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Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
- Consultant32452 10y agoThere's an over-representation of autistics in engineering firms. These crowded noisy spaces can be absolutely maddening for people on the spectrum. I wonder if there's room to get the Americans with Disabilities Act applied to autistic people so they can get quiet workplaces.
- yumaikas 10y agoAs an anecdatum, I am disinterested in Facebook because of that large open office. I currently have my own office, and like that very much. It will be interesting to see where this all goes.
- loeg 10y ago> As an anecdatum, I am disinterested in Facebook because of that large open office. Me too.
- xlm1717 10y agoTo give my own anecdatum, from the pictures I've been able to find of Facebook's open office, it looks overwhelming to me. I would definitely be stressed there, to say the least.
- abecedarius 10y agoDealbreaker for me too. I once worked in a cattle pen like that for a month, and I'd have quit if it'd been permanent.
- bicx 10y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but this blog post doesn't actually seem to answer the question. I'm curious if Facebook really is having difficulty recruiting developers due to this specific issue and if the 40-50% pay offering really has anything to do with that.
- mmuro 10y agoBetteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
- harryjo 10y agoIt's not true in this case, though. People who have the power to choose, are voting with their feet. Still, many people have short term thinking or knowledge (better to get higher pay now than realize it will hold back by career trajectory), or they aren't too worried about success of their company or their productivity level.
- quickben 10y agoIt's subjective. As an sample size of one, based on what I've heard, I'd never work for fb
- DougN7 10y agoOpen offices were developed by people who don't have to really concentrate for their job. They're awful for developers.
- fatlasp 10y agoI always thought open offices became popular because it was literally the cheapest set up for facilities. For startups it worked because all you had to buy was desks. Somehow that got spun in to 'open offices are so sexy!' Open offices are horrible for productivity imo. Moved to a job with an office and it is so. much. better.
- byebyetech 10y agoWe need a job site that lists companies that provide your own office. I would only apply there.
- harryjo 10y agohttp://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html #8 joel used to (still does?) host a job board that used Joel Test as a factor. Maybe it died when StackOverflow launched.
- V-2 10y agoEven so, the Joel Test was incorporated in Stack Careers if I recall
- TylerH 10y agoYes, Stack Overflow Jobs does have the opportunity for employers to include their Joel Test score (including line items, not just the overall number) at the bottom of their postings.
- j4_james 10y agoThe Joel Test is sort of incorporated into Stack Overflow Jobs (previously Careers) in that a company has the option to include the results of their Joel Test when posting an ad on the site. However, there's no obvious way (at least that I could see) for a candidate to search for jobs that meet specific criteria in the test. Also, the exact wording for the office part of the test is "Do programmers have quiet working conditions?" This usually means that working conditions might possibly be quiet if nobody else happened to be in the office at the same time as you. While many claim quiet working conditions, I've never seen one that actually provided private offices. This is anecdotal of course, and just based on looking at photographs they've included on their website or Stack Overflow page, but every job I've viewed recently appears to have an open plan office. In some of the photos you even see people standing around having impromptu meetings in the middle of a group of desks where others are trying to work. Remember this is just the companies that are actually claiming to provide programmers with quiet working conditions. I can't imagine what the noisy ones are like.
- adamnemecek 10y agoYet there are still people defending the "open office meme".
- fsloth 10y agoIs there anyone here who likes open offices more than a floorplan divised into smaller rooms? I ask because I've worked in an open office setting as a developer for years (the place is otherwise nice) and thoroughly despise it as a workspace. Yet some people don't seem to mind it. I don't mind serendipity. The problem is I serendiptously overhear everyones discussion which is incredibly disruptive for deep work. Factories have huge machines, whih create added value. They have a good reason for loud noises and need for ear protection. Offices, on the other hand, are places where people come to create added value by mostly by thinking (if they are programmers). Are there people who enjoy the bustle of open office while trying to untangle a decade old piece of C++ spaghetti? Whose work output it actually improves? I'm trying to figure out if the open offices are bad mostly for everyone or just for someone like me.
- harryjo 10y agoSome people are less sensitive and are able to tune the noise out. Some are not. Sometimes success depends on willingness to use ear coverings and stimulants (caffeine, ritalin, adderall), and willingness varies. I'd rather pay for a wall than overload my body with drugs and a clamp on my head.
- thurn 10y agoI prefer open offices. You get a pretty significant echo chamber effect on articles like this because people who don't like it turn out to comment. Personally, I have no difficulty with noise (I prefer working in coffee shops to at home), and being able to easily start a design discussion with 4 or 5 engineers when necessary is extremely valuable. I totally get why some people don't like it though.
- jowiar 10y ago"Being able to easily start a design discussion with 4 or 5 engineers" means "easily break 4 or 5 engineers out of their flow" along with "easily create a distraction for the other 15 engineers within earshot of the easily-started discussion". I'm fine with coffee shops over home (and did the same in college), but coffeeshop noise is "white noise" -- whirring espresso grinders, a blur of conversations between people I don't know about things that aren't going to activate my distraction monkey.
