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Very simple: does c suite use open offices? No, because they freaking suck lol. If you think collaboration is benefitted from open office layouts, provide more

Very simple: does c suite use open offices? No, because they freaking suck lol. If you think collaboration is benefitted from open office layouts, provide more offices or dedicated meeting rooms instead. In a private office i can put an air filter, control the temp completely, take a nap, and so on.

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
The real question that one should ask the higher ups is how much time do they expect us to be collaborating. The only way you can justify open floor spaces is if the collaboration is the most important element of the majority of the people's time and effort and the majority of the people need to be both aware of and contributing to that collaboration. I very much doubt that leaders believes that developers should be involved in every conversation in the space for the majority of the day.
- Guid_NewGuid 5y ago
  > I very much doubt that leaders believes that developers should be involved in every conversation in the space for the majority of the day. The funny thing is for software/tech companies they probably should be. The people who will be doing the work should probably have input into the work to be done at every stage of the process. Tech companies should value the informed input of the actual people who build their company. But most leaders who value open plan offices see developers as unimportant ticket robots who take in JIRA tickets and output code and who need to know nothing about what exactly they're building.
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    You're right, teams should collaborate, but I've never been in a place-where only one team was in the space. It's a handful of teams from a bunch of practices all taking the same space. I've never been in a company where the couple dozen people all on the floor are on the same project. I'd imagine even if they were there would be subdivisions there - do 30 people all effectively work on the same stuff?
    - bluGill 5y ago
      I've been on projects of 100 developers all on the same floor. However the only way to sanely manage such a thing it break things into smaller parts. You then have a a bunch of small teams (around 10 people) that need to work together. When one person on your team says/asks something you should pay attention because it will affect you, but if someone on a different team says something ignore it.
      - drjasonharrison 5y ago
        LOL. Unfortunately what people say that you can hear can affect your team because of product interactions. And people tend to talk about other things than work. Additionally, they are often wrong which requires correction.
        bluGill 5y ago
        > Unfortunately what people say that you can hear can affect your team because of product interactions. Absolutely. However that is a lot less common than things that you hear that don't affect you. If you want everyone to know everything than you can't have more than 10 developers - a team of this size (or slightly smaller) will be far more productive than larger teams because they know all the interactions - but the larger team because of the larger numbers gets more done at the end of the day anyway (and good architecture will minimize the interactions and thus help productivity) > Unfortunately what people say that you can hear can affect your team because of product interactions. When it is only a small number of people those non-work conversations make your teammates more human and thus gel your team and so are worth thee cost. However if the number of people is too large it is a distraction. > they are often wrong which requires correction. If they are your teammates you should be correcting each other. If they are not - you shouldn't be the expert in the subject and so you won't know they are wrong in the first place.
      - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
        Given that at any one time that means that at least 90% of the developers will be trying to ignore one or more conversations (while trying to work or having their own) it comes back to the question the intent of that space and if that's actually helping productivity. Is that team of 10 collaborating and trying to ignore everyone else while doing so more productive in that space than they would be in their own team office or sets of offices? And are the other non-talking developers not being less productive because of the distraction? It doesn't take a lot of distraction for a team of 10 to drag down the productivity of the other 90 people into a net loss for the room.
  - thrower123 5y ago
    The problem with the model where everybody is inputting all the time, is that nobody is actually doing any of the work to turn that noise into product. It's not a sustainable model for actually accomplishing anything, unless you've got engineers taking things off-the-clock and turning that discussioning into code in the late night or early morning hours. Been there, done that, it's not any fun, and a good way to get resentful and burned out. It's really helpful to formalize communication to a greater degree.
bluedino 5y ago
I worked at a place with open offices and lots of conferenc e rooms, C-levels were notorious for 'permanently occupying' them.
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  I have been a C-Level at a (medium sized) company before, I had a go at using an open-plan desk (which I strongly prefer), but it’s not practical. The reason it can’t really work, is C-Levels spend a lot of their time in meetings discussing confidential information. An open-plan desk is a bit of a waste if you can only spend 1-2 hours a day sitting at it, and you need to spend the rest in a meeting room. I’ve also worked at a company that considered offering private offices to anybody who wanted them, but the numbers on it suck. For our office sites it was going to cost an extra $20-30,000 annually per employee in floor space. Salary is very important to employees, but the total cost of employing somebody is more important to an employer. If it costs an extra $20-30,000 to employ somebody, that money has to come from somewhere. Most people wouldn’t choose to take a pay cut of that size in return for a private office. The extra money could come from increased productivity, but even if you believe you’d be more productive in a private office, you’re not going to be 15-30% more productive. In this case most people spent 1 or 2 days a week WFH, so to cover the cost the change would more realistically have to increase productivity by upwards of 50%. I know they’re “notoriously unpopular” but if you did a survey I’m sure you find waking up to go to work in the morning is pretty unpopular too. The alternative is to increase the cost of employing you in a way that doesn’t result in any form of compensation, which if you think it through is likely not a very good idea.
  - scottLobster 5y ago
    Sounds like that company was considering some luxurious offices. I'd be satisfied with my cubicle walls going to the ceiling and a simple door. The goal is privacy/focus. Hell if I was allowed I would get some plywood and hinges from home depot and install them myself over the weekend.
    - mirkules 5y ago
willcipriano 5y ago
Isn't collaboration the primary role of the executive? If the open office had benefits you would expect them to be the most pronounced among management, wouldn't you? Since salaries in the executive are so high and according to them the open office has massive efficiency benefits doesn't that mean that the cost of executives having private offices is unacceptable as it is hindering the efficiency of a very high cost role?
- rob74 5y ago
