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As a remote worker that despises open offices, I don't believe that nodding in agreement with opinion pieces such as those by Lindsey Kaufman is helpful to the

by jasode 10y ago

As a remote worker that despises open offices, I don't believe that nodding in agreement with opinion pieces such as those by Lindsey Kaufman is helpful to the discussion about it. The 2 common cited reasons of "saves real estate costs" and "employee distrust" have become thought-stopping memes that prevents the analysis of executives who prefer working in open offices and became successful with it. I previously posted an example of Mark Zuckerberg's thinking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13374848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13374848 Look at those old photos and then listen to him speak about his new 2015 open desk in the video. Contemplate whether he built the new open office to spy on everyone or... was it to recreate and extend the "open office" kitchen table at Harvard that let the team quickly iterate on software and get to $100 billion IPO? Would Lindsey's complaints sway him? She says: >A 2013 study found that many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Nearly half of the surveyed workers in open offices said the lack of sound privacy was a significant problem for them and more than 30 percent complained about the lack of visual privacy. Why would Mark Z care about these surveys? Of those respondents that were dissatisfied, what did those workers who require private offices build that was great? He built a multi-billion dollar company with a cramped elbow-to-elbow open office. Opinion pieces about this topic are not convincing. Concrete business performance superior to everyone else based on private offices would be convincing.

