9 ms·

The article does not discuss the impact of the open office movement. I've worked from home, in actual offices, in cubicles both cramped and spacious, and open

The article does not discuss the impact of the open office movement. I've worked from home, in actual offices, in cubicles both cramped and spacious, and open offices. It can be quite difficult to focus at home due to various distractions, especially if you do not have a separate room or area for work. It is difficult to separate work and non-work with a home office. There are a variety of communications issues with colleagues when working from home. However, programming requires high levels of concentration and focus; I work on complex algorithms and mathematical software which requires extremely high levels of concentration and focus. Open offices are simply too noisy and full of interruptions. Thus, given a choice between an open office and home, home wins. But in general I would rather work in a quiet office near my colleagues. There is a clear separation between work and non-work. Communication is faster and easier, less prone to misunderstandings. This however means something like an actual office or a quiet spacious cubicle with high sound absorbent walls. In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport argues in favor of a "hub and spoke" office layout where knowledge workers can work in quiet in offices on the spokes, but meet and collaborate at hubs, such as common areas with food, coffee machines, printers etc. This seems like a much better way to balance the need for deep concentration on the one hand with "collaboration," annoying MBA buzz-word at present.

geebee 9y ago
Thanks for posting. That was the first thing that jumped into my head as well. Many of us are choosing between working at home and working in a loud and noisy environment. If programmers generally worked in the environment you described, our answers might be very different.
JamesBarney 9y ago
There was recently some evidence that open offices led to reduced collaboration because a real office means asking someone a question disturbs one instead of 20 people. So people end up asking less questions, and interacting with there co-workers less.
- geebee 9y ago
  I read about that as well. I also think that there are different work cultures based on what you have to do. Someone who works in sales may be on the phone quite often. Same for a lot of managers, tech support, people who do demos and presentations. The problem certainly isn't that they make noise, they need to! And because of the nature of their jobs, they tend to see hallway conversations and joking around to be beneficial, a way that information is shared around the office. The problem is when they are located with people who are trying to do focused work. It's frustrating. If my kid is having trouble focusing on his math homework, my first thought is to make sure he is free of distractions and can work in a quiet place. I don't tell him that he should wear headphones and listen to music while he struggles with learning algebra. At the same time, I don't think that math classrooms or discussion groups need to be quiet places, and I don't understand why some people think this is somehow a counter point to what I described above. Yet within the office context, it often is interpreted that way. And, broken record that I am, I'll skip back to the same old point: Tech companies have shouted themselves hoarse about the shortage of software developers. Yet they won't provide them with a quiet place to work or allow the working conditions that a majority of programmers say they would like. Why does governmen keep giving these employers a crutch? Sounds to me like a market solution would emerge, if we'd only allow it to.
  - Arizhel 9y ago
    >It's frustrating. If my kid is having trouble focusing on his math homework, my first thought is to make sure he is free of distractions and can work in a quiet place. I don't tell him that he should wear headphones and listen to music while he struggles with learning algebra. Maybe we're doing it wrong: maybe we should be forcing kids to try to learn hard subjects in noisy environments full of distractions, and if they can't hack it, they fail. After all, if this is how the workplaces will be for them, so might as well prepare them for it now, right? Similarly, I really think we need to change the way STEM is taught in colleges. Instead of allowing students to take their exams in quiet classrooms, they need to make they're crammed close together during exams, and that a local fraternity is required to hold a loud party in the room at the same time. All assignments should be done this way too, instead of allowing them to take them at home or in the library. If students can't handle doing hard subjects like differential equations in environments like this, then they're going to fail in the workplaces of the future, so we need to make sure to weed them out early.
eweise 9y ago
Unfortunately, having your own office is costly plus it doesn't satisfy the boss's need to see a large group of people actively doing his/her bidding.
- apathy 9y ago
  perhaps you're working for the wrong boss. Every effective boss I've ever worked for wanted to see two things: 1) revenue 2) results Those who got distracted by other crap tended not to be as successful by objective metrics. Just my experience though
