8 ms·

I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. I'm against open plan offices at large corp level. I have 300 people on my floor, the group closes

I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. I'm against open plan offices at large corp level. I have 300 people on my floor, the group closest to us is from business and spends 2/4 hours a day on the phone. It saddens me because the largest openly claimed benefit of Open Plan offices is "increase collaboration". What I literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide in rooms to get some silence. I mean, people literally have to walk around teams to go to the toilet or get a coffee. I'd like team size cubicles. That would sound to me like a good compromise between collaboration, and deep work. I'm sure people would open up more. In fact, it is how it was setup at Bell Labs back in the time [1], not the pale copy we see everywhere today. A bit like Agile has become Scrum I'm guessing :). [1] https://aquicore.com/blog/bell-labs-office-design/ https://aquicore.com/blog/bell-labs-office-design/

rootsofallevil 6y ago
> I'd like team size cubicles. For a while we had 1st and 2nd line support on the other side of the aisle from us on a floor that had ~ 75 people working there, it was so hard to concentrate. My boss was trying to get a room built for our team: 4 developers, 2 Analysts and 2 testers alas it never happened. Something about collaboration, despite the fact that our team was working an entirely new product line using a new technology (for the company).
matsemann 6y ago
Yup, a room for the team is perfect. And then a gatekeeper (team lead) at the door everything has to go through.
gmtx725 6y ago
Does that not just create silos though. So many things require cross-team working. If each team has its own private space then information bottlenecks will occur
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  You have to compare the cost of potential information bottlenecks with the cost of no deeper work being done at all. To combat the bottlenecks, just include shared spaces - a kitchen with a water cooler, a foosball table, a customary time where people go to lunch as a group. Serendipity will happen there, and workstations can be reclaimed as places for concentration.
  - gmtx725 6y ago
    Maybe, i'm not convinced. In my experience social interactions in shared spaces like kitchens etc tend to be dominated by general niceties and non-work chat. Which is fine, obviously, but I don't think you get the benefits as when people working on similar stuff are physically proximate to one another in their workspace, and can get feedback on an idea they are working on now instantly from knowledgeable coworkers
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      > people working on similar stuff are physically proximate to one another in their workspace, and can get feedback on an idea they are working on now instantly from knowledgeable coworkers Yeah, but the issue people arguing against open-space have, myself included, is that we explicitly don't want to have these interactions, at least not in unstructured form - because your request for feedback from me "now instantly" is actively preventing me from getting my work done.
      - gmtx725 6y ago
        It's just that, a request. You are not obliged to help people straight away if you are deeply engaged in something. In fact most people are polite enough to not ask if it's clear you are busy. But if you're not, having access to that immediacy is a real boon IMO.
        TeMPOraL 6y ago
        It's a request, but just issuing a request to a developer in a state of deep focus stands a good chance of kicking them out of that focused state, ruining anywhere between half an hour and the rest of the day for them. So you need to be really mindful of the cost of just asking someone if they have time. The usual solutions I've employed or been subjected to in the past are: 1) headphones on == no interruptions of any kind, 2) direct questions and requests to IM (with notifications off), and 3) if you need someone's repeated help during the day, then note your questions on a list, and agree on a period (e.g. every hour on the clock) when you and that someone will go over the list together. In my experience, 3) is magical, because once you start noting questions down instead of asking for help immediately, you'll discover that before the hour is up, you'll have answered most of your questions yourself.
- twic 6y ago
  This is what everyone assumes, but when you actually test that idea, it turns out not to be true: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201...
  - tanseydavid 6y ago
    Thank you for the academic link providing a solid contradiction to the idea that open-plan facilitates or improves 'collaboration'.
iso1631 6y ago
Hotdesking often means team members can't sit near each other. I find it hilarious that you have people who spend their entire day on zoom calls with collegues in different parts of the buildings, who also claim they can't possibly work from home.
- em-bee 6y ago
  that's not hilarious. some people just need the occasional face to face interaction, and can't tolerate being alone. i used to work in a kind of hackerspace where i'd sometimes pick the large kitchen as my workspace with others there doing completely unrelated things just because it felt better than being locked up in my room.
twic 6y ago
> I'd like team size cubicles. Upvoting and quoting to emphasise this point. The alternative to open plan is not individual offices, it's team offices.
- jlengrand 6y ago
  I wasn't there to experience it first hand, but it seems like that's how it started as well. Extra collaboration in between teams, but small enough panel size in your direct surrounding. Were not meant to evolve constantly around 100s of people all day
- BiteCode_dev 6y ago
  So... regular offices? Because that's how most office building have been organized outside of tech for decades.
  - Jemm 6y ago
    In one job we had large rooms where each team was housed. There were no closable doors so it felt open but gave us quiet so we could concentrate. That doorway was a psychological deterrent to people coming to socialize or ask stupid questions. It made them stop no briefly. The people who needed privacy due to sensitive nature of their work, like HR and legal, got offices with doors. I hear from people at other companies that this is not always the case.
