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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 e

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.
Mvandenbergh 14y ago
All those effects are dwarfed by the pernicious effects of sitting all day. I don't doubt that many people have anxious reactions to the background noise and panopticon level visibility and that long term mild stress is very bad for health. That's nothing compared to the damage done by sitting for 8 hours a day over that same period. Luckily we've got standing desks at work and I'm getting one put-in at home. We've also recently upgraded our office with natural lighting and natural spectrum artificial lighting which is another thing that has been shown to have huge effects on stress levels. I'm only working from the office two days or so a week, and most of those days are spent doing inherently social activities so I don't mind our mostly open plan offices. (we do have some small single occupancy offices that we use if we want a few hours of quiet work). The next thing I want to get is a portable standing desk set-up that I can take with me to client sites.
Executor 14y ago
I've spent many projects in an "open" environment, never had bad side-effects. You can divide and conquer projects where people focus on only one task... that's efficient group multitasking. The only inefficiency comes through the time taken to synchronize with people.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  You are multitasking in an open-plan office because you have two jobs that are often at odds. One is being productive. The other is appearing productive as part of what actually matters at work: managing your own social status within the group. Even if you're not aware of it, your brain is dedicating resources to the latter of these jobs. Over 9 hours, that wears you down. You may not notice it. You may attribute your end-of-day fatigue and digestive problems to aging even though you're not actually old.
- silverbax88 14y ago
  I don't work in your office, but I have worked in several. More than I care to remember, actually. There is no greater weapon for a knowledge worker than one solid hour of focused, uninterrupted work. Most great knowledge workers are introverts. I don't mean 'introverts' in the pop culture way, I mean the scientific description - people who think deeply and internally about things and work best with focused solitude.Most people think introverts are shy, repressed loners but that's not accurate. There are athletes who do tons of interviews, very well, who are introverts. There's a place for extroverts, but it is not in this kind of specific work. And extroverts work differently - an open office is great for them and they can't understand why anyone wouldn't want to work that way. Whenever I see companies (usually start ups) who have their coders all working in a bullpen, I secretly think ('not hardcore coders'). Just my bias, but over a career that has now spanned nearly 20 years, I've come to trust it.
X-Istence 14y ago
I think that a lot of this depends on the company or where you work as well. I work in an open plan office ... > By the time people are in their 40s and 50s [...] That isn't necessarily true, we've had a couple people we have looked at hiring that were interested in working with us because they were tired of being cooped up in small cubicles. Our execs are all over the age of 50, and part of our programming team is over the age of 40. We all share the same space. > Also, it's not only the noise that makes open-plan offices hell. There are days when the noise in an open-plan office bothers me, but a pair of good headphones helps sort that out ... generally. > It's the social overload of being visible to other people. [...] brain-space to the appearance of productivity, in addition to actual productivity, [...] And this is where I have to disagree with you. This comes down to culture. At my office you can spend the entire day coding and push 800 new lines of code to out git repositories, but at the same time we also all understand that every so often you need to switch off. If you spend an entire day reading Reddit, Hacker News and Wikipedia it may not even be an entire day wasted (especially if stuff on those sites relates to work), but it can help you get out of the singular mindset of work, and have you thinking of other things, and thus help relax. When it is expected that you can't work 8 hours a day on the same programming project that fear of being "caught" not being productive goes away. There is a mutual understanding that doing those things for a week on end isn't right, but at the same time we also understand, the execs understand, our boss's understand that everyone needs some down time.
michaelt 14y ago
Interesting. Is there any scientific research about these cardiac issues, anxiety disorders, digestive problems, vertigo, neurological problems, social overload and productivity reductions?

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.

Mvandenbergh 14y ago

All those effects are dwarfed by the pernicious effects of sitting all day. I don't doubt that many people have anxious reactions to the background noise and panopticon level visibility and that long term mild stress is very bad for health. That's nothing compared to the damage done by sitting for 8 hours a day over that same period. Luckily we've got standing desks at work and I'm getting one put-in at home. We've also recently upgraded our office with natural lighting and natural spectrum artificial lighting which is another thing that has been shown to have huge effects on stress levels. I'm only working from the office two days or so a week, and most of those days are spent doing inherently social activities so I don't mind our mostly open plan offices. (we do have some small single occupancy offices that we use if we want a few hours of quiet work). The next thing I want to get is a portable standing desk set-up that I can take with me to client sites.

Executor 14y ago

I've spent many projects in an "open" environment, never had bad side-effects. You can divide and conquer projects where people focus on only one task... that's efficient group multitasking. The only inefficiency comes through the time taken to synchronize with people.

michaelochurch 14y ago
You are multitasking in an open-plan office because you have two jobs that are often at odds. One is being productive. The other is appearing productive as part of what actually matters at work: managing your own social status within the group. Even if you're not aware of it, your brain is dedicating resources to the latter of these jobs. Over 9 hours, that wears you down. You may not notice it. You may attribute your end-of-day fatigue and digestive problems to aging even though you're not actually old.
silverbax88 14y ago
I don't work in your office, but I have worked in several. More than I care to remember, actually. There is no greater weapon for a knowledge worker than one solid hour of focused, uninterrupted work. Most great knowledge workers are introverts. I don't mean 'introverts' in the pop culture way, I mean the scientific description - people who think deeply and internally about things and work best with focused solitude.Most people think introverts are shy, repressed loners but that's not accurate. There are athletes who do tons of interviews, very well, who are introverts. There's a place for extroverts, but it is not in this kind of specific work. And extroverts work differently - an open office is great for them and they can't understand why anyone wouldn't want to work that way. Whenever I see companies (usually start ups) who have their coders all working in a bullpen, I secretly think ('not hardcore coders'). Just my bias, but over a career that has now spanned nearly 20 years, I've come to trust it.

X-Istence 14y ago

I think that a lot of this depends on the company or where you work as well. I work in an open plan office ... > By the time people are in their 40s and 50s [...] That isn't necessarily true, we've had a couple people we have looked at hiring that were interested in working with us because they were tired of being cooped up in small cubicles. Our execs are all over the age of 50, and part of our programming team is over the age of 40. We all share the same space. > Also, it's not only the noise that makes open-plan offices hell. There are days when the noise in an open-plan office bothers me, but a pair of good headphones helps sort that out ... generally. > It's the social overload of being visible to other people. [...] brain-space to the appearance of productivity, in addition to actual productivity, [...] And this is where I have to disagree with you. This comes down to culture. At my office you can spend the entire day coding and push 800 new lines of code to out git repositories, but at the same time we also all understand that every so often you need to switch off. If you spend an entire day reading Reddit, Hacker News and Wikipedia it may not even be an entire day wasted (especially if stuff on those sites relates to work), but it can help you get out of the singular mindset of work, and have you thinking of other things, and thus help relax. When it is expected that you can't work 8 hours a day on the same programming project that fear of being "caught" not being productive goes away. There is a mutual understanding that doing those things for a week on end isn't right, but at the same time we also understand, the execs understand, our boss's understand that everyone needs some down time.

michaelt 14y ago

Interesting. Is there any scientific research about these cardiac issues, anxiety disorders, digestive problems, vertigo, neurological problems, social overload and productivity reductions?