But Where Do People Work in This Office?

http://www.mattblodgett.com/2015/01/but-where-do-people-work-in-this-office.html

by strangetimes • 12 years ago

502 312 12 years ago

kateho• 12 years ago

As much as it pains for me to say it, I do think small, quiet 1-2 person offices are great for thinking and getting real work done. I believe the IDEO offices in the Bay Area have a combination of a centralised area for discussions and collaboration, but a set of smaller offices for more focused work time. Something which would actually be quite nice to see more of ...

moron4hire2• 12 years ago

I don't understand, why does that pain you to say? That sounds like a great idea.

jayess• 12 years ago

I look at those wide-open office spaces and get anxious. I need my lonely, quiet space to work.

davidu4• 12 years ago

People do the open office floor plan because it's efficient and economical, not because it's the the best for the workers.

We designed a ton of cubbies (like in your university library), 1 person private rooms, 2 person conference rooms, etc. in our office to accommodate for the fact that many people need to more privacy and quiet than just headphones. We also break up the main open plans to help quiet the noise and distraction.

We have about 45,000 sq. ft today, and will be adding another 45,000 sq. ft this year. When we do, there will be much less open floor plan. I do think there's a happy medium, with team rooms of 6 to 15 people, depending on role and requirements.

teddyh2• 12 years ago

it's efficient

Efficient for what or who, I wonder?

gregd3• 12 years ago

It's efficient for people/sq foot.

benihana2• 12 years ago

Cost efficient.

wylee• 12 years ago

I think it's more accurate to say that it's because open office are cheap (*up front). It's pretty clear that they reduce efficiency in many, if not most, cases, which can be very expensive.

davidu4• 12 years ago

Yeah, I meant in the CFO kind of way. It's now clear it's not a long-term win.

bane6• 12 years ago

with team rooms of 6 to 15 people, depending on role and requirements

I absolutely agree. Team rooms seem to be the optimal. The room gets to set the rules. It's amazing how different team cultures grow, develop and optimize for the team composition and the work they're doing.

Provide a few quiet ultra-concentration nodes that people can reserve and use and conference rooms for inter-team coordinating and you're set.

You get the benefits of quick communication and collaboration, without the downsides of other people's/group's conversations disrupting what you're working on AND the ability to comfortably complain that your teammate is being disruptive...which is socially harder to do with strangers/people in other parts of the company.

If your rule is "put headphones on if you want privacy" you're doing it wrong. If you need to have "flow time" in the afternoon because the warehouse you've stuffed your people into is too noisy to get any real work done (so you have to schedule time to actually concentrate) you're doing it wrong.

Some places even go so far as having re-configurable team rooms, they can change size and shape to accommodate growing and shrinking teams without too much fuss.

lotharbot2• 12 years ago

I'm curious if you have any "team rooms" with private rooms directly off of them -- such that the team can have a collaborative space and heads-down coding space.

abalone3• 12 years ago

Source? Every company I've heard talk about their reasons for open plan trumpets collaboration, not cost.

ulysses• 12 years ago

Yes, this is known as a "lie".

davidu4• 12 years ago

This is something they hope to be true, but they probably know to be false. If you already know it to be false, then it's a lie.

Someone pointed out you do get to know your coworkers better, but I'd argue you just get to know them better, faster.

JabavuAdams2• 12 years ago

I love the idea of actually having a quiet room with the sign "library rules" on the door. In the quiet room, if you make noise -- even to have a work-related conversation, you get shushed. GTFO into the open-office area. No apology needed, no excuse accepted.

motbob• 12 years ago

Would collaboration be hurt by spreading things out?

gdulli• 12 years ago

I never thought I'd feel thankful for having high cubicle walls, but here we are.

artmageddon• 12 years ago

I've been on both sides, cube vs open plan. I used to liken cubes to prisons, but now I look at them the same way a cat will look at a box that it tries to squeeze itself tightly into, because the cat wants to be there.

NittLion78• 12 years ago

Yeah, I never realized how much I would miss having my own office with a door until I moved to an open floor plan.

Utterly impossible to concentrate on things w/out headphones.

bduerst• 12 years ago

Huh, I'm the opposite.

I've had my own office, been in cubicles, and currently work in an open office. I would detest getting trapped in a stuffy, carpet-walled cubicle again, and kind of disliked how isolated the office makes you.

I'm also a little clueless about all the disruptions that everyone is talking about - I think the team I work with now probably has some kind of has an unspoken rule to keep disruptions to a minimum. It's mostly heads down working all day, and when disruptions happen, I usually enjoy them because it's usually the break I need to get out of a mental tunnel.

jarcane• 12 years ago

Having worked in offices like these (in a call center, of all things), I really don't understand how the hell you could get any work done. We had people going home with migraines after two days in conditions like that Facebook photo, and that was just reading scripts into a phone headset for 8 hours. Actually producing anything like an intelligent thought in that kind of corporate tuna can is unthinkable to me.

"We have our own indoor artisanal cheese maker! ... but our actual workspace looks like it was cobbled together after a day of frantic Costco purchases." How about sparing the free Sun Chips and putting some walls in, eh?

oinksoft• 12 years ago

Having spent a day at Atlassian's office in SOMA when contracting for them recently, if this sort of setup is done right (with the additional caveat of having an energetic staff) the effect is positively electrifying. The "Costco purchases" jab is overly broad, because this office had very nice motorized standing desks for everybody. Also, the complex was large enough that you could escape into some personal space without feeling like you were hiding.

On the other hand, Gannett attempted a setup like this, except it was out of cheapness (they wanted to lease office space in their Tysons HQ) and was carried out mindlessly. They mixed developers with technical support, managers, etc. thoughtlessly. And they installed "white noise" machines which made matters worse. Working in that place was almost impossible and I quit after a month.

MereInterest• 12 years ago

As someone with flat feet, I certainly hope that they would have traditional sitting desks as well.

untog2• 12 years ago

I imagine a call center is a lot more noisy than the average open plan office, though. The open space I work in sounds a lot like a coffee shop (a few muted voices, but not much else)

snlacks• 12 years ago

They are kept in Bull Pens because they treat their employees as sterile commodities to be herded around.

You don't become WalMart/Facebook/Twitter by treating your employees well. You become big and profitable by cutting as many corners as you can and keeping revenue up. Publicly traded companies generally get into this-quarter frenzy that never leaves and kills any sort of long term viability as being a company of and for people.

Igglyboo• 12 years ago

You become big and profitable by cutting as many corners as you can and keeping revenue up.

Then why would they be spending millions of dollars on the office perks and architecture? You're contradicting yourself, they're obviously spending a huge amount of money on the office.

falcolas• 12 years ago

Perhaps for the visiting VCs, investors, and Executives?

thirdtruck• 12 years ago

Your assertion -- "they're obviously spending a huge amount of money on the office" -- is compatible with the previous assertion. They're spending it on the office, while employees are still treated as fungible cogs to be plugged into said expensive office.

nilkn3• 12 years ago

The point of this post is that they spend money making the office look pretty (to get people to accept offers), but they spend almost nothing making it functional. The office has become a marketing ploy; the workers aren't actually treated very well, it just looks like they are because every surface is shiny.

testguy34• 12 years ago

You don't become WalMart/Facebook/Twitter by treating your employees well.

Today's tech company employees are some of the most pampered in history. The list of perks Facebook and Twitter offer is huge (http://www.glassdoor.com/Benefits/Facebook-US-Benefits-EI_IE...). Comparing them to WalMart is ridiculous.

chrisbennet• 12 years ago

I like this trend toward giant open plan offices - it gives us folks who work in our own quite offices a competitive advantage. :-)

uniformlyrandom2• 12 years ago

It depends on your responsibilities. If you are in devops, ops or support, open office is great for you.

If you are a coder, an engineer, or an architect, then open office is painful.

If you are a manager, then open office is embarrassing.

bharath28• 12 years ago

Why is an open office embarrassing for a manager? I am curious.

uniformlyrandom2• 12 years ago

Manager's responsibility is to talk to people. Often on the phone. People around you can hear everything you say. You have two options:

- Spend half of your day in conference rooms;

- Stop giving a single fuck about the privacy, and 'excel in transparency' (or whatever corporate bullshit is applicable).

analog31• 12 years ago

Same reason as cubicles for the paeans. Status.

But also, if there's a manager in the middle of the bullpen, people tend to clam up. I experienced this. Managers can have a very hard time handling the typical heated and frank discussions that can arise among engineers. At one time, we had the project manager in our cube maze along with the engineers. If he sensed that two engineers disagreed with one another, or that they were discussing a problem, he would step in to manage it. The obvious outcome was that the engineers found another place to hold our discussions.

scourge• 12 years ago

devops

You keep using that word. I don't think you know what it means.

(Coming from a contract 'devop')

There is no such thing. Either you code, and your code helps a company's devops requirements. Or you're in ops because you can't code. I need to collaborate less than devs do. My clients know for a fact that most of my work is done more productively at home in the quiet. Yes we need to talk, plan, work with others (sometimes) but who doesn't?

tankenmate• 12 years ago

The whole point of devops is that it combines development and operations; i.e. everyone works together to make sure that both development and operations are mutually supportive and co-ordinated. Most devops teams I have seen almost all the team are capable developers and sysadmins / operations.

puredemo• 12 years ago

Obviously there are positions where people do both, hence the word. Don't generalize based on your limited experience.

q3k• 12 years ago

Or you're in ops because you can't code.

Yes, this is the only reason why people become system administrators.

warcher• 12 years ago

It turns out that devs are great at a lot of ops type tasks.