cyphar 6y ago
> I'd like team size cubicles. That would sound to me like a good compromise between collaboration, and deep work. I agree, but isn't that just a room? When I was doing research at my university, all of the offices were laid out this way -- each group had one room where they all worked so they could discuss things (and the building is one of the older buildings in our 200-year-old university). Also (though I work from home) when we have face-to-face meetings at my employer's offices, the offices are similarly laid out (2-6 people from the same team in a room). I knew that the open offices thing was the new fad in "efficiency improvements to the workplace which are actually just a way to save money", but is it really so common now that people feel the need to reinvent the room and call it a "team sized cubicle"?
- jlengrand 6y ago
  I'm not an expert on the matter, but I read that originally Bell Labs opened up those 'rooms' to create inter disciplinary collaboration. In other words, exactly a room yes, but making sure that you as as chemist run into a geologist once in a while, or a computer scientist gets to meet a biologist. It was about alleyways and corridors, rather than rooms itself. Of course, things have evolved with time and get used for other reasons (saving costs is indeed a big one) and we also tend to idealize the past so I won't make facts out of what I read but it makes sense to me.
twic 6y ago
How about something like the 1972 Centraal Beheer offices: http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/central_beheer.html http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/central_beheer.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_xHQjBKbjo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_xHQjBKbjo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT1VQHcZOj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT1VQHcZOj0 https://www.ahh.nl/index.php/en/projects2/12-utiliteitsbouw/85-centraal-beheer-offices-apeldoorn https://www.ahh.nl/index.php/en/projects2/12-utiliteitsbouw/...
- jlengrand 6y ago
  haha, het ziet zeker goed uit! I like the whole 'factory' look of it.
tzs 6y ago
> I'd like team size cubicles. That would sound to me like a good compromise between collaboration, and deep work. Small clusters of real offices (i.e., floor to ceiling walls, doors, all lights under control of occupant) opening on a shared space might be better for that. I worked at a place like that once. There are some diagrams of the arrangement in this comment [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3730655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3730655
opo 6y ago
>I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. Having now worked in one of these at a large company, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is relativley small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early without having having to have formal meetings and delays. A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple question (or to just see what they are working on) becomes a big deal because you are now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people. Unless you really know the other person well, we found people just are very hesitant to do it. In big companies, there usually isn't a problem with communicating within a team - the problems occur when teams aren't communicating with people in other teams. These team rooms ruin informal inter-team collaboration and communication. With the pandemic it isn't hard to see that a small enclosed team room with people packed in it is also a pretty good way to guarantee a virus will be spread to others.
- jlengrand 6y ago
  Yeah, I mean I'll leave pandemic out of the discussion simply because airco will make sure the virus is spread everywhere in the building, not just the team anyways. I do agree with you in a way, that's one of the dangers. But I also see today that a lot of teams are not even sure what's being done just next to then, simply because everyone has headphones on all day. Creating a climate of inter exchange and communication in between teams is indeed key.
  - opo 6y ago
    >Yeah, I mean I'll leave pandemic out of the discussion simply because airco will make sure the virus is spread everywhere in the building, not just the team anyways. If the air con is recirculating the air like in the case of that restaurant in China, that is true. Otherwise the risk isn't as clear: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/can-air-conditioning-spread-covid-19-probably-not https://www.healthline.com/health-news/can-air-conditioning-... >...But I also see today that a lot of teams are not even sure what's being done just next to then, simply because everyone has headphones on all day. Creating a climate of inter exchange and communication in between teams is indeed key. I agree. The best environment I've seen for that is individual offices with shared collaboration spaces near the offices.
sngz 6y ago
this, the best office I worked at was in a Large room where me and 4 other engineers sat in an open office layout in 4 corners of the room. People from other teams would peek in and talk to us when they need us. When we need to have an engineering meeting people just gathered in our room and we closed the door.
DedlySnek 6y ago
> What I literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide in rooms to get some silence. I mean, people literally have to walk around teams to go to the toilet or get a coffee. This sentence describes me. I have my headphones plugged in almost all times because I cant focus with all the noise.
- tanseydavid 6y ago
  You are not alone in this. Many developers find noise to be a especially distracting factor. I am in this category. Also, I feel the need to comment on the widespread notion that the primary motivation for open-plan office is that "it facilitates collaboration" which in my opinion and experience is barely truthful in any way. The reality is that open-office is motivated by the costs of rent -- it really is that simple. The whole thing about "collaboration" is after-the-fact rationalizing because organizations lack the courage to admit that it really is about money.