  - kamaal 9y ago
    These kind of bosses are a rare species in any setting. Most want to build their political cartel, protect it and build it for their own good. I've even seen bosses who purposefully punish high performers out of fear that they might become a threat to their job.
- _e 9y ago
  an office doesn't necessarily have: (2) walls that are made of drywall and are floor to ceiling (1) drywall + door (1) window I am looking at new office space now and I am thinking about setting up glass cubicles and having an office sound system that will pump out white noise. I am concerned about aesthetics though.
return0 9y ago
I think working from home is superior (for tech/programming work). In terms of work, it's the best way to not only avoid distractions, but also lay out your time in a way that is conducive to completing a project in the way you intended, and to let your ideas be fully implemented. This means projects finish sooner, much sooner than in a 9-5 environment. I believe that, when you know that you cannot escape the office until 5, that introduces some intellectual laziness and willingness to just kill or dilate time. The office does offer some perks, but they are not related to work itself, they are all about socializing / banter / feeling of being part of a team. Working from home does mean that home becomes workplace , and vice versa, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as work gets done faster. People used to work mostly from home until the industrial era. Personally, I have gotten a second job in an office for the 'office experience', yet i often do even this work at home, because i work faster there. I think some "work from home" problems are problems of perception. It's not very well accepted to say that you work from home yet[1], making you feel like the job is somehow inferior. Also, the location of your home matters, if you live in a mixed commercial/residential place, it doesn't feel wrong to be at home and work all morning. Discipline can be an issue until you establish a work routine. Much like driving to the office primes you to get into work mode, a morning walk to the local bakery can prime you to begin working at home. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4
- pionar 9y ago
  > I think working from home is superior (for tech/programming work). I disagree with you, specifically one point. >The office does offer some perks, but they are not related to work itself, they are all about socializing / banter / feeling of being part of a team. That "banter" or "socializing" is work related. I've found that working from home (been doing it 2 years now) has one very big disadvantage - unless the whole team is remote. You will be excluded from meetings, decisions and conversations. You will always have a feeling that you're missing something. You will miss important hallway conversations that can impact the work you do.
  - cma 9y ago
    Would V8 have been written in an open office environment? https://www.ft.com/content/03775904-177c-11de-8c9d-0000779fd2ac https://www.ft.com/content/03775904-177c-11de-8c9d-0000779fd...
ergothus 9y ago
I think what people miss most often is that this is NOT a "one solution fits all" kind of thing. For some office cultures one is better, and for some people one is better. I myself am very easily distracted, and I'm far more productive at home, where I have a private office set to my preferences, including sound (this sounds ridiculous, but my ear cartilage is sensitive, so I can't wear earbuds and over-the-ear headphones are only comfortable for an hour or two), light (most offices I've been in have had times of day when the sun causes painful glare), and lack of people moving around distracting me. And that doesn't even cover whether I have to listen to the conversations of dozens of people around me. I don't like being loud and distracting to other people, so WHEN I talk to co-workers in the office, it's either in a meeting room, or in clipped, hushed questions. I have one teammate that has a rather booming voice and no apparent concern for who hears him - I just decide not to ask him questions. Meanwhile, my current office has people in 3 states (2 neighboring time zones), so we have a culture of lots of business being conducted over slack or google hangouts. One of my coworkers and I have conducted a lot of business over slack...while sitting next to each other. In talking with others, I've discovered that some of us (including me) PREFER to conduct business over written media -it gives us something to consult later, and requires that people learn to not play the pronoun game. Others, perhaps because they either haven't figured out the pronoun game, or they really hate it, prefer face-to-face, which I've always found to have a poor signal-to-noise ratio. (They'd almost certainly disagree - you yourself said that "communication is faster and easier, less prone to misunderstandings, and I believe that's true for you despite each point being invalid in my experience). Every time I or others complain about open floor plans, someone (and it's usually just one or two) will talk about how nice it is to have face-to-face collaboration...and frankly, I just don't see that happening! In my last office, which was open floor plan but had no culture of resolving things online and our other locations were 12 hours offset, there was definitely more face-to-face collaboration - but we also had a lot more meetings (ugh), and IMNSHO very little got done, so I remain unconvinced that it actually is more efficient, I think it may just be more comfortable. From all of these anecdotes I have assembled my vision that for some office cultures, meetings are better, and for some people, meetings are better, but theses are hardly absolutes, and my personal bias is that it's a war between comfort level and actual efficiency.
