23 ms·

Just like the cargo cult Agile pandemic peaked a few years ago, I suspect we're reaching peak open floor plans right now. The overall negative effects of an op

• LoSboccacc 9y ago
  Many large company will do but the large brunt of codetariat working for cash strapped business living and dying according to investors and customers will be keept in the open spaces: they looks cool in photos, convey a reassuring sense of "working bees" and sells well to visiting customers, so I fear the open plan it's here to stay.
  • bragh 9y ago
    That is the crux of the issue, isn't it? Actual productivity does not matter that much on a grand scale, the perceived productivity and therefore sales is what matters.
  • meddlepal 9y ago
    I think we can have our cake and eat it too. The all-glass office style at We Work could be adopted. I wish the glass was a bit thicker but the small shared office or bullpen model is ideal IMO.
    • evadne 9y ago
      I am currently working from a WeWork location and can provide a data point, that all-glass offices are terrible with soundproofing. The other downside of having glass partitions is that you could see what your neighbours were doing (and vice versa), which in my opinion is no different from visual pollution.
      • edoceo 9y ago
        Yea, I tried weWork to see if my employees would like it. In one of the meeting rooms a neighbor came over and warned us not to talk about any confidential information since everyone in their office could hear us. We sell B2, in a regulated industry. Leaky sound is a deal breaker. So, we're in a suburb now, $/sqft is less, 2 devs in a quiet room, 2 sales in a different room. I will not get open plan for my team. 2 persons per 144sqft office seems a good fit to me
      • bshudi 9y ago
        I am also at a WeWork location, but I find that the noise outside of our room is hardly noticed. That being said, I agree about the clear glass, I wish more of the glass was frosted.
      • Jach 9y ago
        A lot of engineers discount the impact of visibility and focus too much on the sound distractions. I think visibility is just important. It's all part of a violent transparency theme I think is captured pretty well here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150321053931/https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/open-plan-offices-panic-attacks-all-in-the-game/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150321053931/https://michaeloc... Even if you don't suffer from more-than-normal anxiety over it to the point of panic attacks, all the studies on normal people show open plans aren't great.
    • busterarm 9y ago
      Personally, I hated my experience in the glass-door offices of WeWork. The cheaper communal areas they had were vastly more productive and everyone was was respectful of it being a public space for everyone to work (for the most part). The actual offices on the other hand, had almost no sound deadening between them, the hallways way too narrow and it was all-party, all-the-time. People from other companies getting absolutely smashed on keg beer starting at noon was a daily problem. At the one building I went to that had entire floors of conference rooms, you could hear everything from 3 conference rooms over, making phone calls impossible.
  • varelse 9y ago
    HR is driven by data. To kill open floor plans, start citing the floor plan as the primary reason for leaving. If that becomes a theme, IMO open floor plans will become cancer. It just takes time.
    • koolba 9y ago
      That violates rule number one of dealing with HR: Don't talk to HR. It doesn't matter how innocuous the comment is. It can come back to bite you. Example: You: "I don't like open floor plans." HR: "Add a note to his file that he's anti-social. If he ever comes back here it'll be recorded already."
      • varelse 9y ago
        Yeah, I've got one of those "non-regretted depature" notes on my record at Google. So what? Google lost out, not me. Jobs aren't scarce, but talent is. I've never gone for want of employment and Google blind-allocated me into a boring gig I hated. And yes, I'm very anti-social when I'm coding. I wouldn't want to work for a company that considered that a negative trait.
        • hinkley 9y ago
          non-regretted departure? Is that something like "Quit my job at Google, middle fingers in the air," or what?
          • varelse 9y ago
            Disagreed (reasonably politely but persistently with lots of data) with upper management about what became a key technology to Google a year after I left. Got told to shut up about that technology or leave. Chose the latter and made a successful career out of being an expert in that technology. Found out later through my contacts that HR slammed the door behind me.
    • hotsauceror 9y ago
      Yeah, but by then you, and all the others, have already left. Plus, the costs of a re-remodel can be quite persuasive. Time is on the side of the folks who made the original decision to commit to the open floorplan concept in the first place.
• deepGem 9y ago
  I worked at Sun Microsystems for a while and their private office layout was really nice. I can't ballpark the exact size but the office could hold 3 gigantic CRT monitors, 2 desk phones, and had space for 2 visitors. I feel that a 2 person private office is quite optimal, since we are talking about teams. It's easier to pair program or discuss and even maintain silence when required. Office designers will have to pay attention to acoustics and ensure that there is not much echoing or significant noise transmission across walls or glass panels.
