The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-open-plan-office-is-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-idea-42bd9cd294e3

by ingve • 8 years ago

613 443 8 years ago

m.signalvnoise.com

mcherm• 8 years ago

And for what? Because a minority of people kinda like that configuration? Because it’ll look good in a few photos? Because it’ll impress strangers who visit the office?

Somehow the author missed the primary reason for the open office configuration: "Because it cuts the costs of office space by a HUGE amount (certainly more than half)."

I suppose "Because it makes it easier for managers to keep an eye on their employees and see when they are slacking off." figures in also. Although it's probably a sign of poor management.

tomtheelder2• 8 years ago

Yeah this is one of HN's favorite topics to bash on while completely ignoring the primary reason why the open office exists and persists.

It's not about collaboration, it's not about socializing, it's about money. Just like all other business related decisions.

fullshark2• 8 years ago

I think HN is just focusing on disparaging the messaging from company leads, and pointing out that it’s cheaper but actively harmful as well to performance.

maltalex2• 8 years ago

That argument doesn't hold water.

Employee time is usually a lot more expensive than the space they occupy. At least in tech.

You could save quite a lot of money on furniture if everyone sat with their laptops on the floor. But in reality that would be more expensive since the difference in productivity will outweigh the furniture cost.

adrianN2• 8 years ago

Maybe companies should just be honest about why they run open offices instead of trying to sell it as something they do for the employees.

Androider2• 8 years ago

It's a penny wise, pound foolish decision though, considering engineering salaries. It's hard to quantify, and often an externalized cost to the facilities management and decision makers, but my own experience suggests open offices are incredibly expensive as a negative multiplier on the engineering output. The "actual work" starts getting done in the evenings, on planes, and on weekends, while the business hours are a circus of meetings and "grab-ass" as the top comment in this thread so eloquently put it.

I'm building my own company now, fully remote, and from an engineering output point of view I've never seen such productivity. No ass-in-seat supervision, no assigned hours, just straight throughput of engineering tasks being closed and features being shipped every day.

rhizome3• 8 years ago

Productivity is also about money.

notahacker• 8 years ago

Every time the topic comes up on HN half a dozen people insist that the only possible reason anyone could ever consider an open plan office is cost.

Meanwhile, there's a thriving and growing industry selling desks in trendy open plan offices to self-employed people who for the most part could do their work in the privacy of their own home if they didn't think the atmosphere of an open plan office was worth paying for.

bambax• 8 years ago

Not sure about that. Remote would save so much more on office space! Yet most companies hate remote and don't allow it.

I think the real reason is managers want to be able to see everyone at a glance; it's all about control.

PurpleBoxDragon2• 8 years ago

And specifically, about an easy to measure cost verses an hard (if not impossible) to measure cost. Facilities can easily be measured. Productivity lost due to employees overwhelmed with sights and sounds (and even smells)? Much harder to measure, and so much easier to just not measure it or low ball it. So even if money is being lost, it looks like money is being saved.

oblio2• 8 years ago

Apple, Google, etc. could definitely afford team offices. Apple built almost all their campuses from scratch...

SebNag_• 8 years ago

The Basecamp office has a row of desks out in the open which we govern by Library Rules. We also have four private work rooms.

Well it is still a bad decision. Libraries are an open work space and still manage to provide a reasonable working environment. This is less about money but more about a wrong perception of work.

ghosterrific2• 8 years ago

I'm going to argue that nothing cuts real estate costs nearly as much as a 100% remote company.

The real reason for open office layout is this:

- we do not trust ourselves and our employees to do what we say

DrBazza• 8 years ago

Except that when you actually do have individual offices, it's a sunk cost, and the productivity gains easily offset and pay off the initial outlay.

It is only really start ups that cannot afford to do this. Ironically because they have a small number of employees, open plan offices do work for them because they have fewer employees.

deathanatos2• 8 years ago

Relocate the office somewhere cheaper than the real estate hell that is the Bay Area, pay equal, but geographically adjusted salaries, and keep the non-open-office floor plan levels of productivity while reaping the benefits of the aforementioned points?

aestetix• 8 years ago

"Facebook did it, and we want to be like Facebook..."

overcast• 8 years ago

We did it before Facebook was even a twinkle in Zuckerberg's eye, and it's still a stupid idea. All that happens is the level of conversation goes up, and they suppress it with white noise generators. Dumb.

RasputinsBro4• 8 years ago

We were already working from in open office, but at least I had a desk facing the wall behind me, so there was a modicum of privacy and psychological safety. Then management decided that it would “look better” if we went to circular desks where several of us would be sitting with our backs to the hallway, so everyone walking past would be looking at our screen as they passed.

This seems dishonest to me. Can some body explain if I'm missing something?

I understand the argument that open-plan offices increase distractions in general, and the damage that loud people do in particular. But if you really intend on being super focused and productive, I don't understand why it would bother you that someone would look at your screen.

I have worked in an open-plan office and the only times when I was embarrassed that someone saw my screen was because I was wasting my time on reddit/HN, which I shouldn't because that's not what they're paying me for... Once I managed to force upon myself the discipline of just don't open reddit/HN, I was happy to accept one of the desks with the back to the center of the room, because I no longer cared that someone was looking at my screen.

Am I missing something?

cimmanom5• 8 years ago

It's human instinct to be on high alert if you're under scrutiny or observation. There are all sorts of studies indicating people do worse on tasks when they know they're being watched. Part of your brain ends up focused on what other people are thinking of you instead of on the task at hand - even if it's only subconscious.

ebbv• 8 years ago

This smacks to me of an "If you have nothing to hide why do you care about your privacy?" argument. Which we should all know is a major fallacy.

There's plenty of reasons to not want others looking over your shoulder that have nothing to do with goofing off. Private emails, even totally business related ones are just that, private. If you're struggling with a problem, having an audience can make it that much worse. Et cetera, et cetera.

The nature of software development makes it hard for a lot of people to do with lots of distractions around them.

- There's also way too much stigma against "time wasting." Your brain needs breaks and distractions to work through problems. Spending some time on a goof off site each day is not a bad thing in and of itself. If your productivity suffers, that's a problem that needs to be addressed. But it can happen via burn out just as easily as via spending too much time reading fan theories on Infinity War Pt. 2.

RasputinsBro4• 8 years ago

This smacks to me of an "If you have nothing to hide why do you care about your privacy?" argument. Which we should all know is a major fallacy.

The fallacy here is conflating the two. To me the most important argument in the usual privacy conversation (i.e. people vs government) is that people defending themselves from government surveillance is a very important part of keeping the balance of power from swinging too much in one direction.

This is nothing of the sort. If you work for a business and you don't like their open-plan offices, find one where they don't have open-plan offices. But saying that you don't like their open-plan offices because you're so productive without distractions, but then you're afraid that people see your screen seems dishonest. Also, if you're super productive but you need to take breaks to look at cat pictures during office hours, why are you afraid that someone will catch you looking at cat pictures? If you actually are as productive as you claim I'm sure people will respect your need for breaks: after all according to you we all need breaks, so "other people" will be doing the same thing. And if they don't respect _your_ need for breaks, then the problem isn't really the office style, but a lack of trust in colleagues. Again, the entire thing seems dishonest.

nkrisc• 8 years ago

I can only speak for myself but it makes me unconformable because it makes me feel like I must be super productive for 8 hours straight lest the big boss happen to walk by for the 3 minutes I'm taking a mental break to read something interesting and completely unrelated to work.

RasputinsBro4• 8 years ago

If the big boss happens to walk by for the 3 minutes you're taking a mental break and that is a problem, I would say the problem is the boss/culture, not the space.

Think about it. You just said that someone "catching you" taking a break is an issue and that in your mind that is a justification for keeping your screen hidden.

accnumnplus12• 8 years ago

"with backs to the hallway" - depending on how far away the hallway is this can be distracting. In the past I've sat with my back maybe a 1.5m from a wall, and the space between was used as a standard route by countless people - distracting.

RasputinsBro4• 8 years ago

Again, I totally understand the "it's distracting" argument, I have made the same argument myself. I was pointing a finger at the "I don't like it when people can see my screen" argument.

megaman22• 8 years ago

If somebody is looking over my shoulder as I'm trying to work, my productivity goes right to zero. It doesn't matter if I'm writing code or pounding nails - I need people to leave me the hell alone and let me work, without constant feedback and micromanagement.

tombert8• 8 years ago

The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of negated when people have the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant cheering, which is my current situation.

Even when soccer is over, you have to contend with people playing grab-ass all over the office, or jerks (like me) with annoyingly loud keyboards. The modicum of utility of me "jumping into a conversation" really goes out the window when I'm forced to wear headphones all day.

I really don't have a good way of measuring or fully quantifying how much less productive I am personally, but haven't there been a ton of studies that indicate anywhere between 1-1.5 hours a day is wasted per employee due to the open office? I assume that labor is the most expensive part of any big-ish company, so it feels like the "offices are cheaper" argument shouldn't work.

antoineMoPa• 8 years ago

"the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant cheering, which is my current situation" You are lying, the game was yesterday.

EDIT: I get the point, that was a joke.

tombert8• 8 years ago

Ha, yeah, fair point, I was just informed that it's almost over. Don't worry, there always seems to be more sports to watch. They'll probably move onto curling or something today.

zeveb• 8 years ago

The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of negated when people have the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant cheering

Is there anything less professional than watching a game at work? I really don't get why people do this, and why they think it's okay.

Granted, I don't like sports — but I like TV, and I wouldn't watch TV at work. I like computer games, but I wouldn't play computer games at work. It's just odd that sports fans think it's okay to distract people during work hours.

