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Always take these opinions with a grain of salt. Remember Google was the promoter of the open-space office configuration, and that trend ended up being a terri

Always take these opinions with a grain of salt. Remember Google was the promoter of the open-space office configuration, and that trend ended up being a terrible mistake for a lot of companies that followed just because it was the latest fashion in office design. I had bad experience with it, in the context of a Media Agency, to the point where I found that more than 10 people in an open space starts to become too much. 15 to 20 you need to have headphones cranked up in order to be able to do any work. So bare in mind that just because it's Google doesn't mean they should be the trend setter. Google does what Google thinks will work for them.

emteycz 6y ago
Interestingly, most mainstream media had open offices way before it was cool.
- nuclearnice1 6y ago
  I think media and finance had it very early. Here is a story with picture of old newsrooms. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-newsroom-rush-of-old-234187/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-newsroom-rush-of-... What strikes me is the high level of communication and coordination across individualS required to do that work. This seems to be the quality that newsrooms and trading floors are optimized for.
vmception 6y ago
Now get rid of OKRs at small companies that involves anyone else besides managers.
qppo 6y ago
The places I've worked with open offices did it because it was cheap, not because it was cool.
- dekhn 6y ago
  that's the same reason google did it. not because it dramatically improves collaboration.
  - jbay808 6y ago
    With Google spending hundreds of thousands on each engineer, is that really the place to pinch pennies?
    - evgen 6y ago
      If it actually had the cost that people in this thread are claiming do you really think they would continue to build these sort of offices, year after year for almost two decades? Do you seriously think that they have not looked at the impact and determined that the claimed productivity benefits of private offices are so slight as to not even be worth the effort?
    - dekhn 6y ago
      Google has been reducing the average spend per engineer (in terms of benefits and workplace conditions) for quite some time. That is indeed where they have decided to pinch pennies. Real estate costs are non-significant.
- username90 6y ago
  I've never seen anyone say they did open plan because it was cheap, they just say "improved collaboration, more open space environment" etc. Of course the main motivation is likely to reduce cost, but I haven't seen people say that explicitly. So I think that the propaganda in favor for open space offices really sped up their adoption. If Google now produces a lot of propaganda in favor of this hybrid wfh model then it will likely also help speed up adoption, although the main reason to do it would be to save office space costs and not the propaganda blurbs we will see.
  - saiya-jin 6y ago
    Corporate environment is rarely honest even if everybody knows what given thing means. You can literally compose dictionary to normal speech at some point. I have a theory this environment slowly corrupts a character in subtle ways, till folks wake up one day being full of shit while being polite and smiling and when asked everything is fine.
- ksec 6y ago
  Since there are at least a few comment pointing cheaper being the reason. I have to ask, what sort of cost reduction are we looking at ? I cant imagine Open Office being a significant cost reduction in overall office renovation. Let alone the human cost and capital far outweighs renovation cost alone. How could cost saving ever be a reason for Open Office. Am I missing something obvious?
  - geofft 6y ago
    You can pack people more densely, and therefore the office space you need to pay for is smaller for the same number of employees. At my office (which I haven't seen since March), I have one desk large enough to fit two monitors, and a chair. That's all the space that's for me. My desk is part of a row of 4 desks side-by-side, and there's 4 more desks facing them. If you set up cubicles, with the density I had last time I had a cubicle, you could probably fit half as many people. If you set up offices you could fit even less. My employer rents half the floors in one building and just about all the floors in the building across the street, so having to find twice as much space would be not only expensive but logistically complex - either we'd all have to move, or you'd have to commute to get to certain teams.
    - ksec 6y ago
      Thank You. In other words, it was not Open Office, per se that was cost saving, it was using Open Office as a tool to give less space to employees that was cost saving. I mean you could have small cubicles too, I once worked in a office cubicles that physically could not fit anyone taller than 6"2. There are simply not enough leg room.
      - geofft 6y ago