- fecak 10y agoAs the moderator of a Reddit sub focused on comp sci careers, I don't think the open office is an issue for junior level developers. The worship of what we in that sub call the big 4 (some combo of Google, Facebook, Apple (or Microsoft), Amazon) is pretty much what you hear from every college senior, and I've never heard anyone even mention this as a negative. Of course these are mostly people who haven't had much experience working in office environments except possibly an internship or part-time work. Facebook might face some challenges recruiting experienced devs who know what kind of environment suits them, but anecdotally I don't see it at the junior level.
- go_go_ 10y agoI think some of it may also come with the amount of guidance and mentoring those people require. Early in your career, the best thing for you to do is to acquire knowledge -- not raw output. The open office allows for knowledge sharing and eavesdropping in ways closed offices do not. However, as you progress you require less 1:1 time with people and can work independently given a set of goals and general architecture. This requires less face time and more coding time.
- fecak 10y agoFrankly, when it comes to those big 4 companies, I think the perceived value of having that name on the resume will probably overshadow any perceived shortcomings in any of the environments.
- nerdponx 10y ago> Of course these are mostly people who haven't had much experience working in office environments except possibly an internship or part-time work. Exactly. I didn't think an open floor plan was such a bad idea until I started working full-time in one. I can't stand it.
- mattmanser 10y agoI don't get your point? Like you say, a bunch of people who have never worked in an open plan office obviously won't complain about it, nor will they realize it's something they should filter by. They haven't experienced the problem yet. Take renting a flat. I now know to avoid everywhere with storage heaters, just like I avoid places with single glazing and I also now know I should check the shower water pressure. I didn't magically know these things before.
- muse900 10y agoI find that home is the most productive place for a developer. (At least for me) Open spaces do have a lot of distractions.
- zerognowl 10y agoThis Is Why You Shouldn't Interrupt a Programmer: http://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-a-programmer/ http://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-...
- toomuchtodo 10y agohttps://i.imgur.com/sAdZ63y.jpg https://i.imgur.com/sAdZ63y.jpg
- jarsin 10y agoMost dev's don't go back to step 1 when interrupted. They go to checking out hacker news :)
- Crespyl 10y agoGuilty as charged. For those like me who're susceptible to software fences around unproductive behavior, HN has a useful "antiprocrastination" option available under your profile settings.
- prodigal_erik 10y agoIt's very hard to go back to step 1 when you can't reasonably hope to get something done before the next interruption.
- kylec 10y agoYup. Sitting here in an open plan work area reading about open plan work areas on HN. Maybe once everyone goes home I can get some work done.
- dilap 10y agoAn open office wouldn't be so bad if library-like codes of silence were enforced.
- QuercusMax 10y agoWhere I work (at Google), it's generally pretty quiet; you'll occasionally have conversations going on, but most of the time all you hear is typing. It's not quite "library-like", but making phone calls at your desk is very strongly frowned upon. At my last company, we generally had 1-2 person offices; it was very easy to stay in your office all day long and never interact with other developers. With the open plan here, we're much more likely to have impromptu team conversations. I think it would be better if we were in separate rooms in groups of 8-10, but open offices definitely are not all negative. When I work from home I miss the human interaction.
- jrockway 10y agoI mean, Google is a big company, and it varies widely. I sit in an open office space with the staffing team. They are much louder than our team, most of the time. I like the idea of team rooms, we should try more of that.
- Consultant32452 10y agoDid you not have a team chat application in your 1-2 person offices? In my experience that has always provided an excellent balance between distraction and isolation.
- QuercusMax 10y agoSure, it helps to some degree, but can also be very distracting in its own right. Being able to turn to the person next to you or behind you and ask a question is very different from pinging somebody over IM / IRC / etc.
- chris11 10y agoHow do you like the office plans? From what I've seen Google seems to mainly use open offices.
- tdaltonc 10y agoSo what companies have gold standard developer offices?
- loeg 10y agoMicrosoft.
- dannyr 10y agoIntel. https://youtu.be/sZmos0GSCWE https://youtu.be/sZmos0GSCWE
- taurath 10y agoIts the definition of dreary/depression, but perfect for concentration. There's so much room in the middle - theres no reason you can't have nice offices, or even nice cubicles, or mixed spaces depending on the job type or even personal preferences. It seems though that the only "acceptable" option outside of lifeless cube farms is open offices for some reason - I have no idea why.
- caleblloyd 10y agoI worked for a year at IBM's RTP campus. Everyone had their own dimly lit cube with 5-foot walls, no natural daylight, and white noise playing over speakers to drown out conversation. The depressing undertone of the office was part of what pushed me to quit. My team at my present job works in an open setting with 8 people in the room and windows with natural daylight. It's quiet enough to focus but gives us the opportunity for interaction also. I think that team-sized rooms are a good compromise between a completely open and completely secluded workspace.
- schiang 10y agoTeam sized rooms are definitely the way to go. You can avoid conversation from other teams that you don't care about. When there is a conversation in the room, it's probably related to what you're doing so it's not necessarily distracting you. I worked in a room with just my team and it worked out great. We were able to have discussions and draw stuff on white boards on the wall without distracting anyone else. It also helped with team bonding.
- vonmoltke 10y agoThis probably works great if you have evenly-sized, relatively stable teams. The place I just left has teams that ranged from just me to the entire eight-persob company, and the teams could change on a month-to-month basis. In fact, it wasn't unusual to be working on two or three projects simultaneously.
