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Currently working in an open plan office and I hate it. The open plan office seeks to solve the problem of knowledge silos where people hole up and wait for peo

Currently working in an open plan office and I hate it. The open plan office seeks to solve the problem of knowledge silos where people hole up and wait for people to come to them. Unfortunately, once that knowledge is distributed the constant interruptions leads to an environment where no one can focus and formulate new ideas during the 9-6 time frame. So work starts to seep into personal time which leads to a far larger problem where people become resentful on a regular basis and burnout. Meanwhile, the CTOs and VPs who also sit in the open plan floor can be seen leaving on a regular basis at 6:00 sharp. I have not achieved a state of mental flow in over a year. If a place I'm interviewing at has adopted the open floor plan, it's a deal breaker. I've worked in cubicle farms, private rooms, shared rooms, and clustered team cubicle rooms. Cubicle farms are equally abhorred to open plan. I think the best mixture is shared rooms with private meeting rooms on a reservation basis, preferably with the private rooms along the windows and meeting rooms in the middle of the building.

ken 15y ago
Yes, I've heard the 'collaboration' justification, too. In my experience, a lot of programmers hate the open-floorplan noise, to which they're told "just take a laptop into a spare conference room, or work from home". The upshot is that half the team is now taking up conference rooms or working from home. It's the worst of both worlds: we're paying for both cubicles that nobody uses and big conference rooms being used as single offices, and people are even more isolated than if they'd just been given normal offices to begin with. It reminds me of situations like Prohibition (and I'm sure you can think of others): we don't like X, therefore we'll legislate against X, and ignore the fact that people are going to do X anyway, and so our legislation actually makes things worse.
- amcintyre 15y ago
  I'm surprised people that push the open-floorplan idea would allow devs to work from home. I would expect them to view that as "ultimate productivity-killing isolation." I mean, "how can we know you're actually working. You're at home, we can't see you producing."
  - gte910h 15y ago
    At some point, devs don't care. They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't, so they may as well actually get their job done the only way it's possible
  - mhurron 15y ago
    Not every place that pushes open floorplan or some 'collaborative workspace' (ugh, get to go to that tomorrow) is a busybody manager. They moved us from cubes to a 'collaborative workspace' at a company where working from home is fine, almost encouraged. It wasn't the managers that choose this, it was higher up who believe collaborative is nothing but a buzz word. In both the work from home (which happened before and will probably increase) and the collaborative workspace, the measure of getting your work done is 'did you get your work doneon time' not 'do you look busy.'
    - amcintyre 15y ago
      Having a liberal work-from-home-if-you-want policy would definitely make it a lot more tolerable, but this: "It wasn't the managers that choose this, it was higher up who believe collaborative is nothing but a buzz word." always worries me, because it's that kind of higher level management that, 3 months later, stops by the awesome collaborative workspace he told you to use, finds it mostly empty because everybody is at home, and shuts down the work-from-home policy in spite of the fact that people are getting work done. Sure, you can point out that people are getting their work done, but (again, I know I'm stereotyping here) that seems to be the kind of management that doesn't let facts get in their way.
rhizome 15y ago
If you know you hate it, I highly recommend finding a new job sooner than later. I did it last summer and it's just not good for humans (or at least "us") to work like that. Then again, people supposedly actually go for those hacker apartment setups, where someone pays for 5 dudes to live together. Shudder, but there's no accounting for taste. Like you say, it's probably best brought up in the interview.
- angstrom 15y ago
  Already actively looking, but thanks for the advice. If you're straight out of college with no other realities in place, it may be doable, otherwise it's just a stupid waste of an already too short life.
damncabbage 15y ago
I have not achieved a state of mental flow in over a year. If a place I'm interviewing at has adopted the open floor plan, it's a deal breaker. I hear you. As an aside, does anyone know of any dev shops in Sydney (Australia) that don't use open-plan setups? I've been going for nine years, and I've only ever seen one (Campaign Monitor); the rest have been benches, or benches separated by low walls.
Devilboy 15y ago
I work in an open plan office and I hate it. I am constantly annoyed, inconvenienced and I can't get half as much code written as I do at home. The designers, salespeople, tech-support staff, managers and accountants I work with, however, love it. Their productivity is way up because they have quick, easy, friction-free and immediate access to me at all times. In aggregate the company does significantly better as a result of this open-plan office and I realise that wanting to be in 'The Zone' 8 hours a day is not why I work there. I work there to make the company as a whole as awesome as possible.
- amcintyre 15y ago
  Just curious: what are you actually there to do, that the designers, salespeople, tech-support staff, managers and accountants are more productive by bugging you all day? (I'm not saying it isn't true, just that I assume by the way you've stated this you're a developer that's rarely left alone to get anything done, and I can't see how that's beneficial to your employer.)
  - Devilboy 15y ago
    I'm a software engineer in a software-centered B2B company. They all use the back-end system, and our clients use the front-end. During the day I may solve up to a dozen small problems, which might be a small customization of the font-end for a big client, debugging a random bug or two on the spot, querying the database for some new sales stat, and so on. If something comes in to our bug-tracker that I think I can resolve within 30 minutes, I do it immediately. The rest of the time I work on the long term (no deadline) projects to improve the system as a whole. Sure those projects suffer a bit but our clients are always very impressed when we can fix his bug, make his customisation change or implement his new report, literally just minutes after he requested it.
    - amcintyre 15y ago
      Thanks! Oddly, I'd probably prefer your job in an open office to some of the arrangements I've seen where people have offices--at least you have direct indications that you're making a direct impact to the company and customers, whereas sometimes developer jobs are so far removed from the end customer that they might as well not even be there.
sandGorgon 15y ago
question - do things like noise cancellation earphones, etc. not work for you? I work in an unusually noisy operation, right next to ecommerce field ops and my Ultimate Ears are a godsend. At the VP/CTO level, it wont help because you will be talking to people all day anyway.
- gte910h 15y ago
  NCH don't help with visual distraction, the ease of bothering you rather than emailing you, nor the oppressive heat/shivering cold that always happens in rooms designed for too many people (or worse, NOT designed for too many people). At VP/CTO level, you're not coding most of the time, you're coordinating. That's a completely different story.
- dwc 15y ago
  That's an individual response to an organizational problem, and the organizational problem remains. The company has created an environment that is actively hostile to productivity, and you are cleverly finding a way around it. That's great for you. But I find headphones uncomfortable to some degree. I find music distracting much of the time. I've tried, believe me. I think I'm not alone in this, so expensive headphones are not a total answer. But the larger issue remains: why should individual employees have to find ways around a productivity-killing environment created by the employer? It's absurd. Note: some time ago on another HN thread I wrote a similar comment. I feel it's worth repeating my sentiments here. On that thread, amusingly, people responded to me with suggestions for nicer headphones and types of music. Don't bother for two reasons: 1) I've explored the options already, and 2) you're missing my point entirely.
Joeboy 15y ago
I'm in the process of quitting my current job, largely because of the open plan office. Not sure what I'm going to do next, but it'll probably be better than going slowly insane. Edit: This has nothing to do with Agile though, we're about as Waterfall as can be.

