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It has to be said, if you're employing programmers and making them sit in an openplan office you're willingly and knowingly making their job significantly harde
by esskay 3y ago
It has to be said, if you're employing programmers and making them sit in an openplan office you're willingly and knowingly making their job significantly harder, and their day worse.
Open plan might work great for some types of work, but for highly technical and mentally taxing work it's quite litterally the worst possible working environment you could be providing.
There's a reason that many programmers prefer to work from home. Working in a busy office (and that includes open plan offices with even light chatter) is extremely counter productive.
- ath3nd 3y agoWho would win: - literally 100s of publications showing how disruptive and destructive to focus it is to be working in an open office work and how much distractions it brings: https://theconversation.com/returning-to-the-workplace-heres-how-to-stay-focused-in-a-noisy-office-158186 https://theconversation.com/returning-to-the-workplace-heres... https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices https://www.businessdit.com/distraction-work-statistics/ https://www.businessdit.com/distraction-work-statistics/ https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/even-small-distractions-derail-productivity.html https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/eve... https://juliety.com/effects-of-distractions-at-work https://juliety.com/effects-of-distractions-at-work https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/11/why-open-offices-hurt-collaboration-and-what-can-be-done-about-it/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/11/why-open-offi... - A bunch of extroverts who just can't wait to tell you what they did over the weekend. Backed, of course, by C-level dudes who simply can't bring themselves to believe work can be done if they PERSONALLY can't see you at your desk working.
- Muromec 3y ago“I can’t back it up with data, I just know I’m right “ of course
- isoprophlex 3y agoThe asshats holding the bags of money, obviously
- ath3nd 3y agoBingo!
- sokoloff 3y agoWho wins? The CFO and corp real estate people (correctly) saying how much more expensive (and less flexible to changing team size) a building with enough private offices is.
- yreg 3y agoWe have a floorplan with offices of all sizes. (Ok, the biggest ones are like a mini open space - mostly used by flexdesk people who come in only from time to time). It was more expensive, but we have zero issues with seat allocation. We don't force it and make teams always sit together. People are free to choose and switch their places, so often a project is spread across several offices and mixed with other projects. I think it's certainly superior to having an open space.
- mratsim 3y agoSo you're saying programmers' time is not expensive enough?
- sokoloff 3y agoIt's probably closer to the outputs (and differences in output) not being measurable enough. I had a private office setup in one place. It was phenomenal and by far the best work environment (physical and otherwise) I've ever had. The biggest problem was: we couldn't double the size of the team without it being a half-year leasing and construction project. So, we'd sawtooth among "far too much space and lots of pent-up hiring; a Goldilocks zone; out of space; hiring freeze; lease/construct offices; loop". My office now is whatever I want to do with my house. That's also good for heads-down work (and obviously for the commute), but terrible for collaborative whiteboard design work.
- otteromkram 3y ago> but terrible for collaborative whiteboard design work. Not at all. If you think so, maybe try switching jobs to non-remote and let someone fine with virtual whiteboarding take your role on.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- orangepurple 3y ago> A bunch of extroverts who just can't wait to tell you what they did over the weekend and a bunch of C-level dudes who can't believe work can be done if they PERSONALLY can't see you at your desk working. The sight of people in an open office plan is merely an expensive therapy session for these guys
- ath3nd 3y agoNothing more therapeutic than the sight of your worker bees, stuffed together in the noisy hive, making you dough.
- kridsdale1 3y agoLord knows many of them hate their families. Workaholism is a self soothe for those who should consider divorce.
- offices 3y agoYet people still make arguments based off the conceit that a profit motive means businesses act like rational hive minds.
- HowTheStoryEnds 3y agoYou can actually act rationally on fake, imagined and fraudulent data.
- nitely 3y agoidk who wins, but I'd assume extroverts need a quiet environment to be able to focus as much as anyone else.
- oblio 3y agoNot if they have people facing roles. In that case their job IS talking to other people. Sure, they need to prepare, but the higher up they are, the more of that preparation is done by assistants.
- DoughnutHole 3y agoBlaming extroverts/introverts is a red herring - it’s down to the nature of the work. Whether they’re introverts or extroverts a programmer’s job tends to require a lot of solo focus. There’s collaborative aspects of course but it always requires windows of deep work that are deeply frustrated by distraction, introvert or not. Many other areas of work (including much work in upper management) don’t require that focus. The work is often deeply collaborative and communicative, and it‘s work that can be dropped and picked up on a dime and iterated on without much loss of productivity. In a way it’s work that actively benefits from a “distracting” environment, because it’s often full of rapid-fire blockers best resolved by grabbing someone nearby. The friction comes from the fact that the people who do either type of work don’t understand the other type if their whole career has only involved one type.
