6 ms·

Open plan offices are a nightmare

35 points by jon_black 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
viseztrance 14y ago
The last place I worked at was an online advertising agency. My experience was similar, and managed to get things done only by coming early (often before anyone else) and wearing a good pair of headphones. I particularly disliked the fact that some people lacking a technical background don't really understand that we often need a distraction free environment. Perhaps it's because their creative spark comes by brainstorming in a more lively environment or they have seen too many people coding at Starbucks.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  Starbucks and open-plan offices are worlds apart. In a Starbucks, it's loud, but you can tune out the noise without social penalty. No one is going to look over your shoulder or interrupt you in a coffee shop. You can put on noise-canceling headphones and sit with your back to a wall. Only a small percentage of the evil of open-plan offices is noise-related. It's the emotional load of being visible to people who can fuck with their livelihood for any reason or no reason that makes open-plan offices terrible. People become resentful, competitive, and miserable. Those environments are said to foster collaboration, but have the opposite effect, because most people shut down at a certain level of sensory and social overload, the result being that communication grinds to a halt. Open-plan offices are said to be egalitarian, but in practice, they increase rank discrepancies and social inequalities, because they reflect an unconditional right of management to harass and monitor subordinates. The other interesting thing is that there's a lot of evidence suggesting that almost everyone (over 90%) will develop work-related health problems in an open-plan office. The question is how long it will take. Median seems to be about 10-15 years, making open-plan offices a legal way to say, "We don't want to hire anyone over 40".
  - Robin_Message 14y ago
    Do you have a citation for "there's a lot of evidence suggesting that almost everyone (over 90%) will develop work-related health problems"? I mean, come on, over 90%? If the evidence was that clear then you would, for example, expect some worker-friendly country like France or Sweden to have banned or regulated open plan offices. As far as I know, they haven't. I don't doubt open plan is unpleasant; nor that it can cause health problems; and I accept that the rise in health problems may be hard to measure because most companies moved to open plan. However, what you said about >90% health problems and 10-15 year worker lifetimes oversells and undermines what are otherwise very good points.
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      If the evidence was that clear then you would, for example, expect some worker-friendly country like France or Sweden to have banned or regulated open plan offices. As far as I know, they haven't. The problem is that an open-plan ban is not appropriate for all work environments. One example would be a hospital. If you can't handle the stress of an operating room (and many people can't) then you shouldn't be a surgeon. The job has intrinsic stress, and that's a factor in the compensation. That's the fundamental problem with regulation and government intervention: it's hard to get the special cases right. An open-plan ban would be a good thing for the vast majority of white-collar office workers, but it clearly can't be applied to all work environments (medicine, military). If I recall correctly, many countries do have lower limits on personal working space, usually in the neighborhood of 10 m^2. It'd be hard to enact a blanket open-plan ban because the concept isn't well-defined, but work space regulations are already in place. An additional factor that is hard to regulate: the health load of an open-plan office seems to be a function of the person's age, position in the hierarchy, and the amount of personal space. Open-plan wouldn't be so bad if people had the recommended 200 SF (18.6 m^2) with barriers at their backs. At the typical 50 SF, with the person visible from behind and prone to managerial harassment, it's a catastrophe. However, what you said about >90% health problems and 10-15 year worker lifetimes oversells and undermines what are otherwise very good points. Perhaps 90% is high, but the going assumption people make when designing office spaces is that the typical open plan office (< 100 SF, open-back visibility) will increase attrition by about 10% per year for younger people and 20% for older people. How much of this one wishes to attribute to health issues, and how much to less serious garden-variety unhappiness, is somewhat of an open question.
silverbax88 14y ago
I've had a couple of experiences with this type of floor plan. It's absolutely awful, especially for programmers. Whenever someone suggests a 'bullpen' or 'open' office, I cringe, because, well, I actually want to get things done.
regomodo 14y ago
404ing already. Anyone with a mirror/cache?
