6 ms·

Defending our open-plan office

30 points by zackbloom 13y ago

baggachipz 13y ago
The last bullet is the biggest tripping point: > You have to like the people you work with to like an open-plan office. Most places adopt an "open" plan for two reasons: 1) it costs less, and 2) to keep an eye on the minions. Most "open" floors conveniently have large, closed offices for the execs. That's to establish dominance. They always have windows facing the open floor, so that everyone knows they're being watched. These are the kind of "open" offices that are way more common. It's tough to like everyone when somebody feels like they're under constant surveillance. It's no coincidence that I get my best work done at home, when I am free to think clearly without interruption, or the paranoia of being observed.
- lucaspiller 13y ago
  I agree. I worked in an open plan office in my last company with 20 other developers. I liked it a lot better than here where there are 5 other developers and 4 non developers in this room.
- gdulli 13y ago
  > You have to like the people you work with to like an open-plan office. I like the people I work with, but they're adults who still think that shooting nerf guns at each other is amusing. Every day. This is a problem.
- apricot13 13y ago
  > It's no coincidence that I get my best work done at home, when I am free to think clearly without interruption, or the paranoia of being observed. exactly this. I'm 10 times more productive in my pajamas in bed than any office I've ever worked in! I've worked in a giant purpose built open plan office where each team had a 'island' of desks and the managers were all along side us, it was good in that noone could sneak off for lunch without inviting you but thats where the good parts ended. We moved desks regularly so everyone had a chance to have their screens overlooked but I found the whole idea very stressful. Not only sitting but walking around open plan offices and feeling like I'm being watched or someone monitoring how long I was away from my desk for. It really affected my productivity. No amount of headphone listening helps. Plus they hurt your ears after a while and I find them very disorienting.
  - thejosh 13y ago
    Also, do you want to wear headphones for 8+ hours? Doesn't that make you feel compressed also disconnected in a room full of noisy people?
    - baggachipz 13y ago
      It sucks, I had to do that for a long time. My train of thought derails when I hear music with words, so I had the same classical/ambient tracks playing on a loop all day. It was very annoying, and even the most comfortable earphones don't feel great after a whole day. Dead silence would have been much better for me, and "noise-canceling" headphones give me a headache.
    - mogrim 13y ago
      A room full of noisy people is actually less of a problem than an overly quiet office, where a single phone ringing will set everyone doing meerkat impressions... Not disagreeing with the headphones bit, I couldn't wear them for 8hrs.
- dboyd 13y ago
  Very good points. The original article seems to group all open office plans into a single category, as if they were all alike. I've worked in two notable different open office plans. One was at around 400 square feet per person. In this one, the only people with an office were those that dealt with sensitive documents that had to be in a filing cabinet (in this case that was one person, the accountant, who did payroll). I've also worked in an open office where the "senior" staff had offices with windows looking into the cubicle area. The open area was around 150 square feet per person. While sitting at my desk, the back of my chair was about 4 feet from the person behind me. These two experiences were drastically different in productivity and focus. To say open offices don't work, because most of them don't work is like saying startups don't work because most of them fail. The problem isn't with the idea, it's with the execution.
codersbrew 13y ago
I understand open-plan office may work for some folks, but it didn't for me. Wearing headphones all day is uncomfortable and I could still hear noise. The noise for me is a distraction and makes it difficult to code... Plus no privacy to relax. Sometimes you need some quiet time to think out a solution. ( or go for a walk derp)
zhte415 13y ago
No headphones please. Seriously. If someone really wants to listen to music, cool, headphones. If someone wants to text their friends 80% of the day that is also cool (connections bring support and inspiration). Headphones are an escape from discomfort. Open plan offices are great. When they're split into discrete environments. Teams and individuals feel comfortable and where results happen. Have an open plan office, and have a whole load of 8 foot plants and wheel based whiteboards on order for no cost / requisition approval so people make their own space. It is neither expensive nor rocket science, but misses the main point: have a structure where 1-1s are conducted daily between whatever people management scheme is in place.
- shubb 13y ago
  One place I worked used noise cancelling tech (some white noise, along with what appeared actual noise cancelling) to the effect that you couldn't hear a conversation ten foot away. I'm constantly surprised we don't see this more.
joekrill 13y ago
> Are our employees lying to us when they claim that the open offices lead to more collaboration and create a more communal atmosphere? No, probably not. But I think you're asking the wrong questions. While these things may be true, it doesn't in any way mean your employees are more productive or happier. And it certainly doesn't mean that, given the choice, they would take a distracting, collaborative, communal, noisy atmosphere over their own private quiet office.
dsr_ 13y ago
Not everyone is alike. Not everyone works best in the same environment. Not everyone knows what environment works best for them. Not everyone feels secure enough to tell you what they actually think about your open-plan office. 600 people? How many of them work from home every chance they get? How many would rather have a private office if it were available to them? Have these questions even been asked of the workforce?
- owenmarshall 13y ago
  To me this entire argument smacks of emacs or vim, Windows vs Mac, ... just another holy war on something that doesn't have one right answer. I think the best approach would be for companies to stop forcing people to pick. Some days I come in to my office & need to shut the door and grind through a problem. Some days I'd rather go sit in a bullpen to talk through some sticky issues. So rather than forcing people into (or out of) boxes, give everyone their own space but have plenty of places for people to have informal meetings and collaboration. The problem, as always, is cost.
  - troygoode 13y ago
    You're right that we shouldn't force people to pick, but I disagree with your conclusion. If you need to shut your door and grind through the problem, why come into the office at all? I like how GitHub has structured it: come to the office to collaborate, stay at home to have your "private office experience."
