5 ms·

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]

by 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.
  - bronson 12y ago
    Not always... I've seen private offices so small two people can just sit in there. It's like Brazil (the movie) but better lit. So, IFF your company has the money to devote a fair amount of real estate to each worker, yes, private offices are great.
  - collyw 12y ago
    I am in an office of 4. It used to be an office of two, which was great - most productive time of my working life. Even with just 4 of us, it means there is a good chance someone will be asked something, and regularly the head comes down to discuss stuff with one of us (often me). I can deal with it for the standard bug fix type work, but trying to learn something new is really difficult with constant interruption.
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  So go hang out in other people's offices to regain that experience. Back when I worked in offices I'd do that or have coworkers do that all the time.
  - VLM 12y ago
    The once mandatory "visitors chair" in every workspace and most people had two or three. Folks younger than a certain age miss out knowing the social etiquette relating to visitors chairs, such as stacking "stuff" or coats on your visitor chair is anti-social and very strongly frowned upon. Also it was socially acceptable, standard even, to simply walk into someone's cube and sit down in their (visitor) chair and wait till they could talk, especially if you were (currently) working together on something. Also "back in the old days" we had intentionally unreservable conference rooms scattered about. So if you needed 6 people on the spur of the moment you simply walked in to the nearest empty room, confident no one reserved it because it was un reservable. This is pretty much how things were in the early 90s or so. Honestly I don't think I could handle the constant interruption and infinite distraction of an open office, which makes me think about a startup or something; I just can't imagine working in a "modern" office environment. It just sounds horrifying to productivity, like a prison yard or a doctor waiting room or something. Creeeepy. As a parent when I need to get stuff done at home, like if I'm working at home, I kick everyone out of the room and work in peace and quiet. I never, ever, invite seven neighbor kids over and hand out toy whistles as a gift and nerf toys and then sit in the center of the maelstrom and try to concentrate. Nobody who "works at home" sneaks into a day care center with their laptop to concentrate on their finest work. There's a time and place for that kind of stuff, and its not the workplace.
    - Avshalom 12y ago
      I don't think its a generational thing so much as a self inflicted culture thing. I was in college in the mid/late 00s and being social/collaborating never suffered for us having offices (two grads to a lab/office usually). We used computer labs or the common areas instead of conference rooms but same same. That said in addition to a mandatory visitors chair, white boards everywhere. Just fucking everywhere. Nothing seemed to help collaboration like being able to start water cooler level talk about a problem and with out even noticing transition to hashing it out on a whiteboard.
- sheepmullet 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." A few people working together on a single task is not an open office. In a "real" open office you couldn't actually talk to the artist and designer beyond a few sentences because if you did you would disturb the other 10-20 people within earshot.
  - marcosdumay 12y ago
    > if you did you would disturb the other 10-20 people within earshot. 10-20? There are about 80 here.
    - sheepmullet 12y ago
      We have over 100 people on my floor but I like to think I'm only disturbing the nearest 10-20 :).
- matwood 12y ago
  I'm far more productive in a team environment. As others have mentioned this is where the definition of open breaks down. Team environments are great. Many open office advocates are small companies who, because of their size, are really advocating team environments. Now grow that same company to 100s of people and see if the open office still works. What I have seen is that even the biggest open office advocates start putting up walls (even if movable) and segmenting once again into a teams. TLDR; Team != Open
michaelochurch 12y ago
There's one environment in which an open-plan office makes sense: a trading desk. (I was a trader for a year.) That's because 5 seconds means a lot on the markets. If millions of dollars can be lost per second, you can't afford the Bell Labs culture. However, on-the-desk quants and IT are genuinely respected for their sacrifice. Sure, they have to be highly available from 9:20 to 4:10, but the rest of the time is completely their own (usually for research; they tend to work 11-hour days not because anyone is making them, but because they love the work). They're paid very well for that intense 7 hours, and no one would subject them to the humiliation of "Agile" micromanagement. Quants have traders come by to ask about trading strategies at high levels, but they don't deal with PMs and "story points" and arguments about whether what they worked on over the past week was "in the backlog" or not. Quants have something much closer to an open allocation environment than most software engineers, and if they can't hack the stress (and not everyone can, especially for years on end) of being on the desk, they're usually moved to off-the-desk roles and the change isn't stigmatized. (Some will come in and say that quants are second-class citizens in hedge funds and, if one looks at 95th-percentile compensation, that appears to be true. Quants hit a ceiling around $500k-1.5M, which is 1% of what the best traders make, but they're respected. On the other hand, non-managing programmers are third-class citizens in most Valley startups, and they aren't making any money either.) Open-plan offices make sense on trading desks, just as "Agile" makes sense for a small consulting firm on the make-or-break project that'll take it into the big leagues (under which it's reasonable to ask the tech staff to truly "sprint", because delivering the project will result in a quantum leap in client relations, quality of work, and compensation). The problem is that management tends to take these processes that conditionally result in high performance (for a short while) and attempt to implement the costly, negative and painful aspects (e.g. open-plan offices and Scrum) while failing to deliver the upside (e.g. quant-level bonuses, genuine equity rather than 0.05% bullshit) that makes talented people willing to tolerate the pain.
33W 12y ago
Do you have a source for the engineer to office ratios at Google and Microsoft?
- pbiggar 12y ago
  No, and I think I'm slightly wrong there. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7008214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7008214.
  - 33W 12y ago
    Good to know! Thanks!
gdulli 12y ago
My team recently moved to a quieter area within the same office. On the second day I powered through an annoying task I'd been putting off for a month. I realized after I finished that the main reason I'd been putting off the task was that I knew it would require the type of focus and uninterrupted time I wasn't going to be able to get. Since then I've been thinking a lot more about how the office space influences how, and when, and whether various types of work get done.