- swah 14y ago
  If you use Chrome, you can prepend the URL with 'cache:' (available in this case).
cpursley 14y ago
I wouldn't get shit done in an open office as someone with a degree of low latent inhibition. I can listen to music - but only lyric free while I'm working. I don't even have TV in my own house for that reason - background noise drives me insane because I cant filter any of it. I'm not a programmer (professionally, anyways) but an analyst, which also requires huge blocks of uninterrupted time. Clients don't understand why I don't answer the phone all the time and refer them to email communication for non-major stuff.
- jon_black 14y ago
  I do the same with email. Some people don't grasp that communication has a priority. The panic I see in people's faces after ten minutes when a text message goes unreplied. If it's important, call them!
jon_black 14y ago
Looks like my website can't handle being on the front page of HN. I'm talking with my provider to try and get it resolved. It's showing up in Google, but there's no cache link. Apologies to those trying to access the article.
- blowski 14y ago
  Do you have access to the text? Maybe you could post it on Pastebin or something.
  - jon_black 14y ago
    Sadly not. I'm both proud to have a popular article and disappointed that no-one can read it....is this the HN-effect? :)
    - Luyt 14y ago
      Yes, and when your article appears on Reddit at the same time, be prepared. This happened two years ago with a (rather simple) article I wrote, http://www.michielovertoom.com/python/pastebin-abused/ http://www.michielovertoom.com/python/pastebin-abused/. I got 35.000 hits that day, almost using up all my quotas at the provider where this was hosted.
      - jon_black 14y ago
        Sadly my site went down very early, only 150 visits showing up in my analytics. Now my site is back up...barely...and my post is #89 on HN. My five minutes of fame are gone. Sigh.
- kaugesaar 14y ago
  a working cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://jonblack.org/2013/01/29/open-plan-offices-are-a-nightmare/&hl=en&tbo=d&strip=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
blowski 14y ago
Can't see the article - site is down. So what I write here is based solely on the premise of the headline and existing comments on HN. I work for a co-working space in London, which is like an open plan office taken to the extreme. Before that I worked in a variety of environments (I'm in my 30s), including public sector 'one-office-per-person' through to agency '3-people-per-desk' type situations, and working from home as a freelancer. Criticisms about working space often come down to 'the garden on the other side of the fence would be easier to work in'. If you work from home, you miss having people to have coffee with at lunch. If you work in a crowded office, you miss having 2 hours of unbroken flow. So the best offices try to combine a bit of everything - quiet space, play space, etc. Some people talk about the 'email-only' office like the Holy Grail of Offices. But it's not - it's cold, impersonal and unfriendly. It often results in unnecessary arguments resulting from people misinterpreting something. So a culture of "speak, don't write" is definitely a good thing, as long as there are some rules about when it's OK to talk to someone. The problem is whether people respect the rules. We try to follow the headphone rule - if I'm wearing headphones, don't interrupt me unless the building is about to burn down. The corollary - if I'm not wearing headphones, feel free to walk up and talk to me. So it's as much about culture as it is architecture, and that's something that often gets overlooked.
- jon_black 14y ago
  I pretty much concluded at the end of the article that offices should accomodate both collaborative open-planning and leave-me-to-concentrate cubicles. You're right that shutting yourself away is impersonal, and I would certainly never want that.
  - blowski 14y ago
    Just read the article now. Yeah, I think the key to understand is that it's 'open-plan ONLY' offices that are the nightmare. Even in workplaces where everyone has a separate office, if the culture doesn't have a way of saying "this person is busy, don't talk to them" then it doesn't really help. I worked with a bunch of about 8 other developers in the basement, and it was fine. Some suggested rules: * Turn off ALL notification sounds. This includes vibrate functions on phones, which still makes a sound when it rattles on the desk. * No phone calls or conversations at the desk. Take it to the kitchen. * No talking, screaming, or muttering to yourself. Nobody cares about your problems, they're trying to solve their own. * If someone has headphones own, they're trying to concentrate. Send them an email saying you want to talk to them.
dalore 14y ago
I toured the Facebook offices in Menlo Park. It's all open plan, even Mark's desk. It's a big deal over there as they are converting the whole building to be open plan. If you want some privacy/uninterruption you can go to a few places around for it.
