8 ms·

Why open floorplans are bad for programming

85 points by nreece 13y ago

koopajah 13y ago
I think the real title of the blog post "I Hate Open Floorplans, It Makes Roger Come Out…" makes a lot more sense. I understand why open floorplans don't work for some people but I personally enjoy working in one and always have so I don't see them as bad for developers, only bad for some. The conversations floating around, the noise and animation helps me focus a lot more than in a closed office at work. I don't know exactly why but I work a lot better with a lot of people around me. Also it is so much easier to follow what is going on around in your team, who is stuck on something, who is speaking about something new that might be useful to you. I've always worked this way, focusing on something while a part of me was processing what was said around and being able to "pause" what I was doing to help around and get back to my work pretty easily. Of course it does not work all the time and some times you just need to focus for a few hours and in this case I just increase the volume of my music in my headphones and stop caring about the rest. For me the main issue with open floorplans is when other people assume they can just come to your desk and ask you anything without thinking you could be busy and/or in the zone as you describe it when having a closed office would make them think twice before just dropping by unanounced. For me this was easily solved by explaining that it is a lot easier to drop me a line by email or chat and I'd get back to them as soon as I was available.
- king_magic 13y ago
  "The conversations floating around, the noise and animation helps me focus a lot more than in a closed office at work." I wish I could say the same :) I get pulled into a million conversations simply because I'm there and accessible. Open floorplans decimate focus, in my experience.
  - koopajah 13y ago
    I think there's a difference between willingly join a conversation when you know you can help and being pulled in the conversation by someone asking for your opinion all the time. I agree that if the second one happens all day that's a big issue for me too.
    - king_magic 13y ago
      Almost always the latter (being pulled into the convo by someone asking for your opinion all the time).
      - koopajah 13y ago
        I've never been in a situation where I was working and people around would all the time interrupt me and ask for my opinion for everything everyday. And I've worked in big open floorplans. So I would not say it is always the latter here.
        king_magic 13y ago
        Consider yourself very, very lucky. I'm lucky if I get 20 minutes of solid thinking time at my desk. I'm also an architect on a 60 person project, so it may just be different for me.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  "For me this was easily solved by explaining that it is a lot easier to drop me a line by email or chat and I'd get back to them as soon as I was available." Easier? For them? Or you? A perennial argument for open floor plans is that it 'fosters open dialogue' and other such twaddle. For someone to be standing 6 feet from you and be told it'd "easier" to go back to their desk and send you an email instead of just talking to you is ... counter-intuitive at the very least. Unbelievable to some. I was in an 'open floor plan' a few years back, and would email over to the sysadmin who sat 8 feet from me. The owner yelled at us (and by extension, the other 8 people in the open area, distracting all of them) because we weren't talking directly. "That's why you're all out here - to communicate better!" And then he stormed back to his private office. "I've always worked this way, focusing on something while a part of me was processing what was said around and being able to "pause" what I was doing to help around and get back to my work pretty easily. Of course it does not work all the time and some times you just need to focus for a few hours and in this case I just increase the volume of my music in my headphones and stop caring about the rest." If this is actually the case, you're in the minority. After doing this for... 19(?) years, few developers I've met or worked with are actually more productive in open environments. A fair number are more comfortable, but they've not been any more productive (and in some cases, less so) than anyone else on the team, nor have they ever been markedly more productive than people with more private surroundings. My metric for this is purely subjective reading of the quality of their work - number/severity of bugs, features worked on, complexity of code/project/features/bugs/etc. Yeah, so and so was great to work with, pleasant, fun, etc, but always was the last to get things done, always had a few lingering bugs to clean up, never took on the harder features/bugs, etc. Again, totally subjective reading on my part, and it might be biased some because I'm generally not in favor of open floor plans. I'm in favor of private work spaces and open common areas where people can meet to collaborate when they want. I understand it's an extra expense, and there are times when it's simply not possible. The best teams I've seen operate were ones where it was s small team with private offices and available open areas for collaborative meetings. Tables/desks there allowed for bringing laptops to work on code when needed for longer periods as a small group. Usually a group of 2-4 would brainstorm an issue in the open area, possibly hack out a few things on laptops, people would generally go back to private offices for a while to hammer things out, then come back to discuss and demo. I saw this most recently as an outside contractor coming in to a local company, and they were one of the best teams I'd ever worked with. Things got done rather quickly, everyone had a good sense of responsibility, etc (this was ... 4 people, then 5, IIRC). But then things changed, a couple more people came on, physical environment changed, and things went downhill. I can't say it was entirely the change in physical space, but personally I think it contributed a lot - more people were in open spaces, more 'collaboration' was someone standing near someone's desk trying to do that there (the open area and large meeting rooms were rarely available due to company expansion). Things took longer to get done, and there were more lingering bugs that took longer to sort out. Yes, 100% anecdotal, but I watched this myself as a partial outsider. I had no long term vested interest, and was only onsite part time - the open vs closed stuff didn't actually affect me - I always did my work at home.
