8 ms·

Open office plans seem really polarizing on HN, but it surprises me how often people defend them here (or even evangelize them). For software development, it se

• ColinCochrane 12y ago
  That's an interesting point. It reminds me of something Joel Spolsky wrote: Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away 15 minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff and Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal-fattening farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he asks Jeff. Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to save Mutt 15 seconds)." (From http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html)
  • vacri 12y ago
    Conversely, I've been able to save days of employee time by hearing a conversation between two colleagues that had a faulty assumption on our infrastructure setup.
    • waterlesscloud 12y ago
      But does a plus that happens once or twice a year outweigh minuses that happen multiple times per day?
      • VLM 12y ago
        And would the plus have even been necessary if the environment were not highly distracting? The best way to fix a bug is to prevent it from happening.
        • lgas 12y ago
          There are also other solutions to this problem, such as encouraging discussions like this to take place on something like HipChat. Now all the discussions are archived and searchable and even the people that are home sick that day have the chance to overhear something important, not just the guy that happened to be walking by. And while yes, some discussions will still take place outside of the chat rooms, if this is your default way of working then there should be enough discussion of anything critical that everything makes it's way to chat eventually. Once everyone's comfortable working this way you can encourage a lot more working from home (or working from wherever in the world you want to be, if your employees aren't all married with kids yet), etc. And that will save you even more on office space.
    • frostmatthew 12y ago
      This type of "chance encounter" is a common rebuttal but instead of planning your office layout on the hope of occasionally catching a mis-communication maybe it would be better to improve how things are communicated so these "faulty assumptions" don't happen (and/or are caught sooner...independent of luck/chance).
• oldmanjay 12y ago
  Perhaps you can explain something to me that I have found mysterious for years - how does one develop the mindset where they cannot conceive that their opinions on things are not universal? Three separate times in your screed you insinuate that people who like what you do not are not thinking. It's incredibly arrogant.
  • georgemcbay 12y ago
    I'm not the OP, but I'm aligned with the OP in being against open offices. I'm also very cognizant of the fact that I don't have a single opinion that is universal. But opinions aside if we look at actual studies (at least among the research I've seen, some of which is referenced in this article) far more often than not they point to open offices being an overall negative for knowledge workers.
  • bcoates 12y ago
    Productivity an objective fact about the world, not something where people can agree to disagree about their equally valid outlooks.
• Yizahi 12y ago
  Also as a related but possibly incorrect observation - it seems that there is usually more table space per employee in cubicle layouts than in open-space. Whenever I see open-space office pictures there are long rows of tables and each worker has a laptop, maybe one monitor and small place for notes and stuff. And right next starts another similar workplace. In 4-person cubicle I (and all the the others in the office) have place for 2-3 or 4 monitors, laptop in dock, heaps of wires, analyzers, stacks of device parts, normal keyboards and mice, plants and other stuff and have free space left.
• serve_yay 12y ago
  I have had both and been working in software about 10 years. I don't know if I would say open offices are an unalloyed good, but I would say that people tend to focus on the negatives without honestly considering the drawbacks of the alternatives they'd prefer. Further, the time when I did have my own office was when I got interrupted the most. My boss would come in all the time and talk to me about whatever, a lot of times not even work-related stuff. Now I work in a place where people will only ever try to interrupt you via Slack, and if you tell them you're busy they will go away. So I think there is a cultural aspect as well, if your company accepts people bothering you whenever, I don't honestly believe an office will put a stop to that.