- xradionut 14y ago
  If you are programmer, why would you want to work for Facebook, let alone in a open environment?
- mmcconnell1618 14y ago
  I just interviewed with Microsoft in Bellevue and the offices were all open-plan. I thought Microsoft was famous for every programming getting their own private office. They told me their building was the prototype and all other MS offices were converting to open plan in the near future. They could have a revolt on their hands if that's true.
  - Spooky23 14y ago
    Revolt == old people leave.
ghc 14y ago
The only good thing about an open office plan, in my opinion (as a programmer), is that my boss can see me working. That means he is forced to acknowledge, when I can't get anything done due to constant interruptions, that it's because I'm constantly being pestered to do unimportant busywork. When I'm home telecommuting, he must imagine that I'm somehow blowing off work despite the same meaningless interruptions following me around via Skype and phone calls. Can you tell I am not having a happy experience being acquired and working at $BIGCORP?
andrewcooke 14y ago
peopleware http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Second-Edition/dp/0932633439 http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Second-... goes into this a lot. i know it's an ancient classic that everyone has heard of, but it's actually still worth reading, imho (i found it much more relevant/useful/interesting than mythical man month - not sure why, it just clicked somehow).
michaelochurch 14y ago
I'm surprised that few people mention age discrimination when this topic comes up. To a large degree, that's what open-plan offices are really about. It's not explicitly presented that way, but the purpose of the brogrammer culture is to exclude people-- especially women and older men. By the time people are in their 40s and 50s, work-related health problems aren't things people joke about during an annoying project. They're things that actually happen. Your typical competent 45-year-old sees an open-plan office and says, "No thanks", knowing from experience that such environments are not only unproductive but dangerous (cardiac issues, anxiety disorders, digestive problems). Also, it's not only the noise that makes open-plan offices hell. It's the social overload of being visible to other people. (Open-back visibility, which causes vertigo and neurological problems, is especially bad.) People are bad at multitasking-- men are especially bad at it, but suffer from a Dunning-Kruger effect-- and having to dedicate a constant slice of brain-space to the appearance of productivity, in addition to actual productivity, means that a person is forced into a state of ineffective, frustrating, and just plain stupid multitasking for over 8 hours.
- pc86 14y ago
  I agree that the noise alone is enough to ditch the idea (above a certain number of employees), and I get where you're coming from with open-back visibility, but I think that has more to do with culture than the physical layout of the office space. If the company culture is such that taking a 20-minute break to browse HN is going to get you dirty looks or called into a VP's office, having cubicles or offices isn't going to change that. But what in the world does an open office plan do to make cardiac issues more dangerous?
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    If the company culture is such that taking a 20-minute break to browse HN is going to get you dirty looks or called into a VP's office, having cubicles or offices isn't going to change that. Well, I would flat-out walk away from a company where a 20-minute break led to that. It's not the explicit rules that are the issue. It's the stuck-up subtle shit people never tell you about. If you are passed over for a promotion or a good project because you wear headphones too much or don't appear productive, no one will tell you this because (a) it's subconscious and, (b) even if it were conscious, they wouldn't. In an open-plan office, irrelevant stupid shit can raise or lower your social status over the long term, not immediately but minute by minute. You're not aware of the up-and-down drift when it is happening, but you're always being watched. One thing I used to hate that I now think is good (if done properly) is the daily status meeting (standup). Why good? Because it concentrates the Brownian motion of an employee's social status into a small part of the day and allows him to focus on impression management during 10 minutes instead of the full 9-10 hours. Having an office doesn't compensate for shitty culture, but it means you only have to manage impressions during some parts of the day instead of all day, so it's less load overall.
furyg3 14y ago
I've enjoyed working in an open-plan office until recently, mostly because of our growth. As I write this the person next to me is on the phone having a distracting conversation (about one of our projects), someone is engaged in a dramatic battle with the nearby printer, two guys across the aisle are making jokes about a difficult vendor, some guests arrived, and it also sounds like someone is playing frisbee with plates in the kitchen, without much success. At the moment my headphones can't help and serve only a symbolic function. Instead of fighting the waves of distraction I decide to roll with it an refresh HN...