- cableshaft 10y agoWell, you could have a primary team you work for, and then get called on to work on other things for other teams periodically (while staying at your same desk). That's pretty much what we do here. My team lead is always the same person, but sometimes I do work for the other two team leads, especially when work is light in the current iteration for my normal project.
- taurath 10y agoI've had this and private offices... what happens is that difficult conversations can't take place except outside of the office (unless there is another space to go). Need to have a 1-1? Everyone else hears it. No meta conversations can take place unless someone is willing to go out for some coffee. The team banter ends up being trivial, and can be incredibly distracting if you need to buckle down to get something done.
- throwaway2016a 10y agoAnyone got a photo of this office? It sounds spectacular. Not saying it's effective, just saying it sounds visually impressive and awe inspiring.
- monk_e_boy 10y agoIf only there was a way to search the internet for them.
- irrational 10y agoWhen my company moved to an open office plan we, the developers, tried to argue that we needed the ability to concentrate and that this would hinder that. We were told that every job required concentration and that we shouldn't be such prima donnas who think we are special snowflakes. Someday I'm going to get a special snowglobe and shove it down the throat of the sales lady who sits next to me who holds conference calls all day long from her desk. Unfortunately I love everything else about my job so I'm disinclined to move on.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoEvery job requires concentration, so the company interrupts everyone?
- irrational 10y agoI think a developers definition of concentration differs from their definition of concentration.
- dwc 10y ago> the sales lady who sits next to me who holds conference calls all day long from her desk I've had this situation in the past a few times and to some degree today. If we have to have open office plans then at least take some effort into grouping "talkers" together away from "heads down" people. Is that so hard? There's no real economic argument, as it's just putting some thought into where people sit. There's no collaboration argument, because people on the same team would site together. Etc. From the reactions when I've brought it up, that's a completely unreasonable request. The whole idea than anyone's productivity might benefit from a quiet work environment seems to make management/HR upset.
- gnashville 10y agoSeems your wrath is better aimed at those who implemented an open floor plan, not the lady doing her job.
- irrational 10y ago
- kevinSuttle 10y agoWell that, and not wanting to live in L.A..
- zeppelin101 10y agoFacebook is based in the Bay Area.
- renaudg 10y agoAnd bazillions of other locations : https://www.facebook.com/careers/locations/ https://www.facebook.com/careers/locations/
- kevinSuttle 10y agoI interviewed there. They wanted me in Menlo Park.
- apetresc 10y agoMenlo Park is still almost 400 miles away from L.A...
- kevinSuttle 10y agoOk, CALIFORNIA. That better?
- apetresc 10y agoIt makes sense now, yes, but I don't think most people find living in California to be a huge drawback. And almost all jobs ask you to live somewhere.
- teen 10y agoLA is the best... :O
- 10y ago
- renaudg 10y agoFacebook is paying 40-50 percent more than other places, which is usually a sign developers don’t want to work there. More likely a sign of a high hiring bar and corresponding paycheck.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoSimple supply and demand analysis shows that goods command higher prices when supply is lower.
- turowicz 10y agoThere is no shortage of iPhones, yet they are expensive.
- mamon 10y agoReally? Because every time new iPhone hits the stores I keep seeing news about how they were sold out in one day, or how Apple online store has a shortages of this or that version.
- jrockway 10y agoHe used the term "no shortage" not to literally say that it is possible to obtain an iPhone no matter what, but rather to mean "I see lots of them around". Indeed, a lot of people have iPhones.
- renaudg 10y agoAnd indeed the supply of good engineers is low. If Facebook insists on hiring only them, then it makes sense that they're paying more on average.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoOne cannot simply pay more on average. The demand for good engineers is high and Facebook must compete for them. I believe supply and demand with market rates is a much bigger factor on the average Facebook engineer salary than the quality of the engineer. For one, we are only dealing with a discrepancy on the order of 40-50%. Is a good engineer only 40-50% better than an average engineer?
- QuantumRoar 10y agoIt's also very easy to "accidentally" put more people into a very large room than it would be allowed by working regulations. There's at least one large Silicon Valley company who likes to do that. The working conditions can be quite miserable. You can call it an open office that amplifies communication in the team, so noone will notice that they're almost piling up vertically. And the problem is not just noise. Too many people breathing the same air leads to rising carbon dioxide levels which makes concentrating quite hard. Unless the office was literally built for large crowds, the ventilation will usually be insufficient to cool the office in summer and to provide adequate levels of air flow. I stopped calling those things "open offices" and use the term "laying battery" instead.
- prodigal_erik 10y agoWould that be the one who started putting interns in half-cubes in hallways? Where the biggest buildings might not be complying with the fire code?
- QuantumRoar 10y agoNo, I'm talking about something else which is actually a bit worse...
- dx034 10y agoI wouldn't use the term laying battery for a room where employees get salarys of (often) more than 5x the country's median to work there. I'd say no developer at Facebook was forced to work there, they all could easily get another job (maybe paid worse). It's purely their choice to work in this environment. I think the comparison with a laying battery isn't a really good fit here. What's described here is still a "first world problem", some people seem to forget that.