Basically what you get is developers' innate tendencies towards laziness and over-automation yield really good ops solutions.

Where your typical sysadmin will be perfectly comfortable running a hodgepodge of shell scripts and byzantine commands through the terminal every time he wants a server push, your typical developer just wants the fucking code up on the server so he can get back to work he finds less objectionable.

This is absolutely how you want to approach ops. Just get the shit running with as little human interaction as possible.

basicallydan4• 12 years ago

Check out Fog Creek's office: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html

Gobs of well-lit perimeter offices. Every developer, tester, and program manager is in a private office; all except two have direct windows to the outside (the two that don't get plenty of daylight through two glass walls).

The longer I spend in this environment (coming up to five years) the less I like it. I like the idea of having large, interesting open spaces for more social activities including work, but most of the work I do lends itself well to being not surrounded by people having conversations or - in some cases - literally just messing around all day.

There's gotta be a balance.

gregd3• 12 years ago

I don't understand if you like Fog Creek's environment or you don't.

At any rate, I'm so over the open floor plan/cubicle mazes. I get really distracted by the doppler effect that conversations (sometimes LOUD conversations) that pass by my cubicle, have. Perhaps I'm just a curmudgeon, but I much prefer the solitude that an office with a door provides.

ThrustVectoring2• 12 years ago

I've heard that cubicles are worse than open offices in terms of audio distraction. In an open office, you've got a constant visual reminder that people can hear you. People tend to be more mindful of their volume levels and where/how they make noise.

voidlogic• 12 years ago

I normally work remote, but when I come into the office-- I come in 2-3 hrs early and stay 2 hours late to get my work done...

basicallydan4• 12 years ago

Sorry, to be clear, I am very much in favour of Fog Creek's environment :)

df07• 12 years ago

Stack Exchange's office is very similar. Starting to feel like Joel is the only one who still believes in private offices.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.708933,-74.006578,3a,75y,203...

gregd3• 12 years ago

THAT is a gorgeous workspace. I'm envious..

k__5• 12 years ago

Windows to open spaces in my back? No thanks...

rayiner4• 12 years ago

Can they not afford carpet.

wgx• 12 years ago

The 37signals offices have lots of private (and semi-private) spaces https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYMokpfL86Q

raphael_l• 12 years ago

http://i.imgur.com/Kk0jP5o.jpg

Pretty interesting people working there, I see.

smikhanov• 12 years ago

Oh crap! "Private" offices with glass doors, yeah. So that you never immediately see who enters your office because the door is behind you and you have to turn around. Also with monitors visible to everyone who passes by. This is way worse than any open plan office.

72deluxe5• 12 years ago

Those look like great offices!

I must be in the wrong job haha

phowat• 12 years ago

I've worked on open plan floors and also had a private office before. Currently, I share an office with one other dev and I feel it's the best setting I've ever had.

sb8244• 12 years ago

Peopleware does suggest two person semi private offices as a preferred setup based on real productivity studies.

Corrado2• 12 years ago

I can confirm this. One of the most productive spaces in my career has been a long U desk with myself and another programmer at each end. We could roll over and talk to each other, or just sit with our backs to each other and ignore the other person. Great!

mncolinlee• 12 years ago

Until 2009 or so, we used to have private offices at Cray. There were plenty of impromptu conversations. I would argue that they were more pleasant and productive, since we didn't have to worry we were upsetting everyone around us while brainstorming or discussing tech trends. We would meet in an engineer's office so not everyone had to hear the whole thing.

rayiner4• 12 years ago

Offices are a really great example of the push to keep programmers from thinking of themselves as professionals, either by treating them like IT or tech support, or like college kids. Google or Facebook's revenue per engineer is probably 3x that of a law firm or consulting firm, but the overwhelming practice in the latter sorts of places is for each professional to have an office with a door.

When you're a growing startup, having private offices costs you flexibility as well as cash because open plan is easier to reconfigure as you grow. If you're at the point where you're commissioning a Ghery, you're well past that excuse.

vinceguidry3• 12 years ago

the push to keep programmers from thinking of themselves as professionals

Hah. If only we had someone else to blame for that. We do that to ourselves. Programmers act like spoiled little kids when choosing which jobs to apply to or how to conduct their career, (look at all those juice bars! Never seen an accountant use that as a selection criteria.) are often completely unreasonable, (I want $100K salary right out of school, it better be $140K in a year or I'm jumping ship.) and consistently refuse to move to management. (you must pay me more and more money to drift further and further away from company priorities)

Mvandenbergh• 12 years ago

From my time at consulting firms and experience with law firms, this isn't true any more.

I was at the offices of a large law firm in the City of London yesterday and only very senior partners had offices. They had a lot of very nice meeting rooms on separate client facing floors and 'working floors' with open plan offices where lawyers and paralegals did their work.

DigitalBison• 12 years ago

> Every developer, tester, and program manager is in a private office
The longer I spend in this environment (coming up to five years) the less I like it
I like the idea of having large, interesting open spaces for more social activities including work, but most of the work I do lends itself well to being not surrounded by people having conversations

This is confusing.. Are you saying you do like Fog Creek's setup, or you don't?

anon4• 12 years ago

I think he says he likes to mix it up depending on what he's doing. Quiet space for focused, intense coding, open space for socialising.

yaddayadda• 12 years ago

I've seen a couple of comments expressing confusion at @asicallydan's comment, but it seems pretty clear to me.

For the last five years he has been in an environment with private offices. Initially he liked the private offices, over the years he's liked them less and less. Now he likes the idea of large, interesting open spaces more than private offices.

basicallydan4• 12 years ago

I do!

abecedarius4• 12 years ago

How are those offices private when there's a full glass wall on the corridor, and what looks like an opening below the ceiling to the next office? That appears to add up to neither visual nor audio screening.

(Audio distraction causes trouble in conversation for me, and visual distraction disrupts any kind of concentration. I might actually prefer a tall cubicle to this setup, not to endorse the cubicle.)

JetSpiegel• 12 years ago

Private offices are not an extension of your home, it's your workspace. Why can't people see you from the corridor?

Just turn your back to the glass, or use an Oculus Rift.

letstryagain• 12 years ago

Now check out Atlassian's new office:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/atlassian/sets/721576316725737...

Guess who's winning the bug tracking market share

72deluxe5• 12 years ago

I'm not sure - who is winning the market share?

That said, I'm amazed by the size of the offices etc. from just bug tracking software. Does everyone not just use Trac or Bugzilla or something?

kylec• 12 years ago

Wherever my next job is, I'll make sure to take a tour of the working environment. If it looks anything like these photos, I'll decline an offer.

serve_yay• 12 years ago

Good luck!

teddyh2• 12 years ago

That’s a good idea:

“But I just couldn't stop thinking about one thing: the AT&T offices were dingy and dark, in some kind of a stone age office that smelled of 1930s bureaucracy. People were starting to look like mushrooms. There were torn Dilbert cartoons all over the cubicles. (Warning sign number one.) The furniture was falling apart. It was just nasty. But Viacom was in a nice, shiny, modern, bright office building that felt like lawyers' offices. It was clean and new and pleasant. I know I should have been thinking about something more substantial as I made my decision, but I just could not get over how unpleasant it would be to spend my days working in the AT&T dungeon.”

— Joel Spolsky, Whaddaya Mean, You Can't Find Programmers?, June 2000

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html

gook4• 12 years ago

Has this guy even worked in any of these environments? I've worked at Facebook and it is surprisingly quiet. If people want to have meetings or talk, there are plenty of conference rooms to take advantage of. Worst case, the free Sennheisers in the tech vending machines takes care of any other noises that you might not like.

I personally work better in an open office environment. I work off the energy of others and it allows me to focus more than being alone in an office.

While I understand if people legitimately don't like an open office environment, this type of article seems like it is just trying to put down these companies with little knowledge about how loud it really is in these offices.

And if you don't like the environment at Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc, just move to another company. Let's not pretend that it is hard to get another job with one of those companies on your resume.

strangetimes3• 12 years ago

The noise isn't the only consideration (though it is a big one). Visual distractions, lack of privacy, the feeling of being watched, people approaching from behind you, etc. The human animal is stressed by these things.

krschultz• 12 years ago

That's the problem with large open plan offices. The only way for it to be workable for everyone is if everyone shuts up. I find it incredibly stifling.

My ideal environment is the team I'm working on in one big room, the music going, everyone jamming on the project together. Getting shit done. That's probably what Zuckerberg et al remember from when they started the company, and that's why they want to recreate it for 3,000 people.

Unfortunately, once you have more than 1 team in the room, it breaks down. You just shipped something awesome and want to shout about it? The other team gives you dirty looks and want you to just STFU because they're 3 days from shipping and in total crunch mode. Some people just like quiet all the time, they'll give you a dirty look when you get noisy.

Thus the big rooms of people end up being completely silent, it's the only way to make it work. They are terrible for collaboration. The only conversations happen in conference rooms, otherwise you disturb 100+ people.

In my mind small rooms, holding 4-10 people, are ideal. Each team gets a room. If the team likes it quiet, it will be quiet. If you want to bounce ideas around, you can do it without feeling like you are disturbing other teams. If you want to play music, you can play music. I think it's the feeling that the open plan offices are going for, but people haven't connected the productivity of open plan office with the actual size of the open room yet.

txu2• 12 years ago

Sounds good. Might be interesting to build your own ideal environment. Large open plan offices are probably someone else's ideal environment. :-)

gook4• 12 years ago

Facebook has 'War Rooms' for teams who are shipping a large release soon. They are smaller rooms that can fit 12-18 people. Most of the time they have separate desks but sometimes teams just commandeer a conference room.