    - owenmarshall 13y ago
      See, I'm comfortable with that as a choice as well. Some days I'd be perfectly content working on my couch, but there are other days where I'd probably end up doing nothing but playing FIFA! Not only that but I can move from "grind away" time to "oh crap I need to collaborate" time very quickly, and I find it personally easier to collaborate in person. Again though, just a choice. And choice at work is a funny thing -- I've been asked if I want a Macbook or an HP laptop, if I need any software licenses for tools, if I want to get my reference books in ebook format or as actual books, but no one has ever asked me if I want an office or a cube or a desk in the middle of a room.
jdbernard 13y ago
Have you polled your employees to see if they really like the digs? And did you do it anonymously? Maybe they are not comfortable telling you what they really think. My longest experience with an open plan office fit all of your bullet points: we all wore headphones, we used IM before starting conversation (or in place of vocal conversation as often as not), we had a private meeting room we could grab just across the hall, and everyone got alone with each other really well. Still none of us liked the arrangement. We all felt that we were less productive, more distracted, and that there was always someone looking over our shoulder. Management actually went out of their way to stay out of our room, but the feeling persisted. Management knew we didn't like it, but I don't know if they knew how much it hurt productivity. We didn't talk about it. Nothing was going to change. They decided long ago that we didn't have room for private offices. Why complain and get on bad terms with the boss when it won't change anything?
- jessaustin 13y ago
  ...we all wore headphones, we used IM before starting conversation (or in place of vocal conversation as often as not), we had a private meeting room we could grab just across the hall... All of these behaviors seem intended to minimize the differences between open-plan and private offices, don't they? Of course, one could say the same if everyone was in a private office. Haha... headphones. I didn't really get into Danzig or Rammstein until I got stuck next to the boisterous accounts payable department. Radiohead just couldn't compete with those bozos.
  - owenmarshall 13y ago
    >until I got stuck next to the boisterous accounts payable department Wait, seriously?! I've worked in a few open floor plan environments but none of them would ever dream of putting departments that spend lots of time on the phone - training, support, sales, accounting - beside the programmers. How the hell do they begin to think that's a good idea?
    - jessaustin 13y ago
      Wait, seriously?! This was at a phone company. Phone companies do everything wrong. Billing IT was considered part of finance/accounting, and so was accounts payable. (Actually, so was about a third of a 14-story tower.) To be honest, however, this was a temporary (couple of months? it's been awhile) condition, and with sufficient headphone volume I found the A/P yokels distracted me less than other IT people had when I'd been in with them. Perhaps that was my manager's theory? I'd hate to give her too much credit, but when I moved again it was to a quieter location even farther from the rest of Billing IT.
altero 13y ago
I am fine with open-plan office as soon as I can book private room when I need it (hint: almost always).
oflordal 13y ago
The problem is that there is less communication because people afraid to disturb their neighbours. Of the 3 variations I have tries (single office, 2-3 people in a room, 8+ in the same room) I have found 2-3 people in a room is the best. You have someone to bounce ideas on and since everyone in the room tend to work on the same thing it is usually of interest to everyone.
scott_s 13y ago
Are our employees lying to us when they claim that the open offices lead to more collaboration and create a more communal atmosphere? That's probably supposed to be rhetorical, but it shouldn't be. Are they lying to you? Or maybe they're telling you a truth, but leaving off a "but" clause. ("... but sometimes I have difficulty focusing.") You're the boss. You can't answer this question. If you really want to know, do an anonymous survey of your employees - and try to work with someone experienced with writing surveys to avoid leading questions.
- baggachipz 13y ago
  +1; They're telling you what you want to hear, OP.
kylec 13y ago
A few months ago a colleague on my team left and went to HubSpot. From what little I heard it sounded like a cool company, but seeing as I'm both easily distracted and get anxious wearing headphones (it makes me nervous when I'm not able to perceive my surroundings) the revelation that they have open offices (and shared desks, lockers, etc) makes me realize I could never work there. I'm sure there are lots of people that can thrive in this environment, but I'm not one of them. And I suspect I'm not alone.
specialist 13y ago
It's about distractions. People you like are less distracting, because you're more comfortable in their presence. Does everyone get along fabulously? Then sure, do open / shared space. One of my teams started with five of us stuffed into a closet. We rocked. That bon homme didn't survive growing to 25 people and transplanting to an open office. Two bad apples ruined the vibe for everyone. I currently work in the middle of a cube farm. My office nemesis is several cubes over. Dozens of voices, and that's the one that sticks out. Like a barbed ice pick in the ear. Because I despise 'em. Very, very disruptive. 600 people in an open office? They're kidding themselves. Just build a cafeteria and make the bench seating a free for all.
jere 13y ago
>In an open plan office, conversations happen in person. When everyone has a separate office, more conversations happen over email or IRC. Do you have evidence for this? Because Spolsky gives evidence for his claims. >It's a good idea to begin an interaction over chat ("have a few minutes?"), before walking over to someones desk. So then what is the open layout giving you? This sounds like just like my experience with cubes but without the privacy.
bluedino 13y ago
What are the long-term effects of wearing headphones 8-10 hours a day, even at moderate volume levels? I try to wear them as little as possible, as if all the years of motorcycles and loud bands in small bars isn't going to make me deaf on their own.
- rocky1138 13y ago
  I've never read any studies on it, but anecdotally, the majority of us get along with them just fine and have for ~40 years.
- GFischer 13y ago
  For several years, I've been listening to music at a higher than recommended volume, to drown out the ambience and try to work. My hearing has noticeably dropped - a test a few years back showed I have a hearing similar to a person in his 50s, and I'm 32. The company I work for built a new building, and we're moving there next month. Development's quarters? A 500 square foot room, for 18 developers :( .