At least pop off down to the pub or something.

tombert8• 8 years ago

I agree. When I suggested putting on a low-budget 50's monster movie on as background noise (e.g. Gamera, Godzilla, The Giant Claw, something that's amusing to look at for thirty seconds, laugh a bit, but not overly distracting), people act almost offended that I would waste company time like that. But if the TV has some form of ball on it, drop everything.

corpMaverick2• 8 years ago

People have been waiting for it for four years. And your national team only plays 4 or 5 games. Give'm a break.

adrianN2• 8 years ago

Drinking alcohol at work? Taking out the Mulled Wine on Friday afternoons around Christmas is not too uncommon.

magduf5• 8 years ago

Or, as Androider said, put it in the break room. Where I work, that's exactly what they did: there's a TV in the break room that's on all the time, so for world cup it was tuned to that. No problem: if you want to watch it for a few minutes, go do it in the break room. If you want to not be bothered while you work, don't hang out in the break room.

rayiner2• 8 years ago

That and dogs in the office. Jesus what’s wrong with people. (The fact you’re being downvoted is proof we are living in the end times.)

commandlinefan4• 8 years ago

bombarded with constant cheering

At least it ends. I work in a gigantic "airplane hangar" open office with no noise barriers of any kind stretching out to infinity. Everybody around me is on conference calls all day, every day. They put their phones on speaker and then yell louder and louder to be heard over each other. One of them is even one of the Important People with an office with a door that closes... which he leaves open all the time anyway.

WorkLifeBalance• 8 years ago

Get any generic in-ear earphones and thread those under a pair of 3M peltor optime III ear defenders.

You can listen to even fairly quiet music and you won't hear any conversations around you.

scaryspooky• 8 years ago

Have you tried just closing his door for him?

tomtheelder2• 8 years ago

I assume that labor is the most expensive part of any big-ish company, so it feels like the "offices are cheaper" argument shouldn't work.

This probably depends where you are. An open office plan might well let you use less than half of the square footage per employee, which in somewhere like Manhattan would potentially be saving you on the order of $5-10k per employee. Depending on how significant the productivity hit is, that might well be worth it.

falcolas• 8 years ago

$5-10k saved yearly to produce an unproductive $150,000+ employee... I don't think the scales are balanced even then.

And, from personal experience, companies do it even when the cost per square foot is 1/10th of that of NY.

bluedino• 8 years ago

Real offices would have more furniture and such than a bunch of tables or even cubicles.

Faster to deploy, wire, etc.

bachmeier• 8 years ago

An open office plan might well let you use less than half of the square footage per employee

Relative to what? Here are some portable room dividers: https://www.screenflex.com/

You would be starting with a very tiny space if that doubles the square footage per employee. They completely eliminate visual distractions, give employees a feeling of privacy, and stop a lot of noise. Being portable, they can be changed around as needed, and you can easily create small groups.

tephra• 8 years ago

Here's a recent story from our open office.

We have a couple of mobprogramming stations with big televisions, each team has 1 or 2 of these so there are about 5 in a 20m radius from where I sit. When the first game that Sweden played all of a sudden 3 of the televisions are turned on and of course they are _not(!)_ in sync.

So here I am trying to do some work with three TVs games all slightly delayed from each other, meaning one cheer turns into three.

Now I work at a large newspaper and we sit 40m from the editorial staff so that adds to the background noise. To top it all of someone in the sports department thought it would be a good idea to @channel (usually reserved for "OMG the website is down what do we do!?") when some of the TVs stopped working (not really a job for the developers..).

That just killed whatever positive things I used to think about open offices.

hw6• 8 years ago

cubicles wouldn't have helped in this case anyway, unless you're referring to an office where everyone has their own personal room

chrisbennet• 8 years ago

OMG, you need to run away from that place!

Until I read that, the worst I’d ever heard was a friend who worked next to a slamming fire door. He had to wear hearing protection/ear muffs. Get this: he was the PhD physisist that did all the hard math coding for the company.

He has a private office where he works now thank goodness.

0x445442• 8 years ago

Yeah and what kills me is how ubiquitous tellocomms are for multi-site corps. I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in where everyone was at their desk, headphones on and each was playing the mute/unmute game in order to not blast everyone else on the meeting with the surrounding noise.

Then, given all that, you get the coworker two seats down Slacking you. If you're Slacking folks within 10 seconds walking distance then what's the point of being in the office at all.

I think the ideal would be commuting to the office one day a week to take care of meetings which are more productive in person such as sprint planning, grooming etc.

PietdeVries• 8 years ago

The thing is that this working-from-home people significantly impact the efficiency of your office. It's a trend (could be the open-office space started it) but resulted in people easily working 2 or more days from home. That implies that any desk you have is empty about 40% of the time. Or: your entire office is not being used for 40%...

So when bosses realised they were throwing money away, they came up with the open office with flex-desks: no-one has a fixed place, you can sit whereever you want. And there are less desks than people.

That can work out quite well (I work in such an office) but it depends greatly on ehtics or rules: no TVs with soccer games, no speaker-phone (but only headset) and rooms available for discussions or phone calls. And there is a general area (quite large) where you can drink your coffee and discuss the soccer matches or Tour de France results...

For me it works, but I can imagine that without the requirements listed above it can be a cumbersome workenvironment.

BoysenberryPi• 8 years ago

I slack and email co-workers who are within spitting distance of me. More often than not they are busy and I don't want to interrupt their flow with something that does not require immediate attention. So I'll shoot a Slack or email their way and let them get to it when they get to it.

Waterluvian• 8 years ago

I agree. But I like slack more than talking because I get time to think and a transcript after. Probably yet another reason I love working from my home office.

corobo• 8 years ago

what's the point of being in the office at all

Amen. We can work remotely. Let me work in my home office.

eqdw2• 8 years ago

The reason I slack people who are ten seconds walk from my desk is mostly because, if I walk up to them and talk to them, I'm generating noise which will disrupt the other hundred people in my open plan office

dvtrn• 8 years ago

Then, given all that, you get the coworker two seats down Slacking you. If you're Slacking folks within 10 seconds walking distance then what's the point of being in the office at all.

I have a coworker within ONE second of me, I can lean back a few inches and tap them on the shoulder. And I do, frequently, when they send me a 1:1 slack message.

"What's up?"

"Oh I had a question for you in Slack"

"I'm three feet away from you, I'm not doing this over slack, what's up?"

Obviously this is different if they send a code snippet or an app screenshot that I need to look at, but even then when we need to discuss the next steps relevant to that snippet or screenshot, I'll still tap them over the shoulder

"Hey, did you try x?"

"Oh no I didn't, lemme see what happens..." pause "Yup that worked, thanks!"

"No problem"

devhead• 8 years ago

Slack affords a method of passive communication where waving hands or tapping someone on the shoulder is an invasive method of communication.

Unless there's an urgency, or some complication that should be discussed in person; slack is the preferred method so as to allow the party you are interrupting a chance to change their focus in the least impactful manner.

If I go to someone directly, I am losing 10-15 minutes of my own productivity + the length of the conversation and that's multiplied by the number of people I interrupted.

Some people who I've worked with, love to have to have a face to face for questions or information that is not urgent and could easily be taken care of via slack. They seem to do so because they prefer to small talk, lament, debate or some other personal reason; they don't do it for technical reasons.

If your team can effectively communicate passively, on slack, your on a team that has a foundation from which a remote-work policy can easily be enacted.

tzahola• 8 years ago

I'm forced to wear headphones all day.

Didn't you know that you shouldn't use headphones in an open-plan office, because it prevents you from collaborating with others? /s

phkahler• 8 years ago

> The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of negated...

Yeah, they say it promotes more collaboration because you may overhear something where your input is relevant and join in. Or something like that. While that may be true, the increase in UNwanted distraction completely overwhelms any benefit. So then they tell us to be respectful of people around us and keep things quiet - we don't want people to overhear you. Wait wasn't that the point?

watwut5• 8 years ago

What is "grab-ass all over the office"? I tried to google it to find whether it is expression, but got tons of porn as result.

tombert8• 8 years ago

Ah, sorry, it's a bit of local expression from where I grew up. People would say "grab-ass" when people are running/playing around and yelling like children at the office. It's not too uncommon for startups to have Nerf guns or something.

scrumbledober• 8 years ago

I believe he's referring to in office flirting

commandlinefan4• 8 years ago

but got tons of porn

Sure hope you're not googling it in an open-plan office...

fsloth2• 8 years ago

The increased collaboration angle is most likely bs.

According to this study open offices do reduce face to face communications: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/1753/2017...

The only two rational factors why anyone would choose open office:

1. the floor space really is so expensive you can waste xx% of capital output of labour.

2. You inherit a dysfunctional organization or just a one you cannot trust, and want to "keep an eye" on everyone so they behave. Michael Bloomberg gave this rationale in New York.

3. Bonus round for hotdesking : You expect/have a fairly high churn rate. Why bother assigning people personal spaces since it's so much work to keep track of the facilities. Let the people find their own space. Besides, you might outsource xx% of your operations in near future so it's not like you plan on investing in long term team building.

So, any linear combination 1,2 or 3 should suffice as an explanation. Any serious publication which praises open offices is likely a piece by a consultant who makes a living out of peddling said solutions and are offering political propaganda to make the employees less resistant.

The most common irrational reason: You don't really have an opinion what consitutes a good working space but open offices seem to be trendy ("It's what the big boys are doing") and a consultant made you an offer to redesign your office space, so, why not.

Florin_Andrei5• 8 years ago

You don't really have an opinion what consitutes a good working space but open offices seem to be trendy ("It's what the big boys are doing") and a consultant made you an offer to redesign your office space, so, why not.

I'm pretty sure the lemming see, lemming do explanation is one of the top actual reasons.

ConceptJunkie• 8 years ago

I don't think any manager who chooses and open office plan because it's cheaper (and I'm betting that that is almost all of them) has considered, or cares about, the cost of reduced productivity. Otherwise it wouldn't be so common.

But that's just my experience. I've found it's difficult to underestimate management.

thatfrenchguy• 8 years ago

It's impossible to measure, and thus isn't data that is taken into consideration.

hinkley2• 8 years ago

Sabotage your employees and you don’t have to give them a raise. Win win!