- 9y ago
hectorperez 9y ago
I didn't know about Deep Work! I added you and part of your comment to the list of people who prefer (and who do not prefer) remote-work: https://goo.gl/74E3BS https://goo.gl/74E3BS
chrisan 9y ago
My problem with an office or open office is not the noise, I can put on headphones and be fine, but is the actual interruptions. In an open office it is obviously much easier for someone to just lean over or look around their monitor and grab your attention, but having a private office with a door is still prone to someone knocking (or walking in if not closed) Working from home, people can email, chat, or leave a phone message and in any case when I am focusing none of those will bother me until I make an effort to check for messages. Emergency calls can get through by calling me twice. The only reason I'd like to be in an office is often my workmates become friends, and I want to "hang out" with my friends
- dep_b 9y ago
  Let me tell you from my experience as somebody that didn't see the inside of an office for so long I forgot what bad coffee tastes like that the "headphones means go away" rule is not respected by significant others at home. Actually just playing the music loud over speakers works much better. But YMMV depending on your music taste, mine is perceived as too intrusive by most.
  - beat 9y ago
    I don't like wearing headphones for too long. But a nice hi-fi setup with vinyl while I'm working... that I love. And can't do it in the office.
    - dep_b 9y ago
      Yeah that's absolutely the best. Some nice warm sounding big speakers on a low volume. Flipping the album once in a while. But alas, everything is still stuck in a crate in another country.
- Bluestrike2 9y ago
  I wouldn't discount that last reason. There's some research suggesting that friendships between coworkers can greatly increase worker engagement, productivity, and satisfaction.[0][1][2] And a self-report study from LinkedIn suggests that workers perceive workplace friendships as beneficial for both themselves and their work, for what that's worth.[3] Of course, it can also blow up in your face and do the opposite, occasionally slowing down more productive workers as they match their speed to those of their less productive friends when it comes to individual work.[4] That study looked at fruitpickers, but it could be relevant to the tech industry as well. Paradoxically, at least in the US, we're seeing a trend towards fewer workplace friendships and greater detachment.[5] I/O (industrial and organizational) psychologists have a lot of interesting interpretations for those trends. Almost across the board, employment is far more transitory today than in past decades, so there's less pressure to invest time in meaningful relationships at work. And we're so connected nowadays that it's easier than ever to preserve relationships in some form (regardless of whether they're preserved, or we just believe they are), so we don't feel the need to generate replacements as much. Having done a lot of freelance work myself for a couple of years, if I'm being entirely honest with myself, this is one of the disadvantages at times. I enjoy getting to work on different projects, but there's something to be said for getting to focus on something with the same team. Even if open offices and talkative coworkers can get in the way at times :). 0. https://hbr.org/2013/07/we-all-need-friends-at-work https://hbr.org/2013/07/we-all-need-friends-at-work 1. http://www.gallup.com/services/178514/state-american-workplace.aspx http://www.gallup.com/services/178514/state-american-workpla... (behind a form) 2. https://www.fastcompany.com/3051290/why-having-friends-at-work-is-so-important https://www.fastcompany.com/3051290/why-having-friends-at-wo... 3. https://blog.linkedin.com/2014/07/08/work-bffs https://blog.linkedin.com/2014/07/08/work-bffs 4. http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-archive/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2010/02/friendsinworkplace.aspx http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-archive/newsAndMedia/news/archi... 5. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/adam-grant-friends-at-work-not-so-much.html?_r=2 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/adam-grant...
noway421 9y ago
Interesting perspective, indeed i hear people saying that gathering around snacks makes people talk more. But would they talk about work though? And are people going to think about those snack runs in the same way when the culture would make them "small meetings"?
lacampbell 9y ago
It is difficult to separate work and non-work with a home office. That was not my experience at all. When I worked at home, I worked regular hours, and didn't do any non-work stuff during those hours. And after those hours were done, I didn't do any work stuff. I basically kept to a strict 8:30-5 routine, and never had any issue.