- jondubois 10y agoI don't like open offices. Sometimes they can be downright harmful though I can deal with them if I'm sitting with my back to the wall. Many years ago, when I was fresh out of uni, I lost my job because of an open office; I was sitting relatively close to a bathroom and people kept walking past behind me - After 1 week this made me feel stressed and paranoid and I couldn't concentrate. One month in, the boss asked me into his office and basically told me that I was unproductive and that "I'm going to have to cut you loose" - Being young, I thought there was something wrong with me but after working in several other companies, I learned the importance of the workplace environment. If I ever get into a situation where I had to work with my back facing a large empty room again, I would start looking for a new job straight away. I feel shivers just thinking about it...
- Melchizedek 10y agoOh but your psychological wellbeing means nothing to the dimwit who loves open offices and thinks he can still do "deep work" (most likely trivial crap like stitching together some libraries to make the front end of a CRUD application) while spending half the day disturbing others with endless non productive talk ("team work"). Or even worse, someone whose job is to talk on the phone and use the stupid CRUD app, and who has never done anything cognitively demanding in their entire life, literally.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 10y agoWhat's the point of this needlessly incendiary tone? People can have opinions differing from yours while still doing 'deep work' of a nature that you'd find respectable. Jeez.
- United857 10y ago(Disclosure: FB employee) Most of the problems about overhearing conversations, etc, can be dealt with by a nice pair of headphones. Here, it's universally accepted as the 'do not disturb' signal.
- renaudg 10y agoand the company pays for them (former FB employee)
- kzisme 10y agoSince you're a former employee - did your departure have anything to do with the office space?
- boardwaalk 10y agoIf the employer provides super comfortable noise-cancelling headphones I would agree. Personally, listening to music all day gives me a headache and podcasts are too distracting. And I don't need these headphones for anything else (otherwise, I'd already have a pair!) I wonder what would come of it if I requested some.
- new_hackers 10y agoI have over-the-ear comfy headphones that I wear. Lots of time I don't have music playing.
- TheOneTrueKyle 10y agoI am wondering if this is the divide. I personally do not mind open spaces because I have headphones. I find that I can work anywhere so long as I have wifi, my laptop and a pair of headphones. But I have also been wearing headphones most of my life to drown out the noises of my environment (and sadly the sounds of domestic abuse growing up). So I'm curious if people who hate open spaces had greater control of their environment growing up. I didn't and adapted. Maybe I'm reaching here, but curious of other's opinion on this take.
- 10y ago
- colordrops 10y agoWhile this may affect a developer's decision to work at Facebook, my first thought is that Joel is ignoring the gorilla in the room. The number one reason that people don't want to work at Facebook is their product and mission. As someone in the comments mentioned, SpaceX has very tight and open cubicles, but people there are paid _below_ market rates, and they are doing _very_ deep work, so Joel's argument doesn't hold water in all cases.
- simonsarris 10y agoInterviewers should ask for their interviews to be held in the location that they'd be working day to day.
- fasouto 10y ago+1 to this, I always ask during the interview. We should be asking for more money when the company offer an open space. This could stop the trend.
- guelo 10y agoDevelopers also hate Facebook's mission and the overpriced shithole location.
- ng12 10y agoMenlo Park is a shit hole? Compared to what?
- prodigal_erik 10y agoThat land was gerrymandered into Menlo Park despite being miles away on the wrong side of the East Palo Alto ghetto.
- bduerst 10y agoEPA is shitty, but the FB campus is right on the bay and not in EPA. The only shitty thing about it is that you have to deal with the Dumbarton bridge traffic, which is good or bad depending on which side of the bay you live on.
- scient 10y agoYet they have a lot of bright people working there and every year a ton of new-grads fight for the chance for an internship there. Plus the company is doing really well and treating their employees really well. A top 5 best places to work at according to Glassdoor. It really must be so miserable there...
- mrweasel 10y agoAs people get older, they tend to wonder if what their doing is valuable, or even morally right. So I think as Facebooks employees are getting older, they naturally want to leave. At this point Facebook is one big click bait site and that's not something people want to work on long term. If Facebook was more about bringing people closer together, and less about showing ads down the throats of it's users, more people would want to work there.
- pkaye 10y agoFor most of my career I worked at companies with full size cubicles and was okay with it. My current employer started with an open office structure. We are a fairly small group of developers so things were not so noisy and it was easier to communicate. But then I am getting old now and taking daily medicines for chronic issues. It was hard getting the privacy to take my medicines. We've now switched to full cubicles with the front at half height so this is a better blend of openness and privacy.
- aluminussoma 10y agoMy personal anecdote: The main reason I never consider interviewing at Facebook is because of their office layout. I politely decline their requests to chat. And that's totally their choice to make. Maybe it works for them, but I know it doesn't work for me.
- ericclemmons 10y agoRequiring developers to move is what scares me away...
- bogomipz 10y ago"He’s also one of the first Silicon Valley insiders to publicly and directly endorse the importance of deep work over the fuzzier values of connection and serendipity." Isn't Joel and all of his enterprises based in New York City? am I wrong in thinking Silicon Valley insiders live and/or work in Silicon Valley?
- guan 10y agoIt’s pretty clear that different people like different types of workspaces. Why can’t a large company offer variety? Big open offices, rooms with 10-15 people, small team offices, and individual offices.
