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I've been in open plan offices that worked great and others that were terrible. But I take issue with this part of the article: > Open plan offices have taken

I've been in open plan offices that worked great and others that were terrible. But I take issue with this part of the article: > Open plan offices have taken off because of a desire to increase interaction and collaboration among workers. This is the reason invoked after the fact. The real motivation is a financial one. You have X sqft of office space, Y people you'd like to fit in. Open plan offices are seen as the most efficicent way to cram a lot of people into a smaller space. Then more loftly reasons are invoked so that the company doesn't look cheap.

ben509 8y ago
I agree that's going to be a much bigger factor, and when you look at commercial office space, you'd be shocked at how much space walls or even dividers chew up, and how much it costs in rent. But I was on a team where the devs all wanted an open plan, so they weren't motivated by square footage. They specifically requested that all the dividers be taken out, and the Powers That Be didn't really want to because that wound up costing more as they were getting shafted by their contractors for absurdly simple jobs.
gutnor 8y ago
> The real motivation is a financial one. And the absolute hatred people on HN have for it is most likely due to the downgrade from personal office to shared space. In Europe, where personal offices never really happened outside management, Open Office are not working better, but they are the norm that people accept, not a anger inducing topic.
- mieseratte 8y ago
  I've never had a private office, accept for the time I tried holing up in an unused server closet, but I have had a semi-private cube and compared to it open offices are absolute shit. In terms of space, cubicles aren't much different than open-office but there is a cost reduction (cheap Ikea desks vs. desk and walls). I wonder how much is cost, how much is space, and how much is being able to directly see all your peons when managers make these decisions. Personally, If I weren't about to go remote I'd probably come in one weekend and setup a semi-permanent deer stand as my desk...
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
The argument that companies choose open-plan offices to save money is silly. They are fully aware that even a simplistic productivity model combined with easy to estimate productivity losses out of high base salaries nets out to a loss, not even counting other sources of loss like low morale, hindered collaboration due to distractions, etc. It’s comical to suggest medium or large corporations aren’t modeling and measuring these effects. The true losses are likely even higher and this is easy to see using the types of productivity and cost models that many companies already use. Besides, the amount saved per head in real estate terms is tiny compared to other budget concerns in a lot of companies, or even opulent indulgences (I once worked for a company that took all ~300 employees plus up to 5 additional friends or family per person on a 4-day ski trip, with all transportation, lift tickets, rentals, food, hotel and child care paid for by the company). Even for huge headcount firms, the savings is not that significant. And obvious counter-examples like Stack Overflow just immediately refute this line of excuses. I am so saddened that as a community, engineers and developers have bought these paper thin excuses for abjectly terrible physical work conditions and don’t negotiate harder to prevent it. It’s very clearly not chosen for cost savings. That’s just the excuse because plainly admitting that it’s for status signalling and indulging fashion is not a defensible reason for damaging morale and productivity.

ben509 8y ago

I agree that's going to be a much bigger factor, and when you look at commercial office space, you'd be shocked at how much space walls or even dividers chew up, and how much it costs in rent. But I was on a team where the devs all wanted an open plan, so they weren't motivated by square footage. They specifically requested that all the dividers be taken out, and the Powers That Be didn't really want to because that wound up costing more as they were getting shafted by their contractors for absurdly simple jobs.

gutnor 8y ago

> The real motivation is a financial one. And the absolute hatred people on HN have for it is most likely due to the downgrade from personal office to shared space. In Europe, where personal offices never really happened outside management, Open Office are not working better, but they are the norm that people accept, not a anger inducing topic.

mieseratte 8y ago
I've never had a private office, accept for the time I tried holing up in an unused server closet, but I have had a semi-private cube and compared to it open offices are absolute shit. In terms of space, cubicles aren't much different than open-office but there is a cost reduction (cheap Ikea desks vs. desk and walls). I wonder how much is cost, how much is space, and how much is being able to directly see all your peons when managers make these decisions. Personally, If I weren't about to go remote I'd probably come in one weekend and setup a semi-permanent deer stand as my desk...

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

The argument that companies choose open-plan offices to save money is silly. They are fully aware that even a simplistic productivity model combined with easy to estimate productivity losses out of high base salaries nets out to a loss, not even counting other sources of loss like low morale, hindered collaboration due to distractions, etc. It’s comical to suggest medium or large corporations aren’t modeling and measuring these effects. The true losses are likely even higher and this is easy to see using the types of productivity and cost models that many companies already use. Besides, the amount saved per head in real estate terms is tiny compared to other budget concerns in a lot of companies, or even opulent indulgences (I once worked for a company that took all ~300 employees plus up to 5 additional friends or family per person on a 4-day ski trip, with all transportation, lift tickets, rentals, food, hotel and child care paid for by the company). Even for huge headcount firms, the savings is not that significant. And obvious counter-examples like Stack Overflow just immediately refute this line of excuses. I am so saddened that as a community, engineers and developers have bought these paper thin excuses for abjectly terrible physical work conditions and don’t negotiate harder to prevent it. It’s very clearly not chosen for cost savings. That’s just the excuse because plainly admitting that it’s for status signalling and indulging fashion is not a defensible reason for damaging morale and productivity.