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I was a team lead/solutions architect. > Did your team-members enjoy you turning around and interrupting them? I don't think it's fair to call all conversati

I was a team lead/solutions architect. > Did your team-members enjoy you turning around and interrupting them? I don't think it's fair to call all conversations "interruptions" and my co-workers were all very conscious of causing any unwanted interruptions. > Is it really that hard to get up and walk to another office so you don't disturb 8 other people with a question they don't care about? It wasn't, and I often did walk around as I regularly needed to interact with other teams. 99% of people had headphones on through all parts of the day. As a side note, this workplace was comprised of mostly men and women under the age of 35 with quite a few right out of college. We regularly got comments from the interns that we hired that they chose to work their because of the open environment. Age may play a factor here I suppose.

sidlls 9y ago
You don't consider that your position of authority affected a different dynamic than if you were a lower ranked individual contributor? > As a side note, this workplace was comprised of mostly men and women under the age of 35 with quite a few right out of college. I'm not sure how this is relevant. One might as easily conclude that these folks don't know any better due to youth and inexperience as that "it's just a different age and culture."
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  I had this exact thing happen. I was consulting for a team that just acquired a small company. They had this huge building, but got most people into a large open area. The lead was certain it was so useful, he was tuned in, everyone loved it. Plus "they can go into offices if they need it". In personal interviews with employees, nearly everyone hated it and wished they could just permanently have an office and only come out at times, but didn't want to say anything.
  - hinkley 9y ago
    You know, it's one thing when you're crammed in because getting an office means moving the whole company to a new building. Must be quite frustrating to sit in a nearly empty building and have everyone sardined into one large room.
hajile 9y ago
Sounds like you haven't been on the other side often enough. Most of a programmer's added value to a company happens in the 4 hours (give or take) that they are "zoned in" to what they're doing. As tech lead, when you knock them out of the zone early, you cost your company a lot of money because it's usually going to be a while before things ramp up again. Lots (most?) of developers don't like having their focus interrupted. You assume because they are cordial that they were fine with the interruption. As their team lead and SA, they don't really have a choice. As a side note, we're all idiots fresh out of college. We hear about things that seem good, but don't have the experience to make a proper value judgement. Lots of college kids have group study sessions and think they are great. The reality is that they are great for socializing, but generally terrible for studying. Open offices appeal for the same social reasons (with the same kind if issues). With no real life/work experience, its little wonder that this is preferred.
- CorvusCrypto 9y ago
  You made me think of something interesting. My 4 hours NEVER happens and I'm in a cube-farm/closed space. Interruptions happen all the damn time. Sure we don't like our focus interrupted, but that's what work is. It's dealing with the managers and leads that need to ask you something urgent while managing your deadlines and dealing with noise which is still very much present in a closed-office area unless you are the board members that get to work remote. I have one cool little experience which was an open office that switched to a closed office space during my stay. Productivity went down regardless of the boundaries put in place because now the leads and managers have their offices closed for meetings and therefore engineering staff is next in line to handle emergencies/data requests. Granted this is due to our workflow as well, however the point I'm making isn't that one setup is always better than the other but that it probably depends on multiple things and if you think you're gonna get 4 hours of golden time in a real, moving business then that's very naive or you have been very lucky yourself. I think the reason I liked open offices is because when I needed to rethink an algorithm and analyze it I had at least 3 people that could offer their commentary. And while study groups may not work for reading a book, they damn sure work on designing algorithms when you need to openly discuss the tradeoffs and goals. Just my 0.02 on the whole thing but TL;DR sounds like open offices don't work for some places, but work great for others. EDIT: to add to this, the open office we had was not noisey. There weren't massive conversations happening all the time and it was normally just inside voice levels of noise. I haven't experienced what I am imagining as the restaurant equivalent of an office.
bluesnowmonkey 9y ago
> 99% of people had headphones on through all parts of the day. Yes I've found that to be true as well. I myself typically wear expensive noise cancelling headphones all day and blast music, damaging my hearing, in order to drown out distractions. Fuck open offices.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  Buy passive insulating headphones, they usually work better.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Unfortunately no headphones eliminate visual distractions.
mindcrime 9y ago
We regularly got comments from the interns that we hired that they chose to work their because of the open environment. It's unlikely that many of them had competing offers from a company that offered private offices, given how few companies actually offer private offices. Most likely they were just indoctrinated / brainwashed into drinking the Open Plan Koolaid and are just parroting a stock line.