- jon_black 14y ago
  Hehe. That sounds familiar. I have sound isolating ear-buds which do a decent job of blocking out noise. Somtimes, however, even my own music is distracting. In a previous job my desk was next to the printer. You can imagine how that was.
- aurelianito 14y ago
  I also find same-project talks really distracting. And the most complicated thing is that those talks are needed. It is easy to request someone to use headphones instead of speakers but, how could I request other people not to work on their assigned tasks?
- Anderkent 14y ago
  Industrial ear muffs over earbuds with music/white noise helps quite a bit, though finding comfortable ones is not easy.
fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
The only place I've ever seen this done well is at National Instruments in Austin. Working groups get their area cordoned off with high cube walls. I didn't work there, so I have no idea how well it functioned. But it looked reasonable to me. It had to be better than the open-plan cube-farm that I worked at. In my old co's cube-farm, they even had a paging system where service/tech-support calls to certain individuals were blasted over the whole building. So, every 5-15 minutes you'd get a (BEEP - "Rick/John/Dale/Pam/etc, line 2" click). The paging-lady was very proper too, so she always used people's first and last name. The HR people & bean-counters loved it because they got to watch everyone (real-time worker productivity analytics!). They never really understood why nothing ever got done on time; or why some people liked to work late, or come in early. It was an old manufacturing business run by bunch of boomers, who hadn't been outside in decades, and who thought they'd made it a big (100 employees!) company (but in my mind it was a parody of). Another funny note, they'd built this place in response to growth, and planned/expected more growth. However, the building (new, purpose built) only had additional floor space for a few more cubes, so when the growth happened, they had to wiggle, shove, & stuff people into every nook and cranny they could find. Well, that was therapeutic.
- fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
  Oh yeah, I always found JWZ's tent-of-doom inspirational.
pc86 14y ago
Did anyone happen to post a mirror or have a cached version? I'm getting a timeout.
kabdib 14y ago
I work at a company which has open areas capable of holding from 4 to perhaps 20 people. The desks are on wheels. You choose where to work, where to put your desk, who to put your desk next to. There are offices available, and if you want to you can put your desk in one. Few people do; the social environment is _really_ important. Mobility and choice make a huge difference. People are smart and know the difference between environments that are supportive of cooperative work, and simple cheap-ass accountancy coupled with power games.
- X-Istence 14y ago
  Valve?
ry0ohki 14y ago
The article mentions open plan with no partitions. In my book, there is a HUGE difference between completely open like that, and open plan with low partitions. A low partition blocks a huge amount of sound, while still preventing people from being isolated. Completely open with no partition, once you get above 4 people is almost unworkable.
- alistairSH 14y ago
  Agreed. Totally open office sounds like a disaster. I'm on a team of about 10 people, mostly developers, with a few QA specialists mixed. 3 are remote. At my office, we have normal cubes on the first floor. But, we spend 90% of our work hours in a "lab" on the second floor. The lab has one central conference table, so we're all facing each other. So, if we need quiet time to talk on the phone or concentrate, we go downstairs. But, the default for most of the developers is upstairs. Our analyst splits about 50/50. I really like this arrangement. I find I'm LESS distracted when I'm working in a group, even it we're just sitting around the table and not actually talking or pair programming. Of course, we can also work from home should the need arise. Overall, my employer is pretty flexible about all of this.
asthasr 14y ago
I currently work in an environment with about 40 people -- managers, developers, "operations" people -- all in an "open plan" office with half-height partitions. The distractions are constant; my field of view is always busy, someone is always talking, I can hear every phone conversation in the area, and even the coffee machine is loud. The printer is in the middle of the area, so whenever someone prints, it becomes a squeaking, beeping distraction. If I check my bank account balance before going to lunch, everyone can see; even if I have head phones on over earplugs, people still interrupt me! My productivity has fallen by at least half, probably more.

