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I've yet to meet a programmer who strongly defends open offices. They seem to range from "doesn't mind it" to "literally unable to tolerate it."

AmericanChopper 7y ago
I love them. They vastly improve team members ability to work together imo. Personally, I’ve never met an engineer in real life who complains about them, I’ve only ever seen this on HN or Reddit. I’ve always suspected it had something to do with this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6483953/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6483953/
- learc83 7y ago
  Did you ever stop to think that maybe it's because people working in open offices are self selecting to work in open offices?
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    No, because non-open-plan offices pretty much don’t exist anymore.
    - learc83 7y ago
      There are plenty of companies without open layouts, add remote workers to that and self selection is a big factor. Add to that the possibility that people aren't comfortable complaining to someone who is very obviously pro open layout. Also every survey I can find says that employees don't want open office layouts by a large margin. There's clearly something else going on beyond autistic programmers complaining.
      - magduf 7y ago
        I don't know why AmericanChopper keeps getting modded down; his points are absolutely valid. I'm not a fan of open offices either, but I've worked in a bunch of different places over the years, and he's right on many points. There aren't many places left that don't have open offices of some kind, and I have not met many people who complained about them. Usually, I'm the biggest complainer. I would take surveys with a grain of salt; of course complainers like me are going to be happy to voice their opinions in surveys like this, while other people probably don't bother taking the survey. I also find that my younger coworkers seem to really enjoy the open layouts. At my current workplace where I work in a closed lab, the complaint is about the lack of windows, not the noise or the lack of privacy. Some people will make comments about certain teams having meetings that are extremely loud, or about how quiet the lab is when those teams are in their meeting, so there does seem to be some desire for a little more quietness, but these same people have no trouble having a fairly noisy conversation while people are trying to work. In my view, Americans are just loud and extroverted in general, and this extends to the current workers in this field.
        learc83 7y ago
        >I don't know why AmericanChopper keeps getting modded down They're getting modded down because the argument is: people don't complain to me about open offices, therefore everyone is happy with open office layouts except people with autism. > There aren't many places left that don't have open offices of some kind Depends on what you mean by open office. Not many places have dedicated private offices for each developer, but cubicles, small team rooms, temporary private spaces etc... are very common. >I have not met many people who complained about them. Usually, I'm the biggest complainer. I would take surveys with a grain of salt; of course complainers like me are going to be happy to voice their opinions in surveys like this, while other people probably don't bother taking the survey. So take surveys with a grain of salt, but not anecdotal evidence? It's much more likely that you're suffering from selection and confirmation bias than it is that every survey I can find online is. We're not talking about online polls open to anyone, but randomized samples. Here's one where they hired an independent research agency that randomly sampled over 4k adults in the US. 66% of the office workers want a closed office layout. That's a huge margin--big enough to overcome any minor issues with the survey. And definitely stronger evidence than 2 people on hacker news saying that people don't complain to them. https://files.getroom.com/ROOM-2018-Open-Office-Woes-Report.pdf https://files.getroom.com/ROOM-2018-Open-Office-Woes-Report.... > In my view, Americans are just loud and extroverted in general, and this extends to the current workers in this field. You are definitely suffering from confirmation bias here. Also basically every study that has been done on open office layouts shows that it's detrimental to business and moral.
- sky_rw 7y ago
  If you truly have never met an eng that complains about open office spaces, I submit that you have not worked in an environment where engineers feel safe to voice their true personal opinions.
  - jarofgreen 7y ago
    Agreed. Especially if when one kinda did once, they were told they might be autistic. Not that there is anything wrong with autism, but you can see how armchair psychiatry would put other people off discussing issues ever again.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      Where did you get the idea that I go around telling my coworkers that they’re autistic? I have somebody very close to me quite seriously affected by autism, and I simply see a very strong parallel between how they struggle with sensory issues in perfectly normal environments, and the HN trope of complaining about how open offices are too loud. I’ve worked in more than a hundred offices as a consultant, and the only one that was loud enough to be distracting was a particularly raucous sales floor. Contrary to the baseless conclusions you’ve drawn, the offices I’ve worked in where people enjoyed open-plan the most were the ones with the most open and supportive cultures. The real reason people tend to dislike open plan is screen privacy. If noise is the reason you don’t like it, then you either work in a very loud office, or you’re much more sensitive to sensory input than the average person.
      - jarofgreen 7y ago
        Fair enough then, good for you. Sorry if that was harsher than I should have worded it. I've seen things like that happen before tho, so there definitely are places where staff are afraid to speak up for that reason. > The real reason people tend to dislike open plan is screen privacy. Still going to call citation needed on you tho. I've heard many people complain in person, and this wasn't a big reason I heard. The last place I worked, almost every single person spent a lot of money on noise cancelling headphones.
ben509 7y ago
I was on a team where the team jointly decided to convert their half-cubes to an open office. There were two hold-outs, myself, and another guy next to me who just wanted to keep his cube. (He had a loud voice to begin with, but now he would have long conversations by yelling across the office.) Like any strongly held belief, you're going to find like-minded people and convince yourself that you're a majority. And, especially, we're unhappy and that means we want to justify our unhappiness, and if we were the majority we'd obviously be justified. But I think all these things are true at the same time: 1. There is a minority of people who are genuinely miserable in open offices. 2. A sizable group of people dislike specific things (too much chatter, clicking pens, etc.) but they don't think about it much. 3. A plurality are oblivious to the noise and are having fun at work. 4. And open offices decrease everyone's ability to focus and are no better for collaboration than any other design. 5. The raison d'etre of an office is to get work done and silence facilitates that. So we're a minority, but regardless there's a solid case against open offices.