sidlls 9y ago

You don't consider that your position of authority affected a different dynamic than if you were a lower ranked individual contributor? > As a side note, this workplace was comprised of mostly men and women under the age of 35 with quite a few right out of college. I'm not sure how this is relevant. One might as easily conclude that these folks don't know any better due to youth and inexperience as that "it's just a different age and culture."

MichaelGG 9y ago
I had this exact thing happen. I was consulting for a team that just acquired a small company. They had this huge building, but got most people into a large open area. The lead was certain it was so useful, he was tuned in, everyone loved it. Plus "they can go into offices if they need it". In personal interviews with employees, nearly everyone hated it and wished they could just permanently have an office and only come out at times, but didn't want to say anything.
- hinkley 9y ago
  You know, it's one thing when you're crammed in because getting an office means moving the whole company to a new building. Must be quite frustrating to sit in a nearly empty building and have everyone sardined into one large room.

hajile 9y ago

Sounds like you haven't been on the other side often enough. Most of a programmer's added value to a company happens in the 4 hours (give or take) that they are "zoned in" to what they're doing. As tech lead, when you knock them out of the zone early, you cost your company a lot of money because it's usually going to be a while before things ramp up again. Lots (most?) of developers don't like having their focus interrupted. You assume because they are cordial that they were fine with the interruption. As their team lead and SA, they don't really have a choice. As a side note, we're all idiots fresh out of college. We hear about things that seem good, but don't have the experience to make a proper value judgement. Lots of college kids have group study sessions and think they are great. The reality is that they are great for socializing, but generally terrible for studying. Open offices appeal for the same social reasons (with the same kind if issues). With no real life/work experience, its little wonder that this is preferred.

CorvusCrypto 9y ago
You made me think of something interesting. My 4 hours NEVER happens and I'm in a cube-farm/closed space. Interruptions happen all the damn time. Sure we don't like our focus interrupted, but that's what work is. It's dealing with the managers and leads that need to ask you something urgent while managing your deadlines and dealing with noise which is still very much present in a closed-office area unless you are the board members that get to work remote. I have one cool little experience which was an open office that switched to a closed office space during my stay. Productivity went down regardless of the boundaries put in place because now the leads and managers have their offices closed for meetings and therefore engineering staff is next in line to handle emergencies/data requests. Granted this is due to our workflow as well, however the point I'm making isn't that one setup is always better than the other but that it probably depends on multiple things and if you think you're gonna get 4 hours of golden time in a real, moving business then that's very naive or you have been very lucky yourself. I think the reason I liked open offices is because when I needed to rethink an algorithm and analyze it I had at least 3 people that could offer their commentary. And while study groups may not work for reading a book, they damn sure work on designing algorithms when you need to openly discuss the tradeoffs and goals. Just my 0.02 on the whole thing but TL;DR sounds like open offices don't work for some places, but work great for others. EDIT: to add to this, the open office we had was not noisey. There weren't massive conversations happening all the time and it was normally just inside voice levels of noise. I haven't experienced what I am imagining as the restaurant equivalent of an office.

bluesnowmonkey 9y ago

> 99% of people had headphones on through all parts of the day. Yes I've found that to be true as well. I myself typically wear expensive noise cancelling headphones all day and blast music, damaging my hearing, in order to drown out distractions. Fuck open offices.

eeZah7Ux 9y ago
Buy passive insulating headphones, they usually work better.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Unfortunately no headphones eliminate visual distractions.

mindcrime 9y ago

We regularly got comments from the interns that we hired that they chose to work their because of the open environment. It's unlikely that many of them had competing offers from a company that offered private offices, given how few companies actually offer private offices. Most likely they were just indoctrinated / brainwashed into drinking the Open Plan Koolaid and are just parroting a stock line.