Zelphyr• 8 years ago

My previous employer and I had a conversation about the open office he wanted to set up in our new office space. I kept telling him it was a bad idea. He really wanted to encourage a "vibrant and collaborative environment!" I kept trying to tell him that what he perceived as vibrant and collaborative was his employees not getting any work done. Those generally weren't work conversations. They were jokes, catching up with life events, etc... Of course, he won. I wish I had this study to point to at the time.

Since then I've heard they have installed what can only be described as rows of tables. They're not really desks. Just long rows of white tables where one row of employees faces another with an 8" glass divider between the two employees. You know; for privacy.

kindatrue• 8 years ago

you have to contend with people playing grab-ass all over the office

???

Do you work at Sterling Cooper Draper?

vlozko• 8 years ago

You forgot about Pryce!

Spooky23• 8 years ago

That sounds like a workplace professionalism issue than a seating issue.

If you want to watch soccer, take a vacation day.

hw6• 8 years ago

I think it's less about increased collaboration but more about fostering culture and relationships between team members. Imagine a soccer team where everyone trains independently and only heads in to the office for video sessions. Teams with good culture, good bond between team members, often succeed (there's a particular sports team in the Oakland that is a good example).

TimJYoung• 8 years ago

What exact property of private office space prevents fostering a team culture ? At some point, people need to stop discussing and get something done, and that requires quiet, un-interrupted, work time.

Florin_Andrei5• 8 years ago

Imagine a soccer team where everyone trains independently and only heads in to the office for video sessions.

Riiight, because soccer and office work are so similar!

GordonS2• 8 years ago

IME it only fosters slowly simmering hatred of co-workers' irritating (and often noisy) foibles.

IshKebab• 8 years ago

Ah yes the world cup - kills productivity for 6-10 hours every 4 years. Definitely worth changing office layout for.

tombert8• 8 years ago

I think you might have missed my point; it's not about the world cup (or any ball-based sport you want to talk about) in particular. I'm complaining about the fact that <event x> can make people loud and therefore very distracting.

I wouldn't suggest changing the office layout if I were only distracted by events every four years. I get distracted by events related to the open office every single day; the latest one just happened to be the World Cup when I wrote that.

tssva• 8 years ago

The it is cheaper argument works because the savings are short term, easy to quantify and the person making the open office decision can easily claim credit for them while the costs are long term, hard to quantify and difficult to assign directly to the decision for an open office.

andrewfromx4• 8 years ago

You really can just put in the headphones and ignore distractions for a few hours. And then, leave. You don’t have to sit there for 8+ hours. Go in in the morning, talk to a few people face to face, sit there with headphones for ~2 hours, and then maybe after lunch, go elsewhere and work from another location you like.

flax• 8 years ago

Maybe that works for you, but headphones do nothing for me for the stress caused by having my back exposed to people walking around.

pc86• 8 years ago

All things considered you have a pretty amazing life if someone walking behind you constitutes "stress."

senectus1• 8 years ago

I've worked in open plan for the last 14 years, I've gotten used to it. headphones and zoning out just makes me the only one there...

vonmoltke2• 8 years ago

You realize there are large numbers of people who cannot "go elsewhere and work from another location [they] like".

andrewfromx4• 8 years ago

Sure but that’s all just conditioning. Just do it. And if you get in trouble show the code you wrote. Repeat. Eventually you’ll be at peace with just walking out the door.

binarymax• 8 years ago

Open plan offices have been known to be bad since at least 1987, when the first edition of Peopleware was published. A good portion of the book discusses issues with employee distraction and its inverse relationship to productivity. They use evidence from the field to discuss office layout, and also other issues like office wide paging systems (that used to be a thing!), phone calls, and email.

accnumnplus12• 8 years ago

These articles keep being written, I guess as individuals each eventually discover this for themselves -- is it having any positive effect as far as any HNers can tell?

howard941• 8 years ago

Every time I see it on the front page I forward the link to my direct supervisor and my contact at the mother ship one hop away from the CEO and it feels like I'm doing something, therefore it's having a positive effect on me. Unfortunately corporate policy remains unchanged.

commandlinefan4• 8 years ago

is it having any positive effect

If anything, it's convincing upper management that they must be doing something right because anything that makes us this miserable has to be good for the bottom line.

antfarm• 8 years ago

Few managers have a schedule that allows, or even requires, long hours of uninterrupted time dedicated to a single creative pursuit.

More on that in Paul Graham's Essay: http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

jonbarker• 8 years ago

Knowledge workers, aka the creative class, are required to be on both schedules. They are both makers and managers. So if they are doing it 'right' they basically have two jobs.

collinf3• 8 years ago

My biggest issue with my open floor office is that it seems like everyone just takes calls at their seats. We have private spaces and enclaves for that, but I am just bombarded with 4 people within 10 feet of my workspace on their phone. To counteract I throw on some Ambient music on my headphones, which sort of works but I still find I prefer to work in silence.

Does it not seem like open-office etiquette to take a phone call in a private space when other people are trying to work?

jSully243• 8 years ago

Why can't the team agree on some norms of behavior for this very situation? We're supposed to be collaborating, so how about we all collaborate on where to take a phone call, what is and is not acceptable for noice in our work space? If we can or can not microwave fish leftovers and eat our desk? The important stuff.

A critical piece of making the open space work is people being open with another. For watching big events on tv, you can take that into a conference room too. Cheer all you want. Gotta call your partner or someone else? Go in a room.

rhizome3• 8 years ago

Why can't the team agree on some norms of behavior for this very situation

Who is going to assume the authority when a company is promoted as having a flat hierarchy, or holocracy, etc.? If the CEO is speakerphoning or fomenting adhoc floor meetings in an open-plan, nobody is going to say it's bad.

ghaff9• 8 years ago

For a lot of people, "taking calls" is a major part of their job. I usually work remotely but, when I am in the office, hunting for a free enclave every time I need to have a phone conversation isn't practical and certainly doesn't scale if everyone were to do it.

I do think that it's on management to try to segregate groups that don't talk much and prefer quiet from groups whose jobs involve a lot of phone conversations but it's not practical for many roles to avoid talking on their desk phone. That's why they have one.

collinf3• 8 years ago

This is certainly a good point and part of the reason why I just deal with the noise. Desk segregation based on noise levels rather than teams is actually a pretty good idea. Not sure of the implementation of something like that.

fblp• 8 years ago

ask for some Zenbooths and create rule that calls must be taken in them. It makes the open office workable. www.zenbooth.net (I'm a founder there)

jpindar5• 8 years ago

From one of the testimonials on that site: "I have some people who will literally spend all day in them."

collinf3• 8 years ago

These are pretty cool and we actually have them in our office, I see my current company on your list of companies using them.

Unfortunately, team culture takes precedence over neat tools. It's just a common thing on my team to do take calls at your desk.

cullenking2• 8 years ago

[edited].

For anyone who doesn't want to drop their email into their webpage to see pricing (yes, I received an outreach email within 15 minutes of doing so) their pricing starts at $4.5k and $14k "on sale". Bit steep for my blood, but, there's obviously some bigger spenders out there!

RandallBrown5• 8 years ago

I've never worked in an office where people regularly talked on their phones in the open. The people at the company who talked on the phone for their job (sales, customer service etc.) had their desks in a different area and had a different setup with high cubicle walls or offices.

HelloNurse3• 8 years ago

If I take or make a phone call, it must be in a place where my computer, my notes and my phone are located. This means the open office, regardless of how much I disturb my audience.

loco5niner13• 8 years ago

Yikes. I wouldn't want to work with you.

I think your comment is ironic considering your previous comment:

but there are plenty of idiots who turn off air conditioning, open the windows or pull up curtains regardless of everyone else's comfort.

Techpanda74• 8 years ago

I like the name of the post, full of passion. From the first look, you can see how the writer "enjoys" open spaces and couldn't hide his feelings. What deals with open offices itself, I found it appealing, but that's just what people prefer, we all have different preferences.

EADGBE• 8 years ago

I don't know. I was in open offices thrice in 2.5 years before joining a cubical cult for nearly three more years now.

I literally jumped at the opportunity to move my cube to share a window, and an entrance.

Give me remote; or give me death at this point.

There's not much natural light and a set of nice headphones can't overshadow.

sytse• 8 years ago

The OP point of an office being used to impress visitors is on point. Since we're all remote we resorted to building a TV wall of 6 screens of 65 inch each that features a team map of 300 people all around the world. Visitors love it and I don't distract my fellow team members by showing it.

tribune• 8 years ago

I wish everyone would give up on the "increases collaboration" thing and just admit that open-plan offices are about shoving as many people as possible into a given space

commandlinefan4• 8 years ago

I suffer in an open office, but everybody on my team that I might collaborate with is actually in a different time zone, so there's absolutely no chance that the "open-ness" of the office will help me in any way.

Marazan2• 8 years ago

I like open plan offices.

The increased collaboration is a plain and albviius benefit for me as a developer.

A site crushing issue was solved in 30 seconds due to me overhearing a conversation in ouropen plan office. Without that it would have been at least 3 hours of pass the parcel to work out what incredibly obscure thing with timezones had happened.

delecti• 8 years ago

How many such situations don't happen despite an open office, because the person who could have solved it was wearing noise blocking headphones? Most discussions near me don't require my attention, so none of them get my attention.

loco5niner13• 8 years ago

... and the issue was probably initially caused by a programmer being distracted in their open office.

linuxftw4• 8 years ago

I agree. It feels like a 'if you repeat a lie often enough' kind of statements. I'll never buy into it, there is no evidence that anyone can show me. Open offices are terrible.

massenburger• 8 years ago

I'm sure this is just anecdotal, but we all kind of like our open office layout. We're not just at desks sitting shoulder to shoulder. They're more of these horseshoe-esque things, and you have plenty of room between you and the next person. We have an open ceiling, so the A/C provides some good, loud background noise to drown out conversations. And lastly, we're pretty strict about having people IM you before they come to your desk, so interruptions aren't as intrusive.