- pseudalopex 3y agoMost programmers understand the aspects of upper management work you described in my experience. And most upper managers choose to work in separate offices.
- ath3nd 3y agoI wonder why...
- closeparen 3y agoThe extroverts are always struggling to get conference room bookings. They'd be able to converse a lot more freely by just inviting people to their always-available offices.
- 4star3star 3y agoI have an office with a nice, heavy door. I don't often close it, but just knowing that it's there and that I can close if I want to is a comforting thought. That said, I think if I did always close it, I'd be more productive by a significant margin....
- throw0101c 3y ago> Open plan might work great for some types of work […] I'm curious to know: why types are, or people consider to be, good for open plan? Generally, office type jobs tends to be one where people need to use their brains to concentrate on something, and open plans tend to be able to create / not block distractions, they would be antithetical to being able to concentrate.
- Towaway69 3y agoMarketing? Where ideas and concepts need a lot of input and discussion. Basically anything that is very human and not zero or one. Customer support via telephone support where not one agent knows everything. I.e., you tell customer to hold the line and then ask some other agent for a solution.
- victorbjorklund 3y agoI used to be in marketing (but now developer) and not really (of course depends on the specific role). Sure, parts of marketing is meetings and discussions stuff but so is software development (need to discuss requirements, architecture, etc) - the rest of the job is deep work and execution on ideas (just like coding).
- Towaway69 3y agoThe best mix imho is to have spaces where people can individualise their time - to focus. Small booths or mini meeting rooms or even large kitchens area with tables - alone amongst people. Because it's not black and white, everyone needs focus but also communication with others.
- voisin 3y agoTrading floors would be one.
- gregoriol 3y agoMostly everything that is not creative: creativity needs focus. Take any job that isn't creating something, anything related to customer, operations, support, ... and one can do it in almost any conditions.
- nprateem 3y agoIt's never been a problem for me
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoPrivate rooms are not cheap and it would be hard to justify for junior programmers. And having private space just for middle level folks is bad for morale and learning of junior folks. But yeah for companies which just employs senior folks this should be the norm.
- coev 3y agoOne private room per team works very well for programmers without the expense justification. The two most productive jobs I've ever had in an office were with that arrangement, not cubicles or open offices.
- joshjje 3y agoCubicles are OK as long as there isn't a lot of chatter, people being on the phone all the time, talking loud, etc. Though of course id rather be in my own room no doubt.
- dragonelite 3y agoCancelling sound distractions with NC headsets isn't that bad. Cubicles will most likely help with visual distraction i have in an open floor plan.
- pseudalopex 3y agoI never saw headphones mask voice adequately without playing music or other sound. Or wearable all day without discomfort.
- red-iron-pine 3y agosame. you're basically getting earplugs at that point, or keeping something on in the background as a low drone
- dragonelite 3y ago
- gorgoiler 3y agoOpen plan worked for me when there was a very clear contract between every stakeholder. Firstly, everyone had free, good quality, sound blocking headphones. Not just free as in standard equipment on your first day free. There were buckets of the things lying around and if you needed a new set you just grabbed some, no questions asked. VC funded opulence, yay! Secondly, there was an understanding amongst everyone on the shop floor that “headphones on” meant do not disturb, just as much as a closed office door. Violations were not tolerated but it was a social norm thing not an HR write up thing. Maybe people were getting the latter behind the scenes though? In return you end up with an office architecture that’s considerably easier to manage at the expense of turning the physical challenge of giving everyone an office into a — potentially intractable for some teams — people management challenge.
- kstrauser 3y agoA coworker repeatedly ignored a person’s headphones and would interrupt them anyway. One day I put a bright post-it note on my headphones: “Joe, don’t bother me”. I was in middle of flow, making some huge changes, when I noticed Joe standing next to me, laughing. “Hahaha, someone put a post-it note on your headphones!” I coulda killed him. “In startup land did CFO A stately office plan decree: Through EDM, the coders flow Unless they were disturbed by Joe Until we broke his knee.”
- dylan604 3y agoI printed out the infamous quote "Go away, or I will replace you with a small shell script." It was primarily meant for one specific employee known to have the gift of gab. Seeing how my job was to automate the most mundane/error prone tasks, it seemed to be pretty effective. I heard murmurings about how some thought it was rather rude, but I never had to speak to HR about it.
- kridsdale1 3y agoMake them fear the dark wizard’s powers.
- 3y ago
- neilwilson 3y agoThe work was done by IBM in 1975. You need lots of space to keep the noise down and you need offices with doors that close. Why are we still having this discussion fifty years later?
- pseudalopex 3y agoThe costs of offices are easier to quantify than the benefits.