- diego_moita 10y agoWe've been hearing this "private rooms to better concentrate" argument since at least 1987, when Tom DeMarco wrote Peopleware. The cublicle culture didn't change since then. It won't change soon. Managers don't want to learn it.
- lazzlazzlazz 10y agoI work in an open office, and have been to Facebook's open office campus many times. I love working in an open office, and think Facebook's campus looks excellent. I think the disadvantages of open offices are radically exaggerated by people who have difficulty imagining how easy it is to book a small conference room for yourself for a few hours, to walk away to a hotel desk in a more quiet part of the office, or (more typically) for the white noise of the central air to obscure everyone's mild sounds as they quietly work. I chronically had focus issues growing up and was easily distracted, and I have no problem focusing at work in an open office - even when it's crowded with people.
- vonmoltke 10y ago> I think the disadvantages of open offices are radically exaggerated by people who have difficulty imagining how easy it is to book a small conference room for yourself for a few hours, to walk away to a hotel desk in a more quiet part of the office, or (more typically) for the white noise of the central air to obscure everyone's mild sounds as they quietly work. There are those of us who can only do our jobs from our desks for various reasons and who have direct experience with crappy, noise-polluted environments. The disadvantages are not radically exaggerated unless you always use best-case open office implementations as your baseline.
- prodigal_erik 10y ago> book a small conference room for yourself for a few hours I'm supposed to work all day every day, not a few hours. And the open offices I've been stuck in didn't even have enough conference rooms for actual meetings. > walk away to a hotel desk in a more quiet part of the office If that space existed, I would move into it full time. But open offices are wall to wall with people who do not shut up. In practice I stay very late and get things done after they leave.
- mrweasel 10y agoSome countries mandate, for good reason, that you can't work on you laptop, without an external monitor, mouse and keyboard, when not on the road. Plus you're desk is require to be height adjustable. That sort of eliminate the option of moving around to much. Personally I feel that a persons desk is the place where they're suppose to be doing the majority of their work, so that should be the quite area. The noise people can book a conference room for phone calls. One thing I find fascinating is that all the people I've meet that claimed to love open offices, or require background noise, all, every single one, have had head phones glued to their head. At my last job I asked if we could not have the radio on: Nope, people like the background noise, and I was just being difficult. The next week I asked again, adding that the people wanting the noise where wearing head phones anyway, or where rarely in the office. So the radio was turned off.
- evanelias 10y agoFor me, density and team layout makes a big impact between a good open plan space and a horrible one. I worked for FB in NYC, and found that when visiting Menlo Park hq, the open plan there didn't bother me at all -- if anything, I was actually way more productive there. The density at MPK was low enough that the noise/distraction level was minimal, and all of the surrounding teams were working on similar parts of the stack. I've previously been skeptical of open plan, but this setup was really ideal for collaboration. (that said, this was one of the older formerly-Sun buildings; I never experienced the new, larger, more open building.) But meanwhile in NYC, the density was much much higher, and team layout totally random, to the extent that I left the company for these reasons alone. It was impossible to concentrate without wearing noise-cancelling headphones, but I couldn't wear those for 9+ hours a day without getting a migraine. It was frustrating since I otherwise liked my job, loved my team, loved the technical challenges. Space-wise, it looks like things are finally much better in the NYC office these days, but I'm still very hesitant to consider returning to the company after my previous experiences.
- kangax 10y agoI'm at FB office in NYC and I agree with your points. MPK always has that more chill vibe and is less dense/quieter. The NY office has gotten much better though. Many engineers are now on 15th floor which has no distractions like help desk and is generally surprisingly quiet. I notice myself working in almost complete silence among many people around and only once in a while put my headphones on. Sucks to hear about your experience.
- chris11 10y agoDo you have to listen to music or have noise cancelling on the entire day to get that silence?
- krschultz 10y agoThe NYC office has gotten a lot better as we have expanded. I actually now find the NYC office to be the most productive space in the company.
- jahaja 10y agoI'm surprised that comments seem to focus so much on the impact on productivity but not the impact on workers' health.
- borplk 10y agoCome to think about it, wow you are right. As a huge introvert I noticed my mental health very visibly improved after I quit my regular office job to work from the comfort and peace of my home. I think I had a bit of a case of Stockholm Syndrome at the time thinking that I'm going to get lonely or miss coming in to an office and seeing coworkers and so on. Not one bit. I feel like an adult and an independent human again after so long. The routine and the lack of genuine choice had started to make me feel like a child.
- leovonl 10y agoI guess the main point is balance - not everybody agrees about the exact point where it is, but everybody agrees the extremes are bad. An isolated room in a corner is not good - though it may be useful for "development sprints". An "auditorium" shared between sales, development, marketing, and sometimes even support - people which talk on the phone all the time - is terrible. Best productivity I ever achieved was during a time I shared a room with 2 co-workers that shared similar knowledge but worked in slightly different areas of the product line, and one was not even working in the same project as me. So we did exchange ideas, but each one was doing each one's part of the equation independently. I considered some other opportunities before joining my current employer, and some of them were discarded due to (among other reasons) the huge open offices with 30-40+ employees on the same floor.
- serge2k 10y ago> An isolated room in a corner is not good Sure it is. It's called an office. Traditionally the corner ones are bigger and are given to management/execs.