This sounds a bit like your idea, though a few more people.

saryant• 12 years ago

I think I would quit in about ten minutes if I had to put up with someone else's music choices. I don't even like putting up with my own when I'm working but I'm forced to to drown out everyone else.

alextgordon• 12 years ago

Don't you feel self-conscious that everybody can see your every movement, for the entire day?

To me it reminds me of one of those victorian prisons where every inch can be viewed from the central platform. Now that I think about it, even prisoners get a lot more privacy than this.

gook4• 12 years ago

I would only feel self-conscious if people judged what I was doing all day. I didn't feel like I was being judged.

I always passed this one guy who had a separate monitor to watch some kind of anime. Another seemed to always have Netflix on. During the World Cup this summer, so many people had a window/monitor watching the games.

The culture was very much this: get your work done? cool. do whatever you need to continue getting your work done.

kyllo• 12 years ago

I believe what you're describing is a panopticon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

matwood2• 12 years ago

I personally work better in an open office environment. I work off the energy of others and it allows me to focus more than being alone in an office.

I have stints like this, particularly when working on a hard problem. One person typing with others brain storming is a great way to push through hard problems.

For a lot of us coding is a very solitary endeavor, but it doesn't have to be.

smtddr• 12 years ago

I know you're getting downvoted, but I agree with you. There is no way whatsoever I could go back to working in a private / cubicle partitioned office. I'm open-plan for life. The energy and intelligent conversations I overhear completely eclipse any negative aspects imho. I guess it's important that you like hearing what your coworkers have to say. If I _truly_ need to concentrate, the headphones and some www.polskastacja.pl and I'm all set.

squeaky-clean• 12 years ago

I agree completely. I prefer the open office layout a hundred times over, compared to a private room or a cubicle. Maybe it depends on your coworkers, you have to trust them not to be too loud or bothersome, and you have to be fine with being in the same room as these people for 8+ hours a day for a long time.

At my office, the "Dev Room" has 10 engineers in the same room, as well as open desks for anyone else to join us. The rest of the office has rooms with 1-3 people working in them, but we requested to take this large room. Whenever anyone from the rest of the office walks into the dev room, they always have to remark "Wow, it's so silent in here." And it's true, it's a different world once you walk in here. We even have our own conference room only accessible through this room.

But because everyone here are friends, it's easy for us to ask questions, have fun, play around. Right now as I type this, two developers are drawing Chinese characters and playing with the new Google Translate app. The rest of us have headphones on. It's on you to ignore distractions and get your work done, but everyone does, and everyone helps each other and laughs while doing it.

Morgawr5• 12 years ago

I am currently working at Google as an intern and I'm probably going to be the contradicting opinion in this thread but I really appreciate the openspace office we have here. Maybe because it's my first "real" office job, but I do not find much of a problem working here. When I want to be on my own to think on stuff, I just put my headphones on (sometimes with music, sometimes without, since they are good at canceling noise anyway) and it's like being in my own isolated office. And if that is not enough, we have small cubicle-like mini-rooms where you can go and isolate yourself, most people use them to have phone conversations or do interviews, but nothing stops you from working in there with your laptop.

All in all, though, maybe it's my floor that is very quiet but there's not much distraction or annoying background noise as most people are busy working. When they are not working, they go somewhere else (the pub, the relax rooms, etc etc). If they want to have a work-related conversation that lasts more than 5-10 minutes, we have open areas with whiteboards separated from the desk area, or we have separate conference rooms you can use. Most of the time, I enjoy taking my headphones off and listening to a couple of coworkers making remarks on stuff (either work or non-work related), it helps me relieve stress and boredom much more than just staring at a wall or reading some articles online.

Ironically, the major source of annoyance in our floor recently has been the old AC system that sometimes starts making very loud noises and bothers everybody, but this is not the fault of the openspace office so it doesn't count :)

k__5• 12 years ago

I liked them too, when I was an intern and the first few years of my real job.

But after I acquired more knowledge it became more stressing, because everyone was asking me stuff all the time. Also I had to listen to all the communication that was going on around me.

Headphones are but a crutch and a bad one too, since all I want is silence when working and no music or anything...

Bahamut2• 12 years ago

Agreed - there is something nice about having a quiet space to retreat to at work so you can focus on getting stuff done without any noise/distractions. I miss having a private office sorely since everyone just goes to me and asks me questions, making it harder for me to be productive. Oftentimes these questions are ones that if the developer did more research, he/she could have figured it out.

Morgawr5• 12 years ago

Mind I recommend earplugs if you want absolute quietness? Sometimes I do wear headphones on without anything playing, because they provide really good sound isolation. You could get specifically noise-canceling headphones for that.

Regarding getting asked all the time by other people, I would think that is more of an organization problem. Nothing stops me from pinging coworkers on irc or any other IM program for help or actually going to their office in person. As an advantage to openspace office, I can just raise my head, look at my coworker and ask "hey, do you have a second?". More often than not I get a "sure, give me a few minutes" if they are busy or they can just lean over or walk to my desk without wasting too much time. And if it's a more serious issue it's "Shall we move to a more private place?".

I honestly don't see a problem, nobody stops you from telling your coworkers to check the documentation regarding their question (if there is one, is it a common question? Maybe you should write something up since you are more knowledgeable on the matter and don't like being interrupted about it). But yeah, this is probably because I'm just an intern and I don't have experience on the matter, but I enjoy working like this.

moron4hire2• 12 years ago

It's not just the decibel level that damages hearing. Constant, low-volume white noise can damage hearing as well. I know quite a few ex-signals intelligence folk who are nearly deaf in their left ears from sitting in trailers, holding the cans up to their left ear while transcribing radio transmissions.

I'm pretty sure I have my own mild hearing loss problem in my right ear from the near-constant headphone use I had to do in the last open-floor plan office I worked in. It's not just "things sound quiet". Everything sounds normal volume. It just sounds muddy and garbled if people are talking in lower registers.

davidu4• 12 years ago

This feeling goes away.

igorgue• 12 years ago

It's your first job, just wait, they do get old, specially when things like, I don't know, your girlfriend breaks up with you and you just wanna get down to work and not talk about the last episode of game or thrones, and what you did this weekend (fight with your girlfriend).

Maybe I'm different, I'd like to be alone for a longer time at the office, I get the best work done when I'm working from home too.

tribaal• 12 years ago

and it's like being in my own isolated office.

I think that's the crux of the argument right here. I think most people who experienced both, myself included, will strongly disagree.

it helps me relieve stress and boredom much more than just staring at a wall or reading some articles online.

Just staring at a wall? Come on, having a personal office door means you can open it and interact with other people when you so desire. Not when they so desire.

gohrt4• 12 years ago

Yes, when you are new and not doing much work, and often asking your neighbors for help (as a junior person should!), the open offices are fine. (But team rooms are better) When you are trying to get work done, not so much.

we have small cubicle-like mini-rooms ... but nothing stops you from working in there with your laptop.

That seems like a waste of the monstrously powerful workstations with 30" monitors

http://robert.love.usesthis.com/

Ironically, the major source of annoyance in our floor recently has been the old AC system

If you weren't working in the HVAC room, you wouldn't hear that noise in your office (or it would be muffled)

txu2• 12 years ago

I wonder what do people who disagree with open floor plans think the desks should be like?

skynetv2• 12 years ago

I have a semi-private office (two of us) in a ~15X15 office with a door, I would not give it up for anything in the world. openspaces are terrible for productivity. too many distractions.

skatenerd• 12 years ago

Is this some extension / perversion of the original XP principles? I feel like XP Explained talks a lot about office layout and how it can foster communication and teamwork.

austenallred• 12 years ago

I think there's a balance to be struck.

I used to think that programmers complaining about open office spaces were just nitpicking... then I learned how to program. Open offices are a reason for headphones at best and a nightmare at worst.

That having been said, I've worked in spaces where everyone had their own private office. It was great for productivity, but I felt like I never got to know anyone. All communication was forced, which caused a lot of annoying and unnecessary meetings.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but it's probably somewhere in the middle.

bmj• 12 years ago

Having worked in a variety of office environments over the last 15 years, my favorite has been shared, closed office space. My employee moved into a relatively small building which had 2-3 person offices in it. The devs were one, QC in another, sales in another. It worked quite well. We could close our door, but still collaborate when we needed to. We also had several meeting rooms if we needed to talk between teams.

I'm also not against the "pod"-style cubes (4 or so people in a large cube), assuming the pods aren't cramped on top of one another.

bunderbunder• 12 years ago

My company recently built out a schmancy new open plan office and moved a bunch of people from my team there. Based on what I've seen so far the answer is that people don't work in that office. They work from home, because that's the only place you can get any actual work done. They do come into the office one or two days a week, but only so that management doesn't feel like they wasted money on all those ping-pong and pool tables.

dtech• 12 years ago

You company already seems quite progressive in accepting so much being done from home.

bixmix2• 12 years ago

Is it a generation gap? Old programmer vs new? The open office trend may be the death of my 2 decade career in writing software.

I do not need a spacious office: a room with a door, a distinct lack of distracting windows, and a 4x6 desk and an overflow side table would be perfect. Closing a door means I can focus and block out traffic, noise and the general hubbub of an office.

georgeecollins• 12 years ago

Managers like bullpens because they are very cheap. They cram a lot of people into a small space. They don't require the maintence of door locks or even cube walls. People can be moved around very easily.