mcv 13y ago
I'm still not sure exactly what distinguishes an open floor plan from other floor plans. I prefer working directly with the rest of my team in the same room. I don't want a private room. But a room where people unrelated to the team are constantly walking around and making noise and disturbing people is bad.
- omervk 13y ago
  Open floor plans mean that there are no rooms, only one big one (with half-height barriers if you're especially lucky). Meeting rooms and rooms for management are usually not part of this arrangement, because, you know, management has to work.
  - SuperChihuahua 13y ago
    ...unless your name is Elon Musk
  - mcv 13y ago
    Are there no rooms, or is there one big one? And how big? I'm currently in a room with about 20 desks, which works very well. But an adjoining building has rooms with probably less desks, but a main corridor going through the middle, and I can imagine that's not such a great idea, because everybody in the building is constantly walking past.
- mrweasel 13y ago
  Even sharing a room with your team can be a problem. My colleagues prefer to have the radio on, which conflicts with my desire for an almost eerie silence. I simply work better and more efficient if there's complete silence. I can work with a low level of background noice, but if certain songs / types of songs are playing on the radio I just stop until it's gone. My ears simply won't tune out some sounds, such as a high pitch female singers. Also some radio shows are just designed to have annoying sounds because it's "fun".
  - icebraining 13y ago
    That just means that open floor need different rules regarding sound. We don't say that libraries are terrible places just because some people insist on having loud conversations there.
onion2k 13y ago
Open floorplans are fine so long as there's an alternative option available. Working in an environment where peace and quiet is never available is not going to make you as productive as you can possibly be - an open plan office has to come with the authority and autonomy to take yourself off to a different, quieter place to work from instead should the office get too distracting. It's very rare that one solution works all of the time.
JazCE 13y ago
more like: why open floorplans are bad for me personally. this is not something you can blanket statement like: eating asbestos is bad for your health
duiker101 13y ago
This title is wrong, the real title is better. You don't like open floor. I love it. I can get in the flow and I have my colleagues here with which I can joke/interact/discuss. I think being isolated would make me feel bad. I think that the most important factor here is that people need to know how to behave on open floors. You can be distracted by a ringing phone everywhere.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  "You can be distracted by a ringing phone everywhere." It's harder to be distracted by 5 ringing phones in a private office.
  - duiker101 13y ago
    That is true but I think that most people use headphones. Personally I made a habit of wearing them even when I am not listening to anything. They are not noise cancelling but it help to not listen to anything that is "out of scope". But obviously you can't ignore your own phone.
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      Most people who don't have offices use headphones, yes. If you don't like to wear headphones all day, that's another reason why you're uncomfortable in an open office.
    - mgkimsal 13y ago
      You can develop your own process for filtering out your own phone - vibrate, go to vmail, vmail routed to email with label alerts, etc. "to not listen to anything that is "out of scope"" Doors work wonders too, and don't end up necessarily causing physical pain after a while, some headphones can.
netcan 13y ago
This seems to be a favorite topic here. It gets discussed in a way that I find strange, because it seems to me that most participants are being dishonest. At least I think this is true in many cases. On the side that decides on and pays for the offices, open floor plans are cheaper and more convenient. They take less space per person. You can moved stuff around and rearrange them. You don't have to decide on team sizes in advance. You don't have to allocate office quality based on seniority. Managers can get a feel for happenings just by being present. etc. Moving in does not mean a big upfront cost and it is easier to make the decision. These are price and convenience concerns. Those drive the decision most of the time. There are a whole bunch of arguments that can be used to justify the decision. knowledge flow, agility, egality, whatever. You can agree for disagree with them but they're not honestly making up a significant part of the decision so the argument is pointless. On the other side are the people who work in the companies who mostly don't like open floorplans. It seems to me we don't like them for the same reason we don't want to live in a big dormitory. We want our own space. We want to control our environment. Same thing every 14 year old wants. We spend half our lives at work and we want a pleasant office for the same reason we want a pleasant home. More space is more pleasant. These are "quality of life reasons. This side has abstract arguments too. Quite. concentration. etc. The whole argument is dishonest. One side wants to make life cheaper and easier for themselves. The other wants to make life more pleasant. Both are pretending to be discussing productivity, creativity and whatnot.
- meddlepal 13y ago
  This is why we invented cubicles. Middle ground between cost/personal area/flexibility. The only problem with cubicles is when you get the half-height wall ones. Then literally you have almost all the same problem as open-floor while literally costing more money and reducing flexibility.
  - SnacksOnAPlane 13y ago
    Except cubicles feel like tools of oppression.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
raldi 13y ago
> I dislike working with people walking around behind me (I offer no explanation, it just gives me the creeps) 98% of feng shui is about avoiding that feeling.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Feng shui is to ergonomics what homeopathy is to medicine.
  - raldi 13y ago
    No, that's precisely the misconception I'm trying to address here. Taking homeopathic treatments won't make any difference to your health. But following the principles of feng shui (even if the beliefs behind them are bullshit) will, more often than not, lead to a psychologically-pleasing layout.
