14 ms·

Science, Superstition, and Open Plan Offices

51 points by bratfarrar 12y ago

7402 12y ago
I interviewed with a company and during the "cultural fit" interview with the VP of Engineering, I asked why they used an open-plan office. I mentioned that there seemed to be a lot of concern in the literature and online about developer productivity in such offices. He said he "wasn't familiar" with the discussion, but he didn't think it was a problem. I was offered a contract-to-hire situation, instead of the employment I was seeking, and was explicitly told that the reason was because I seemed to be concerned about the open office. So be careful about bringing up "science" with people who aren't interested in it.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  I often wonder why companies offer contract-to-hire positions when so many regular employees are at-will anyway. I am especially puzzled as to why a company would offer it as an alternative to both full-time regular employment and a fixed-term contract. It seems that mixing the two removes all benefit to the worker while reserving all benefits to the company. So why would anyone do it if they had a choice?
  - sethhochberg 12y ago
    I could also see this as the company giving the worker an easy out based on the concerns they expressed about the open office - there is no worry about waiting for the "right time" to quit if you're not happy with the new position when the "right time" comes in the form of the end of a contract period before full employment.
- TheCraiggers 12y ago
  You also have to consider the opposite side of the coin- you should be interviewing them as much as they are you. The VP's responses should have been a red flag to you. Not just because of the fact that he apparently hadn't heard of the debate over open floor plans over the decades, but mostly due to the fact he seemingly punished you for speaking out. Typically, not fun people to work for. And yes I'm fully aware that sometimes you're in a positions of "I need a job and can't be too picky". I hope you were in a better position than that and had the opportunity to turn them down. If not, I'd be curious how it turned out.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- arethuza 12y ago
  For someone to be a VP of Engineering and to not even have heard of the debate around office layout and developer productivity is a bit alarming. Presumably you didn't take up their offer?
- astalwick 12y ago
  Interviews are tough. There's very little time to get a feel for whether a person would be a good fit for an organization - and often, you have to make a judgment: was this comment just off-the-cuff curiosity, or does the fact that the person brought up the open-plan indicate that he or she would have problems with the way that the company works? In interviews, the open-plan office is non-negotiable. It's not like you're going to convince them in an interview to change their minds and build closed offices. I can imagine a lot of interviewers going "well, if he or she brought it up and has actually studied literature on it, then it's probably something that bothers them, and if it's something that bothers them, we might have a problem down the road... maybe it's better to test the water than to offer full employment." To be clear, this is a problem with the interview process, not with you (or the person hiring). There's just not enough time to actually understand a person, so interviewers are forced to make guesses and go with their hunches. And because the cost of hiring the wrong person is high, interviewers will often look for any small thing to refuse a hire.
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  Fit interviews are hard for engineers. Technical interviews are about getting the right answer. Fit interviews are about whether you can tell a convincing lie ("of course I like the working under tight deadlines to changing requirements with minimal support from the business.") It's a tough context switch: from zero-in-on-right-answer to socially-acceptable-bald-faced-lie.
  - typicalrunt 12y ago
    I half-agree with you, because there are some companies that use "fit" to determine how much they can use you as a "resource" rather than a human being. Where I disagree is whether one has put themselves in a situation where they are desperate for a position at a company where they have to lie to pass the fit interview stage. I'd rather be honest and lose than lie, win and ultimately impugn my integrity. It is very refreshing when you already have a job and are looking for something new, then you can sit back and take a relaxed approach to finding a good company. Once one is found and you are interviewing with them (and interviewing them, as a previous commenter mentioned), then you can ask all the tough questions. If you don't like what you hear, vote with your feet and walk away. Now, this isn't always the situation people are in, so YMMV but I throw it out there as a piece of advice for anyone interviewing companies.
    - michaelochurch 12y ago
      I fully agree with you... and yet we disagree on a matter about the outside world. My experience is that good companies are about 5%, at least weighted by jobs that are on the market. (There could be more good companies that are small or rarely have to hire.) I might be off and it might be higher, but not by much. They're rare, and they're selective, and they tend to grow slowly. Most people are going to have to swing from one crappy company to another until they find something good. Once you have something legit, you definitely want to hold on to it for a good few years. Also, on a practical note, there are good teams within crappy companies that are still worth working for. I wouldn't advise, say, most large tech companies or investment banks in general, but most of those huge companies have teams that are really good and make it worth taking the job. I'd rather be honest and lose than lie, win and ultimately impugn my integrity. I used to feel this way, but ultimately I'm of more use to the world if I'm occasionally willing to part with honesty. If I see someone in the grocery store who's 400 pounds, shouting "You're obese and if you don't stop eating that crap, you're gonna die!" does no one any favors. It's "honest", but worthlessly so.
