12 ms·

The Open-office Trap

212 points by marchustvedt 12y ago

cel1ne 12y ago
Old news. If work is boring, routine or extremely exhausting open spaces are great cause' you can talk to each other and lift each others spirits. If work is any type of creative, where you need to concentrate, it's better to have your own space.
- waps 12y ago
  It makes management feel better if they can constantly spy on the people they employ because they have zero trust in them. And of course this immediately leads to the situation that the workers are out to exploit the company merely to rebel against this situation. Or at least, that's the attitude it brings out in me.
dsymonds 12y ago
This is a dupe from January of this year. Here's the discussion from then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024488
- Adrock 12y ago
  Even though I know it's a dupe, I'll upvote it every time.
hliyan 12y ago
The office depicted in this article looks almost exactly like the office I used to work in before I moved to a smaller place a year ago. It was a nightmare for those who are sometimes loosely (and perhaps erroneously) categorized as type-A personalities: I want to focus on one thing and do it as perfectly as possible before moving onto the next thing; I hate multitasking unless the situation calls for it; I have highly (and perhaps unnecessarily) attuned peripheral vision and hearing. The chatter was impossible to tune out -- especially design discussions taking place two workstations over. People who did 'soft' jobs kept suggesting that I listen to music to drown out the chatter without realizing that mine is not the sort of work that can be done while music is playing. People walking about in the background behind my screen would distract me from the complicated problem displayed on it. It was difficult to have private chats with people -- the moment I asked to see someone in one of the glass cubicles, everyone (including the person called) would assume that person was in trouble. My current office layout is very 'residential' -- smaller rooms, wooden furniture, doors and windows, no sterile white partitions and ceilings etc. Needless to say, I haven't had any problems concentrating.
pbiggar 12y ago
We've just moved into our first place where everyone has a private office. It's absolutely amazing! I had been complaining for years about open-plan offices [1], but I was actually surprised at just how much more productive it is to have a door that closes! [1] http://blog.circleci.com/silence-is-for-the-weak/ http://blog.circleci.com/silence-is-for-the-weak/
- greggman 12y ago
  I've personally had the opposite experience. I'm far more productive in a team environment. In video games my most product times are when an artist and/or designer and I sit together and work together. Even when we are not directly interacting with each other seeing stuff on each other's screens lets us see what each other is working on and communicate early and often. I understand that some people in certain roles would do much better with no interruptions in a private office but it's not a one size fits all solution. If your work consists of something you can mostly do on your own that's certainly one case where private offices might be a win. If your work consists of lots of collaboration it seems less clear. At least to me. I'll also note that at least for me I'm much happier around other people than isolated in a private office. I'm not saying I want to be an a 1960 bullpen but a room/area with 2 or 3 other coworkers I'm working on stuff with is my personal ideal.
  - cosmie 12y ago
    Those are shared/team offices, not open offices. And I agree: it has been the most effective configuration I've worked in. I used to work in an environment with 4-5 people per (large) office. It worked out really well, and we'd reconfigure the seating arrangement as needed. Where I'm at now the entire building only has three private offices, the rest are completely open. Those type of spontaneous, collaborative discussions are helpful, but tend to piss off the other ~10 people within earshot more often than not.
  - burriko 12y ago
    Working alongside 2 or 3 other coworkers isn't really the same thing as an open-office though. At the moment I'm sitting in an office of approximately 30+ people. Working on my own in this environment is annoying. Working with my team (2-3 other people) is also annoying, as we can't speak without being overheard. And I'm sure when we're working as a team, and conversing a lot, we'll be annoying others who require some quiet. A private office doesn't mean you have to work on your own, it just means you have the option to.
bitwize 12y ago
Open-plan offices are a cost-effective panopticon: cheap, effective way to ensure that not only the boss, but other co-workers are aware of where you are and -- more or less -- what you're doing. The "other co-workers" bit is crucial because even if the boss can't find Dave himself he can ask anyone in the space "hey, have you seen Dave" and be led to a meaningful answer. Companies will get rid of open-plan offices when they stop being such gift-wrapped boons to middle management, and not a second before. If you don't like it, adjust or exercise your right to be fired. This is America.
- dalek_cannes 12y ago
  First, the answer to "Hey, Have you seen Dave?" should be "In his cubicle/office". If a coworker (or worse yet, the boss) does not know this, then there is a different problem. But yes, it does work well for management-by-surveillance. Whether that's a good thing is yet another different problem. Second, not all readers of HN are American. Nor do they subscribe to the same political/ethical/social beliefs. The article was about whether open offices are productive or not, not whether we should or should not have them.
  - VLM 12y ago
    There is tangentially a correct aspect to it, in that playing geolocation and SPOF games are non-productive so they fit well with an open office. If you need to talk to Dave, first of all Dave being a SPOF is a bug or management failure to be worked around. Secondly geolocating Dave is almost certainly non-productive. If you need to converse with Dave you call/text his phone to maximize productivity. This is an insightful observation about the core values of open office vs alternatives... an open office simply isn't interested in productive activity. Its interested in non-productive activity, which has been proven over and over in scientific studies. Its unpleasant, perhaps even inhumane for a large segment of the population, and unproductive for everyone but in a cause and effect relationship the bug is in the core values of the organization, that productivity doesn't matter. Its not that they don't know its non-productive, its that they don't care that its non-productive. Also note you can't fix that core value epic fail by merely generating a new, technically superior architectural fad. You merely end up with an organization that's non-productive that has really nice private offices. In that way its kind of like a HOA... I don't want the weirdos and dirtbags to be hidden, I want to be able to glance at a companies office and tell instantly if they have screwed up values, so in a weird way I want failing companies to implement open offices, so I can identify them and avoid them.
rjbwork 12y ago
Would love it if my company would get us each an office. We have the money for it. I feel like since we've expanded and I moved out of the 2 person office I shared with one of the front end devs (I'm back end) and into the 5 person back end space, my productivity has plummeted.
- deleted 12y ago
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qwerta 12y ago
I am ok with open-office if company provides paid sick leave. In Ireland there is at least one week every year, when 70% of company is at home with flu.
- mrweasel 12y ago
  Would you really trade your health, physical and mentally for paid sick leave? I rarely get sick, but then again we're seven people in one office and only one have kids ( kids makes a difference ). Mentally it's different story. I can't begin to count the number of days where I get home stressed out due to the noise of my co-workers and people going in an out of the room to talk to one of my colleagues. Maybe I'm just special, but for me to completely focus and do my best work, I need an almost eerie silence. That's doesn't mix well with co-workers talking on the phone or a radio playing. Open offices have been known to be a bad idea since Peopleware, but they are just so cheap to build.
  - asogi 12y ago
    I'm guessing that disease spreads more quickly in an open office, so sick leave is more necessary.
  - qwerta 12y ago
    People in open-space are more sick, paid sick leave ensures that employer is not passing his cost savings on me. Non-paid sick leave indicates dysfunctional company and lack of trust (at least in Europe). It is a principle. Open-space was major reason (together with new born children) why I quit corporate world and started my own business two years ago.
austinz 12y ago
I am thoroughly disillusioned with open offices. Headphones are a paper-thin barrier against being interrupted while in the midst of thinking; a good, solid, closed door might do the job better.
- levosmetalo 12y ago
  there is also this small minority that can't stand headphones, especially if there's any sound coming out of them. being part of such a minority in an open space environment in one of my previous jobs wasn't fun. at all. what did i do when i needed to concentrate? just schedule a meeting with myself and use the meeting room for work when i need concentration. or just do the easy things and avoid complicated stuff. it's the bug count they cared about, not the essence. then only good thing about that is that I would return home mentally fresh, and could concentrated very well on my personal projects.