        It's difficult to pack small cubicles and have them still really count as cubicles. Looking for some random pictures from Google Images, my office looks kind of like this: https://s3.amazonaws.com/mentoring.redesign/s3fs-public/open-office-plan.jpg https://s3.amazonaws.com/mentoring.redesign/s3fs-public/open... And here is a random picture of a small cubicle design: https://cubiclebydesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Workstations-12.jpg https://cubiclebydesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Works... Note the dividers in the center area extend back to the sides of the chairs, even though the chairs are not pushed in. If you tried to do that in the first image, you would block the walkway. (You certainly couldn't do the design of the farther-away cubicles; they take up much more room per employee.) You could do something like this: https://www.quill.com/content/index/resource-center/office-furniture-tips-ideas/tips-and-tricks/how-to-arrange-cubicles-for-an-efficient-office-layout-and-employee-satisfaction/images/arrange-cubicles-for-efficient-office-layout-1205.jpg https://www.quill.com/content/index/resource-center/office-f... But I'd probably call that an open office layout, honestly.
kostarelo 6y ago
Well yeah I totally get your point but “we wanted to give people a sense of certainty in those uncertain times” that makes 1000% sense to me.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Open plan offices worked great; it’s just that the promotors of it were lying about why they were doing it. The main point of an open plan office is to reduce the cost of said office. That’s it. Everything else is about trying to find a nice, polite fiction about productivity and communication.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  It’s been repeatedly debunked that in terms of real estate and operating costs, open plan offices don’t save money compared to one-office-per-worker designs, not even in super dense urban centers. To boot, many tech companies actively spend money to tear down privacy features and install open plan features, even when there is no growth plan or need for higher worker density per square foot, often even splurging ridiculous money to make the office have excessively opulent features like gourmet dining, coffee bars, alcohol bars, roof decks, etc. - despite hugely financial losses from the destructive effect on productivity and lack of privacy. Offices are not chosen for short term cost savings, except possibly very early stage startups. Beyond that, offices are juvenile shrines to the company executives and founders.
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    >It’s been repeatedly debunked that in terms of real estate and operating costs, open plan offices don’t save money compared to one-office-per-worker designs Source? I can't imagine there would be enough space for individual offices larger than a phonebooth per employee in the same space as open offices. Anyway, to play the devil's advocate for the move fast and beak things type of companies, open offices are not only about cost, but about the ease to move people and teams around instantly as projects/resources change and more people are onboarded without having to constantly tear down and erect walls to accommodate the various sized teams.
    - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
      Sorry, I’m not going to google it for you and filter out the confirmation bias effect. This topic has been debated so extensively that it’s no longer acceptable to throw in a super lazy “citation needed” kind of rhetorical deflection. The burden of proof runs the other way. It’s mundane and uncontroversial to state that open plan offices fail to save money. If someone wants to claim the opposite, they need to bring extraordinary evidence.
zibarn 6y ago
We have a really small web agency (5 people) and I agree that we don't need to be in the office, that we share with other people of the same company of another division, to get good work done. We need to be together to boost ideas more. Technology and remote tools stigma don't allow you to substitute that for now.
kens 6y ago
> Remember Google was the promoter of the open-space office configuration I don't think that's true. First, open-space offices predate Google by many years. (Frank Lloyd Wright invented the open-plan office in 1936. They were common in tech companies long before Google.) Second, Google used a mixture of enclosed offices with doors and open-space.
mayank 6y ago
> Remember Google was the promoter of the open-space office configuration Are you thinking of Facebook perhaps? Google used to favor the 4-to-a-cube/office configuration.
SergeAx 6y ago
My experience is that in open space where everybody are following basic noise hygiene rules, most of the sounds you got are keyboard and mouse clicks and sometimes mouse wheel crackle. Setting and enforcement of said rules are in mutual company's and employees interest.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  So like a library? Headphones can help but I do tire of them. And if anyone needs voice control to support their work (accessibility).
  - SergeAx 6y ago
    Good example, yes. Like a library. Just some basic rules like "talk in a whisper or use a meeting room", "set your phone on silent and forward notifications to your workstation", and so on. Passages wide enough to go without disturbing people nearby.
ilaksh 6y ago
They did not follow it just because it was fashionable. They followed it because seating people like that requires like 1/4 of the space and cost of offices, and real estate in big cities is incredibly expensive.
schoolornot 6y ago
A Google open floor plan without any of the other perks/distractions is a completely different experience.