  • matchagaucho 9y ago
    The irony is that we (FB) came in and demolished all those awesome Sun offices to create "open space". No "Duke" mascots were harmed in the process, though :-)
    • abritinthebay 9y ago
      It's even worse in the new building I think. Lovely park on the roof, great amenities, but cluttered open-plan hell at every desk area.
    • wdb 9y ago
      But do you have an assigned desk? Every morning I am hoping there is a desk free for me and don't need to squeeze in between two colleagues. No fun.
  • thedarkginger 9y ago
    Have never worked in a non-open office plan so I can't really conceptualize this but sounds interesting. So if I envision a floor, do you just have rows of 2-person offices with hallways in between?
    • JonathonW 9y ago
      The best layouts I've seen have had 1- or 2-person offices around the perimeter of the space, with shared spaces (open spaces for collaboration when you actually need to collaborate and for big stuff, conference rooms, break rooms, etc.) on the interior, because people shouldn't always be in them so they don't need natural light as urgently. Requires a decent amount of space to do correctly, though.
• bogomipz 9y ago
  >"Just like the cargo cult Agile pandemic peaked a few years ago, I suspect we're reaching peak open floor plans right now." Wait, that peaked? That hasn't been my perception. I'm curious where you are seeing that.
  • varelse 9y ago
    I'm not seeing anywhere near the $h!+storm of pointless standups I used to see every morning. I'm also seeing the return of the weekly status meeting. Give it time. Then again, I'm someone who's threatened to enact the 6 mph standup meeting wherein the second anyone drops below 6 mph on foot, the meeting's over because how can we practice Agile if we aren't agile? That wasn't received well.
    • brogrammernot 9y ago
      Very rarely do I actually lol but I just chuckled so hard in a meeting. Yeah, you guessed it. An agile meeting.
      • robertlagrant 9y ago
        Pretty sure you both mean Scrum.
  • noarchy 9y ago
    I haven't been seeing it, either. In fact, I dare say it is nearly impossible to find a software shop in my area that isn't knee-deep in some iteration of "Agile" management - usually some form of Scrum.
    • abritinthebay 9y ago
      That's because it works. There's a reason it's popular. That said: a lot of places don't do it correctly and really do deserve being called cargo cults. Still, some process is better than no process.
• hajile 9y ago
  In my experience semi-open layouts are the best. A handful people working in the same room on the same project generally seems to work well at encourage pair programming and exchange of information while having an actual room isolates from other distractions. That said, I think in the programming world, remote work will eventually become the new office because it's the ultimate cost cutter and greatly opens up the pool of applicants.
  • r00fus 9y ago
    I prefer the hybrid approach: common semi-open room, plentiful breakout areas that can double as part-time offices.
  • Spooky23 9y ago
    I agree. My most productive environment was either 2 or 4 person offices. The weakness was the common space. IMO a dorm suite like layout would be great... have a pod of offices supporting 20 people with a shared common area.
    • maxxxxx 9y ago
      Agree. 2 to 4 is very nice. That would be my setup too. It's not even necessary to work on the same things.
• hotsauceror 9y ago
  Cargo Cult is exactly right. Our organization is selling us this right now. "We're creating a more collaborative atmosphere! Facebook does it, this must be what IT people want." (Any discussion of paying IT staff like FB, though, is "well, we're not an IT company, and besides we're mission driven!") Because they don't think we're mature enough to accept that they want to squeeze more bodies unto a smaller space, for purely financial reasons. Leadership got called out at a recent company meeting by someone who commented that noise-cancelling headphone were critical. One of the C-suite evangelists was like "haha, yeah you're right next to my office aren't you." In other words, "I'm so oblivious, I think it's amusing that my loud conversations are negatively impacting my subordinates' ability to concentrate in this 'collaborative' environment'". My team does not need a collaborative atmosphere. We're not marketers. We're quiet, introverted, methodical folks who need a quiet atmosphere where they can concentrate on writing ops code that won't bring down a production server in the middle of the day. We don't want to have to listen to overheard gossip, ostensibly private phone calls, etc. while we're trying to figure triage a complex issue. But more than anything, it's offensive that they won't just come out and admit that this is being done for financial reasons. We're all adults in a capitalist economy; we know the score.
  • Declanomous 9y ago
    I technically work in marketing, and even I don't think that open-offices are better. A private office is way more productive for the 75% of the time we aren't collaborating. It is a lot easier to write and design things when it is quiet. The idea that creative extroverted people work better the more riotous an environment is is absolute nonsense.