- oblio 3y agoBecause in the short term it's cheaper to do other stuff. And ain't nobody going in between this year's bonus and executives.
- 2devnull 3y agoBecause we work in different ways now than we did in 1975? The work people do is also different. And, the people themselves have also changed. A person born in 1980s may be more used to 24/7 noise from tv and devices. A 30 year old worker in 1975 grew up in a quieter home.
- JohnFen 3y agoI don't think people and how they work are much different now than in 1975. I have no data, though. That would be an interesting study. Do you have data?
- 2devnull 3y agoI do. The data would be computer sales to businesses. The data indicates computer use is now a regular part of many jobs, whereas very few jobs in 1970 involved working on a computer, based on computer sales data.
- diyftw 3y agoThat generalization certainly doesn't fit with this 1977 edition human. The loudest 24/7 thing in my house is the compressor on my fridge. Silence (and office doors) are priceless.
- miroljub 3y agoLet's not pretend that we are something special, and we need to focus so much more than other creative workers. For the majority of work of an average programmer in an average corporation, deep focus is highly overrated.
- Apocryphon 3y agoThose workers deserve environments that promote deep focus, as well.
- falcor84 3y ago> quite litterally the worst possible working environment you could be providing Just for fun, let me try to one-up that: working outside, in a scorching desert, hung upside down, just barely reaching your laptop on the sand, with scorpions crawling over the keyboard. But thinking about it, even in that situation, I guess I would still prefer not to have to deal with people having unrelated conversations around me.
- ath3nd 3y agoAt least the scorpions don't have the unreasonable expectation for you to not freak out when they interrupt you.
- IKantRead 3y agoRecent experience at a fairly young startup has shown me that open office culture has also started to breed a very different type of programmer. People will often be pairing nearly all day long, any claim that you need a moment to focus and think about a problem is met with perplexity, every idea should be shipped to prod asap, while tests exist the idea of performing basic QA/manual testing on your own work is only used in the most extreme cases. Contemporary startup engineering culture is best described as frenetic. It certainly feels hyper productive (if not extremely exhausting for a more traditional, introverted programmer), but I've started to notice a fairly large amount of that "productivity" is fixing mistakes a more focused programmer would have avoided. I suspect the long-term impact of open offices my be even more deleterious than it's impact on the focus of individual programmers.
- rpmisms 3y agoI was raised by the focused type of programmer, and modern startup culture is horrifying to me (and him). I have left that world and now am solo engineer in a non-profit where I'm responsible for a list of results, not a pile of Jira tickets someone made up to look busy.
- ducharmdev 3y agoThat sounds like my ideal job. The longer I've been a developer, the more I've come to dislike work that doesn't address problems faced by end-users/the org.
- Aerbil313 3y agoYeah, humans have a major need of purpose.
- rpmisms 3y agoI couldn't be happier. I am the in-house expert in my field, I replaced an agency that was far more expensive and incompetent, and I have great hours (9-4:30!) and benefits. Oh, and I'm fully remote in an org that's been remote since 2013.
- Zelphyr 3y agoI worked for a guy (who is actually a great guy) who, while excitedly showing me the floor plan for the proposed open plan for our team, exclaimed, "I want to create a vibrant, energetic atmosphere." and asked me what I thought. All I could think was, "What you see as vibrant is really your employees shooting the shit and not getting any actual work done." He went with the plan and I found myself staying until 7pm and 8pm most days because I got more work done in those 2-3 hours at the end of the day than I did the other eight because of all the interruptions.
- bluGill 3y ago> "What you see as vibrant is really your employees shooting the shit and not getting any actual work done." That is better than getting work on the wrong thing done. People who sit in their office and never interact with others tend to work on projects the company thought was canceled months ago.
- shikon7 3y agoIf that happens, that’s rather the fault of the company and the managers of not communicating the current affairs clearly enough. You shouldn’t need to rely on informal channels to find out what the company considers canceled.
- bluGill 3y agoWhile you are not wrong, making those formal channels is expensive in itself. If the informal channels work they can be a lot cheaper. Well maybe, I don't think anyone has really studied this including all the subtle issues.
- ath3nd 3y agoYou are saying it's normal to use "water cooler" talk to find what you should be working on? The sad thing is that probably for some organizations, that's the norm. Management is incapable of creating clear vision and clear communication channels, and you end up with a bunch of people gathering like a crowd in front of the town hall, trying to figure out what's going on. Hard pass on that! The West is doomed.
- RandomLensman 3y agoYou have pretty noisy and messy environments where technically challenging programming and other taxing work happens successfully (e.g., some trading floor). How much do think the whole issue is self selection into preferred work environments?
