6 ms·

> And for what? Because a minority of people kinda like that configuration? Because it’ll look good in a few photos? Because it’ll impress strangers who visit t

by mcherm 8y ago

> And for what? Because a minority of people kinda like that configuration? Because it’ll look good in a few photos? Because it’ll impress strangers who visit the office? Somehow the author missed the primary reason for the open office configuration: "Because it cuts the costs of office space by a HUGE amount (certainly more than half)." I suppose "Because it makes it easier for managers to keep an eye on their employees and see when they are slacking off." figures in also. Although it's probably a sign of poor management.

ghosterrific 8y ago
I'm going to argue that nothing cuts real estate costs nearly as much as a 100% remote company. The real reason for open office layout is this: - we do not trust ourselves and our employees to do what we say
tomtheelder 8y ago
Yeah this is one of HN's favorite topics to bash on while completely ignoring the primary reason why the open office exists and persists. It's not about collaboration, it's not about socializing, it's about money. Just like all other business related decisions.
- fullshark 8y ago
  I think HN is just focusing on disparaging the messaging from company leads, and pointing out that it’s cheaper but actively harmful as well to performance.
- maltalex 8y ago
  That argument doesn't hold water. Employee time is usually a lot more expensive than the space they occupy. At least in tech. You could save quite a lot of money on furniture if everyone sat with their laptops on the floor. But in reality that would be more expensive since the difference in productivity will outweigh the furniture cost.
  - larrik 8y ago
    Ah, but accountants don't measure productivity, only cost. It doesn't matter if it takes 3 times as long to ship your product, the only way they'd justify the higher cost of the office is if it meant cutting jobs.
    - linuxftw 8y ago
      I agree, and often times is several engineering teams that have their own budgets for labor, verses an entirely different department (facilities) using a different pool of money. Each department has incentives to cut costs independently and often at the expense of other departments. I would happily buy my own sodas (I don't drink them anyway), chips/snacks (I don't eat them at work), coffee (I do drink coffee!) if it meant I never had to sit in an open office environment again.
    - maltalex 8y ago
      > Ah, but accountants don't measure productivity, only cost. Accountants don't get to decide the office layout in my experience.
      - larrik 8y ago
        You'd be surprised how often accountants run a company unofficially, and all the ways that it happens.
  - funkaster 8y ago
    You're missing the point that the people configuring the office (most of the time) do not take productivity as a major factor, unless is something extreme and unrealistic like your example. Now it's more like: "everyone is already used to this configuration, and it's 50% (or some big %) cheaper to setup now"
- adrianN 8y ago
  Maybe companies should just be honest about why they run open offices instead of trying to sell it as something they do for the employees.
  - magduf 8y ago
    I work in a place with younger developers, who basically run things themselves with management's blessing. They love the open-plan office layout. I think a lot of this is generational: younger programmers are much more social and like noisy environments where they can chat and banter endlessly.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Personal preferences vary but, yeah, a lot of overall preferences are probably age-related. I remember in a long-ago job I had for quite a few years (with an old-style high cubicle arrangement), we had a lot of walking the hallways F2F informal catchups, ate lunch together, had sports teams, etc. These days I mostly work remote by choice and am good with that. Some of it is better tech to work remote; I didn't even have broadband for most of my time in that former job. But it's also that I have no particular interest in spending a lot of time with coworkers generally beyond what I need to get my job done.
      - magduf 8y ago
        I'm not claiming that it's age-related, but that it's generational. The people who are going into programming these days are not the same type of people who went into it a generation ago. In the 80s, these people would have gone into a different career field.
        ghaff 8y ago
        And I'm not sure I agree with that in general. If I look back at the engineers of the computer company I worked for in the late 80s, I would say there were more women and it was whiter. Certainly, more were from traditional EE disciplines given how relatively new CS was. But I'm not sure that new engineers at that company were fundamentally different from new engineers joining, say, Facebook today.
- Androider 8y ago