  Well yeah, but that collaboration is also often done via phone/videoconference, and some of the things discussed may not be for everyone's ears, so I can understand them wanting a private office. The logic behind cramming developers into open-space offices is more along the lines of "their job is more or less silent, and they don't have as many calls that could disturb the others, so we can put them all in a big room and save money, yay!".
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Walls are cheap. Depending on who you ask the HVAC is enough cheaper as to be worth it. (open offices are a nightmare to heat/cool: there are always temperature gradient across large rooms)
    - leetcrew 5y ago
      cheaper still: open office and don't worry about things like temperature gradient or air quality.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      Walls and HVAC are cheap. What’s not cheap is all the additional square footage of floor plate to make offices work (additional space in the office itself, additional space for corridors, laying out architecture to allow sight lines to natural light, etc)
      - cyphertruck 5y ago
3pt14159 5y ago
In the '80s when my dad was a C-level at a major Canadian telcom the first thing he did was move the knowledge workers to the edge of the building where the private offices were and moved his setup to the middle of the floor. His reasoning was that he'd constantly need to talk to different people anyway and the people with more technical roles would benefit from the silence. It kinda blew peoples minds at the time, though I can't say I know how well it really worked in practice.
- bluGill 5y ago
  On that line, open door policies are worthless. The people who believe in it are extroverts. They are never in the office, they are walking around looking for people to talk to. The only time they are in their office is when they are have a conversation that truly does need to be private. The introverts in the mean time need time away from people to recharge. They don't want you interrupting if it isn't an emergency.
  - belval 5y ago
    Nothing like the CEO telling everyone that we have an "open door culture" and to feel free to come to him when they have concerns for the well-being of the business. The above only works if no-one does it.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      The CEO actually wants a FEW people to do that though. He wants feedback, the bigger isn't isn't the number of people is too much (though that could be a problem), the bigger issue it is that the few who do come to him skew his thinking to their biases instead of the real thing. Thus open door for the CEO needs to be replaced with something that gets more general feedback. I'm not sure what that might be though.
      - JohnFen 5y ago
        Not just more general feedback, but honest feedback. Whether acknowledged or not, there is a power discrepancy between executives (especially C-suite execs) and everyone else. That discrepancy means that executives can't expect to get the real picture by relying on workers to tell them.
dudul 5y ago
The typical move I've seen is C-level execs permanently booking one of the conference rooms. I've seen one who had no problem doing his work in a 20-person conference room all day.
- allyant 5y ago
  Also seen this - meeting rooms where like gold dust. Had a few meetings that were suddenly cancelled when the CEO came into the office.
codingdave 5y ago
The offices I've worked in gave private offices to roles that need to discuss confidential concerns. Which means all people managers, which in turns means all executives. I also have had a private office as an individual tech contributor, but most places just gave us cubes. I agree that open offices suck, btw. I'd much more readily go back to an office if I got my own space.
- antonzabirko 5y ago
  That's usually just an excuse. For example, that issue can be addressed in a more budget-friendly way by simply adding a few temporary meeting rooms. Need to discuss a confidential concern? Just book it. The real reason is that it's harder to find quality c-suite candidates who would accept an open office. Since stockholders care so much about the quality of leadership (rightly), companies usually spare no expense in enticing the best candidates.
hazz99 5y ago
Our C-levels use the exact same open offices as the rest of us
- sillyquiet 5y ago
  Yeah? How often are they at their places in that open office doing work vs traveling or in conference rooms? I betcha for most of them it's 'not often'
  - hazz99 5y ago
    I mean they’re in meeting rooms pretty often, but they’re not special fancy conference rooms. Just used for meetings like everyone else, and they have a lot of meetings because they run the company. I could use the meeting rooms just as much if I wanted. I don’t see them having very special facilities.
    - sillyquiet 5y ago
      My point being c-level executives don't need comfortable, low-distraction work stations to perform their work, so its not like their work life alters much in the open-office fad. Their work is done primarily in conference rooms and in meetings. Engineers, for the most part, do.
Hamuko 5y ago
There's usually some excuse along the line of "Oh, the C-suite is constantly on the phone" / "Oh, the C-suite has to conduct business that cannot yet be shared with all the employees" / "Oh, the C-suite has to conduct private HR business" that makes it necessary for the C-suite to have a private office.
Closi 5y ago
> Very simple: does c suite use open offices? No, because they freaking suck lol. Sure they do. I worked at a FTSE-100 company that had the CEO and full director team working in an open office. You could walk right up to the CEO no matter who you were. In fact, I would say that CEO's being in the open office is increasingly popular. They did have access to pre-booked meeting rooms they could use for private conversations which would not be appropriate to hold in an open office.
- loopz 5y ago
  When top leaders are in the same open plan: How inviting is it to come on over and chat up? It's wide open to misinterpretations and unintended skip-levels.
  - Closi 5y ago
    In the company I worked at, it depended on the seniority: * CEO - He was in the open office but had his team of PA's and assistants around him, so if they didn't recognise you they would triage it first (and everyone knew not to just walk up in reality - open office at that scale means you can technically walk up to them and start talking but it doesn't mean that you should). The CEO in this particular company was a public figure too (i.e. the kind of CEO where reporters would follow them and would be recognised on the street), so again it's kinda like walking up to a celebrity in a cafe - you can but it's not always polite. * Board/Exec Directors - They usually had 1 or 2 PA's sitting next to them but would be very approachable. Typically would have the desk against a wall to discourage disturbance slightly (i.e. it meant you had to walk past the PA desk). If you are in their department usually you could just walk over and chat. If you weren't in the department, the PA's would probably chat to you first and suggest speaking to one of the directors that reported into them first, although if they had done that already then they probably would either have a quick chat (director is in ear-shot anyway) or schedule a meeting if it needs a longer discussion. * Non-Exec Directors - Were in the full open office, typically with one PA but they could be remote. You could walk up and start chatting openly. For reference it was a company with over 100k employees, and 5 levels of hierarchy below director level. To be honest the whole setup worked really well, and I personally didn't feel like there was any barrier between management and everyone else.