35 points by jon_black 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

The last place I worked at was an online advertising agency. My experience was similar, and managed to get things done only by coming early (often before anyone else) and wearing a good pair of headphones. I particularly disliked the fact that some people lacking a technical background don't really understand that we often need a distraction free environment. Perhaps it's because their creative spark comes by brainstorming in a more lively environment or they have seen too many people coding at Starbucks.

michaelochurch 14y ago
Starbucks and open-plan offices are worlds apart. In a Starbucks, it's loud, but you can tune out the noise without social penalty. No one is going to look over your shoulder or interrupt you in a coffee shop. You can put on noise-canceling headphones and sit with your back to a wall. Only a small percentage of the evil of open-plan offices is noise-related. It's the emotional load of being visible to people who can fuck with their livelihood for any reason or no reason that makes open-plan offices terrible. People become resentful, competitive, and miserable. Those environments are said to foster collaboration, but have the opposite effect, because most people shut down at a certain level of sensory and social overload, the result being that communication grinds to a halt. Open-plan offices are said to be egalitarian, but in practice, they increase rank discrepancies and social inequalities, because they reflect an unconditional right of management to harass and monitor subordinates. The other interesting thing is that there's a lot of evidence suggesting that almost everyone (over 90%) will develop work-related health problems in an open-plan office. The question is how long it will take. Median seems to be about 10-15 years, making open-plan offices a legal way to say, "We don't want to hire anyone over 40".
- Robin_Message 14y ago
  Do you have a citation for "there's a lot of evidence suggesting that almost everyone (over 90%) will develop work-related health problems"? I mean, come on, over 90%? If the evidence was that clear then you would, for example, expect some worker-friendly country like France or Sweden to have banned or regulated open plan offices. As far as I know, they haven't. I don't doubt open plan is unpleasant; nor that it can cause health problems; and I accept that the rise in health problems may be hard to measure because most companies moved to open plan. However, what you said about >90% health problems and 10-15 year worker lifetimes oversells and undermines what are otherwise very good points.
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    If the evidence was that clear then you would, for example, expect some worker-friendly country like France or Sweden to have banned or regulated open plan offices. As far as I know, they haven't. The problem is that an open-plan ban is not appropriate for all work environments. One example would be a hospital. If you can't handle the stress of an operating room (and many people can't) then you shouldn't be a surgeon. The job has intrinsic stress, and that's a factor in the compensation. That's the fundamental problem with regulation and government intervention: it's hard to get the special cases right. An open-plan ban would be a good thing for the vast majority of white-collar office workers, but it clearly can't be applied to all work environments (medicine, military). If I recall correctly, many countries do have lower limits on personal working space, usually in the neighborhood of 10 m^2. It'd be hard to enact a blanket open-plan ban because the concept isn't well-defined, but work space regulations are already in place. An additional factor that is hard to regulate: the health load of an open-plan office seems to be a function of the person's age, position in the hierarchy, and the amount of personal space. Open-plan wouldn't be so bad if people had the recommended 200 SF (18.6 m^2) with barriers at their backs. At the typical 50 SF, with the person visible from behind and prone to managerial harassment, it's a catastrophe. However, what you said about >90% health problems and 10-15 year worker lifetimes oversells and undermines what are otherwise very good points. Perhaps 90% is high, but the going assumption people make when designing office spaces is that the typical open plan office (< 100 SF, open-back visibility) will increase attrition by about 10% per year for younger people and 20% for older people. How much of this one wishes to attribute to health issues, and how much to less serious garden-variety unhappiness, is somewhat of an open question.

silverbax88 14y ago

I've had a couple of experiences with this type of floor plan. It's absolutely awful, especially for programmers. Whenever someone suggests a 'bullpen' or 'open' office, I cringe, because, well, I actually want to get things done.

regomodo 14y ago

404ing already. Anyone with a mirror/cache?

swah 14y ago
If you use Chrome, you can prepend the URL with 'cache:' (available in this case).