pwpwp 13y ago
What I really look forward to are the "Defending our office" posts in 5 years.
- jere 13y ago
  Don't hold your breath. Peopleware has been recommending private offices for 25+ years. http://www.amazon.com/review/RYVTUPDAUANZW http://www.amazon.com/review/RYVTUPDAUANZW
pivo 13y ago
As someone who doesn't work well in open office plans it's incredibly frustrating to hear, over and over again, some guy defending their open office when he obviously doesn't understand the simple fact that not everyone is exactly like him. How can someone in charge of employees not understand this basic fact? Edit: grammar
rocky1138 13y ago
My workflow in an open office tends to go as follows: - come in and greet the team - go over some of the big tasks to do today - find a private spot in a cafe or booked room to get work done
edderly 13y ago
Since the original article was posted, it occurred to me that an issue that is rarely raised is that most office spaces are far too small to make any imaginative decisions when it comes to workspaces. The best office environments I worked in was in a different industry, where I worked part of the time in a laboratory because we were dealing with hazardous chemicals and specialist machinery. However, even as a junior employee I also had an office, only because the building itself was relatively under-occupied. Stints in the lab varied, sometimes I was in their part of the day and at other times we were in their for several weeks pretty much full-time. In my experience in the tech industry I've worked occasionally in full time lab conditions too for a stretch of a few weeks. Generally I've found these periods enjoyable as well, but after a long stint in "the lab" I've been glad to go back to a more isolated environment. Given this experience I find weaknesses in all the arguments about whether dedicated offices or cubes or open-planned work environment are the best. Personal offices are obviously the least worse, cubes are a ghastly compromise in my opinion, and open plan has obvious problems. If we're talking about ideal working environments, it would be one that allows focussed rather than forced collaboration. Labs allow for this but are rarely thought about because of the phyical constraints of most office spaces. *Oh, and it requires imagination and effort from management too.
Zigurd 13y ago
As a consultant, I sometimes have to code or debug in all kinds of clients' office environments. Just saying "open office" is not enough to characterize an office. For example, at a design firm I saw project rooms where 4-10 people work that are usually buzzing with collaborative conversations, but they also have open "hotelling" space providing a quiet area. This is the opposite of the quiet-room or "phone booth" approach. Their designers and engineers can also work at home part of each week. This combination seems to work well and their employees have a lot of say in how the workspace works. The variation among open offices is greater than among conventional walled-off offices. In part I believe that's because it is more difficult to make an open office work well for a mix of employees. It can work well for coders, but I think it's safer to put coders in offices, and almost certainly not the same open space as business development The most recent example I have seen of a failure in providing a good engineering environment went beyond the banal cubicle veal farm and included an insecure manager who needed to see all his engineers even though he wasn't hands-on enough to evaluate their output closely. If you find clashing parts of your engineering environment the furniture is probably just one factor among many. In China, crowded open office spaces are common, and use of headphones by coders is rare, at least in my unscientific sample space. After-lunch naps at one's desk are normal, and are sometimes accommodated by turning down the lighting. I point that out mainly because napping in an open office in the US would be horrifying to most people. So keep an open mind about what can help. I seldom have to deal with adverse workspaces for very long, and I'm aware that I'm paid to adapt to my clients' work-style. For Hubspot, making headphones acceptable "work-wear" is probably important to making all offices in the open for everyone work. I use IEMs if a workspace is very loud because some people might look askance at a consultant wearing big Sennheiser closed cans.
mattzito 13y ago
I find the most useful office layout is a blend of spaces. I think you should have: - hotelling rooms for phone calls, thinking time, etc. - team rooms - closed spaces for groups of people that often work together - conference rooms for larger get togethers I think individual offices are too limiting for those that don't have frequent private conversations. And I think purely open plan is insane, you're just staring at your coworkers all day. Grouping people into "pods" or "team rooms" lets each group come to their own system of working. Everyone in one team like music playing out loud? great, they rotate responsibility for what plays. Likes quiet time? Headphones and breakout rooms for conversations. But if you give people some options as to how they can structure their own work environment, they'll generally come to a consensus on what works for them.
vampirechicken 13y ago
The effects of "collaborative office spaces" on the companies accounting system are well understood. It is cheaper to buy or lease cubicles or (heaven help up) put plywood on saw horses, then it is to get enough space then subdivide and construct offices. One is written off as furniture, the other is physical plant, and depreciates at a far slower rate. Sometimes it's about the ability to see if you're at your sewing machine making garments, but the motives are nearly always financial.
RogerL 13y ago
So you've self selected for people that thrive in noisy, distracting environments (and plenty of such people exist), then conclude that open offices are the right way to go? You conclude that because somebody likes something, in the absence of any study, (or in this case, contradictory to every study done!) that it is in fact better? No. We fool ourselves all the time. The classic mouse study comes to mind. Most programmers prefer typing to the mouse - "it's faster" we say. Except, it's not. It's just that typing engages our brains in a way that the mouse doesn't, so we don't perceive the passage of time as much when tab typing out a directory, and we do perceive it while navigating the mouse. Mouse is faster (generally), we think typing is faster. So, I don't take it for granted that just because somebody says they are more productive in an open office that they are. They might just perceive it that way because they are having so much fun hanging with the fellow brogrammers, or the constant interaction gives the illusion of progress, or.... I can't take continual noise - it drives me bonkers. And yes, to me headphones count as noise. So, I would not accept a job at that place, most likely, and thus they do not have the data point of someone going quietly mad in their midst. See, open plans are better! "Ignore these scientific studies, my selection bias says it's fine" is usually a pretty poor path to the truth.
