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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 f

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.

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.