• michaelochurch 12y ago
  For software development, it seems like something that has no upside at all (aside from saving money on office space), and tons of downsides. Commercial real estate is about $3/SF (per month) in San Francisco (Class A) and $4/SF in Manhattan. Open plan offices save about 75-100 SF per employee (more, if you're looking to be sadistic and impractical, but at this point, the productivity loss is obvious.) So the employer is saving, at absolute most, $5000 per employee per year. It's not worth it. I bring this up because I just really truly don't get the occasional open office boosterism here. My current theory is that most of it comes from people who are still in the honeymoon phase of their career (like, the first few years after college when everything about the workplace still has some novelty to it). That's basically what it is. The open-plan layout is reminiscent of college and the all-nighters in the computer lab. But work is not college. A bad grade on an assignment is much more fixable than getting fired. The stakes are higher, and that's why a certain brand of professionalism (or, more bluntly, divorcing oneself from behaviors that are acceptable for 18- to 21-year-olds) is necessary. I say this because it seems like many/most of the people I talk to in person who like the open office idea have either literally never had a private office, or are relatively fresh out of college and get a job at Google (or a startup, or wherever), and they're still so excited about everything that even the things that are hassles (like open office plans?) seem like they're brimming with novelty. Well, private offices make nerf-gun battles harder. And you hear less juicy gossip. And you don't have an audience for self-important rants about Lena Dunham. It might get so "boring" (in the sense of a lack of distractions) that you might be tempted to actually work to pass the time.
  • fixedd 12y ago
    At a former job I worked from home where I had peace and quiet pretty much all day. I only really worked 4-5 hours in a day, but I was significantly (in the order-of-magnitude realm) more productive than my in-office teammates. On the occasion I'd go into the office for a few days my productivity level would similarly plummet, even though I was working for more hours each day. I can only attribute this to the incessant interruptions of the open-office plan.
    • jdbernard 12y ago
• Symmetry 12y ago
  I've been happy with open plan offices when the seats are far enough apart. If you open someone's door you are certainly going to interrupt them, but looking at someone's face often lets you know if this is a good time to ask them a question or not. My favorite work environment (where I stayed for 1.5 years) was open plan. My least favorite work environment (2 years) was also open plan where people were packed in.
  • varelse 12y ago
    And that's the insidious rot in every open floor plan I've experienced. Once you've put everyone in an open space, step two is to keep packing them in tighter and tighter until they start quitting because that's the only way to continue improving shareholder value(tm). Anecdotally, the managers always seem to manage to keep their private offices. Funny that...
• georgemcbay 12y ago
  My experience mirrors yours, I've yet to meet (IRL) someone who has actually experienced private (or at least semi-private two-to-an-office) offices who prefers open offices. All of the boosters I've run into have only known open offices. Having said that, I'm sure someone will chime in here who has experienced both and prefers open offices, but I have to believe such people are in the vast minority based on my completely anecdotal data Having done both (as I'm old enough to have started working when open offices were pretty rare), it is kind of ridiculous how much less productive (and less happy) I am in an open office and how difficult it is to find a workplace that isn't open office these days.
• untog 12y ago
  Do you have a team chatroom? Are you ever distracted by messages you receive in it? For me the two are very similar. I work in an open plan office and enjoy being able to talk to my co-workers - often someone will pull their chair up to someone else's to pair program for a while, or just discuss the issue they're having. If you don't want interruptions, you put headphones on. It works well.
  • fixedd 12y ago
    Maybe it's because I've been working "alone" in the quiet for so long, but I can not force myself to not stop and listen when other people are talking. I can, however not switch windows/tabs over to the chat client until I'm ready.
  • ebiester 12y ago
    Have you figured out "eye headphones" to remove the visual noise as well?
    • stefan_kendall3 12y ago
      If you find something let me know. I literally want blinders to complement my QC-25s. It's the only way to get things done.
    • hugs 12y ago
      Check out the "Laptop Compubody Sock" by Becky Stern. http://www.instructables.com/id/Laptop-Compubody-Sock/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Laptop-Compubody-Sock/
  • frostmatthew 12y ago
    > If you don't want interruptions, you put headphones on. It works well. It works well for some people. While you may be able to code perfectly well with music blasting in your ears (loud enough to drown out nearby conversations) that is not the case for everyone. I wear headphones at work but the volume (at which I can actually concentrate on my work) is only sufficient to drown out/filter random background noises (typing/mouse-clicks, HVAC, people walking by, etc) - if there are people having a conversation a few feet away my productivity plummets.
