Building Workplaces

A few readings on workplace design, physical and digital, in and out of tech.

tags: LitReview

I guess the prerequisite knowledge for this LitReview is about workplace design itself. There are two big patterns in the field: (1) the older cubicle and walled office layout and (2) some version of the open office plan, which uses wide-open spaces and large shared workspaces. Obviously there’s a lot left to know, but that’s a rough starting point.

Some more ‘reading’ to start off with:

• Google Workspace Design¹
  • Okay, this one’s actually a video, but it’s interesting and gives you a lot to consider because they’ve been obligated to think about this topic for a while in a relatively new profession.
• CircleCI’s respect of workplace silence leading to flow.²
  • I particularly love the following quote from this CircleCI blog post:

  • I have another myth I’d like to put to rest: “Silence is for the weak”. Too many offices, managers, entrepreneurs and even other developers build offices full of noise and distractions, preventing developers from concentrating and doing our jobs.

  • This quote illustrates the repeated feeling we’ll see about open office layouts: they were an interesting experiment, but have ultimately turned out to be awful for the one activity they’re meant to inspire: work.
  • As someone who has yet to even enter the tech. industry, it’s really interesting and telling that I hear, repeatedly, that the dominant workplace layout is actually annoying, even counterproductive. It’s good to know what to look out for, and what I’m getting myself into.

But office design isn’t just a programmer, or even tech thing. What about other professions - how do , graphic designers, journalists³, and marketers⁴ work, in and outside of tech? It’s different per profession but the general consensus is when a profession requires flow⁵, like the programming often does, the open layout plan leads to being “frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance.”

And what about that oft relegated sector of the tech industry labor: customer experience? It’s loud, small open cubicles; how does that affect their work, are there better ways of doing that office layout? I couldn’t find any readings on that issue specifically, but it definitely seems that because the job requires conversations, it might be better to allow office space to these professions too⁶, rather than the traditional open layout plan robbing people of their personal space and sense of agency. Whether to preserve flow or allow optimal basic working conditions, it feels like boundary setting in the physical world is one of the best ways to give people a sense of ownership over their space at work.

Finally, how does remote work figure into all of this? Well, once we get into remote work we’re really talking about keeping open communication, boundaries and using your tools⁷ to make it work. It definitely changes how you design an office and a workplace communication chain, but there are tools and plenty of companies to model off of. Whether you’re building off a collective coop, business, PBC, or some other model, there’s probably a way you can make remote work, but you have to be intentional about not letting biases get in the way of organizational contributions.

This is the first in my LitReview series. As such, this piece was more an exploration of the ways in which our ideas of work environments can affect us. Let me know if you have any more ideas on Twitter or through my contact form. And enjoy reading!