by pbiggar 12y ago

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.
- bronson 12y ago
  Not always... I've seen private offices so small two people can just sit in there. It's like Brazil (the movie) but better lit. So, IFF your company has the money to devote a fair amount of real estate to each worker, yes, private offices are great.
- collyw 12y ago
  I am in an office of 4. It used to be an office of two, which was great - most productive time of my working life. Even with just 4 of us, it means there is a good chance someone will be asked something, and regularly the head comes down to discuss stuff with one of us (often me). I can deal with it for the standard bug fix type work, but trying to learn something new is really difficult with constant interruption.
InclinedPlane 12y ago
So go hang out in other people's offices to regain that experience. Back when I worked in offices I'd do that or have coworkers do that all the time.
- VLM 12y ago
  The once mandatory "visitors chair" in every workspace and most people had two or three. Folks younger than a certain age miss out knowing the social etiquette relating to visitors chairs, such as stacking "stuff" or coats on your visitor chair is anti-social and very strongly frowned upon. Also it was socially acceptable, standard even, to simply walk into someone's cube and sit down in their (visitor) chair and wait till they could talk, especially if you were (currently) working together on something. Also "back in the old days" we had intentionally unreservable conference rooms scattered about. So if you needed 6 people on the spur of the moment you simply walked in to the nearest empty room, confident no one reserved it because it was un reservable. This is pretty much how things were in the early 90s or so. Honestly I don't think I could handle the constant interruption and infinite distraction of an open office, which makes me think about a startup or something; I just can't imagine working in a "modern" office environment. It just sounds horrifying to productivity, like a prison yard or a doctor waiting room or something. Creeeepy. As a parent when I need to get stuff done at home, like if I'm working at home, I kick everyone out of the room and work in peace and quiet. I never, ever, invite seven neighbor kids over and hand out toy whistles as a gift and nerf toys and then sit in the center of the maelstrom and try to concentrate. Nobody who "works at home" sneaks into a day care center with their laptop to concentrate on their finest work. There's a time and place for that kind of stuff, and its not the workplace.
  - Avshalom 12y ago
    I don't think its a generational thing so much as a self inflicted culture thing. I was in college in the mid/late 00s and being social/collaborating never suffered for us having offices (two grads to a lab/office usually). We used computer labs or the common areas instead of conference rooms but same same. That said in addition to a mandatory visitors chair, white boards everywhere. Just fucking everywhere. Nothing seemed to help collaboration like being able to start water cooler level talk about a problem and with out even noticing transition to hashing it out on a whiteboard.
sheepmullet 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." A few people working together on a single task is not an open office. In a "real" open office you couldn't actually talk to the artist and designer beyond a few sentences because if you did you would disturb the other 10-20 people within earshot.
- marcosdumay 12y ago
  > if you did you would disturb the other 10-20 people within earshot. 10-20? There are about 80 here.
  - sheepmullet 12y ago
    We have over 100 people on my floor but I like to think I'm only disturbing the nearest 10-20 :).
matwood 12y ago
I'm far more productive in a team environment. As others have mentioned this is where the definition of open breaks down. Team environments are great. Many open office advocates are small companies who, because of their size, are really advocating team environments. Now grow that same company to 100s of people and see if the open office still works. What I have seen is that even the biggest open office advocates start putting up walls (even if movable) and segmenting once again into a teams. TLDR; Team != Open