geebee 9y ago

Thanks for posting. That was the first thing that jumped into my head as well. Many of us are choosing between working at home and working in a loud and noisy environment. If programmers generally worked in the environment you described, our answers might be very different.

JamesBarney 9y ago

There was recently some evidence that open offices led to reduced collaboration because a real office means asking someone a question disturbs one instead of 20 people. So people end up asking less questions, and interacting with there co-workers less.

geebee 9y ago
I read about that as well. I also think that there are different work cultures based on what you have to do. Someone who works in sales may be on the phone quite often. Same for a lot of managers, tech support, people who do demos and presentations. The problem certainly isn't that they make noise, they need to! And because of the nature of their jobs, they tend to see hallway conversations and joking around to be beneficial, a way that information is shared around the office. The problem is when they are located with people who are trying to do focused work. It's frustrating. If my kid is having trouble focusing on his math homework, my first thought is to make sure he is free of distractions and can work in a quiet place. I don't tell him that he should wear headphones and listen to music while he struggles with learning algebra. At the same time, I don't think that math classrooms or discussion groups need to be quiet places, and I don't understand why some people think this is somehow a counter point to what I described above. Yet within the office context, it often is interpreted that way. And, broken record that I am, I'll skip back to the same old point: Tech companies have shouted themselves hoarse about the shortage of software developers. Yet they won't provide them with a quiet place to work or allow the working conditions that a majority of programmers say they would like. Why does governmen keep giving these employers a crutch? Sounds to me like a market solution would emerge, if we'd only allow it to.
- Arizhel 9y ago
  >It's frustrating. If my kid is having trouble focusing on his math homework, my first thought is to make sure he is free of distractions and can work in a quiet place. I don't tell him that he should wear headphones and listen to music while he struggles with learning algebra. Maybe we're doing it wrong: maybe we should be forcing kids to try to learn hard subjects in noisy environments full of distractions, and if they can't hack it, they fail. After all, if this is how the workplaces will be for them, so might as well prepare them for it now, right? Similarly, I really think we need to change the way STEM is taught in colleges. Instead of allowing students to take their exams in quiet classrooms, they need to make they're crammed close together during exams, and that a local fraternity is required to hold a loud party in the room at the same time. All assignments should be done this way too, instead of allowing them to take them at home or in the library. If students can't handle doing hard subjects like differential equations in environments like this, then they're going to fail in the workplaces of the future, so we need to make sure to weed them out early.

eweise 9y ago

Unfortunately, having your own office is costly plus it doesn't satisfy the boss's need to see a large group of people actively doing his/her bidding.

apathy 9y ago
perhaps you're working for the wrong boss. Every effective boss I've ever worked for wanted to see two things: 1) revenue 2) results Those who got distracted by other crap tended not to be as successful by objective metrics. Just my experience though
- kamaal 9y ago
  These kind of bosses are a rare species in any setting. Most want to build their political cartel, protect it and build it for their own good. I've even seen bosses who purposefully punish high performers out of fear that they might become a threat to their job.
_e 9y ago
an office doesn't necessarily have: (2) walls that are made of drywall and are floor to ceiling (1) drywall + door (1) window I am looking at new office space now and I am thinking about setting up glass cubicles and having an office sound system that will pump out white noise. I am concerned about aesthetics though.