I think they also like that everyone can look over everyone else's shoulder very easily, which creates peer pressure to work. In my experience, the maangers that advocate this are often the ones that are really spending all their time in special break-out rooms or conference rooms.

nilkn3• 12 years ago

I've always believed that the direct manager of a team should have to work in the same conditions as the team itself. I find it distasteful when the team members are crammed into cubicles or just open desks in some sort of bullpen while the manager has a spacious private office and becomes disconnected from the conditions that the rest of the workers experience.

If you feel the need to delineate different power levels in the company with different working spaces, that's fine, but it needs to be done intelligently. Let executives who only work with other executives have their own offices. If you must put the workers in an open bullpen, though, then their immediate manager should be a part of it as well.

ghshephard• 12 years ago

We should have someone like Ben Horowitz who has been a line manager of engineers, CEO of a large company that cranks out code - both the pure "New technology" type code, as well as the "Lots of framework code" type engineering, comment on this. But, from memory, I think he said something like this:

"Engineering productivity, counterintuitively, appears to increase as you move them out of private offices into contact with one another, both through cross-pollination of different ideas, as well as the energy inherent in working in a team environment. This graph of productivity, though, does have a maxima as density increases, until it begins to once again decrease as the distractions become a dominating effect. With that said, not all engineers are alike, and there are some individuals that are far more effective in a quiet room, than those who benefit from the open office layout. The efficient engineering organization should make opportunities for both types of engineers to excel."

Bahamut2• 12 years ago

I am in agreement here with that - there are benefits to both types of spaces. I am surprised there are not more companies willing to just let people pick their workspace smartly, whether it is a private office or open office.

rilita7• 12 years ago

Generally software developers at any level are treated as the lowest level of person at companies, even when the company specializes in software. As a result, they are packed in wherever they fit.

The theory seems that developers benefit from feeling like a frathouse of some sort, where they play in most of their area, but otherwise cram together to study for a bit, so that they can go back to goofing off afterwards.

Developers are not treated as professionals. They are treated as animals; herded together to make them work, but otherwise just giving them big grassy fields.

mgkimsal3• 12 years ago

My first reaction was that this was a bit over the top, but... on reflection, not really. Fog Creek's setup looks nice, but outside of that, I've rarely seen any company treat their developers like they treat their marketing folks, legal, financial and other areas. Financial/accountants aren't generally expected to sit in an open room with 15 other people with foosball games going on in their line of site.

Should we encourage "pair accounting" and have accountants share a laptop screen to get their work done?

There's an element of mentoring and support that can go on in those open environments - adhoc help, etc - but that seems to be partially a cover for the fact that many people aren't all that good at what they do, and the better people need to help train (sorry, "lead") the less experienced folk.

My own experience in open plans, beyond the general noise, is that it's harder for people to admit they have a question, because it's visible to an entire group. Likewise, it's harder to call someone out for not pulling their weight in an open plan setting, without calling more attention to the interaction.

"private by default" seems to work well for OO developers, just not when it comes to their office space.

king_jester• 12 years ago

Should we encourage "pair accounting" and have accountants share a laptop screen to get their work done?

Have you ever seen finance people work? That happens all of the time.

mahyarm3• 12 years ago

Well usually the ratio is something like 1 finance|accounting|hr|legal:50 general employees at a company after a certain size. The 8 people in accounting/finance/hr for a 250 person company has a closed office mostly because of the frequently sensitive conversations and the need to file papers that need to be locked but accessed frequently?

Other departments like marketing that don't have a team office nearly as much.

jnem• 12 years ago

Im with King, have you ever seen how the Big 4 accounting firms treat their employees? The TL;DR is they pack em in as tight as they can.

http://www.examiner.com/article/pwc-deloitte-e-y-and-kpmg-bi...

couchand2• 12 years ago

I'm not sure why you'd assume that pair programming and private space are mutually exclusive.

hamburglar• 12 years ago

Fog Creek's setup looks nice, but outside of that, I've rarely seen any company treat their developers like they treat their marketing folks, legal, financial and other areas.

I think a big distinguishing factor here is whether software is the company's primary product or not. At Adobe back in the days it was being run by (founder) John Warnock, there was very much an attitude that the developers were the company's bread and butter, and they were treated well. Junior developers often had private offices to themselves. Same went for Microsoft back then.

Most other types of companies see software developers as overhead and treat them accordingly.

skybrian3• 12 years ago

Developers are lowest level? You're not seeing what's really going on. What about janitors and security guards and kitchen staff?

nbouscal2• 12 years ago

Janitors and security guards aren't usually employed by the company, are they?

Iftheshoefits2• 12 years ago

What makes you think from an organizational perspective that there is a difference between them? It is far more likely that the engineers are viewed as having similar fungibility as the janitors than management is viewed as having similar fungibility (for example).

rilita7• 12 years ago

What I'm saying is that developers typically don't have their own hierarchy. Sometimes there is a "lead developer", but usually there is a non technical person over top a group of developers, and that person is given an office and more respect.

It has been shown time and again that open floor plans actually harm developer productivity more than they help it. Imo the most reasonable mid ground is giving developers larger cubes big enough to allow pair programming when desired. High cube walls are necessary also so that conversations within a cube don't make it impossible for nearby desks to concentrate.

TeMPOraL2• 12 years ago

I find most of your comment to be spot-on, but I personally believe a bit of "feeling like a frathouse of some sort" is conductive to creative work.

rilita7• 12 years ago

I agree that it enhances creativity, so it may be a match for a gaming company, especially when the game itself is targeted at a college demographic, but I don't think it is good for developing corporate systems.

In this sense, it may be the best fit for places such as twitter and facebook... their target demographic is not business people.

For myself, I think all software should be made in the most professional way possible, and I don't think goofing around is conducive to that.

That said, there is a large push to draw in lots of new junior level developers to get stuff done, and a belief that you don't need more than 1 or 2 engineers with 5 years of experience. My objection is that skilled engineers with 5+ years of experience continue to get treated the same way even as they mature and become able to be leaders.

Kiro2• 12 years ago

I don't know if I agree. At the companies I've been in developers are treated like gods. Sure, we've been sitting in open office plans but so has the management.

3minus1• 12 years ago

I've worked at 3 companies and it's never been like this. If anything I've noticed developers are afforded more freedom, flexibility, and respect. I really have no idea what you're talking about.

meddlepal• 12 years ago

Developers aren't treated like professionals because most of them don't act like professionals.

mgkimsal3• 12 years ago

it's a bit of a feeding cycle. When you're not treated as one, and it's not expected, you don't act like one. When there's a group, if they all want to act non-professionally, the one person who wants to is overruled or ostracized because they don't "fit in".

markolschesky• 12 years ago

I used to work at Epic (the Health IT company), which is known for its interesting office design and giving its staff individual offices [1]. Now that I've been working for startups, I've worked in more bullpen-type offices.

A few things:

1) Having my own office did not mean that there weren't distractions. It's impractical to build sound-proof walls between offices and the guy across from me loved to try to sing opera for hours a day. I eventually moved offices to another part of campus for that reason.

2) Likewise, I've worked in open offices that were pretty monastic. Engineers are quiet, everyone is wired in and most people talk on Slack/HipChat. The only interruption was when the mailman would drop off the daily mail.

3) I think the worst thing about open offices are the logistics of staff that need to take phone calls. As a customer-facing programmer that does sales support and configuration assistance it's sub-optimal not having a dedicated space for phone calls. When the perfect storm arises of too many people needing to take calls, everything flies into anarchy where I'm forced to take a call in a common space and try to be quiet. A bullpen that has some separation and accommodation for those needs is ok. A bullpen that doesn't have that is not.

[1] http://www.xconomy.com/wisconsin/2014/09/19/epic-hopes-wi-ca...

k-mcgrady• 12 years ago

Those office all look nice - until you get to the place where work actually takes place. I don't care if the foosball table is in a nice room or if the kitchen is fancy. I spend 95% of my time at my desk. Focus some energy on making that area bearable.

numlocked• 12 years ago

I was the engineering manager at my previous employer and we were reconfiguring our office layout. I talked to the engineers and with one exception each person wanted private offices. We set up one floor of the office with high cubicle walls, and a lot of sound isolation. So not exactly private offices, but really a pretty nice setup (with the best equipment and furniture available).

On a separate floor we had a bullpen with ops folks, people who were on the phone a lot, etc. One by one, each engineer gravitated towards the bullpen until no one spent more than perhaps 1 day per week in the dedicated office space. The part of the office that each engineer had claimed to want to work in became abandoned.

I think, in spite of the theoretical want for quiet space and isolation, there's a very human need at work to be in the middle of the action -- to hear what's going on, and to be connected to your colleagues. There were certain tasks and problems for which engineers would walk downstairs and make use of the dedicated space, but it was ultimately not where folks wanted to be on a daily basis.

droob• 12 years ago

People tend to enjoy private alcoves with a view on the action, which is kinda best of both worlds. Christopher Alexander describes that pattern in _A Pattern Language_.

lotsofmangos• 12 years ago

As do cats.