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago

The real question that one should ask the higher ups is how much time do they expect us to be collaborating. The only way you can justify open floor spaces is if the collaboration is the most important element of the majority of the people's time and effort and the majority of the people need to be both aware of and contributing to that collaboration. I very much doubt that leaders believes that developers should be involved in every conversation in the space for the majority of the day.

Guid_NewGuid 5y ago
> I very much doubt that leaders believes that developers should be involved in every conversation in the space for the majority of the day. The funny thing is for software/tech companies they probably should be. The people who will be doing the work should probably have input into the work to be done at every stage of the process. Tech companies should value the informed input of the actual people who build their company. But most leaders who value open plan offices see developers as unimportant ticket robots who take in JIRA tickets and output code and who need to know nothing about what exactly they're building.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  You're right, teams should collaborate, but I've never been in a place-where only one team was in the space. It's a handful of teams from a bunch of practices all taking the same space. I've never been in a company where the couple dozen people all on the floor are on the same project. I'd imagine even if they were there would be subdivisions there - do 30 people all effectively work on the same stuff?
  - bluGill 5y ago
    I've been on projects of 100 developers all on the same floor. However the only way to sanely manage such a thing it break things into smaller parts. You then have a a bunch of small teams (around 10 people) that need to work together. When one person on your team says/asks something you should pay attention because it will affect you, but if someone on a different team says something ignore it.
    - drjasonharrison 5y ago
      LOL. Unfortunately what people say that you can hear can affect your team because of product interactions. And people tend to talk about other things than work. Additionally, they are often wrong which requires correction.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        > Unfortunately what people say that you can hear can affect your team because of product interactions. Absolutely. However that is a lot less common than things that you hear that don't affect you. If you want everyone to know everything than you can't have more than 10 developers - a team of this size (or slightly smaller) will be far more productive than larger teams because they know all the interactions - but the larger team because of the larger numbers gets more done at the end of the day anyway (and good architecture will minimize the interactions and thus help productivity) > Unfortunately what people say that you can hear can affect your team because of product interactions. When it is only a small number of people those non-work conversations make your teammates more human and thus gel your team and so are worth thee cost. However if the number of people is too large it is a distraction. > they are often wrong which requires correction. If they are your teammates you should be correcting each other. If they are not - you shouldn't be the expert in the subject and so you won't know they are wrong in the first place.
    - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
      Given that at any one time that means that at least 90% of the developers will be trying to ignore one or more conversations (while trying to work or having their own) it comes back to the question the intent of that space and if that's actually helping productivity. Is that team of 10 collaborating and trying to ignore everyone else while doing so more productive in that space than they would be in their own team office or sets of offices? And are the other non-talking developers not being less productive because of the distraction? It doesn't take a lot of distraction for a team of 10 to drag down the productivity of the other 90 people into a net loss for the room.
- thrower123 5y ago
  The problem with the model where everybody is inputting all the time, is that nobody is actually doing any of the work to turn that noise into product. It's not a sustainable model for actually accomplishing anything, unless you've got engineers taking things off-the-clock and turning that discussioning into code in the late night or early morning hours. Been there, done that, it's not any fun, and a good way to get resentful and burned out. It's really helpful to formalize communication to a greater degree.