I really think open office layouts can be implemented correctly, it's just that managers don't take the time to really tailor them for their development teams. We all wanted the lights off to work in? Lights are off. We wanted standing desks? We got standing desks. We wanted 2 monitors? We got 2 monitors that have adjustable heights. I think the problem with open offices is that managers are just using them as a way to save money on office space. If you really want a good office area for your developers, I think you can accomplish that with an open office layout if you really try.

linuxftw4• 8 years ago

So, you have to sit there more or less quietly to not disturb others? In an nice cube farm, you can walk over to someone else cube and have a quiet discussion and not disturb the entire office.

If you're a relatively small office, I suppose no cubicles could work. Wait until you have offices in other parts of the country/world that you need to collaborate with remotely. Everyone is on a call for 25% of the day, and it's terrible. It's terrible to listen to 2/5 people next to you on a conference call, and it's terrible to listen to people that are in those environments on your conference call because they are trying to talk like they're in a library.

dccoolgai• 8 years ago

One cool thing I saw once was a company that had a "quiet room" for its developers set aside in the middle of an open office. Si they could kinda get the best of both worlds.

seanmcdirmid2• 8 years ago

Vaulted ceilings with lots of natural light can make me prefer an open office. Better if it’s more like a design studio with a lot of artifacts/plush to break up the desk monotony.

HelloNurse3• 8 years ago

Some problems defy budget. I'm in a mid-sized office (8 people) or in a customer's larger office (about 30 people) and in both cases noise is moderate (and mostly consisting of interesting conversation) but there are plenty of idiots who turn off air conditioning, open the windows or pull up curtains regardless of everyone else's comfort.

southerndrift• 8 years ago

None of this is new. There’s been an endless stream of studies showing that the open-plan office is a source of stress, conflict, and turnover. And yet it’s still the default in tech. An almost unquestioned default. That’s a fucking travesty.

No, it's the other way round: you create conflict and turnover by introducing an open-plan office. That way, your codebase remains maintainable since handovers happen regularly.

Imagine the opposite: a productive coder from a silent office leaves after 30 years. There is a very high probability that it takes months until new recruits can make meaningful changes since nothing has been documented. If you enforce regular handovers you can be sure that some documentation has accumulated somewhere.

neilwilson• 8 years ago

My 30 year old copy of "Peopleware" by DeMarco and Lister has a chapter entitled "Bring Back the Door".

And yet the battle still rages.

If you haven't read the book, I'd recommend it. If only to realise how little we've learned.

wafflesraccoon• 8 years ago

Man, reading the comments makes me think I'm the only one who loves open offices. After switching from a cube I never want to go back. I found being locked in a cube all day was depressing and created a culture of working zombies. With an open office in my experience people seem much happier.

mlthoughts201816• 8 years ago

It’s funny because I’ve always noticed that coworkers seem way more depressed and zombie-like in open plan offices, because they cannot get any relief from the constant stream of distractions and focus distuptors.

Jaruzel3• 8 years ago

Cubes seem to be very much a US led thing. I've worked in and around London (UK) for over 25 years now, and have worked in small offices (~10 people) up to massive 2000+ people trading floors. Not once have I seen an office split into the 'Office Space' or 'Dilbert' style of cube working.

Given the choice, and as a 100% remote worker now, I'm so glad I don't actually have to choose, I think I'd take the cube over an open trading floor environment any day.

vfc1• 8 years ago

I used to stay later and use the hours from 17h onwards where there was more peace to get productive work done, as it was impossible during the day with all the interruptions and standups (plus headphones all day non-stop).

Only 1.5h hours lost hours a day? Try 3h or so at least LOL

Working from home, it feels like time is elastic at least the first few times, then you get used to it. You start working, get what it feels like half a day of work done and look at the clock: it's still 11 AM.

p3llin0r3• 8 years ago

I am a full time remote worker, but I have survived the tyranny of an open office in the past. I dislike the open office format.

A lot of the time companies don't "choose" an open office, it chooses them.

If you are working at a small or mid-sized company, building out rented office space you will probably outgrow in a year or two is a crappy investment.

The alternative? Buy the desks, throw them into a room, expect people to be quiet and respectful.

athenot• 8 years ago

I think what's a terrible idea is pegging people to specific locations. That used to be necessary to find someone in the office but nowadays we have other tools to discover each other's locations.

Instead of binding people to locations, I'd much rather bind activities/moods to locations, e.g.

- the studious space: hushed atmosphere like a library, NO TALKING, for people actively working on brain problems

- the collaboration space: when you need to huddle with a few other people and solve a problem out loud

- the audio privacy space: small rooms for remote conferences where you're the only participant

- etc.

What's important is to have extra monitors in all these spaces, so a decent work setup can be had anywhere.

As a compromise, what's been working in our own office is that the open plan is—with rare exceptions—the "Library": very quiet talking, if any. For the super quiet, that's the Home Office. And for all the rest, we have conference rooms which are all equiped with very large screen telepresence equipment and which supports wireless screen sharing. So anytime we need to make noise, we have what we need. And for those who need some momentary privacy on their own, we have Audio Privacy Rooms with are set up with 1 armchair, small table and video phone. (Disclaimer: I work for the Collaboration group at Cisco so we're eating our own dog food and have easy access to it; I do realize these things do have a cost.)

mlthoughts201816• 8 years ago

What if a worker needs personalized space, like certain lighting, ergonomic chair & keyboard, works on a special desktop station not with a portable laptop, etc.?

Also, in every job I’ve had, the tasks I am asked to complete always require absolute quiet, private concentration time, for most hours on almost all days. The same has been true for most colleagues in each of these businesses, across all different software teams.

Given this, why not make the default be dedicated private offices per person, and then have separate areas for collaboration, interview rooms, etc.?

A “Library” open plan area would simply not be good enough as a default, since it lacks dedicated privacy and lacks customizability per each individual for sound, lighting, equipment, etc.

I think the main thing is that any solution proposing to put a lot of programmers into the same shared, open room is just wrong-headed and unworkable. That’s the defining property that makes these workspaces bad.

RandallBrown5• 8 years ago

What if a worker needs personalized space, like certain lighting, ergonomic chair & keyboard, works on a special desktop station not with a portable laptop, etc.?

They would set their stuff up in the space that best fit their needs or even work from home.

qw• 8 years ago

What if a worker needs personalized space, like certain lighting, ergonomic chair & keyboard, works on a special desktop station not with a portable laptop, etc.?

They could use rolling desks.

https://gamebridgeu.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/desks/

rimliu2• 8 years ago

For me hotsitting, flex-spacing or whatever you call it just quietly whispers: "you do not belong".

nucleardog3• 8 years ago

"This is all temporary. Do not get comfortable. Be ready for it all to drop out from under you on a moment's notice."

mpg33• 8 years ago

Open office is "anti-focus" imo. It's crazy how it even became a thing.

Cubicles use up the same amount of space and at least you have some privacy.

pnw_hazor6• 8 years ago

Nice cubicles are pretty expensive.

Evidence would suggest that companies are willing to harm their employees, reduce productivity, and pay more recruiter fees rather than pay for cubicles.

everdev• 8 years ago

I know an Apple employee begging not to be moved to the new camps and it's open floorplan.

I'm sure some people love it, but there should be options to work in an environment that's best for you.

dvfjsdhgfv3• 8 years ago

The author completely misses the point using straw man argumentation. The managers sign the leases not because the of nice-looking photos, "increased collaboration" and other ridiculous arguments, but because of the bottom line. Open-plan offices are cheaper and that's the sole reason. Whatever other reasons are communicated to employees they're just typical corporate internal PR. I haven't actually met anyone who really believed all this - everyone knows these office are much worse than separate rooms, and it's also common knowledge that they're unavoidable because of (much) lower cost.

mlthoughts201816• 8 years ago

Do you have evidence that open plan spaces are actually cheaper, even just in plain real estate terms? I’ve always read that they end up being less than a few percent cheaper per person after all is said and done. To boot, a lot of companies spend millions on stupid, opulent office features like fountains, coffee stations, roof decks, beer, etc. How do you explain that they are willing to spend so much more on that stuff instead of spending that budget on giving healthy workplace privacy?

I worked for a company once that already had a huge office in Columbus, Ohio, with private offices for everyone. They had no engineering presence in that office and no plans to increase headcount in that office. It was an HR office primarily, and the workers there needed privacy everyday to be on the phone about sensitive topics like legal issues or salary.

The CEO announced in a company meeting once that they would be totally remodeling that office to change it into open plan seating (we found out later it came at a cost of $14 million, purely to destroy good privacy and turn it into open plan seats, in a building the company already owned, with no need to accomodate more head count).

The CEO just said, “We are an innovation company and that makes each and every one of you an innovator — and innovators love open spaces.”

So I think you’re wrong. Companies don’t care about open plan offices for saving money (and they often lose money on it).

It’s all about bullshit optics.

dvfjsdhgfv3• 8 years ago

I guess we come from different backgrounds. Personally, I've never met a person who liked the idea of open-plan offices - and this includes all managers. Of course they choose the best places for themselves to keep the maximum level of privacy possible.

As for the CEO - I can't imagine he could say "we're going to squeeze you all against your will to improve the bottom line." He had to say the usual bs, whether he believed it or not.

As for concrete data, check any online calculator. This one [1] shows individual offices as taking 3 times as much space as open-plan offices. As personnel costs are usually one of the highest fixed costs, going open plan might be a good alternative to lowering the salary when a manager wants to improve the bottom line - or, sometimes, to save the employees in troublesome times.

[1] http://officeprinciples.com/planning/space-calculator/result...

geebee2• 8 years ago

Here's what I posted three years ago on the topic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9760414

Is it time to get depressed yet? This has been a topic for such a long time. It was in peopleware in 1987. I thought I discovered the topic when Joel (On Sofware) wrote about it in 2000. While a few people seem to enjoy open offices, the overwhelming majority of developers I know, or who chime in on HN, value a quiet place to work and dislike open offices.

And yet, not only has nothing changed, it seems to be getting worse. It couldn't be more clear to me that developers, at least on this issue, simply have no clout as a profession. There may be a few individuals who can make demands, but on the balance, these are decisions imposed on us, as a group, and we are apparently unable to do anything about it.