- MetaCosm 13y ago
  You nailed exactly what I was going to say -- goes against studies. I honestly wonder if he did a valid, anonymous questionnaire to his own employees what the result would be, I am guessing he would learn people HATE it.
stevesearer 13y ago
I don't really think it is necessary to 'defend' any particular office setup whether it be open plan, private offices, or an activity-based office design. What companies need to embrace is the ability to adapt and adjust their office plan to their current situation they find themselves in. From what I can tell, Hubspot has tried to modify their open plan office by adding private spaces, conference rooms, and trying to use technology to mitigate unnecessary distraction. That's a far cry from what most people decry, which is a big room where desks are crammed in like sardines with nowhere to hide. Also, I run Office Snapshots and we've shown Hubspot's offices in the past - http://officesnapshots.com/companies/hubspot http://officesnapshots.com/companies/hubspot
Jormundir 13y ago
This article annoys me to no end. This is my job, I should not have to fight for some peace and quiet in order to get some solid work done! Having to wear headphones is a pain in the ass. Often listening to music is a distraction in and of itself, so you haven't solved the problem of noise at all. There's also a huge unaddressed problem of visual distraction. You can see people moving around, going to meetings, or having conversations even if you can't hear them! This is often more distracting than sound. You defend and have an open office plan so you can make the claim that you're doing everything you can to increase "collaboration" on the product, but I think you've completely covered up for yourself, the extreme downsides to the open office plan, and don't realize that the open office is probably hugely slowing down the development of your company's mission.
- wpietri 13y ago
  Totally agreed. 600 people aren't meaningfully collaborating on anything. I've really loved open-plan spaces for 5-10. But at the point where a lot of the people you see are effective strangers, it's no better than just setting your desks out on the sidewalk
RandallBrown 13y ago
I used to work in an open office and I really liked it. The team was always on the same page because of how easy it was to talk to eachother and show everyone what we were working on. Now I have my own office and I hate it. Everyone sits in their little office, works on their work, and only gets help when they really need it. Getting up, walking down the hall, knocking on someone's door, seeing if they're even in the office, and then talking to them is a pretty huge barrier to fast easy collaboration. Discussions that would happen naturally and take 5 minutes end up happening in hour long meetings. Code reviews can take days because it's way easier to ignore someone you can't see. Obviously every company is going to be different, but I just liked the open plan better. I felt like part of the team, not just a person working on similar stuff.
- darkarmani 13y ago
  > Getting up, walking down the hall, knocking on someone's door, seeing if they're even in the office, and then talking to them is a pretty huge barrier to fast easy collaboration. What? Why can't you collaborate in their office? This sounds like you don't get immediate fulfillment when you want to ask someone a question, but there isn't anything stopping you from collaborating when needed.
wpietri 13y ago
I'm unable to see how to reconcile "I want to work closely with others" with "to get anything done we all must wear headphones all the time" and "IM is a must". The most productive places I have ever worked have been at single-team-size, open-plan startups. But that worked for us because we were very disciplined about noise. When you heard somebody talking, it was something relevant to the work. Non-relevant stuff happened elsewhere, or during breaks where we were all not trying to focus. That was awesome, because the ambient information kept us all in sync. But right now I'm visiting somebody else's open-plan space, and it's infuriating. Noise levels often get up to the "busy street" marker on my decibel meter. All of the developers I've talked to feel their productivity is significantly impacted by the noise. Ad-hoc collaboration is low, because everybody's in their own little headphone bubble. The model I'm most intrigued by now is Spotify's. There, each team has a shared team space that's closed off from other team spaces. Plus they have lounge space directly outside, so that the team room is really for working. That seems to be to get the benefits of open-plan spaces (easy collaboration) in a way that supports productivity (minimum noise and distraction).
chollida1 13y ago
I've been fortunate enough to work in both environments. I'll be the first to admit there are pros and cons to both. I've had an office and in my opinion, for focused work there is just no comparison. Being able to close the door means no corner of the eye people walking by distractions. People can talk about headphones all they want but if you can't put 4 walls around you then there are just too many distractions for me to get "into the zone". On the other hand I currently work at a hedge fund with an open office and it probably needs to be open. Every one needs to know what the others are doing but design. The number of good ideas that come out of open discussion is just amazing. The other up side to an open office that some people may not be aware of is the inclusiveness of it. with doors its easy for 3 people to have an impromptu meeting and not realize there are excluding others. With an open office everyone hears the conversation and can know if they want to participate or not. or put another way, shy people are more likely to listen in and participate in meetings in open offices than they are to enter a closed door office to participate in the same meeting. Many companies try to combat this by using irc. google hangouts, style chats which I feel really helps.
- ktsmith 13y ago
  > With an open office everyone hears the conversation and can know if they want to participate or not. That's only true if no one is wearing headphones. Both the OP and many of the commenters here state headphones are necessary for these environments. My own experience in an open office was the same way, headphones all day every day. The people with headphones are excluded in exactly the same way as if the conversation had happened behind closed doors.
  - chollida1 13y ago
    True, but the key point is that alteast here if they are excluded its because they want to be. The key take away point is: An open office lets the introverts have more say than when everyone is in offices.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