Bangladesh1 12y ago
I prefer little superstition with more science
gojomo 12y ago
Maybe we need to re-brand the "open plan" to something else. "Open" is something many tech businesses want to be, especially internally. So an "open" layout helps people be "open" in other desirable ways, right? Well, not really. It's an unfortunate decision-scrambling word-collision. It deserve a name that's still descriptive, but of a loud, crowded place where it's hard to get work done. "Stadium plan"? "Nursery plan"? "Transit hall plan"?
- evan_ 12y ago
  Awful Plan? Noisy Office Plan? Distract-o-matic?
- hga 12y ago
  How about boiler room? Has a lot of negative connotations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_room_(business) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_room_(business)
- wmeredith 12y ago
  Exposed office plan. Cheap office plan. I really like Cheap Office plan actually. For all the ra-ra Kumbayah BS around open office plans, the fact that they are cheaper in the short run is why Cheap Office PLans (tm) are popular with management.
  - gojomo 12y ago
    Hmm. Unfortunately 'cheap' also has some positive connotations in business – and it doesn't necessarily imply productivity-damaging. "It's both 'cheap' and 'open'? Sign us up!" But breaking down 'cheap' into more-explicit descriptions of missing-amenities could work. The "infantry barracks plan". The "shantytown plan". The "disaster shelter plan". The "resettlement camp plan". The "soup kitchen plan".
- scotty79 12y ago
  We just call our largest openspace the Chinese Sweatshop. Even managers use this name.
nsxwolf 12y ago
2014 is the year of the war on open plan offices. Some people enjoy working in them, you know. Not everyone is interested in saying "how high" every time some grad student's study says "jump".
- greenyoda 12y ago
  Peopleware was published in 1987. This body of research is not something that suddenly sprang up in 2014.
  - nsxwolf 12y ago
    So are people not allowed to prefer open office layouts? They're not allowed to discern what works for them, because there couldn't possibly be any variables that make the results of some study irrelevant to their unique situation? Edit: It would appear the answer is "no", no one is to be allowed make that decision. HN hates open plans more than they hate sexism.
    - sheepmullet 12y ago
      So meet us "private office folks" half way and have enough private offices and open space for everyone. That way if you want to work in the open office section you can but the rest of us aren't forced into low productivity and constant low level anxiety simply because you enjoy it.
      - nsxwolf 12y ago
        That sounds like a reasonable compromise, but I'll need to see some studies before trying it.
cliffcrosland 12y ago
On the other hand, studies also show that "radical collocation" can increase software development productivity. This study from the University of Michigan claims that productivity was doubled when developers worked together in specially designed "war rooms" that allowed for both spontaneous meetings and moments of solitude: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/220879336_How_does_radical_collocation_help_a_team_succeed/file/72e7e5242450ed5e28.pdf http://www.researchgate.net/publication/220879336_How_does_r... This quote summarizes the results well: "Although the teammates were not looking forward to working in close quarters, over time they realized the benefits of having people at hand, both for coordination, problem solving and learning. They adapted to the distractions of radical collocation, both by removing themselves to nearby hotelling areas when they needed privacy, and by zoning out, made possible because of the distance between people in the larger rooms." It feels productive to enter a flow-like state for several hours debugging a problem, but it's probably more productive if a teammate notices and provides the solution in minutes. Nevertheless, stretches of uninterrupted focus are often essential.
- astalwick 12y ago
  I think that's one thing that gets missed in these discussions: software development is different from, say, accounting or administration or whatever. I get huge value out of being right beside the people that can answer the questions I have, and I know that they get value being near me. Putting walls between people and enforcing no-interruption work inhibits communication and makes it much easier to get blocked. At our office, I actively encourage every new hire to interrupt me and ask a question when they get stuck. (I actually get kind of annoyed when they don't). Lots of people, especially more junior devs, will sit down at a problem and really get lost for a day trying to figure it all out themselves. I'd way rather be interrupted for a 15 minute explanation of some bit of code than have them lose a day.
  - pyre 12y ago
    > I get huge value out of being right beside the people that can answer the questions I have As someone who -- in my workplace -- is more often than not on the receiving end of questions or calls for help, I find it extremely distracting. There have been entire days where I wasn't able to focus on my own work because everyone else had questions to answer, or bugs that they needed help working through. I can't fault them for asking for help, but I definitely get frustrated at the situation, because sometimes at the end of the day I end up feeling like I haven't accomplished anything.