rootsofallevil 6y ago

> I'd like team size cubicles. For a while we had 1st and 2nd line support on the other side of the aisle from us on a floor that had ~ 75 people working there, it was so hard to concentrate. My boss was trying to get a room built for our team: 4 developers, 2 Analysts and 2 testers alas it never happened. Something about collaboration, despite the fact that our team was working an entirely new product line using a new technology (for the company).

matsemann 6y ago

Yup, a room for the team is perfect. And then a gatekeeper (team lead) at the door everything has to go through.

gmtx725 6y ago

Does that not just create silos though. So many things require cross-team working. If each team has its own private space then information bottlenecks will occur

TeMPOraL 6y ago
You have to compare the cost of potential information bottlenecks with the cost of no deeper work being done at all. To combat the bottlenecks, just include shared spaces - a kitchen with a water cooler, a foosball table, a customary time where people go to lunch as a group. Serendipity will happen there, and workstations can be reclaimed as places for concentration.
- gmtx725 6y ago
  Maybe, i'm not convinced. In my experience social interactions in shared spaces like kitchens etc tend to be dominated by general niceties and non-work chat. Which is fine, obviously, but I don't think you get the benefits as when people working on similar stuff are physically proximate to one another in their workspace, and can get feedback on an idea they are working on now instantly from knowledgeable coworkers
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > people working on similar stuff are physically proximate to one another in their workspace, and can get feedback on an idea they are working on now instantly from knowledgeable coworkers Yeah, but the issue people arguing against open-space have, myself included, is that we explicitly don't want to have these interactions, at least not in unstructured form - because your request for feedback from me "now instantly" is actively preventing me from getting my work done.
    - gmtx725 6y ago
      It's just that, a request. You are not obliged to help people straight away if you are deeply engaged in something. In fact most people are polite enough to not ask if it's clear you are busy. But if you're not, having access to that immediacy is a real boon IMO.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        It's a request, but just issuing a request to a developer in a state of deep focus stands a good chance of kicking them out of that focused state, ruining anywhere between half an hour and the rest of the day for them. So you need to be really mindful of the cost of just asking someone if they have time. The usual solutions I've employed or been subjected to in the past are: 1) headphones on == no interruptions of any kind, 2) direct questions and requests to IM (with notifications off), and 3) if you need someone's repeated help during the day, then note your questions on a list, and agree on a period (e.g. every hour on the clock) when you and that someone will go over the list together. In my experience, 3) is magical, because once you start noting questions down instead of asking for help immediately, you'll discover that before the hour is up, you'll have answered most of your questions yourself.
twic 6y ago
This is what everyone assumes, but when you actually test that idea, it turns out not to be true: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201...
- tanseydavid 6y ago
  Thank you for the academic link providing a solid contradiction to the idea that open-plan facilitates or improves 'collaboration'.

iso1631 6y ago

Hotdesking often means team members can't sit near each other. I find it hilarious that you have people who spend their entire day on zoom calls with collegues in different parts of the buildings, who also claim they can't possibly work from home.

em-bee 6y ago
that's not hilarious. some people just need the occasional face to face interaction, and can't tolerate being alone. i used to work in a kind of hackerspace where i'd sometimes pick the large kitchen as my workspace with others there doing completely unrelated things just because it felt better than being locked up in my room.

twic 6y ago

> I'd like team size cubicles. Upvoting and quoting to emphasise this point. The alternative to open plan is not individual offices, it's team offices.

jlengrand 6y ago
I wasn't there to experience it first hand, but it seems like that's how it started as well. Extra collaboration in between teams, but small enough panel size in your direct surrounding. Were not meant to evolve constantly around 100s of people all day
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
So... regular offices? Because that's how most office building have been organized outside of tech for decades.
- Jemm 6y ago
  In one job we had large rooms where each team was housed. There were no closable doors so it felt open but gave us quiet so we could concentrate. That doorway was a psychological deterrent to people coming to socialize or ask stupid questions. It made them stop no briefly. The people who needed privacy due to sensitive nature of their work, like HR and legal, got offices with doors. I hear from people at other companies that this is not always the case.

