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On the general question of open vs. private offices, my views have tempered over time. The first time I worked in an open office, I hated it. But I've come to r
by msluyter 9y ago
On the general question of open vs. private offices, my views have tempered over time. The first time I worked in an open office, I hated it. But I've come to realize that a lot depends on the layout of the office and that there are better and worse ways to configure one.
The first case -- the one I hated -- had a) long rows of desks, b) bright overhead fluorescent lights, c) a lot of noise due to being in a large room with sales/marketing, d) a lot of visual distractions due to people walking up & down the aisles, and e) few available areas to go to collaborate away from your desks.
Now, I'm also in an open office, but I find it quite livable, because: a) my desk faces the wall, for fewer visual distractions, b) the room is comfortably lit (ie, not too bright)[1], c) it's a smaller room with only engineering and is generally quieter[2], d) there are enough areas to go if you need to collaborate.
All this is to say that, while the evidence is that open offices generally suck, there's probably a number of ways to ameliorate their problems to some degree without having to resort to private offices. I don't think I'd prefer an office to my current setup, actually.
[1] I think this element is underrated. In fact, I'd be curious to know if there's a verifiable correlation between brightness levels and how loud people tend to talk. There's something about a dim room that seems to induce people to lower their voices.
[2] Small, but not too small. There's a sort of sweet spot. I was once in a room with 3 other people and it was maddening because it was generally quiet but every little noise -- coughing, swallowing, etc... -- was seemingly amplified by the overall quietness to became hugely annoying. (An inverse concept explains why I can work quite well in a coffee shop despite the background din.)
- maaaats 9y agoI work in a team. The team of 5-10 people sit in the same office. That way we can talk to each other when needed. Some say that's disturbance, I call it collaborating. I'm not a code monkey. I don't sit alone in an office all day hammering out code. If that was what expected of me, I would change job. So, not exactly open floor plan, but not separate offices either. I think that's perfect.
- celim307 9y agoSame. I'm a huge fan of a team having its own 'alcove' or bullpen as we all are usually tackling a problem together or triaging something.
- mden 9y agoAgreed, as long as managers, business, or generally people who talk a lot weren't stationed there. And other people coming for discussion or just to chat weren't allowed either unless it involved the entire team.
- celim307 9y agoSame. I'm a huge fan of a team having its own 'alcove' or bullpen as we all are usually tackling a problem together or triaging something.
- bobbytherobot 9y agoI'm currently in a small office with a small team. They hate talking. They want to do everything by chat or code review. My point? So many factors are at play for a healthy office.
- magic_beans 9y agoI mean, why is there a need to chat while working? Why not go to the kitchen to chat? Code review seems pointless at a company with a defined code conventions.
- RHSeeger 9y agoCode conventions don't cover good algorithm design, good architecture, common implementation patterns, edge case coverage, etc.
- pgwhalen 9y ago"Code review seems pointless at a company with defined code conventions." I don't mean to disrespect you, but either you are you are very green or are living in a completely different universe of software engineering than I am. It's interesting to hear this viewpoint.
- ams6110 9y agoIt seems weird to me to use online chat to talk to someone right next to you. I've done it in some situations to avoid disturbing others but it's pretty inefficient compared to face-to-face talking.
- wolco 9y agoThe good thing about online chats is you have a history of the conversation to reference later.
- harveywi 9y agoThis is worth its weight in gold. Add to that the ability to selectively broadcast the conversation to potentially-relevant people without mutilating the concentration of non-interested parties. Add to that the ability to forward that info to new team members years after the conversations have happened and potentially years after the originator of the answer left.
- maxxxxx 9y agoI like that too. I am fine with interruptions that are work related. It's the constant background noise that bothers me in open office.
- orange_bear 9y agoI read this as "I don't write code all day." I did write code all day, and when I worked in that exact environment, I could not do it. Too many audio distractions and distractions in my peripherals. And I was supposed to be doing difficult programming work? I have always gotten my best work done at home, alone, while you "not a code monkey" types chit chat in the office.
- scottLobster 9y agoDepends on the work. I do code all day, but the codebase I work on is massive, fairly old (although some parts have been updated) and everyone in the office has their own area of knowledge. What the code does is also complex enough that it requires specific domain knowledge to code properly (I suppose "expert system" is the correct term), so you can't just throw general computer science at every problem. In that type of environment collaboration among developers is vital, I often leave in the evening not because there's nothing to do but because almost everyone else is gone and I've exhausted the bounds of my knowledge. At that point I can bang my head against a problem for 5 hours or ask the local expert the next morning and get my answer in 5 minutes. But yeah if I was just churning out CRUD apps then I'd probably be more productive on my own.