facepalm 12y ago
I suppose open plan has some advantages, like it is more hip (makes for great "we are a family" pictures), and the "team building" might make people less likely to leave their jobs. Just guessing - in any case there might be effects that offset the lower productivity. Otoh I was floored to read today that Amazon apparently has lots of dogs in their offices because it is supposedly good for the atmosphere, lower stress levels and whatnot. I heard Google has lots of office dogs, too. I hope this is not a case of pseudoscientific superstition, because for me office dogs would be an absolute deal breaker. If most offices start adding dogs because of some shaky research results I'll be in trouble :-(
- saryant 12y ago
  My company is co-located with another company and they encourage dogs in the office. My question has always been: what if you want to hire someone with a dog allergy? Worse: what if the person isn't currently local and there aren't any dogs in the office the day they happen to come in but relocate only to find they can't possibly work in that office?
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Work remotely.
  - Spooky23 12y ago
    I was always kind of amazed about companies that do this. I'd love to bring my dog to the office, but when does it become not ok to cause physical harm to my co-workers?
  - existencebox 12y ago
    While I was at google, I had (and have) a minor pet dander allergy. There were _many_ dogs regularly in the office, and perhaps I'm being overly paranoid/judgemental of the culture, but mentioning your own discomfort would have been read very negatively against you by not only the dog owners but by all the people who do buy in to that it is some part of the culture. Whether you read that as a feature or a frustration, it comes down to that it simply becomes another line item that potential candidates may be judging you on, and you may never know about it. (it's certainly something I keep an eye out for nowadays.)
michaelochurch 12y ago
OP is a generally good post. Two minor comments. Open plan has the advantages of being familiar, allowing more people to fit into the same space, and being more egalitarian. I.e., since offices are viewed as status symbols, providing them to developers and not to other groups could have a significant negative impact on morale among non-developers. Open-plan seems egalitarian, but it's not. It's the opposite. If you're a manager and your boss is on another floor, you don't have to worry about what's on your screen, how often you go to the bathroom, and people coming up behind you (only interns will do that) when you're obviously not receptive. It's subordinates who end up feeling like caged animals. When you work in an open-plan office, power relationships are shoved in your face 8 hours per day. If you're the rare sadistic middle manager who enjoys watching people squirm, you can do "the Boss Walk" all day and enjoy it. Everyone else (even decent managers) is miserable. If I were a manager, I wouldn't want this: I don't want people to feel threatened and anxious (or a need to change what's on their screen) every time I walk by their desk on the way to take a piss. That the engineers at your company are more productive, or more in tune with the needs of the business because of the constant natural interaction with their coworkers. I worked for an R&D think-tank during a summer internship. Everyone had an office, but at 3:00 there was "tea" and people got together for snacks and board games for an hour. They naturally ended up having this kind of conversation. There are better ways to achieve this. Open-plan offices may populate the social graph, but they flood it with antagonistic edges. What the fuck good is that? None.
- greenyoda 12y ago
  "I worked for an R&D think-tank during a summer internship. Everyone had an office, but at 3:00 there was "tea" and people got together for snacks..." That's also the custom in many academic departments.
jamieb 12y ago
Here's another quote: "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." My experience, anecdotal as it is, is that an open space per team is the most effective. This being science, when has the truth ever been precisely one end of the spectrum or the other? I'm naturally skeptical of pundits, advocating science, who point out that developers with their own office perform better than developer who share an open space with the call center and then claim that this demonstrates that private offices are the best solution. The key quote from the article is "quieter and more private". Maybe in the days when The Architect wrote a design doc and The Engineers went into their offices for six months, then a private office was a great way to get to the "Oh fuck this thing will never work" moment faster. In contrast most teams I work with collaborate at the feature level: engineers work on the same feature, implementing different pieces together, before moving on to the next feature. We have other teams where individual developers take a feature and go off and work on it for a few days. The "individuals" are "faster" claiming work is complete, but the "teams" are faster at producing work that is accepted. I should also add that while the team environment works for most engineers, we have some that absolutely require a private space, and we try to accommodate them. Individuals work differently and when we find someone good we try to make the environment work for them. YMMV.
- wmeredith 12y ago
  The simple answer is that these office plans are cheaper. It's a common business pitfall. The cheaper short term solution wins in spite of long term health productivity and culture advantages.