davidgerard 13y ago
At this stage, we need someone to write an article about "Why open floor plans being bad for programming will never, ever be fixed."
irremediable 13y ago
I'd be interested to hear if anyone else agrees with the author about disliking it when people walk behind him. For some reason, I find having people behind me really distracting. I think it stems from having people watch my screen while I try to code. Instant productivity killer. Interestingly, I don't find this precludes open plan offices. It just means I want to grab a corner desk.
- koopajah 13y ago
  It's the same for me I really dislike the idea of having people behind me and not knowing what they are doing. I also don't really like knowing people can stare at my screen so I always try to win a spot in a corner or with my back to a wall
- luch 13y ago
  It's a primary reaction : animals dislike to show their back to "enemies", even if coworkers aren't technically enemies (some aren't really allies either). I've noticed, when you invite a guest to sit in a room, the guest will almost always takes the chair with the back facing the wall.
  - _kfb 13y ago
    Agreed, I intensely dislike having my back to a room (including in places such as restaurants), and this was always my explanation, too. (Actually, the explanation I give to people is that I'm terrified of assassination attempts, which is related from a scientific point of view but has the bonus of making my life sound much more exciting than it is.)
  - kazagistar 13y ago
    Conversely, sitting in a central, exposed position might be a primal show of confidence. Just something to bear in mind.
yeukhon 13y ago
What I need is simple: a large desk, a good char, a room with glass walls, dry-erase markers, pen and papers. I also want to be able look outside. Confine myself in a tiny room or on a floor full of people but no windows is a torture. That's all. That's my dream workstation area.
chrisbennet 13y ago
Pffft, what a bunch of babies. We have an open floor plan where I work. I don't have earphones and I have no problem concentrating. * (*) As long as no one else is in the office.
Kurtz79 13y ago
It doesn't make a lot of a difference to me. The stuff I'm working on influences my ability to focus much more than the environment. If I'm doing something boring or uninteresting I could be in a monastic cell and still manage to get distracted.
arjie 13y ago
As a counterpoint, interning at an open floor plan company is brilliant. If you're considerate about your coworkers' space, it lowers barriers to conversation (obviously you have to respect space) and just listening in on other conversations helps pick up stuff. We had private rooms too, and many engineers preferred working in quiet, but I'm glad it wasn't all private offices. I can usually get more out of one minute of conversation than five minutes of instant messaging. It seems to me that most complaints stem from the fact that many people here have worked with inconsiderate people.
ses 13y ago
I think it is nonsense to say that what doesn't work for one person won't work for another. The whole thing is completely context dependent. Here in Europe most people feel cubicles are so isolating that you might as well be working remotely because of the lack of interaction with your co-workers. Don't get me wrong I think its really important to be able to 'plug in and get on' without distraction as a programmer, but I'm just making the point not everyone works well this way if they do it all the time.
rbobby 13y ago
I'd like to see some science applied to this topic. A decrease in productivity may not be an insurmountable business problem. Private offices take up more square footage which has a direct annual cost. Open floor plans have higher density, which might offset the decrease in productivity. Open floorplans may/may not work well depending on the number of folks involved (eg. a team of 100 vs a team of 10) and types of job functions and size of the open floor plan area (maybe "pods" work better than one wide open area). I'm sure there's lots of interest questions that could be answered if some rigor where applied to this issue.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Open-plan offices are backdoor age and health discrimination, also known as "culture fit". With all the project-management garbage (often in the name of "Agile") designed to mash software down into chunks that can be done mindlessly by CommodityJavaDrones, making software development superficially reliable (but the product soulless) the job is easy, which the business wants. It's more expensive to dumb down the job and hire idiots (legitimate 10x programmers only cost 1.5-2x) but more reliable-- the risks are long-term and thus pushed off to the next guy-- as they see it. So the attrition for promotion has to be conducted by subjecting people to petty stresses, but in bulk, and seeing who cracks first. When someone has the first panic attack, goes to the ER (a real panic attack, if you don't know what it is, is terrifying) and one way or another isn't working there in 3 months, that's part of the design. Also, as one who suffers panic attacks, it's not the noise that makes people sick (and, with enough time in an open-plan office, almost everyone will get sick) because people will tune that out over time, but open-back visibility, which is much harder to get used to. The creepy feeling of being watched is what fucks peoples' health up. That could be fixed with booth-style seating if regular offices can't be afforded, but you never see that either. There's a false egalitarianism to it as well. Managers typically have desks in the bullpen as well so they can say that it's a blanket policy, but that's making an unfair comparison. Managers can come and go as they please, typically only spend a couple hours per day in the bullpen, and don't have much to fear from visibility anyway; but workers who take the side offices "too often" draw suspicion and, even if they're getting a lot of work done, have to worry about getting "culture fitted" (that is, no-hired or fired for being old, sick, or female.) I love programming itself but this is a fucking shitty industry and it's goddamn time we rise up and take it the fuck back.
vicaya 13y ago
Open floorplans are great for hackathons and bugfixes for system integration in fire-fighting mode. It's disastrous for actual feature implementation.