- psychometry 12y ago
  Sounds like you just need some better noise-isolating headphones. If you're like me and basically listen to music for 8+ hours/day, spending $200 or more on good headphones is more of a necessity than an indulgence. And you need not listen to distracting music; prerecorded white noise works well for a lot of people.
jacquesm 12y ago
The problem with the open-office / everybody in their own room / some mixture articles and proponents of various solutions is that they all seem to ignore the effect of calcification.
NateDad 12y ago
What's funny is that I actually have no idea what a non-open office would look like. I've worked for 15 years and have never even walked in an office that wasn't open. How do you give each person an office without using like 5x the space as a cubicle farm? That's the real reason that companies like open offices - because they can jam a lot more people in the same space. Someone who is ok with a 6x6 cubicle would feel trapped in a 6x6 office.
- bitJericho 12y ago
  A cubicle farm is not an open office. An open office is like a cubicle farm without the cubicles.
  - wlesieutre 12y ago
    Depends on the cubicles. They used to be 78" high, but low panel heights are much more popular now. 42" panels don't afford much privacy.
    - jcromartie 12y ago
      Because... drumroll please: low panels are cheaper!
      - derekp7 12y ago
        The place I work at had just recently (a couple years ago) moved from an older office with 6 ft cubical walls, to an open office with the short cubical walls. You can see over the top of them when sitting down, but they also have a frosted glass piece (1 ft high) stuck on top to maintain privacy (but still let light through). Big thing I notice -- in the old office, it was pretty noisy, as it was all too easy for people to think they had privacy when they were in a high-walled cubical. The new office is a bit quieter, as people tend to talk in hushed voices more, since they can see everyone around them that would otherwise hear them.
    - deleted 12y ago
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DanBC 12y ago
There is definitely a need for better working environments. This small table with a wool shell looks nice, and the idea could (with heavy modification) be used to create long benches of private working space where noise and visual distraction is reduced and people are not boxed into cubicles. http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/13088/gamfratesi-the-rewrite-desk.html http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/13088/gamfratesi...
- lucasjans 12y ago
  I get a 404 on that link. Can you check it out? ---- Edit: found it http://www.designboom.com/design/gamfratesi-the-rewrite-desk/ http://www.designboom.com/design/gamfratesi-the-rewrite-desk...
danso 12y ago
Anyone here not ever work in an open-office since professional employment? I was going to say that I had never had an office, including my stints in food service and construction...and I had never even had a real cubicle, i.e. partitions where I couldn't see the person across from me. But that's not true...I had about a year in the "dungeon" when I was moved to my newspaper's online multimedia team, in a windowless basement...by then I already had the habit of surfing the Internet, but I did manage to learn enough PHP and MySQL to build a crime-mapping site and do other data projects, and even do things like get Drupal working (which ended up not being very useful, but still, my first web framework).
- noir_lord 12y ago
  Yes. I threatened to quit if I didn't get moved out the main room with sales (fully expecting to actually have to quit, I was already half out the door). Boss begrudgingly gave me an office, 3 months later he said it was one of the best idea's he ever had (he was a boss after all). These days I work for myself (small consulting supported startup) so I have an office at work and an office at home.
- gatehouse 12y ago
  The company I work for occupies a chunk of spare rooms in a law office. I have my own 100 sqft. office, natural light, decent view. It is really convenient. I can have remote people come in and work with me for the day when necessary, there is plenty of room. Never having to listen to other people talk on the phone is beautiful. I can stretch my legs without it turning into a parade. Impossible for someone to surprise me or loom over me. I think my ideal office is Don Draper's in Mad Men Season 1, this is the closest I've come. Not looking forward to leaving this arrangement, especially since my earning power is effectively proportional to my ability to concentrate. http://midcenturymodernist.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Mad-Men-Drapers-Office-1.jpg http://midcenturymodernist.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Ma...
inanov 12y ago
reading the title, i thought that it was about OpenOffice office software suite.
luka-birsa 12y ago
Couldn't agree more. Open offices, while fancy looking, sport apalling usability. After moving into ours we had super issues with the team adapting to the noises and layout. Things got better only after most of the people started using headphones. Separate office with a closed door = productivity boon.
NikhilVerma 12y ago
Like anything taken to the extreme open offices are bad for you. I personally have worked in an open office and a semi-open office (where your team is in a part enclosure/room with a door). And I much prefer to have a semi-open office rather than a private office. A private office for me would totally kill any social interaction I have with anyone. A semi-open office keeps it private on the team level.
- aeberbach 12y ago
  What's your job? Do you have a greater need to concentrate or to socialize? Not criticising, just asking. I need to be able to go talk to people only sometimes but I need to go to a quiet place and think without interruption more often. The best office I ever worked in was a series of long corridors with many closed offices and two developers to each. It had large meeting rooms at regular intervals, a lunchroom with table football and that was about it.
- rwallace 12y ago
  > A private office for me would totally kill any social interaction I have with anyone. Perhaps a better working environment would allow your day to be spent more efficiently and leave you with spare time and energy to get an actual social life, instead of requiring your job to double as your social life and end up performing both functions badly?
  - collyw 12y ago
    You are likely to spend more than half of your time awake in your workplace. You might as well try to make it a pleasant place to be. And being sociable at work is hardly likely to exhaust you to the point of preventing an social life outside work.
    - capisce 12y ago
      Do workers prefer spending more than half of their awake time in their workplace in order to make more money, or do they simply not have enough bargaining power to negotiate for a shorter work day?
josefresco 12y ago
Do we have to have one or the other? Can an office have private/personal work spaces, and communal open social places that can sometimes host real work? I feel often that managers/owners feel they have to force one or the other on their staff, not considering that their people are probably very diverse, and seek differing models from individual to individual.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Inevitably there's a limited amount of floor space; somebody ends up on the wrong side. I'd say, why not have closed offices space entirely, and let the socializers wander from room to room?
michaelochurch 12y ago
Backdoor age and disability discrimination. At some point, when an organization loses the purpose for its existence and selecting leadership comes down to office politics alone, the selection process becomes attrition. Since excellence no longer matters (there isn't real work for a person to excel at) the leaders are selected by subjecting people to artificial stresses and seeing who cracks (either a full-scale nervous breakdown, or just a passive loss of interest) first. Those were the weak, the less dedicated, etc. Open-plan offices make that attrition faster, and provide more insight into who is next to crack up and entertain the crowd with an open-plan-induced panic attack. That's also why this toxic micromanagement, in the name of "Agile" or "Scrum", that programmers are subjected to will probably never go away. When there's no good way to pick leaders (because the work isn't challenging or interesting) the stress of being watched, hour by hour, is a powerful attritive tool.
- drzaiusapelord 12y ago
  When I was younger I could probably handle a weirdo office like this for a year or two. Now? No way. I need some level of quiet, non-social time, etc to be focused and get things done. I imagine environments like this are the equivalent of saying, "We don't hire anyone over 30."
  - michaelochurch 12y ago
    Moreover, "We don't hire anyone over 30" means "We don't hire anyone good". That's not to say there aren't good people in their 20s. There are quite a few of them. But they want to learn from people who are better than they are. That's the trait of A players: they want to learn from the A+ players. If you don't have anyone over 30, then the good under-30 people you get will quickly leave.
    - vonmoltke 12y ago
      > If you don't have anyone over 30, then the good under-30 people you get will quickly leave. At least the ones who are actually good, as opposed to the ones who think they are $DEITY's gift to engineering.
aeberbach 12y ago