emteycz 6y ago

Interestingly, most mainstream media had open offices way before it was cool.

nuclearnice1 6y ago
I think media and finance had it very early. Here is a story with picture of old newsrooms. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-newsroom-rush-of-old-234187/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-newsroom-rush-of-... What strikes me is the high level of communication and coordination across individualS required to do that work. This seems to be the quality that newsrooms and trading floors are optimized for.

vmception 6y ago

Now get rid of OKRs at small companies that involves anyone else besides managers.

qppo 6y ago

The places I've worked with open offices did it because it was cheap, not because it was cool.

dekhn 6y ago
that's the same reason google did it. not because it dramatically improves collaboration.
- jbay808 6y ago
  With Google spending hundreds of thousands on each engineer, is that really the place to pinch pennies?
  - evgen 6y ago
    If it actually had the cost that people in this thread are claiming do you really think they would continue to build these sort of offices, year after year for almost two decades? Do you seriously think that they have not looked at the impact and determined that the claimed productivity benefits of private offices are so slight as to not even be worth the effort?
  - dekhn 6y ago
    Google has been reducing the average spend per engineer (in terms of benefits and workplace conditions) for quite some time. That is indeed where they have decided to pinch pennies. Real estate costs are non-significant.
username90 6y ago
I've never seen anyone say they did open plan because it was cheap, they just say "improved collaboration, more open space environment" etc. Of course the main motivation is likely to reduce cost, but I haven't seen people say that explicitly. So I think that the propaganda in favor for open space offices really sped up their adoption. If Google now produces a lot of propaganda in favor of this hybrid wfh model then it will likely also help speed up adoption, although the main reason to do it would be to save office space costs and not the propaganda blurbs we will see.
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  Corporate environment is rarely honest even if everybody knows what given thing means. You can literally compose dictionary to normal speech at some point. I have a theory this environment slowly corrupts a character in subtle ways, till folks wake up one day being full of shit while being polite and smiling and when asked everything is fine.
ksec 6y ago
Since there are at least a few comment pointing cheaper being the reason. I have to ask, what sort of cost reduction are we looking at ? I cant imagine Open Office being a significant cost reduction in overall office renovation. Let alone the human cost and capital far outweighs renovation cost alone. How could cost saving ever be a reason for Open Office. Am I missing something obvious?
- geofft 6y ago
  You can pack people more densely, and therefore the office space you need to pay for is smaller for the same number of employees. At my office (which I haven't seen since March), I have one desk large enough to fit two monitors, and a chair. That's all the space that's for me. My desk is part of a row of 4 desks side-by-side, and there's 4 more desks facing them. If you set up cubicles, with the density I had last time I had a cubicle, you could probably fit half as many people. If you set up offices you could fit even less. My employer rents half the floors in one building and just about all the floors in the building across the street, so having to find twice as much space would be not only expensive but logistically complex - either we'd all have to move, or you'd have to commute to get to certain teams.
  - ksec 6y ago
    Thank You. In other words, it was not Open Office, per se that was cost saving, it was using Open Office as a tool to give less space to employees that was cost saving. I mean you could have small cubicles too, I once worked in a office cubicles that physically could not fit anyone taller than 6"2. There are simply not enough leg room.
    - geofft 6y ago
      It's difficult to pack small cubicles and have them still really count as cubicles. Looking for some random pictures from Google Images, my office looks kind of like this: https://s3.amazonaws.com/mentoring.redesign/s3fs-public/open-office-plan.jpg https://s3.amazonaws.com/mentoring.redesign/s3fs-public/open... And here is a random picture of a small cubicle design: https://cubiclebydesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Workstations-12.jpg https://cubiclebydesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Works... Note the dividers in the center area extend back to the sides of the chairs, even though the chairs are not pushed in. If you tried to do that in the first image, you would block the walkway. (You certainly couldn't do the design of the farther-away cubicles; they take up much more room per employee.) You could do something like this: https://www.quill.com/content/index/resource-center/office-furniture-tips-ideas/tips-and-tricks/how-to-arrange-cubicles-for-an-efficient-office-layout-and-employee-satisfaction/images/arrange-cubicles-for-efficient-office-layout-1205.jpg https://www.quill.com/content/index/resource-center/office-f... But I'd probably call that an open office layout, honestly.