- kol 10y agoAt my company they are changing open offices to open offices with shared desks. At least if you cannot stand it, you are allowed to work from home. Cheap, cheaper, cheapest -- for the company. The fun part is when starry eyed managers are talking about this "upgrade", and call it "Future Work" project as if it was something great and innovative. As Joel said, if you want to sell something, "take the most unfortunate truth about it, turn it upside down, and drill that lie home". http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html
- sandGorgon 10y agodoes anyone know what kind of light works best for offices ? I have heard of all colors ranging from 2700k to 5000k - I wonder what does facebook use.
- _audakel 10y agocan't you just put in headphones if you don't want to be bothered by the conversations?
- paulmooreparks 10y agoCan't the company just provide a quiet working environment where headphones aren't required for concentration?
- hobo_mark 10y agoI remember that in "The Social Network" the characters would sometimes go "wired in" (headphones on and no external interruptions) when they needed to do deeply focused work, I wonder if any of that was based on how people really worked at Facebook, at least at the beginning?
- emodendroket 10y agoWhere would they go instead?
- joeevans1000 10y agoThe only reason the whole open office thing came about is that it's exceedingly easier to manage building planning. However, adults want their own office... not a huge room, not a team room, not a cubicle. Make no mistake: this was an outcome of the effort to save money by not having to provide real offices to real adults.
- erobbins 10y agoI worked at a company where there was a combination of team rooms and offices... but all the walls were glass. You had the benefit of being able to see if Julie was at her desk so you could go ask her a question, but not hear Bob next door arguing with his wife again. It was fantastic. Now, I'm at FB... and I wouldn't work on a team in the new "warehouse" building. It's terrible over there, frankly.
- elnado 10y agoHaha I used to be at Microsoft in a building like you described: a combination of open space with offices and break-out areas. They're trying to renovate all their buildings to follow this hybrid approach as they did with building 16 which is just incredibly gorgeous (https://news.microsoft.com/stories/b16/ https://news.microsoft.com/stories/b16/). Now I'm at a startup in the bay are that adopted the generic open-space/warehouse design and although I'm happy with the move career-wise, I really do miss being able to concentrate...
- jpgvm 10y agoI'm fairly certain Microsoft is like the gold standard when it comes to office spaces. I have always been super impressed when visiting any Microsoft campus.
- coredog64 10y agoAs I understand it, they went so far as to build office buildings that could efficiently house as many private offices as possible. So rather than a volume efficient cube, they would build long, thin buildings with offices around the perimeter and shared services in the center.
- adrianratnapala 10y agoSo on the plus side of working for Microsoft is that you get windows in your office. Which compensates for the minus side, which is that you get Windows in your office.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tn13 10y agoI have visited Facebook's warehouse pretty often and it has always intimidated me. It has a feel of a crowded airport waiting room. I remember reading in "Peopleware" that science says privacy is good for productivity and people tend to perform better in their cabins. Isnt this open office a bit unnerving ?
- bastijn 10y agoTL;DR - open offices might increase the frequency you bump into people and thus interaction, but that was never a real issue in the first place. - open offices are less productive as a whole due to the increased noise levels and the increased number of coffee machine talks all over the working floor. - privacy is gone. On the plus side this is forcing people to work. On the downside this also reduces job satisfaction for many. - one large room makes you no longer be able to regulate temperature, lights, and that sort of stuff. Less control on your environment. Some people like hot rooms, others like fresh air in winter. From what I observed open offices sure can be fun. A bit too much even. Usually you meet people at the coffee machine if you weren't directly walking up to them. You usually spend a coffee for some smalltalk, just because it's fun and you were walking around anyway to clear your mind. In an open office it's like fulltime coffee time. There are always people having fun stories from past weekend, last holiday, or just beer time. Sure you know a few and pop in more frequently than you would have in coffee machine talks at the coffee machine. This is not a downside for you personally, you might perceive it as fun, but it kills your output. A lot of reactions in favor of open offices mention it's ability to quickly get a hold of someone. I never understand why the ability to quickly ask colleagues anything is a pro for open offices. I have worked in both and to be honest there is no difference in time it takes to reach out to a colleague. If they are in my room, the people you typically need most, it's the same as an open office. If they aren't, it's one walk away. The distance doesn't chance that much. Get out of your chair, visit coffee machine on the way, and walk into the room of the person you need. Pros might want to check the chat status, if green he's at his desk. I'd say if you think you need to schedule a meeting for every question there is something else wrong, an open office is not going to help you there. Also, if you need a meeting now you will need it in the open office as well. Only on paper these two environments have different protocols when it comes to human interaction. Noisy. Well, enough is said about this. I don't mind too much but others do. Control on your environment is something I really missed. Everything is set to general population. The heating is average but I really like fresh air even in winter. The great perk of a company for me is always to have a heater and open the window ( :) ). There are plenty who like warmer rooms though and after a couple of months, or years, you learn to not take the same room. No offense but either party agrees on the different preferences. Same holds for light. Some people close all sun screens the moment the sun peeks in. I personally like the sun and only close stuff when it's directly on my screen. With large rooms it's always in someone's screen and the sun screens are always down. I have had a summer where basically they were down all day. I think ideally you need a mix. I'd say the only thing in favor of open offices is the increased interaction. If you accept less productivity in favor of potential great ideas spawned in that one case where two people bumped into each other at the right time than by all means make it happen. Doesn't need to be an open office though, can also be open spaces where you create an incentive for people to hang around more frequently. Relaxing areas. Make sure you communicate it's okay to be there as well. The rest is basically against open offices. Personally I don't think they are worth it for engineering departments.