pmlnr 10y ago
> Why would Mark Z care about these surveys? Of those respondents that were dissatisfied, what did those workers who require private offices build that was great? He built a multi-billion dollar company with a cramped elbow-to-elbow open office. Because companies shouldn't be planned for just a few years, while the initial excitement lasts. You'll be OK with discomfort if the benefits outweigh it, and in case of Facebook, I'm fairly certain this is what happened. When the work becomes less interesting and more traditional company like, you're toleration levels will start dropping as well. Early bird employees go and seek new challenges and the ones replacing them never experience the initial thrill only the vast, yet crowded, noisy, anti-privacy zone that is supposed to be the place to host extensive thinking.
Joeri 10y ago
What works best for Mark Z does not necessarily work best for his staff. Forcing a thousand devs to work exactly as their leader is perhaps not the best path to optimal productivity. Microsoft conquered the world with closed offices. You can find anecdotes either way. Maybe facebook are big despite open offices. How could you tell the difference?
- jasode 10y ago
  >Microsoft conquered the world with closed offices. You can find anecdotes either way. And to your point about anecdotes supporting either narrative: Microsoft was defeated by open-office search company (Google vs Bing), defeated by open-office smartphone company (Apple iPhone vs Windows Phone), defeated by open-office cloud services company (Amazon AWS vs MS Azure). Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that Microsoft has transitioned away from private offices towards open plans in their newer buildings.[1] I've been looking for compelling evidence that proves the superiority of private offices but haven't found any. The business case studies showing superior performance that's directly caused by private offices don't exist. Yeah, surveys of employees exist but not superior business results. [1]http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-developer-division/ http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-developer-division/
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    The problem is the number of variables in directly comparing companies based on just financial history. What is needed is an interventional study or a few.
  - NumberSix 10y ago
    Apple has only very recently begun to adopt open offices -- meaning in 2016. At the time the iPhone was created and soared to market dominance Apple workers were in actual offices with locks due in part to Apple's obsession with secrecy ( 1 or 2 to an office ). At least so far as Apple has adopted the open office craze, innovation and sales have dropped with Tim Cook taking a recent pay cut for poor performance. Yes, Apple is moving to open offices in the new Cupertino headquarters, the "spaceship," but that is not how they achieved their big success with the iPhone.
coldtea 10y ago
>Look at those old photos and then listen to him speak about his new 2015 open desk in the video. Contemplate whether he built the new open office to spy on everyone or... was it to recreate and extend the "open office" kitchen table at Harvard that let the team quickly iterate on software and get to $100 billion IPO? People have gotten to multi billion IPOs without open spaces. It's just a random historical accident on Facebook's story, and it that sense it would be like considering PHP essential to Facebook's IPO, as if if they used Python or Ruby or anything similar, they wouldln't have made it. >Why would Mark Z care about these surveys? Of those respondents that were dissatisfied, what did those workers who require private offices build that was great? He built a multi-billion dollar company with a cramped elbow-to-elbow open office. People have built "multi-billion dollar companies" with all other kind of traits, including private offices (Microsoft, Apple) but also sexism, treating employees badly, death marches, poisonous work culture, etc. It doesn't mean that companies should imitate all these to get to the "multi-billion dollar" part, any more than they should imitate open offices.
- Ensorceled 10y ago
  You missed the point of the comment you are replying to. They were not saying open offices are better, they are saying people like Mark Z need data. You don't need data to know that sexism, employee abuse and other social ills are are bad so that's not a good comparison.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >You missed the point of the comment you are replying to. They were not saying open offices are better, they are saying people like Mark Z need data. Then the comment I was replying to missed TFA, because it gives pointers to research on the issue.
    - jasode 10y ago
      >the comment I was replying to missed TFA, because it gives pointers to research on the issue. The research[1] that various journalists in Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, WSJ, etc are pointing to is a survey of employees' satisfaction levels and not an analysis comparing business results. If that oft-cited survey is the best ammunition we have, it won't move the needle towards private offices. What we need is business evidence of private offices enabling productivity levels superior to everyone else with open offices. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413000340 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413...
Melchizedek 10y ago
He built a multi-billion dollar company with a cramped elbow-to-elbow open office. Yes, but what he built was yet another banal social media site in php. Nothing that required deep thinking or innovation.
- aclsid 10y ago
  He used the tools in the right way, and it was no small feat that should be dismissed that easily. Just a quick summary: 1) Give consumers what they want instead of what you think they want. 2) He used tools as intended. Instead of wasting time implementing Erlang trying to achieve the best messaging platform ever, he went with something that was popular and was easy to understand for everybody at the time, which was PHP. Then went on to improve the system as they needed with HHVM, React, React Native, etc. 3) As much as somebody can hate Facebook for being a social network/privacy leech, which is something a lot of programmers dismiss precisely because of the social part, just the fact they popularized React as one of the defacto front-end frameworks speaks volumes about how they can push real innovation for everybody else. 4) And even simple stuff like sharing pictures. I still remember vividly how awkward was to share pictures before Facebook. Sure, I think Flickr or similar stuff was there already, but nobody is going to keep clicking on your gallery so they can see how an amazing photographer you are. Sometimes the greatest innovation is in the simplest things, and if you ask me, this was THE feature they brought to the table.
  - rwmj 10y ago
    Yawn. mixi.jp was doing Facebook before Facebook was widely available. It even had the much-vaunted news wall. Mixi screwed themselves in a few ways, mainly by being a Japanese-only site and (later) requiring a Japanese phone number to register, but still, Facebook was hardly an innovation. Mixi was written in Perl. (In fact Mixi has/had features which even now I've never seen in social media sites, such as the "ashiato" feature where you can see who has been looking at your profile)
    - spdionis 10y ago
      I don't think seeing who looked at your profile is a hard feature to build. Odnoklassniki (russian social website) has it. It's obviously a conscious business decision.
bryanlarsen 10y ago
The data that should sway people like Zuckerberg is the data that shows that open offices have beneficial effects that often outweigh the drawbacks for companies smaller than 8-12 people, or for teams of 4-8. Above that threshold, the data shows that the drawbacks exceed the benefits.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Yes! This exactly! You can have at most a dozen people round a kitchen table. You can't put the whole company around the same table. The social dynamics simply don't scale that way. I too have had great experiences doing productive new work in small open offices up to 6 people. I'm currently not enjoying my open office of >100 people. I'd be quite happy with a team-sized office with a door and decent internal sound damping.
talmand 10y ago
>> Of those respondents that were dissatisfied, what did those workers who require private offices build that was great? Clearly since we can't match these workers with a highly successful, innovative, billion dollar idea their opinions are worthless. After all, such things never happened until Mark invented the open office.
imgabe 10y ago
I doubt Zuckerberg is that naive. There's a big difference between a kitchen table and a quarter-mile long open room with a thousand people having conversations in it. How many people started[1] a multi-billion dollar company from the latter? [1] I want to emphasize started not worked at. To answer your question, Microsoft famously gave developers private offices through much of the 90s and I think early 00s while they were becoming successful enough to be sued under the antitrust laws. So, there's one example for you.