cpursley 14y ago

I wouldn't get shit done in an open office as someone with a degree of low latent inhibition. I can listen to music - but only lyric free while I'm working. I don't even have TV in my own house for that reason - background noise drives me insane because I cant filter any of it. I'm not a programmer (professionally, anyways) but an analyst, which also requires huge blocks of uninterrupted time. Clients don't understand why I don't answer the phone all the time and refer them to email communication for non-major stuff.

jon_black 14y ago
I do the same with email. Some people don't grasp that communication has a priority. The panic I see in people's faces after ten minutes when a text message goes unreplied. If it's important, call them!

jon_black 14y ago

Looks like my website can't handle being on the front page of HN. I'm talking with my provider to try and get it resolved. It's showing up in Google, but there's no cache link. Apologies to those trying to access the article.

blowski 14y ago
Do you have access to the text? Maybe you could post it on Pastebin or something.
- jon_black 14y ago
  Sadly not. I'm both proud to have a popular article and disappointed that no-one can read it....is this the HN-effect? :)
  - Luyt 14y ago
    Yes, and when your article appears on Reddit at the same time, be prepared. This happened two years ago with a (rather simple) article I wrote, http://www.michielovertoom.com/python/pastebin-abused/ http://www.michielovertoom.com/python/pastebin-abused/. I got 35.000 hits that day, almost using up all my quotas at the provider where this was hosted.
    - jon_black 14y ago
      Sadly my site went down very early, only 150 visits showing up in my analytics. Now my site is back up...barely...and my post is #89 on HN. My five minutes of fame are gone. Sigh.
kaugesaar 14y ago
a working cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://jonblack.org/2013/01/29/open-plan-offices-are-a-nightmare/&hl=en&tbo=d&strip=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

blowski 14y ago

Can't see the article - site is down. So what I write here is based solely on the premise of the headline and existing comments on HN. I work for a co-working space in London, which is like an open plan office taken to the extreme. Before that I worked in a variety of environments (I'm in my 30s), including public sector 'one-office-per-person' through to agency '3-people-per-desk' type situations, and working from home as a freelancer. Criticisms about working space often come down to 'the garden on the other side of the fence would be easier to work in'. If you work from home, you miss having people to have coffee with at lunch. If you work in a crowded office, you miss having 2 hours of unbroken flow. So the best offices try to combine a bit of everything - quiet space, play space, etc. Some people talk about the 'email-only' office like the Holy Grail of Offices. But it's not - it's cold, impersonal and unfriendly. It often results in unnecessary arguments resulting from people misinterpreting something. So a culture of "speak, don't write" is definitely a good thing, as long as there are some rules about when it's OK to talk to someone. The problem is whether people respect the rules. We try to follow the headphone rule - if I'm wearing headphones, don't interrupt me unless the building is about to burn down. The corollary - if I'm not wearing headphones, feel free to walk up and talk to me. So it's as much about culture as it is architecture, and that's something that often gets overlooked.

jon_black 14y ago
I pretty much concluded at the end of the article that offices should accomodate both collaborative open-planning and leave-me-to-concentrate cubicles. You're right that shutting yourself away is impersonal, and I would certainly never want that.
- blowski 14y ago
  Just read the article now. Yeah, I think the key to understand is that it's 'open-plan ONLY' offices that are the nightmare. Even in workplaces where everyone has a separate office, if the culture doesn't have a way of saying "this person is busy, don't talk to them" then it doesn't really help. I worked with a bunch of about 8 other developers in the basement, and it was fine. Some suggested rules: * Turn off ALL notification sounds. This includes vibrate functions on phones, which still makes a sound when it rattles on the desk. * No phone calls or conversations at the desk. Take it to the kitchen. * No talking, screaming, or muttering to yourself. Nobody cares about your problems, they're trying to solve their own. * If someone has headphones own, they're trying to concentrate. Send them an email saying you want to talk to them.

dalore 14y ago

I toured the Facebook offices in Menlo Park. It's all open plan, even Mark's desk. It's a big deal over there as they are converting the whole building to be open plan. If you want some privacy/uninterruption you can go to a few places around for it.