Why stop at having an office merely "open"? Hot desking is the new thing - it's nothing to do with cost saving, it's all about "flexibility". Except that your organisation might also have a policy against working from home. There's no implicit message that you are simply a replaceable functional unit, not at all. You might even find there's no desk left when you arrive at work - who doesn't love the suspense of arriving for an oversold airplane? Now you can have that at work every single day! Truly modern offices have hot desks AND are wired for teleconferencing - right in the open areas! That's right, if "open" is good for communication then a 60" screen on the wall with video cameras pointing at you is even better! You can share in the dull roar of collaboration with people on other continents ALL DAY! In the average open space you can fit at least two, maybe three such screens. When you have them installed, get the tradesmen to come during office hours. It costs way more if they come after hours and your employees should get the chance to see drills, saws and nailguns operated by professionals, they may learn something. We all know there's nothing that stimulates productivity like the sound of productivity, right? So when you plan your next office, leave the kitchen open too - the scrape of chairs on the tiles, the sound of the dishwasher being unloaded, the happy PING of the microwave - not to mention the aromas of hot food - all these things will make employees feel right at home. Using only the most modern materials in the office - lots of glass and steel - will ensure the entire workforce shares the joy. You don't want to be damping the precious sound waves with carpet or plasterboard. I wish I was joking.
- mrweasel 12y ago
  I got a bit stressed out just by reading that.
- matwood 12y ago
  Hot desking is the new thing I visited a place that was a giant room of ~100 people working. No one had their own computer, instead you just sat down and whatever computer was there and started working. The guy running this insanity said they re-image all the machines all time taking settings from one of the machines that has been in use. His theory was that over time everyones preferences would merge. It was interesting to see and a little frightening. Right off the bat the noise level would have turned me off. I asked how hard it was to hire and he said interviews are held in the room with him or another senior person pair coding with the candidate.
emsy 12y ago
Open-offices are downright dangerous. We had an Indian colleague who had tuberculoses. After it was diagnosed, every employee had to get an examination. One colleague got infected. Worst of all, the management handled the matter rather unserious and kept jamming everyone in the same office (including the infected colleague!) Gladly, I worked remotely for that company.
- seizethecheese 12y ago
  Why is it relevant that he is Indian?
  - general_failure 12y ago
    Maybe because it's still quite prevalent in India
    - emsy 12y ago
      I guess it's a habit because whenever I told that story I was asked how he got tuberculoses in the first place (It's virtually extinct where I live)
  - emsy 12y ago
    You're right, it's not relevant at all, it may only evoke bad sentiments. I'll edit it. Edit: forgot I can't edit it -.- Remembered why it was relevant: Since tuberculoses is still a problem in India, they already assumed that he may have tuberculoses before the diagnosis (he was coughing heavily and had signs of an ulcer). But not only did they keep him working, he was still in a tightly packed office with all the others.
    - seizethecheese 12y ago
      On second thought, this should have been obvious! Sorry for the snark, and I'm glad that you followed up with this.
- waps 12y ago
amake 12y ago
I wonder how dependent all this is on culture and expectations. I've spent my entire career in Japan, and have never not worked in an open office. To my knowledge, non-open offices basically don't exist in Japan. So is every Japanese company just leaving productivity lying on the floor by insisting on open offices? I wonder if there have been studies on switching to closed floor plans in Japan. (Of course traditionally the cultural emphasis has been on consensus, not productivity, so there hasn't been a lot of impetus to experiment. Things are changing, however.)
- PythonicAlpha 12y ago
  It is simply a myth, that the Japanese make everything right. This myth arose, because of the success of their industries and the quality engineering movement they coined. But they just don't do everything right. They do of course some things right. How is, that they have stagnating industry for decades now. How is, that they produced Fukushima and showed, how a country can fail in letting one totally incompetent corporation mess everything up. (Fukushima was not the first problem, this corporation produced -- but the bureaucrats did let them continue and problems where pushed under the carpet).
- rwallace 12y ago
  > I wonder how dependent all this is on culture and expectations. The actions people take depend on these things. The results of those actions typically do not. > So is every Japanese company just leaving productivity lying on the floor by insisting on open offices? Yes.
- sosborn 12y ago
  >So is every Japanese company just leaving productivity lying on the floor by insisting on open offices? I worked for about 8 years in Japan. Hell yes they leave productivity lying on the floor, and not just with the open offices.
PythonicAlpha 12y ago
It is amazing, how a so old wisdom (I read it many years from now in a book called "Peopleware" from 1987! could be ignored so many decades (by people, who claim to be reasonable). But it just seems that some ideas, because they are economical interesting, stick so much, that management people come up every 6 month with an other idea or excuse, why the dead horse must be ridden again (and not buried).
chrissyb 12y ago
I always wonder when i see reports like this at the amount of cherry picked data in the studies - and also the ability for the journalist to properly interpret it. The problem i have with this piece and so many others is that its just calls out a number of sometimes unrelated "problems", cites some studies with open offices and calls it a day. They fail to really come up with a strong conclusion or offer viable solutions. As a designer working under an architect and having just completed an open office building for a 150+ employee financial firm[1] - i feel i have a pretty good handle on this subject. There a a couple key anecdotal design criteria that i'd like to address in relation to open offices that the report does not address. Natural Light - Access to natural light Artificial light - using the correct lighting for the task with the right output measured in lumens for the particular task. Ventilation - Natural and sufficient HVAC Acoustics - Are proper acoustic absorbent materials being used. Planning - has the space been thought out in a thorough way - is there a meaningful program to which the open office functions in both arrangement, flow and activities. Psychology - Has there been effort to educate the staff about the new space and general systems in place to govern how it functions. All of these points above can be easily planned for by hiring and adhering to the advice of design professionals like architects, electrical engineers, hydraulic engineers, acoustic consultants etc. Does this happen? In my experience - the answer is generally - no. Building offices and fitting thee out is an expensive exercise and time and time again i see clients willing to cut corners and forgo professional advice at the sake of saving a few thousand dollars. It may be that the ROI in terms of employee productivity could be significantly diminished due to a insignificant saving during the build phase. I would agree in some respects that there are limitation to open office layouts - but that its due more to the ill-conceived notion that achieving an open office work environment is as easy throwing some workstation and humans into a cavernous space and expecting it to just work. Moreover that is why indeed planners are moving away from open office and employing the newer philosophy of ABW (activity based working)[2]. [1]http://marklawlerarchitects.com.au/commercial/hunter-street-office-development/ http://marklawlerarchitects.com.au/commercial/hunter-street-... [2]http://www.jll.com.au/australia/en-au/Documents/jll-au-activity-based-working-2012.pdf http://www.jll.com.au/australia/en-au/Documents/jll-au-activ...
bluedino 12y ago
I can't believe we're still having this debate, how many years has it been? You can't simply take a closed-office environment and just knock the walls down, pass out headphones and cram everyone in one room. You need to change the work culture so that open offices work. You have to adapt things like pair programming and remove things like phones and email. Put everyone on a certain project at the same table. Switch partners out. You can't have people who sit by themselves, don't communicate and don't work together in an open office environment. You're nuts if you think that's going to work.
- sheepmullet 12y ago
  I suspect a lot of the productivity we get from peer programming comes from the ability it gives us to focus better in a noisy environment. I've found when working from home I'm significantly more productive on my own than two of us peer programming in the office.
chrisgd 12y ago
Interesting article. My favorite sentence is this though, "Open offices may seem better suited to younger workers, many of whom have been multitasking for the majority of their short careers." Despite what I want to believe and what I have been told (all companies only want to hire multitaskers!), multitasking is neither productive nor really possible. You can really only do one project at a time.
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  What they call "multi-tasking" is actually an inability to stay focused on one task due to a combination of procrastination and sheer boredom. So if you keep switching between writing a sales report, reading incoming email and conversing with your neighbor, congratulations, you may not be getting anything done, but you are multi-tasking!