• jobu 12y ago
  > My current theory is that most of it comes from people who are still in the honeymoon phase of their career (like, the first few years after college when everything about the workplace still has some novelty to it). Or are younger people able to handle more distractions? I don't mean that in the sense of "those kids these days", but as a more general developmental thing. In college I remember doing homework while watching TV with the sound off so I could listen to music and chat with friends on the computer. Over the last few years at work it seems much more difficult to refocus after distractions from coworkers or text messages from friends and family. Has anyone else noticed this? The reason I ask is it's difficult to tell if this is an aging brain issue, or a side-effect of the projects being so much bigger and more complex than anything in highschool, college, and even early-career.
  • dasil003 12y ago
    I don't know because I'm old enough that when I was fresh out of college there were no smart phones, and the only people on chat were tech nerds and college students, so the background distraction was just much much lower. But what I will say is that distraction is bad for everyone, and being objective about ones performance is very difficult. A lot of people claim to be good at multi-tasking because that is what a lot of work environments demand, and so people learn to cope, but on the other side of the coin, many of these supposed multi-taskers have never sat down and thought deeply with enough focus to really solve a difficult problem the right away. Software development is one field where the rigor forces you to learn this or eventually be exposed as incompetent, but I believe it is useful in any professional work that involves solving problems. Great solutions do not come from raw intelligence, they come from intelligence applied over time. If you can't focus and construct a persistent mental model then you might have a 200 IQ but still not be able to design a good system.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• ryandrake 12y ago
  I'm apparently one of the few unashamed Open Office boosters here, so let me see if I can help. I've worked as a developer for about 12+ years, then as a product/project manager for about 4 years. As a developer, I worked about half that time in soft-walled cubicles of various heights and another half in open office environments. I spent a year or so in a shared walled office. As a project guy, I spent about 3 years in an open office and 1 in a shared walled office (2people). With my dev lead and project management hats on, open offices wins hands down. Whenever I want I can stand up and do a quick and dirty eyeball scan of the office and gauge who's deep in thought and shouldn't be disturbed, who maybe needs help with something, who's picking their nose on Facebook. Project goals, milestones, etc. can be on prominent display on the walls, so everyone can easily reference them--no more "oh, I didn't know we were releasing next Monday" excuses. Whiteboards all over the place so people can get up and do a quick informal collaboration, then visually reference it later from their desks. Everyone sees everyone all day, bringing an extra bit of team unity, nobody gets to hidey-hole in their office, pretending to not be part of a team. Daily stand-up meeting is quick to set up and painless, it takes a minute for everyone to just get up and walk over to the scrum corner, as opposed to having to lose 10 minutes every time waiting for everyone to decide to come out of their hiding holes. If I do have a quick question, I can tell if they're in the middle of something concentrating by just glancing over their way rather than having to knock on their office door (guaranteeing that I disturb them). With my developer hat on, it's a bit of a toss up. I can appreciate the benefit of having a quiet, closed-in space to go deep on a problem. And open offices, while they can be quiet if you set basic etiquette rules, will never match the volume level in closed offices. But, in an open office, there's zero friction if someone needs to come chat about the code, collaborate, bounce ideas off me, and vice versa. I've never been offended when someone stopped by to discuss a problem they're having, or ask to review their approach or code. Sure, it gets you out of "the zone" a bit, but you just get back into it. The whole business about having to waste an hour to get back into the zone after an interruption is, frankly, total BS. One thing I'll say though, is the cubicles are the worst of both worlds: You have the noise level of an open office combined with the high-friction human interaction, collaboration that's limited to online tools, and hidey-hole mentality. I'd take either option over a cubicle any day. I think my ideal office environment is open offices for everyone, but with small private workrooms here and there that people can reserve in 2hr blocks or so, where they can go away into if they really need that occasional alone time to get the job done.
