Our org recently moved to a new office space, to be precise it a cowork spaces.
They've made the layout of floor mentally hostile and exhausting for people working there. Its a big rectangular floor, with 6 equal sized cabins on one side and rest floor is divided in 2 columns. Each column has 7 bays, each bay allows 8 people to sit. The separation on the desk are almost non existent as they're so small we can see the person sitting opposite to us.
The whole place can accommodate 100 people barring cabins. One can see the whole floor from one end. There no such things as privacy or integrity. One cannot concentrate on work at all if there's lot of noise or distraction. The washrooms are atleast 20 meters away from our floor.
It was very evident that management wants to excercise their power and authority.
It clear what they want.
– They don't want us to talk to our teammates because if everyone talks it will create lot of noise.
– If there is heated argument between a manager and an junior dev(which we may happen as we are just humans), it will put bad impression on other managers and lessen chances of the junior to work with them, even if the person is good and just happened to get into argument for once.
– They don't want us to getup from our place as it will create distraction.
– If a team is doing fun activity they will disturb other teams, which means we cannot carry out fun activities for our teams.
The atmosphere of every team just changed from black to white once we came to new location. It is very stressed and more exhausted than before.