  It's a penny wise, pound foolish decision though, considering engineering salaries. It's hard to quantify, and often an externalized cost to the facilities management and decision makers, but my own experience suggests open offices are incredibly expensive as a negative multiplier on the engineering output. The "actual work" starts getting done in the evenings, on planes, and on weekends, while the business hours are a circus of meetings and "grab-ass" as the top comment in this thread so eloquently put it. I'm building my own company now, fully remote, and from an engineering output point of view I've never seen such productivity. No ass-in-seat supervision, no assigned hours, just straight throughput of engineering tasks being closed and features being shipped every day.
  - watwut 8y ago
    > The "actual work" starts getting done in the evenings, on planes, and on weekends, while the business hours are a circus of meetings and "grab-ass" as the top comment in this thread so eloquently put it. And thus, there is no incentive to change it. Cause total productivity is the same.
  - mwcampbell 8y ago
    > I'm building my own company now, fully remote How do you counter the common argument that face-to-face communication is the most high-bandwidth and one shouldn't throw away that competitive advantage unnecessarily? I'm not a proponent of that position; on the contrary, I don't want to accept it. But a lot of people think that way.
    - linuxftw 8y ago
      I find video chat to be as productive or even moreso than face-to-face meetings for small groups of people. In face to face meetings, many companies (like ones I have worked for) have limited meeting spaces and it's quite hard to book a conference room for more than an hour. Often times, we'd shuffle from one conference room to another. So even in-person isn't quite as effecient and productive as it could be.
    - s-shellfish 8y ago
- rhizome 8y ago
  Productivity is also about money.
- notahacker 8y ago
  Every time the topic comes up on HN half a dozen people insist that the only possible reason anyone could ever consider an open plan office is cost. Meanwhile, there's a thriving and growing industry selling desks in trendy open plan offices to self-employed people who for the most part could do their work in the privacy of their own home if they didn't think the atmosphere of an open plan office was worth paying for.
  - fullshark 8y ago
    Working at home has other issues (distractions, lack of separation between home/work, loneliness) so I can see someone wanting to rent a desk especially if they find working at home that particular day challenging to their productivity.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      I mostly work from home these days but I can't imagine starting out that way after school. A lot of people I know work remotely in whole or in large part. But I've also worked with people who either felt the need for work-home separation or just found home to be too distracting a work environment in one or more ways.
  - Tharkun 8y ago
    YMMV, but in my neck of the woods the whole office-share thing is having a very hard time. Prices are either very steep and include private offices (hah!), or very cheap for open plan offices. Many of the latter places have devolved into regular cafes because there's no demand.
- bambax 8y ago
  Not sure about that. Remote would save so much more on office space! Yet most companies hate remote and don't allow it. I think the real reason is managers want to be able to see everyone at a glance; it's all about control.
  - Tharkun 8y ago
    Not likely, unless these managers have really keen eyes and are able to look at everyone's monitor at the same time....
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  And specifically, about an easy to measure cost verses an hard (if not impossible) to measure cost. Facilities can easily be measured. Productivity lost due to employees overwhelmed with sights and sounds (and even smells)? Much harder to measure, and so much easier to just not measure it or low ball it. So even if money is being lost, it looks like money is being saved.
- oblio 8y ago
  Apple, Google, etc. could definitely afford team offices. Apple built almost all their campuses from scratch...
- SebNag_ 8y ago
  > The Basecamp office has a row of desks out in the open which we govern by Library Rules. We also have four private work rooms. Well it is still a bad decision. Libraries are an open work space and still manage to provide a reasonable working environment. This is less about money but more about a wrong perception of work.
DrBazza 8y ago
Except that when you actually do have individual offices, it's a sunk cost, and the productivity gains easily offset and pay off the initial outlay. It is only really start ups that cannot afford to do this. Ironically because they have a small number of employees, open plan offices do work for them because they have fewer employees.
deathanatos 8y ago
Relocate the office somewhere cheaper than the real estate hell that is the Bay Area, pay equal, but geographically adjusted salaries, and keep the non-open-office floor plan levels of productivity while reaping the benefits of the aforementioned points?

