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Cheaper rent is definitely the driving factor in cities like NYC and SFO. But I think small private offices like those at Stack Overflow [1] don't really eat up

Cheaper rent is definitely the driving factor in cities like NYC and SFO. But I think small private offices like those at Stack Overflow [1] don't really eat up that much more floorspace (maybe 1.5x-2x but then you need far fewer small conf rooms). [1]: https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-in-private-offices/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-i... Saying "toughen up and use headphones" is such a dismissive response to noise that employers use. I'm extremely sensitive to noise distractions, and music is, for me, just as bad as coworker chatter. Even white-noise apps make me feel like I'm getting barraged with sound. I want "library quiet." It's amazing that "open office" workplaces don't generally have a policy to keep the space as quiet as possible so people can get real work done.

SandwichTeeth 8y ago
Honestly I think the noise and chaos of open offices are positives to executives because it creates the appearance of work. I follow some of the executives of the company I work at (we have an open office) and they are constantly posting pictures of "teamwork and collaboration" that just have a bunch of people standing around each others desks talking. They see all the movement and noise and they love that it seems like everybody is hard at work, collaborating and discussing problems etc. But if you look a little closer, the people doing actual work are hunched over their desks with huge headphones on, and everybody standing around are either not talking about anything related to work or they are rehashing discussions that have already happened over IM/email/meetings. I expressed to my manager that I had a hard time working in this environment and would like the chance to work from home a more often but was dismissed because he "likes the open office" and our management has the view that if you are working from home you probably aren't working.
- dbattaglia 8y ago
  Funny anecdote about that: I briefly worked in one of those "startup inside a megacorp" companies, which had the typical trendy NYC startup look, open floor plan, free snacks and lunch, etc. Fairly often, you would see upper management types from the headquarters walking investors around. One of my coworkers, who worked for the company for many years, believed that we were basically just a zoo to look exciting for the investors compared to the stuffy corporate office. Good developer, here's a banana! Of course I don't think that's necessarily 100% true, but it always stuck with me.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    I think this is pretty close to being 100% true. Expensive tech workers function more like office furniture in most companies, where the executives don’t actually care about productivity anyway, beyond a few senior engineers who decide everything anyway.
    - talmand 8y ago
      In a previous job I once had a VP make a quick run-through of the office to make sure everybody was at their desks doing something, anything. The reason being that they were about to walk clients through the space and wanted the appearance of hard work being done. The VP was very open about this reasoning with us as he was herding people into place. I believe a few people sat at different desks because their regular desks were away from the path.
      - dbattaglia 8y ago
        Oh yeah I've been there as well. I've also seen upper management insist on adding more infrastructure monitors on the walls for the same reason: clients think they look cool!
        ryandrake 8y ago
        Wow, I remember being a junior guy long ago and getting assigned this task. They brought in two huge (at the time) monitors and had me set them up to show “real time” graphs and plots. Didn’t matter what the data was, just find a computer, plug it into those monitors and show some techinal-looking ambiance for the 15 minutes that some investor or other big shot will be in the room.
      - mikec3010 8y ago
        This is eerily similar of the stories about guided tours of Pyongyang.
  - waylandsmithers 8y ago
    Yes, just like suits in hardhats walking through rows of humming machines on the factory floor. Things are getting done.
- dougmwne 8y ago
