11 ms·

Why open office design makes people less productive

54 points by aytekin 8y ago

cddotdotslash 8y ago
It's interesting to me how quickly this trend has evolved. 5-6 years ago, every recruiting email and startup job posting I saw advertised open floor plans as if they were a top benefit. Now, lots of enterprises have copied the trend (expectedly since it's cheaper) and I'm getting recruiting messages from startups on LinkedIn bragging about how their office has "lots of quiet space" or "private offices."
- denimnerd 8y ago
  my enterprise has gone full tilt. open offices, w/ hot desking and instead of laptops its a thin client. so yeah when you need or want to work from home you have to use the slow citrix client. fun..
maxxxxx 8y ago
It's interesting how bad trends persist even though most people say they are a problem. Open office is one, excessive meetings is one, E-mail overload, Slack and so on. My theory is that the people in power (management) quickly get to the level where everything they do in their jobs requires talking to multiple people and coordinating and they apply that need to everybody's work so they think all work is about "Collaboration" and "Connecting". At least for engineering I think there is not that much need for constant collaboration but there is a big need for focused work which is hard to do in an open office. In addition open offices even fail for collaboration. I work in a cube farm with some open office space and I rarely see people actually collaborate there. Instead people have headsets and are desperately trying to focus. I used to work in team rooms before and there we talked to each other a lot in comparison.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  The primary motivator I think is just cost. It costs probably less than 1/2 in terms of square footage and overhead. Expenses are easy and tangible, the social stuff, not so much, so the 'hard data' of cost efficiency wins. I've worked in open spaces and it drives me absolutely batty, I can't get anything done. I refuse to consider that mid-level business professionals should be resigned to wearing 'headphones' to have to keep the noise out, it's undignified.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    " I refuse to consider that mid-level business professionals should be resigned to wearing 'headphones' to have to keep the noise out, it's undignified. " Agreed. It feels very disrespectful.
- sametmax 8y ago
  Don't look so far. It's just cheaper. Also it gives managers the feeling they can avoid people slacking off because everbody see what you are doing.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    "It's just cheaper." Is that really true? We have a ton of meeting rooms and other space that also use up a lot of space. You don't need meeting rooms if people can sit together in their offices.
  - mc32 8y ago
    Absolutely agree with that. I’ve also seen it cargo culted. It’s been implemented because, “well, if successful multibillion dollar companies are doing it, it must be good... it's probably part their success.” Of course pointing out the negative aspects and asking questions automatically got you labeled as “not being a team player.”
    - existencebox 8y ago
      This is an issue on which I feel strongly enough to speak about on an account I've connected to my employer. (I am a Microsoftie, and not because I think you believe this, but to support your point) It's _certainly not_ part of our success. I'd even go so far as to say our success is in spite of it. I've seen many engineers, including the single most competent dev I've ever worked with, migrate to other companies as their teams were moved out of personal offices or into larger open offices. I've also seen my own (and my teammate's) work and culture suffer, as we have to work later, fight distractions, and often politik internally to fight for the "best seat" (actually having one wall). This is, to me, an absurd situation to put professional adults in. This process is only partially complete, and changes take a while to take effect, so it's to be seen what the tractable results are, but in the same way I called out our bad choice by the manner in which we dissolved SDETs, the push for open offices is a canonically bad choice. (This is only my opinion, I in no way speak for the company etc etc)
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
- EngineerBetter 8y ago
  Folks who practice pairing and mobbing would probably disagree about constant collaboration.
  - Xeago 8y ago
