21 ms·

U.S. workers hate ‘open’ office spaces

362 points by Corrado 8y ago

ajhurliman 8y ago
People complained about cubicles before, now they're complaining about lack of barriers. The highly negative responses people seem to have about their working conditions doesn't seem to be a particularly interesting line of questions.
Corrado 8y ago
How many articles will it take to incite positive change? Not only does this survey reveal that people don't like open office spaces it highlights that they would rather work remotely. This is a shift that I haven't seen before, at least in any survey. Interesting.
- acct1771 8y ago
  "You can call me a rich bastard in the press all you want, as long as I'm still rich."
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Articles won’t matter. People will have to refuse jobs in open office environments or quit when they’re proposed or implemented for change to occur.
- organsnyder 8y ago
  I mentioned the open office to my former manager as one of my reasons for leaving (yes, I know some people think it's never a good idea to give exit feedback, but IMHO it depends on the context). I knew my manager was already not a fan of open offices, so I figured I'd give him a bit of ammunition.
- Kadin 8y ago
  Who cares what articles say, if a company can still recruit employees? When good candidates start turning down positions because of the office layout, that might create some pressure to change, though. But I think one of the problems is that bad office layouts tend to exacerbate problems. They may be the ultimate underlying cause of retention problems, but they're typically not the proximate cause, and thus don't get the blame they're due. Someone might leave because of interpersonal conflicts or just "not fitting in" to their team, which might not seem like an office-layout issue. But who knows if they might have gelled better with their team if they weren't all sitting around with noise-cancelling headphones on, or glaring at each other for turning the lights on/off, or taking too many phone calls, or all the other annoyances of an open office.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  Part of the problem here is the title: "U.S. workers hate 'open' office spaces". The CEO in the corner office lighting cigars off of $100 bills doesn't care what the workers hate - in fact, he probably sees this as a net positive, because it reminds the workers who they are and who he is. And in reality, it's _not_ important what U.S. workers "hate" and that they hate it isn't really the problem with open offices - the problem is that everybody working in them is working at half capacity because they're wasting at least half of their concentration trying to block out all of the (completely unnecessary) distractions they're surrounded by.
Insanity 8y ago
I'd bet it's the same for other countries. I'm European and I'd rather be working from home rather than an open office. Alas, the standard here is open office.
- Wohlf 8y ago
  I used to hate cubicles until I experienced an open office plan. I now know things could be better, but they can easily be far worse.
  - spudlyo 8y ago
    Yeah, I can't believe I now look upon the times when we had cubicles as "the good old days", but compared to the open office plan hell of today they seem like a damn luxury.
- mcv 8y ago
  To me it matters how open. I want to share a room with the members of my team, I don't want to share it with noisy salespeople. I've worked at many companies that get it right, but a few get very wrong.
  - nsnick 8y ago
    It also matters what sort of keyboards everyone is using. Horribly noisy mechanical keyboards make it impossible to concentrate.
    - brightball 8y ago
      This is definitely one of those things that I can't understand. There seem to be so many people that swear by using keyboards with the clicks...but I just don't understand it. Especially once you get out of your own house.
      - bshipp 8y ago
        I used to swear by mechanical keyboards; I wrote my entire thesis on one, much to the chagrin of my graduate student officemate. She still brings it up when I see her, twelve years later! For me, the difference was similar to weighted vs unweighted piano keys. With a mechanical keyboard I could get into a rhythm that I miss when working on a bubble-type keyboard. I've since trained myself (mostly out of necessity due to travel) to type almost as quickly and error-free on my laptop keyboard, but I do still miss the feedback from mechanical springs. If I did 'spring' for a new mech keyboard now, however, I'd find the quietest one I could get, that still provided some sense of feedback. I don't need my noisy clicks to provide a juvenile signal to my coworkers that, yes, I am indeed working really hard on something really important right now.
bshipp 8y ago
Our office just converted to an open space design with fancy desks that elevate for standing or drop to sit. Although it's a small office, one of my coworkers already left (and refuses to communicate with any of the management except through his lawyer) and three others are in conversations with labour lawyers on constructive dismissal cases, while the remaining three are shopping their resumes and attending interviews. That means we could lose seven out of ten staff. It's definitely not all due to the open office space, but it was pretty much the last straw for most of them. I was one of the few who got to keep their office during the demolition, I think mostly because it was written in my contract when I accepted this job. So although I, personally, don't think they look very efficient, I can relate that the staff in my company dispise the lack of privacy and general noise that results from working in an open office space.
- systemtest 8y ago
  Perhaps it's some sort of the Stockholm syndrome but I am now at the point where the open office noise has become white noise. And it is making me perform better. The constant chatter, ringtones, speakerphones, toilets flushing, coffee beans grinding, printers buzzing. There is a rhythm to it. It's a living organism of sound. Who am I kidding, anyone need a Java/Kotlin back-end developer?
  - grigjd3 8y ago
    You can hear toilets flushing? Yuck.
    - yitchelle 8y ago
      Hopefully, the other toilet noises are quieter.
    - systemtest 8y ago
      The worst part is hearing a toilet flush and watching a co-worker walk out seconds later.
      - 8y ago
hellisothers 8y ago
Surely an unpopular opinion but my previous job of many years had individual offices and my current job of 2 years is an open office for a couple thousand employees and it’s really not that bad. I was really worried when I started after hearing all the angst online but after a month I didn’t notice, I put in headphones if I need focus and it’s all good. I’m a software engineer at a level where my role involves a lot of collaboration so maybe that’s why I don’t mind? I notice others on my team do work away from their desks 90% of the time and I imagine it’s so they can hide and focus and the company provides locations for that. We would need 3x size of location(s) without open offices so I get it, also I’m it helps that the office has embraced “open” and tries to provide alternative space within the office, also grouping sales far away from engineering :)
- shereadsthenews 8y ago
  The problem for some people is the open layout inhibits collaboration. Nobody wants to start talking because it disturbs others. Whereas if you could just walk into someone's office and close the door you'd feel free to yak away.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    Exactly. A real discussion can often get loud but you can't really do that in an open layout. So collaboration becomes pretty shallow.
  - metamet 8y ago
    We have "pods" where each pod has 10 desks (with monitors/standing desks, etc), five along each of the two outside walls, with two long tables and TVs on wheels between the desk-walls. We each have privacy (and our own seating), but the collaboration is always available and not overwhelming. I dig it a lot more than the cube I had at my old job.
    - alexgmcm 8y ago
      My PhD office was like that and it was pretty sweet. Now I work in industry with a fully open office and yeah, it's a nightmare.
lordleft 8y ago
Optional collaborative spaces? Awesome. Mandatory collaborative spaces? Tire fire.
meddlepal 8y ago
Recently got a tour from some former coworkers of the new PTC HQ in Boston, open office AND hotel style seating (no assigned location... stuff goes in a cubby at the end of the day). So not only can you hate all the noise and distraction around you, but tomorrow it can be entirely new set of people that piss you off. Also nothing says "you don't matter" like not even giving someone 4x6 feet of space for a desk and chair they can call their own..
- beart 8y ago
  Our office transitioned to desk hoteling. What it amounted to is a small set of people switching desks semi-regularly. The first month, everyone pulled down all their personal stuff. Six months later, most people never actually changed desks and ended up putting their personal stuff back up, 'claiming' desks as theirs anyway.
  - 0xffff2 8y ago
    Didn't "hoteling" start out as "hot desking", where the idea is that there are fewer desks than employees because some percentage of employees are out of the office each day? What the point of not having assigned desks if you still have as many desks as employees?
    - CharlesColeman 8y ago
      > What the point of not having assigned desks if you still have as many desks as employees? This is the point: > https://www.wired.com/1999/02/chiat-3/ https://www.wired.com/1999/02/chiat-3/ > As the unofficial story goes, Jay Chiat was skiing down a mountain in Telluride when it dawned on him that the conventional American office structure was antiquated and counterproductive; that revolution was not only inevitable but overdue; and that destiny had selected him, Jay Chiat, as its agent of change. So the boss can see himself as a trend-setting visionary. That link it pretty interesting, since it was clear that "hoteling" was awful 20 years ago in 1999. It's bizarre that I was reading about the how terrible 2019's trends in office space are when I was a kid.
    - 8y ago
grigjd3 8y ago
Open offices aren't about worker happiness or efficiency. They're about decreasing costs.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Not even that, because reduced productivity (and iirc Facebook reported having to pay their employees 1.5x just because of the bad working environment). It's so that managers look cool when strolling through their workforce, it looks good and hip on recruitment webpages, etc.
  - HenryKissinger 8y ago
    > Destroying your employees' productivity for a pic.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  "Penny wise and pound foolish." Which is to say if you're paying a developer $70K+/year (+taxes/benefits), and you're skimping on a $2K one time cost cubicle, even if that loss results in increased turnover ($$$), reduced morale ($$$), or reduced productively ($$$) then that's an irrational decision. Employers should consider a "1-2%" per-employee per year "morale fund." If you're paying someone $70K/year the least you could manage is $700-1400 to keep them sweet, it is just good business. Better equipment, software to make them more productive, a nicer chair, whatever. But I've come to realize that managers rarely make decisions for purely rational reasons. The prestige and internal politics often play a larger role than pure costing.
  - kyralis 8y ago
    They're not skimping $2k one time cost on a cubicle. They're skimping on the recurring cost in rent and maintenance on a large facility in which to place that cubicle, plus the cost of that cubicle. My wife was an office manager that worked with a couple startups through expansions, and the costs of office space and office equipment is actually quite a bit higher than you might think. That said, I still think it's generally a foolish thing to do for many companies and I personally despise open offices. I've recently transitioned to being fully remote, and a hatred of the open office plan was a good part of what pushed me in that direction.
cowmix 8y ago
My company just moved from a almost completely open floor plan to an open floor plan but plenty of private / huddle rooms. Also we have a very liberal work-at-home options too. So far, the change has been positive. People are able to, on the fly, pick the type of physical work environment they want to experience at a given point in time. Also, our management invested in VERY nice noise canceling headsets for anyone who requested one. That technology has done wonders for productivity and has increase the quality of our video conferences.
- iSnow 8y ago