return0 9y ago

I think working from home is superior (for tech/programming work). In terms of work, it's the best way to not only avoid distractions, but also lay out your time in a way that is conducive to completing a project in the way you intended, and to let your ideas be fully implemented. This means projects finish sooner, much sooner than in a 9-5 environment. I believe that, when you know that you cannot escape the office until 5, that introduces some intellectual laziness and willingness to just kill or dilate time. The office does offer some perks, but they are not related to work itself, they are all about socializing / banter / feeling of being part of a team. Working from home does mean that home becomes workplace , and vice versa, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as work gets done faster. People used to work mostly from home until the industrial era. Personally, I have gotten a second job in an office for the 'office experience', yet i often do even this work at home, because i work faster there. I think some "work from home" problems are problems of perception. It's not very well accepted to say that you work from home yet[1], making you feel like the job is somehow inferior. Also, the location of your home matters, if you live in a mixed commercial/residential place, it doesn't feel wrong to be at home and work all morning. Discipline can be an issue until you establish a work routine. Much like driving to the office primes you to get into work mode, a morning walk to the local bakery can prime you to begin working at home. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4

pionar 9y ago
> I think working from home is superior (for tech/programming work). I disagree with you, specifically one point. >The office does offer some perks, but they are not related to work itself, they are all about socializing / banter / feeling of being part of a team. That "banter" or "socializing" is work related. I've found that working from home (been doing it 2 years now) has one very big disadvantage - unless the whole team is remote. You will be excluded from meetings, decisions and conversations. You will always have a feeling that you're missing something. You will miss important hallway conversations that can impact the work you do.
- cma 9y ago
  Would V8 have been written in an open office environment? https://www.ft.com/content/03775904-177c-11de-8c9d-0000779fd2ac https://www.ft.com/content/03775904-177c-11de-8c9d-0000779fd...

ergothus 9y ago

I think what people miss most often is that this is NOT a "one solution fits all" kind of thing. For some office cultures one is better, and for some people one is better. I myself am very easily distracted, and I'm far more productive at home, where I have a private office set to my preferences, including sound (this sounds ridiculous, but my ear cartilage is sensitive, so I can't wear earbuds and over-the-ear headphones are only comfortable for an hour or two), light (most offices I've been in have had times of day when the sun causes painful glare), and lack of people moving around distracting me. And that doesn't even cover whether I have to listen to the conversations of dozens of people around me. I don't like being loud and distracting to other people, so WHEN I talk to co-workers in the office, it's either in a meeting room, or in clipped, hushed questions. I have one teammate that has a rather booming voice and no apparent concern for who hears him - I just decide not to ask him questions. Meanwhile, my current office has people in 3 states (2 neighboring time zones), so we have a culture of lots of business being conducted over slack or google hangouts. One of my coworkers and I have conducted a lot of business over slack...while sitting next to each other. In talking with others, I've discovered that some of us (including me) PREFER to conduct business over written media -it gives us something to consult later, and requires that people learn to not play the pronoun game. Others, perhaps because they either haven't figured out the pronoun game, or they really hate it, prefer face-to-face, which I've always found to have a poor signal-to-noise ratio. (They'd almost certainly disagree - you yourself said that "communication is faster and easier, less prone to misunderstandings, and I believe that's true for you despite each point being invalid in my experience). Every time I or others complain about open floor plans, someone (and it's usually just one or two) will talk about how nice it is to have face-to-face collaboration...and frankly, I just don't see that happening! In my last office, which was open floor plan but had no culture of resolving things online and our other locations were 12 hours offset, there was definitely more face-to-face collaboration - but we also had a lot more meetings (ugh), and IMNSHO very little got done, so I remain unconvinced that it actually is more efficient, I think it may just be more comfortable. From all of these anecdotes I have assembled my vision that for some office cultures, meetings are better, and for some people, meetings are better, but theses are hardly absolutes, and my personal bias is that it's a war between comfort level and actual efficiency.