LiweiZ• 12 years ago

Nice words and thanks for the book recommendation.

ecspike• 12 years ago

At my office, I have a real desk and a "satellite" desk in the video editor pod. It's an easy place to go and work on something heads down or when I want a reduction in activity but not down to zero. My have nicknamed that empty desk "The Villa". It even has it's own calendar.

sanderjd• 12 years ago

I really don't understand why you hardly ever see 4 to 6 person glass-walled offices with doors around an open collaborative area with comfy seats and coffee tables. That seems like a great and still fairly cost-effective setup.

sahara• 12 years ago

n.b. https://archive.org/details/APatternLanguage

jkaunisv12• 12 years ago

I'm amazed more people don't make use of that book. It's so chock full of brilliant advice with very reasonable explanations, for so many situations. I'm still not done reading it, because it's massive, but every chapter I read makes me notice new things in the environments I move through.

nilkn3• 12 years ago

Just having that dedicated space, though, could have been invaluable. Of course, I can't speak to any specifics and can only speculate here, but the fact that at any moment they could just walk downstairs to find a quiet dedicated space for serious work probably was pretty liberating. They probably felt at ease to utilize the noisy, energetic space upstairs because they knew they weren't confined to it should they need privacy.

Cthulhu_• 12 years ago

I honestly wouldn't mind an open office space, as long as there's measures in place for privacy, noise levels (like the sound absorbent material on the ceilings in some of those pictures), and visual distractions (a big enough screen works for me). I think that's the main difference a lot of people will perceive when it comes to open office vs private office / cubicles. I don't mind a bit of background noise, but in some of the open plans I've worked at it quickly escalated into a chaotic cacophony because of a lack of sound insulation.

nolk100• 12 years ago

I think, in spite of the theoretical want for quiet space and isolation, there's a very human need at work to be in the middle of the action

This is why I, and many others like working in coffee shops. There's usually an ambient background noise which makes it feel like you are involved in something, but it doesn't require your direct attention. I think there's also a subconscious element to having activity around you which keeps you focussed. I personally find it easy to look at cat videos on the internet when no one can see my screen, but when I know people might walk past me when at a coffee shop, or at work, it keeps me focussed.

bdcravens3• 12 years ago

I like working in coffee shops, except for the fact that I often have to go to the trouble of getting there to find nowhere to sit, since it filled up with squatters that have been there 3+ hours (several of which are one person filling up a big table, with everything spread around like it's their personal desk)

matwood2• 12 years ago

Great point! I worked out of coffee shops for ~ 2 years and loved it. There was action going on around me, but it was never an interruption.

JabavuAdams2• 12 years ago

I also find this works well, but I've often had to leave when a particularly loud and distracting conversation starts nearby. So really, the best option is to have open, communal areas and also quiet concentration areas.

genericuser• 12 years ago

I am one of those people that can not comprehend how people work in coffee shops, I have tried it in the past, and have trouble even figuring out what I wanted to work on. Every time I see something move out the corner of my eye I need to look at what is going on. Every time a new sound starts or an existing sound stops I take notice. I am constantly afraid someone will sit down at the same table as me and try to take some of the precious little space I have sprawled with notes. This happened once and I tried to keep working but then there was a persons face like 3 feet away from mine over a tiny table and I lasted about 5 min before just leaving.

I can do crap like respond to emails, make todo lists, read documentation, write specifications, and google for the solutions to known problems. I am however fortunate enough to have a job where all that makes up a minuscule fraction of the work I do, most of my work is in solving new problems by developing and implementing algorithms. And that requires thinking on my part which is something I am completely unable to do with new thoughts about my changing surroundings constantly entering my head. My work provides two person offices with enough space to be comfortable. As well as common areas where you can work if you so choose to be out in that type of noisy environment. Only a handful of people make use of the common areas for anything besides eating lunch or having scrum.

I believe it is because nearly everyone's work involves either thinking or being in meetings all day. And while I will not be supporting it I believe if you give someone who needs to think the choice between a nice quiet office where it is accepted that if their door is closed you don't bother them, or a nice common area with the noises of people walking by and milk being frothed, they will eventually realize they are more productive where there are fewer distractions. (Not that everyone wants to be more productive)

bsirkia• 12 years ago

I wonder if that just shows that having the both the open bullpen and quiet space as dueling options is ineffective. FOMO is extremely strong in everyone, so even though engineers might prefer and be more productive in a quiet space, they're afraid of missing out on the action in the bullpen so migrate there.

ojbyrne• 12 years ago

People don't necessarily want to be more productive, nor recognize when they're aren't.

untog2• 12 years ago

Some ancedata to back up your point - I am exactly like that. However, I do appreciate an isolated space from time to time. Maybe the optimum is providing private spaces totaling, say, 1/3 of your staff. Then people can go use them whenever they want, but you're not wasting so much space.

mlwarren• 12 years ago

I would probably be a holdout for the private office. I've been opting to work from home as much as I can from my quiet home office rather than go to the office. My colleagues are all very responsive via email/IM so that helps a lot when we need to converse.

idkMaybeImonly1• 12 years ago

I used to think like you guys, how the fuck would I get any work done if I'm in the middle with so many people doing so many different things in the same time. Someone is narrating his/her life story, other one talking about his views on x and so on. However, after working on similar environment for a year and now working on a really private cubes. I prefer the open spaces, it's more fun. YOU CANNOT SLACK IN OPEN SPACES. I used only code code code whole day and now in a private cube I spent hours on HN, reddit and 2/3 hrs for work. Yes, the company is fine but I don't feel I'm producing as much as I can. Why? Because I can slack in private cubes unlike in open spaces where I want to prove among these peoples.

edit: Sorry for bad English. I cannot slack in open spaces, that's why I like them.

TeMPOraL2• 12 years ago

So which one is it? Do you slack more, or less, in private space?

I personally find open space distracting. When I'm separated, I do browse a lot of HN and stuff - but at some point I eventually concentrate, gain speed, and start getting the work done. Not so in open-space; there I find it hard to do anything else than read HN or talk on IRC. Partly because I find the presence of other people unnerving and annoying when I'm working.

rilita7• 12 years ago

Slack should be handled by effective management. Having clearly defined deadlines and checkups on progress prevents people from wasting time in a detrimental way. Instilling fear in your devs by threatening to expose them when they goof off is not how you should treat professionals.

So I goof off. Perhaps I don't even work for an entire day. Am I meeting the schedule laid out for me? Am I producing as much as expected while being happy and carefully managing my output?

Forcing engineers to work nonstop is a good way to create buggy software.

There needs to be a shift in the industry to respecting what people get done rather than how many hours they spent working on it.

jakobegger2• 12 years ago

I work in a large open space but often I'm the only one there. I find that the amount of time I spend slacking depends more on the nature of my work and on my personal condition than on wheter there are other people around.

When I'm tired and I have lots of dreadfully boring things to do, I end up reading HN. When I have a challenging task, and I'm well rested, I get into the zone and everything around me fades away and I'm really productive. The surrounding (people or no people) seems less important.

Fomite• 12 years ago

YOU CANNOT SLACK IN OPEN SPACES.

You're not trying hard enough.

Swizec• 12 years ago

Did the private offices feel nice or soulsickingly without character?

I dont' know why, but your description makes the offices sound like the last place I would want to be. Small, cramped, dark, and soulsuckingly unalive.

The bullpen wasn't more productive, but it had character. It made people feel good. Made them feel welcome.

Iftheshoefits2• 12 years ago

Your employees had the choice between drab isolating cubicles bathed in depressing internal lighting and something else, which they eventually chose. I think maybe you should reconsider what that means. Perhaps your engineers weren't as interested as other parries in pretending cubicles--no matter how fancy--are the same thing as offices.

Anecdotally, at my current job I prefer working in a room where there are from three to five other engineers and lots of electronics around over working in the cube I'm assigned, but if I had a genuinely private office with a window, even overlooking a parking lot, I'd take it and work there 99% of the time, and be more productive if past experience is any indication.

rilita7• 12 years ago

Cubicles do not have to be drab and have depressing lighting. Everywhere I have gone I decorate my cubicle so it feels happy for me and I often bring my own full spectrum lighting. The size of the cubicle has to be quite large for it to not be suffocating though. I could easily fit 4 people seated inside my current cubicle, and it feels quite nice.

I do agree that having private offices is way better, and the idea of having a building full of private offices seems great, but it is much more expensive than open floorplans with cubes. ( consider heating/cooling of many offices... having a maze of pathways to maximize the size of offices... )

Concentric rings of offices might work as a floorplan though??

legohead• 12 years ago

I worked at a place that had a kind of combination -- actual offices, but with 2-4 people in them. I actually loved it, but I also got along with who I was paired with. We could talk all day, play loud music we liked, and still have "privacy".

Corrado2• 12 years ago

Yes, my best working experiences have been in a smallish area with space for 2-4 people. We all faced into a corner but were able to talk/collaborate easily by turning around. We also worked on the same thing so it was pretty easy to get into a groove.

patentAbuse• 12 years ago

I have a similar story, but the outcomes differ significantly.

When we were planning some new office space for a move, some of the staff wanted open concept, while others wanted their own space with privacy. It was a tough conversation given that a moral air was added to it -- one where those who favored open concept were collaborative and selfless, while those who wanted a private space were selfish and insular.

Regardless, we designed a new office space that had both (it was designed for significant growth): An open area, similar to what was trending in the "startup world" (cargo culting), and private areas (not quite private offices, but tall private cubicle walls on all sides, strong sound abatement, no concern that someone is creeping behind you, etc).

We moved and let people pick their spots essentially anonymously. Every single one chose a private area, with the majority selecting the most private area which ended up being assigned by a random drawing. Indeed, it struck me that the person who was the most outspoken about open concept and all that jazz was the one who complained the most about others intruding in their quiet zone (they complained about music, loud conversations between peers, etc).