michaelochurch 12y ago

There's one environment in which an open-plan office makes sense: a trading desk. (I was a trader for a year.) That's because 5 seconds means a lot on the markets. If millions of dollars can be lost per second, you can't afford the Bell Labs culture. However, on-the-desk quants and IT are genuinely respected for their sacrifice. Sure, they have to be highly available from 9:20 to 4:10, but the rest of the time is completely their own (usually for research; they tend to work 11-hour days not because anyone is making them, but because they love the work). They're paid very well for that intense 7 hours, and no one would subject them to the humiliation of "Agile" micromanagement. Quants have traders come by to ask about trading strategies at high levels, but they don't deal with PMs and "story points" and arguments about whether what they worked on over the past week was "in the backlog" or not. Quants have something much closer to an open allocation environment than most software engineers, and if they can't hack the stress (and not everyone can, especially for years on end) of being on the desk, they're usually moved to off-the-desk roles and the change isn't stigmatized. (Some will come in and say that quants are second-class citizens in hedge funds and, if one looks at 95th-percentile compensation, that appears to be true. Quants hit a ceiling around $500k-1.5M, which is 1% of what the best traders make, but they're respected. On the other hand, non-managing programmers are third-class citizens in most Valley startups, and they aren't making any money either.) Open-plan offices make sense on trading desks, just as "Agile" makes sense for a small consulting firm on the make-or-break project that'll take it into the big leagues (under which it's reasonable to ask the tech staff to truly "sprint", because delivering the project will result in a quantum leap in client relations, quality of work, and compensation). The problem is that management tends to take these processes that conditionally result in high performance (for a short while) and attempt to implement the costly, negative and painful aspects (e.g. open-plan offices and Scrum) while failing to deliver the upside (e.g. quant-level bonuses, genuine equity rather than 0.05% bullshit) that makes talented people willing to tolerate the pain.

33W 12y ago

Do you have a source for the engineer to office ratios at Google and Microsoft?

pbiggar 12y ago
No, and I think I'm slightly wrong there. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7008214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7008214.
- 33W 12y ago
  Good to know! Thanks!

gdulli 12y ago

My team recently moved to a quieter area within the same office. On the second day I powered through an annoying task I'd been putting off for a month. I realized after I finished that the main reason I'd been putting off the task was that I knew it would require the type of focus and uninterrupted time I wasn't going to be able to get. Since then I've been thinking a lot more about how the office space influences how, and when, and whether various types of work get done.