by mcherm 8y ago

ghosterrific 8y ago

I'm going to argue that nothing cuts real estate costs nearly as much as a 100% remote company. The real reason for open office layout is this: - we do not trust ourselves and our employees to do what we say

tomtheelder 8y ago

Yeah this is one of HN's favorite topics to bash on while completely ignoring the primary reason why the open office exists and persists. It's not about collaboration, it's not about socializing, it's about money. Just like all other business related decisions.

fullshark 8y ago
I think HN is just focusing on disparaging the messaging from company leads, and pointing out that it’s cheaper but actively harmful as well to performance.
maltalex 8y ago
That argument doesn't hold water. Employee time is usually a lot more expensive than the space they occupy. At least in tech. You could save quite a lot of money on furniture if everyone sat with their laptops on the floor. But in reality that would be more expensive since the difference in productivity will outweigh the furniture cost.
- larrik 8y ago
  Ah, but accountants don't measure productivity, only cost. It doesn't matter if it takes 3 times as long to ship your product, the only way they'd justify the higher cost of the office is if it meant cutting jobs.
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    I agree, and often times is several engineering teams that have their own budgets for labor, verses an entirely different department (facilities) using a different pool of money. Each department has incentives to cut costs independently and often at the expense of other departments. I would happily buy my own sodas (I don't drink them anyway), chips/snacks (I don't eat them at work), coffee (I do drink coffee!) if it meant I never had to sit in an open office environment again.
  - maltalex 8y ago
    > Ah, but accountants don't measure productivity, only cost. Accountants don't get to decide the office layout in my experience.
    - larrik 8y ago
      You'd be surprised how often accountants run a company unofficially, and all the ways that it happens.
- funkaster 8y ago
  You're missing the point that the people configuring the office (most of the time) do not take productivity as a major factor, unless is something extreme and unrealistic like your example. Now it's more like: "everyone is already used to this configuration, and it's 50% (or some big %) cheaper to setup now"
adrianN 8y ago
Maybe companies should just be honest about why they run open offices instead of trying to sell it as something they do for the employees.
- magduf 8y ago
  I work in a place with younger developers, who basically run things themselves with management's blessing. They love the open-plan office layout. I think a lot of this is generational: younger programmers are much more social and like noisy environments where they can chat and banter endlessly.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Personal preferences vary but, yeah, a lot of overall preferences are probably age-related. I remember in a long-ago job I had for quite a few years (with an old-style high cubicle arrangement), we had a lot of walking the hallways F2F informal catchups, ate lunch together, had sports teams, etc. These days I mostly work remote by choice and am good with that. Some of it is better tech to work remote; I didn't even have broadband for most of my time in that former job. But it's also that I have no particular interest in spending a lot of time with coworkers generally beyond what I need to get my job done.
    - magduf 8y ago
      I'm not claiming that it's age-related, but that it's generational. The people who are going into programming these days are not the same type of people who went into it a generation ago. In the 80s, these people would have gone into a different career field.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        And I'm not sure I agree with that in general. If I look back at the engineers of the computer company I worked for in the late 80s, I would say there were more women and it was whiter. Certainly, more were from traditional EE disciplines given how relatively new CS was. But I'm not sure that new engineers at that company were fundamentally different from new engineers joining, say, Facebook today.
Androider 8y ago
It's a penny wise, pound foolish decision though, considering engineering salaries. It's hard to quantify, and often an externalized cost to the facilities management and decision makers, but my own experience suggests open offices are incredibly expensive as a negative multiplier on the engineering output. The "actual work" starts getting done in the evenings, on planes, and on weekends, while the business hours are a circus of meetings and "grab-ass" as the top comment in this thread so eloquently put it. I'm building my own company now, fully remote, and from an engineering output point of view I've never seen such productivity. No ass-in-seat supervision, no assigned hours, just straight throughput of engineering tasks being closed and features being shipped every day.
- watwut 8y ago
  > The "actual work" starts getting done in the evenings, on planes, and on weekends, while the business hours are a circus of meetings and "grab-ass" as the top comment in this thread so eloquently put it. And thus, there is no incentive to change it. Cause total productivity is the same.
- mwcampbell 8y ago
  > I'm building my own company now, fully remote How do you counter the common argument that face-to-face communication is the most high-bandwidth and one shouldn't throw away that competitive advantage unnecessarily? I'm not a proponent of that position; on the contrary, I don't want to accept it. But a lot of people think that way.
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    I find video chat to be as productive or even moreso than face-to-face meetings for small groups of people. In face to face meetings, many companies (like ones I have worked for) have limited meeting spaces and it's quite hard to book a conference room for more than an hour. Often times, we'd shuffle from one conference room to another. So even in-person isn't quite as effecient and productive as it could be.
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
rhizome 8y ago
Productivity is also about money.
notahacker 8y ago
Every time the topic comes up on HN half a dozen people insist that the only possible reason anyone could ever consider an open plan office is cost. Meanwhile, there's a thriving and growing industry selling desks in trendy open plan offices to self-employed people who for the most part could do their work in the privacy of their own home if they didn't think the atmosphere of an open plan office was worth paying for.
- fullshark 8y ago
  Working at home has other issues (distractions, lack of separation between home/work, loneliness) so I can see someone wanting to rent a desk especially if they find working at home that particular day challenging to their productivity.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    I mostly work from home these days but I can't imagine starting out that way after school. A lot of people I know work remotely in whole or in large part. But I've also worked with people who either felt the need for work-home separation or just found home to be too distracting a work environment in one or more ways.
- Tharkun 8y ago
  YMMV, but in my neck of the woods the whole office-share thing is having a very hard time. Prices are either very steep and include private offices (hah!), or very cheap for open plan offices. Many of the latter places have devolved into regular cafes because there's no demand.
bambax 8y ago
Not sure about that. Remote would save so much more on office space! Yet most companies hate remote and don't allow it. I think the real reason is managers want to be able to see everyone at a glance; it's all about control.
- Tharkun 8y ago
  Not likely, unless these managers have really keen eyes and are able to look at everyone's monitor at the same time....
PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
And specifically, about an easy to measure cost verses an hard (if not impossible) to measure cost. Facilities can easily be measured. Productivity lost due to employees overwhelmed with sights and sounds (and even smells)? Much harder to measure, and so much easier to just not measure it or low ball it. So even if money is being lost, it looks like money is being saved.
oblio 8y ago
Apple, Google, etc. could definitely afford team offices. Apple built almost all their campuses from scratch...
SebNag_ 8y ago
> The Basecamp office has a row of desks out in the open which we govern by Library Rules. We also have four private work rooms. Well it is still a bad decision. Libraries are an open work space and still manage to provide a reasonable working environment. This is less about money but more about a wrong perception of work.

DrBazza 8y ago

Except that when you actually do have individual offices, it's a sunk cost, and the productivity gains easily offset and pay off the initial outlay. It is only really start ups that cannot afford to do this. Ironically because they have a small number of employees, open plan offices do work for them because they have fewer employees.

deathanatos 8y ago

Relocate the office somewhere cheaper than the real estate hell that is the Bay Area, pay equal, but geographically adjusted salaries, and keep the non-open-office floor plan levels of productivity while reaping the benefits of the aforementioned points?