• srj 12y ago
  I've worked in software development post-college for 7 years. The first 3 I had my own office and for the last 4 I've been in an open space. I really think this is a matter of personal taste to a large degree, but for my part I prefer the ability to ask questions readily and listen in on what my colleagues are working on. I think the point you're trying to make about an 'interruption deficit' is off the mark. Someone new to a team is going to ask many more questions than a veteran and it's certainly damaging to their ability to learn if asking questions is a chore or unwelcome socially. Email and messaging apps are alternatives of course, and are often the right choice when the question doesn't merit interruption. But sometimes a quick answer is needed to progress at all and being able to turn around and say something makes things faster. In open office spaces people are still able to work from a laptop somewhere else, put on headphones, or work from home. And having your own office doesn't mean you aren't interrupted. People would tend to come by for long periods of time when I had an office, seemingly because they were starved of social interaction. A caveat to all this is that for a brief period I was in an overly crowded open office arrangement and that was very much detrimental to my work.
• gcb0 12y ago
  if you actually read the papers they mention (and others) you will notice that people that defend it are often: 1) mislead by the initial sense of acomplishment and better communication. it is like working in a war room. you get tons of stuff done, but it is crazy, stressful and you have lots of people working on a little thing that demands attention. your return for all those people is actually less, but you need a war room in some situations. open office work the same way. you get a initial difficult thing done. but at the usual high cost of having lots of people working on it and ignoring/half-assing others. 2) people like micro-management. there is no denying. open office plans and war rooms are perfect for the micro manager boss.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• aetherson 12y ago
  I've worked as a developer for 15 years. The first ten or so were in cubes, the last five or so have been in open office plans. I'd say that I ask other people questions about five times per day and get asked questions about seven times per day, though that's fluctuated a lot. When I'm coming up to speed on a project, language, or company, I obviously ask more questions. When I was the lead engineer at my previous company, I got asked more questions. Personally, I find the open plan office energizing. I have a social development style anyway (I'm most productive when pairing, and I find that talking through a problem often gives me insight into it), and I don't very often find that I want or need to dive deep into something for 4+ hours at a time -- I'm more likely to make progress at a large project by chipping away at it in half hour to two hours in increments, with breaks that involve a focus change. While I have met some developers who are very productive in the "go into a room, close the door, emerge a half day or a day later with code" style, the majority of developers I've met who rail against interruptions and distractions seem to be incapable of producing good work even when they are given their wish and not interrupted.
• nowarninglabel 12y ago
  Just to throw another data point at ya: 1) 9 years 2) 1 year in shared office with only boss, 4 years in shared office with 4 other people, 4 years in a fully open office 3) In person I never interrupt others, but I will IM others about 3 times a day. As far as folks interrupting me, I spend 25% of my time managing folks, so I expect (and get) lots of interruptions, but people know to IM me first. Headphones help as a signaling mechanism for this, as well as blocking out noise. I loved my office that was just me and my boss as it was quiet and also had a great view. I also love my current open office because it's a great space and facilitates easy conversation, plus my standing desk is next to a window. It's no honeymoon period, been a developer for 9 years and in the workforce for 15 years. Also, I absolutely hated the shared office with 4 people. Just absolutely terrible to be in cubicles in a small space with none of the benefits of a private office or open office. And people constantly opening the door to go in and out until we finally everyone was just propping their doors open, so it was semi-open anyways. Edit to note: I work for a great non-profit and it helps to be surrounded by people I love and who I know are working hard to make a positive change for the world. If I were working for a corporation I'm not sure if I would feel the same about an open office plan or not.