  - notahacker 12y ago
    That might be true in some cases but there's an entire industry built around renting open-plan workspaces to solo founders and freelancers who freely choose to spend an extra $5000 per year and an hour's commute time each day because they feel an "office environment" surrounded by other busy professionals focuses their mind better than the serene quiet of their bedside desk. Many of them are developers.
- gojomo 12y ago
skizm 12y ago
I work in an open office environment and I spend a lot of my day positioning myself so that I'm not in direct line of sight with anyone else's eyes. I hate that I can't ponder to myself without risk of accidentally making eye contact with someone. What makes it worse is that if I sit in an upright (comfortable and ergonomic) position I am staring directly at someone. I hate it. As a result my posture and productivity noticeably decline as the day goes on.
- Havoc 12y ago
  Interesting. Never even considered the eye contact thing. Ours is open plan but you're always looking at a partition or out the window. That makes it a bit more bearable.
- ScottBurson 12y ago
  Yeah, if the cube walls are low enough that you can see over them -- or if there are no cube walls -- it's just a disaster. I was in a place like that once and hated it. Eventually I found a spot where I was facing a wall; that wasn't so bad.
hershel 12y ago
Recently i've been interested in buying a noise cancelling headphones. There's the new bose quietcomfort 20i, which are claimed at least by some reviewers to almost cancel talking sound. Assuming they work well, since they are controlled using software, it might open the way to a more "programmable" noise environment. For example you could set them to hear only the team members you want at any given time, thus giving you the best of both worlds.
- ScottBurson 12y ago
  I haven't tried that model, but in my experience and from what I've heard, noise cancelling headphones don't work that well on voices. They mostly cancel low frequencies, below the vocal range. In-ear monitors, that seal the ear canal like earplugs, work much better.
  - hershel 12y ago
    I know. They are supposed to be unique in that regard according to pcmag.
Havoc 12y ago
You get used to it - plus unavoidable in some cases (travelling staff plus office with "hotchair" open office seating for those not travelling at the moment). I find that as long as I'm allowed to use earphones I can block things out sufficiently.
varelse 12y ago
My litmus test for an open office fanboy manager is whether he too works in the open office. Usually not in my experience. Funny that...
frisco 12y ago
I was really sympathetic to the distractions caused by an open plan office. I saw the statistics that people get sick more often. I knew it would be annoying to have it potentially be really loud (or have everyone need to be quiet to keep it not loud). My company's new office is going to be open plan, though. Why? Because an office costs about $15k to build. We're already spending six figures on construction (ha ha biotech) and there was just no economically reasonable way around an open plan office. I think the real reason many offices are open plan now is simply that it's much, much cheaper. The rest are kind of just-so stories, for or against. Interior designers will come up with these justifications when prompted but really I think it's that the people who actually get to make the decisions look at the general contractor estimates and say, "okay open plan it is."
- mabbo 12y ago
  Let's assume my office employs 100 people, at around $100,000 per year each. If a $15k office would make us 10% more efficient, then it would pay for itself in 18 months. Open plan offices are penny-wise and pound-foolish.
  - frisco 12y ago
    That's a $1.5M investment up front. Maybe it will make you 10% more efficient, but I have to look at all of the different things I could spend $1.5M on. Hopefully there's something in there for a growing company with an expected IRR of more than 10% over 18 months. In parallel, how many months of runway do you have? I'm guessing it's not 18, much less the 36+ you'd want to really see those benefits pay off even if it were the most efficient use of the capital.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Yet iF you want to save time then the only critical resource is your employees. 10% is an extremely low estimate of the disruption open-plan offices engender. In some cases they can completely disrupt some employees, resulting in 0 or negative return.
    - 12y ago
BigChiefSmokem 12y ago
I prefer open spaces. I like to talk to my team about all things tech and all things not (we have the World Cup on all day on one of our large HDTVs while we work). I also like to know who around me is available to help if I have any issues with "Blame" code. I love paired programming and reflecting my ideas off others to get a good sense of what the correct course of action should be. When I feel like I know what to do and just need time and focus to complete something important without interruptions, I telecommute. In other words, the best way to work is to have the ability to have it both ways.
xiaoma 12y ago
>"Of course, scientists once thought that humans had 48 chromosomes. That partially hydrogenated vegetable oil was healthy. That egg yolks were bad for you." Scientists still do think egg yolks are bad for you. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021915012005047 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021915012... http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=egg+yolk+consumption http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=egg+yolk+consumpti...