    I have yet to see mobbing happen in our open-office plan whereas it was very common in our team-room setup before. Don’t want to disturb the teams sitting right besides us.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      Exactly! In team rooms you can actually be loud and energetic whereas in open space everything needs to be hushed.
      - styfle 8y ago
        The worst is when someone walks over and starts talking but no one knows who they are talking to: Just me? My boss? Everyone? Is it rude if I don’t look and continue to focus on my work? Everything can be heard and seen in an open office so I think it makes communication worse.
    - Corrado 8y ago
      Our open office layout was so quiet it felt like working in a Library. Half the time I was scared that my headphones were too loud and disturbing others around me. It was very difficult to actually talk to another person in my area because it echoed and I felt like I had to whisper everything. Maybe if we would have had a noise canceling system or something it would have been different.
plmpsu 8y ago
Can anyone chime in regarding the economics and cost savings of open floor plans vs. private per-team offices (or the like)? As an employee working in an open space, their costs on subjective well being, quality of work & etc. are so obvious to me that I sometimes get upset that employers and I do not agree on the issue.
cortesoft 8y ago
I have always been blessed (and cursed) with the ability to block out everything around me. It bothers people, actually, because they will come talk to me and I won’t realize they are standing at my desk talking. I still don’t like open offices. I hate the lack of privacy.
enieslobby 8y ago
I've read so many variants of this same article.
EngineerBetter 8y ago
Why are "open offices are bad" stories so popular on HN? I've only ever worked in open plan offices, and can't say I've ever had a problem concentrating. I'm not sure what alternatives are popular, but if an employer forced me to work in a cubicle I'd immediately quit without hesitation. Having visited cubicle offices, they strike me as inhumane detention centres.
- JauntTrooper 8y ago
  I've worked in a high walled cube, a low walled cube, and an open office. The open office looked nicer and more modern, but the high walled cube was the most comfortable of the 3. You could work in the high walled cube without feeling like someone was watching over your shoulder, and people were a little more respectful about interrupting you when they came by. Low walled cubes encouraged more conversation over the cube walls, but open office somehow encouraged it less than the cubes because everyone had headphones and earplugs in.
  - thrav 8y ago
    This has been my experience. Low walled cubes allow me to drop my chair and block everything else out of my line of sight, then stand up and have the ability to see everyone around me. It also hides everybody’s cords, which are always beyond messy and hideous in most open office settings. I think small cube wall (that acts as a backdrop for a stationary monitor or 2) is optimal.
    - fouc 8y ago
      Most open offices have tables that are designed with holes for cables and even trays underneath to keep it all organized and out of sight.
- jfim 8y ago
  Have you worked in an office building where individual developers have their own private offices to compare? From past experience, having a private office limits distractions and allows one to focus completely on the task at hand. As for cubicles, they're significantly worse than private offices; you get the drawbacks of both open plan offices and private offices, without getting either the privacy or the noise isolation.
phakding 8y ago
These and some other trends are originated in Agile methodologies, are they not? Software engineering is being taken over by pseudo scientific ideology is what it is. Funny thing is, no proof/studies are needed to make sweeping changes like these.
utopkara 8y ago
I had an office (in the company which pioneered individual offices for their dedicated building for creatives many decades ago), and I have worked in open office settings. There are times when you want to think on your own, but I don't think it is impossible to achieve if you have a good pair of noise cancelling headphones. In return, you get to interact with peers more openly. Not to mention the cost savings for the company. This is absolutely a win-win. Although, the devil is in the details, and they are neither easy nor cheap: Open office settings have to be implemented with the flexibility to occasionally work from home; ample amount of meeting rooms for impromptu huddles; well designed ergonomics; absolutely relaxing decor and setup.