xradionut 14y ago
If you are programmer, why would you want to work for Facebook, let alone in a open environment?
mmcconnell1618 14y ago
I just interviewed with Microsoft in Bellevue and the offices were all open-plan. I thought Microsoft was famous for every programming getting their own private office. They told me their building was the prototype and all other MS offices were converting to open plan in the near future. They could have a revolt on their hands if that's true.
- Spooky23 14y ago
  Revolt == old people leave.

ghc 14y ago

The only good thing about an open office plan, in my opinion (as a programmer), is that my boss can see me working. That means he is forced to acknowledge, when I can't get anything done due to constant interruptions, that it's because I'm constantly being pestered to do unimportant busywork. When I'm home telecommuting, he must imagine that I'm somehow blowing off work despite the same meaningless interruptions following me around via Skype and phone calls. Can you tell I am not having a happy experience being acquired and working at $BIGCORP?

andrewcooke 14y ago

peopleware http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Second-Edition/dp/0932633439 http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Second-... goes into this a lot. i know it's an ancient classic that everyone has heard of, but it's actually still worth reading, imho (i found it much more relevant/useful/interesting than mythical man month - not sure why, it just clicked somehow).

michaelochurch 14y ago

I'm surprised that few people mention age discrimination when this topic comes up. To a large degree, that's what open-plan offices are really about. It's not explicitly presented that way, but the purpose of the brogrammer culture is to exclude people-- especially women and older men. By the time people are in their 40s and 50s, work-related health problems aren't things people joke about during an annoying project. They're things that actually happen. Your typical competent 45-year-old sees an open-plan office and says, "No thanks", knowing from experience that such environments are not only unproductive but dangerous (cardiac issues, anxiety disorders, digestive problems). Also, it's not only the noise that makes open-plan offices hell. It's the social overload of being visible to other people. (Open-back visibility, which causes vertigo and neurological problems, is especially bad.) People are bad at multitasking-- men are especially bad at it, but suffer from a Dunning-Kruger effect-- and having to dedicate a constant slice of brain-space to the appearance of productivity, in addition to actual productivity, means that a person is forced into a state of ineffective, frustrating, and just plain stupid multitasking for over 8 hours.

pc86 14y ago
I agree that the noise alone is enough to ditch the idea (above a certain number of employees), and I get where you're coming from with open-back visibility, but I think that has more to do with culture than the physical layout of the office space. If the company culture is such that taking a 20-minute break to browse HN is going to get you dirty looks or called into a VP's office, having cubicles or offices isn't going to change that. But what in the world does an open office plan do to make cardiac issues more dangerous?
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  If the company culture is such that taking a 20-minute break to browse HN is going to get you dirty looks or called into a VP's office, having cubicles or offices isn't going to change that. Well, I would flat-out walk away from a company where a 20-minute break led to that. It's not the explicit rules that are the issue. It's the stuck-up subtle shit people never tell you about. If you are passed over for a promotion or a good project because you wear headphones too much or don't appear productive, no one will tell you this because (a) it's subconscious and, (b) even if it were conscious, they wouldn't. In an open-plan office, irrelevant stupid shit can raise or lower your social status over the long term, not immediately but minute by minute. You're not aware of the up-and-down drift when it is happening, but you're always being watched. One thing I used to hate that I now think is good (if done properly) is the daily status meeting (standup). Why good? Because it concentrates the Brownian motion of an employee's social status into a small part of the day and allows him to focus on impression management during 10 minutes instead of the full 9-10 hours. Having an office doesn't compensate for shitty culture, but it means you only have to manage impressions during some parts of the day instead of all day, so it's less load overall.

furyg3 14y ago

I've enjoyed working in an open-plan office until recently, mostly because of our growth. As I write this the person next to me is on the phone having a distracting conversation (about one of our projects), someone is engaged in a dramatic battle with the nearby printer, two guys across the aisle are making jokes about a difficult vendor, some guests arrived, and it also sounds like someone is playing frisbee with plates in the kitchen, without much success. At the moment my headphones can't help and serve only a symbolic function. Instead of fighting the waves of distraction I decide to roll with it an refresh HN...