51 points by bratfarrar 12y ago

7402 12y ago

I interviewed with a company and during the "cultural fit" interview with the VP of Engineering, I asked why they used an open-plan office. I mentioned that there seemed to be a lot of concern in the literature and online about developer productivity in such offices. He said he "wasn't familiar" with the discussion, but he didn't think it was a problem. I was offered a contract-to-hire situation, instead of the employment I was seeking, and was explicitly told that the reason was because I seemed to be concerned about the open office. So be careful about bringing up "science" with people who aren't interested in it.

logfromblammo 12y ago
I often wonder why companies offer contract-to-hire positions when so many regular employees are at-will anyway. I am especially puzzled as to why a company would offer it as an alternative to both full-time regular employment and a fixed-term contract. It seems that mixing the two removes all benefit to the worker while reserving all benefits to the company. So why would anyone do it if they had a choice?
- sethhochberg 12y ago
  I could also see this as the company giving the worker an easy out based on the concerns they expressed about the open office - there is no worry about waiting for the "right time" to quit if you're not happy with the new position when the "right time" comes in the form of the end of a contract period before full employment.
TheCraiggers 12y ago
You also have to consider the opposite side of the coin- you should be interviewing them as much as they are you. The VP's responses should have been a red flag to you. Not just because of the fact that he apparently hadn't heard of the debate over open floor plans over the decades, but mostly due to the fact he seemingly punished you for speaking out. Typically, not fun people to work for. And yes I'm fully aware that sometimes you're in a positions of "I need a job and can't be too picky". I hope you were in a better position than that and had the opportunity to turn them down. If not, I'd be curious how it turned out.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
arethuza 12y ago
For someone to be a VP of Engineering and to not even have heard of the debate around office layout and developer productivity is a bit alarming. Presumably you didn't take up their offer?
astalwick 12y ago
Interviews are tough. There's very little time to get a feel for whether a person would be a good fit for an organization - and often, you have to make a judgment: was this comment just off-the-cuff curiosity, or does the fact that the person brought up the open-plan indicate that he or she would have problems with the way that the company works? In interviews, the open-plan office is non-negotiable. It's not like you're going to convince them in an interview to change their minds and build closed offices. I can imagine a lot of interviewers going "well, if he or she brought it up and has actually studied literature on it, then it's probably something that bothers them, and if it's something that bothers them, we might have a problem down the road... maybe it's better to test the water than to offer full employment." To be clear, this is a problem with the interview process, not with you (or the person hiring). There's just not enough time to actually understand a person, so interviewers are forced to make guesses and go with their hunches. And because the cost of hiring the wrong person is high, interviewers will often look for any small thing to refuse a hire.
michaelochurch 12y ago
Fit interviews are hard for engineers. Technical interviews are about getting the right answer. Fit interviews are about whether you can tell a convincing lie ("of course I like the working under tight deadlines to changing requirements with minimal support from the business.") It's a tough context switch: from zero-in-on-right-answer to socially-acceptable-bald-faced-lie.
- typicalrunt 12y ago
  I half-agree with you, because there are some companies that use "fit" to determine how much they can use you as a "resource" rather than a human being. Where I disagree is whether one has put themselves in a situation where they are desperate for a position at a company where they have to lie to pass the fit interview stage. I'd rather be honest and lose than lie, win and ultimately impugn my integrity. It is very refreshing when you already have a job and are looking for something new, then you can sit back and take a relaxed approach to finding a good company. Once one is found and you are interviewing with them (and interviewing them, as a previous commenter mentioned), then you can ask all the tough questions. If you don't like what you hear, vote with your feet and walk away. Now, this isn't always the situation people are in, so YMMV but I throw it out there as a piece of advice for anyone interviewing companies.
  - michaelochurch 12y ago
    I fully agree with you... and yet we disagree on a matter about the outside world. My experience is that good companies are about 5%, at least weighted by jobs that are on the market. (There could be more good companies that are small or rarely have to hire.) I might be off and it might be higher, but not by much. They're rare, and they're selective, and they tend to grow slowly. Most people are going to have to swing from one crappy company to another until they find something good. Once you have something legit, you definitely want to hold on to it for a good few years. Also, on a practical note, there are good teams within crappy companies that are still worth working for. I wouldn't advise, say, most large tech companies or investment banks in general, but most of those huge companies have teams that are really good and make it worth taking the job. I'd rather be honest and lose than lie, win and ultimately impugn my integrity. I used to feel this way, but ultimately I'm of more use to the world if I'm occasionally willing to part with honesty. If I see someone in the grocery store who's 400 pounds, shouting "You're obese and if you don't stop eating that crap, you're gonna die!" does no one any favors. It's "honest", but worthlessly so.