85 points by nreece 13y ago

I think the real title of the blog post "I Hate Open Floorplans, It Makes Roger Come Out…" makes a lot more sense. I understand why open floorplans don't work for some people but I personally enjoy working in one and always have so I don't see them as bad for developers, only bad for some. The conversations floating around, the noise and animation helps me focus a lot more than in a closed office at work. I don't know exactly why but I work a lot better with a lot of people around me. Also it is so much easier to follow what is going on around in your team, who is stuck on something, who is speaking about something new that might be useful to you. I've always worked this way, focusing on something while a part of me was processing what was said around and being able to "pause" what I was doing to help around and get back to my work pretty easily. Of course it does not work all the time and some times you just need to focus for a few hours and in this case I just increase the volume of my music in my headphones and stop caring about the rest. For me the main issue with open floorplans is when other people assume they can just come to your desk and ask you anything without thinking you could be busy and/or in the zone as you describe it when having a closed office would make them think twice before just dropping by unanounced. For me this was easily solved by explaining that it is a lot easier to drop me a line by email or chat and I'd get back to them as soon as I was available.

king_magic 13y ago
"The conversations floating around, the noise and animation helps me focus a lot more than in a closed office at work." I wish I could say the same :) I get pulled into a million conversations simply because I'm there and accessible. Open floorplans decimate focus, in my experience.
- koopajah 13y ago
  I think there's a difference between willingly join a conversation when you know you can help and being pulled in the conversation by someone asking for your opinion all the time. I agree that if the second one happens all day that's a big issue for me too.
  - king_magic 13y ago
    Almost always the latter (being pulled into the convo by someone asking for your opinion all the time).
    - koopajah 13y ago
      I've never been in a situation where I was working and people around would all the time interrupt me and ask for my opinion for everything everyday. And I've worked in big open floorplans. So I would not say it is always the latter here.
      - king_magic 13y ago
        Consider yourself very, very lucky. I'm lucky if I get 20 minutes of solid thinking time at my desk. I'm also an architect on a 60 person project, so it may just be different for me.
mgkimsal 13y ago
"For me this was easily solved by explaining that it is a lot easier to drop me a line by email or chat and I'd get back to them as soon as I was available." Easier? For them? Or you? A perennial argument for open floor plans is that it 'fosters open dialogue' and other such twaddle. For someone to be standing 6 feet from you and be told it'd "easier" to go back to their desk and send you an email instead of just talking to you is ... counter-intuitive at the very least. Unbelievable to some. I was in an 'open floor plan' a few years back, and would email over to the sysadmin who sat 8 feet from me. The owner yelled at us (and by extension, the other 8 people in the open area, distracting all of them) because we weren't talking directly. "That's why you're all out here - to communicate better!" And then he stormed back to his private office. "I've always worked this way, focusing on something while a part of me was processing what was said around and being able to "pause" what I was doing to help around and get back to my work pretty easily. Of course it does not work all the time and some times you just need to focus for a few hours and in this case I just increase the volume of my music in my headphones and stop caring about the rest." If this is actually the case, you're in the minority. After doing this for... 19(?) years, few developers I've met or worked with are actually more productive in open environments. A fair number are more comfortable, but they've not been any more productive (and in some cases, less so) than anyone else on the team, nor have they ever been markedly more productive than people with more private