Blackthorn• 12 years ago

You can't really take from this experience that people don't want private offices, though (you didn't exactly say it, but I think the implication is there). As you admitted, your engineers didn't actually get private offices, they got cubes with high walls! That's a pretty major difference.

j_baker• 12 years ago

Research has shown that engineers really tend to dislike being interrupted by outsiders (managers, salespeople, etc), but really tolerate a lot of interruptions from other engineers[1]. I feel like there has to be a happy medium. Ok, so we're not going to end up getting (and maybe shouldn't end up getting) private offices or dedicated workspaces. Those may inhibit our ability to collaborate with other engineers. But open bullpen layouts leave the worker with no privacy and allow unlimited interruptions by outsiders.

[1] Source: http://books.google.pl/books?id=QZPpdB_yfqgC&printsec=frontc...

_wiv7• 12 years ago

I think one of the key flaws with a lot of bullpen setups is this: They're too big, and they include hallway area where people from unrelated teams walk through having irrelevant conversations all day. A much better solution would be maybe a ~500 sq ft (~50 m^2) big shared office with a window, populated with people that work on the same project.

stalcottsmith• 12 years ago

I found the happy medium when I designed our company's office layout.

I called it "Cave and Campfire" -- blending collaborative team rooms connected by sound-isolating glass and half-glass walls to a common area with standup tables and info radiators.

http://blog.aelogica.com/business/cave-and-campfire-our-cust...

venomsnake• 12 years ago

Private office = something with lock from inside. If I cannot restrict access of outside people at will it is not private.

abalone3• 12 years ago

Which is why the less dynamic an organization you work in, the harder it is to comprehend the importance of ad hoc realtime collaboration. It trades a hit on personal focus for a big uptick in collab and team productivity.

To get a sense of where the OP is coming from, here's what he wrote recently on remote work:

"Some of the most blissfully productive days I’ve had are when my whole team is working remote because a winter storm has left us snowbound. There’s nothing quite like the glorious zone of productivity sans soul-crushing interruptions."

Cornell did a study awhile back that found that when you have a private office, the standard for "frequent" team interaction goes down. Way down. From several times a day ad hoc (open plan) to a couple times a week in scheduled meetings.

rilita7• 12 years ago

This is an either-or way of looking at it. There are other options. Consider Valve; the most wildly profitable game company that exists: Their strategy is to allow people to move their desks around however they wish, anytime they want.

Want to have some time along? Move your desk away from the herd and grind away. Need to handle a sudden need that requires lots of team interactivity? Arrange your desks in a small circle for maximum interaction.

The problem with companies in general is that they are run by management who have been trained that fixed structure is the most effective way to get things done. Structures are good; but they don't have to be fixed. There are pluses and minuses to every single methodology.

Blend.

edw519• 12 years ago

Programmers work in multiple modes, for me they are:

  Mode 1: Preparing to program
  Mode 2: Programming
  Mode 3: Reviewing my code

The mix varies among projects and even days, but I usually spend more than half of my time in Mode 2: Programming.

With a few exceptions, I can do Modes 1 and 3 almost anywhere, and sometimes they need to be done with others, so an open office/meeting room can be great for these.

But for Programming with any quality, I must have silence and no interruptions. I have never found this in an open office or cubicle. I can only do Mode 2 in a private office or at home.

Programmers want offices because they could need a safe haven for Mode 2 at almost any time.

If you're in an office, you can always find another place to be with others, but if you're not in an office, you constantly struggle to find a place to get into Mode 2.

rilita7• 12 years ago

While I agree that this outlook applies to "programmers" I do not agree that this is a good plan for skilled engineers. Proper software development is not just about code.

Things that you are skipping in your modes: 1. Comprehending the business value and purpose of the project. 2. Interacting with end users 3. Testing ( unit testing, testing for feature completion, exploratory testing ) 4. Time management ( scrum meetings or various alteratives ) 5. Mentoring others 6. UI design and refinement 7. Bug tracking and resolution 8. Future planning/system maintenance 9. Disaster scenarios 10. System backups 11. System optimizations 12. Data structure/design

All of the things I have listed here should be understood by good engineers. They don't have to do them all, but they should dabble in all of them over time in order to be more effective.

There is no single setting that works best for all of these behaviors. It takes multiple areas and modes of interaction to accomplish everything that is needed for proper application development.

api• 12 years ago

I personally would love to just work on a laptop and have "docks." I'd like my "home" to be in a public area so that I could come in and socialize, but I'd like private rooms where I could retreat for quiet time.

mcguire3• 12 years ago

It sounds like the people in the bullpen were defining the work products for the engineers. If your current "customer" (for lack of a better word) is used to working in a bullpen, you had better be in the bullpen as well, if you want to get anything done.

Lately, I've been doing two sorts of things: short turn-around bug-fixes and enhancements and longer-term major development. If I try to do the short turn-around work without being in the same room as the customer/tester/what-have-you non-developer, the latency of email/IM means less work gets done, which is frustrating for both sides. On the other hand, if I try to do major development while in the same room as the other people, my work simply won't get done due to the interruptions and general inability to concentrate.

ArkyBeagle• 12 years ago

I find that utterly incredible.

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” - Blaise Pascal. It's true. I have never gotten in trouble sitting quietly in a room alone.

mgkimsal3• 12 years ago

"(with the best equipment and furniture available)."

So... why insist on spending money on high end equipment and furniture while not giving people what they asked for?

I was at a place years ago that was happy to spend tens of thousands of high-end chairs, but giving developers private offices (those who wanted them) "cost too much". Bear in mind that they'd custom built a second office with private offices that were sitting empty (and devs were in the second office). The "it costs too much" doesn't carry much water when that sort of money is spent on things that people aren't asking for.

edpichler• 12 years ago

Am I the only one here that does not like too much silent offices? I like to feel my environment alive, I don't want silence, I want the low noise of smart people discussing, sharing and interacting.

penguat• 12 years ago

I love that too - where I work I get it 9 - 9.30 and 17.30 - 18.00

peterwwillis• 12 years ago

Why do people like working in coffee shops?

It's cramped. It's noisy. There's barely enough power outlets (if at all). Uncomfortable chairs. Annoying conversations. Hipster baristas.

Yet people all over the world cram into coffee shops like Starbucks, sucking up the free wifi with a grande half-calf mocha latte, churning out a report or answering e-mails, sometimes even on a conference call. Conditions that could border on sweatshop if it weren't for the food and drink. It seems completely unintuitive.

Are there benefits to this environment? Perhaps.

For one thing, you don't know anyone there; nobody is going to interrupt you, or tell loud inappropriate jokes while tossing a football, and you are so close to people you are forced to focus on what is right in front of you. You get the comfort of being near other humans without any requirement to ever interact with them. Then there's the convenience of easy access to food, a bathroom, and that miracle drug we're all dependent on. Add the internet and a table and chair and it's like some utopian Japanese vision of the future of all offices. The music is a nice bonus.

But there's one thing I think really makes the coffee shop an ideal place to work: no expectations.

You can come and go as you please. No assigned seats. No meetings. No interruptions. Nothing but your coffee and chair and table space and internet. Who cares if it's loud? Who cares if it's impractical to stay there? If you just need to get something done and break away from the commitment to a typical monotonous working life, this is your hideaway.

I think all offices should just be giant coffee shops.

geebee• 12 years ago

Open floor plan offices are generally pretty unpleasant, but some of the negative effects can be mitigated.

I worked at Sun Micro a while ago (the place that is now Facebook), and we all had offices at the time. However, Sun had also started to create numerous drop-in work centers. One of them was in downtown SF, just south of market.

This was an "open" office with three largish rooms with cubicles and desks, and a smaller number of offices with doors that close (reservable or walk in).

Here's what made it work - one of the rooms was designated a "zone of silence", and it really was enforced. The two outer rooms had phones at each desk, the quiet room did not. Sales people and other workers who needed to make noise worked in the outer rooms, programmers and other heads down people worked in the quiet room.

Not surprisingly, there were plenty of people who wanted to break the rules. This generally happened when all the desks in the loud room were taken. Then you'd get people trying to take phone calls in the quiet room on their cell phones. Some felt that as long as they spoke in a relatively hushed tone of voice, it would be ok (though everyone could still hear their conversation). Others figured that the phone could ring, and they could start their conversation in the room, as long as they were actively walking outside the room as they talked.

What saved it was an office manager who simply wouldn't tolerate it. She would absolutely tell people that they couldn't do this, and that their right to work from the drop in center would be revoked if they continued to do it. She didn't care about their rank, or if they liked her.

I did have a couple of ugly moments about it. I very politely asked people on a couple of occasions not to use their phones in the designated quiet room (with signs everywhere about it), and more than once, they started in on how much more important their work was than mine.

But it was relatively rare, because the signage and vibe of the room really was pretty clear about it, and the office manager was very strict and just didn't have the kind of personality that was easily pushed around.

sibelius7th• 12 years ago

Why does it have to be either or? Why not provide a variety of different work environments, encourage employees to find the one that best suits them, and work there? I think back to my days at the University. Sometimes a louder, open space was great so I'd head to the student union or the group floor of the library. Or maybe I needed some isolated quiet time, find a private room in the library so I could think. I've worked in places that had only open spaces, and it was very difficult to find any quiet, more private rooms. There are times that I like a more open environment, and I get work done there, but when there are no quiet places I can retreat to when I need it, then it can become very frustrating to get any work done. And no, don't tell me you provide me headphones to 'block out' the noise. Sometimes its quiet I want, not louder noises to block out the existing noises (not to mention the fact that it doesn't block out visual stimulation which can be equally distracting).

perlgeek• 12 years ago

Why does it have to be either or?