  - chrisgd 12y ago
    I am an expert multi-tasker!
- stygiansonic 12y ago
  Spot on. What most people refer to as "multitasking" is really a constant partial-attention deficit.
  - Florin_Andrei 12y ago
    However, it works great if you just need to put up a façade.
ThomaszKrueger 12y ago
I work in such open office arrangement. The worse is when the two guys across your desk have their phones on a conference call on speaker phone and the echo of both come through as they speak, utterly distracting, I might as well just pack and go home.
general_failure 12y ago
Not sure what the definition of open-office is. In our office, we have gazillion cubicles (the classic valley office). No sound proofing. And people of a team don't sit near each other. This means that you can end up with sales guys around who are constantly on the call and meetings. What's worse is that they keep pitching the same lines over and over again and you have to listen to it. It makes you empathize about a sales person's job but you end up hating your job and never want to step into office.
- bitJericho 12y ago
  Now imagine that but with no cubicle walls!
pnathan 12y ago
I have worked in cubes, private offices, shared offices, and open offices. For productivity and thinking, I found the physical barriers were proportional to the thinking. For communication, in any of these, company IM worked quite well most of the time, and when it failed, face to face worked out. I strongly advocate for private or team-member-shared offices at any chance I get. It's just that much better.
geebee 12y ago
This is another interesting and good article, and I'm glad to see it getting (yet more) mainstream attention. But eventually, I think we should probably look at this as a solved problem and try to figure out what's going on upstream. In other words, I'm completely convinced that open offices (and cubicle farms, where I work) are harmful. To me, the more pressing question is: why are they still so common?
- vonmoltke 12y ago
  > To me, the more pressing question is: why are they still so common? To quote a very cynical and jaded friend of mine, "It increases shareholder value". Yes, studies show that open plan offices, especially badly-designed open plan offices, hurt knowledge worker productivity. The problem is, knowledge worker productivity is not expressed as a nice, neat number on a balance sheet. Facilities cost is. Thus, when a business gets into the mode of increasing profits by decreasing costs, all they see with respect to this topic is that office space expense. Cue the management bullshit stream about "collaboration", switch to open plans, and watch that number drop. The productivity drop tends to lag, however. Since many executive suites can't see forward past the next earnings report, or backwards past the previous, they see a nice increase in margins for a quarter or two, followed by a drop in revenue, schedule slips, or increasing costs in other areas caused by the open plan switch. They then move on to fixing this "new" problem, not realizing they caused it with their previous "fix".
- nerfhammer 12y ago
  Because you can fit 2-4 times as many employees in the same floor space
stox 12y ago
Open offices are awesome during a crisis. On the other hand, they really suck when you need to focus on a problem. They work well for young start-ups, as crises tend to be quite frequent, but as a company matures, I think they become more of a liability than an asset.
- lreeves 12y ago
  I find them awful in a crisis; generally there are a few people that can actually fix and work on the crisis and people start hovering behind them trying to drive from the back.
pbreit 12y ago
I've already bought in to the notion that open arrangements may have short-comings. But in the Bay Area circa 2014 what arrangements are being tried out and seeing advantages? Low cubes, high cubes, fully enclosed offices, bull pens, mini bull pens, periodic re-arrangement, unassigned?
- collyw 12y ago
  bull pens? I assume this is the name of some office arrangement. It isn't very inspiring though.
squozzer 12y ago
At my last job I had a private office, my first. Now I work in the most open office I've had since leaving the Army - my office there was called "The Motor Pool" I didn't find it as distracting as I thought - but I am someone who can tune out everything when watching TV. I miss being able to break wind somewhat discreetly though.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  >I miss being able to break wind somewhat discreetly though. "What’s more, Evans and Johnson discovered that people in noisy environments made fewer ergonomic adjustments than they would in private, causing increased physical strain."
psychometry 12y ago
Can we stop pretending open offices are about anything more than spending a minimum on an office construction? Let's face it: it's much cheaper to convert an empty warehouse space into a office space than to buy or build a traditional one.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  They're also for management or sales to walk potential clients through while waving a hand through the air like a magician opening a curtain, before they take the client back to their nice, quiet corner offices. Also interior design showcases for hipster cred.
rl3 12y ago
It's clear that both open and closed office plans have their advantages and disadvantages. Ditto hot desking. I'm surprised that no hybrid solution to this problem exists, or at least one that's taken hold. The best solution we currently have seems to be giving everyone a private office and augmenting it with really good team collaboration software. In most cases however, this does not eliminate the need for direct human collaboration, which is partly why open office plans exist in the first place. It seems you could accomplish a hybrid approach by somehow giving each employee the ability to toggle the privacy of their workspace on or off. How you would accomplish that remains an interesting question. Some ideas that come to mind: a) Have two physical workspaces for the employee: one private, one open. b) Some sort of The Jetsons-esque enclosure around the workspace that can be toggled. Might use technologies such as electronic smart glass (for privacy) and/or active noise cancellation. c) Have two floors and lifts under each desk. Want privacy? Just ascend or descend into it. It could even support hot desking on both floors, provided the proper visual cues and safety features existed. The cool part about this approach is it could in theory make moving your desk much easier. d) In the future it could just be a matter of telling your standard ocular and cochlear implants to filter your peripheral vision and hearing accordingly. Disclaimer: Some of these are admittedly crazy.
- GFischer 12y ago
  In "Peopleware", Tom de Marco tries to solve the problem, based on Christopher Alexander's observations: http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13 http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13 Edit: see also the discussion at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces His first rule is that there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution :) but there are patterns :) He does identify the need for all three of - a communal space - a semiprivate/team space ("war rooms", etc) - a private space Also: "Each team needs identifiable public and semiprivate space and each individual needs protected private space. "
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dang 12y ago
Burying this thread as a dupe: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=open+office+trap#!/story/forever/0/open%20office%20trap https://hn.algolia.com/?q=open+office+trap#!/story/forever/0.... Once a story has had significant attention, reposts are treated as duplicates for about a year.
dredmorbius 12y ago
Previously posted to HN: "Creativity is Not a Team Sport" http://fixyt.com/watch?v=QfMvqkrQkYQ http://fixyt.com/watch?v=QfMvqkrQkYQ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494705 One of the best lectures I've seen on the topic. [There's] a very long and well-established literature in psychology that getting groups of people together is no way to come up with ideas. Creativity is not a team sport. What you're looking for is somebody's individual, intellectual trunk to make new connections and come up with something new. Let's imagine billions of neurons in my head communicating with stuff they've been talking about all their lives together: there's a high probability that occasionally they'll come up with something new. Let's now think of the line of communication that you and I have got between each other, which is impoverished, because we have to try and translate complex ideas into language, and how many times do you find you've got a good idea, it's almost in symbolic thought inside your head, and you really can't articulate it to someone. And when you do, they get the wrong idea, because really, language can't encapsulate it until it's fully formed. There's no good evidence that I know of that these brainstorming sessions will come up with a solution or a new idea. What they might do is improve a little bit of team spirit, or show some of the people in the group, "well, if that's the best they can come up with then I'm doing OK". The idea that you can marshal creativity is an error. I'd go a little bit further than this: if there is somebody who's spending 80 hours a week running a creative team, I'd stop them right there and tell them "you don't run a creative team, you allow a creative team to run". That would be the first thing I would jump on. People ask themselves "how do I make a team be creative?" You don't. You allow a team to be creative. (Emphasis in original.) More: http://redd.it/21qgiv http://redd.it/21qgiv