  I work with noise cancelling headsets all the time and they do nothing for cancelling out phone calls or office chat. You could work with them next to a big machine and have a more distraction-free environment than I have right now while my colleague is on the phone and I am on Hacker News instead of in the bowels of my code.
  - cowmix 8y ago
    To be clear, these are noise cancelling for your ears AND mic. Most of us have the Jabra 75 (over the ear) pair. It definitely helps on conference calls.
    - 0xffff2 8y ago
      I don't think GP was talking about when they are on the phone. If you're talking on the phone next to me, I can hear you talking, whether I have noise cancelling headphones on or not.
- awakeasleep 8y ago
  I see a lot of people giving thanks for 'nice noise canceling headsets' in this thread, but from what I can tell, noise canceling does not work for about 50% of people. In my office we've tested every single noise canceling headset, from Bose QC, to Sennheiser PXC 550, to B&W PX, and everything in between. The noise canceling is a weird hiss, increases feelings of ear pressure, and the discomfort manifests as a headache or car sickness after a few hours- and that isn't even taking into account the other pains people feel from prolonged use of over ear headphones. When you're talking about wearing something for 8 hours a day, there are some real ergo needs that drive the shape and technology of the device. Think about how light typical call center headsets are- that is a professional device. Not to say it doesn't work for you individually, but noise canceling headsets are NOT a solution that works for an office worth of people. Out of about 500 people in my office, only 20 or so stuck with noise canceling cans as their daily headsets.
brightball 8y ago
I always figured the solution to this issue would be in 2 parts: 1. All open office layouts must include a stipend for high quality, noise cancelling headphones that won't hurt your ears long term and are comfortable enough to wear all day. 2. People should have a little LED that sits on their desk, monitor, etc that they can turn red when they don't want to be disturbed (like this). https://redlevelgroup.com/busylight-the-next-level-do-not-disturb-sign/ https://redlevelgroup.com/busylight-the-next-level-do-not-di...
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  Noise cancelling headphones help, I find that I can't really get in the zone with the constant comings and goings, nor really relax surrounded by people, and not being able to feel good about taking a break, knowing that people could be looking at my screen and judging me constantly.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > 1. All open office layouts must include a stipend for high quality, noise cancelling headphones that won't hurt your ears long term and are comfortable enough to wear all day. Noise-cancelling headphones are designed to cancel predictable background noise, such as the white noise of an airplane's engines while flying. They are not designed to cancel the noise of conversations happening around you. Furthermore, noise-cancelling headphones cause dizziness and nausea after extended use in many people. This is well-documented and also fairly understood, given the relationship between the ears and the vestibular system. Finally, auditory noise isn't the only problem people have with open office layouts. Visual distractions and the "fishbowl effect" are also significant factors.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  > noise cancelling headphones > don't want to be disturbed Yeah, collaboration here we come!
meddlepal 8y ago
I don't like pure open office setups, but I do enjoy bullpen style arrangements with a team of say 5 to 7 in the same shared space. It is a hard setup to get right though. High wall cubes are fine too... Obviously a real office with a door would be ideal, but I think that door has closed at this point in time.
- thebiss 8y ago
  Bullpens defined by 6 foot segmented movable whiteboard walls allow teams to grow and shrink while projects change, while keeping noise contained. Individual quiet spaces are still needed for private meetings and client calls. https://i.pinimg.com/736x/25/e5/8c/25e58cb8380ba9d5a9afdb1c1a5324b2.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/25/e5/8c/25e58cb8380ba9d5a9afdb1c1...
- KVFinn 8y ago
  >I do enjoy bullpen style arrangements with a team of say 5 to 7 in the same shared space. The key being team -- you are next to people you are actively collaborating with on a day to day basis.
- Kadin 8y ago
  IMO the optimal arrangement for technical teams is small groups of people in shared offices, say ~4 per office. What I've noticed is that a handful of people together in a space will typically work out issues like music vs. no music, lights on vs. off, blinds open vs. closed, etc. without a lot of trouble. But there's a tipping point where it gets much harder. Put 20 people in an open office and suddenly everyone is wearing headphones and nobody is talking (except the people who are ALWAYS talking/yelling to each other) and it sucks. I think as far back as the late 70s, "Peopleware" cited a bunch of studies that found that small shared offices with flexible policies on letting people move around (so people can self-organize either around their teams or with people they share space well with) was optimal. Sadly few offices seem to have adopted this.
- IpV8 8y ago
  Im a huge fan of the bullpen as well. You get the benefits of spontaneous conversation and collaboration, without the overwhelming anxiety that some of us feel in a crowded room. Its a solid compromise between collaboration and privacy.
beart 8y ago
Most open office layouts have to pump some sort of white noise into the environment to dampen voices echoing across huge rooms. I really don't understand why there is such an aversion to doing an open-ish office, segmenting groups of desks into smaller closed off (floor to ceiling frosted glass) areas instead of having the entire room open.
- Kadin 8y ago
  > I really don't understand why there is such an aversion to doing an open-ish office, segmenting groups of desks into smaller closed off (floor to ceiling frosted glass) areas Because that costs money, and open offices are a cost-savings measure. It's a way to be cheap while looking hip/stylish/whatever. In some cases I think there's also a barely-concealed dick measuring thing going on, where companies put in open office space so that they can elevate some employees by giving them cubicles (and executives, obviously, will always get outer-ring offices with windows!). So you take away with one hand, give it back with the other, and suddenly what was formerly standard for everyone becomes an incentive you can hand out discretionarily.
  - randcraw 8y ago
    It would add trivial cost to hang heavy sound-absorbing curtains as room partitions to break up an open space. These would reduce noise significantly from all sources and make the roomlets colorful and cozy. And they could be moved around over time to accommodate changes in team size, and just to add visual variety. No decent restaurant uses stadium seating as their decor. There's good reason. Patrons don't want to dine in a gymnasium.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Meanwhile in the defense industry you're all but assured a cube, often a tall one, maybe even an office if you happen to work in a building spec'd out that way. Can't have unauthorized eyes looking at what other people are working on.
- rdl 8y ago
  Curious where a cubicle wall would be considered necessary and sufficient isolation, even assuming people cleared to the sufficient level and on the same project. Seems like you'd either say ntk exists or not, so either shared workspace ok, or more robust isolation.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    The pattern I've noticed is that if the entire building/floor/cube farm is "you ain't getting in here without clearance" or "nothing in here requires clearance" then cube farms are acceptable. Most places with cube farms also provide something to string across the opening to prevent accidental NTK violations. You'll have oversized cube farms that are half empty even though the rest of the building is packed like sardines because they've determined that nobody else has a NTK for whatever the team occupying them is working on. At some point it comes down to common sense and cost, level of secrecy and expected lifetime of secrecy (the requirements for a sub propeller are different than something that's being production-ized so it can be issued to thousands of soldiers). The only buildings/floors I've seen that are all offices either were management or super secret algorithms and electronic systems integration projects. Like the kind of stuff where the "old boring legacy tech" exceeds the kind of stuff Hollywood shows you.
    - rdl 8y ago
      Makes sense. I'm only familiar with the paranoid VTR SCIFs and the plywood-and-tent SCIFs (downrange), not so much with how contractors handle C/S/TS in CONUS.
- Kadin 8y ago
  Honestly I think this has more to do with the profit margins in the defense industry, not because of any IA/OPSEC concerns. Though I have noticed a very unwelcome trend where some newer defense companies are building open-plan offices because they think it's "cool". Fine example of the worst sort of cargo-culting.
matthewfelgate 8y ago
Personally I hate open offices, I wish I had my own office. I could actually get some work done.
- HenryKissinger 8y ago
  Preach, brother.
DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
In the various discussions I've seen about open offices on Hacker News and elsewhere, I don't recall ever seeing a post from management explaining why they've implemented open offices despite these complaints. I'm I just mistaken about their collective silence? Or if not, does their silence imply some kind of ulterior motive?
- asdff 8y ago
  More people per square foot = cheaper lease.
  - menckenjr 8y ago
    It sounds a lot like those misbegotten standing airline seats (https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/standing-up-airplane-seat/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/standing-up-airplane-seat...) and it's another example of what happens when bean counters get control of things.
- Kadin 8y ago
  That's obvious: it's cheap. I've participated in office buildouts and seen architectural sketches of cubes vs. "open plan" tables. You can put a lot more people into the same area when you are just giving everyone a table. Higher density means less square footage which means lower rent. QED.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  In my company the managers I have talked to about this (they have private offices with windows) seemed to be thinking that the people who complain are just whiners. In addition these decisions get made pretty far up in the hierarchy so most likely the people who make the decision never have to work in that environment. For example in my company facilities makes the decisions but they have a nice team room with windows for everyone. So in short I believe that decisions about workspaces almost never that made by the prople who have to work there. And when you get to the level of people who can shape their workspace like CEO and VP you rarely see open office as the choice but usually private office with window.
rdl 8y ago
I'm fine with open offices with tiny teams all working on exactly the same task. Once that ceases to be the case, they become hell. My ideal office is essentially private regular office space, and then big conference rooms which can be taken over by teams for days/weeks/months. I've gotten more work done in a shared conference room with people in it than anywhere else, but it has to be during a specific task-focused time. I kind of wonder if the ideal office would be essentially an apartment building or hotels, with studio or 1br "apartments" per person, and then some meeting rooms/work rooms for actual work. Having a private bathroom, quiet office, "living room" office where you could have meetings, etc. would be pretty awesome.
- theshrike79 8y ago
  Exactly. Shared team spaces as "open offices", where everyone there is contributing to the same thing and understands the context of everything that needs to be communicated out loud. Basically the people who attend a daily scrum should be in the same room (with exceptions). This paired with quiet working areas where all disturbances are forbidden (no talking, no "can you just quickly look at this") is a good combo for productivity.
jdlyga 8y ago
I switched jobs from an open, small desk, "collaborative" environment to one that has bigger more private desks. It's much nicer. I have more space, more time to research and watch programming conference videos, less interruptions since most interactions are on our chat program. And the environment has about the same level of collaboration.