Thank you for writing that. It seems much this discussion is very black-or-white.

I work in an office with four desks, though typically only three are occupied. It's a nice mixture between not being alone, and not being too loud either.

In vacation time, when I'm the only one around, I do tend to feel a bit lonely after two days or so, even though I still do breaks, take lunch with other co-workers and so on.

mmagin3• 12 years ago

Why does it have to be either or?

Because the people who spend the money at a lot of companies don't want to spend any more than necessary.

mbesto5• 12 years ago

1. These are clearly marketing pictures taken by professional photographers. Well done ones I might add. They are meant to demonstrate (perception/reality) what daily life of an any employee is. Not every big tech company is a composed of 99% engineers. Cassandra and HHVM were built there (or somewhere similar), yet people whose only evidence is a bunch of marketing pictures decide to question the design decisions of people with intimate knowledge about their company's organization.

2. There is yet to be conclusive evidence that open offices work or don't work, and I don't expect this to change anytime soon. What is clear to me is that the correlation between good code and office does not exist. Think of how much code has been written in kitchens, garages, vans, etc that may have changed the world...

bane6• 12 years ago

2. There is yet to be conclusive evidence that open offices work or don't work

There's actually quite a few studies that show that they most definitely do not work.

Here's a meta-study that reviewed hundreds of specific studies [1] and the conclusion is inescapable.

Here's a survey of tens of thousands of workers [2]

And here's a New Yorker article collecting lots of this [3]. It includes a reference to a study that found actual measurable health detriment to open offices.

Arguing that issues with open offices are ambiguous is a bit like arguing that global climate change isn't happening.

1 - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119992592.ch6...

2 - http://lubswww.leeds.ac.uk/fileadmin/webfiles/cstsd/Images/P...

3 - http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-t...

sgustard• 12 years ago

It's staggering to think, if you are right, how much more profitable Facebook or Twitter or Dropbox would be if they had productive office space, don't you think?

mbesto5• 12 years ago

I've got a list of articles that say the same thing and refute it again. Happy to share, but I think it's only going make this discussion go in more circles. The Leed study you reference in particular has so many biases in it's approach, that I don't know where to start in refuting it.

Here's a meta-study that reviewed hundreds of specific studies [1] and the conclusion is inescapable.

If the conclusion is inescapable, then what's the explanation for why so many companies chose to implement it? Especially ones with highly disposable cash flows (a la Facebook/Twitter) where money and desk efficiency isn't a problem.

The only real conclusion I can draw at this point is that this topic is a merry-go-round of anecdotes, imperfect studies, and agendas.

conradfr• 12 years ago

Well it seems at some point the HHVM guys isolate themselves from distractions.

http://www.wired.com/2013/06/facebook-hhvm-saga/all/

ThrustVectoring2• 12 years ago

I code in an open office. My solution: headphones, and three 27 inch monitors angled inward. It's not quite as good as walls, but it cuts out enough visual distraction that it works well enough. I've also got an adjustable-height desk that I leave at standing height, so there's not much going on above monitor height.

A big chunk of the benefit of having an office is keeping your visual field entirely work-related.

codingdave• 12 years ago

My favorite space was the one we laid out for our startup back in the dotcom boom.

We had large cubicles that housed 4 developers each. We each had a corner, and there was a small conference table in the middle so we could just turn around and collaborate. It was a great mix of a shared environment and private, where it was easy to talk to the folks on your team, but also easy for everyone to just work quietly for much of the time.

patrickmay• 12 years ago

This works better for me personally when there are a few high-walled cubes or offices opening into a shared area. I have Billy the Kid syndrome and really, REALLY hate having my back to the room or door.

jim_greco• 12 years ago

There's few if any private offices in trading. Even those who have them don't use them except for meetings.

As an introvert I can understand the need for quiet time, but part of what makes work 'fun' (and frankly tolerable) is the interaction with your teammates who are working on similarly challenging problems. I definitely miss the back and forth now that it's just me and my co-founder in a private office.

bane6• 12 years ago

I'm currently working at a place where I have 4 locations I can work from:

1 - my office (shared with one other person)

2 - a team room, about 10 people right now

3 - an office across from my client, it's a "guest cube" in a cube farm

4 - from home

Plus the normal mix of conference rooms.

I find that in any given week, I'll rotate through about 3 of those pretty comfortably. My officemate also has a similar work schedule, so I'm alone in my office most of the time, so I use it for deep concentration. It's too isolated though to spend all my time there.

The team room is great if I need to collaborate, or get my energy up. It's also not too bad if I need to concentrate as everybody there is working.

The guest cube is where I go if I need to do document editing, presentations, client meetings...stuff that's so distracting I can't get any technical work done anyway.

And home, because well, who doesn't want to work from home every once in a while?

So far, it's the best workplace I've ever been, and this includes about 5 years of working from home, various client sites, cubes, personal offices, open floor plans. The best part is that it doesn't cost the company a fortune, but I get flexibility, privacy when I need it, collaboration when I need it, different work contexts etc.

I've been more productive in the few months I've been here than I've been anywhere else in my career.

Morgawr5• 12 years ago

Do you have a workstation in each spot to go work on? Or do you work specifically on your laptop?

I find that even with a company-issued laptop, as awesome as it is, it can't compare to a 2-3 monitors workstation if I really need to work on something complex that requires multiple applications up next to each other.

bane6• 12 years ago

Everybody, top-to-bottom is issued a laptop. We get a choice from about a half dozen models of Dells and a couple Macs. About 1/3 of the company is transitioning to using Macs. The sales/BD guys tend to get the lighter machines, the MB Airs, that sort of thing, while the designers/writers tend to go for bigger screens. Engineers tend to go for RAM and SSDs or max out on disk space depending. I think there are a few folks who've asked for desktops simply because they don't want to carry something around and they know they'll never move, it's mostly secretaries.

We're all also given very nice laptop bags to carry our stuff around in.

My office, the team room and the guest cube all have monitors we can plug into. All my monitors at home are occupied at the moment.

They standardized on Dells until last year when they started offering Macs. This means that every possible workplace is full of standardized Dell Docs. So if you have a Dell, you just plop it in and you're wired up to network, monitor, power, keyboard, mouse etc. It's a bit more fuss with the Macs and all the display port dongles and power bricks, but on the flip side, the machines themselves are physically lighter, thinner and generally nicer to use on their own than the Dells. For example, if I forget my mouse (I use a rMBP) it's not a big deal since the trackpad is very good, but my Dell using colleagues are kind of SOL since the trackpad works so poorly.

Also the equivalent Dell to my rMBP (15") weighs something like 11 pounds and is about 3 times as thick.

In general the philosophy seems to be to offer workplace flexibility while making each choice as good as possible.

stevesearer• 12 years ago

I run officesnapshots.com, where the majority of the photos in the blog post are from, and what you have described is the exact direction office designs are heading. Europe has been moving this way for a while and the US is (finally) beginning to as well.

The idea is to offer a variety of places where employees can work and let them move between them freely depending on what needs to get done.

Need privacy? Work in this private room. Need to collaborate? There's a room for that too.

Much of the pushback from developers on Hacker News regarding open floorplans seems to be that their offices default to 'open office' rather than 'private office'. But given that many tech companies are founded by developers and technical people, and this hasn't changed yet, I suspect companies just aren't trying to optimize for individual developer productivity.

strangetimes3• 12 years ago

The author thanks you. Your website (Office Snapshots) is awesome.

l-jenkins• 12 years ago

We are set up in offices with 2-5 developers per room. Works out nicely. If work styles don't meld, you can request to move (given there is space).

rodeoclown• 12 years ago

Scalability is a reason that many growing companies use open floors. When you are growing rapidly, you're often put in a situation where you need the most flexible possible floor plan, otherwise you have to move offices. Having way more offices than employees sitting empty waiting for the hiring to happen in the next few years feels too much like a waste of space. This makes the open office plan very seductive when making decisions about how to lay out the floors.

mmagin3• 12 years ago

The problem with this argument is that aside from work space and meeting space, there aren't many other uses to which most places are going to allocate the surplus space. And furthermore, I've seen non-load-bearing partition walls in existing buildings go up just about as fast as I've seen cube farm put in.

njloof• 12 years ago

And bathrooms. Why are there never enough bathrooms in tech companies?

wellactually• 12 years ago

Bathrooms are the limiting factor in most self-respecting venues. Yet as you state, there are never enough bathrooms, and I'd add they're never private enough. I do not want to hear or smell when other people are doing their business, and I certainly don't want them to hear or smell mine. Why aren't there more private bathrooms? Is it taboo to discuss bathrooms?

edit: But Where Do People Do Their Business In This Office?

lotharbot2• 12 years ago

Related: bathrooms tend to be all tile without much ambient cover noise, which just amplifies the sounds from the next stall. A big, noisy fan would solve a lot of the problem.

Haul4ss2• 12 years ago

If those office layouts don't appeal to you, it's because those companies don't want to recruit you.

Deep-pocketed companies like Facebook (who surely have enough money to build any kind of office space) choose to build open layouts as a signal. They want to attract a certain kind of developer, and they probably have a platoon of operations researchers telling them they need to arrange their offices like this to get them.

If you like quiet private offices then you will not work at Facebook. But that's okay because Facebook doesn't want you anyway.

mynameishere• 12 years ago

Nice theory but a lot of shittier companies use open plans as well.