- RHSeeger 9y agoI use slack for those questions and, very rarely, a phone. Collaboration doesn't need to be in person.
- pmiller2 9y agoI consider it rude to Slack someone after they've left, unless it's a critical issue. People shouldn't be "on call" for anything that could wait until morning.
- tomsthumb 9y agoSlack has options to snooze notifications until working hours. We slack each other all the time after hours if someone is on call or just working late, but there's no expectation of answering till the next workday. It's nice because you can get things out there without having to remember.
- mindcrime 9y agoSome say that's disturbance, I call it collaborating. Sure, just keep your collaboration out of my concentration. That is, "Alice and Bob collaborating" may just be keeping Joe from getting any work done. It's easy to lose track of the effect of your collaboration in any open environment. Doing it in an office with a closed door eliminates that problem. I'm not a code monkey. I don't sit alone in an office all day hammering out code. Having an office does not in any way imply that you're supposed to "sit alone in an office all day hammering out code".
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- martindelemotte 9y agoIn regard to [1] your hypothesis is probably correct. There exists technology that dims the lights automatically when the volume level of an area is too loud, in order to make people lower their voices.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- macNchz 9y ago>I'd be curious to know if there's a verifiable correlation between brightness levels and how loud people tend to talk. There's something about a dim room that seems to induce people to lower their voices. Almost every open office I've worked in has been super loud and disruptive, but one of them that happened to have high ceilings and very soft, warm lighting turned and turned out to be the fantastic. Something about the space gave the room a kind of library-style hush, which I think helped create a feedback loop compelling people to speak quietly and move longer conversations into closed rooms. I think there's also an element to establishing the culture of how you interact in the open space early on, I think even with the hushed atmosphere of the room itself, it only worked because people had been talking quietly and taking louder conversations into private rooms for as long as they'd been working in the space. Pulling back from a culture of having a boisterous open space to a quiet one is, I think, much harder than doing it from the get-go.
- H1Supreme 9y agoLighting is such a big issue for me. Our office, luckily has a bunch of large windows in it. But, I've worked places with no windows and too much florescent lights. It's an awful environment.
- therealdrag0 9y agoAt the last couple places I've worked I've just stood on my desk and unscrewed the lights above my desk. Helps a lot with eye strain.
- el_benhameen 9y agoThe point about facing the wall is interesting. I find it very difficult to concentrate if I'm not facing _away_ from a wall. Knowing that people can come up behind me as I'm working or taking a break makes me very uncomfortable, to the point that I can't really relax and get into the flow of my work. It just feels like I'm being constantly watched. Of course, cubes or offices would let us have the best of both worlds, but ...
- lordnacho 9y agoOne thing that matters a lot is the behaviour of the people. I used to work in a small open office where one guy would constantly hold debates with everyone. It was pretty hard to stay out of it, and very distracting. Now I'm in an office with a similar layout and staff, but it's like a library. There's the occasional group discussion or banter, but not enough to bother. I've worked in finance my whole career, so it's all open plan, lots of screens. Never had my own office, people always needed (well so they say) to be accessible.
- neuronsguy 9y agoWhich did you prefer? I currently work in the former environment (but everyone is like that guy), and it's super noisy and distracting but also fun.
- lordnacho 9y agoI've come to the conclusion that watching the market is a fool's errand. We don't need to discuss our trades all the time. Or politics. Or gossip. The common space should be used sparingly. It is more fun though, to have a constant debate. Just not productive.