  Your bit about executive perception is a great point. I think that's a huge reason why our offices and workdays look the way they look, why we spend so much time in meetings, why WFH has so much resistance. The executives tend to be extroverted and at the top of the primate social-power higherarchy. Much of this is unconscious, or at least un-admitted, but the people in charge of our offices get a rush when their subordinates visably do the work. They enjoy people gathering around them and telling them about the issue of the day. To an extrovert at the top of the ladder, that power wouldn't feel as good if it was manifested solely as Jira tickets, slack pings, and performance dashboards in a home office. They would not feel nearly as important. One open office I worked regularly flew in parent company executives from around the world so they could watch all that geeky brainpower under their command grinding away at our Macbooks. I think this psychology has had a cumulative effect on creating our work culture. Did an individual executive decide to build your office based on how it made them feel? No probablly not, but when you take the psychological profiles of all business leaders together you get the open office, the business trip, and the all day meeting.
  - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
    That's an interesting theory. It made me think of another: perhaps executives wrongly assume that what's a productive environment for them and their tasks is appropriate for everyone in the organization.
  - Melchizedek 8y ago
    Even worse for the managers, WFH would reveal how mostly unnecessary they are.
    - sidlls 8y ago
      Except for doing all the stuff "100% heads down coders" don't want to do, like run the parts of the business that actually bring in revenue, you mean.
      - ryandrake 8y ago
        Right, I think some people honestly think that software just magically leaps from developers’ fingertips onto store shelves. Product management, project management, operations, marketing, legal, sales, BD? They just sit in meetings and play Candy Crush all day...
- beamatronic 8y ago
  If they want appearance of work, just look at the Kanban board!
  - jonhendry18 8y ago
    Or build a fancy display with lots of blinkenlights that shows git activity, CI build activity, network activity, slack activity, etc. It doesn't even need to really show anything, just say it does. Kind of like the Connection Machine's random blinkenlights "activity mode".
- gaius 8y ago
  Read IBM’s instructions to workers before the CEO visits: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/28/ibm_chief_rometty_texas_staff/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/28/ibm_chief_rometty_t...
commandlinefan 8y ago
> have a policy to keep the space as quiet as possible I work in a similar dystopian open office panopticon, and I'm shocked, every day, that this isn't something that everybody is intrinsically aware of. But where I work, there are some Important People who have offices with doors - who leave the doors wide open, put their phones on speaker, and shout into conference calls all day, every day. The inconsiderateness of some people is really mind boggling.
- organsnyder 8y ago
  In my anecdotal experience, the same people that are loud in open offices are also the ones leaving dirty dishes in the sink. Some people are either unaware and/or don't care.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    I wonder if this isn't a side effect of our moving to be a "less violent" society. Back in the day, that person would at least get punched for doing such a thing, and would not do it again. As it is, there's really no negative reinforcement to such actions, and so they don't see the point of not doing them.
    - HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
      No need to start punching. Just confront them on their behaviour. 90% of the time they'll back down if you call them out. They're just school-bullies grown up.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  When that happened to me, I got up, walked to their office, and closed their door. At the time, it felt a little like Rorschach saying, "no, you're locked in here with me". I was closing just one of the doors to my office.
  - commandlinefan 8y ago
    Ah, you're lucky. That would definitely be an HR incident here.
kimdotcom 8y ago
Basecamp HQ has a policy like that, 'library day'.
- Thespian2 8y ago
  Why not "library every day"?
  - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
    > Why not "library every day"? Just a guess: some extroverts find "library day" just as unpleasant as others find non-library days? I really like the way Amtrak handles this: At least on the Northeast Corridor, most of their trains have a "quiet car". Whether or not you sit in it is optional.
    - mikhailfranco 8y ago
      How about ... extroverts work at the office introverts work from home.
mgkimsal 8y ago
"Even white-noise apps make me feel like I'm getting barraged with sound. I want "library quiet."" The middle ground I have is noise-cancelling headphones (bose qc20) with white noise app playing a low volume mix of grey noise and... maybe brown. The grey gives a low feeling, and helps mask out some frequencies that the noise cancelling headphones miss. It's not perfect, and it's not "library quiet", but I've found the combination is relatively calming most of the time.