Haul4ss2• 12 years ago

Most companies (the ones who lease space, anyway) are at the mercy of the commercial real estate agencies they rent from. They don't always have the money to raze the whole space they rent and build a developer's utopia in its place.

I was referring specifically to companies who have the money to build any kind of office space, and choose to build sardine cans with arcades.

gohrt4• 12 years ago

have a platoon of operations researchers telling them they need to arrange their offices like this to get them.

There's a name for the fallacy that assuming something happens for a reason, that there must be a good reason, because the obvious reason is so bad.

diziet• 12 years ago

I am not sure if the author visited any of the offices in question, but they do have plenty of rooms/floors/isolated areas where people do work.

abecedarius4• 12 years ago

I've visited Twitter and Dropbox and am unconvinced that's enough: for best flow you need a personalized space.

jheriko• 12 years ago

clearly the author does not understand how important both vanity and greed are to most people - especially decision makers. XD

sogen• 12 years ago

Introverts prefer a quiet place to be able to focus and work, a lot.

blktiger• 12 years ago

The author is incredulous that any of these companies get any work done. Yet. All of these companies are tremendously successful and produce great software. Obviously there is quite a bit of disconnect between what the author thinks and what happens in reality.

Personally I think it's because none of these places are about productivity. In fact I think it's the exact opposite. Take Google for instance. If you think about working on improving Google search what kinds of things do you think are important? Productivity? Or Creativity? My bet is on creativity which I think is where these kinds of workspaces excel.

You are in a room full of smart people who are all collaborating on the same set of problems. Innovative solutions are more likely to occur in that environment than closed off in a personal office. Personally, I like the trend of offering both kinds of workspaces. Private offices for when you just need some time to think. Public workspaces for collaboration and creativity. Conference rooms for meetings. Leave it up to the individual to determine when they need to work in each space.

sapek• 12 years ago

I think private offices are better for collaboration too. When I don't worry about distracting everyone around me I feel much freer to engage in a long discussion with one or two other developers in my office.

OneMoreGoogler3• 12 years ago

I am in a room full of people, none of whom are working on anything related to what I'm doing. The idea that my seating will help "foster collaboration" is ludicrous. It's all about maximizing the number of warm bodies per square foot.

gohrt4• 12 years ago

All of these companies are tremendously successful and produce great software.

Well, they were. More recently (since the headcounts exploded and the open-office fad picked up) they've been coasting along with the S&P500 overall performance and upseting users.

If you think about working on improving Google search

I thnk about concentrating to deeply analyzing lots of subtle data using advanced mathematics, not spitballing cool ideas.

Productivity? Or Creativity?

Lots of creativity with no productivity: great idea that never launch, or launch with fatal flaws that never get fixed, and products that get shuttered.

smart people who are all collaborating

Most humans can barely remember the identities of 100 people at once. How can they be "all collaborating" all day in the office.

Hmm.

benihana2• 12 years ago

This resonates with me so much. I currently work in a 'creative' and 'collaborative' open office and I just don't enjoy it. It's loud, distracting, frustrating and worst of all, it makes me a hypocrite. I hate the noise, but I am just as much a part of the problem as everyone else. I talk to teammates and make jokes when other people are working, just as they do when I'm working. I can't keep count of how many times per day I'm deep in thought and then get startlingly pulled out of it when I notice my line-of-sight goes right through someone and they're looking at me.

I find myself coming up with reasons to work from home, where I am much more productive, much more comfortable and (I think) much more creative. I can take the time I need, I can think out loud, I can pace, I can drop to the floor and do some pushups (which I find helps reset my brain state and get a new line of thoughts flowing) without distracting other people.

A private or semi private office wouldn't fix all these issues, but it would go a long way in making me want to come into the office.

eugenez• 12 years ago

It's not about individual productivity - it's about team and company productivity.

I doubt anyone questions whether individual effectiveness suffers from an open layout. However open layouts have several benefits that more than compensate: - Impromptu conversations are easy. The barrier to ask someone a question is lower - it's faster to get unblocked. - Shared context. With conversations happening in the open, others will often overhear, sometimes learn, and often will choose to participate. - Impromptu socialization leads to better morale. Someone drops by to chat socially, others join in, people build personal relationships. - Function-specific spaces. The space saved by having a denser desk layout is allocated to having everything from kitchens to massage chair rooms to ping-pong tables. At the same cost per employee, an open space layout has more 'perks'.

I've worked in both offices and open spaces and I far prefer open spaces with a good etiquette about when to interrupt someone.

morgante• 12 years ago

Unfortunately corporate culture has shifted to the point that it's seen as incredibly wasteful to give people private offices. Literally the only technology company I know of which provides private offices for everyone is Fog Creek.

Moreover, even if a startups wants to give their engineers private offices, external forces make it challenging. VCs think it's unnecessary overhead, and even some developers are turned off by the prospect when recruiting (particularly new grads).

So far the solution we've found is to have a separate "sanctuary" room. It's located right next to our main office, but it's kept completely silent. All conversations have to be kept out in the open office or conference rooms. So far it's working pretty well—when you want to hunker down and work, there's space for that but we can also collaborate easily.

It's also interesting to see where people have set up their "desk" (ie. default location, with their monitor). The majority of the company gravitates towards the open office by default, but a few writers and one engineer default to the sanctuary. Perhaps the open office is more attractive, even if it's less productive.

Personally, I put my desk in the sanctuary but end up spending most of my time in the open office.

abecedarius4• 12 years ago

That Dropbox office was a big damper on my enthusiasm interviewing there. "Wow, this is the most beautiful office I've seen... but how do you all concentrate?" They had some answers, fwiw, and maybe I'd have adapted, though my experience of similar setups over a few months says no.

This is a real problem for recruiting if the recruitee is me.

Kiro2• 12 years ago

I don't see the problem. When I put on my headphones it's like I'm sitting in a private office.

RogerL5• 12 years ago

People are different. I can't work with music, for the most part. Some can hardly work without it.

noir_lord• 12 years ago

I can't stand open plan offices, I can just about cope with a shared office as long as phone calls are very rare/none existent.

My current office http://imgur.com/a/KmHEO is about perfect, Apart from the computer I spent essentially nothing on it, the desk was off freecycle, the chair inherited from previous tenant etc.

It's warm and quiet and beyond that I'm not fussed about architectural masterpieces.

aswanson• 12 years ago

It's funny how most of these places hire the top cs grads and dont realize they're implemented an n^2 noise generation (audio and visual) algorithm for their developers, deoptimizing the very thing you hired them for: concentrated brain power.

Maybe the best thing to do is layout things like a microprocessor, where everyone gets their own isolated location (ram/register address), a place where people who need to be associated come together periodically (a local cache), and a meeting place for larger groups (an ALU) for bigger operations.

TheRealDunkirk• 12 years ago

As I commented on the article: I used to work at DeveloperTown (http://developertown.com) in Indianapolis. Their "house" setup is both unique and awesome. Any article discussing office space for programmers and designers needs to reference them.

mellery451• 12 years ago

I've worked in a bunch of these kinds of spaces - all utterly distracting. Turns out I'm more productive in my own quiet space at home. If you are doing this to your workers, give 'em the option to work from home and save the rent.

tessierashpool• 12 years ago

As a remote worker, I sometimes work at my desk, I sometimes work at coffee shops, and I get a nice blend that way. Sometimes I log into IRC, sometimes I don't, and again, I'm able to find the balance which works for me personally.

Background noise is up to me. Interacting with co-workers is up to me (to a point, of course).

Some of my rent will be tax-deductible for me personally, none of it will be an expense for my employer.

Meanwhile, none of the existing research supports open-plan offices. Yet it's the norm in the industry.

jedanbik• 12 years ago

I've done some impressive work... From my bed.

spinlock• 12 years ago

I put on headphones if I want quiet. What I really need to get away from is flowdock/hipchat/etc... invading my screen. That kills my flow worse than anything else.

IshKebab• 12 years ago

Ha, this is where I work:

http://news.images.itv.com/image/file/257809/image_update_b4...

That photo is quite old. There are about 80% more desks in that room now (around 1000 in total). It's pretty loud. I put up with it though because the job is otherwise pretty awesome.

segmondy• 12 years ago

I work in an open office and I love it, when this space was designed, we all hated it, we cried, we moaned and grunted about it. We left our nice comfy cozy private spaces and have to rub elbows with others. More than a year later, I will pick it any day over any other space, collaboration at it's best. For the first time I find myself enjoying to work more with others than to work alone. So whilst some may not like it, please do realize that there are those of us that love it.

TheSageMage• 12 years ago

Personally, I think that most office designers take the concept of open offices too far. From what I've seen of several offices, as a Software Engineer, is that Open Office is meant to be entirely open. This means that the only dividers/partitions are for things like meeting rooms. The rest of the office is open, such as halls, cafeterias/break rooms, etc. This is what causes my hatred of open offices.

I am on the fence about cubicles/private offices, because I do like the fact that my team is close by and I can have a conversation by turning around and talking to them. The annoying noise for me is all the idle chatter from people in meeting rooms near by coming out of their meeting and deciding to carry on a conversation right outside the meeting room, or while walking back to their desk.

Ideally, I'd like an open office to mean that it's open for my team, where we are partition/sectioned together, but that there is a door or some way of keeping out all the ambient office noise/sights. I believe if I had this, I would be able to get a lot more work done as I'm not having to wear headphones to cut out the general clutter of distractions from my environment.

tarikjn• 12 years ago

Here is what I think about when someone says open office: http://www.belarus.by/relimages/000914_392548.jpg

But Where Do People Work in This Office?

Related Stories