surroundings. My metric for this is purely subjective reading of the quality of their work - number/severity of bugs, features worked on, complexity of code/project/features/bugs/etc. Yeah, so and so was great to work with, pleasant, fun, etc, but always was the last to get things done, always had a few lingering bugs to clean up, never took on the harder features/bugs, etc. Again, totally subjective reading on my part, and it might be biased some because I'm generally not in favor of open floor plans. I'm in favor of private work spaces and open common areas where people can meet to collaborate when they want. I understand it's an extra expense, and there are times when it's simply not possible. The best teams I've seen operate were ones where it was s small team with private offices and available open areas for collaborative meetings. Tables/desks there allowed for bringing laptops to work on code when needed for longer periods as a small group. Usually a group of 2-4 would brainstorm an issue in the open area, possibly hack out a few things on laptops, people would generally go back to private offices for a while to hammer things out, then come back to discuss and demo. I saw this most recently as an outside contractor coming in to a local company, and they were one of the best teams I'd ever worked with. Things got done rather quickly, everyone had a good sense of responsibility, etc (this was ... 4 people, then 5, IIRC). But then things changed, a couple more people came on, physical environment changed, and things went downhill. I can't say it was entirely the change in physical space, but personally I think it contributed a lot - more people were in open spaces, more 'collaboration' was someone standing near someone's desk trying to do that there (the open area and large meeting rooms were rarely available due to company expansion). Things took longer to get done, and there were more lingering bugs that took longer to sort out. Yes, 100% anecdotal, but I watched this myself as a partial outsider. I had no long term vested interest, and was only onsite part time - the open vs closed stuff didn't actually affect me - I always did my work at home.

mcv 13y ago

I'm still not sure exactly what distinguishes an open floor plan from other floor plans. I prefer working directly with the rest of my team in the same room. I don't want a private room. But a room where people unrelated to the team are constantly walking around and making noise and disturbing people is bad.

omervk 13y ago
Open floor plans mean that there are no rooms, only one big one (with half-height barriers if you're especially lucky). Meeting rooms and rooms for management are usually not part of this arrangement, because, you know, management has to work.
- SuperChihuahua 13y ago
  ...unless your name is Elon Musk
- mcv 13y ago
  Are there no rooms, or is there one big one? And how big? I'm currently in a room with about 20 desks, which works very well. But an adjoining building has rooms with probably less desks, but a main corridor going through the middle, and I can imagine that's not such a great idea, because everybody in the building is constantly walking past.
mrweasel 13y ago
Even sharing a room with your team can be a problem. My colleagues prefer to have the radio on, which conflicts with my desire for an almost eerie silence. I simply work better and more efficient if there's complete silence. I can work with a low level of background noice, but if certain songs / types of songs are playing on the radio I just stop until it's gone. My ears simply won't tune out some sounds, such as a high pitch female singers. Also some radio shows are just designed to have annoying sounds because it's "fun".
- icebraining 13y ago
  That just means that open floor need different rules regarding sound. We don't say that libraries are terrible places just because some people insist on having loud conversations there.

onion2k 13y ago

Open floorplans are fine so long as there's an alternative option available. Working in an environment where peace and quiet is never available is not going to make you as productive as you can possibly be - an open plan office has to come with the authority and autonomy to take yourself off to a different, quieter place to work from instead should the office get too distracting. It's very rare that one solution works all of the time.