patrickg_zill 8y ago
Having recently started working in such an office, the reason has (IMHO) nothing to do with actual worker efficiency and everything to do with management's perspective. The cubicle walls are so short that I can see other's heads while sitting down (and if the person is tall and/or they prefer to raise their chair high, I can see their face) and conversations are often audible from 2 cubes away. Upper level management wants to reduce costs but also, to remind everyone that they are cogs in the machinery and that they want to basically turn every job they can, into essentially a regimented call-center sort of job, with quantitative stats being collected on all aspects of work performance. Only the very decent pay and the prospects for promotion out of this part of the company are keeping me around (it's the pay, really). Loyalty to the company itself: approximately zero.
Rooster61 8y ago
The implication that open offices are fine as long as you are using noise-cancelling headphones irks the hell out of me. If a working environment is noisy/distracting to the point that you can't be productive without having to rely on headphones, then there is a fundamental problem with your environment. People should not HAVE to do buy/use something just to be productive. It's downright disrespectful to expect your workers to just "deal with the noise in a professional manner".
- vibrato 8y ago
  Not to mention the hearing damage I do to my ears in these environments. I can't get into flow unless I literally cannot hear or see activity around me.
  - otabdeveloper1 8y ago
    > I can't get into flow unless I literally cannot hear or see activity around me. Then this job isn't for you. Find a different occupation.
    - C1sc0cat 8y ago
      That does discriminate against a large group who work in tech.
      - parzivalm 8y ago
        I don't think it is really discrimination, if you can't handle an open office setting, then don't work at a place that utilizes one.
        kevas 8y ago
        Here's a fun fact... not everyone can get a job at a place of their choosing at a drop of the hat.
        8y ago
jrumbut 8y ago
I currently work where most people have offices with doors that close (though some share them with 1-2 others, the shared ones are large though), and I've noticed that the turnover is almost non-existent. Basically retirement? My prior open plan (even with remote) offices had an average tenure of 2-3 years maybe?
samtrack2019 8y ago
I can't watch random nsfw videos on youtube in a open office, give me back my closed office so i can slack it!
- sctb 8y ago
  Could you please not post unsubstantive comments? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
peterwwillis 8y ago
The new trend of "You don't even get an assigned desk, anyone can take yours at any time" is beyond low. We're literally replaceable cogs now. Don't bother doing anything silly like leaving a water bottle at your desk, or pictures of your family, or god forbid, a plant: it's someone else's now.
samtrack2019 8y ago
I like better open office as I can have interaction with other people, I would literally never interact with anyone (except my team members) if i had my own office, I am an introvert and there is that,
greysonp 8y ago
When I first started working after college, I was briefly in a cubicle-like thing. I hated it. I felt isolated during a big transition point in my life. But it wasn't long before we switched to an open office plan, and it was fantastic. Loved it for the next couple years I was there, because it felt like I was part of a team -- more ad-hoc conversations, and yes, people talking about their weekends (that can be a good thing). We still got plenty done. Fast forward a few years, and now I'm working remotely and loving it. In fact, when I do work in coffee shops or something, I hate it, because I struggle to focus and get things done (unlike most, I straight-up can't listen to music and code at the same time, so headphones are out). So maybe it just depends on where you are in your career?
- zdragnar 8y ago
  There are certain advantages to being in an open office, under the right set of conditions: 1- teams sit together 2- people who need to be on their phones (aka sales) are in a different office 3- buffer spaces between communal areas (kitchen, lounge) and desks 4- people respect each other I've been in an open office that followed those rules, and it was actually pretty great, because people helped each other a lot more; a bit like open-ended pair programming if you wanted it. I've also been in an open office that violated all of those rules, and absolutely detested it. Especially that one person who played their radio out loud for the team to "enjoy" and sprayed air freshener everywhere, and the sales people ringing a bell whenever a sale landed, and the kitchen microwaves constantly going off, and and and... it was a minor hell.
  - gota 8y ago
    > 2- people who need to be on their phones (aka sales) are in a different office I'd like that
docker_up 8y ago
I've been in all different types of environments: single offices; shared offices; cubicles; working entirely remote; open office. At first I thought it was weird but after 25 years, my favorite is open office spaces. It's a lot more social, and I don't care if people see that I'm surfing HN or reddit for a few minutes every now and then. I'm not bothered by noise around me, so overall I think it's works great for me. Others mileage may vary obviously and I know some people hate it, but I personally love it.
code_chimp 8y ago
I am in the process of leaving a very decently compensated position at one of the better places to work in my market specifically because they have converted us to "open office". Maybe it would have been different if they were this way to start with, but going from a small cubicle to absolutely no separation between myself and all of the devs surrounding me is getting untenable for myself. Having my headphones on constantly is annoying and I cannot seem to tune out all of the ancillary motion around me. It also doesn't help that the monitors are now so much closer to my face that I now find myself turning my head back and forth more to see my monitors and by the end of the day my eyes are tired.
smileypete 8y ago
Ear defenders like Peltor Optime III are good for near sensory-deprivation levels of quietness, it's almost a relief to take them off after an hour and hear some ambient noise...
- LeifCarrotson 8y ago
  I can't stand working in an open office with passive hearing protection (working in the shop is different, of course). They filter out all the high-frequency white noise, but I can still hear all the speech, just with a small added bit of straining to make out all the words. There's a variety of devices that can be worn: - Over-the-ear passive earmuffs, ex Peltor Optime III: Visible to others, reduce all ambient sounds, some people can wear headphones beneath them. Comfortable, but somewhat heavy. - In-ear earplugs, ex 3M 90585-00000T: Not very visible to others, reduce all ambient sounds, no headphones. Comfort varies, lightweight. - Over-ear Active Noise Cancelling [ANC] headphones, ex Bose QuietComfort: Visible, reduce ambient noise but not ambient speech. Comfortable, heaviest option, require batteries. Some new expensive in-ear options available. - In-ear headphones playing music: Not very visible, reduce ambient sounds by virtue of playing louder sounds over top and drowning out dynamic range of ears. Comfortable, lightweight, requires cables or batteries. May cause hearing damage at volume levels sufficient to drown out ambient speech. - Over-ear passive earmuffs over headphones: A bit clunky to take off, but have the benefits of both. My problem -- or rather, my employer's problem -- is that I'm an indiscriminate eavesdropper. If someone's talking near me (or people are talking on the radio or TV), I find it extremely difficult to ignore the conversation. Active or passive noise cancelling does a much better job of canceling out the background than speech, increasing the SNR of the open-office chatter I want to drown out. I wish there was an option for ANC that would actively reduce ambient speech.
legitster 8y ago
I liked my cube. I could pop up and talk to a neighbor, or stay low for phone calls or concentration. Open office is just so much more exhausting. Especially if they do not have a lunch area with a door. Either the entire floor becomes filled with loud chatter, or the lunch area becomes a quiet, depressing wasteland. I wish companies were more transparent that it is a way to save cost. I would have happily put up with a smaller cube, or better benefits in exchange for floor space.
sixdimensional 8y ago
I would like to see the statistics on absenteeism and sick days after such a change. My work just switched to open plan, and anecdotally this last flu season was one of the worst I’ve seen in 3.5 years at this place, with nearly every person in a room of approx. 120-150 (all open plan) getting ill at some point. I think probably nobody stopped to think of that negative impact of open seating, especially on people with special immune system needs.
- w0utert 8y ago
  Not sure if you are thinking about sick leave because open-space office plans are worse for spreading contagious diseases, or because people are simply less motivated to come into the office if they feel a little weak or tired. I would not be surprised at all if the latter actually has more impact.
  - mikestew 8y ago
    people are simply less motivated to come into the office if they feel a little weak or tired Au contraire, as the open office plan is usually paired with the "all-in-one-bucket-PTO" plan. So if you take a sick day, it comes out of your vacation/holiday time. Ergo, employees are even more motivated to come in while feeling a little puny. Otherwise the kids are going to be pissed when you have to trim a day off that trip to Disney World.
    - ummonk 8y ago
      Wait, what? No place I've seen (and all have been open office) has taken sick leave out of vacation PTO. That's crazy. Employees have to draw the line somewhere.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        All-in-one-bucket PTO plans are extremely common including at large tech companies. I think it's a bad system but it's increasingly the norm outside of "unlimited" PTO plans. It's definitely not some weird outlier.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
My last employer transitioned from cubicles to open office "pods". Basically desks arranged where about 5 devs could work in close proximity. I disliked it. I work remote now, but if I ever have to work like that again, I'll bring in a large cardboard box and duct tape it to my desk around me, my monitor and keyboard.
theshrike79 8y ago
None of this crap is new. Can't we make it a law that anyone who designs office spaces for software companies MUST read Peopleware first? They described these exact same problems THIRTY YEARS AGO. The solutions are there too, just read the damn book.
- ghaff 8y ago
  When I interviewed with Boeing many years ago, engineers worked in old fashioned bullpen offices with dozens of desks in a completely open room with managers in offices on the periphery. One of the reasons I didn't take the job--along with a general vibe of engineers just being replaceable jobs. (I was actually given an offer straight out of school on the basis of just a resume. I had to request to come on-site and do some interviews.)
c2h5oh 8y ago
Aside from being horrible and costing you employees open spaces make no economical sense at all. Open space requires 60-110 ft^2 (5.5-10 m^2) per person [1] Let's assume that with offices you'd need 150 ft^2 (14^m) - that's including extra corridor space etc - a whooping 90 ft^2 (8.4 m^2) extra. Let's assume that open space costs you just 10% of productivity (studies show that it's more than that [2], [3]). I bet that just 10% of the salary alone is more than rent on 90 ft^2 for majority of employees.. [1] https://www.officefinder.com/how.html https://www.officefinder.com/how.html [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494413000340 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02724... [3] https://www.steelcase.com/research/articles/privacy-crisis/ https://www.steelcase.com/research/articles/privacy-crisis/
drbojingle 8y ago
Canadian here: Also hate open offices. It's a classic case of straight line fallacy IMO, and just general ignorance of diminished returns. Yes being around people CAN lead to collaboration which can lead to creativity, better relationships, and greater success, but too much of a good thing IS a bad thing.