ken 15y ago

Yes, I've heard the 'collaboration' justification, too. In my experience, a lot of programmers hate the open-floorplan noise, to which they're told "just take a laptop into a spare conference room, or work from home". The upshot is that half the team is now taking up conference rooms or working from home. It's the worst of both worlds: we're paying for both cubicles that nobody uses and big conference rooms being used as single offices, and people are even more isolated than if they'd just been given normal offices to begin with. It reminds me of situations like Prohibition (and I'm sure you can think of others): we don't like X, therefore we'll legislate against X, and ignore the fact that people are going to do X anyway, and so our legislation actually makes things worse.

amcintyre 15y ago
I'm surprised people that push the open-floorplan idea would allow devs to work from home. I would expect them to view that as "ultimate productivity-killing isolation." I mean, "how can we know you're actually working. You're at home, we can't see you producing."
- gte910h 15y ago
  At some point, devs don't care. They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't, so they may as well actually get their job done the only way it's possible
- mhurron 15y ago
  Not every place that pushes open floorplan or some 'collaborative workspace' (ugh, get to go to that tomorrow) is a busybody manager. They moved us from cubes to a 'collaborative workspace' at a company where working from home is fine, almost encouraged. It wasn't the managers that choose this, it was higher up who believe collaborative is nothing but a buzz word. In both the work from home (which happened before and will probably increase) and the collaborative workspace, the measure of getting your work done is 'did you get your work doneon time' not 'do you look busy.'
  - amcintyre 15y ago
    Having a liberal work-from-home-if-you-want policy would definitely make it a lot more tolerable, but this: "It wasn't the managers that choose this, it was higher up who believe collaborative is nothing but a buzz word." always worries me, because it's that kind of higher level management that, 3 months later, stops by the awesome collaborative workspace he told you to use, finds it mostly empty because everybody is at home, and shuts down the work-from-home policy in spite of the fact that people are getting work done. Sure, you can point out that people are getting their work done, but (again, I know I'm stereotyping here) that seems to be the kind of management that doesn't let facts get in their way.