cyphar 6y ago

> I'd like team size cubicles. That would sound to me like a good compromise between collaboration, and deep work. I agree, but isn't that just a room? When I was doing research at my university, all of the offices were laid out this way -- each group had one room where they all worked so they could discuss things (and the building is one of the older buildings in our 200-year-old university). Also (though I work from home) when we have face-to-face meetings at my employer's offices, the offices are similarly laid out (2-6 people from the same team in a room). I knew that the open offices thing was the new fad in "efficiency improvements to the workplace which are actually just a way to save money", but is it really so common now that people feel the need to reinvent the room and call it a "team sized cubicle"?

jlengrand 6y ago
I'm not an expert on the matter, but I read that originally Bell Labs opened up those 'rooms' to create inter disciplinary collaboration. In other words, exactly a room yes, but making sure that you as as chemist run into a geologist once in a while, or a computer scientist gets to meet a biologist. It was about alleyways and corridors, rather than rooms itself. Of course, things have evolved with time and get used for other reasons (saving costs is indeed a big one) and we also tend to idealize the past so I won't make facts out of what I read but it makes sense to me.

twic 6y ago

How about something like the 1972 Centraal Beheer offices: http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/central_beheer.html http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/central_beheer.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_xHQjBKbjo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_xHQjBKbjo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT1VQHcZOj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT1VQHcZOj0 https://www.ahh.nl/index.php/en/projects2/12-utiliteitsbouw/85-centraal-beheer-offices-apeldoorn https://www.ahh.nl/index.php/en/projects2/12-utiliteitsbouw/...

jlengrand 6y ago
haha, het ziet zeker goed uit! I like the whole 'factory' look of it.

tzs 6y ago

> I'd like team size cubicles. That would sound to me like a good compromise between collaboration, and deep work. Small clusters of real offices (i.e., floor to ceiling walls, doors, all lights under control of occupant) opening on a shared space might be better for that. I worked at a place like that once. There are some diagrams of the arrangement in this comment [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3730655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3730655

opo 6y ago

>I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. Having now worked in one of these at a large company, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is relativley small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early without having having to have formal meetings and delays. A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple question (or to just see what they are working on) becomes a big deal because you are now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people. Unless you really know the other person well, we found people just are very hesitant to do it. In big companies, there usually isn't a problem with communicating within a team - the problems occur when teams aren't communicating with people in other teams. These team rooms ruin informal inter-team collaboration and communication. With the pandemic it isn't hard to see that a small enclosed team room with people packed in it is also a pretty good way to guarantee a virus will be spread to others.

jlengrand 6y ago
Yeah, I mean I'll leave pandemic out of the discussion simply because airco will make sure the virus is spread everywhere in the building, not just the team anyways. I do agree with you in a way, that's one of the dangers. But I also see today that a lot of teams are not even sure what's being done just next to then, simply because everyone has headphones on all day. Creating a climate of inter exchange and communication in between teams is indeed key.
- opo 6y ago
  >Yeah, I mean I'll leave pandemic out of the discussion simply because airco will make sure the virus is spread everywhere in the building, not just the team anyways. If the air con is recirculating the air like in the case of that restaurant in China, that is true. Otherwise the risk isn't as clear: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/can-air-conditioning-spread-covid-19-probably-not https://www.healthline.com/health-news/can-air-conditioning-... >...But I also see today that a lot of teams are not even sure what's being done just next to then, simply because everyone has headphones on all day. Creating a climate of inter exchange and communication in between teams is indeed key. I agree. The best environment I've seen for that is individual offices with shared collaboration spaces near the offices.

sngz 6y ago

this, the best office I worked at was in a Large room where me and 4 other engineers sat in an open office layout in 4 corners of the room. People from other teams would peek in and talk to us when they need us. When we need to have an engineering meeting people just gathered in our room and we closed the door.

DedlySnek 6y ago

> What I literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide in rooms to get some silence. I mean, people literally have to walk around teams to go to the toilet or get a coffee. This sentence describes me. I have my headphones plugged in almost all times because I cant focus with all the noise.

tanseydavid 6y ago
You are not alone in this. Many developers find noise to be a especially distracting factor. I am in this category. Also, I feel the need to comment on the widespread notion that the primary motivation for open-plan office is that "it facilitates collaboration" which in my opinion and experience is barely truthful in any way. The reality is that open-office is motivated by the costs of rent -- it really is that simple. The whole thing about "collaboration" is after-the-fact rationalizing because organizations lack the courage to admit that it really is about money.