- seangrogg 10y agoA bunch of people seem to like it. A bunch of people seem to dislike it. It's almost like people are interested in a multitude of things and what appeals to one may not appeal to another. Huh, who knew?
- draw_down 10y agoI wouldn't work in that godforsaken thing but that's just me.
- Analemma_ 10y agoI'm just a single data point, but... it absolutely did for me. Granted I wasn't (and still am not) looking for a new job, but I used to have the impression that Facebook was a really developer-friendly place, and had it on my mental list of places I might want to look at if I jumped ship - and then I saw the pictures of that new airplane hangar workspace. Nope nope nope. Never ever.
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- erikb 10y agoIn the big universities in Berlin you have class rooms where everybody focusses (or is supposed to) on one topic, small side rooms for team meetings and project work, libraries for silent study (even sneezing is looked bad upon). That in my eyes is the best way for a big organization to provide rooms. People can choose one according to their current needs. If everybody is doing project work in a big hall that's aweful and pretty much nothing gets done. The best I found is working from home with people who are annoying chatters via skype/slack/IRC/jabber. Overspamming is a little necessary since you don't see each other face to face all the time. But if you have such people you can pretty much whenever you feel like it, sleep when you feel like, you don't need to wear trousers, and achieve a lot more than in a big office.
- dleslie 10y agoWorking from home is the only way I could manage to have a private office. The problem with this debate is that there isn't much room for middle ground; those that advocate open spaces tend to also believe I the necessity for open spaces to inspire productivity, despite little to no evidence to support this claim, and without full team commitment to open spaces it will result in a communication bifurcation as those in the open space will opt for vocal to their immediate vicinity as often as they use team chart services or knock on an office door.
- rwmj 10y agoI noticed from that VR video that Zuckerberg gives himself a large, glass-enclosed office, while everyone outside appeared to be working at rows of desks.
- pushtheenvelope 10y agothat's his meeting room. its enclosed (like all meeting rooms are) so that discussions there don't disturb other employees whose desks are nearby. He has a dedicated desk nearby like everyone else.
- jmspring 10y agoI recall during my first visit to HP Labs as a grad student. Walking into the office off of Page Mill Road, passing reception and being on an elevated platform looking over a sea of cubes. Creeped me out. I've worked at places with cubes and bullpens, open offices with a mix of engineering and sales (sucked), open offices that were poorly designed (sucked), and now I work at home full time (unless traveling or at a coffee shop). I much prefer having the freedom to pick the level of noise I subject myself to. Open offices were generally annoying because you became anti-social anyways by putting in headphones.
- vacri 10y ago> Facebook is paying 40-50 percent more than other places, which is usually a sign developers don’t want to work there. Weren't they paying this much more before they moved to the giant office?
- geff82 10y agoI think the perfect office has 5-8 occupants that work on related/the same subject. That way, you can still communicate if needed, still have calm times where you can concentrate and don't have to fear you have so sit in a 2-3 people office where there is a certain possibility you don't like the other 1-2 and thus don't like coming to work. I had everything from 2 to hundreds of colleagues at an office, but I liked going to work best when the office was occupied by 5-8.
- amelius 10y agoYou can always buy a "private office pod", [1]. [1] https://www.wired.com/2015/04/private-office-pod-thatll-help-find-work-flow/ https://www.wired.com/2015/04/private-office-pod-thatll-help...
- languagehacker 10y agoThe only things I've heard about Facebook's office, from Facebook employees, is the constant, ongoing battle to keep people from playing noisy games during work hours. The ping pong table has become a battleground.
- webvictim 10y agoI used to work there and my team was unfortunate enough to get relocated to a set of desks near a ping pong table during a floor reshuffle. It was noisy, infuriating and a huge distraction. The ping pong noise itself was nothing compared to the shouting, cheering and the noise of the ball inevitably bouncing away across the floor with someone running after it every 30 seconds. A colleague put in a facilities ticket on the morning of the second day we were there to get the table relocated. Facilities couldn't find anywhere else to put it (because it would've meant simply disrupting someone else's area) and so the table was removed and put into storage. This caused a huge outcry from the ping pong players, but did have the upside of allowing us as developers to do our jobs. I saw the whole situation as quite ridiculous, given that we were all at work in a company office and getting paid to code rather than to play ping pong. The counter-argument was that the removal of a ping pong table was the thin end of the wedge and the sign that FB was slowly becoming corporate and losing its hacker soul. I guess I can see the point, but the reality is that ping pong is a brilliant game until you have to sit near the table and try to work.
- gjolund 10y ago"Losing its hacker soul" Ugh, FB never had a "hacker soul". It is an abomination built on advertising and privacy invasion. It is the antithesis of the hacker ethos.