JazCE 13y ago

more like: why open floorplans are bad for me personally. this is not something you can blanket statement like: eating asbestos is bad for your health

duiker101 13y ago

This title is wrong, the real title is better. You don't like open floor. I love it. I can get in the flow and I have my colleagues here with which I can joke/interact/discuss. I think being isolated would make me feel bad. I think that the most important factor here is that people need to know how to behave on open floors. You can be distracted by a ringing phone everywhere.

mgkimsal 13y ago
"You can be distracted by a ringing phone everywhere." It's harder to be distracted by 5 ringing phones in a private office.
- duiker101 13y ago
  That is true but I think that most people use headphones. Personally I made a habit of wearing them even when I am not listening to anything. They are not noise cancelling but it help to not listen to anything that is "out of scope". But obviously you can't ignore your own phone.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Most people who don't have offices use headphones, yes. If you don't like to wear headphones all day, that's another reason why you're uncomfortable in an open office.
  - mgkimsal 13y ago
    You can develop your own process for filtering out your own phone - vibrate, go to vmail, vmail routed to email with label alerts, etc. "to not listen to anything that is "out of scope"" Doors work wonders too, and don't end up necessarily causing physical pain after a while, some headphones can.

netcan 13y ago

This seems to be a favorite topic here. It gets discussed in a way that I find strange, because it seems to me that most participants are being dishonest. At least I think this is true in many cases. On the side that decides on and pays for the offices, open floor plans are cheaper and more convenient. They take less space per person. You can moved stuff around and rearrange them. You don't have to decide on team sizes in advance. You don't have to allocate office quality based on seniority. Managers can get a feel for happenings just by being present. etc. Moving in does not mean a big upfront cost and it is easier to make the decision. These are price and convenience concerns. Those drive the decision most of the time. There are a whole bunch of arguments that can be used to justify the decision. knowledge flow, agility, egality, whatever. You can agree for disagree with them but they're not honestly making up a significant part of the decision so the argument is pointless. On the other side are the people who work in the companies who mostly don't like open floorplans. It seems to me we don't like them for the same reason we don't want to live in a big dormitory. We want our own space. We want to control our environment. Same thing every 14 year old wants. We spend half our lives at work and we want a pleasant office for the same reason we want a pleasant home. More space is more pleasant. These are "quality of life reasons. This side has abstract arguments too. Quite. concentration. etc. The whole argument is dishonest. One side wants to make life cheaper and easier for themselves. The other wants to make life more pleasant. Both are pretending to be discussing productivity, creativity and whatnot.

meddlepal 13y ago
This is why we invented cubicles. Middle ground between cost/personal area/flexibility. The only problem with cubicles is when you get the half-height wall ones. Then literally you have almost all the same problem as open-floor while literally costing more money and reducing flexibility.
- SnacksOnAPlane 13y ago
  Except cubicles feel like tools of oppression.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

raldi 13y ago

> I dislike working with people walking around behind me (I offer no explanation, it just gives me the creeps) 98% of feng shui is about avoiding that feeling.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
Feng shui is to ergonomics what homeopathy is to medicine.
- raldi 13y ago
  No, that's precisely the misconception I'm trying to address here. Taking homeopathic treatments won't make any difference to your health. But following the principles of feng shui (even if the beliefs behind them are bullshit) will, more often than not, lead to a psychologically-pleasing layout.

davidgerard 13y ago

At this stage, we need someone to write an article about "Why open floor plans being bad for programming will never, ever be fixed."

irremediable 13y ago

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else agrees with the author about disliking it when people walk behind him. For some reason, I find having people behind me really distracting. I think it stems from having people watch my screen while I try to code. Instant productivity killer. Interestingly, I don't find this precludes open plan offices. It just means I want to grab a corner desk.