Bangladesh1 12y ago

I prefer little superstition with more science

gojomo 12y ago

Maybe we need to re-brand the "open plan" to something else. "Open" is something many tech businesses want to be, especially internally. So an "open" layout helps people be "open" in other desirable ways, right? Well, not really. It's an unfortunate decision-scrambling word-collision. It deserve a name that's still descriptive, but of a loud, crowded place where it's hard to get work done. "Stadium plan"? "Nursery plan"? "Transit hall plan"?

evan_ 12y ago
Awful Plan? Noisy Office Plan? Distract-o-matic?
hga 12y ago
How about boiler room? Has a lot of negative connotations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_room_(business) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_room_(business)
wmeredith 12y ago
Exposed office plan. Cheap office plan. I really like Cheap Office plan actually. For all the ra-ra Kumbayah BS around open office plans, the fact that they are cheaper in the short run is why Cheap Office PLans (tm) are popular with management.
- gojomo 12y ago
  Hmm. Unfortunately 'cheap' also has some positive connotations in business – and it doesn't necessarily imply productivity-damaging. "It's both 'cheap' and 'open'? Sign us up!" But breaking down 'cheap' into more-explicit descriptions of missing-amenities could work. The "infantry barracks plan". The "shantytown plan". The "disaster shelter plan". The "resettlement camp plan". The "soup kitchen plan".
scotty79 12y ago
We just call our largest openspace the Chinese Sweatshop. Even managers use this name.

nsxwolf 12y ago

2014 is the year of the war on open plan offices. Some people enjoy working in them, you know. Not everyone is interested in saying "how high" every time some grad student's study says "jump".

greenyoda 12y ago
Peopleware was published in 1987. This body of research is not something that suddenly sprang up in 2014.
- nsxwolf 12y ago
  So are people not allowed to prefer open office layouts? They're not allowed to discern what works for them, because there couldn't possibly be any variables that make the results of some study irrelevant to their unique situation? Edit: It would appear the answer is "no", no one is to be allowed make that decision. HN hates open plans more than they hate sexism.
  - sheepmullet 12y ago
    So meet us "private office folks" half way and have enough private offices and open space for everyone. That way if you want to work in the open office section you can but the rest of us aren't forced into low productivity and constant low level anxiety simply because you enjoy it.
    - nsxwolf 12y ago
      That sounds like a reasonable compromise, but I'll need to see some studies before trying it.

cliffcrosland 12y ago

On the other hand, studies also show that "radical collocation" can increase software development productivity. This study from the University of Michigan claims that productivity was doubled when developers worked together in specially designed "war rooms" that allowed for both spontaneous meetings and moments of solitude: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/220879336_How_does_radical_collocation_help_a_team_succeed/file/72e7e5242450ed5e28.pdf http://www.researchgate.net/publication/220879336_How_does_r... This quote summarizes the results well: "Although the teammates were not looking forward to working in close quarters, over time they realized the benefits of having people at hand, both for coordination, problem solving and learning. They adapted to the distractions of radical collocation, both by removing themselves to nearby hotelling areas when they needed privacy, and by zoning out, made possible because of the distance between people in the larger rooms." It feels productive to enter a flow-like state for several hours debugging a problem, but it's probably more productive if a teammate notices and provides the solution in minutes. Nevertheless, stretches of uninterrupted focus are often essential.

astalwick 12y ago
I think that's one thing that gets missed in these discussions: software development is different from, say, accounting or administration or whatever. I get huge value out of being right beside the people that can answer the questions I have, and I know that they get value being near me. Putting walls between people and enforcing no-interruption work inhibits communication and makes it much easier to get blocked. At our office, I actively encourage every new hire to interrupt me and ask a question when they get stuck. (I actually get kind of annoyed when they don't). Lots of people, especially more junior devs, will sit down at a problem and really get lost for a day trying to figure it all out themselves. I'd way rather be interrupted for a 15 minute explanation of some bit of code than have them lose a day.
- pyre 12y ago
  > I get huge value out of being right beside the people that can answer the questions I have As someone who -- in my workplace -- is more often than not on the receiving end of questions or calls for help, I find it extremely distracting. There have been entire days where I wasn't able to focus on my own work because everyone else had questions to answer, or bugs that they needed help working through. I can't fault them for asking for help, but I definitely get frustrated at the situation, because sometimes at the end of the day I end up feeling like I haven't accomplished anything.