The really sad thing is, this isn't a situation where we're asking to fly first class, or for more vacation. We're talking about asking for something that will make us more productive and increase the value we largely hand over to our employers, simply because it's depressing to not be able to do a good job due to distractions. So yeah, I'm depressed about it.

There was a time when I read these essays and felt a bit more charged up, like people were starting to understand something important and that things would change. Well, now we have open offices.

I'll finish with another variant on my broken record: the industry talks constant about the critical shortage of software engineers, but it won't give them a quiet place to work. Actually, that last sentence is too optimistic - it won't allow them a quiet place to work. Those places exist, but companies often demand that their programmers spend 8 hours a day in places that are too noisy for focus.

sotojuan• 8 years ago

Reminds me of Dan Luu's take:

This book seemed convincing when I read it in college. It even had all sorts of studies backing up what they said. No deadlines is better than having deadlines. Offices are better than cubicles. Basically all devs I talk to agree with this stuff.
But virtually every successful company is run the opposite way. Even Microsoft is remodeling buildings from individual offices to open plan layouts. Could it be that all of this stuff just doesn't matter that much? If it really is that important, how come companies that are true believers, like Fog Creek, aren't running roughshod over their competitors?

geebee2• 8 years ago

That's a great point. The top companies are succeeding in spite of a practice developers say they despise. So isn't that evidence they're right, and the devs are wrong?

Here's the thing - how many industries rely so deeply on controlling their workforce's right to live and work in the United States? How many industries lobby congress so ferociously and constantly about a shortage of highly skilled workers?

Well, yeah, if an industry has the right to decide who is and isn't allowed to live in the United States, in a system where non-family based immigration is difficult and spots are hard to come by, then sure, they can be very successful imposing work conditions that people with personal and economic freedom of mobility would reject in favor of another profession. But if you really want to live in the US and Facebook controls whether you get and keep a work visa, then sure, you'll put up with an open office. And because of the way we allocate green cards (requiring a corporate sponsor, and greatly restricting how many are issued every year, with a long queue), you may have to put up with it for quite a while.

So another way to look at it is this: companies say they are in a desperate competition for key workers in critical shortage, and they can't recruit domestically no matter how good an offer they make. They also require working conditions that most developers say they despise. Uh, how about working conditions that most developers don't despise, have you tried that?

nerfhammer• 8 years ago

e.g., Google didn't beat Altavista because its employees were 20% more productive with their office time.

jpindar5• 8 years ago

Sweatshops succeed too.

At least developers generally quit before we get to the point of wanting to jump off the building.

Felz• 8 years ago

Personally, I'm fairly certain that this stuff does matter, but that a successful company will inevitably backslide to the corporate mean. The things that initially made it successful will be lost. Anything not an immediate disaster from management's perspective (open offices) will creep in. It might be decades before people realize the company was running off inertia, though.

rimliu2• 8 years ago

Slavery was kind of a success too.

ghaff9• 8 years ago

I suspect the answer is that it doesn't matter all that much at the end of the day. People have different preferences at different stages of their career and larger companies are always going to be distributed to at least some degree.

And, to the degree it does matter, 1.) the individual company's/team's context is probably relevant and 2.) companies/teams tend to take actions which at least somewhat mitigate the disadvantages of whatever approach they've chose. So an all-remote company may well have different decision-making processes than a co-located one, probably systematically holds F2F meetings of various times, and so forth. In open floor plans where people mostly work in the office, there's often some flexibility to spend some time off by yourself.

yelloweyes• 8 years ago

That's a very simplistic and stupid insight. Guess what else generated a lot of money? Slavery.

existencebox• 8 years ago

I am an employee at Microsoft, who has had both offices and open space teams, and who has chatted with Dan about many of these points.

I'd make two statements, both are entirely my own.

1. The impact of these changes often lags the change itself, and status quo takes time to shift. Open spaces were definitely a fad for a while, and a lot of people (broader than MS) certainly started drinking the koolaid, yet it took ~decade for the rollout to really move in force. Conversely, I see far more anti-open-space articles nowadays than a decade ago. On top of this as well, bigCo corporate momentum cannot be underemphesized. IBM is still a behemoth, recent follies and very well-discussed employee-QOL-"hiccups" aside.

2. "success" is not binary. It's especially harder to judge when "product success" is often impacted by so many externalities it becomes very difficult to ask "what really is the impact of X specific factor." It becomes _even harder_ when the entire industry did this shift almost in lockstep, so finding "outliers" that are also viable employers for an individual became less and less an option. In that context, all I can bring is anecdata, and the # of peers I've worked with who dislike open spaces and will make active career choices to avoid them (myself included) seems to be growing.

hsnewman• 8 years ago

I absolutely agree with this, I see such a loss in moral and productivity where I work. What is funny though, is that the management has walled offices. I wonder why.

cullenking2• 8 years ago

I'm management (and a dev). I have to manage health insurance, payroll, accounting, and interface with our lawyer. My screen is shielded, and I wish I had an office where I could take sensitive calls, and where I could have open a notice of wage garnishment on my desk without worrying that someone will see it, etc. Sorry, it's not because I want to look down on the plebs, I just have things I have to do that require privacy.

That being said, I wish everyone could have their own. But, as the person who writes the rent check and the salaries, I can't afford to go from $6k a month to $15k a month, plus $100k outlay to build out an office where everyone gets a private space. It's just incredibly expensive.

I'll do it if everyone would take a paycut though!

rhapsodic• 8 years ago

I'm old enough to remember when high-wall cubicles were standard fare, and they were mocked and derided as soul-crushing corporate cost-cutting measures. But they gave you a lot of privacy, relatively speaking. And you could still have spontaneous conversations with your neighbors.

And then when school-cafeteria-style open offices became de rigeur in the startup culture, people seemed hesitant to push back on the "but collaboration!" nonsense. It looks like the overton window for that is finally starting to shift.

dreamcompiler• 8 years ago

I wonder how much of this is introvert vs extrovert? All sales people are extroverts and most managers are. Most programmers are introverts. Guess which group likes open offices?

magduf5• 8 years ago

All sales people are extroverts and most managers are. Most programmers are introverts. Guess which group likes open offices?

This is not my experience at all. From what I see, most programmers these days are definitely extroverts, if they're under the age of ~35.

Mistredo4• 8 years ago

What happened to introverts?

snarfy• 8 years ago

We're moving to an open office soon. I think I'm going to request some VR googles so I can run a VR office app.

amiga-workbench• 8 years ago

I've seriously considered this, but the resolution and software isn't there yet. I've tried looking into simple video glasses without any head tracking and those are really poor too.

tw1010• 8 years ago

Is talking like Trump starting to become a thing now?

tert45ty54wy2• 8 years ago

No. Probably got it from here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_and_the_Terrible,_Ho...

RandallBrown5• 8 years ago

To throw some more anecdotes in with the rest of the comments, I love open offices.

I've had my own office and found it lonely and boring. I never got less work done than at that job. Everything took longer because I had to stand up and walk to talk to my team. Instant messaging sort of worked, but if they didn't respond immediately, you didn't know if it was because they missed the message or they weren't actually in their office.

Because I hardly ever talked to my team members I never felt any real friendship or camaraderie with them. That made it harder to get help when I needed it and made my day a lot less enjoyable.

I find that I thrive in open offices. I don't even need headphones to concentrate. Everyone is different I guess.

rock_hard• 8 years ago

Thanks for sharing this!

I am a IC and I love open offices.

Also agree that privat offices feel lonely and are a hassle.

I think like with many things there is just a vocal minority that bitching about open offices...we need more people speak up about all the benefits of open offices (besides the economic ones for the company that get cynically cited every time).

CodeCube• 8 years ago

Same here ... it's ideal for me, though I can definitely agree that even better is the "hybrid" concept mentioned by a few others, where I have some time spent amongst the team, and some time spent in isolation.

sillyquiet• 8 years ago

'minority'? doesn't the parent blog post cite studies that claim the direct opposite, that people that prefer open offices are in fact the minority?

nojvek2• 8 years ago

I thrive in hybrid environment. I go to office for half the day, while other half the day I either work from home, or in a coffee place or somewhere else where I can be in the zone for hours.

But the downside is I’m a workaholic. I spend too many hours working.

qaq• 8 years ago

Yep this is perfect setup for me too.

loco5niner13• 8 years ago

I would LOVE this. Unfortunately, commute.

jehlakj2• 8 years ago

Can’t do this. The moment I introduce work at home, I have a much harder time not thinking about work.

tluyben22• 8 years ago

That is why it should be a mix. I get zero coding done in an open office. Networking, sales etc yes, but programming nope. None. So a courtyard office works best for me.

fludlight• 8 years ago

What's a courtyard office?

salvar• 8 years ago

Completely agree with all of this. I believe the people describing their problems with open offices, but I'm just not at all one of them. I'd love if the conversation was less about open space offices being objectively bad for everyone, and more about finding a balance for both people who hate them and people who prefer them.

mpweiher• 8 years ago

First sentence of TFA: "Not because there aren’t people who actually enjoy working in an open office, there are."

DyslexicAtheist• 8 years ago

"And, as with anything, there’s a small subset of workers who legitimately DO enjoy the open office. But unless your company consists solely of such people (very unlikely), it’s hardly worth pleasing a few people to inflect a torment of interruption on the rest." -- @DHH

maxxxxx2• 8 years ago

I prefer team rooms with 2-4 people. You can chat from time to time and build friendships but you don't have the permanent noise of a big office and also some level of privacy.

But the general point is: don't force people into an environment they hate and can't work in. I probably am several times more effective when I work from home in quiet. For others an open office is good.

wizzard2• 8 years ago

All my favorite working arrangements have involved sitting in small teams, either in a room or in individual cubicles (such that you're only in really close proximity to a few other people). I've had my own office before; it's seriously lonely.