__ralston3 8y ago
I always found it interesting that "hating open office spaces" is one of those sort of biased-HN things, similar to general dislike/distrust of popular social media platforms. Virtually every parent comment on the thread is along the lines of "I don't like open offices", which is obviously fine, seeing as how to each their own. However, I for one LOVE open offices. The fact that I can see what's going on, feel the vibe of the office, distract myself for a bit should I so choose to do so. Or even if I want to put my headphones in and turn the music all the way up, I have the option and I really enjoy it. To me, the open style makes the office feel like more of a community, as opposed to "an office" (similar to cubicles, offices, and mini-cubicles) and I absolutely enjoy that. Side note: I'd be curious to see responses for office preference (open, or not open) distributed by age.
- jarjoura 8y ago
  I've been in some open office situations where it was so loud that you couldn't even talk to each other about, ya know, work stuff. It was like living in a call center. Conference rooms were overbooked and the situation was simply untenable. However, I'm currently in an office where they went to great lengths to absorb sound and space everyone out to create an area that at most times is actually quiet except for the few times we chat with each other. So in this instance I don't mind it, I mostly chill on the nearby couch anyway. So I can see how some would love it, and others would hate it. It really does matter how the office is architected and the density of people.
- fjp 8y ago
  25 years old, only worked in non-open office (cubicles) when I was an intern in college. Since then have only worked in open space. I love the ability to just put on headphones and grind away most of the day, but my coworkers that I work with most often are still literally just a chair pivot away. We turn around, collaborate on how to solve a problem together, then turn back to our computers and execute. I think it's important to work on noise reduction through office design and offering quiet isolated spaces to work for people that need that environment. But overall I'm a big fan.
- bovermyer 8y ago
  I hate open offices and miss the days when I had my own office with a door. I'm 37.
ergothus 8y ago
I hate open offices, and took it as a given that most others do too. But in my last office, they held a poll (anonymous, but kinda in-person, we all voted electronically while in an all-hands meeting) in an office that is mostly (but not solely engineers)...and it came back slightly IN FAVOR of open offices. I was stunned, but asking around there were enough people that didn't seem to have a problem with the distractions to explain it, so I think it was actually representative.
WhompingWindows 8y ago
My team at my last biological sciences company was on an island - literally a cluster of desks around which the rest of the company had to walk to get to the kitchen. We were subjected to by far the most "openness" of any team in that we were not anchored to windows or walls. Furthermore, we were right next to two very talkative departments. What was most distracting was when the CEO or anyone in the company can walk 2 feet behind or 5 feet in front of you while you're working. That was one of the biggest factors, other than low salary, that pushed out SO many of my team (50% turnover in the single year I was there) and lead to numerous poachings. Management did not care, however, because they simply hired new people from the pool of underemployed biological scientists. Compare that to my current post, I'm in a cubicle room with 3-5 other people, depending on their remote schedule, and its super quiet and very focused. I get a lot more hard things done now, and learn a LOT more, though my social life at work definitely took a hit.
yRR9vQKQ 8y ago
To people saying things like "I know they bother some people, but I actually really like open offices!" - that's great for you, but the point of a workspace should be to target a "lowest common denominator" of productivity. You enjoy open offices, but does a basic cubicle (as an option - you can always have meetings/other open spaces) really hinder your productivity, in the same way open offices hinder the productivity of many? If not, then the right thing to do (for a professional work environment - a place intended for productivity first, and subjective enjoyment at best second) is to respect the needs of others in this situation. Any commons involves compromise.
wwarner 8y ago
I love 'em, starting as a student when I switched from the ultra-quiet Butler library to always dully roaring Watson library to study. I cannot work with music in my ears, but loosley relevant background noise is just perfect when I have to think.
commandlinefan 8y ago
> U.S. workers hate ... which means that they're probably here to stay.
dawhizkid 8y ago
I have no idea how anyone gets work done in a WeWork. I've been to a few and the first thing I notice is how loud they are.
iheartpotatoes 8y ago
When I got my tech job out of college in the 80's I was embarrassed because most of my friends in non-tech (especially finance) had offices with doors that closed. Sometimes nice wooden doors. It took a lot of getting used to: constant chatter, loud talkers, ice chewers, mouth noises, farting, personal phone calls that were too personal... But I acclimated. I continued to work in a 9'x9'x (x5' high) cube for 25+ years and the last company I worked for switched to an open floorplan for my last 3 years there. IT WAS HELL. At least in my small cube I had some sense of privacy, but now everyone could see my screen, or see me having to deal with various biological discomforts, it just sucked. I'm glad I became a contractor 5 years ago because it is great to be out of that mess. Hopefully I'll never have to return.
- layoutIfNeeded 8y ago
  >ice chewers Were they literally chewing ice or is this some idiom?
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    Some people love to literally crush ice in their mouth. I cannot stand it. On top of just being an annoying sound, it makes me think about / feel pain, because it sounds like it really hurts.
    - wccrawford 8y ago
      I love it, but it does tend to freak out at least a few people. They claim I'll crack my teeth or something, but that's probably just a cover for how it makes them feel. Yes, it could be bad for my teeth, but that's likely not why they're telling me about it. It bothers them more than it concerns them, or they'd stop telling me about it after a few times.
  - iheartpotatoes 8y ago
    Literally would crunch ice from a big metal cup ALL DAY LONG (walk to the soda fountain in the break room and refill with ice every hour). I encountered two people like this in my life. It would make me physically ill, like an allergy, but no one else around us complained so I tried to get over it and ended up just working in a lab. I'm old enough now were it to happen again I'd flood every channel with complaints until we arrived at a compromise, but I was younger then.
volkl48 8y ago
I think the basic disconnect being expressed in the widly varying opinions seen in this thread is: You can design an open office to work well. You can design an open office to be a sweatshop fitting in the maximum number of employees at the lowest cost. You cannot do both. ------ I have worked in an open office I liked. It was the former. Plenty of huddle rooms and other private spaces, different groups physically had a good amount of open floor space between them and another group, and great design to minimize visual distractions for people. I do not believe it saved any significant amount of floorspace over a more traditional cube setup. But it worked well and I didn't have major complaints. However, I have seen far more "open offices" that are just purely out to fit the most employees in the smallest space, and everyone is always miserable in those.
EvagohP5 8y ago
this is the real deal: to be productive: sucks to let workers be a little more human: it's good
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
davesque 8y ago
I've generally felt that open office plans are just a cost cutting move that has been heavily disguised as some kind of ingenious workplace innovation. Times are tight. Companies don't have as much money lying around as they did in the nineties -- that or they're just not willing to admit that they do.
samgranieri 8y ago
In the past few years I've worked from home, worked in places that had a cubicle, a room of 6 devs where everyone had their back to a wall, and now an open office floor plan. Right now I'm sitting in a corner near a wall with the open office floor plan. I have some desks partially behind me, with a conference room that's not used much. I've gotten used to it. I liked the six devs in a room thing, but my company outgrew that office two years ago. I also invested in some noise cancelling headphones, and it's absolutely essential. Right now I have two coworkers talking 5 feat from me, and I can't hear them.
amanaplanacanal 8y ago
When they remodeled a building I used to work in, they converted it all to open office space (minus the manager's fully enclosed offices, of course). What we were told was that every person had to have a view of a window. Something to do with the LEED certification? Maybe they were saving electricity by allowing the light to reach all the spaces. Then our team lead decided we needed to have a morning stand-up meeting every day in the middle of this space, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that we were bothering all the other teams in the same shared space.
Rudism 8y ago
I wonder what these numbers would look like if you just focused on software engineers instead of a "diverse cross-section" of workers. I really dislike my open office floor plan, but I think I'm the only one on my team of around 6 other software engineers who feels that way.
nfriedly 8y ago
Officially, I work from home. But when my family is around, that can be just as bad as being in an open office environment, maybe worse. (I have a 4-year old and a 3-month old.) So, I started leasing an office in town about a year and a half ago. Totally worth it. It's a quiet space to work where nobody interrupts me or touches anything. And, the internet's about 5x faster than what I have at home. When the weather is nice, I bike in. It'd be great if my employer paid for it, but my base pay is sufficient.
Corrado 8y ago
A counterpoint to the noise that an open office creates can be the silence it enforces. In a past life we had an open office with 20 people situated in "pods" of 2-3 desks. We were all developers and the problem wasn't that it was too noisy but was too quiet. I was afraid to say anything to anyone because the whole room could hear it and it would disturb everyone. Even just moving in your chair could cause a cacophony of squeaks and groans (or at least it felt that way). It felt like working in a library where everyone was afraid to breath too loudly.
tschwimmer 8y ago
People think open offices are some sort of hidden conspiracy that's been set up to make their lives hell. There's no conspiracy; open office floorpans require less floor space per employee and are thus cheaper. Think about all the additional space required to have walls, a hallway connecting offices, etc. Firms are not stupid. I am not doubting that there is a productivity hit due to distracting noise and motion, but it's probably not outweighed by the reduction in real estate cost.
- Not_a_pizza 8y ago
  It's not a conspiracy - removing privacy looks nice on the surface, until you realize that every conversation you have at work is now in public corp space. Any jokes you might have told, any friendship type things are now scrutinized at the highest levels by managers who are only "cells" away - in the same big room. Open offices feel like a real dick move by any company that uses it to corral employees as close together as possible. Maybe if they have reasonable break rooms it's not so bad, but how many companies give you more than the bare minimum space you need to work?
Tepix 8y ago
Here's what Dilbert thinks about open offices https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-12-08 https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-12-08
ddacunha 8y ago
Short video on the history of open space and how today's version is a copy of-a-copy of-a-copy of-a-copy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p6WWRarjNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p6WWRarjNs
robben1234 8y ago
It was meant for to make already needed frequent communication easier between sales (editoral, etc) stuff. When open space is implemented in an office meant for engineers it's killing people. You need silence to be able efficiently focus on your work and now employer makes you work in a place where silence is impossible by design.