30 points by zackbloom 13y ago

The last bullet is the biggest tripping point: > You have to like the people you work with to like an open-plan office. Most places adopt an "open" plan for two reasons: 1) it costs less, and 2) to keep an eye on the minions. Most "open" floors conveniently have large, closed offices for the execs. That's to establish dominance. They always have windows facing the open floor, so that everyone knows they're being watched. These are the kind of "open" offices that are way more common. It's tough to like everyone when somebody feels like they're under constant surveillance. It's no coincidence that I get my best work done at home, when I am free to think clearly without interruption, or the paranoia of being observed.

lucaspiller 13y ago
I agree. I worked in an open plan office in my last company with 20 other developers. I liked it a lot better than here where there are 5 other developers and 4 non developers in this room.
gdulli 13y ago
> You have to like the people you work with to like an open-plan office. I like the people I work with, but they're adults who still think that shooting nerf guns at each other is amusing. Every day. This is a problem.
apricot13 13y ago
> It's no coincidence that I get my best work done at home, when I am free to think clearly without interruption, or the paranoia of being observed. exactly this. I'm 10 times more productive in my pajamas in bed than any office I've ever worked in! I've worked in a giant purpose built open plan office where each team had a 'island' of desks and the managers were all along side us, it was good in that noone could sneak off for lunch without inviting you but thats where the good parts ended. We moved desks regularly so everyone had a chance to have their screens overlooked but I found the whole idea very stressful. Not only sitting but walking around open plan offices and feeling like I'm being watched or someone monitoring how long I was away from my desk for. It really affected my productivity. No amount of headphone listening helps. Plus they hurt your ears after a while and I find them very disorienting.
- thejosh 13y ago
  Also, do you want to wear headphones for 8+ hours? Doesn't that make you feel compressed also disconnected in a room full of noisy people?
  - baggachipz 13y ago
    It sucks, I had to do that for a long time. My train of thought derails when I hear music with words, so I had the same classical/ambient tracks playing on a loop all day. It was very annoying, and even the most comfortable earphones don't feel great after a whole day. Dead silence would have been much better for me, and "noise-canceling" headphones give me a headache.
  - mogrim 13y ago
    A room full of noisy people is actually less of a problem than an overly quiet office, where a single phone ringing will set everyone doing meerkat impressions... Not disagreeing with the headphones bit, I couldn't wear them for 8hrs.
dboyd 13y ago
Very good points. The original article seems to group all open office plans into a single category, as if they were all alike. I've worked in two notable different open office plans. One was at around 400 square feet per person. In this one, the only people with an office were those that dealt with sensitive documents that had to be in a filing cabinet (in this case that was one person, the accountant, who did payroll). I've also worked in an open office where the "senior" staff had offices with windows looking into the cubicle area. The open area was around 150 square feet per person. While sitting at my desk, the back of my chair was about 4 feet from the person behind me. These two experiences were drastically different in productivity and focus. To say open offices don't work, because most of them don't work is like saying startups don't work because most of them fail. The problem isn't with the idea, it's with the execution.

codersbrew 13y ago

I understand open-plan office may work for some folks, but it didn't for me. Wearing headphones all day is uncomfortable and I could still hear noise. The noise for me is a distraction and makes it difficult to code... Plus no privacy to relax. Sometimes you need some quiet time to think out a solution. ( or go for a walk derp)

zhte415 13y ago

No headphones please. Seriously. If someone really wants to listen to music, cool, headphones. If someone wants to text their friends 80% of the day that is also cool (connections bring support and inspiration). Headphones are an escape from discomfort. Open plan offices are great. When they're split into discrete environments. Teams and individuals feel comfortable and where results happen. Have an open plan office, and have a whole load of 8 foot plants and wheel based whiteboards on order for no cost / requisition approval so people make their own space. It is neither expensive nor rocket science, but misses the main point: have a structure where 1-1s are conducted daily between whatever people management scheme is in place.

shubb 13y ago
One place I worked used noise cancelling tech (some white noise, along with what appeared actual noise cancelling) to the effect that you couldn't hear a conversation ten foot away. I'm constantly surprised we don't see this more.

joekrill 13y ago

> Are our employees lying to us when they claim that the open offices lead to more collaboration and create a more communal atmosphere? No, probably not. But I think you're asking the wrong questions. While these things may be true, it doesn't in any way mean your employees are more productive or happier. And it certainly doesn't mean that, given the choice, they would take a distracting, collaborative, communal, noisy atmosphere over their own private quiet office.

dsr_ 13y ago

Not everyone is alike. Not everyone works best in the same environment. Not everyone knows what environment works best for them. Not everyone feels secure enough to tell you what they actually think about your open-plan office. 600 people? How many of them work from home every chance they get? How many would rather have a private office if it were available to them? Have these questions even been asked of the workforce?