koopajah 13y ago
It's the same for me I really dislike the idea of having people behind me and not knowing what they are doing. I also don't really like knowing people can stare at my screen so I always try to win a spot in a corner or with my back to a wall
luch 13y ago
It's a primary reaction : animals dislike to show their back to "enemies", even if coworkers aren't technically enemies (some aren't really allies either). I've noticed, when you invite a guest to sit in a room, the guest will almost always takes the chair with the back facing the wall.
- _kfb 13y ago
  Agreed, I intensely dislike having my back to a room (including in places such as restaurants), and this was always my explanation, too. (Actually, the explanation I give to people is that I'm terrified of assassination attempts, which is related from a scientific point of view but has the bonus of making my life sound much more exciting than it is.)
- kazagistar 13y ago
  Conversely, sitting in a central, exposed position might be a primal show of confidence. Just something to bear in mind.

yeukhon 13y ago

What I need is simple: a large desk, a good char, a room with glass walls, dry-erase markers, pen and papers. I also want to be able look outside. Confine myself in a tiny room or on a floor full of people but no windows is a torture. That's all. That's my dream workstation area.

chrisbennet 13y ago

Pffft, what a bunch of babies. We have an open floor plan where I work. I don't have earphones and I have no problem concentrating. * (*) As long as no one else is in the office.

Kurtz79 13y ago

It doesn't make a lot of a difference to me. The stuff I'm working on influences my ability to focus much more than the environment. If I'm doing something boring or uninteresting I could be in a monastic cell and still manage to get distracted.

arjie 13y ago

As a counterpoint, interning at an open floor plan company is brilliant. If you're considerate about your coworkers' space, it lowers barriers to conversation (obviously you have to respect space) and just listening in on other conversations helps pick up stuff. We had private rooms too, and many engineers preferred working in quiet, but I'm glad it wasn't all private offices. I can usually get more out of one minute of conversation than five minutes of instant messaging. It seems to me that most complaints stem from the fact that many people here have worked with inconsiderate people.

ses 13y ago

I think it is nonsense to say that what doesn't work for one person won't work for another. The whole thing is completely context dependent. Here in Europe most people feel cubicles are so isolating that you might as well be working remotely because of the lack of interaction with your co-workers. Don't get me wrong I think its really important to be able to 'plug in and get on' without distraction as a programmer, but I'm just making the point not everyone works well this way if they do it all the time.

rbobby 13y ago

I'd like to see some science applied to this topic. A decrease in productivity may not be an insurmountable business problem. Private offices take up more square footage which has a direct annual cost. Open floor plans have higher density, which might offset the decrease in productivity. Open floorplans may/may not work well depending on the number of folks involved (eg. a team of 100 vs a team of 10) and types of job functions and size of the open floor plan area (maybe "pods" work better than one wide open area). I'm sure there's lots of interest questions that could be answered if some rigor where applied to this issue.

michaelochurch 13y ago

Open-plan offices are backdoor age and health discrimination, also known as "culture fit". With all the project-management garbage (often in the name of "Agile") designed to mash software down into chunks that can be done mindlessly by CommodityJavaDrones, making software development superficially reliable (but the product soulless) the job is easy, which the business wants. It's more expensive to dumb down the job and hire idiots (legitimate 10x programmers only cost 1.5-2x) but more reliable-- the risks are long-term and thus pushed off to the next guy-- as they see it. So the attrition for promotion has to be conducted by subjecting people to petty stresses, but in bulk, and seeing who cracks first. When someone has the first panic attack, goes to the ER (a real panic attack, if you don't know what it is, is terrifying) and one way or another isn't working there in 3 months, that's part of the design. Also, as one who suffers panic attacks, it's not the noise that makes people sick (and, with enough time in an open-plan office, almost everyone will get sick) because people will tune that out over time, but open-back visibility, which is much harder to get used to. The creepy feeling of being watched is what fucks peoples' health up. That could be fixed with booth-style seating if regular offices can't be afforded, but you never see that either. There's a false egalitarianism to it as well. Managers typically have desks in the bullpen as well so they can say that it's a blanket policy, but that's making an unfair comparison. Managers can come and go as they please, typically only spend a couple hours per day in the bullpen, and don't have much to fear from visibility anyway; but workers who take the side offices "too often" draw suspicion and, even if they're getting a lot of work done, have to worry about getting "culture fitted" (that is, no-hired or fired for being old, sick, or female.) I love programming itself but this is a fucking shitty industry and it's goddamn time we rise up and take it the fuck back.

vicaya 13y ago

Open floorplans are great for hackathons and bugfixes for system integration in fire-fighting mode. It's disastrous for actual feature implementation.