AmericanChopper 7y ago

I love them. They vastly improve team members ability to work together imo. Personally, I’ve never met an engineer in real life who complains about them, I’ve only ever seen this on HN or Reddit. I’ve always suspected it had something to do with this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6483953/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6483953/

learc83 7y ago
Did you ever stop to think that maybe it's because people working in open offices are self selecting to work in open offices?
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  No, because non-open-plan offices pretty much don’t exist anymore.
  - learc83 7y ago
    There are plenty of companies without open layouts, add remote workers to that and self selection is a big factor. Add to that the possibility that people aren't comfortable complaining to someone who is very obviously pro open layout. Also every survey I can find says that employees don't want open office layouts by a large margin. There's clearly something else going on beyond autistic programmers complaining.
    - magduf 7y ago
      I don't know why AmericanChopper keeps getting modded down; his points are absolutely valid. I'm not a fan of open offices either, but I've worked in a bunch of different places over the years, and he's right on many points. There aren't many places left that don't have open offices of some kind, and I have not met many people who complained about them. Usually, I'm the biggest complainer. I would take surveys with a grain of salt; of course complainers like me are going to be happy to voice their opinions in surveys like this, while other people probably don't bother taking the survey. I also find that my younger coworkers seem to really enjoy the open layouts. At my current workplace where I work in a closed lab, the complaint is about the lack of windows, not the noise or the lack of privacy. Some people will make comments about certain teams having meetings that are extremely loud, or about how quiet the lab is when those teams are in their meeting, so there does seem to be some desire for a little more quietness, but these same people have no trouble having a fairly noisy conversation while people are trying to work. In my view, Americans are just loud and extroverted in general, and this extends to the current workers in this field.
      - learc83 7y ago
        >I don't know why AmericanChopper keeps getting modded down They're getting modded down because the argument is: people don't complain to me about open offices, therefore everyone is happy with open office layouts except people with autism. > There aren't many places left that don't have open offices of some kind Depends on what you mean by open office. Not many places have dedicated private offices for each developer, but cubicles, small team rooms, temporary private spaces etc... are very common. >I have not met many people who complained about them. Usually, I'm the biggest complainer. I would take surveys with a grain of salt; of course complainers like me are going to be happy to voice their opinions in surveys like this, while other people probably don't bother taking the survey. So take surveys with a grain of salt, but not anecdotal evidence? It's much more likely that you're suffering from selection and confirmation bias than it is that every survey I can find online is. We're not talking about online polls open to anyone, but randomized samples. Here's one where they hired an independent research agency that randomly sampled over 4k adults in the US. 66% of the office workers want a closed office layout. That's a huge margin--big enough to overcome any minor issues with the survey. And definitely stronger evidence than 2 people on hacker news saying that people don't complain to them. https://files.getroom.com/ROOM-2018-Open-Office-Woes-Report.pdf https://files.getroom.com/ROOM-2018-Open-Office-Woes-Report.... > In my view, Americans are just loud and extroverted in general, and this extends to the current workers in this field. You are definitely suffering from confirmation bias here. Also basically every study that has been done on open office layouts shows that it's detrimental to business and moral.
sky_rw 7y ago
If you truly have never met an eng that complains about open office spaces, I submit that you have not worked in an environment where engineers feel safe to voice their true personal opinions.
- jarofgreen 7y ago
  Agreed. Especially if when one kinda did once, they were told they might be autistic. Not that there is anything wrong with autism, but you can see how armchair psychiatry would put other people off discussing issues ever again.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    Where did you get the idea that I go around telling my coworkers that they’re autistic? I have somebody very close to me quite seriously affected by autism, and I simply see a very strong parallel between how they struggle with sensory issues in perfectly normal environments, and the HN trope of complaining about how open offices are too loud. I’ve worked in more than a hundred offices as a consultant, and the only one that was loud enough to be distracting was a particularly raucous sales floor. Contrary to the baseless conclusions you’ve drawn, the offices I’ve worked in where people enjoyed open-plan the most were the ones with the most open and supportive cultures. The real reason people tend to dislike open plan is screen privacy. If noise is the reason you don’t like it, then you either work in a very loud office, or you’re much more sensitive to sensory input than the average person.
    - jarofgreen 7y ago
      Fair enough then, good for you. Sorry if that was harsher than I should have worded it. I've seen things like that happen before tho, so there definitely are places where staff are afraid to speak up for that reason. > The real reason people tend to dislike open plan is screen privacy. Still going to call citation needed on you tho. I've heard many people complain in person, and this wasn't a big reason I heard. The last place I worked, almost every single person spent a lot of money on noise cancelling headphones.

ben509 7y ago

I was on a team where the team jointly decided to convert their half-cubes to an open office. There were two hold-outs, myself, and another guy next to me who just wanted to keep his cube. (He had a loud voice to begin with, but now he would have long conversations by yelling across the office.) Like any strongly held belief, you're going to find like-minded people and convince yourself that you're a majority. And, especially, we're unhappy and that means we want to justify our unhappiness, and if we were the majority we'd obviously be justified. But I think all these things are true at the same time: 1. There is a minority of people who are genuinely miserable in open offices. 2. A sizable group of people dislike specific things (too much chatter, clicking pens, etc.) but they don't think about it much. 3. A plurality are oblivious to the noise and are having fun at work. 4. And open offices decrease everyone's ability to focus and are no better for collaboration than any other design. 5. The raison d'etre of an office is to get work done and silence facilitates that. So we're a minority, but regardless there's a solid case against open offices.