owenmarshall 13y ago
To me this entire argument smacks of emacs or vim, Windows vs Mac, ... just another holy war on something that doesn't have one right answer. I think the best approach would be for companies to stop forcing people to pick. Some days I come in to my office & need to shut the door and grind through a problem. Some days I'd rather go sit in a bullpen to talk through some sticky issues. So rather than forcing people into (or out of) boxes, give everyone their own space but have plenty of places for people to have informal meetings and collaboration. The problem, as always, is cost.
- troygoode 13y ago
  You're right that we shouldn't force people to pick, but I disagree with your conclusion. If you need to shut your door and grind through the problem, why come into the office at all? I like how GitHub has structured it: come to the office to collaborate, stay at home to have your "private office experience."
  - owenmarshall 13y ago
    See, I'm comfortable with that as a choice as well. Some days I'd be perfectly content working on my couch, but there are other days where I'd probably end up doing nothing but playing FIFA! Not only that but I can move from "grind away" time to "oh crap I need to collaborate" time very quickly, and I find it personally easier to collaborate in person. Again though, just a choice. And choice at work is a funny thing -- I've been asked if I want a Macbook or an HP laptop, if I need any software licenses for tools, if I want to get my reference books in ebook format or as actual books, but no one has ever asked me if I want an office or a cube or a desk in the middle of a room.

jdbernard 13y ago

Have you polled your employees to see if they really like the digs? And did you do it anonymously? Maybe they are not comfortable telling you what they really think. My longest experience with an open plan office fit all of your bullet points: we all wore headphones, we used IM before starting conversation (or in place of vocal conversation as often as not), we had a private meeting room we could grab just across the hall, and everyone got alone with each other really well. Still none of us liked the arrangement. We all felt that we were less productive, more distracted, and that there was always someone looking over our shoulder. Management actually went out of their way to stay out of our room, but the feeling persisted. Management knew we didn't like it, but I don't know if they knew how much it hurt productivity. We didn't talk about it. Nothing was going to change. They decided long ago that we didn't have room for private offices. Why complain and get on bad terms with the boss when it won't change anything?

jessaustin 13y ago
...we all wore headphones, we used IM before starting conversation (or in place of vocal conversation as often as not), we had a private meeting room we could grab just across the hall... All of these behaviors seem intended to minimize the differences between open-plan and private offices, don't they? Of course, one could say the same if everyone was in a private office. Haha... headphones. I didn't really get into Danzig or Rammstein until I got stuck next to the boisterous accounts payable department. Radiohead just couldn't compete with those bozos.
- owenmarshall 13y ago
  >until I got stuck next to the boisterous accounts payable department Wait, seriously?! I've worked in a few open floor plan environments but none of them would ever dream of putting departments that spend lots of time on the phone - training, support, sales, accounting - beside the programmers. How the hell do they begin to think that's a good idea?
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    Wait, seriously?! This was at a phone company. Phone companies do everything wrong. Billing IT was considered part of finance/accounting, and so was accounts payable. (Actually, so was about a third of a 14-story tower.) To be honest, however, this was a temporary (couple of months? it's been awhile) condition, and with sufficient headphone volume I found the A/P yokels distracted me less than other IT people had when I'd been in with them. Perhaps that was my manager's theory? I'd hate to give her too much credit, but when I moved again it was to a quieter location even farther from the rest of Billing IT.

altero 13y ago

I am fine with open-plan office as soon as I can book private room when I need it (hint: almost always).

oflordal 13y ago

The problem is that there is less communication because people afraid to disturb their neighbours. Of the 3 variations I have tries (single office, 2-3 people in a room, 8+ in the same room) I have found 2-3 people in a room is the best. You have someone to bounce ideas on and since everyone in the room tend to work on the same thing it is usually of interest to everyone.

scott_s 13y ago

Are our employees lying to us when they claim that the open offices lead to more collaboration and create a more communal atmosphere? That's probably supposed to be rhetorical, but it shouldn't be. Are they lying to you? Or maybe they're telling you a truth, but leaving off a "but" clause. ("... but sometimes I have difficulty focusing.") You're the boss. You can't answer this question. If you really want to know, do an anonymous survey of your employees - and try to work with someone experienced with writing surveys to avoid leading questions.

baggachipz 13y ago
+1; They're telling you what you want to hear, OP.

kylec 13y ago

A few months ago a colleague on my team left and went to HubSpot. From what little I heard it sounded like a cool company, but seeing as I'm both easily distracted and get anxious wearing headphones (it makes me nervous when I'm not able to perceive my surroundings) the revelation that they have open offices (and shared desks, lockers, etc) makes me realize I could never work there. I'm sure there are lots of people that can thrive in this environment, but I'm not one of them. And I suspect I'm not alone.

specialist 13y ago

It's about distractions. People you like are less distracting, because you're more comfortable in their presence. Does everyone get along fabulously? Then sure, do open / shared space. One of my teams started with five of us stuffed into a closet. We rocked. That bon homme didn't survive growing to 25 people and transplanting to an open office. Two bad apples ruined the vibe for everyone. I currently work in the middle of a cube farm. My office nemesis is several cubes over. Dozens of voices, and that's the one that sticks out. Like a barbed ice pick in the ear. Because I despise 'em. Very, very disruptive. 600 people in an open office? They're kidding themselves. Just build a cafeteria and make the bench seating a free for all.

jere 13y ago

>In an open plan office, conversations happen in person. When everyone has a separate office, more conversations happen over email or IRC. Do you have evidence for this? Because Spolsky gives evidence for his claims. >It's a good idea to begin an interaction over chat ("have a few minutes?"), before walking over to someones desk. So then what is the open layout giving you? This sounds like just like my experience with cubes but without the privacy.

bluedino 13y ago

What are the long-term effects of wearing headphones 8-10 hours a day, even at moderate volume levels? I try to wear them as little as possible, as if all the years of motorcycles and loud bands in small bars isn't going to make me deaf on their own.