362 points by Corrado 8y ago

People complained about cubicles before, now they're complaining about lack of barriers. The highly negative responses people seem to have about their working conditions doesn't seem to be a particularly interesting line of questions.

Corrado 8y ago

How many articles will it take to incite positive change? Not only does this survey reveal that people don't like open office spaces it highlights that they would rather work remotely. This is a shift that I haven't seen before, at least in any survey. Interesting.

acct1771 8y ago
"You can call me a rich bastard in the press all you want, as long as I'm still rich."
toomuchtodo 8y ago
Articles won’t matter. People will have to refuse jobs in open office environments or quit when they’re proposed or implemented for change to occur.
organsnyder 8y ago
I mentioned the open office to my former manager as one of my reasons for leaving (yes, I know some people think it's never a good idea to give exit feedback, but IMHO it depends on the context). I knew my manager was already not a fan of open offices, so I figured I'd give him a bit of ammunition.
Kadin 8y ago
Who cares what articles say, if a company can still recruit employees? When good candidates start turning down positions because of the office layout, that might create some pressure to change, though. But I think one of the problems is that bad office layouts tend to exacerbate problems. They may be the ultimate underlying cause of retention problems, but they're typically not the proximate cause, and thus don't get the blame they're due. Someone might leave because of interpersonal conflicts or just "not fitting in" to their team, which might not seem like an office-layout issue. But who knows if they might have gelled better with their team if they weren't all sitting around with noise-cancelling headphones on, or glaring at each other for turning the lights on/off, or taking too many phone calls, or all the other annoyances of an open office.
commandlinefan 8y ago
Part of the problem here is the title: "U.S. workers hate 'open' office spaces". The CEO in the corner office lighting cigars off of $100 bills doesn't care what the workers hate - in fact, he probably sees this as a net positive, because it reminds the workers who they are and who he is. And in reality, it's _not_ important what U.S. workers "hate" and that they hate it isn't really the problem with open offices - the problem is that everybody working in them is working at half capacity because they're wasting at least half of their concentration trying to block out all of the (completely unnecessary) distractions they're surrounded by.

Insanity 8y ago

I'd bet it's the same for other countries. I'm European and I'd rather be working from home rather than an open office. Alas, the standard here is open office.

Wohlf 8y ago
I used to hate cubicles until I experienced an open office plan. I now know things could be better, but they can easily be far worse.
- spudlyo 8y ago
  Yeah, I can't believe I now look upon the times when we had cubicles as "the good old days", but compared to the open office plan hell of today they seem like a damn luxury.
mcv 8y ago
To me it matters how open. I want to share a room with the members of my team, I don't want to share it with noisy salespeople. I've worked at many companies that get it right, but a few get very wrong.
- nsnick 8y ago
  It also matters what sort of keyboards everyone is using. Horribly noisy mechanical keyboards make it impossible to concentrate.
  - brightball 8y ago
    This is definitely one of those things that I can't understand. There seem to be so many people that swear by using keyboards with the clicks...but I just don't understand it. Especially once you get out of your own house.
    - bshipp 8y ago
      I used to swear by mechanical keyboards; I wrote my entire thesis on one, much to the chagrin of my graduate student officemate. She still brings it up when I see her, twelve years later! For me, the difference was similar to weighted vs unweighted piano keys. With a mechanical keyboard I could get into a rhythm that I miss when working on a bubble-type keyboard. I've since trained myself (mostly out of necessity due to travel) to type almost as quickly and error-free on my laptop keyboard, but I do still miss the feedback from mechanical springs. If I did 'spring' for a new mech keyboard now, however, I'd find the quietest one I could get, that still provided some sense of feedback. I don't need my noisy clicks to provide a juvenile signal to my coworkers that, yes, I am indeed working really hard on something really important right now.

bshipp 8y ago

Our office just converted to an open space design with fancy desks that elevate for standing or drop to sit. Although it's a small office, one of my coworkers already left (and refuses to communicate with any of the management except through his lawyer) and three others are in conversations with labour lawyers on constructive dismissal cases, while the remaining three are shopping their resumes and attending interviews. That means we could lose seven out of ten staff. It's definitely not all due to the open office space, but it was pretty much the last straw for most of them. I was one of the few who got to keep their office during the demolition, I think mostly because it was written in my contract when I accepted this job. So although I, personally, don't think they look very efficient, I can relate that the staff in my company dispise the lack of privacy and general noise that results from working in an open office space.

systemtest 8y ago
Perhaps it's some sort of the Stockholm syndrome but I am now at the point where the open office noise has become white noise. And it is making me perform better. The constant chatter, ringtones, speakerphones, toilets flushing, coffee beans grinding, printers buzzing. There is a rhythm to it. It's a living organism of sound. Who am I kidding, anyone need a Java/Kotlin back-end developer?
- grigjd3 8y ago
  You can hear toilets flushing? Yuck.
  - yitchelle 8y ago
    Hopefully, the other toilet noises are quieter.
  - systemtest 8y ago
    The worst part is hearing a toilet flush and watching a co-worker walk out seconds later.
    - 8y ago

hellisothers 8y ago

Surely an unpopular opinion but my previous job of many years had individual offices and my current job of 2 years is an open office for a couple thousand employees and it’s really not that bad. I was really worried when I started after hearing all the angst online but after a month I didn’t notice, I put in headphones if I need focus and it’s all good. I’m a software engineer at a level where my role involves a lot of collaboration so maybe that’s why I don’t mind? I notice others on my team do work away from their desks 90% of the time and I imagine it’s so they can hide and focus and the company provides locations for that. We would need 3x size of location(s) without open offices so I get it, also I’m it helps that the office has embraced “open” and tries to provide alternative space within the office, also grouping sales far away from engineering :)

shereadsthenews 8y ago
The problem for some people is the open layout inhibits collaboration. Nobody wants to start talking because it disturbs others. Whereas if you could just walk into someone's office and close the door you'd feel free to yak away.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  Exactly. A real discussion can often get loud but you can't really do that in an open layout. So collaboration becomes pretty shallow.
- metamet 8y ago
  We have "pods" where each pod has 10 desks (with monitors/standing desks, etc), five along each of the two outside walls, with two long tables and TVs on wheels between the desk-walls. We each have privacy (and our own seating), but the collaboration is always available and not overwhelming. I dig it a lot more than the cube I had at my old job.
  - alexgmcm 8y ago
    My PhD office was like that and it was pretty sweet. Now I work in industry with a fully open office and yeah, it's a nightmare.

lordleft 8y ago

Optional collaborative spaces? Awesome. Mandatory collaborative spaces? Tire fire.

meddlepal 8y ago

Recently got a tour from some former coworkers of the new PTC HQ in Boston, open office AND hotel style seating (no assigned location... stuff goes in a cubby at the end of the day). So not only can you hate all the noise and distraction around you, but tomorrow it can be entirely new set of people that piss you off. Also nothing says "you don't matter" like not even giving someone 4x6 feet of space for a desk and chair they can call their own..

beart 8y ago
Our office transitioned to desk hoteling. What it amounted to is a small set of people switching desks semi-regularly. The first month, everyone pulled down all their personal stuff. Six months later, most people never actually changed desks and ended up putting their personal stuff back up, 'claiming' desks as theirs anyway.
- 0xffff2 8y ago
  Didn't "hoteling" start out as "hot desking", where the idea is that there are fewer desks than employees because some percentage of employees are out of the office each day? What the point of not having assigned desks if you still have as many desks as employees?
  - CharlesColeman 8y ago
    > What the point of not having assigned desks if you still have as many desks as employees? This is the point: > https://www.wired.com/1999/02/chiat-3/ https://www.wired.com/1999/02/chiat-3/ > As the unofficial story goes, Jay Chiat was skiing down a mountain in Telluride when it dawned on him that the conventional American office structure was antiquated and counterproductive; that revolution was not only inevitable but overdue; and that destiny had selected him, Jay Chiat, as its agent of change. So the boss can see himself as a trend-setting visionary. That link it pretty interesting, since it was clear that "hoteling" was awful 20 years ago in 1999. It's bizarre that I was reading about the how terrible 2019's trends in office space are when I was a kid.
  - 8y ago

grigjd3 8y ago

Open offices aren't about worker happiness or efficiency. They're about decreasing costs.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
Not even that, because reduced productivity (and iirc Facebook reported having to pay their employees 1.5x just because of the bad working environment). It's so that managers look cool when strolling through their workforce, it looks good and hip on recruitment webpages, etc.
- HenryKissinger 8y ago
  > Destroying your employees' productivity for a pic.
Someone1234 8y ago
"Penny wise and pound foolish." Which is to say if you're paying a developer $70K+/year (+taxes/benefits), and you're skimping on a $2K one time cost cubicle, even if that loss results in increased turnover ($$$), reduced morale ($$$), or reduced productively ($$$) then that's an irrational decision. Employers should consider a "1-2%" per-employee per year "morale fund." If you're paying someone $70K/year the least you could manage is $700-1400 to keep them sweet, it is just good business. Better equipment, software to make them more productive, a nicer chair, whatever. But I've come to realize that managers rarely make decisions for purely rational reasons. The prestige and internal politics often play a larger role than pure costing.
- kyralis 8y ago
  They're not skimping $2k one time cost on a cubicle. They're skimping on the recurring cost in rent and maintenance on a large facility in which to place that cubicle, plus the cost of that cubicle. My wife was an office manager that worked with a couple startups through expansions, and the costs of office space and office equipment is actually quite a bit higher than you might think. That said, I still think it's generally a foolish thing to do for many companies and I personally despise open offices. I've recently transitioned to being fully remote, and a hatred of the open office plan was a good part of what pushed me in that direction.

cowmix 8y ago

My company just moved from a almost completely open floor plan to an open floor plan but plenty of private / huddle rooms. Also we have a very liberal work-at-home options too. So far, the change has been positive. People are able to, on the fly, pick the type of physical work environment they want to experience at a given point in time. Also, our management invested in VERY nice noise canceling headsets for anyone who requested one. That technology has done wonders for productivity and has increase the quality of our video conferences.