facepalm 12y ago

I suppose open plan has some advantages, like it is more hip (makes for great "we are a family" pictures), and the "team building" might make people less likely to leave their jobs. Just guessing - in any case there might be effects that offset the lower productivity. Otoh I was floored to read today that Amazon apparently has lots of dogs in their offices because it is supposedly good for the atmosphere, lower stress levels and whatnot. I heard Google has lots of office dogs, too. I hope this is not a case of pseudoscientific superstition, because for me office dogs would be an absolute deal breaker. If most offices start adding dogs because of some shaky research results I'll be in trouble :-(

saryant 12y ago
My company is co-located with another company and they encourage dogs in the office. My question has always been: what if you want to hire someone with a dog allergy? Worse: what if the person isn't currently local and there aren't any dogs in the office the day they happen to come in but relocate only to find they can't possibly work in that office?
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Work remotely.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  I was always kind of amazed about companies that do this. I'd love to bring my dog to the office, but when does it become not ok to cause physical harm to my co-workers?
- existencebox 12y ago
  While I was at google, I had (and have) a minor pet dander allergy. There were _many_ dogs regularly in the office, and perhaps I'm being overly paranoid/judgemental of the culture, but mentioning your own discomfort would have been read very negatively against you by not only the dog owners but by all the people who do buy in to that it is some part of the culture. Whether you read that as a feature or a frustration, it comes down to that it simply becomes another line item that potential candidates may be judging you on, and you may never know about it. (it's certainly something I keep an eye out for nowadays.)

michaelochurch 12y ago

OP is a generally good post. Two minor comments. Open plan has the advantages of being familiar, allowing more people to fit into the same space, and being more egalitarian. I.e., since offices are viewed as status symbols, providing them to developers and not to other groups could have a significant negative impact on morale among non-developers. Open-plan seems egalitarian, but it's not. It's the opposite. If you're a manager and your boss is on another floor, you don't have to worry about what's on your screen, how often you go to the bathroom, and people coming up behind you (only interns will do that) when you're obviously not receptive. It's subordinates who end up feeling like caged animals. When you work in an open-plan office, power relationships are shoved in your face 8 hours per day. If you're the rare sadistic middle manager who enjoys watching people squirm, you can do "the Boss Walk" all day and enjoy it. Everyone else (even decent managers) is miserable. If I were a manager, I wouldn't want this: I don't want people to feel threatened and anxious (or a need to change what's on their screen) every time I walk by their desk on the way to take a piss. That the engineers at your company are more productive, or more in tune with the needs of the business because of the constant natural interaction with their coworkers. I worked for an R&D think-tank during a summer internship. Everyone had an office, but at 3:00 there was "tea" and people got together for snacks and board games for an hour. They naturally ended up having this kind of conversation. There are better ways to achieve this. Open-plan offices may populate the social graph, but they flood it with antagonistic edges. What the fuck good is that? None.

greenyoda 12y ago
"I worked for an R&D think-tank during a summer internship. Everyone had an office, but at 3:00 there was "tea" and people got together for snacks..." That's also the custom in many academic departments.

jamieb 12y ago

Here's another quote: "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." My experience, anecdotal as it is, is that an open space per team is the most effective. This being science, when has the truth ever been precisely one end of the spectrum or the other? I'm naturally skeptical of pundits, advocating science, who point out that developers with their own office perform better than developer who share an open space with the call center and then claim that this demonstrates that private offices are the best solution. The key quote from the article is "quieter and more private". Maybe in the days when The Architect wrote a design doc and The Engineers went into their offices for six months, then a private office was a great way to get to the "Oh fuck this thing will never work" moment faster. In contrast most teams I work with collaborate at the feature level: engineers work on the same feature, implementing different pieces together, before moving on to the next feature. We have other teams where individual developers take a feature and go off and work on it for a few days. The "individuals" are "faster" claiming work is complete, but the "teams" are faster at producing work that is accepted. I should also add that while the team environment works for most engineers, we have some that absolutely require a private space, and we try to accommodate them. Individuals work differently and when we find someone good we try to make the environment work for them. YMMV.