rocky1138 13y ago
I've never read any studies on it, but anecdotally, the majority of us get along with them just fine and have for ~40 years.
GFischer 13y ago
For several years, I've been listening to music at a higher than recommended volume, to drown out the ambience and try to work. My hearing has noticeably dropped - a test a few years back showed I have a hearing similar to a person in his 50s, and I'm 32. The company I work for built a new building, and we're moving there next month. Development's quarters? A 500 square foot room, for 18 developers :( .

pwpwp 13y ago

What I really look forward to are the "Defending our office" posts in 5 years.

jere 13y ago
Don't hold your breath. Peopleware has been recommending private offices for 25+ years. http://www.amazon.com/review/RYVTUPDAUANZW http://www.amazon.com/review/RYVTUPDAUANZW

pivo 13y ago

As someone who doesn't work well in open office plans it's incredibly frustrating to hear, over and over again, some guy defending their open office when he obviously doesn't understand the simple fact that not everyone is exactly like him. How can someone in charge of employees not understand this basic fact? Edit: grammar

rocky1138 13y ago

My workflow in an open office tends to go as follows: - come in and greet the team - go over some of the big tasks to do today - find a private spot in a cafe or booked room to get work done

edderly 13y ago

Since the original article was posted, it occurred to me that an issue that is rarely raised is that most office spaces are far too small to make any imaginative decisions when it comes to workspaces. The best office environments I worked in was in a different industry, where I worked part of the time in a laboratory because we were dealing with hazardous chemicals and specialist machinery. However, even as a junior employee I also had an office, only because the building itself was relatively under-occupied. Stints in the lab varied, sometimes I was in their part of the day and at other times we were in their for several weeks pretty much full-time. In my experience in the tech industry I've worked occasionally in full time lab conditions too for a stretch of a few weeks. Generally I've found these periods enjoyable as well, but after a long stint in "the lab" I've been glad to go back to a more isolated environment. Given this experience I find weaknesses in all the arguments about whether dedicated offices or cubes or open-planned work environment are the best. Personal offices are obviously the least worse, cubes are a ghastly compromise in my opinion, and open plan has obvious problems. If we're talking about ideal working environments, it would be one that allows focussed rather than forced collaboration. Labs allow for this but are rarely thought about because of the phyical constraints of most office spaces. *Oh, and it requires imagination and effort from management too.

Zigurd 13y ago

As a consultant, I sometimes have to code or debug in all kinds of clients' office environments. Just saying "open office" is not enough to characterize an office. For example, at a design firm I saw project rooms where 4-10 people work that are usually buzzing with collaborative conversations, but they also have open "hotelling" space providing a quiet area. This is the opposite of the quiet-room or "phone booth" approach. Their designers and engineers can also work at home part of each week. This combination seems to work well and their employees have a lot of say in how the workspace works. The variation among open offices is greater than among conventional walled-off offices. In part I believe that's because it is more difficult to make an open office work well for a mix of employees. It can work well for coders, but I think it's safer to put coders in offices, and almost certainly not the same open space as business development The most recent example I have seen of a failure in providing a good engineering environment went beyond the banal cubicle veal farm and included an insecure manager who needed to see all his engineers even though he wasn't hands-on enough to evaluate their output closely. If you find clashing parts of your engineering environment the furniture is probably just one factor among many. In China, crowded open office spaces are common, and use of headphones by coders is rare, at least in my unscientific sample space. After-lunch naps at one's desk are normal, and are sometimes accommodated by turning down the lighting. I point that out mainly because napping in an open office in the US would be horrifying to most people. So keep an open mind about what can help. I seldom have to deal with adverse workspaces for very long, and I'm aware that I'm paid to adapt to my clients' work-style. For Hubspot, making headphones acceptable "work-wear" is probably important to making all offices in the open for everyone work. I use IEMs if a workspace is very loud because some people might look askance at a consultant wearing big Sennheiser closed cans.

mattzito 13y ago

I find the most useful office layout is a blend of spaces. I think you should have: - hotelling rooms for phone calls, thinking time, etc. - team rooms - closed spaces for groups of people that often work together - conference rooms for larger get togethers I think individual offices are too limiting for those that don't have frequent private conversations. And I think purely open plan is insane, you're just staring at your coworkers all day. Grouping people into "pods" or "team rooms" lets each group come to their own system of working. Everyone in one team like music playing out loud? great, they rotate responsibility for what plays. Likes quiet time? Headphones and breakout rooms for conversations. But if you give people some options as to how they can structure their own work environment, they'll generally come to a consensus on what works for them.

vampirechicken 13y ago

The effects of "collaborative office spaces" on the companies accounting system are well understood. It is cheaper to buy or lease cubicles or (heaven help up) put plywood on saw horses, then it is to get enough space then subdivide and construct offices. One is written off as furniture, the other is physical plant, and depreciates at a far slower rate. Sometimes it's about the ability to see if you're at your sewing machine making garments, but the motives are nearly always financial.

RogerL 13y ago

So you've self selected for people that thrive in noisy, distracting environments (and plenty of such people exist), then conclude that open offices are the right way to go? You conclude that because somebody likes something, in the absence of any study, (or in this case, contradictory to every study done!) that it is in fact better? No. We fool ourselves all the time. The classic mouse study comes to mind. Most programmers prefer typing to the mouse - "it's faster" we say. Except, it's not. It's just that typing engages our brains in a way that the mouse doesn't, so we don't perceive the passage of time as much when tab typing out a directory, and we do perceive it while navigating the mouse. Mouse is faster (generally), we think typing is faster. So, I don't take it for granted that just because somebody says they are more productive in an open office that they are. They might just perceive it that way because they are having so much fun hanging with the fellow brogrammers, or the constant interaction gives the illusion of progress, or.... I can't take continual noise - it drives me bonkers. And yes, to me headphones count as noise. So, I would not accept a job at that place, most likely, and thus they do not have the data point of someone going quietly mad in their midst. See, open plans are better! "Ignore these scientific studies, my selection bias says it's fine" is usually a pretty poor path to the truth.