9y ago

hectorperez 9y ago

I didn't know about Deep Work! I added you and part of your comment to the list of people who prefer (and who do not prefer) remote-work: https://goo.gl/74E3BS https://goo.gl/74E3BS

chrisan 9y ago

My problem with an office or open office is not the noise, I can put on headphones and be fine, but is the actual interruptions. In an open office it is obviously much easier for someone to just lean over or look around their monitor and grab your attention, but having a private office with a door is still prone to someone knocking (or walking in if not closed) Working from home, people can email, chat, or leave a phone message and in any case when I am focusing none of those will bother me until I make an effort to check for messages. Emergency calls can get through by calling me twice. The only reason I'd like to be in an office is often my workmates become friends, and I want to "hang out" with my friends

dep_b 9y ago
Let me tell you from my experience as somebody that didn't see the inside of an office for so long I forgot what bad coffee tastes like that the "headphones means go away" rule is not respected by significant others at home. Actually just playing the music loud over speakers works much better. But YMMV depending on your music taste, mine is perceived as too intrusive by most.
- beat 9y ago
  I don't like wearing headphones for too long. But a nice hi-fi setup with vinyl while I'm working... that I love. And can't do it in the office.
  - dep_b 9y ago
    Yeah that's absolutely the best. Some nice warm sounding big speakers on a low volume. Flipping the album once in a while. But alas, everything is still stuck in a crate in another country.
Bluestrike2 9y ago
I wouldn't discount that last reason. There's some research suggesting that friendships between coworkers can greatly increase worker engagement, productivity, and satisfaction.[0][1][2] And a self-report study from LinkedIn suggests that workers perceive workplace friendships as beneficial for both themselves and their work, for what that's worth.[3] Of course, it can also blow up in your face and do the opposite, occasionally slowing down more productive workers as they match their speed to those of their less productive friends when it comes to individual work.[4] That study looked at fruitpickers, but it could be relevant to the tech industry as well. Paradoxically, at least in the US, we're seeing a trend towards fewer workplace friendships and greater detachment.[5] I/O (industrial and organizational) psychologists have a lot of interesting interpretations for those trends. Almost across the board, employment is far more transitory today than in past decades, so there's less pressure to invest time in meaningful relationships at work. And we're so connected nowadays that it's easier than ever to preserve relationships in some form (regardless of whether they're preserved, or we just believe they are), so we don't feel the need to generate replacements as much. Having done a lot of freelance work myself for a couple of years, if I'm being entirely honest with myself, this is one of the disadvantages at times. I enjoy getting to work on different projects, but there's something to be said for getting to focus on something with the same team. Even if open offices and talkative coworkers can get in the way at times :). 0. https://hbr.org/2013/07/we-all-need-friends-at-work https://hbr.org/2013/07/we-all-need-friends-at-work 1. http://www.gallup.com/services/178514/state-american-workplace.aspx http://www.gallup.com/services/178514/state-american-workpla... (behind a form) 2. https://www.fastcompany.com/3051290/why-having-friends-at-work-is-so-important https://www.fastcompany.com/3051290/why-having-friends-at-wo... 3. https://blog.linkedin.com/2014/07/08/work-bffs https://blog.linkedin.com/2014/07/08/work-bffs 4. http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-archive/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2010/02/friendsinworkplace.aspx http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-archive/newsAndMedia/news/archi... 5. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/adam-grant-friends-at-work-not-so-much.html?_r=2 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/adam-grant...

noway421 9y ago

Interesting perspective, indeed i hear people saying that gathering around snacks makes people talk more. But would they talk about work though? And are people going to think about those snack runs in the same way when the culture would make them "small meetings"?

lacampbell 9y ago

It is difficult to separate work and non-work with a home office. That was not my experience at all. When I worked at home, I worked regular hours, and didn't do any non-work stuff during those hours. And after those hours were done, I didn't do any work stuff. I basically kept to a strict 8:30-5 routine, and never had any issue.