    • hotsauceror 9y ago
      No offense intended, of course. In my mental picture of a Marketing department, there's lots of creative back and forth and sort of, "brainstorming all the time" which is probably about as accurate as any stereotype. Everyone needs a time and a place to go heads-down.
      • 9y ago
• dba7dba 9y ago
  Point for teaching me `$h!+`
• chaostheory 9y ago
  > But square feet cost $$$ and switching to an open floor plan is an immediate cost cutter. This reminds me of the time companies used to try to save money by buying low powered computers. They didn't realize that carbon is more expensive than silicon.
  • rglovejoy 9y ago
    I actually had a manager tell me that all I do is typing.
    • richardthered 9y ago
      This reminds me of an old parable: There's a big manufacturing plant in town that's been around for decades. One day, a new company comes in and buys them out. The new managers look at the books, and say "Wow! Look at these crazy labor costs! There are way too many senior people here. Let's replace them with new guys, and we'll save a bundle." So, they do that, and save a lot in labor costs. After the first year, though, they run into a problem. The plant isn't working like it should. Output is down, and everyone's running around with their hair on fire, trying to figure out what the heck is wrong. After two days of this, someone finally gets a bright idea: "Hey, why don't we bring in one of those old guys that we laid off?" So, they hunt down the most experienced guy they could find, and bring him in to take a look. He shows up, and starts walking around the plant. He slowly walks up and down the whole plant, with a gaggle of concerned managers following his every move. Finally, he stops at a pipe at the back of the plant, and pulls out a hammer. He lifts the hammer up, and whacks one joint really hard. Suddenly, the plant starts working again, and everyone is rejoicing. The CEO is smiling, and pats the old-timer on the back, and tells him to send a bill for his work. Well, the next day, the bill shows up. $10,000. "What!" he exclaims, pounding his desk. "Send me an itemized bill!" The day after after that, a new bill arrives: Hitting pipe with hammer: $5 Knowing which pipe to hit: $9,995
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• ig1 9y ago
  Using a study of programmers in the 1970s (where not punching the wrong hole in punch cards was a critical skill) for programmers in 2017 may not give you the most useful data.
  • spcelzrd 9y ago
    Makes you wonder why more companies don't measure these things. Google and Facebook A/B test button colors, but can't be bothered to measure programmer productivity in any scientific way.
    • disgruntledphd2 9y ago
      To be fair, its not easy. You would need: - Some kind of informed consent (because quitting) - Separation of space (to prevent jealousy) - A good way to measure programmer skill (this one's harder) - A lack of unquestioned dogma that open plan is better It's not as easy as you make it out to be, but either big G or Fbook could probably do it, given the will (which i suspect is the actual problem). EDIT: parentheses are hard to match
  • opo 9y ago
    Is there any study that shows that adding distractions to people and removing personal privacy makes them more productive and/or lowers stress hormones? For example: >...In 2011, the organizational psychologist Matthew Davis reviewed more than a hundred studies about office environments. He found that, though open offices often fostered a symbolic sense of organizational mission, making employees feel like part of a more laid-back, innovative enterprise, they were damaging to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-t...
  • kps 9y ago
    Point of order: a punch card environment would have typists do the actual keypunching. Programmers wrote on paper coding forms by hand. Of course writing out programs by hand is also a long obsolete and useless skill — except for interviews at all the top companies, where it's vital.
• sfifs 9y ago
  > I suspect we're reaching peak open floor plans right now I doubt it simply because it's way way cheaper to have open floor plans than rooms. Savings on materials, easier compliance with fire safety, way higher density.
  • Florin_Andrei 9y ago
    > higher density One day someone will look up and notice that whole unused third dimension in the office.
    • hinkley 9y ago
      Worked a place where a third of our office had 20ft ceilings and we were running out of space for people. I used to joke that Ikea sold queen sized bunk beds (I dunno if they still do, but they did then), and that we could totally get a desk up on top of one of those...
    • umanwizard 9y ago
      In many places this has already been done; e.g., I work on the 15th floor of a building.
• x0x0 9y ago
  It's not a cargo cult -- cargo cults are done as pure imitation. Open floor plans are simply a cost saving measure combined with a way to enforce the internal hierarchy.
• danellis 9y ago
  > Just like the cargo cult Agile pandemic peaked a few years ago Part of that early agile movement was Extreme Programming, which I'm pretty sure advocated for office space per-team and a communal working area with private office space around it.