MetaCosm 13y ago
You nailed exactly what I was going to say -- goes against studies. I honestly wonder if he did a valid, anonymous questionnaire to his own employees what the result would be, I am guessing he would learn people HATE it.

stevesearer 13y ago

I don't really think it is necessary to 'defend' any particular office setup whether it be open plan, private offices, or an activity-based office design. What companies need to embrace is the ability to adapt and adjust their office plan to their current situation they find themselves in. From what I can tell, Hubspot has tried to modify their open plan office by adding private spaces, conference rooms, and trying to use technology to mitigate unnecessary distraction. That's a far cry from what most people decry, which is a big room where desks are crammed in like sardines with nowhere to hide. Also, I run Office Snapshots and we've shown Hubspot's offices in the past - http://officesnapshots.com/companies/hubspot http://officesnapshots.com/companies/hubspot

Jormundir 13y ago

This article annoys me to no end. This is my job, I should not have to fight for some peace and quiet in order to get some solid work done! Having to wear headphones is a pain in the ass. Often listening to music is a distraction in and of itself, so you haven't solved the problem of noise at all. There's also a huge unaddressed problem of visual distraction. You can see people moving around, going to meetings, or having conversations even if you can't hear them! This is often more distracting than sound. You defend and have an open office plan so you can make the claim that you're doing everything you can to increase "collaboration" on the product, but I think you've completely covered up for yourself, the extreme downsides to the open office plan, and don't realize that the open office is probably hugely slowing down the development of your company's mission.

wpietri 13y ago
Totally agreed. 600 people aren't meaningfully collaborating on anything. I've really loved open-plan spaces for 5-10. But at the point where a lot of the people you see are effective strangers, it's no better than just setting your desks out on the sidewalk

RandallBrown 13y ago

I used to work in an open office and I really liked it. The team was always on the same page because of how easy it was to talk to eachother and show everyone what we were working on. Now I have my own office and I hate it. Everyone sits in their little office, works on their work, and only gets help when they really need it. Getting up, walking down the hall, knocking on someone's door, seeing if they're even in the office, and then talking to them is a pretty huge barrier to fast easy collaboration. Discussions that would happen naturally and take 5 minutes end up happening in hour long meetings. Code reviews can take days because it's way easier to ignore someone you can't see. Obviously every company is going to be different, but I just liked the open plan better. I felt like part of the team, not just a person working on similar stuff.

darkarmani 13y ago
> Getting up, walking down the hall, knocking on someone's door, seeing if they're even in the office, and then talking to them is a pretty huge barrier to fast easy collaboration. What? Why can't you collaborate in their office? This sounds like you don't get immediate fulfillment when you want to ask someone a question, but there isn't anything stopping you from collaborating when needed.

wpietri 13y ago

I'm unable to see how to reconcile "I want to work closely with others" with "to get anything done we all must wear headphones all the time" and "IM is a must". The most productive places I have ever worked have been at single-team-size, open-plan startups. But that worked for us because we were very disciplined about noise. When you heard somebody talking, it was something relevant to the work. Non-relevant stuff happened elsewhere, or during breaks where we were all not trying to focus. That was awesome, because the ambient information kept us all in sync. But right now I'm visiting somebody else's open-plan space, and it's infuriating. Noise levels often get up to the "busy street" marker on my decibel meter. All of the developers I've talked to feel their productivity is significantly impacted by the noise. Ad-hoc collaboration is low, because everybody's in their own little headphone bubble. The model I'm most intrigued by now is Spotify's. There, each team has a shared team space that's closed off from other team spaces. Plus they have lounge space directly outside, so that the team room is really for working. That seems to be to get the benefits of open-plan spaces (easy collaboration) in a way that supports productivity (minimum noise and distraction).

chollida1 13y ago

I've been fortunate enough to work in both environments. I'll be the first to admit there are pros and cons to both. I've had an office and in my opinion, for focused work there is just no comparison. Being able to close the door means no corner of the eye people walking by distractions. People can talk about headphones all they want but if you can't put 4 walls around you then there are just too many distractions for me to get "into the zone". On the other hand I currently work at a hedge fund with an open office and it probably needs to be open. Every one needs to know what the others are doing but design. The number of good ideas that come out of open discussion is just amazing. The other up side to an open office that some people may not be aware of is the inclusiveness of it. with doors its easy for 3 people to have an impromptu meeting and not realize there are excluding others. With an open office everyone hears the conversation and can know if they want to participate or not. or put another way, shy people are more likely to listen in and participate in meetings in open offices than they are to enter a closed door office to participate in the same meeting. Many companies try to combat this by using irc. google hangouts, style chats which I feel really helps.

ktsmith 13y ago
> With an open office everyone hears the conversation and can know if they want to participate or not. That's only true if no one is wearing headphones. Both the OP and many of the commenters here state headphones are necessary for these environments. My own experience in an open office was the same way, headphones all day every day. The people with headphones are excluded in exactly the same way as if the conversation had happened behind closed doors.
- chollida1 13y ago
  True, but the key point is that alteast here if they are excluded its because they want to be. The key take away point is: An open office lets the introverts have more say than when everyone is in offices.

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