bluedino 5y ago

I worked at a place with open offices and lots of conferenc e rooms, C-levels were notorious for 'permanently occupying' them.

AmericanChopper 5y ago
I have been a C-Level at a (medium sized) company before, I had a go at using an open-plan desk (which I strongly prefer), but it’s not practical. The reason it can’t really work, is C-Levels spend a lot of their time in meetings discussing confidential information. An open-plan desk is a bit of a waste if you can only spend 1-2 hours a day sitting at it, and you need to spend the rest in a meeting room. I’ve also worked at a company that considered offering private offices to anybody who wanted them, but the numbers on it suck. For our office sites it was going to cost an extra $20-30,000 annually per employee in floor space. Salary is very important to employees, but the total cost of employing somebody is more important to an employer. If it costs an extra $20-30,000 to employ somebody, that money has to come from somewhere. Most people wouldn’t choose to take a pay cut of that size in return for a private office. The extra money could come from increased productivity, but even if you believe you’d be more productive in a private office, you’re not going to be 15-30% more productive. In this case most people spent 1 or 2 days a week WFH, so to cover the cost the change would more realistically have to increase productivity by upwards of 50%. I know they’re “notoriously unpopular” but if you did a survey I’m sure you find waking up to go to work in the morning is pretty unpopular too. The alternative is to increase the cost of employing you in a way that doesn’t result in any form of compensation, which if you think it through is likely not a very good idea.
- scottLobster 5y ago
  Sounds like that company was considering some luxurious offices. I'd be satisfied with my cubicle walls going to the ceiling and a simple door. The goal is privacy/focus. Hell if I was allowed I would get some plywood and hinges from home depot and install them myself over the weekend.
  - mirkules 5y ago

willcipriano 5y ago

Isn't collaboration the primary role of the executive? If the open office had benefits you would expect them to be the most pronounced among management, wouldn't you? Since salaries in the executive are so high and according to them the open office has massive efficiency benefits doesn't that mean that the cost of executives having private offices is unacceptable as it is hindering the efficiency of a very high cost role?

rob74 5y ago
Well yeah, but that collaboration is also often done via phone/videoconference, and some of the things discussed may not be for everyone's ears, so I can understand them wanting a private office. The logic behind cramming developers into open-space offices is more along the lines of "their job is more or less silent, and they don't have as many calls that could disturb the others, so we can put them all in a big room and save money, yay!".
- bluGill 5y ago
  Walls are cheap. Depending on who you ask the HVAC is enough cheaper as to be worth it. (open offices are a nightmare to heat/cool: there are always temperature gradient across large rooms)
  - leetcrew 5y ago
    cheaper still: open office and don't worry about things like temperature gradient or air quality.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Walls and HVAC are cheap. What’s not cheap is all the additional square footage of floor plate to make offices work (additional space in the office itself, additional space for corridors, laying out architecture to allow sight lines to natural light, etc)
    - cyphertruck 5y ago

3pt14159 5y ago

In the '80s when my dad was a C-level at a major Canadian telcom the first thing he did was move the knowledge workers to the edge of the building where the private offices were and moved his setup to the middle of the floor. His reasoning was that he'd constantly need to talk to different people anyway and the people with more technical roles would benefit from the silence. It kinda blew peoples minds at the time, though I can't say I know how well it really worked in practice.