by jasode 10y ago

pmlnr 10y ago

> Why would Mark Z care about these surveys? Of those respondents that were dissatisfied, what did those workers who require private offices build that was great? He built a multi-billion dollar company with a cramped elbow-to-elbow open office. Because companies shouldn't be planned for just a few years, while the initial excitement lasts. You'll be OK with discomfort if the benefits outweigh it, and in case of Facebook, I'm fairly certain this is what happened. When the work becomes less interesting and more traditional company like, you're toleration levels will start dropping as well. Early bird employees go and seek new challenges and the ones replacing them never experience the initial thrill only the vast, yet crowded, noisy, anti-privacy zone that is supposed to be the place to host extensive thinking.

Joeri 10y ago

What works best for Mark Z does not necessarily work best for his staff. Forcing a thousand devs to work exactly as their leader is perhaps not the best path to optimal productivity. Microsoft conquered the world with closed offices. You can find anecdotes either way. Maybe facebook are big despite open offices. How could you tell the difference?

jasode 10y ago
>Microsoft conquered the world with closed offices. You can find anecdotes either way. And to your point about anecdotes supporting either narrative: Microsoft was defeated by open-office search company (Google vs Bing), defeated by open-office smartphone company (Apple iPhone vs Windows Phone), defeated by open-office cloud services company (Amazon AWS vs MS Azure). Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that Microsoft has transitioned away from private offices towards open plans in their newer buildings.[1] I've been looking for compelling evidence that proves the superiority of private offices but haven't found any. The business case studies showing superior performance that's directly caused by private offices don't exist. Yeah, surveys of employees exist but not superior business results. [1]http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-developer-division/ http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-developer-division/
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  The problem is the number of variables in directly comparing companies based on just financial history. What is needed is an interventional study or a few.
- NumberSix 10y ago
  Apple has only very recently begun to adopt open offices -- meaning in 2016. At the time the iPhone was created and soared to market dominance Apple workers were in actual offices with locks due in part to Apple's obsession with secrecy ( 1 or 2 to an office ). At least so far as Apple has adopted the open office craze, innovation and sales have dropped with Tim Cook taking a recent pay cut for poor performance. Yes, Apple is moving to open offices in the new Cupertino headquarters, the "spaceship," but that is not how they achieved their big success with the iPhone.

coldtea 10y ago

>Look at those old photos and then listen to him speak about his new 2015 open desk in the video. Contemplate whether he built the new open office to spy on everyone or... was it to recreate and extend the "open office" kitchen table at Harvard that let the team quickly iterate on software and get to $100 billion IPO? People have gotten to multi billion IPOs without open spaces. It's just a random historical accident on Facebook's story, and it that sense it would be like considering PHP essential to Facebook's IPO, as if if they used Python or Ruby or anything similar, they wouldln't have made it. >Why would Mark Z care about these surveys? Of those respondents that were dissatisfied, what did those workers who require private offices build that was great? He built a multi-billion dollar company with a cramped elbow-to-elbow open office. People have built "multi-billion dollar companies" with all other kind of traits, including private offices (Microsoft, Apple) but also sexism, treating employees badly, death marches, poisonous work culture, etc. It doesn't mean that companies should imitate all these to get to the "multi-billion dollar" part, any more than they should imitate open offices.

