DEV Community

Discussion on: Private Office or Shared Space?

Collapse
 
kspeakman profile image
Kasey Speakman

Shared offices are distracting for focus work. Private offices make it hard to collaborate.

In private offices, collaboration feels like an intrusion. Especially when scheduled meetings are your collaboration vehicle. It leads more to specialization so you don't have to setup meetings. And perhaps drifting away from shared values. Corps tend to start worrying about "team building". It can be effective if you have mostly focus work to do.

Shared spaces tend to make "meetings" go away. Since it is just somebody saying "hey" and everybody turning around. So collaboration is a lot easier, provided nobody is a grump. But focus work is harder since it is very easy to distract and be distracted. Headphones are commonly employed to achieve some isolation.

I suppose a best case would be to have both. Shared team space and focus rooms.