iSnow 8y ago
I work with noise cancelling headsets all the time and they do nothing for cancelling out phone calls or office chat. You could work with them next to a big machine and have a more distraction-free environment than I have right now while my colleague is on the phone and I am on Hacker News instead of in the bowels of my code.
- cowmix 8y ago
  To be clear, these are noise cancelling for your ears AND mic. Most of us have the Jabra 75 (over the ear) pair. It definitely helps on conference calls.
  - 0xffff2 8y ago
    I don't think GP was talking about when they are on the phone. If you're talking on the phone next to me, I can hear you talking, whether I have noise cancelling headphones on or not.
awakeasleep 8y ago
I see a lot of people giving thanks for 'nice noise canceling headsets' in this thread, but from what I can tell, noise canceling does not work for about 50% of people. In my office we've tested every single noise canceling headset, from Bose QC, to Sennheiser PXC 550, to B&W PX, and everything in between. The noise canceling is a weird hiss, increases feelings of ear pressure, and the discomfort manifests as a headache or car sickness after a few hours- and that isn't even taking into account the other pains people feel from prolonged use of over ear headphones. When you're talking about wearing something for 8 hours a day, there are some real ergo needs that drive the shape and technology of the device. Think about how light typical call center headsets are- that is a professional device. Not to say it doesn't work for you individually, but noise canceling headsets are NOT a solution that works for an office worth of people. Out of about 500 people in my office, only 20 or so stuck with noise canceling cans as their daily headsets.

brightball 8y ago

I always figured the solution to this issue would be in 2 parts: 1. All open office layouts must include a stipend for high quality, noise cancelling headphones that won't hurt your ears long term and are comfortable enough to wear all day. 2. People should have a little LED that sits on their desk, monitor, etc that they can turn red when they don't want to be disturbed (like this). https://redlevelgroup.com/busylight-the-next-level-do-not-disturb-sign/ https://redlevelgroup.com/busylight-the-next-level-do-not-di...

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
Noise cancelling headphones help, I find that I can't really get in the zone with the constant comings and goings, nor really relax surrounded by people, and not being able to feel good about taking a break, knowing that people could be looking at my screen and judging me constantly.
chimeracoder 8y ago
> 1. All open office layouts must include a stipend for high quality, noise cancelling headphones that won't hurt your ears long term and are comfortable enough to wear all day. Noise-cancelling headphones are designed to cancel predictable background noise, such as the white noise of an airplane's engines while flying. They are not designed to cancel the noise of conversations happening around you. Furthermore, noise-cancelling headphones cause dizziness and nausea after extended use in many people. This is well-documented and also fairly understood, given the relationship between the ears and the vestibular system. Finally, auditory noise isn't the only problem people have with open office layouts. Visual distractions and the "fishbowl effect" are also significant factors.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
commandlinefan 8y ago
> noise cancelling headphones > don't want to be disturbed Yeah, collaboration here we come!

meddlepal 8y ago

I don't like pure open office setups, but I do enjoy bullpen style arrangements with a team of say 5 to 7 in the same shared space. It is a hard setup to get right though. High wall cubes are fine too... Obviously a real office with a door would be ideal, but I think that door has closed at this point in time.

thebiss 8y ago
Bullpens defined by 6 foot segmented movable whiteboard walls allow teams to grow and shrink while projects change, while keeping noise contained. Individual quiet spaces are still needed for private meetings and client calls. https://i.pinimg.com/736x/25/e5/8c/25e58cb8380ba9d5a9afdb1c1a5324b2.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/25/e5/8c/25e58cb8380ba9d5a9afdb1c1...
KVFinn 8y ago
>I do enjoy bullpen style arrangements with a team of say 5 to 7 in the same shared space. The key being team -- you are next to people you are actively collaborating with on a day to day basis.
Kadin 8y ago
IMO the optimal arrangement for technical teams is small groups of people in shared offices, say ~4 per office. What I've noticed is that a handful of people together in a space will typically work out issues like music vs. no music, lights on vs. off, blinds open vs. closed, etc. without a lot of trouble. But there's a tipping point where it gets much harder. Put 20 people in an open office and suddenly everyone is wearing headphones and nobody is talking (except the people who are ALWAYS talking/yelling to each other) and it sucks. I think as far back as the late 70s, "Peopleware" cited a bunch of studies that found that small shared offices with flexible policies on letting people move around (so people can self-organize either around their teams or with people they share space well with) was optimal. Sadly few offices seem to have adopted this.
IpV8 8y ago
Im a huge fan of the bullpen as well. You get the benefits of spontaneous conversation and collaboration, without the overwhelming anxiety that some of us feel in a crowded room. Its a solid compromise between collaboration and privacy.

beart 8y ago

Most open office layouts have to pump some sort of white noise into the environment to dampen voices echoing across huge rooms. I really don't understand why there is such an aversion to doing an open-ish office, segmenting groups of desks into smaller closed off (floor to ceiling frosted glass) areas instead of having the entire room open.

Kadin 8y ago
> I really don't understand why there is such an aversion to doing an open-ish office, segmenting groups of desks into smaller closed off (floor to ceiling frosted glass) areas Because that costs money, and open offices are a cost-savings measure. It's a way to be cheap while looking hip/stylish/whatever. In some cases I think there's also a barely-concealed dick measuring thing going on, where companies put in open office space so that they can elevate some employees by giving them cubicles (and executives, obviously, will always get outer-ring offices with windows!). So you take away with one hand, give it back with the other, and suddenly what was formerly standard for everyone becomes an incentive you can hand out discretionarily.
- randcraw 8y ago
  It would add trivial cost to hang heavy sound-absorbing curtains as room partitions to break up an open space. These would reduce noise significantly from all sources and make the roomlets colorful and cozy. And they could be moved around over time to accommodate changes in team size, and just to add visual variety. No decent restaurant uses stadium seating as their decor. There's good reason. Patrons don't want to dine in a gymnasium.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

Meanwhile in the defense industry you're all but assured a cube, often a tall one, maybe even an office if you happen to work in a building spec'd out that way. Can't have unauthorized eyes looking at what other people are working on.

rdl 8y ago
Curious where a cubicle wall would be considered necessary and sufficient isolation, even assuming people cleared to the sufficient level and on the same project. Seems like you'd either say ntk exists or not, so either shared workspace ok, or more robust isolation.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  The pattern I've noticed is that if the entire building/floor/cube farm is "you ain't getting in here without clearance" or "nothing in here requires clearance" then cube farms are acceptable. Most places with cube farms also provide something to string across the opening to prevent accidental NTK violations. You'll have oversized cube farms that are half empty even though the rest of the building is packed like sardines because they've determined that nobody else has a NTK for whatever the team occupying them is working on. At some point it comes down to common sense and cost, level of secrecy and expected lifetime of secrecy (the requirements for a sub propeller are different than something that's being production-ized so it can be issued to thousands of soldiers). The only buildings/floors I've seen that are all offices either were management or super secret algorithms and electronic systems integration projects. Like the kind of stuff where the "old boring legacy tech" exceeds the kind of stuff Hollywood shows you.
  - rdl 8y ago
    Makes sense. I'm only familiar with the paranoid VTR SCIFs and the plywood-and-tent SCIFs (downrange), not so much with how contractors handle C/S/TS in CONUS.
Kadin 8y ago
Honestly I think this has more to do with the profit margins in the defense industry, not because of any IA/OPSEC concerns. Though I have noticed a very unwelcome trend where some newer defense companies are building open-plan offices because they think it's "cool". Fine example of the worst sort of cargo-culting.

matthewfelgate 8y ago

Personally I hate open offices, I wish I had my own office. I could actually get some work done.

HenryKissinger 8y ago
Preach, brother.

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago

In the various discussions I've seen about open offices on Hacker News and elsewhere, I don't recall ever seeing a post from management explaining why they've implemented open offices despite these complaints. I'm I just mistaken about their collective silence? Or if not, does their silence imply some kind of ulterior motive?

asdff 8y ago
More people per square foot = cheaper lease.
- menckenjr 8y ago
  It sounds a lot like those misbegotten standing airline seats (https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/standing-up-airplane-seat/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/standing-up-airplane-seat...) and it's another example of what happens when bean counters get control of things.
Kadin 8y ago
That's obvious: it's cheap. I've participated in office buildouts and seen architectural sketches of cubes vs. "open plan" tables. You can put a lot more people into the same area when you are just giving everyone a table. Higher density means less square footage which means lower rent. QED.
maxxxxx 8y ago
In my company the managers I have talked to about this (they have private offices with windows) seemed to be thinking that the people who complain are just whiners. In addition these decisions get made pretty far up in the hierarchy so most likely the people who make the decision never have to work in that environment. For example in my company facilities makes the decisions but they have a nice team room with windows for everyone. So in short I believe that decisions about workspaces almost never that made by the prople who have to work there. And when you get to the level of people who can shape their workspace like CEO and VP you rarely see open office as the choice but usually private office with window.

rdl 8y ago

I'm fine with open offices with tiny teams all working on exactly the same task. Once that ceases to be the case, they become hell. My ideal office is essentially private regular office space, and then big conference rooms which can be taken over by teams for days/weeks/months. I've gotten more work done in a shared conference room with people in it than anywhere else, but it has to be during a specific task-focused time. I kind of wonder if the ideal office would be essentially an apartment building or hotels, with studio or 1br "apartments" per person, and then some meeting rooms/work rooms for actual work. Having a private bathroom, quiet office, "living room" office where you could have meetings, etc. would be pretty awesome.

theshrike79 8y ago
Exactly. Shared team spaces as "open offices", where everyone there is contributing to the same thing and understands the context of everything that needs to be communicated out loud. Basically the people who attend a daily scrum should be in the same room (with exceptions). This paired with quiet working areas where all disturbances are forbidden (no talking, no "can you just quickly look at this") is a good combo for productivity.

jdlyga 8y ago

I switched jobs from an open, small desk, "collaborative" environment to one that has bigger more private desks. It's much nicer. I have more space, more time to research and watch programming conference videos, less interruptions since most interactions are on our chat program. And the environment has about the same level of collaboration.

patrickg_zill 8y ago

Having recently started working in such an office, the reason has (IMHO) nothing to do with actual worker efficiency and everything to do with management's perspective. The cubicle walls are so short that I can see other's heads while sitting down (and if the person is tall and/or they prefer to raise their chair high, I can see their face) and conversations are often audible from 2 cubes away. Upper level management wants to reduce costs but also, to remind everyone that they are cogs in the machinery and that they want to basically turn every job they can, into essentially a regimented call-center sort of job, with quantitative stats being collected on all aspects of work performance. Only the very decent pay and the prospects for promotion out of this part of the company are keeping me around (it's the pay, really). Loyalty to the company itself: approximately zero.