bluGill 5y ago
On that line, open door policies are worthless. The people who believe in it are extroverts. They are never in the office, they are walking around looking for people to talk to. The only time they are in their office is when they are have a conversation that truly does need to be private. The introverts in the mean time need time away from people to recharge. They don't want you interrupting if it isn't an emergency.
- belval 5y ago
  Nothing like the CEO telling everyone that we have an "open door culture" and to feel free to come to him when they have concerns for the well-being of the business. The above only works if no-one does it.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    The CEO actually wants a FEW people to do that though. He wants feedback, the bigger isn't isn't the number of people is too much (though that could be a problem), the bigger issue it is that the few who do come to him skew his thinking to their biases instead of the real thing. Thus open door for the CEO needs to be replaced with something that gets more general feedback. I'm not sure what that might be though.
    - JohnFen 5y ago
      Not just more general feedback, but honest feedback. Whether acknowledged or not, there is a power discrepancy between executives (especially C-suite execs) and everyone else. That discrepancy means that executives can't expect to get the real picture by relying on workers to tell them.

dudul 5y ago

The typical move I've seen is C-level execs permanently booking one of the conference rooms. I've seen one who had no problem doing his work in a 20-person conference room all day.

allyant 5y ago
Also seen this - meeting rooms where like gold dust. Had a few meetings that were suddenly cancelled when the CEO came into the office.

codingdave 5y ago

The offices I've worked in gave private offices to roles that need to discuss confidential concerns. Which means all people managers, which in turns means all executives. I also have had a private office as an individual tech contributor, but most places just gave us cubes. I agree that open offices suck, btw. I'd much more readily go back to an office if I got my own space.

antonzabirko 5y ago
That's usually just an excuse. For example, that issue can be addressed in a more budget-friendly way by simply adding a few temporary meeting rooms. Need to discuss a confidential concern? Just book it. The real reason is that it's harder to find quality c-suite candidates who would accept an open office. Since stockholders care so much about the quality of leadership (rightly), companies usually spare no expense in enticing the best candidates.

hazz99 5y ago

Our C-levels use the exact same open offices as the rest of us

sillyquiet 5y ago
Yeah? How often are they at their places in that open office doing work vs traveling or in conference rooms? I betcha for most of them it's 'not often'
- hazz99 5y ago
  I mean they’re in meeting rooms pretty often, but they’re not special fancy conference rooms. Just used for meetings like everyone else, and they have a lot of meetings because they run the company. I could use the meeting rooms just as much if I wanted. I don’t see them having very special facilities.
  - sillyquiet 5y ago
    My point being c-level executives don't need comfortable, low-distraction work stations to perform their work, so its not like their work life alters much in the open-office fad. Their work is done primarily in conference rooms and in meetings. Engineers, for the most part, do.

Hamuko 5y ago

There's usually some excuse along the line of "Oh, the C-suite is constantly on the phone" / "Oh, the C-suite has to conduct business that cannot yet be shared with all the employees" / "Oh, the C-suite has to conduct private HR business" that makes it necessary for the C-suite to have a private office.

Closi 5y ago

> Very simple: does c suite use open offices? No, because they freaking suck lol. Sure they do. I worked at a FTSE-100 company that had the CEO and full director team working in an open office. You could walk right up to the CEO no matter who you were. In fact, I would say that CEO's being in the open office is increasingly popular. They did have access to pre-booked meeting rooms they could use for private conversations which would not be appropriate to hold in an open office.

loopz 5y ago
When top leaders are in the same open plan: How inviting is it to come on over and chat up? It's wide open to misinterpretations and unintended skip-levels.
- Closi 5y ago
  In the company I worked at, it depended on the seniority: * CEO - He was in the open office but had his team of PA's and assistants around him, so if they didn't recognise you they would triage it first (and everyone knew not to just walk up in reality - open office at that scale means you can technically walk up to them and start talking but it doesn't mean that you should). The CEO in this particular company was a public figure too (i.e. the kind of CEO where reporters would follow them and would be recognised on the street), so again it's kinda like walking up to a celebrity in a cafe - you can but it's not always polite. * Board/Exec Directors - They usually had 1 or 2 PA's sitting next to them but would be very approachable. Typically would have the desk against a wall to discourage disturbance slightly (i.e. it meant you had to walk past the PA desk). If you are in their department usually you could just walk over and chat. If you weren't in the department, the PA's would probably chat to you first and suggest speaking to one of the directors that reported into them first, although if they had done that already then they probably would either have a quick chat (director is in ear-shot anyway) or schedule a meeting if it needs a longer discussion. * Non-Exec Directors - Were in the full open office, typically with one PA but they could be remote. You could walk up and start chatting openly. For reference it was a company with over 100k employees, and 5 levels of hierarchy below director level. To be honest the whole setup worked really well, and I personally didn't feel like there was any barrier between management and everyone else.