Ensorceled 10y ago
You missed the point of the comment you are replying to. They were not saying open offices are better, they are saying people like Mark Z need data. You don't need data to know that sexism, employee abuse and other social ills are are bad so that's not a good comparison.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >You missed the point of the comment you are replying to. They were not saying open offices are better, they are saying people like Mark Z need data. Then the comment I was replying to missed TFA, because it gives pointers to research on the issue.
  - jasode 10y ago
    >the comment I was replying to missed TFA, because it gives pointers to research on the issue. The research[1] that various journalists in Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, WSJ, etc are pointing to is a survey of employees' satisfaction levels and not an analysis comparing business results. If that oft-cited survey is the best ammunition we have, it won't move the needle towards private offices. What we need is business evidence of private offices enabling productivity levels superior to everyone else with open offices. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413000340 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413...

Melchizedek 10y ago

He built a multi-billion dollar company with a cramped elbow-to-elbow open office. Yes, but what he built was yet another banal social media site in php. Nothing that required deep thinking or innovation.

aclsid 10y ago
He used the tools in the right way, and it was no small feat that should be dismissed that easily. Just a quick summary: 1) Give consumers what they want instead of what you think they want. 2) He used tools as intended. Instead of wasting time implementing Erlang trying to achieve the best messaging platform ever, he went with something that was popular and was easy to understand for everybody at the time, which was PHP. Then went on to improve the system as they needed with HHVM, React, React Native, etc. 3) As much as somebody can hate Facebook for being a social network/privacy leech, which is something a lot of programmers dismiss precisely because of the social part, just the fact they popularized React as one of the defacto front-end frameworks speaks volumes about how they can push real innovation for everybody else. 4) And even simple stuff like sharing pictures. I still remember vividly how awkward was to share pictures before Facebook. Sure, I think Flickr or similar stuff was there already, but nobody is going to keep clicking on your gallery so they can see how an amazing photographer you are. Sometimes the greatest innovation is in the simplest things, and if you ask me, this was THE feature they brought to the table.
- rwmj 10y ago
  Yawn. mixi.jp was doing Facebook before Facebook was widely available. It even had the much-vaunted news wall. Mixi screwed themselves in a few ways, mainly by being a Japanese-only site and (later) requiring a Japanese phone number to register, but still, Facebook was hardly an innovation. Mixi was written in Perl. (In fact Mixi has/had features which even now I've never seen in social media sites, such as the "ashiato" feature where you can see who has been looking at your profile)
  - spdionis 10y ago
    I don't think seeing who looked at your profile is a hard feature to build. Odnoklassniki (russian social website) has it. It's obviously a conscious business decision.

bryanlarsen 10y ago

The data that should sway people like Zuckerberg is the data that shows that open offices have beneficial effects that often outweigh the drawbacks for companies smaller than 8-12 people, or for teams of 4-8. Above that threshold, the data shows that the drawbacks exceed the benefits.

pjc50 10y ago
Yes! This exactly! You can have at most a dozen people round a kitchen table. You can't put the whole company around the same table. The social dynamics simply don't scale that way. I too have had great experiences doing productive new work in small open offices up to 6 people. I'm currently not enjoying my open office of >100 people. I'd be quite happy with a team-sized office with a door and decent internal sound damping.

talmand 10y ago

>> Of those respondents that were dissatisfied, what did those workers who require private offices build that was great? Clearly since we can't match these workers with a highly successful, innovative, billion dollar idea their opinions are worthless. After all, such things never happened until Mark invented the open office.

imgabe 10y ago

I doubt Zuckerberg is that naive. There's a big difference between a kitchen table and a quarter-mile long open room with a thousand people having conversations in it. How many people started[1] a multi-billion dollar company from the latter? [1] I want to emphasize started not worked at. To answer your question, Microsoft famously gave developers private offices through much of the 90s and I think early 00s while they were becoming successful enough to be sued under the antitrust laws. So, there's one example for you.