212 points by marchustvedt 12y ago

Old news. If work is boring, routine or extremely exhausting open spaces are great cause' you can talk to each other and lift each others spirits. If work is any type of creative, where you need to concentrate, it's better to have your own space.

waps 12y ago
It makes management feel better if they can constantly spy on the people they employ because they have zero trust in them. And of course this immediately leads to the situation that the workers are out to exploit the company merely to rebel against this situation. Or at least, that's the attitude it brings out in me.

dsymonds 12y ago

This is a dupe from January of this year. Here's the discussion from then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024488

Adrock 12y ago
Even though I know it's a dupe, I'll upvote it every time.

hliyan 12y ago

The office depicted in this article looks almost exactly like the office I used to work in before I moved to a smaller place a year ago. It was a nightmare for those who are sometimes loosely (and perhaps erroneously) categorized as type-A personalities: I want to focus on one thing and do it as perfectly as possible before moving onto the next thing; I hate multitasking unless the situation calls for it; I have highly (and perhaps unnecessarily) attuned peripheral vision and hearing. The chatter was impossible to tune out -- especially design discussions taking place two workstations over. People who did 'soft' jobs kept suggesting that I listen to music to drown out the chatter without realizing that mine is not the sort of work that can be done while music is playing. People walking about in the background behind my screen would distract me from the complicated problem displayed on it. It was difficult to have private chats with people -- the moment I asked to see someone in one of the glass cubicles, everyone (including the person called) would assume that person was in trouble. My current office layout is very 'residential' -- smaller rooms, wooden furniture, doors and windows, no sterile white partitions and ceilings etc. Needless to say, I haven't had any problems concentrating.

pbiggar 12y ago

We've just moved into our first place where everyone has a private office. It's absolutely amazing! I had been complaining for years about open-plan offices [1], but I was actually surprised at just how much more productive it is to have a door that closes! [1] http://blog.circleci.com/silence-is-for-the-weak/ http://blog.circleci.com/silence-is-for-the-weak/

greggman 12y ago
I've personally had the opposite experience. I'm far more productive in a team environment. In video games my most product times are when an artist and/or designer and I sit together and work together. Even when we are not directly interacting with each other seeing stuff on each other's screens lets us see what each other is working on and communicate early and often. I understand that some people in certain roles would do much better with no interruptions in a private office but it's not a one size fits all solution. If your work consists of something you can mostly do on your own that's certainly one case where private offices might be a win. If your work consists of lots of collaboration it seems less clear. At least to me. I'll also note that at least for me I'm much happier around other people than isolated in a private office. I'm not saying I want to be an a 1960 bullpen but a room/area with 2 or 3 other coworkers I'm working on stuff with is my personal ideal.
- cosmie 12y ago
  Those are shared/team offices, not open offices. And I agree: it has been the most effective configuration I've worked in. I used to work in an environment with 4-5 people per (large) office. It worked out really well, and we'd reconfigure the seating arrangement as needed. Where I'm at now the entire building only has three private offices, the rest are completely open. Those type of spontaneous, collaborative discussions are helpful, but tend to piss off the other ~10 people within earshot more often than not.
- burriko 12y ago
  Working alongside 2 or 3 other coworkers isn't really the same thing as an open-office though. At the moment I'm sitting in an office of approximately 30+ people. Working on my own in this environment is annoying. Working with my team (2-3 other people) is also annoying, as we can't speak without being overheard. And I'm sure when we're working as a team, and conversing a lot, we'll be annoying others who require some quiet. A private office doesn't mean you have to work on your own, it just means you have the option to.

bitwize 12y ago

Open-plan offices are a cost-effective panopticon: cheap, effective way to ensure that not only the boss, but other co-workers are aware of where you are and -- more or less -- what you're doing. The "other co-workers" bit is crucial because even if the boss can't find Dave himself he can ask anyone in the space "hey, have you seen Dave" and be led to a meaningful answer. Companies will get rid of open-plan offices when they stop being such gift-wrapped boons to middle management, and not a second before. If you don't like it, adjust or exercise your right to be fired. This is America.

dalek_cannes 12y ago
First, the answer to "Hey, Have you seen Dave?" should be "In his cubicle/office". If a coworker (or worse yet, the boss) does not know this, then there is a different problem. But yes, it does work well for management-by-surveillance. Whether that's a good thing is yet another different problem. Second, not all readers of HN are American. Nor do they subscribe to the same political/ethical/social beliefs. The article was about whether open offices are productive or not, not whether we should or should not have them.
- VLM 12y ago
  There is tangentially a correct aspect to it, in that playing geolocation and SPOF games are non-productive so they fit well with an open office. If you need to talk to Dave, first of all Dave being a SPOF is a bug or management failure to be worked around. Secondly geolocating Dave is almost certainly non-productive. If you need to converse with Dave you call/text his phone to maximize productivity. This is an insightful observation about the core values of open office vs alternatives... an open office simply isn't interested in productive activity. Its interested in non-productive activity, which has been proven over and over in scientific studies. Its unpleasant, perhaps even inhumane for a large segment of the population, and unproductive for everyone but in a cause and effect relationship the bug is in the core values of the organization, that productivity doesn't matter. Its not that they don't know its non-productive, its that they don't care that its non-productive. Also note you can't fix that core value epic fail by merely generating a new, technically superior architectural fad. You merely end up with an organization that's non-productive that has really nice private offices. In that way its kind of like a HOA... I don't want the weirdos and dirtbags to be hidden, I want to be able to glance at a companies office and tell instantly if they have screwed up values, so in a weird way I want failing companies to implement open offices, so I can identify them and avoid them.

rjbwork 12y ago

Would love it if my company would get us each an office. We have the money for it. I feel like since we've expanded and I moved out of the 2 person office I shared with one of the front end devs (I'm back end) and into the 5 person back end space, my productivity has plummeted.

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qwerta 12y ago

I am ok with open-office if company provides paid sick leave. In Ireland there is at least one week every year, when 70% of company is at home with flu.

mrweasel 12y ago
Would you really trade your health, physical and mentally for paid sick leave? I rarely get sick, but then again we're seven people in one office and only one have kids ( kids makes a difference ). Mentally it's different story. I can't begin to count the number of days where I get home stressed out due to the noise of my co-workers and people going in an out of the room to talk to one of my colleagues. Maybe I'm just special, but for me to completely focus and do my best work, I need an almost eerie silence. That's doesn't mix well with co-workers talking on the phone or a radio playing. Open offices have been known to be a bad idea since Peopleware, but they are just so cheap to build.
- asogi 12y ago
  I'm guessing that disease spreads more quickly in an open office, so sick leave is more necessary.
- qwerta 12y ago
  People in open-space are more sick, paid sick leave ensures that employer is not passing his cost savings on me. Non-paid sick leave indicates dysfunctional company and lack of trust (at least in Europe). It is a principle. Open-space was major reason (together with new born children) why I quit corporate world and started my own business two years ago.

austinz 12y ago

I am thoroughly disillusioned with open offices. Headphones are a paper-thin barrier against being interrupted while in the midst of thinking; a good, solid, closed door might do the job better.

levosmetalo 12y ago
there is also this small minority that can't stand headphones, especially if there's any sound coming out of them. being part of such a minority in an open space environment in one of my previous jobs wasn't fun. at all. what did i do when i needed to concentrate? just schedule a meeting with myself and use the meeting room for work when i need concentration. or just do the easy things and avoid complicated stuff. it's the bug count they cared about, not the essence. then only good thing about that is that I would return home mentally fresh, and could concentrated very well on my personal projects.
psychometry 12y ago
Sounds like you just need some better noise-isolating headphones. If you're like me and basically listen to music for 8+ hours/day, spending $200 or more on good headphones is more of a necessity than an indulgence. And you need not listen to distracting music; prerecorded white noise works well for a lot of people.

jacquesm 12y ago

The problem with the open-office / everybody in their own room / some mixture articles and proponents of various solutions is that they all seem to ignore the effect of calcification.