- hinkley 9y agoThe only difference between your library and a closed office plan is that the library was cheaper to build. And all it takes is two chatty hires to ruin it (as a chatty person, I'm fine unless someone encourages me). If they kept a lot of private meeting rooms when they changed the floor plan, you have a good chance of convincing the chatty people to fuck off to a room if they want to talk, but most places don't do that. They use open floor plans to reduce costs, and then there are shortages of meeting space, kitchens, ventilation, and bathrooms. The sales pitch of sitting in a group is that you can ask people questions and get an answer, but it's based on bad information about recovery periods after task switching. And as a lead I've been crippled by the inability to get candid answers from junior and midlevel engineers, and being unable to negotiate agreements with senior engineers by hashing out our disagreements in private where I can steer the conversation toward addressing their personal concerns instead of general ones. We should be concentrating on finding a compromise or promising more functionality so they're happy, so that it's two or three advocating for an idea when it's time to discuss it as a team. Instead it just gets shit on while I'm stream-of-consciousing it in the middle of a bunch of myopic people, leading to more confirmation bias and reaffirmation of the status quo. [Edit] And good luck healing a rift between QA and dev if the QA folk have to wander into the lion's den to talk about an issue. I have only been a lead once in an open office plan (working on #2), because half of my skill is in knowing more about what's going on by liaising across functional or personality boundaries. Half of the rest is in fixing unidentified pain points, which often requires hearing from people who don't like to be a bother. Open plans don't encourage candor, they crush it like a bug. Steve Job's line, as reported by Jonny Ive IIRC, about ideas being fragile and needing space to grow really hit home when I figured out I'm doomed to be in open offices until the pendulum swings back.
- GordonS 9y ago> But I've come to realize that a lot depends on the layout of the office A lot also depends on the people that work around you. If everyone respects one another, then it's usually OK. However, there is often at least one person who talks and talks and talks for most of the day (and somehow keeps their job), and at least one person who talks VERY LOUDLY on the phone all day (because they're far away, so obviously you need to shout to be heard?!).
- mindcrime 9y agoa) my desk faces the wall, for fewer visual distractions I'm sitting here feeling stunned that anybody could ever want their desk facing a wall, as the implication (in terms of any "open plan" environment) is that their back is facing, well, nothing. IOW, somebody can walk up behind you unnoticed. Me personally, I hate that with a passion. I'd pay money to have my desk facing out with my back to the wall, just so nobody can walk up behind me.
- always_good 9y agoI feel anxious when anyone can see my screen. I should be able to visit HN without feeling guilty as long as I'm getting my work done, but when I'm facing a wall, it's almost paralyzing.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hinkley 9y agoThere's a reason common convention swag for years included a fish eye mirror with a notch on the back to fit over the corner of your monitor.
- msluyter 9y agoWell, technically I'm facing 8th floor windows, but my blind is down. Others are partially open though so I can glance to the side and see the outdoors, which is nice. So it's not quite as bad as facing a wall, but it is true that anyone can walk up behind me unnoticed. Because it's a standing desk (though I use a high chair) that somehow doesn't seem as bad because they can't loom over you.
- dionian 9y agoI used to do this because I'd do personal stuff at work. recently i changed jobs where i face outward towards a wall instead of towards others. I work 100% during work hours on my work computer, though I frequently check social media/news on my personal cell phone -- especially while waiting for things like compilation or deployment :) so i guess I solved that problem by only using my handheld devices for stuff I'd rather not have anyone see. all in all its kind of nice, it raises the barrier to coming to distract me if my back is turned to you and my headphones are on. I thought i'd hate it but i wound up liking it just fine
- pi_qed 9y agoI had a similar experience with coffee shops. I was working from home for a stretch and discovered (almost by accident) that I could focus well at a coffee shop in spite of the noise. It gave me a mild sense of urgency for whatever task I had chosen that helped me tune out the distractions. It was mostly quieter at home but there always seemed to be more potential distractions. I found going once or twice a week helped me stay more focused overall - also for when I was home all day.
- kabdib 9y agoI generally hate open offices. I've worked in enough open space / half-height-cubie-space to detest them. In one case I refused a job (well, a transfer) because the other group was basically cheek-to-jowl and in a place with little ventilation (it smelled bad in there); I've done crappy working conditions in startups, but I refuse to do them in a multi-billion dollar corporation. However, the ability to move your desk at will makes open space work well, assuming you have enough space to work with. If your desk is on wheels and your company lets you, you can just relocate: Find a quieter spot to work, or go sit next to a few people you're working closely with for a while. But the combination of open offices and assigned seating is terrible. It feels like preschool. I prefer to be treated like an adult at work, not a child or a slave.
- giaour 9y agoIn that environment, you also lose the ability to shut your office door and have a private meeting. Sure, you can put 3-4 person meeting rooms next to big open offices, but I've never worked in a building that had enough small conference rooms to make up for the loss meetings in offices with doors