of when I enter and exit is a great red flag for the rest of the organization. Just a personal observation!

[adamio]

You leave out the too common expectation in Japan of spending long hours, working on only looking busy. Which is probably not helped by an open office

[pekk]

Do people at your workplace actually have anything to get done, or is their performance entirely based on hours spent in a certain fenced off area?

[josephschmoe]

Except you're sitting next to your coworkers - not your boss. Your coworkers don't want to out you - that only hurts their reputation and gives them more work.

If anything, this prevents one person from being singled out because it's difficult to get mad at one person for slacking when everyone is slacking to a similar degree.

At least, that's my experience being in a 4 person cubicle. It built trust between coworkers and against the company.

[kazinator]

Four person cubes are not quite the open office concept, or don't represent all instances of it. In Japan, open offices include everyone. You look away from your monitor and there is your boss ("buchou" -- department head) looking back at you! If you have to leave before the buchou, you apologize, e.g. "O saki ni, shitsurei shimasu".

If the boss is not there, then it's not quite the open office; it's a slightly strawman version of the open office which doesn't quite include everyone. Even so, the boss can come out peek at the workspace at any time and tell at a glance who is there and who isn't, and who is doing what.

[TeMPOraL]

> Open offices instantly "out" anyone who comes late, leaves early, takes a 2.5 hour lunch breaks, or surfs the web instead of working.

Looks at HN karma. Yeah, if only they did that.

I guess a lot depends on company culture, but I'm yet to work in an open-office space where I could actually focus on anything harder than the most mechanical coding tasks.

[BadassFractal]

It's absolutely this. We've mandated something similar at our org. I hate it, but there's still something about being surrounded by people who aggressively work together for 10h a day, that's a lot of peer pressure to stay afloat and do what you can. Builds more of a team spirit as well. It's basically a way to squeeze more work out of people. Not that it doesn't have downsides, but it's really hard to make an accurate calculus here.