NateDad 12y ago

What's funny is that I actually have no idea what a non-open office would look like. I've worked for 15 years and have never even walked in an office that wasn't open. How do you give each person an office without using like 5x the space as a cubicle farm? That's the real reason that companies like open offices - because they can jam a lot more people in the same space. Someone who is ok with a 6x6 cubicle would feel trapped in a 6x6 office.

bitJericho 12y ago
A cubicle farm is not an open office. An open office is like a cubicle farm without the cubicles.
- wlesieutre 12y ago
  Depends on the cubicles. They used to be 78" high, but low panel heights are much more popular now. 42" panels don't afford much privacy.
  - jcromartie 12y ago
    Because... drumroll please: low panels are cheaper!
    - derekp7 12y ago
      The place I work at had just recently (a couple years ago) moved from an older office with 6 ft cubical walls, to an open office with the short cubical walls. You can see over the top of them when sitting down, but they also have a frosted glass piece (1 ft high) stuck on top to maintain privacy (but still let light through). Big thing I notice -- in the old office, it was pretty noisy, as it was all too easy for people to think they had privacy when they were in a high-walled cubical. The new office is a bit quieter, as people tend to talk in hushed voices more, since they can see everyone around them that would otherwise hear them.
  - deleted 12y ago
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DanBC 12y ago

There is definitely a need for better working environments. This small table with a wool shell looks nice, and the idea could (with heavy modification) be used to create long benches of private working space where noise and visual distraction is reduced and people are not boxed into cubicles. http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/13088/gamfratesi-the-rewrite-desk.html http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/13088/gamfratesi...

lucasjans 12y ago
I get a 404 on that link. Can you check it out? ---- Edit: found it http://www.designboom.com/design/gamfratesi-the-rewrite-desk/ http://www.designboom.com/design/gamfratesi-the-rewrite-desk...

danso 12y ago

Anyone here not ever work in an open-office since professional employment? I was going to say that I had never had an office, including my stints in food service and construction...and I had never even had a real cubicle, i.e. partitions where I couldn't see the person across from me. But that's not true...I had about a year in the "dungeon" when I was moved to my newspaper's online multimedia team, in a windowless basement...by then I already had the habit of surfing the Internet, but I did manage to learn enough PHP and MySQL to build a crime-mapping site and do other data projects, and even do things like get Drupal working (which ended up not being very useful, but still, my first web framework).

noir_lord 12y ago
Yes. I threatened to quit if I didn't get moved out the main room with sales (fully expecting to actually have to quit, I was already half out the door). Boss begrudgingly gave me an office, 3 months later he said it was one of the best idea's he ever had (he was a boss after all). These days I work for myself (small consulting supported startup) so I have an office at work and an office at home.
gatehouse 12y ago
The company I work for occupies a chunk of spare rooms in a law office. I have my own 100 sqft. office, natural light, decent view. It is really convenient. I can have remote people come in and work with me for the day when necessary, there is plenty of room. Never having to listen to other people talk on the phone is beautiful. I can stretch my legs without it turning into a parade. Impossible for someone to surprise me or loom over me. I think my ideal office is Don Draper's in Mad Men Season 1, this is the closest I've come. Not looking forward to leaving this arrangement, especially since my earning power is effectively proportional to my ability to concentrate. http://midcenturymodernist.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Mad-Men-Drapers-Office-1.jpg http://midcenturymodernist.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Ma...

inanov 12y ago

reading the title, i thought that it was about OpenOffice office software suite.

luka-birsa 12y ago

Couldn't agree more. Open offices, while fancy looking, sport apalling usability. After moving into ours we had super issues with the team adapting to the noises and layout. Things got better only after most of the people started using headphones. Separate office with a closed door = productivity boon.

NikhilVerma 12y ago

Like anything taken to the extreme open offices are bad for you. I personally have worked in an open office and a semi-open office (where your team is in a part enclosure/room with a door). And I much prefer to have a semi-open office rather than a private office. A private office for me would totally kill any social interaction I have with anyone. A semi-open office keeps it private on the team level.

aeberbach 12y ago
What's your job? Do you have a greater need to concentrate or to socialize? Not criticising, just asking. I need to be able to go talk to people only sometimes but I need to go to a quiet place and think without interruption more often. The best office I ever worked in was a series of long corridors with many closed offices and two developers to each. It had large meeting rooms at regular intervals, a lunchroom with table football and that was about it.
rwallace 12y ago
> A private office for me would totally kill any social interaction I have with anyone. Perhaps a better working environment would allow your day to be spent more efficiently and leave you with spare time and energy to get an actual social life, instead of requiring your job to double as your social life and end up performing both functions badly?
- collyw 12y ago
  You are likely to spend more than half of your time awake in your workplace. You might as well try to make it a pleasant place to be. And being sociable at work is hardly likely to exhaust you to the point of preventing an social life outside work.
  - capisce 12y ago
    Do workers prefer spending more than half of their awake time in their workplace in order to make more money, or do they simply not have enough bargaining power to negotiate for a shorter work day?

josefresco 12y ago

Do we have to have one or the other? Can an office have private/personal work spaces, and communal open social places that can sometimes host real work? I feel often that managers/owners feel they have to force one or the other on their staff, not considering that their people are probably very diverse, and seek differing models from individual to individual.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Inevitably there's a limited amount of floor space; somebody ends up on the wrong side. I'd say, why not have closed offices space entirely, and let the socializers wander from room to room?

michaelochurch 12y ago

Backdoor age and disability discrimination. At some point, when an organization loses the purpose for its existence and selecting leadership comes down to office politics alone, the selection process becomes attrition. Since excellence no longer matters (there isn't real work for a person to excel at) the leaders are selected by subjecting people to artificial stresses and seeing who cracks (either a full-scale nervous breakdown, or just a passive loss of interest) first. Those were the weak, the less dedicated, etc. Open-plan offices make that attrition faster, and provide more insight into who is next to crack up and entertain the crowd with an open-plan-induced panic attack. That's also why this toxic micromanagement, in the name of "Agile" or "Scrum", that programmers are subjected to will probably never go away. When there's no good way to pick leaders (because the work isn't challenging or interesting) the stress of being watched, hour by hour, is a powerful attritive tool.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago
When I was younger I could probably handle a weirdo office like this for a year or two. Now? No way. I need some level of quiet, non-social time, etc to be focused and get things done. I imagine environments like this are the equivalent of saying, "We don't hire anyone over 30."
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  Moreover, "We don't hire anyone over 30" means "We don't hire anyone good". That's not to say there aren't good people in their 20s. There are quite a few of them. But they want to learn from people who are better than they are. That's the trait of A players: they want to learn from the A+ players. If you don't have anyone over 30, then the good under-30 people you get will quickly leave.
  - vonmoltke 12y ago
    > If you don't have anyone over 30, then the good under-30 people you get will quickly leave. At least the ones who are actually good, as opposed to the ones who think they are $DEITY's gift to engineering.