rhizome 15y ago

If you know you hate it, I highly recommend finding a new job sooner than later. I did it last summer and it's just not good for humans (or at least "us") to work like that. Then again, people supposedly actually go for those hacker apartment setups, where someone pays for 5 dudes to live together. Shudder, but there's no accounting for taste. Like you say, it's probably best brought up in the interview.

angstrom 15y ago
Already actively looking, but thanks for the advice. If you're straight out of college with no other realities in place, it may be doable, otherwise it's just a stupid waste of an already too short life.

damncabbage 15y ago

I have not achieved a state of mental flow in over a year. If a place I'm interviewing at has adopted the open floor plan, it's a deal breaker. I hear you. As an aside, does anyone know of any dev shops in Sydney (Australia) that don't use open-plan setups? I've been going for nine years, and I've only ever seen one (Campaign Monitor); the rest have been benches, or benches separated by low walls.

Devilboy 15y ago

I work in an open plan office and I hate it. I am constantly annoyed, inconvenienced and I can't get half as much code written as I do at home. The designers, salespeople, tech-support staff, managers and accountants I work with, however, love it. Their productivity is way up because they have quick, easy, friction-free and immediate access to me at all times. In aggregate the company does significantly better as a result of this open-plan office and I realise that wanting to be in 'The Zone' 8 hours a day is not why I work there. I work there to make the company as a whole as awesome as possible.

amcintyre 15y ago
Just curious: what are you actually there to do, that the designers, salespeople, tech-support staff, managers and accountants are more productive by bugging you all day? (I'm not saying it isn't true, just that I assume by the way you've stated this you're a developer that's rarely left alone to get anything done, and I can't see how that's beneficial to your employer.)
- Devilboy 15y ago
  I'm a software engineer in a software-centered B2B company. They all use the back-end system, and our clients use the front-end. During the day I may solve up to a dozen small problems, which might be a small customization of the font-end for a big client, debugging a random bug or two on the spot, querying the database for some new sales stat, and so on. If something comes in to our bug-tracker that I think I can resolve within 30 minutes, I do it immediately. The rest of the time I work on the long term (no deadline) projects to improve the system as a whole. Sure those projects suffer a bit but our clients are always very impressed when we can fix his bug, make his customisation change or implement his new report, literally just minutes after he requested it.
  - amcintyre 15y ago
    Thanks! Oddly, I'd probably prefer your job in an open office to some of the arrangements I've seen where people have offices--at least you have direct indications that you're making a direct impact to the company and customers, whereas sometimes developer jobs are so far removed from the end customer that they might as well not even be there.

sandGorgon 15y ago

question - do things like noise cancellation earphones, etc. not work for you? I work in an unusually noisy operation, right next to ecommerce field ops and my Ultimate Ears are a godsend. At the VP/CTO level, it wont help because you will be talking to people all day anyway.

gte910h 15y ago
NCH don't help with visual distraction, the ease of bothering you rather than emailing you, nor the oppressive heat/shivering cold that always happens in rooms designed for too many people (or worse, NOT designed for too many people). At VP/CTO level, you're not coding most of the time, you're coordinating. That's a completely different story.
dwc 15y ago
That's an individual response to an organizational problem, and the organizational problem remains. The company has created an environment that is actively hostile to productivity, and you are cleverly finding a way around it. That's great for you. But I find headphones uncomfortable to some degree. I find music distracting much of the time. I've tried, believe me. I think I'm not alone in this, so expensive headphones are not a total answer. But the larger issue remains: why should individual employees have to find ways around a productivity-killing environment created by the employer? It's absurd. Note: some time ago on another HN thread I wrote a similar comment. I feel it's worth repeating my sentiments here. On that thread, amusingly, people responded to me with suggestions for nicer headphones and types of music. Don't bother for two reasons: 1) I've explored the options already, and 2) you're missing my point entirely.

Joeboy 15y ago

I'm in the process of quitting my current job, largely because of the open plan office. Not sure what I'm going to do next, but it'll probably be better than going slowly insane. Edit: This has nothing to do with Agile though, we're about as Waterfall as can be.