- notacoward 8y ago
  The cost-savings argument doesn't really work. For one thing, those savings aren't real. What does "ample amount of meeting rooms" mean? It means a higher seat-per-employee ratio, just to make up for the inconvenience of their main seats not being usable for those huddles. And speaking of inconvenience, time spent walking to/from rooms and waiting outside rooms for the last group to get out and adjusting chairs and wiping boards and picking up your crap is all time not spent producing. I've seen many people lose 5-10 minutes of productivity every hour of every day like that. That's not cost savings. Neither is the effect on productivity when people are in their primary seats. Look at any company's expense breakdown. Personnel will be at or near the top; real estate will be much further down. Keeping people more productive is a much bigger cost savings than cheaping out on real estate. I contend that there is no way to implement an open-office system that truly reduces costs. The only reason they're so common is a combination of cost insensitivity and cargo culting.
  - utopkara 8y ago
    Meeting room switch does take time, and it is a cost, cannot argue with facts. However, real estate cost is not high only if the company is located in the woods. If one is looking to grow workforce in a central location, the real estate cost is through the roof. Keep in mind that companies do not start at their final size; so the efficiency of the space will be far lower during the earlier stages.
notacoward 8y ago
I really like the team-room idea mentioned near the end. The noise from my immediate peers doesn't bother me. It really is useful to overhear others' conversations sometimes, or pull someone in on a moment's notice, and when there's a high level of social connection people can agree on when to be quiet. What really drives me nuts is constantly hearing the conversations of people two aisles over, talking about something that couldn't possibly be of interest to me. And the people walking through, because not everyone gets to be around the edges. (In one workspace I sometimes occupy, the edge is all taken up by conference rooms so everyone is in the middle with people walking past.) There's a reason that every desk in an open-office layout seems to have at least one pair of headphones on it. That's a poor solution where an obviously better one exists.
- Corrado 8y ago
  I've actually worked in a small team environment several times and I really love it. At one point we were in an old vault with no windows and concrete walls, and it was great. We all had the same taste in music so we just cranked it up and let the sales guys outside do their thing and they left us alone. In another case I was in a room with 8 people arranged into 2 "pods". We all worked on similar projects and would often turn to each other to get help, show something off, etc. I got sick more often that year (I think the ventilation in that room was bad) but we were very productive and I really enjoyed working there.
umichguy 8y ago
Are there even "closed office" designs? I've never worked in one. I think I might have been in a couple maybe once or twice over the course of last 5 to 6 yrs while visiting someone. Everybody in my office, right up to senior VPs sit in open plan. I didn't even know the guy sitting next to me was one when I joined before someone pointed it out. I really can't compare.
- dasmoth 8y ago
  I had a private office a couple of times in academia. Not uncommon (although the open plan trend has been showing up there, too). The private sector does seem to have embraced the bullpen pretty thoroughly...
- dwaltrip 8y ago
  They exist. My first job had offices with 1 to 4 people per room. We even had doors!
- jfim 8y ago
  They're uncommon nowadays, but Sun Microsystems [1] and Microsoft [2] had them. Apparently Microsoft is replacing them with open office designs these days though. FogCreek [3] is adamant about private offices. [1] https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Work-is-where-you-hang-your-coat-Sun-leads-way-2654589.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Work-is-where-you-ha... [2] https://officesnapshots.com/photos/22763/ https://officesnapshots.com/photos/22763/ [3] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/12/29/the-new-fog-creek-office/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/12/29/the-new-fog-creek-...