wmeredith 12y ago
The simple answer is that these office plans are cheaper. It's a common business pitfall. The cheaper short term solution wins in spite of long term health productivity and culture advantages.
- notahacker 12y ago
  That might be true in some cases but there's an entire industry built around renting open-plan workspaces to solo founders and freelancers who freely choose to spend an extra $5000 per year and an hour's commute time each day because they feel an "office environment" surrounded by other busy professionals focuses their mind better than the serene quiet of their bedside desk. Many of them are developers.
gojomo 12y ago

skizm 12y ago

I work in an open office environment and I spend a lot of my day positioning myself so that I'm not in direct line of sight with anyone else's eyes. I hate that I can't ponder to myself without risk of accidentally making eye contact with someone. What makes it worse is that if I sit in an upright (comfortable and ergonomic) position I am staring directly at someone. I hate it. As a result my posture and productivity noticeably decline as the day goes on.

Havoc 12y ago
Interesting. Never even considered the eye contact thing. Ours is open plan but you're always looking at a partition or out the window. That makes it a bit more bearable.
ScottBurson 12y ago
Yeah, if the cube walls are low enough that you can see over them -- or if there are no cube walls -- it's just a disaster. I was in a place like that once and hated it. Eventually I found a spot where I was facing a wall; that wasn't so bad.

hershel 12y ago

Recently i've been interested in buying a noise cancelling headphones. There's the new bose quietcomfort 20i, which are claimed at least by some reviewers to almost cancel talking sound. Assuming they work well, since they are controlled using software, it might open the way to a more "programmable" noise environment. For example you could set them to hear only the team members you want at any given time, thus giving you the best of both worlds.

ScottBurson 12y ago
I haven't tried that model, but in my experience and from what I've heard, noise cancelling headphones don't work that well on voices. They mostly cancel low frequencies, below the vocal range. In-ear monitors, that seal the ear canal like earplugs, work much better.
- hershel 12y ago
  I know. They are supposed to be unique in that regard according to pcmag.

Havoc 12y ago

You get used to it - plus unavoidable in some cases (travelling staff plus office with "hotchair" open office seating for those not travelling at the moment). I find that as long as I'm allowed to use earphones I can block things out sufficiently.

varelse 12y ago

My litmus test for an open office fanboy manager is whether he too works in the open office. Usually not in my experience. Funny that...

frisco 12y ago

I was really sympathetic to the distractions caused by an open plan office. I saw the statistics that people get sick more often. I knew it would be annoying to have it potentially be really loud (or have everyone need to be quiet to keep it not loud). My company's new office is going to be open plan, though. Why? Because an office costs about $15k to build. We're already spending six figures on construction (ha ha biotech) and there was just no economically reasonable way around an open plan office. I think the real reason many offices are open plan now is simply that it's much, much cheaper. The rest are kind of just-so stories, for or against. Interior designers will come up with these justifications when prompted but really I think it's that the people who actually get to make the decisions look at the general contractor estimates and say, "okay open plan it is."

mabbo 12y ago
Let's assume my office employs 100 people, at around $100,000 per year each. If a $15k office would make us 10% more efficient, then it would pay for itself in 18 months. Open plan offices are penny-wise and pound-foolish.
- frisco 12y ago
  That's a $1.5M investment up front. Maybe it will make you 10% more efficient, but I have to look at all of the different things I could spend $1.5M on. Hopefully there's something in there for a growing company with an expected IRR of more than 10% over 18 months. In parallel, how many months of runway do you have? I'm guessing it's not 18, much less the 36+ you'd want to really see those benefits pay off even if it were the most efficient use of the capital.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Yet iF you want to save time then the only critical resource is your employees. 10% is an extremely low estimate of the disruption open-plan offices engender. In some cases they can completely disrupt some employees, resulting in 0 or negative return.
  - 12y ago

BigChiefSmokem 12y ago

I prefer open spaces. I like to talk to my team about all things tech and all things not (we have the World Cup on all day on one of our large HDTVs while we work). I also like to know who around me is available to help if I have any issues with "Blame" code. I love paired programming and reflecting my ideas off others to get a good sense of what the correct course of action should be. When I feel like I know what to do and just need time and focus to complete something important without interruptions, I telecommute. In other words, the best way to work is to have the ability to have it both ways.

xiaoma 12y ago

>"Of course, scientists once thought that humans had 48 chromosomes. That partially hydrogenated vegetable oil was healthy. That egg yolks were bad for you." Scientists still do think egg yolks are bad for you. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021915012005047 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021915012... http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=egg+yolk+consumption http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=egg+yolk+consumpti...