jon_black 14y ago
Hehe. That sounds familiar. I have sound isolating ear-buds which do a decent job of blocking out noise. Somtimes, however, even my own music is distracting. In a previous job my desk was next to the printer. You can imagine how that was.
aurelianito 14y ago
I also find same-project talks really distracting. And the most complicated thing is that those talks are needed. It is easy to request someone to use headphones instead of speakers but, how could I request other people not to work on their assigned tasks?
Anderkent 14y ago
Industrial ear muffs over earbuds with music/white noise helps quite a bit, though finding comfortable ones is not easy.

fnordfnordfnord 14y ago

The only place I've ever seen this done well is at National Instruments in Austin. Working groups get their area cordoned off with high cube walls. I didn't work there, so I have no idea how well it functioned. But it looked reasonable to me. It had to be better than the open-plan cube-farm that I worked at. In my old co's cube-farm, they even had a paging system where service/tech-support calls to certain individuals were blasted over the whole building. So, every 5-15 minutes you'd get a (BEEP - "Rick/John/Dale/Pam/etc, line 2" click). The paging-lady was very proper too, so she always used people's first and last name. The HR people & bean-counters loved it because they got to watch everyone (real-time worker productivity analytics!). They never really understood why nothing ever got done on time; or why some people liked to work late, or come in early. It was an old manufacturing business run by bunch of boomers, who hadn't been outside in decades, and who thought they'd made it a big (100 employees!) company (but in my mind it was a parody of). Another funny note, they'd built this place in response to growth, and planned/expected more growth. However, the building (new, purpose built) only had additional floor space for a few more cubes, so when the growth happened, they had to wiggle, shove, & stuff people into every nook and cranny they could find. Well, that was therapeutic.

fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
Oh yeah, I always found JWZ's tent-of-doom inspirational.

pc86 14y ago

Did anyone happen to post a mirror or have a cached version? I'm getting a timeout.

kabdib 14y ago

I work at a company which has open areas capable of holding from 4 to perhaps 20 people. The desks are on wheels. You choose where to work, where to put your desk, who to put your desk next to. There are offices available, and if you want to you can put your desk in one. Few people do; the social environment is _really_ important. Mobility and choice make a huge difference. People are smart and know the difference between environments that are supportive of cooperative work, and simple cheap-ass accountancy coupled with power games.

X-Istence 14y ago
Valve?

ry0ohki 14y ago

The article mentions open plan with no partitions. In my book, there is a HUGE difference between completely open like that, and open plan with low partitions. A low partition blocks a huge amount of sound, while still preventing people from being isolated. Completely open with no partition, once you get above 4 people is almost unworkable.

alistairSH 14y ago
Agreed. Totally open office sounds like a disaster. I'm on a team of about 10 people, mostly developers, with a few QA specialists mixed. 3 are remote. At my office, we have normal cubes on the first floor. But, we spend 90% of our work hours in a "lab" on the second floor. The lab has one central conference table, so we're all facing each other. So, if we need quiet time to talk on the phone or concentrate, we go downstairs. But, the default for most of the developers is upstairs. Our analyst splits about 50/50. I really like this arrangement. I find I'm LESS distracted when I'm working in a group, even it we're just sitting around the table and not actually talking or pair programming. Of course, we can also work from home should the need arise. Overall, my employer is pretty flexible about all of this.

asthasr 14y ago

I currently work in an environment with about 40 people -- managers, developers, "operations" people -- all in an "open plan" office with half-height partitions. The distractions are constant; my field of view is always busy, someone is always talking, I can hear every phone conversation in the area, and even the coffee machine is loud. The printer is in the middle of the area, so whenever someone prints, it becomes a squeaking, beeping distraction. If I check my bank account balance before going to lunch, everyone can see; even if I have head phones on over earplugs, people still interrupt me! My productivity has fallen by at least half, probably more.