I'm skeptical of people who say that being in an open office doesn't affect their productivity at all. Really? How can you be sure?

gcb0• 8 years ago

insteresting point of view that kinda explains it.

now I imagine dilbert's boss being sad in an office, looking at all the workers in cublicles and thinking of ways to make friends :D

pitt1980• 8 years ago

for the sake of adding data points, I prefer not being alone in an office as well

I kind of think being in a group of 4-6 cubicles is pretty ideal

s3r3nity2• 8 years ago

I don't love a _fully_ open office, but I do enjoy some middle ground.

I think my best working experience was when I worked at a startup where there was a big "bullpen," but it was mostly for customer service; all other teams had massive conference rooms where you would have 3-5 people _max_ in that room, with the potential to shut the door if that team wanted privacy or more silence than other teams.

zamalek• 8 years ago

For me it's the large volumes of space. Our office is split up into multiple large open areas, and my current one (12 people) is next to a giant window and is generously laid out. I find the whole situatioun much more relaxing than being cooped up in a small room, I can think clearer likely because of my better mood.

I do have noise cancelling headphones, but I always have music when working - even when I'm working from home.

What we also have, which helps a ton, is an abundance of meeting rooms - some with a tiny table and four chairs. We'll still have a two minute discussion at our desks, but instinctively head to a room for longer discussions. I'm not sure if this was an intentional solution to the cons of open offices - but it seems extremely effective.

jehlakj2• 8 years ago

I personally like open offices because of their casual nature. I used to work at a cubicle like setting, and I was suffocating from the upright and stricter mood they bring.

tyoma• 8 years ago

Thanks for posting this. I also find single offices lonely and isolating. It is much easier to both help people and get help in an open office environment versus the friction and isolation of single person offices.

augbog• 8 years ago

I also love open offices but I do find it heavily depends on who you sit around with. I'm pretty fortunate because everyone prefers deep work and if they do want to chat we just do it over Slack even if we're right next to each other and if we needed something more urgent we'd just give them a look haha.

ryandrake• 8 years ago

Thanks, this point of view always seems to get lost when these open office threads pop up. I had a job with an office (with a door) shared with one other person. The loneliest, most depressing time at that job was when the guy left for a different company and I was by myself there. It was horrible. I basically moved my workspace to the break room so I could regularly encounter people and left the office empty.

deathanatos2• 8 years ago

Everyone is different, but studies continually show that the net overall effect of open offices across people is hugely negative: productivity goes down, stress goes up, disease transmission goes up…

byebyetech• 8 years ago

It is very interesting indeed that tech companies who proud themselves in making decisions that are purely "Data Driven" completely ignores data in this case. Majority of developers hate Open Office and study after study shows that its bad. Yet they can't make decision to have offices. Very strange.

pnw_hazor6• 8 years ago

They have made their decision based on data, devs are commodity items that are fungible so associated costs should be minimized.

They may not admit that, but look at their actions. If you don't like their unhealthy office space they are okay with you taking a hike.

JackFr• 8 years ago

Honestly, the adversity with which we put up in this industry is epic.

We're all truly open plan heroes. Take the rest of the day off.

dalbasal• 8 years ago

--> Few managers have a schedule that allows, or even requires, long hours of uninterrupted time dedicated to a single creative pursuit.

As a manager in an open plan office, I will say this is categorically untrue. I have twelve people interupting me constantly, and I need to stay late or start early regularly so that I can get some uninterrupted work time. It also tends to work against self sufficiency. Rather than learn how to do something (or find out how to find out), it's too easy to ask someone (like me).

I do have a lot of meetings, but I also have work. I need to read specs, for example, and understand all the implications. I need to plan projects with complicated circular dependencies. These are "load lots of stuff into memory" jobs. It's impossible to do in 20 minutes stretches.

I'm also a sprint-and-rest type of personality. I get a lot done I. My most productive stretch of the week. Knocking me out of a productive roll can be real costly in time.

It also makes me a worse/lazier manager. Rather than make sure people are working on a nice big chunk of something, and have everything they need to get the job done, I can trickle information in as we go. That's invariably worse, but less work upfront.

There are definitely upsides too. You get a lot of cohesion for free, especially at a company in the 50-250 people range.

tonyedgecombe• 8 years ago

I need to stay late or start early regularly so that I can get some uninterrupted work time

Why? Your employers dysfunctional work environment isn't your problem to fix.

nucleardog3• 8 years ago

This is where I draw the line, and I've made it clear to those in charge here.

If you need me to work overtime because we're unexpectedly busy, then I'll work overtime. I'm not subsidizing your choice to cheap out on the office environment with my personal time.

Not that anything's changed, but since they're unwilling to try and address the issue I also have no guilt and receive no reprimand for the wasted hours.

(But my frustration with my inability to be productive here was definitely a huge driving factor in my decision to leave.)

jlebrech• 8 years ago

open offices can work if people kept quiet and minded their own business.

also listened to their own headphones and not a common radio (as that one same playlist can drive someone crazy)

nedwin• 8 years ago

Are there any companies in the Bay Area that have private offices for the rank and file?

I've heard of one older section of the Apple campus (pre alien spacecraft) where you can have your own space with a door etc but that's about it...

User23• 8 years ago

One upside of open offices is that by reducing average productivity, they make it easier for employees with an effective coping strategy to more easily surpass their peers.

Fellshard• 8 years ago

It's quite simple - in a shared open space, sound levels and attention become resources subject to normal tragedy of the commons rules.

andrewfromx4• 8 years ago

If uncomfortable { And have talked to > 3 people { Take laptop to nearby college campus library. Find room and work. }

imroot• 8 years ago

Ever time this gets brought up, everyone agrees with this, but, yet, no matter what, damn near every -- and I mean EVERY -- employer I've worked at, and even interviewed for since -- probably 2002 has gone to open plan offices.

I can look at the engineering area at any given day and see every member of the engineering team with headphones/earbuds on. Slack/IRC/Skype for Business gets ignored...why? It allows us to focus on the task at hand, without the noise of the office around us.

One of the best startups that I've worked at -- culture wise -- had a policy of two days a week, there would be no meetings, chatter around the office, or loud noises in the afternoon, and they'd play something that was rather chill/relaxing that everyone would agree on...and it really helped with productivity: the number of commits went up on Tuesdays and Thursdays because we were able to get things done without the hassle of anyone bothering us but the tasks at hand.

If open plan offices were designed with sound masking/dampening, the correct number of bathrooms per person (because, they were originally designed for cubes, not open seating, there are never enough bathrooms, it seems), the correct network planning (limiting your DevOps guys to one network drop always sucks when we're the ones pushing around gb+ images), and parking (because open plan seating usually implies that they're trying to stuff more people into a smaller space, so, there's never usually enough parking for the area) I would not really have an issue with open plan offices. I have a great pair of noise cancelling headphones and they work well for me.

coldtea2• 8 years ago

Ever time this gets brought up, everyone agrees with this, but, yet, no matter what, damn near every -- and I mean EVERY -- employer I've worked at, and even interviewed for since -- probably 2002 has gone to open plan offices.

That's because employers don't care and employees don't unite to fight them back on such matters.

imgabe• 8 years ago

I mention this every time open offices come up, but it bears repeating. The "collaboration" excuse is nonsense. Companies choose open offices because they're cheaper. You can fit more people in less square feet which means cheaper rent.

I'm pretty damn sure that if private offices were somehow cheaper they would do that instead and figure out some other way to handle collaboration.

mfringel• 8 years ago

"Just wear headphones" is the "Just hit delete" of the new millennium.

phyzome• 8 years ago

The one benefit of open floor plans, in my experience, is that I get to look out the window. Cubicles cut down on the amount of natural light that can infiltrate the room.

...orrrrr I could work from home, which I do 2 days per week, and it's very nice. No distractions, "private office", all the natural light I want, good food.

frogger101• 8 years ago

I think the open office is not suited for all personalities. We have some people in our small, open office that enjoy it and others that don't. It's not a one size fits all situation, neither are cubicles.

dboreham• 8 years ago

It is very good, excellent, attractive idea if you are paying for the office space (and even better if you are not also subject to the consequences of poor employee productivity).

ken• 8 years ago

I've come to see the open-plan office like the Golden Path in the Dune novels, even if accidental. Between large technology companies which have tried to expand to do everything, and endless acquisitions and acqui-hires, we were at risk of too much centralization in the tech world.

Open-plan offices are a pain point which serve to drive everyone with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit to start their own company. They're supposed to be oppressive. We're due for a Scattering.

king_nothing• 8 years ago

Paraphrasing a self-made billionaire: Give people a cubicle or an office with a door and make sure no one bothers them, including you.

trts• 8 years ago

My open office of about 15 people per 350 square feet, row after row after row, is silent and without interaction almost completely. It makes me crawl out of my skin to wanting to leave. I can typically spend no more than about 5 hours there before I escape to home where I can actually get work done. I'd love my job if I didn't have to go to that place.

pnw_hazor6• 8 years ago

Companies treat programmers as costs that should be minimized. They manage programmers like children (toys and treats) or stenographers(typing pools) because it is cheap.

Whereas, lawyers in law firms are considered revenue generators and they are treated that way.

When I switched from programming to lawyering, one of the biggest differences I noticed was how the law firm staff and office manager were always trying to make it easier for me to generate billable hours. Years later it still feels weird having "staff" that take of care you and work hard to remove obstacles that may interfere with your work. I can't even make my own copies w/o a staff person offering to do that for me. Staff that catch me refilling the coffee pot will offer to do it for me.

And, the million dollar view from my high-rise office still takes my breath away.

Now instead of feeling like a tool/plebe I feel like a milk cow. The law firm's entire setup is to keep me working efficiently (not that its perfect but they try).

notyourwork4• 8 years ago

Very interesting, as someone who is interested in law and currently an SDE I would love to hear more about your transition. Did you all along plan on this, did it come after your engineering career, at what point did you become an attorney.