kostarelo 6y ago

Well yeah I totally get your point but “we wanted to give people a sense of certainty in those uncertain times” that makes 1000% sense to me.

ashtonkem 6y ago

Open plan offices worked great; it’s just that the promotors of it were lying about why they were doing it. The main point of an open plan office is to reduce the cost of said office. That’s it. Everything else is about trying to find a nice, polite fiction about productivity and communication.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
It’s been repeatedly debunked that in terms of real estate and operating costs, open plan offices don’t save money compared to one-office-per-worker designs, not even in super dense urban centers. To boot, many tech companies actively spend money to tear down privacy features and install open plan features, even when there is no growth plan or need for higher worker density per square foot, often even splurging ridiculous money to make the office have excessively opulent features like gourmet dining, coffee bars, alcohol bars, roof decks, etc. - despite hugely financial losses from the destructive effect on productivity and lack of privacy. Offices are not chosen for short term cost savings, except possibly very early stage startups. Beyond that, offices are juvenile shrines to the company executives and founders.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  >It’s been repeatedly debunked that in terms of real estate and operating costs, open plan offices don’t save money compared to one-office-per-worker designs Source? I can't imagine there would be enough space for individual offices larger than a phonebooth per employee in the same space as open offices. Anyway, to play the devil's advocate for the move fast and beak things type of companies, open offices are not only about cost, but about the ease to move people and teams around instantly as projects/resources change and more people are onboarded without having to constantly tear down and erect walls to accommodate the various sized teams.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    Sorry, I’m not going to google it for you and filter out the confirmation bias effect. This topic has been debated so extensively that it’s no longer acceptable to throw in a super lazy “citation needed” kind of rhetorical deflection. The burden of proof runs the other way. It’s mundane and uncontroversial to state that open plan offices fail to save money. If someone wants to claim the opposite, they need to bring extraordinary evidence.

zibarn 6y ago

We have a really small web agency (5 people) and I agree that we don't need to be in the office, that we share with other people of the same company of another division, to get good work done. We need to be together to boost ideas more. Technology and remote tools stigma don't allow you to substitute that for now.

kens 6y ago

> Remember Google was the promoter of the open-space office configuration I don't think that's true. First, open-space offices predate Google by many years. (Frank Lloyd Wright invented the open-plan office in 1936. They were common in tech companies long before Google.) Second, Google used a mixture of enclosed offices with doors and open-space.

mayank 6y ago

> Remember Google was the promoter of the open-space office configuration Are you thinking of Facebook perhaps? Google used to favor the 4-to-a-cube/office configuration.

SergeAx 6y ago

My experience is that in open space where everybody are following basic noise hygiene rules, most of the sounds you got are keyboard and mouse clicks and sometimes mouse wheel crackle. Setting and enforcement of said rules are in mutual company's and employees interest.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
So like a library? Headphones can help but I do tire of them. And if anyone needs voice control to support their work (accessibility).
- SergeAx 6y ago
  Good example, yes. Like a library. Just some basic rules like "talk in a whisper or use a meeting room", "set your phone on silent and forward notifications to your workstation", and so on. Passages wide enough to go without disturbing people nearby.

ilaksh 6y ago

They did not follow it just because it was fashionable. They followed it because seating people like that requires like 1/4 of the space and cost of offices, and real estate in big cities is incredibly expensive.

schoolornot 6y ago

A Google open floor plan without any of the other perks/distractions is a completely different experience.