54 points by aytekin 8y ago

It's interesting to me how quickly this trend has evolved. 5-6 years ago, every recruiting email and startup job posting I saw advertised open floor plans as if they were a top benefit. Now, lots of enterprises have copied the trend (expectedly since it's cheaper) and I'm getting recruiting messages from startups on LinkedIn bragging about how their office has "lots of quiet space" or "private offices."

denimnerd 8y ago
my enterprise has gone full tilt. open offices, w/ hot desking and instead of laptops its a thin client. so yeah when you need or want to work from home you have to use the slow citrix client. fun..

maxxxxx 8y ago

It's interesting how bad trends persist even though most people say they are a problem. Open office is one, excessive meetings is one, E-mail overload, Slack and so on. My theory is that the people in power (management) quickly get to the level where everything they do in their jobs requires talking to multiple people and coordinating and they apply that need to everybody's work so they think all work is about "Collaboration" and "Connecting". At least for engineering I think there is not that much need for constant collaboration but there is a big need for focused work which is hard to do in an open office. In addition open offices even fail for collaboration. I work in a cube farm with some open office space and I rarely see people actually collaborate there. Instead people have headsets and are desperately trying to focus. I used to work in team rooms before and there we talked to each other a lot in comparison.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
The primary motivator I think is just cost. It costs probably less than 1/2 in terms of square footage and overhead. Expenses are easy and tangible, the social stuff, not so much, so the 'hard data' of cost efficiency wins. I've worked in open spaces and it drives me absolutely batty, I can't get anything done. I refuse to consider that mid-level business professionals should be resigned to wearing 'headphones' to have to keep the noise out, it's undignified.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  " I refuse to consider that mid-level business professionals should be resigned to wearing 'headphones' to have to keep the noise out, it's undignified. " Agreed. It feels very disrespectful.
sametmax 8y ago
Don't look so far. It's just cheaper. Also it gives managers the feeling they can avoid people slacking off because everbody see what you are doing.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "It's just cheaper." Is that really true? We have a ton of meeting rooms and other space that also use up a lot of space. You don't need meeting rooms if people can sit together in their offices.
- mc32 8y ago
  Absolutely agree with that. I’ve also seen it cargo culted. It’s been implemented because, “well, if successful multibillion dollar companies are doing it, it must be good... it's probably part their success.” Of course pointing out the negative aspects and asking questions automatically got you labeled as “not being a team player.”
  - existencebox 8y ago
    This is an issue on which I feel strongly enough to speak about on an account I've connected to my employer. (I am a Microsoftie, and not because I think you believe this, but to support your point) It's _certainly not_ part of our success. I'd even go so far as to say our success is in spite of it. I've seen many engineers, including the single most competent dev I've ever worked with, migrate to other companies as their teams were moved out of personal offices or into larger open offices. I've also seen my own (and my teammate's) work and culture suffer, as we have to work later, fight distractions, and often politik internally to fight for the "best seat" (actually having one wall). This is, to me, an absurd situation to put professional adults in. This process is only partially complete, and changes take a while to take effect, so it's to be seen what the tractable results are, but in the same way I called out our bad choice by the manner in which we dissolved SDETs, the push for open offices is a canonically bad choice. (This is only my opinion, I in no way speak for the company etc etc)
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
EngineerBetter 8y ago
Folks who practice pairing and mobbing would probably disagree about constant collaboration.
- Xeago 8y ago
  I have yet to see mobbing happen in our open-office plan whereas it was very common in our team-room setup before. Don’t want to disturb the teams sitting right besides us.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    Exactly! In team rooms you can actually be loud and energetic whereas in open space everything needs to be hushed.
    - styfle 8y ago
      The worst is when someone walks over and starts talking but no one knows who they are talking to: Just me? My boss? Everyone? Is it rude if I don’t look and continue to focus on my work? Everything can be heard and seen in an open office so I think it makes communication worse.
  - Corrado 8y ago
    Our open office layout was so quiet it felt like working in a Library. Half the time I was scared that my headphones were too loud and disturbing others around me. It was very difficult to actually talk to another person in my area because it echoed and I felt like I had to whisper everything. Maybe if we would have had a noise canceling system or something it would have been different.

plmpsu 8y ago

Can anyone chime in regarding the economics and cost savings of open floor plans vs. private per-team offices (or the like)? As an employee working in an open space, their costs on subjective well being, quality of work & etc. are so obvious to me that I sometimes get upset that employers and I do not agree on the issue.

cortesoft 8y ago

I have always been blessed (and cursed) with the ability to block out everything around me. It bothers people, actually, because they will come talk to me and I won’t realize they are standing at my desk talking. I still don’t like open offices. I hate the lack of privacy.

enieslobby 8y ago

I've read so many variants of this same article.

EngineerBetter 8y ago

Why are "open offices are bad" stories so popular on HN? I've only ever worked in open plan offices, and can't say I've ever had a problem concentrating. I'm not sure what alternatives are popular, but if an employer forced me to work in a cubicle I'd immediately quit without hesitation. Having visited cubicle offices, they strike me as inhumane detention centres.

JauntTrooper 8y ago
I've worked in a high walled cube, a low walled cube, and an open office. The open office looked nicer and more modern, but the high walled cube was the most comfortable of the 3. You could work in the high walled cube without feeling like someone was watching over your shoulder, and people were a little more respectful about interrupting you when they came by. Low walled cubes encouraged more conversation over the cube walls, but open office somehow encouraged it less than the cubes because everyone had headphones and earplugs in.
- thrav 8y ago
  This has been my experience. Low walled cubes allow me to drop my chair and block everything else out of my line of sight, then stand up and have the ability to see everyone around me. It also hides everybody’s cords, which are always beyond messy and hideous in most open office settings. I think small cube wall (that acts as a backdrop for a stationary monitor or 2) is optimal.
  - fouc 8y ago
    Most open offices have tables that are designed with holes for cables and even trays underneath to keep it all organized and out of sight.
jfim 8y ago
Have you worked in an office building where individual developers have their own private offices to compare? From past experience, having a private office limits distractions and allows one to focus completely on the task at hand. As for cubicles, they're significantly worse than private offices; you get the drawbacks of both open plan offices and private offices, without getting either the privacy or the noise isolation.