For reference, I am 8 years into a software engineering career and heavily considering going to law school.

jbronn3• 8 years ago

Do not go to law school unless it's a passion that you're willing to sacrifice financial and mental well-being for. It's only "worth it" if you're able to attend an elite (top 10) institution -- otherwise, in an industry obsessed with status and prestige, you'll end up on the wrong side of the bimodal salary curve¹ struggling to pay your six figure student debt. BigLaw, IP (patents), and tax attorneys are the only specialties that make decent money. Once laden with debt, 2000 billable hours is standard at most firms, meaning that 50+ hour weeks are the norm. Lawyers are unhappy: alcoholism² and depression³ are rampant in the profession.

Source: Lawyer that hated writing patents and went back to tech.

¹ https://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib

² 20+% of lawyers have alcohol problems: https://www.americanbar.org/publications/youraba/2016/march-...

³ 4x rate of depression and highest suicide rate among occupations: https://www.americanbar.org/publications/gp_solo/2015/march-...

pnw_hazor6• 8 years ago

I didn't plan on it but I always considered LS an option.

I have a Computer Engineering degree and programmed for 10+ years, mainly at startups that didn't pan out with some contracting thrown in there too. During that time some of my friends went into IP law and were doing well.

I eventually reached my last straw with startups and bit the bullet and went to LS at night while doing programming.

IMO industry experience is more important than LS rank/performance for patent attorneys. (I went to a local third tier LS school and had no problem.) It is your understanding of the technical subject matter that will set you apart from other patent attorneys especially from those w/o much industry experience. That said, I only work on computer/software patents, never gadgets or circuits.

Downsides include: drafting good patents is more exhausting for me than programming; the job can get grindy at times; and it also kind of sucks being in the service industry, dealing with those pesky clients can sometimes be a hassle. Being a diva programmer was more fun in that aspect.

Also, LS is expensive, my school charges about 2X what it did when I went. I went at night and worked at programming jobs during the day. This reduced my opportunity cost by at least $400K.

Upsides include: meeting a lot of smart people; learning about what they are building; flexible hours; nice office; decent pay; not having to build the inventions -- we just talk about cool parts and don't have to spend n-months or years getting them work; and not having to program for work.

sorine• 8 years ago

This is also true in the accounting industry. Internal accountants are cost-centers and not viewed as value-add departments, whereas in public accounting each accountant is a revenue-generator. Public accounting pay is generally higher until you reach the manager level of internal accounting, and it is amazing how much more willing the organization was willing to make us happy and more billable. Internally, it seemed like the less management saw of us, the better.

ghaff9• 8 years ago

One suspects that businesses in general have tilted too far towards having highly paid professionals doing everything self-service just because they can and the costs are sort of hidden.

Playing travel agent for an hour suddenly makes a lot less sense when it keeps you from billing out at $500/hr. for some client.

ADDED: The one time I did some legal work (for an expert witness report) the ticking clock made me very aware of what was a good use of my time and what wasn't.

pnw_hazor6• 8 years ago

More than once my boss has had to remind me that we pay the staff to do such-and-such so I can keep billing.

bshoemaker• 8 years ago

Ah yes, Google & Facebook et. al. really seem to be minimizing their costs by spending hundreds of thousands per developer on salary and millions upon millions in toys and perks.

What world are you living in?

pnw_hazor6• 8 years ago

They minimize where they can. They would pay $25/hr if they could get away with it.

They used to break the law to do it (anti-poaching agreements).

edit-to-add: Why do you think they ignore the research that says open offices are not healthy or productive? Because they can get devs to stay using less expensive means, such as, increased compensation and treats.

oblio2• 8 years ago

Toys and perks are cheap and high impact. They’re from “Tricking employees 101”.

Developer salaries are high but revenues per developer are huge for these companies.

Tharkun3• 8 years ago

Most of us don't work for Google or FB. Most of us aren't even in the US. I can definitely see laywer or banker types getting all the perks the parent mentioned, while devs are treated like overpaid secretaries.

johnvega• 8 years ago

If working on complex code that requires Deep Work (Cal Newport) then having a quiet private office/room is a must, otherwise, open office should be okay. Having my own quiet private office, and depending on my current tasks, with option to work on open office should be a great setup.

hw6• 8 years ago

As much as I dislike the interruptions of an open office, I breathe better walking into an open office instead of a cubicle farm, which are downright depressing. Not to mention trying to find a co-worker - downright impossible unless you peek into each cubicle or you know which one he/she's at beforehand.

kqr• 8 years ago

I feel like cubicles give you the solitude and quiet of an open office, coupled with the social interaction and community of private offices.

bedros• 8 years ago

another horrible concept pioneered by Mark Zuckerberg

Mark, the eighties called and they want their open-plan office back

nascar_is_bad• 8 years ago

I hate open office plans, but I would be fine with them with three changes.

Do not allow eating meals in the general workspace. The main office should not be an "office-ateria". Right now, there's a ~3.5 hour block between 11am-2:30pm where there's a 50 percent chance people are eating and having a conversation about last night's episodes/games 5 feet behind my back.

Similarly, if you need to pull up a group of people for anything more than a quick conversation? Get together in a room. Do not do it amongst the rest of the team. Offices still need several private rooms to make this possible. Same thing with phone calls. Any sort of long term outlaid conversations should be relegated to private rooms, or to that cafeteria area. The more people involved the shorter it must be for it to happen acceptably amongst the general workspace.

Lastly, let people be remote when they need to, encourage it even. Don't make jokes about it, or discourage it for any reason other than important dates/meetings. Give them everything they need to succeed remotely. Open office plans make everyone aware of who is there and who is not, and currently, "not being there" is frowned upon. So even people with a valid reason, like they're on the second week of a bad cold, feel pressured to return earlier than necessary.

With these three things, I could reasonably expect that my work space and general area is a suitable environment to focus, to have quick, productive discussions and general be a part of the group.

Without them, I'm an irritable bastard with headphones on all day who loathes everyone around me.

s3r3nity2• 8 years ago

Every time I read these threads against the open-plan office, I think back to two arguments that an old boss put forth for them that I haven't been able to find a good answer for:

1) If it works for some of the most successful tech companies on the planet (Google / Facebook / Amazon,) why can't it work for us?

2) Prove to me that the loss in productivity is higher than the cost / investment necessary to build everyone an office (or a semi-isolated cube) + value gained from collaboration.

I hear lots of hearsay and opinions, but if folks have good research or articles to point to, I'd love to have them in my back pocket for the next time I have this argument.

mattnewport• 8 years ago

The obvious answer to 1) is "you're not Google, Facebook or Amazon". How does he propose to distinguish between it "working" for them vs. them being able to function despite the productivity hit because of their other strengths? Given that all the research shows almost entirely negative impacts of open plan offices on multiple dimensions it seems more likely that those exceptions succeed despite not because of the disadvantages.

The OP links to the recent study that the supposed communication benefits of open plan offices also appear to be a myth which calls into question the premise of 2)

HelloNurse3• 8 years ago

The loss in productivity includes productive people who leave for a better workplace. Does your boss need research to understand the value of not alienating and driving away employees?

loco5niner13• 8 years ago

1) If it works for some of the most successful tech companies on the planet (Google / Facebook / Amazon,) why can't it work for us?

Have these companies always been open-office, or is this something they've recently moved to? These companies have been successful for years and can probably absorb the productivity losses an open office generates for a while.

coldtea2• 8 years ago

1) If it works for some of the most successful tech companies on the planet (Google / Facebook / Amazon,) why can't it work for us?

Because it's not about what merely works, it's about what's better.

Keith Richards and others wrote great music even while on heroin. But you can do even better without heroin.

2) Prove to me that the loss in productivity is higher than the cost / investment necessary to build everyone an office (or a semi-isolated cube) + value gained from collaboration.

There's no extra collaboration, just extra disruption, so you don't have to prove anything.

opo• 8 years ago

1) If it works for some of the most successful tech companies on the planet (Google / Facebook / Amazon,) why can't it work for us?

The open floor plans hurt their expensive worker's productivity, but they have the money to hire more people. A small company has to be more worried about worker productivity than a large mega corp.

...2) Prove to me that the loss in productivity is higher than the cost / investment necessary to build everyone an office (or a semi-isolated cube) + value gained from collaboration.

There is pretty much overwhelming research that people are more productive and healthy at work when they have some privacy and don't have distractions. One example - a study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology of more than 40,000 workers in 300 US office buildings: "...Enclosed private offices clearly outperformed open-plan layouts in most aspects of IEQ (Indoor Environmental Quality), particularly in acoustics, privacy and the proxemics issues. Benefits of enhanced 'ease of interaction' were smaller than the penalties of increased noise level and decreased privacy resulting from open-plan office configuration."

https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/science-just-proved-that-...

This article talks about some of the other research on the negative health effects and other effects on productivity:

https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-...

Even the idea that there is any actual "value gained from collaboration" in an open floor plan is questionable and anyone claiming it should show some evidence for it. In a large company, the issues always seem to be between teams, not inside the individual teams. An open floor plan lets you hear every random conversations in your own team, but it really discourages people from going to another teams area to ask a casual question or have an impromptu discussion of what they are working on since they know they would be disrupting several people.

The best environments I have seen are when there are individual offices with plenty of open areas and conference rooms for people to meet.

VohuMana• 8 years ago

I agree with the article. My company transitioned to open office which I was very much against, but once the move happened I bought some nice comfortable headphones and adjusted to the environment, it was always loud, cramped, and lacking privacy of any kind. It wasn't until I switched to a new team that had offices that I realized just how much of an affect the open office had on me. I had hours of uninterrupted time and managed to get the tasks that would usually take me a day or 2 in open office, done in just a couple hours.

iliasku• 8 years ago

it's also cheap so..

newnewpdro• 8 years ago

I'll never again work someplace that can't even be bothered to provide private cubicles for engineers. Open offices are a shit show.

eqdw2• 8 years ago

At a previous office we did a survey regarding our open office space.

The answers were extremely polarized, with about half the office loving them and half the office hating them.

The separation was pretty clean: people whose jobs involved focusing for extended periods of time hated it. People whose jobs were mundane/mindless/entry level, people whose jobs involved multitasking across a lot of things, and people whose jobs involved constant interruptions, loved it.