aeberbach 12y ago

Why stop at having an office merely "open"? Hot desking is the new thing - it's nothing to do with cost saving, it's all about "flexibility". Except that your organisation might also have a policy against working from home. There's no implicit message that you are simply a replaceable functional unit, not at all. You might even find there's no desk left when you arrive at work - who doesn't love the suspense of arriving for an oversold airplane? Now you can have that at work every single day! Truly modern offices have hot desks AND are wired for teleconferencing - right in the open areas! That's right, if "open" is good for communication then a 60" screen on the wall with video cameras pointing at you is even better! You can share in the dull roar of collaboration with people on other continents ALL DAY! In the average open space you can fit at least two, maybe three such screens. When you have them installed, get the tradesmen to come during office hours. It costs way more if they come after hours and your employees should get the chance to see drills, saws and nailguns operated by professionals, they may learn something. We all know there's nothing that stimulates productivity like the sound of productivity, right? So when you plan your next office, leave the kitchen open too - the scrape of chairs on the tiles, the sound of the dishwasher being unloaded, the happy PING of the microwave - not to mention the aromas of hot food - all these things will make employees feel right at home. Using only the most modern materials in the office - lots of glass and steel - will ensure the entire workforce shares the joy. You don't want to be damping the precious sound waves with carpet or plasterboard. I wish I was joking.

mrweasel 12y ago
I got a bit stressed out just by reading that.
matwood 12y ago
Hot desking is the new thing I visited a place that was a giant room of ~100 people working. No one had their own computer, instead you just sat down and whatever computer was there and started working. The guy running this insanity said they re-image all the machines all time taking settings from one of the machines that has been in use. His theory was that over time everyones preferences would merge. It was interesting to see and a little frightening. Right off the bat the noise level would have turned me off. I asked how hard it was to hire and he said interviews are held in the room with him or another senior person pair coding with the candidate.

emsy 12y ago

Open-offices are downright dangerous. We had an Indian colleague who had tuberculoses. After it was diagnosed, every employee had to get an examination. One colleague got infected. Worst of all, the management handled the matter rather unserious and kept jamming everyone in the same office (including the infected colleague!) Gladly, I worked remotely for that company.

seizethecheese 12y ago
Why is it relevant that he is Indian?
- general_failure 12y ago
  Maybe because it's still quite prevalent in India
  - emsy 12y ago
    I guess it's a habit because whenever I told that story I was asked how he got tuberculoses in the first place (It's virtually extinct where I live)
- emsy 12y ago
  You're right, it's not relevant at all, it may only evoke bad sentiments. I'll edit it. Edit: forgot I can't edit it -.- Remembered why it was relevant: Since tuberculoses is still a problem in India, they already assumed that he may have tuberculoses before the diagnosis (he was coughing heavily and had signs of an ulcer). But not only did they keep him working, he was still in a tightly packed office with all the others.
  - seizethecheese 12y ago
    On second thought, this should have been obvious! Sorry for the snark, and I'm glad that you followed up with this.
waps 12y ago

amake 12y ago

I wonder how dependent all this is on culture and expectations. I've spent my entire career in Japan, and have never not worked in an open office. To my knowledge, non-open offices basically don't exist in Japan. So is every Japanese company just leaving productivity lying on the floor by insisting on open offices? I wonder if there have been studies on switching to closed floor plans in Japan. (Of course traditionally the cultural emphasis has been on consensus, not productivity, so there hasn't been a lot of impetus to experiment. Things are changing, however.)

PythonicAlpha 12y ago
It is simply a myth, that the Japanese make everything right. This myth arose, because of the success of their industries and the quality engineering movement they coined. But they just don't do everything right. They do of course some things right. How is, that they have stagnating industry for decades now. How is, that they produced Fukushima and showed, how a country can fail in letting one totally incompetent corporation mess everything up. (Fukushima was not the first problem, this corporation produced -- but the bureaucrats did let them continue and problems where pushed under the carpet).
rwallace 12y ago
> I wonder how dependent all this is on culture and expectations. The actions people take depend on these things. The results of those actions typically do not. > So is every Japanese company just leaving productivity lying on the floor by insisting on open offices? Yes.
sosborn 12y ago
>So is every Japanese company just leaving productivity lying on the floor by insisting on open offices? I worked for about 8 years in Japan. Hell yes they leave productivity lying on the floor, and not just with the open offices.

PythonicAlpha 12y ago

It is amazing, how a so old wisdom (I read it many years from now in a book called "Peopleware" from 1987! could be ignored so many decades (by people, who claim to be reasonable). But it just seems that some ideas, because they are economical interesting, stick so much, that management people come up every 6 month with an other idea or excuse, why the dead horse must be ridden again (and not buried).

chrissyb 12y ago

I always wonder when i see reports like this at the amount of cherry picked data in the studies - and also the ability for the journalist to properly interpret it. The problem i have with this piece and so many others is that its just calls out a number of sometimes unrelated "problems", cites some studies with open offices and calls it a day. They fail to really come up with a strong conclusion or offer viable solutions. As a designer working under an architect and having just completed an open office building for a 150+ employee financial firm[1] - i feel i have a pretty good handle on this subject. There a a couple key anecdotal design criteria that i'd like to address in relation to open offices that the report does not address. Natural Light - Access to natural light Artificial light - using the correct lighting for the task with the right output measured in lumens for the particular task. Ventilation - Natural and sufficient HVAC Acoustics - Are proper acoustic absorbent materials being used. Planning - has the space been thought out in a thorough way - is there a meaningful program to which the open office functions in both arrangement, flow and activities. Psychology - Has there been effort to educate the staff about the new space and general systems in place to govern how it functions. All of these points above can be easily planned for by hiring and adhering to the advice of design professionals like architects, electrical engineers, hydraulic engineers, acoustic consultants etc. Does this happen? In my experience - the answer is generally - no. Building offices and fitting thee out is an expensive exercise and time and time again i see clients willing to cut corners and forgo professional advice at the sake of saving a few thousand dollars. It may be that the ROI in terms of employee productivity could be significantly diminished due to a insignificant saving during the build phase. I would agree in some respects that there are limitation to open office layouts - but that its due more to the ill-conceived notion that achieving an open office work environment is as easy throwing some workstation and humans into a cavernous space and expecting it to just work. Moreover that is why indeed planners are moving away from open office and employing the newer philosophy of ABW (activity based working)[2]. [1]http://marklawlerarchitects.com.au/commercial/hunter-street-office-development/ http://marklawlerarchitects.com.au/commercial/hunter-street-... [2]http://www.jll.com.au/australia/en-au/Documents/jll-au-activity-based-working-2012.pdf http://www.jll.com.au/australia/en-au/Documents/jll-au-activ...

bluedino 12y ago

I can't believe we're still having this debate, how many years has it been? You can't simply take a closed-office environment and just knock the walls down, pass out headphones and cram everyone in one room. You need to change the work culture so that open offices work. You have to adapt things like pair programming and remove things like phones and email. Put everyone on a certain project at the same table. Switch partners out. You can't have people who sit by themselves, don't communicate and don't work together in an open office environment. You're nuts if you think that's going to work.

sheepmullet 12y ago
I suspect a lot of the productivity we get from peer programming comes from the ability it gives us to focus better in a noisy environment. I've found when working from home I'm significantly more productive on my own than two of us peer programming in the office.

chrisgd 12y ago

Interesting article. My favorite sentence is this though, "Open offices may seem better suited to younger workers, many of whom have been multitasking for the majority of their short careers." Despite what I want to believe and what I have been told (all companies only want to hire multitaskers!), multitasking is neither productive nor really possible. You can really only do one project at a time.

enraged_camel 12y ago
What they call "multi-tasking" is actually an inability to stay focused on one task due to a combination of procrastination and sheer boredom. So if you keep switching between writing a sales report, reading incoming email and conversing with your neighbor, congratulations, you may not be getting anything done, but you are multi-tasking!
- chrisgd 12y ago
  I am an expert multi-tasker!
stygiansonic 12y ago
Spot on. What most people refer to as "multitasking" is really a constant partial-attention deficit.
- Florin_Andrei 12y ago
  However, it works great if you just need to put up a façade.