Rooster61 8y ago

The implication that open offices are fine as long as you are using noise-cancelling headphones irks the hell out of me. If a working environment is noisy/distracting to the point that you can't be productive without having to rely on headphones, then there is a fundamental problem with your environment. People should not HAVE to do buy/use something just to be productive. It's downright disrespectful to expect your workers to just "deal with the noise in a professional manner".

vibrato 8y ago
Not to mention the hearing damage I do to my ears in these environments. I can't get into flow unless I literally cannot hear or see activity around me.
- otabdeveloper1 8y ago
  > I can't get into flow unless I literally cannot hear or see activity around me. Then this job isn't for you. Find a different occupation.
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    That does discriminate against a large group who work in tech.
    - parzivalm 8y ago
      I don't think it is really discrimination, if you can't handle an open office setting, then don't work at a place that utilizes one.
      - kevas 8y ago
        Here's a fun fact... not everyone can get a job at a place of their choosing at a drop of the hat.
        8y ago

jrumbut 8y ago

I currently work where most people have offices with doors that close (though some share them with 1-2 others, the shared ones are large though), and I've noticed that the turnover is almost non-existent. Basically retirement? My prior open plan (even with remote) offices had an average tenure of 2-3 years maybe?

samtrack2019 8y ago

I can't watch random nsfw videos on youtube in a open office, give me back my closed office so i can slack it!

sctb 8y ago
Could you please not post unsubstantive comments? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

peterwwillis 8y ago

The new trend of "You don't even get an assigned desk, anyone can take yours at any time" is beyond low. We're literally replaceable cogs now. Don't bother doing anything silly like leaving a water bottle at your desk, or pictures of your family, or god forbid, a plant: it's someone else's now.

samtrack2019 8y ago

I like better open office as I can have interaction with other people, I would literally never interact with anyone (except my team members) if i had my own office, I am an introvert and there is that,

greysonp 8y ago

When I first started working after college, I was briefly in a cubicle-like thing. I hated it. I felt isolated during a big transition point in my life. But it wasn't long before we switched to an open office plan, and it was fantastic. Loved it for the next couple years I was there, because it felt like I was part of a team -- more ad-hoc conversations, and yes, people talking about their weekends (that can be a good thing). We still got plenty done. Fast forward a few years, and now I'm working remotely and loving it. In fact, when I do work in coffee shops or something, I hate it, because I struggle to focus and get things done (unlike most, I straight-up can't listen to music and code at the same time, so headphones are out). So maybe it just depends on where you are in your career?

zdragnar 8y ago
There are certain advantages to being in an open office, under the right set of conditions: 1- teams sit together 2- people who need to be on their phones (aka sales) are in a different office 3- buffer spaces between communal areas (kitchen, lounge) and desks 4- people respect each other I've been in an open office that followed those rules, and it was actually pretty great, because people helped each other a lot more; a bit like open-ended pair programming if you wanted it. I've also been in an open office that violated all of those rules, and absolutely detested it. Especially that one person who played their radio out loud for the team to "enjoy" and sprayed air freshener everywhere, and the sales people ringing a bell whenever a sale landed, and the kitchen microwaves constantly going off, and and and... it was a minor hell.
- gota 8y ago
  > 2- people who need to be on their phones (aka sales) are in a different office I'd like that

docker_up 8y ago

I've been in all different types of environments: single offices; shared offices; cubicles; working entirely remote; open office. At first I thought it was weird but after 25 years, my favorite is open office spaces. It's a lot more social, and I don't care if people see that I'm surfing HN or reddit for a few minutes every now and then. I'm not bothered by noise around me, so overall I think it's works great for me. Others mileage may vary obviously and I know some people hate it, but I personally love it.

code_chimp 8y ago

I am in the process of leaving a very decently compensated position at one of the better places to work in my market specifically because they have converted us to "open office". Maybe it would have been different if they were this way to start with, but going from a small cubicle to absolutely no separation between myself and all of the devs surrounding me is getting untenable for myself. Having my headphones on constantly is annoying and I cannot seem to tune out all of the ancillary motion around me. It also doesn't help that the monitors are now so much closer to my face that I now find myself turning my head back and forth more to see my monitors and by the end of the day my eyes are tired.

smileypete 8y ago

Ear defenders like Peltor Optime III are good for near sensory-deprivation levels of quietness, it's almost a relief to take them off after an hour and hear some ambient noise...

LeifCarrotson 8y ago
I can't stand working in an open office with passive hearing protection (working in the shop is different, of course). They filter out all the high-frequency white noise, but I can still hear all the speech, just with a small added bit of straining to make out all the words. There's a variety of devices that can be worn: - Over-the-ear passive earmuffs, ex Peltor Optime III: Visible to others, reduce all ambient sounds, some people can wear headphones beneath them. Comfortable, but somewhat heavy. - In-ear earplugs, ex 3M 90585-00000T: Not very visible to others, reduce all ambient sounds, no headphones. Comfort varies, lightweight. - Over-ear Active Noise Cancelling [ANC] headphones, ex Bose QuietComfort: Visible, reduce ambient noise but not ambient speech. Comfortable, heaviest option, require batteries. Some new expensive in-ear options available. - In-ear headphones playing music: Not very visible, reduce ambient sounds by virtue of playing louder sounds over top and drowning out dynamic range of ears. Comfortable, lightweight, requires cables or batteries. May cause hearing damage at volume levels sufficient to drown out ambient speech. - Over-ear passive earmuffs over headphones: A bit clunky to take off, but have the benefits of both. My problem -- or rather, my employer's problem -- is that I'm an indiscriminate eavesdropper. If someone's talking near me (or people are talking on the radio or TV), I find it extremely difficult to ignore the conversation. Active or passive noise cancelling does a much better job of canceling out the background than speech, increasing the SNR of the open-office chatter I want to drown out. I wish there was an option for ANC that would actively reduce ambient speech.

legitster 8y ago

I liked my cube. I could pop up and talk to a neighbor, or stay low for phone calls or concentration. Open office is just so much more exhausting. Especially if they do not have a lunch area with a door. Either the entire floor becomes filled with loud chatter, or the lunch area becomes a quiet, depressing wasteland. I wish companies were more transparent that it is a way to save cost. I would have happily put up with a smaller cube, or better benefits in exchange for floor space.

sixdimensional 8y ago

I would like to see the statistics on absenteeism and sick days after such a change. My work just switched to open plan, and anecdotally this last flu season was one of the worst I’ve seen in 3.5 years at this place, with nearly every person in a room of approx. 120-150 (all open plan) getting ill at some point. I think probably nobody stopped to think of that negative impact of open seating, especially on people with special immune system needs.

w0utert 8y ago
Not sure if you are thinking about sick leave because open-space office plans are worse for spreading contagious diseases, or because people are simply less motivated to come into the office if they feel a little weak or tired. I would not be surprised at all if the latter actually has more impact.
- mikestew 8y ago
  people are simply less motivated to come into the office if they feel a little weak or tired Au contraire, as the open office plan is usually paired with the "all-in-one-bucket-PTO" plan. So if you take a sick day, it comes out of your vacation/holiday time. Ergo, employees are even more motivated to come in while feeling a little puny. Otherwise the kids are going to be pissed when you have to trim a day off that trip to Disney World.
  - ummonk 8y ago
    Wait, what? No place I've seen (and all have been open office) has taken sick leave out of vacation PTO. That's crazy. Employees have to draw the line somewhere.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      All-in-one-bucket PTO plans are extremely common including at large tech companies. I think it's a bad system but it's increasingly the norm outside of "unlimited" PTO plans. It's definitely not some weird outlier.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

My last employer transitioned from cubicles to open office "pods". Basically desks arranged where about 5 devs could work in close proximity. I disliked it. I work remote now, but if I ever have to work like that again, I'll bring in a large cardboard box and duct tape it to my desk around me, my monitor and keyboard.

theshrike79 8y ago

None of this crap is new. Can't we make it a law that anyone who designs office spaces for software companies MUST read Peopleware first? They described these exact same problems THIRTY YEARS AGO. The solutions are there too, just read the damn book.

ghaff 8y ago
When I interviewed with Boeing many years ago, engineers worked in old fashioned bullpen offices with dozens of desks in a completely open room with managers in offices on the periphery. One of the reasons I didn't take the job--along with a general vibe of engineers just being replaceable jobs. (I was actually given an offer straight out of school on the basis of just a resume. I had to request to come on-site and do some interviews.)

c2h5oh 8y ago

Aside from being horrible and costing you employees open spaces make no economical sense at all. Open space requires 60-110 ft^2 (5.5-10 m^2) per person [1] Let's assume that with offices you'd need 150 ft^2 (14^m) - that's including extra corridor space etc - a whooping 90 ft^2 (8.4 m^2) extra. Let's assume that open space costs you just 10% of productivity (studies show that it's more than that [2], [3]). I bet that just 10% of the salary alone is more than rent on 90 ft^2 for majority of employees.. [1] https://www.officefinder.com/how.html https://www.officefinder.com/how.html [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494413000340 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02724... [3] https://www.steelcase.com/research/articles/privacy-crisis/ https://www.steelcase.com/research/articles/privacy-crisis/

drbojingle 8y ago

Canadian here: Also hate open offices. It's a classic case of straight line fallacy IMO, and just general ignorance of diminished returns. Yes being around people CAN lead to collaboration which can lead to creativity, better relationships, and greater success, but too much of a good thing IS a bad thing.