- ath3nd 3y agoThere is a reason the stereotypical image of these guys is them chainsmoking, doing copious amount of drugs (to take the edge off), and throwing themselves out of high places. Work happening "successfully" and people making money doesn't mean it's the most efficient or healthy way of working. I am happy to throw a % or two of productivity in the short term if my workers don't burn out in the long term. Luckily, research clearly shows that the most successful work and the happiest employees happen in quiet places with deep focus.
- RandomLensman 3y agoThat stereotypical image is wrong. Also, there is real complex stuff created there. Some people like such environments and wouldn't like sitting in quiet places - being where stuff happens has its benefits, too. How is success defined in those studies? Honestly curious.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoIt is crazy that companies will pay someone $300k a year to sit in an open office and then wonder why the conference rooms are over booked all the time. And then they don’t understand why they don’t want to RTO.
- wildzzz 3y agoIf you can't give me my own office with a door, at minimum I want a cube with 6ft walls that have excellent noise dampening (I don't want to be able to clearly hear a normal conversation next door), a large enough work space such that I can stand up and walk over to my own whiteboard, a pair of ultra comfortable noise cancelling headphones, and being able to have some natural daylight coming into the space (but not necessarily direct line of sight to a window from my chair). I'm fully aware that commercial real estate is expensive and that old office floorplans are not entirely conducive to offering everyone an office with a door. There are certainly compromises that need to be made when renovating the office to give people what they want without simply moving to a brand new building. While I'd prefer my own office, just having a noise-proof cube where I don't have to stare at everyone walking past would be a huge step up from the picnic table style desks where it feels like you're sitting at a library computer desk. There are plenty of ways to track productivity that don't involve a manager being able to stare at everyone working like a sweatshop foreman.
- ath3nd 3y ago> There are plenty of ways to track productivity that don't involve a manager being able to stare at everyone working like a sweatshop foreman. I have called those kind of managers "glorified taskmasters" in the past, but "sweatshop foreman" is a good enough phrase make me want to add it to my repertoire! It's insulting to me to treat knowledge workers as cogs in a machine or workers in a factory. Humans are not made to be crammed with other humans in tiny, noisy and poorly ventilated and lit spaces with no natural light. We are told to "suck it up" but we are not paid the bills when panic attacks, burnout and other health problems start showing up. As a person who has fought management tooth and nail to give myself and my teams the ability to work remotely and a have a 4 day work week while paid the same as before, I can tell you, it's infinitely better to have time and space, and your productivity, creativity and communication doesn't suffer at all (we measured it, and many others have done as well). It's all a question of whether your corporate overlords trust you enough.
- manishsharan 3y agoThe best we can get is horse blinders and noise cancelling headphones.
- paulcole 3y ago> if you're employing programmers and making them sit in an openplan office you're willingly and knowingly making their job significantly harder, and their day worse. I think it’s more fair to say that they’re making some of their jobs significantly harder and improving the experience for others. Plenty of jobs aren’t interested in optimizing for anyone’s personal productivity and happiness — they’re optimizing for their business goals. > There's a reason that many programmers prefer to work from home I think there’s many reasons this seems to be true (I say seems because the ones who prefer it are very vocal about it and tend to (at best) shout down those who disagree) and maximizing productivity is probably one of those reasons that they’re willing to tell their employers.
- aswanson 3y agoI liken open offices to a situation where I'm balancing a pile of plates in both hands and hundreds of other people are in the kitchen and can trip me or shove me at will, causing a mental stack crash.
- y1426i 3y agoOpen offices exist for the same reason WFH doesn't work, at least where it won't work. I have worked in older organizations, and the culture there is that the most productive workers spend relatively more time on their work chairs. That is the only way managers have traditionally known to get work done from their teams. An open office is a natural way to ensure everyone is working, at least in how those organizations measure productivity. If these companies move to a closed office, they will have to change how they measure productivity, and their culture may not allow that.
- FuriouslyAdrift 3y agoThe one time I had a heavy dev job (I mostly take sysadmin type roles) in an open floorplan, I ended up buying a motorcycle helmet with built in audio to isolate myself from distractions...it was mostly gregarious sporty (it was a sporting goods company), young people (I was the second oldest at the company at 32). I was not well-liked at that job and was happy when they let me go.
- danesparza 3y agoI love that so many people answer this with "well, just get headphones" ... which just seems like an admission of a design mistake to me. I think the real reason open floorplans are popular is money. It's MUCH cheaper to cram 20 people into 200 square feet than to let 3 people sit in offices (in the same square footage). Now you know why 50% haven't returned to office spaces like corporate america (and specifically corporate real-estate owners) would have hoped.
- phero_cnstrcts 3y agoI’ve tried working in the middle of nerf gun fights every afternoon for a year. Let’s just say I enjoy Home Office a lot.