SandwichTeeth 8y ago

Honestly I think the noise and chaos of open offices are positives to executives because it creates the appearance of work. I follow some of the executives of the company I work at (we have an open office) and they are constantly posting pictures of "teamwork and collaboration" that just have a bunch of people standing around each others desks talking. They see all the movement and noise and they love that it seems like everybody is hard at work, collaborating and discussing problems etc. But if you look a little closer, the people doing actual work are hunched over their desks with huge headphones on, and everybody standing around are either not talking about anything related to work or they are rehashing discussions that have already happened over IM/email/meetings. I expressed to my manager that I had a hard time working in this environment and would like the chance to work from home a more often but was dismissed because he "likes the open office" and our management has the view that if you are working from home you probably aren't working.

dbattaglia 8y ago
Funny anecdote about that: I briefly worked in one of those "startup inside a megacorp" companies, which had the typical trendy NYC startup look, open floor plan, free snacks and lunch, etc. Fairly often, you would see upper management types from the headquarters walking investors around. One of my coworkers, who worked for the company for many years, believed that we were basically just a zoo to look exciting for the investors compared to the stuffy corporate office. Good developer, here's a banana! Of course I don't think that's necessarily 100% true, but it always stuck with me.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I think this is pretty close to being 100% true. Expensive tech workers function more like office furniture in most companies, where the executives don’t actually care about productivity anyway, beyond a few senior engineers who decide everything anyway.
  - talmand 8y ago
    In a previous job I once had a VP make a quick run-through of the office to make sure everybody was at their desks doing something, anything. The reason being that they were about to walk clients through the space and wanted the appearance of hard work being done. The VP was very open about this reasoning with us as he was herding people into place. I believe a few people sat at different desks because their regular desks were away from the path.
    - dbattaglia 8y ago
      Oh yeah I've been there as well. I've also seen upper management insist on adding more infrastructure monitors on the walls for the same reason: clients think they look cool!
      - ryandrake 8y ago
        Wow, I remember being a junior guy long ago and getting assigned this task. They brought in two huge (at the time) monitors and had me set them up to show “real time” graphs and plots. Didn’t matter what the data was, just find a computer, plug it into those monitors and show some techinal-looking ambiance for the 15 minutes that some investor or other big shot will be in the room.
    - mikec3010 8y ago
      This is eerily similar of the stories about guided tours of Pyongyang.
- waylandsmithers 8y ago
  Yes, just like suits in hardhats walking through rows of humming machines on the factory floor. Things are getting done.
dougmwne 8y ago
Your bit about executive perception is a great point. I think that's a huge reason why our offices and workdays look the way they look, why we spend so much time in meetings, why WFH has so much resistance. The executives tend to be extroverted and at the top of the primate social-power higherarchy. Much of this is unconscious, or at least un-admitted, but the people in charge of our offices get a rush when their subordinates visably do the work. They enjoy people gathering around them and telling them about the issue of the day. To an extrovert at the top of the ladder, that power wouldn't feel as good if it was manifested solely as Jira tickets, slack pings, and performance dashboards in a home office. They would not feel nearly as important. One open office I worked regularly flew in parent company executives from around the world so they could watch all that geeky brainpower under their command grinding away at our Macbooks. I think this psychology has had a cumulative effect on creating our work culture. Did an individual executive decide to build your office based on how it made them feel? No probablly not, but when you take the psychological profiles of all business leaders together you get the open office, the business trip, and the all day meeting.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  That's an interesting theory. It made me think of another: perhaps executives wrongly assume that what's a productive environment for them and their tasks is appropriate for everyone in the organization.
- Melchizedek 8y ago
  Even worse for the managers, WFH would reveal how mostly unnecessary they are.
  - sidlls 8y ago
    Except for doing all the stuff "100% heads down coders" don't want to do, like run the parts of the business that actually bring in revenue, you mean.
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      Right, I think some people honestly think that software just magically leaps from developers’ fingertips onto store shelves. Product management, project management, operations, marketing, legal, sales, BD? They just sit in meetings and play Candy Crush all day...
beamatronic 8y ago
If they want appearance of work, just look at the Kanban board!
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  Or build a fancy display with lots of blinkenlights that shows git activity, CI build activity, network activity, slack activity, etc. It doesn't even need to really show anything, just say it does. Kind of like the Connection Machine's random blinkenlights "activity mode".
gaius 8y ago
Read IBM’s instructions to workers before the CEO visits: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/28/ibm_chief_rometty_texas_staff/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/28/ibm_chief_rometty_t...

commandlinefan 8y ago

> have a policy to keep the space as quiet as possible I work in a similar dystopian open office panopticon, and I'm shocked, every day, that this isn't something that everybody is intrinsically aware of. But where I work, there are some Important People who have offices with doors - who leave the doors wide open, put their phones on speaker, and shout into conference calls all day, every day. The inconsiderateness of some people is really mind boggling.

organsnyder 8y ago
In my anecdotal experience, the same people that are loud in open offices are also the ones leaving dirty dishes in the sink. Some people are either unaware and/or don't care.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  I wonder if this isn't a side effect of our moving to be a "less violent" society. Back in the day, that person would at least get punched for doing such a thing, and would not do it again. As it is, there's really no negative reinforcement to such actions, and so they don't see the point of not doing them.
  - HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
    No need to start punching. Just confront them on their behaviour. 90% of the time they'll back down if you call them out. They're just school-bullies grown up.
logfromblammo 8y ago
When that happened to me, I got up, walked to their office, and closed their door. At the time, it felt a little like Rorschach saying, "no, you're locked in here with me". I was closing just one of the doors to my office.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  Ah, you're lucky. That would definitely be an HR incident here.

kimdotcom 8y ago

Basecamp HQ has a policy like that, 'library day'.

Thespian2 8y ago
Why not "library every day"?
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  > Why not "library every day"? Just a guess: some extroverts find "library day" just as unpleasant as others find non-library days? I really like the way Amtrak handles this: At least on the Northeast Corridor, most of their trains have a "quiet car". Whether or not you sit in it is optional.
  - mikhailfranco 8y ago
    How about ... extroverts work at the office introverts work from home.

mgkimsal 8y ago

"Even white-noise apps make me feel like I'm getting barraged with sound. I want "library quiet."" The middle ground I have is noise-cancelling headphones (bose qc20) with white noise app playing a low volume mix of grey noise and... maybe brown. The grey gives a low feeling, and helps mask out some frequencies that the noise cancelling headphones miss. It's not perfect, and it's not "library quiet", but I've found the combination is relatively calming most of the time.