phakding 8y ago

These and some other trends are originated in Agile methodologies, are they not? Software engineering is being taken over by pseudo scientific ideology is what it is. Funny thing is, no proof/studies are needed to make sweeping changes like these.

utopkara 8y ago

I had an office (in the company which pioneered individual offices for their dedicated building for creatives many decades ago), and I have worked in open office settings. There are times when you want to think on your own, but I don't think it is impossible to achieve if you have a good pair of noise cancelling headphones. In return, you get to interact with peers more openly. Not to mention the cost savings for the company. This is absolutely a win-win. Although, the devil is in the details, and they are neither easy nor cheap: Open office settings have to be implemented with the flexibility to occasionally work from home; ample amount of meeting rooms for impromptu huddles; well designed ergonomics; absolutely relaxing decor and setup.

notacoward 8y ago
The cost-savings argument doesn't really work. For one thing, those savings aren't real. What does "ample amount of meeting rooms" mean? It means a higher seat-per-employee ratio, just to make up for the inconvenience of their main seats not being usable for those huddles. And speaking of inconvenience, time spent walking to/from rooms and waiting outside rooms for the last group to get out and adjusting chairs and wiping boards and picking up your crap is all time not spent producing. I've seen many people lose 5-10 minutes of productivity every hour of every day like that. That's not cost savings. Neither is the effect on productivity when people are in their primary seats. Look at any company's expense breakdown. Personnel will be at or near the top; real estate will be much further down. Keeping people more productive is a much bigger cost savings than cheaping out on real estate. I contend that there is no way to implement an open-office system that truly reduces costs. The only reason they're so common is a combination of cost insensitivity and cargo culting.
- utopkara 8y ago
  Meeting room switch does take time, and it is a cost, cannot argue with facts. However, real estate cost is not high only if the company is located in the woods. If one is looking to grow workforce in a central location, the real estate cost is through the roof. Keep in mind that companies do not start at their final size; so the efficiency of the space will be far lower during the earlier stages.

notacoward 8y ago

I really like the team-room idea mentioned near the end. The noise from my immediate peers doesn't bother me. It really is useful to overhear others' conversations sometimes, or pull someone in on a moment's notice, and when there's a high level of social connection people can agree on when to be quiet. What really drives me nuts is constantly hearing the conversations of people two aisles over, talking about something that couldn't possibly be of interest to me. And the people walking through, because not everyone gets to be around the edges. (In one workspace I sometimes occupy, the edge is all taken up by conference rooms so everyone is in the middle with people walking past.) There's a reason that every desk in an open-office layout seems to have at least one pair of headphones on it. That's a poor solution where an obviously better one exists.

Corrado 8y ago
I've actually worked in a small team environment several times and I really love it. At one point we were in an old vault with no windows and concrete walls, and it was great. We all had the same taste in music so we just cranked it up and let the sales guys outside do their thing and they left us alone. In another case I was in a room with 8 people arranged into 2 "pods". We all worked on similar projects and would often turn to each other to get help, show something off, etc. I got sick more often that year (I think the ventilation in that room was bad) but we were very productive and I really enjoyed working there.

umichguy 8y ago

Are there even "closed office" designs? I've never worked in one. I think I might have been in a couple maybe once or twice over the course of last 5 to 6 yrs while visiting someone. Everybody in my office, right up to senior VPs sit in open plan. I didn't even know the guy sitting next to me was one when I joined before someone pointed it out. I really can't compare.

dasmoth 8y ago
I had a private office a couple of times in academia. Not uncommon (although the open plan trend has been showing up there, too). The private sector does seem to have embraced the bullpen pretty thoroughly...
dwaltrip 8y ago
They exist. My first job had offices with 1 to 4 people per room. We even had doors!
jfim 8y ago
They're uncommon nowadays, but Sun Microsystems [1] and Microsoft [2] had them. Apparently Microsoft is replacing them with open office designs these days though. FogCreek [3] is adamant about private offices. [1] https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Work-is-where-you-hang-your-coat-Sun-leads-way-2654589.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Work-is-where-you-ha... [2] https://officesnapshots.com/photos/22763/ https://officesnapshots.com/photos/22763/ [3] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/12/29/the-new-fog-creek-office/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/12/29/the-new-fog-creek-...