- webvictim 10y agoI used to work at FB and the huge, open offices were one of my least favourite parts about the job. I worked in the London office for a year and that was actually a little better because it's smaller and generally quieter there, but the three years that I did in the Menlo Park offices were not particularly fun for all the reasons described. It's very difficult to concentrate when there's constant background noise. Mercifully, all the teams I worked with were based in the old Sun campus rather than the new warehouse style Gehry building across the road - I'm told that the noise and general foot traffic in the new offices was at times completely unbearable. There were a huge number of pot plants, whiteboards and other makeshift obstacles used to try and block paths between desks there, both to block out noise and to channel foot traffic away from groups of people fed up with being disturbed. The worst thing of all (in my opinion) is the fact that the open office culture is simply accepted there as being the best thing for all concerned. It's like a theory that cannot be challenged. The introverts basically don't get listened to, while the extroverts can sing and dance with happiness. This surprised me greatly because anyone who's worked at FB will tell you that it's a hugely data-driven company - lots of people did try a great many times to suggest that we should trial team-sized offices or at least something different to the status quo, even providing studies and statistics to back up their hypotheses, but the requests always fell on deaf ears. I'm not sure it was ever taken seriously as a concern despite numerous articles like this being linked internally and debated ad infinitum. It's a real shame, as the company was a pretty great place to work on most other levels.
- rajeshp1986 10y agoThe big problem with open office plan is that when people form groups and talk, it becomes distraction for everyone else. You cannot expect that people always move out of the working area to have small discussions. I was working in an office where we had an open office. My team only had 3 people. We were made sit next to design team where designers formed a group and had lengthy discussions about UX. I newly joined this place and it was impossible for me to raise a voice and tell them to keep their voices low. I tried to tell them to keep their voices low but their job demanded having discussions over a topic. As a result of this I avoided writing code during office hours and only focussed on replying emails, discussions. I used to spend my important office time doing trivial tasks and browsing web and only did coding after office hours. This obviously resulted in more unhappiness over a long period of time. This also became my habit now and I can no longer focus on coding especially when I am in office because of distractions. I am only able to write code in alone after office hours at my home/office.
- gremlinsinc 10y agoI think it'd be cool to have sound proof all encompassing glass /plexiglass cubicles with the glass doubling as a screen for communications so you can let in communications with select people, or even use it as a large monitor, etc... but still ahve the peace/quiet needed to code..alternative to that would be noise cancelling headphones and no monitors --instead you where VR that lets you use/resize move monitors anywhere in visible space... But still ahve an open office when you take off the headset/headphones.
- adrianratnapala 10y agoMy guess is the answer is "no, it doesn't scare many off". I didn't know about the Facebook open-plan office, but I just went through the interview process for a similarly well known company, and everything saw at the interviews and on videos of their offices was the opposite of good. But it never occurred to me to shy away from the job because of that. I am sure they know these offices are bad for productivity, but for some reason they like to buy expensive real-estate, the inefficiency is paid for by the savings on rent.
- dharma1 10y agoI also work in an open office, and really don't like it. I find the best way to work is in a quiet room (no loud AC) with 2-3 people working on the same thing, with regular breaks.
- sagivo 10y agoOpen office is the main reason why so many people prefer to work from home nowadays.
- bluthru 10y ago>Facebook is paying 40-50 percent more than other places, which is usually a sign developers don’t want to work there It's amazing how this isn't considered when companies are seemingly only looking at the initial cost of buildings.
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- woah 10y agoI don't mind open offices in the slightest. I wouldn't even know it was an issue for people if there wasn't so much complaining on the internet.
- rororororo 10y agoI worked both in extremely quite places (management consulting) with "fish tank" rooms and in extremely loud places (startups) in open offices. I tried using sound blocking apps (brown noise) to mask the background noise but it's not just the noise, it's people coming and going. I think I am much more productive in quiet places. Does anyone really prefer to work in loud environments?
- JTenerife 10y agoA couple of years ago I was working at a car company in Melbourne (Holden). They also had a huge open plan. But it was devided into smaller areas and ultimately 4-work-place-cubicles by about 1.2 m tall noise reducing movable walls. Also, they had meeting rooms and facilities to devide the huge floor. Noise and distraction was quite effectivly reduced but communication was supported.
- kristianp 10y ago"Facebook is paying 40-50 percent more than other places, which is usually a sign developers don’t want to work there." The logic here is pretty weak. Fb pays more for other reasons. I've not heard that people don't want to work for Facebook before, quite the opposite in fact.
- MaysonL 10y agoWhen you're spending ~$10-20K/month on a developer (including benefits) spending an extra 1-2K/month in rent to allow them to be productive as opposed to killing their productivity by cramming them into an open-plan office seems that it would be a nobrainer.
- pmontra 10y agoI remember the VR video from FB a few days ago. There were a few seconds of broadcast from a camera in the FB office and I thought that the ceiling was more like the one of a factory than the one of an office. Not very inviting. Even the rest of the place looked like a warehouse, colors included. A few seconds later the broadcast moved to a camera in the living room of Zuckerberg's house. That was a much more pleasant place to work at. It was only a matter of space and colors, not about furniture.
- otakucode 10y agoIt is unquestionably destroying productivity. Of that there can be absolutely not one shred of doubt. There are literally over a THOUSAND studies showing that open floor plan offices absolutely massacre productivity, especially in any form of mental work. It is patently insane that so many smart people just spit in the face of mountains and mountains of legitimate research.
- tofupup 10y agoneat