Open office spaces are the greatest mystery of humankind

Day 9/90 — Die, open office, just die.

I had a really hard time finding a topic to write about today. Then I remembered my own advice from this post — write about your first and last thought. I also remembered Alexander Sokoloff’s advice: write about what makes you angry. So today’s post is dedicated to something that makes me really angry. In fact, so angry, that it was the first thing I thought about when I woke up this morning.

This post is dedicated to my hate for open office spaces.

Open office spaces are — in my humble opinion — the most stupid human invention to date.

Fellow open-office-victims please enlighten me:

How the f*ck do you get any work done?

People taking sales calls around you. Phones ringing. Phones vibrating. Aggressive typing. Chatter. Food smells (please don’t bring fish to work). Laughing. Crying (sometimes). People walking around pretending to look for something. People actually looking for something. People trying to get your attention because apparently they don’t have any work to do. More aggressive typing. A bunch of people talking to themselves (why though?).

Meanwhile I sit at my desk trying to write, calculate, design, understand stuff.

It’s literally the most difficult part about my job. It’s not the budget, the ideas, the writing, the staying competitive, the generating leads, the growth — no — the hardest thing about my job is the fact that it’s supposed to be done in an open-office space. Ugh.

Why are we doing this to ourselves?

Why aren’t we optimizing work environments? We optimize everything else. Software, hardware, work/life-balance. But we don’t actually optimize the work environment. This is a mystery to me. Maybe one of the greatest mysteries of humankind to date.

Ok, I actually just tried to google benefits of open office spaces.

I didn’t find anything — except of course, that it’s cheaper. Cheaper than having a bunch of individual offices. But you know what’s even cheaper than an open office? A remote office.

Why not let your employees work from the comfort of their home, maybe invest in awesome conference software and a regular meeting space?

There are many alternatives, there are many opportunities to make work nice for your employees. But one thing is for sure: the general concept of the open office needs to die.

P.S.: I listened to Drake while writing this. It helped.

P.P.S.: I’m really lucky to work for awesome employers who let me work remotely and are open to conversations about office space efficiency. The fact that I say I’m lucky is a problem. Every single employee one Earth should be working for someone that respects their need for an optimal working environment. Talk to your employer. Don’t waste chunks of your potential because you sit in a shitty environment.

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This is day 9of 90 days that I will be sharing something I’ve learned here in this publication. Don’t miss it.