ThomaszKrueger 12y ago

I work in such open office arrangement. The worse is when the two guys across your desk have their phones on a conference call on speaker phone and the echo of both come through as they speak, utterly distracting, I might as well just pack and go home.

general_failure 12y ago

Not sure what the definition of open-office is. In our office, we have gazillion cubicles (the classic valley office). No sound proofing. And people of a team don't sit near each other. This means that you can end up with sales guys around who are constantly on the call and meetings. What's worse is that they keep pitching the same lines over and over again and you have to listen to it. It makes you empathize about a sales person's job but you end up hating your job and never want to step into office.

bitJericho 12y ago
Now imagine that but with no cubicle walls!

pnathan 12y ago

I have worked in cubes, private offices, shared offices, and open offices. For productivity and thinking, I found the physical barriers were proportional to the thinking. For communication, in any of these, company IM worked quite well most of the time, and when it failed, face to face worked out. I strongly advocate for private or team-member-shared offices at any chance I get. It's just that much better.

geebee 12y ago

This is another interesting and good article, and I'm glad to see it getting (yet more) mainstream attention. But eventually, I think we should probably look at this as a solved problem and try to figure out what's going on upstream. In other words, I'm completely convinced that open offices (and cubicle farms, where I work) are harmful. To me, the more pressing question is: why are they still so common?

vonmoltke 12y ago
> To me, the more pressing question is: why are they still so common? To quote a very cynical and jaded friend of mine, "It increases shareholder value". Yes, studies show that open plan offices, especially badly-designed open plan offices, hurt knowledge worker productivity. The problem is, knowledge worker productivity is not expressed as a nice, neat number on a balance sheet. Facilities cost is. Thus, when a business gets into the mode of increasing profits by decreasing costs, all they see with respect to this topic is that office space expense. Cue the management bullshit stream about "collaboration", switch to open plans, and watch that number drop. The productivity drop tends to lag, however. Since many executive suites can't see forward past the next earnings report, or backwards past the previous, they see a nice increase in margins for a quarter or two, followed by a drop in revenue, schedule slips, or increasing costs in other areas caused by the open plan switch. They then move on to fixing this "new" problem, not realizing they caused it with their previous "fix".
nerfhammer 12y ago
Because you can fit 2-4 times as many employees in the same floor space

stox 12y ago

Open offices are awesome during a crisis. On the other hand, they really suck when you need to focus on a problem. They work well for young start-ups, as crises tend to be quite frequent, but as a company matures, I think they become more of a liability than an asset.

lreeves 12y ago
I find them awful in a crisis; generally there are a few people that can actually fix and work on the crisis and people start hovering behind them trying to drive from the back.

pbreit 12y ago

I've already bought in to the notion that open arrangements may have short-comings. But in the Bay Area circa 2014 what arrangements are being tried out and seeing advantages? Low cubes, high cubes, fully enclosed offices, bull pens, mini bull pens, periodic re-arrangement, unassigned?

collyw 12y ago
bull pens? I assume this is the name of some office arrangement. It isn't very inspiring though.

squozzer 12y ago

At my last job I had a private office, my first. Now I work in the most open office I've had since leaving the Army - my office there was called "The Motor Pool" I didn't find it as distracting as I thought - but I am someone who can tune out everything when watching TV. I miss being able to break wind somewhat discreetly though.

pessimizer 12y ago
>I miss being able to break wind somewhat discreetly though. "What’s more, Evans and Johnson discovered that people in noisy environments made fewer ergonomic adjustments than they would in private, causing increased physical strain."

psychometry 12y ago

Can we stop pretending open offices are about anything more than spending a minimum on an office construction? Let's face it: it's much cheaper to convert an empty warehouse space into a office space than to buy or build a traditional one.

pessimizer 12y ago
They're also for management or sales to walk potential clients through while waving a hand through the air like a magician opening a curtain, before they take the client back to their nice, quiet corner offices. Also interior design showcases for hipster cred.

rl3 12y ago

It's clear that both open and closed office plans have their advantages and disadvantages. Ditto hot desking. I'm surprised that no hybrid solution to this problem exists, or at least one that's taken hold. The best solution we currently have seems to be giving everyone a private office and augmenting it with really good team collaboration software. In most cases however, this does not eliminate the need for direct human collaboration, which is partly why open office plans exist in the first place. It seems you could accomplish a hybrid approach by somehow giving each employee the ability to toggle the privacy of their workspace on or off. How you would accomplish that remains an interesting question. Some ideas that come to mind: a) Have two physical workspaces for the employee: one private, one open. b) Some sort of The Jetsons-esque enclosure around the workspace that can be toggled. Might use technologies such as electronic smart glass (for privacy) and/or active noise cancellation. c) Have two floors and lifts under each desk. Want privacy? Just ascend or descend into it. It could even support hot desking on both floors, provided the proper visual cues and safety features existed. The cool part about this approach is it could in theory make moving your desk much easier. d) In the future it could just be a matter of telling your standard ocular and cochlear implants to filter your peripheral vision and hearing accordingly. Disclaimer: Some of these are admittedly crazy.

GFischer 12y ago
In "Peopleware", Tom de Marco tries to solve the problem, based on Christopher Alexander's observations: http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13 http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13 Edit: see also the discussion at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces His first rule is that there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution :) but there are patterns :) He does identify the need for all three of - a communal space - a semiprivate/team space ("war rooms", etc) - a private space Also: "Each team needs identifiable public and semiprivate space and each individual needs protected private space. "

deleted 12y ago

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dang 12y ago

Burying this thread as a dupe: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=open+office+trap#!/story/forever/0/open%20office%20trap https://hn.algolia.com/?q=open+office+trap#!/story/forever/0.... Once a story has had significant attention, reposts are treated as duplicates for about a year.

dredmorbius 12y ago

Previously posted to HN: "Creativity is Not a Team Sport" http://fixyt.com/watch?v=QfMvqkrQkYQ http://fixyt.com/watch?v=QfMvqkrQkYQ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494705 One of the best lectures I've seen on the topic. [There's] a very long and well-established literature in psychology that getting groups of people together is no way to come up with ideas. Creativity is not a team sport. What you're looking for is somebody's individual, intellectual trunk to make new connections and come up with something new. Let's imagine billions of neurons in my head communicating with stuff they've been talking about all their lives together: there's a high probability that occasionally they'll come up with something new. Let's now think of the line of communication that you and I have got between each other, which is impoverished, because we have to try and translate complex ideas into language, and how many times do you find you've got a good idea, it's almost in symbolic thought inside your head, and you really can't articulate it to someone. And when you do, they get the wrong idea, because really, language can't encapsulate it until it's fully formed. There's no good evidence that I know of that these brainstorming sessions will come up with a solution or a new idea. What they might do is improve a little bit of team spirit, or show some of the people in the group, "well, if that's the best they can come up with then I'm doing OK". The idea that you can marshal creativity is an error. I'd go a little bit further than this: if there is somebody who's spending 80 hours a week running a creative team, I'd stop them right there and tell them "you don't run a creative team, you allow a creative team to run". That would be the first thing I would jump on. People ask themselves "how do I make a team be creative?" You don't. You allow a team to be creative. (Emphasis in original.) More: http://redd.it/21qgiv http://redd.it/21qgiv