This is broadly consistent with the thesis "open plan offices are very bad for focus and concentration"

dgreensp• 8 years ago

People whose jobs were mundane/mindless/entry level, people whose jobs involved multitasking across a lot of things, and people whose jobs involved constant interruptions

This is a great description of being a software engineer at certain companies. The pay is good, though.

mynameishere• 8 years ago

This is an old thread, but to square your circle, the lower level employees probably knew that any upgrade wouldn't benefit them, so they "loved" the open office that everyone else was stuck with.

dqpb• 8 years ago

Disregarding cost, I think the best office plan is to have an open-plan as your base, and enough solitary space for people to go when they need to concentrate.

ThrustVectoring3• 8 years ago

Open offices would probably work a hell of a lot better if people paid any attention whatsoever to acoustics. Put up thick carpeting over the floor, noise reducing curtains over the windows, and tile the walls + ceiling with acoustical panels. Basically you want the reflected noise of conversations to be minimal - that way, people don't increase their speaking volume to be heard over ambient noise, and the room ends up a hell of a lot quieter.

georgeecollins• 8 years ago

I think it is telling that proponents of open offices usually don't mention what seem to be their biggest advantages: they are cheap, they let you pack people in like sardines, they make it easy to move people around if they quit or their is an reorganization. They make it easier to obscure hierarchies of status in the workplace. I worked for a company in SV with open offices, where the head of the department reserved a very nice conference room all day, four days a week. But like us he did not have an office.

thx113897932• 8 years ago

It occurs to me that we haven't quite done away with cubicles, we have instead shrunk them down to the size of our heads, in the form of noise cancelling headphones.

raz32dust• 8 years ago

I am going to be the contrarian here. I think open office plan does work well. But given these caveats:

- Give enough desk space: i.e, 2 monitor, laptop, enough space for a few books and papers, and 2 feet of space to move my chair in each direction.

- No people making calls. Have sound-insulated single person, non-bookable, meeting rooms/call booths for calls. Also anyone playing anything on their computer without headphones must be prohibited. Basically no one should be hearing any one-way conversations.

- Strict rules on two-way conversations. Anything that's taking more than 5 mins to discuss and does not involve the whole area should go to a meeting room.

With this arrangement, open office has worked for me. I am able to provide solutions when I hear something about which I know something, other people are able to provide me solutions, I get to hear about stuff that effects me sooner (e.g, hey the commits aren't going through due to test failures). I have found that the number of noises that bother me is actually very few in reality, and I have my trusty insulated headphones for that.

Animats• 8 years ago

Which YC companies do not have open offices?

s73v3r_• 8 years ago

So.... what's new this time around from when we had this same discussion a week or two ago? I agree these are bad, but what are we actually gonna do about them?

iamdave3• 8 years ago

Anyone else find themselves assessing office space when on interviews? Not things like looking for the pool table or seeing what craft beer they have on tap, or how fancy the giant wallboard behind reception is. I'm talking about going into an interview, taking a look at the space and asking yourself "Could I really stand working in this configuration for more than a month?".

I ask, having gone into interview after interview in the last few years and just seeing ikea tables lined up with an equally absurd line of monitors and tiny 4x4 foot spaces, desperately decorated so workers can come in and quickly spot their little section of the subdivision, and ultimately deciding "No. I'm not gonna work like this".

Just wondering.

llampx• 8 years ago

If more developers would put that line in their feedback to HR, I suspect change might come sooner rather than later.

iamdave3• 8 years ago

See, that statement alone makes me think of something. If more developers put that line in their feedback to HR, and you analyzed that data, how much you want to bet the people who are fed up and tired with "open offices" trend on the older side?

I'm much older than I was earlier in my developer years (turning 36 in a few months) and have come to form an appreciation for this kind of thinking. With age my patience for some of the crap these high-speed, energetic startups (and even some established companies looking to target the young and energetic worker by adopting startup-y tropes-like the open office) put their workers through has plummeted.

I don't care about your beer. I care about your healthcare plan. Do you offer retirement benefits? Are you matching contributions?

Hey that's a real nice pool table you've got there. There's a slim to none chance I'll ever be playing on it (partly because I'll mop the floor with anybody you throw at me over a game of 8-ball), do you support continuing education of your employees? How? Subsidized or can I expect to be reimbursed for taking a certificate course?

Are you discussing met objectives with the workforce? What gets discussed in an all-hands meeting? Did we meet our monthly business goals or did we come up short? Or are the meetings just feel good moments of superlatives for someone who got a positive reaction on twitter?

Don't get me wrong, this line of thinking kind of drifts away from the core discussion we're having about open-office spaces, but I look at the open office space as an indicator of QOL in the work place.

I walk in for an interview and see rows and columns of monitors, surge protectors and switches, entire ecosystems of cables mashed under a desk and the only thing that looks like a wall separating one area from the next being a conference room with not enough chairs, and history has taught me to be very incredulous. Very good chance I'm not going to want to work there or will regret it in a few months.

loco5niner13• 8 years ago

Assessing the office space will be high on my list next time I interview. Especially if they have a pool table. Am I going to have to listen to that all day???

iamdave3• 8 years ago

Admittedly a pool table is probably on the extreme end of examples I could have given; been fortunate enough that in both places that actually did have a billiards table-they had dedicated game rooms so the clatter of a cue-ball breaking and scattering balls against each other was well contained.

mikelevins• 8 years ago

The best office environment I was ever in, in 30 years of working in software development, was on Apple's Newton team in the Bubb Road building in Cupertino.

Everyone in the building I was in had a private office with floor-to-ceiling exterior windows and a door that closed.

Groups of offices shared a larger open common room with sofas and comfy chairs and coffee tables conveniently arranged for sitting around talking. There were white boards in the offices and on several walls of the common areas.

You need to concentrate? Go in your office and close the door. Feeling amenable to visits from colleagues? Open the door. Feel the need for free-form conversation with one or more colleagues? Plop onto the couch and talk things over.

NeXT was laid out somewhat similarly, but with less convenient common areas.

At various times I've experienced wall-to-wall private offices, giant open rooms with everyone side-by-side on long tables, and everything in between. For my money, the Newton office was the best. Privacy and camaraderie were available to us at all times in whatever measure suited each of us.

hitekker• 8 years ago

Hate to be that guy, but didn’t the newton product fail?

Or at least fail in the direct sense of the word, and not “inspired something actually successful”.

Mistredo4• 8 years ago

It did, but it does not make his argument less valid.

pertymcpert• 8 years ago

What's the relevance?

aphextron• 8 years ago

NeXT was laid out somewhat similarly, but with less convenient common areas.

Fascinating. I've always found Conway's Law [0] to hold up incredibly well, and there's a perfect example.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

lolsal• 8 years ago

I share your sentiment. I worked for a company that leased an old Sun building - all of the engineers got a private office. Three solid walls (unfortunately exterior windows were limited) and one entire wall was glass and frosted between knee and shoulder height. The door to the office was a floor-to-ceiling sliding door on this glass wall.

The offices all had whiteboards on two walls and were large enough to comfortably fit 3-4 chairs total. This was great because it meant any useful meeting could happen in anyone's office. There were larger conference rooms on the corner of each hallway which had screens for video conferencing and larger tables to accommodate larger groups of folks.

If you needed privacy to focus, you closed your door. If you were open to watercooler-chit-chat, you left your door open. It was easy to overhear technical conversations if you wanted to, but also easy to ignore since you had 3.5 walls of noise privacy.

At the time I did not realize how good of a work environment that was. It was almost a decade ago. I still consider that my ideal work environment if I have to work in an office.

sandover• 8 years ago

Please do a google image search for "medieval scriptorium". Then try a google image search for "victorian office engraving" or "victorian counting house engraving". Or check out this list of "Antique Office Illustrations 1770-1879" (https://www.officemuseum.com/photo_gallery_1860s-1880s.htm). What you'll see is different instances of the open office plan, over a timespan of a THOUSAND YEARS. It's a space plan which seems to emerge around collective knowledge work.

These types of workplaces are not a newly-hatched resource squeeze by our ruthless capitalist overlords. They are a physical work pattern which has been reinvented and retooled many times, and isn't going away. In most of history, "office"==="big room".

Joeri• 8 years ago

I’ve built software for the facilities industry so could see the move to open offices from the inside.

The single most important motivation for open offices is cost. The facilities department inside almost every company is viewed as a cost, and managers of departments viewed as a cost have only one way to make a bonus: cut costs. Most of the facilities costs are a multiple of the square meters (rent, cleaning, heating, ...), so to cut costs you cut square meters. How do you do this most easily? Get rid of walls first (open office), get rid of fixed desks second (flexdesk / hot desk), then keep reducing the ratio of desks to staff and push people to work from starbucks. Of course, it’s always packaged up as an enabling story, creating better workplaces, but in almost all cases that I saw the core driver was cost.

To get back to private offices the facilities department needs to be seen as an investment, with higher productivity as ROI. The trick is proving that with numbers. Reducing square meters is so much easier.

eikenberry• 8 years ago

If this is the case it would indicate an eventual move toward mostly remote positions. With remote work the company gets the productivity advantages of private offices while having near 0 cost for facilities.

Mistredo4• 8 years ago

There will be explanation for that. Something like that managers are afraid people would slack, or they feel they would be redundant, because people wouldn't need their supervising.

frogperson• 8 years ago

If open floor plans are as beneficial as managent says, then why do they always get to keep their private offices?

Mistredo4• 8 years ago

They deal with confidential information.

loco5niner13• 8 years ago

Not all of them. And programmers deal with confidential information too.

fit2rule• 8 years ago

My headphones are my cubicle. These days the anti-social aspect of wearing headphones in the workplace is alleviated by the fact that there are, at any given time, about 10 different ways to get my attention through those headphones without requiring you to leave your desk - Slack PM's, email alerts, etc.

If I forget to charge them, however, my productivity goes out the roof. I cannot sit in an open plan office for 8 hours and get even close to the same amount of work done, as if I'd had headphones on the whole day.

The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

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