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I like bantering and chatting too, but I definitely don’t think it’s that conducive towards me being a productive engineer. Sometimes it’s nice being able to fr

I like bantering and chatting too, but I definitely don’t think it’s that conducive towards me being a productive engineer. Sometimes it’s nice being able to freely walk about and bounce ideas off others, and I’m sure this has resulted in some positive benefits, but 70+% of the time I really just need to go heads down on something and not be distracted. Always being near people who are talking is very distracting. As a result I get more done when I’m not in the office. I think it’s pretty obvious that you could have a hybrid approach where you have open areas for collaborating as well as a lot of private booths or rooms for people who actually need to get things done. But of course that wouldn’t be cheap..

saberience 8y ago
The open-plan areas at my company are kept limited in size. Our area seats about a max of 14 people and right now we have 10 people. Everyone has their own movable standing desk and the company provides pretty good noise-cancelling headphones if you want. Given the limited amount of people and decent sized area, there is a good amount of space between desks and the noise level never really gets that high since there aren't really that many people around.
- rpedela 8y ago
  I think we need another word for that. It isn't really the definition of "open office" that is usually discussed. Open office typically refers to 10s or 100s of people in the same room. <= 10 is something else because that is small enough for everyone to respect each other's space, ears, etc even when on top of each other. I have had a few jobs with that particular set up and I never had a problem with it. However I have never liked larger open offices.