People always talk about the terrible NOISE in open office plans. For me, I hate...

TeMPOraL · on March 31, 2015

I second this. For me it's not even about being watched. It's that unnerving feeling of presence of other people that often makes me unable to focus in open-space setting at work. I had that since forever - even as a kid I aways closed the door to my room. I'm usually the last person to leave the office and when I see a cow-orker of mine staying late I start to feel irritated (saying in my head "hey, this was supposed to be my time for focused work!").

Funny thing is - I'm not an antisocial person. I love people. Just not when I'm trying to focus on something. Then the very presence of others makes me nervous.

And yes, when I'm focused, I like to talk to myself out loud, lie down on a couch to think, rock to music and draw a lot (when designing something). All those things look silly and I'm uncomfortable doing any of it when not alone.

pdkl95 · on March 31, 2015

Being around people usually engages various parts of the brain that are involved in being aware of the local situation. Even if you're not interacting to someone, some amount of monitoring happens to maintain the brain's model of the local environment that we actually experience. This would include stuff like tracing the locations of people/stuff in the room, checks of stuff like body language or subtle social indicators, and probably a long list of other tiny checks that we never really notice consciously.

The problem is that some of the areas of the brain that do that processing are also used when handling other complex tasks such as programming. This overloading of processing areas will vary from person to person, of course.

This problem is the main reason I could never work in an open office, and have serious productivity problems even ion an office shared with only one other person. It's not that they are interrupting constantly or otherwise distracting in the commonly-used sense. If there are people around, I have to be aware of them, which wastes mental CPU time and introduces cache-flushing context switches at annoying times.

pdkl95 · on March 31, 2015

Now that you mention it, I wonder if this open-office culture - conditioning employees to accept little privacy in the workplace - was the reason the reprehensible "surveillance as a business model" became popular at so many tech companies.

borplk · on March 31, 2015

Bingo! The whole thing is a plot for shoving people together, saving money and letting employees watch each other, and of course to please the management they love seeing a floor full of people click click click typing on their keyboards.

It just get wrapped in a bunch of politically correct fluff about "something something collaboration" ... "something something support and community" to make it difficult for people to oppose it.

God forbid you raise an objection and suddenly you are worse than Hitler and hate people and need therapy.

djur · on March 31, 2015

I have similar problems with anxiety and have come to partial terms with them this way: when I'm at work, I'm performing. If part of that performance is dancing around in my chair or putting my head down on the desk or reading irrelevant websites from time to time, so be it. This is my own self-expression. And anyone who gives a shit about it who isn't my boss can get fucked.

michaelochurch · on March 31, 2015

For me, I hate the feeling of BEING WATCHED. It's just unnerving.

Agree. It's practically abusive. Even if you're a great worker, pillar of the community, whatever, the fact remains that a surveillance state is an anxiety state.

The problem is that this industry is now fueled by the eagerness of clueless 22-year-olds who've never had a serious health problem or personal matter that interferes with work, who still think they're immortal, and buy into that "if you have nothing to hide" fallacy. Fuck that shit.