__ralston3 8y ago

I always found it interesting that "hating open office spaces" is one of those sort of biased-HN things, similar to general dislike/distrust of popular social media platforms. Virtually every parent comment on the thread is along the lines of "I don't like open offices", which is obviously fine, seeing as how to each their own. However, I for one LOVE open offices. The fact that I can see what's going on, feel the vibe of the office, distract myself for a bit should I so choose to do so. Or even if I want to put my headphones in and turn the music all the way up, I have the option and I really enjoy it. To me, the open style makes the office feel like more of a community, as opposed to "an office" (similar to cubicles, offices, and mini-cubicles) and I absolutely enjoy that. Side note: I'd be curious to see responses for office preference (open, or not open) distributed by age.

jarjoura 8y ago
I've been in some open office situations where it was so loud that you couldn't even talk to each other about, ya know, work stuff. It was like living in a call center. Conference rooms were overbooked and the situation was simply untenable. However, I'm currently in an office where they went to great lengths to absorb sound and space everyone out to create an area that at most times is actually quiet except for the few times we chat with each other. So in this instance I don't mind it, I mostly chill on the nearby couch anyway. So I can see how some would love it, and others would hate it. It really does matter how the office is architected and the density of people.
fjp 8y ago
25 years old, only worked in non-open office (cubicles) when I was an intern in college. Since then have only worked in open space. I love the ability to just put on headphones and grind away most of the day, but my coworkers that I work with most often are still literally just a chair pivot away. We turn around, collaborate on how to solve a problem together, then turn back to our computers and execute. I think it's important to work on noise reduction through office design and offering quiet isolated spaces to work for people that need that environment. But overall I'm a big fan.
bovermyer 8y ago
I hate open offices and miss the days when I had my own office with a door. I'm 37.

ergothus 8y ago

I hate open offices, and took it as a given that most others do too. But in my last office, they held a poll (anonymous, but kinda in-person, we all voted electronically while in an all-hands meeting) in an office that is mostly (but not solely engineers)...and it came back slightly IN FAVOR of open offices. I was stunned, but asking around there were enough people that didn't seem to have a problem with the distractions to explain it, so I think it was actually representative.

WhompingWindows 8y ago

My team at my last biological sciences company was on an island - literally a cluster of desks around which the rest of the company had to walk to get to the kitchen. We were subjected to by far the most "openness" of any team in that we were not anchored to windows or walls. Furthermore, we were right next to two very talkative departments. What was most distracting was when the CEO or anyone in the company can walk 2 feet behind or 5 feet in front of you while you're working. That was one of the biggest factors, other than low salary, that pushed out SO many of my team (50% turnover in the single year I was there) and lead to numerous poachings. Management did not care, however, because they simply hired new people from the pool of underemployed biological scientists. Compare that to my current post, I'm in a cubicle room with 3-5 other people, depending on their remote schedule, and its super quiet and very focused. I get a lot more hard things done now, and learn a LOT more, though my social life at work definitely took a hit.

yRR9vQKQ 8y ago

To people saying things like "I know they bother some people, but I actually really like open offices!" - that's great for you, but the point of a workspace should be to target a "lowest common denominator" of productivity. You enjoy open offices, but does a basic cubicle (as an option - you can always have meetings/other open spaces) really hinder your productivity, in the same way open offices hinder the productivity of many? If not, then the right thing to do (for a professional work environment - a place intended for productivity first, and subjective enjoyment at best second) is to respect the needs of others in this situation. Any commons involves compromise.

wwarner 8y ago

I love 'em, starting as a student when I switched from the ultra-quiet Butler library to always dully roaring Watson library to study. I cannot work with music in my ears, but loosley relevant background noise is just perfect when I have to think.

commandlinefan 8y ago

> U.S. workers hate ... which means that they're probably here to stay.

dawhizkid 8y ago

I have no idea how anyone gets work done in a WeWork. I've been to a few and the first thing I notice is how loud they are.

iheartpotatoes 8y ago

When I got my tech job out of college in the 80's I was embarrassed because most of my friends in non-tech (especially finance) had offices with doors that closed. Sometimes nice wooden doors. It took a lot of getting used to: constant chatter, loud talkers, ice chewers, mouth noises, farting, personal phone calls that were too personal... But I acclimated. I continued to work in a 9'x9'x (x5' high) cube for 25+ years and the last company I worked for switched to an open floorplan for my last 3 years there. IT WAS HELL. At least in my small cube I had some sense of privacy, but now everyone could see my screen, or see me having to deal with various biological discomforts, it just sucked. I'm glad I became a contractor 5 years ago because it is great to be out of that mess. Hopefully I'll never have to return.

layoutIfNeeded 8y ago
>ice chewers Were they literally chewing ice or is this some idiom?
- mywittyname 8y ago
  Some people love to literally crush ice in their mouth. I cannot stand it. On top of just being an annoying sound, it makes me think about / feel pain, because it sounds like it really hurts.
  - wccrawford 8y ago
    I love it, but it does tend to freak out at least a few people. They claim I'll crack my teeth or something, but that's probably just a cover for how it makes them feel. Yes, it could be bad for my teeth, but that's likely not why they're telling me about it. It bothers them more than it concerns them, or they'd stop telling me about it after a few times.
- iheartpotatoes 8y ago
  Literally would crunch ice from a big metal cup ALL DAY LONG (walk to the soda fountain in the break room and refill with ice every hour). I encountered two people like this in my life. It would make me physically ill, like an allergy, but no one else around us complained so I tried to get over it and ended up just working in a lab. I'm old enough now were it to happen again I'd flood every channel with complaints until we arrived at a compromise, but I was younger then.

volkl48 8y ago

I think the basic disconnect being expressed in the widly varying opinions seen in this thread is: You can design an open office to work well. You can design an open office to be a sweatshop fitting in the maximum number of employees at the lowest cost. You cannot do both. ------ I have worked in an open office I liked. It was the former. Plenty of huddle rooms and other private spaces, different groups physically had a good amount of open floor space between them and another group, and great design to minimize visual distractions for people. I do not believe it saved any significant amount of floorspace over a more traditional cube setup. But it worked well and I didn't have major complaints. However, I have seen far more "open offices" that are just purely out to fit the most employees in the smallest space, and everyone is always miserable in those.

EvagohP5 8y ago

this is the real deal: to be productive: sucks to let workers be a little more human: it's good

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

davesque 8y ago

I've generally felt that open office plans are just a cost cutting move that has been heavily disguised as some kind of ingenious workplace innovation. Times are tight. Companies don't have as much money lying around as they did in the nineties -- that or they're just not willing to admit that they do.

samgranieri 8y ago

In the past few years I've worked from home, worked in places that had a cubicle, a room of 6 devs where everyone had their back to a wall, and now an open office floor plan. Right now I'm sitting in a corner near a wall with the open office floor plan. I have some desks partially behind me, with a conference room that's not used much. I've gotten used to it. I liked the six devs in a room thing, but my company outgrew that office two years ago. I also invested in some noise cancelling headphones, and it's absolutely essential. Right now I have two coworkers talking 5 feat from me, and I can't hear them.

amanaplanacanal 8y ago

When they remodeled a building I used to work in, they converted it all to open office space (minus the manager's fully enclosed offices, of course). What we were told was that every person had to have a view of a window. Something to do with the LEED certification? Maybe they were saving electricity by allowing the light to reach all the spaces. Then our team lead decided we needed to have a morning stand-up meeting every day in the middle of this space, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that we were bothering all the other teams in the same shared space.

Rudism 8y ago

I wonder what these numbers would look like if you just focused on software engineers instead of a "diverse cross-section" of workers. I really dislike my open office floor plan, but I think I'm the only one on my team of around 6 other software engineers who feels that way.

nfriedly 8y ago

Officially, I work from home. But when my family is around, that can be just as bad as being in an open office environment, maybe worse. (I have a 4-year old and a 3-month old.) So, I started leasing an office in town about a year and a half ago. Totally worth it. It's a quiet space to work where nobody interrupts me or touches anything. And, the internet's about 5x faster than what I have at home. When the weather is nice, I bike in. It'd be great if my employer paid for it, but my base pay is sufficient.

Corrado 8y ago

A counterpoint to the noise that an open office creates can be the silence it enforces. In a past life we had an open office with 20 people situated in "pods" of 2-3 desks. We were all developers and the problem wasn't that it was too noisy but was too quiet. I was afraid to say anything to anyone because the whole room could hear it and it would disturb everyone. Even just moving in your chair could cause a cacophony of squeaks and groans (or at least it felt that way). It felt like working in a library where everyone was afraid to breath too loudly.

tschwimmer 8y ago

People think open offices are some sort of hidden conspiracy that's been set up to make their lives hell. There's no conspiracy; open office floorpans require less floor space per employee and are thus cheaper. Think about all the additional space required to have walls, a hallway connecting offices, etc. Firms are not stupid. I am not doubting that there is a productivity hit due to distracting noise and motion, but it's probably not outweighed by the reduction in real estate cost.

Not_a_pizza 8y ago
It's not a conspiracy - removing privacy looks nice on the surface, until you realize that every conversation you have at work is now in public corp space. Any jokes you might have told, any friendship type things are now scrutinized at the highest levels by managers who are only "cells" away - in the same big room. Open offices feel like a real dick move by any company that uses it to corral employees as close together as possible. Maybe if they have reasonable break rooms it's not so bad, but how many companies give you more than the bare minimum space you need to work?

Tepix 8y ago

Here's what Dilbert thinks about open offices https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-12-08 https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-12-08

ddacunha 8y ago

Short video on the history of open space and how today's version is a copy of-a-copy of-a-copy of-a-copy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p6WWRarjNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p6WWRarjNs

robben1234 8y ago

It was meant for to make already needed frequent communication easier between sales (editoral, etc) stuff. When open space is implemented in an office meant for engineers it's killing people. You need silence to be able efficiently focus on your work and now employer makes you work in a place where silence is impossible by design.