• nostrademons 12y ago
  I'll share my answers as well. Durations are rounded to the nearest month and may not add up to 100% because of rounding; also, most of my jobs have some combination of situations, since I tend to move around a lot internally. 1.) I've been a developer (in some context, this also includes "startup founder", "tech lead", and about a year total of internships) for about 10.5 years. 2.) Private office for 1 year total (across 2 companies). Shared office for 1 year (2 companies). Worked from home for a total of 2.2 years (2 companies). Private cube for 1.25 years (3 companies). Shared cube for 1.5 years. Open-floorplan for 20 months (Google), and war-room (same team in a large, 5-10 person office) for 2.5 years. 3.) It's varied throughout my career. As a startup founder, I neither interrupt people nor get interrupted, since I'm working from home and am the only developer on the project. When I was a tech lead, I did literally nothing but get interrupted; incoming requests outnumbered outgoing by roughly 10:1. As an individual dev, typically I'd be interrupted about 2-3 times for every time I asked someone else a question (my preference is usually much more toward figuring out something for myself than asking questions...probably moreso than it should be). I am mildly in favor of open-plan offices, and here's why: most of the interesting stuff is happening outside of your head. I'll grant that open-plan offices are a huge distraction, they pull you out of flow, and as a result, you will write a lot less code than you would in a private office. However, here's where I say something controversial: code is a liability, not an asset. The goal of a developer is to solve problems, and you will solve more problems if you know what the pressing problems are than if you just put your head down and code up what your boss tells you to. It really sucks to slave away at a masterpiece of technology for a year or two, and then find that nobody uses it because you weren't solving the right problem to begin with. Here's another statistic: in those 10.5 years of experience, I've implemented 30 projects (as in, working code delivered to boss/cofounder/teammates/market). Of those, 10 were successes, where I define "success" as either "used by > 1 million people", "at least 6 internal teams use it", or "made money for employer". The successes included 2 shared offices, 3 warrooms, 2 shared cubes, 2 open floorplans, and 1 private cube. The failures included 5 private cubes, 2 private office, 2 shared office, 7 open floorplans, and 4 works from home. (Interestingly, this seems to reproduce what I've heard in the literature of "same team in an office" > "private office" > "unrelated teams in an open floorplan".) I'm curious, do folks in favor of private offices consider a project to be successful when it is delivered according to spec to your boss? Or is it successful when it makes it to market and makes a profit for the company? If it's the former, that would explain the differing views right there: it's quite possible for private offices to help you efficiently produce the wrong product.
• bbarn 12y ago
  Polarizing is a good way to put it. For such a generally free thinking crowd, there's a lot of flat out hate for the open office here. Personally, I've seen it work well (where I'm at now), and I've seen it work badly (two jobs ago). I've also seen the same in separate offices. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I don't really find that age or experience tends to matter that much as to where it works or doesn't. It's more about the work you're doing, and the company you're doing it for. Some dev projects - those heavy on the back end especially, or requiring lots of sheer coding manpower over critical thinking, I think they definitely don't gain anything from the open office. The same could be said as well for the truly complex coding work out there - which, honestly, is less and less a reality. If you're wiring up pages that do some middle tier logic or dealing with heavily interactive sites, which I think is what many of us do day to day, rather than the super intense, super difficult coding work that we all wish we did, I think the collaborative benefits can outweigh the risk of interruption. If you're actually doing that big brain work, or really working on something that needs complete concentration, then yes, being able to zone in on it interruption free is definitely a good thing. Like every other process, or tool, it depends on the context and the problem you're solving. And like most problems, you need the right person to use that tool or process. So does it work for every scenario, and every person? No, definitely not. The same can be said for a closed office as well. Bottom line - right people, right place, for the right task at hand.
• lakis 12y ago
  I work as a software engineer for the last 22 years. ~4 of them as engineer manager, the rest as an individual contributor. I hate offices. I worked in Microsoft in an office and it was hell. I was alone. It was not a team. It was me. It was sometimes better to email somebody then walk around to talk to them. I love open office plans. Yes, it's disruptive. But if I want to tell somebody something, I lift my head and talk. Everybody can hear what is going on and they can tune in if they are interested. For people that have distraction problems, usually headphones work quite well. Of course, I assume that people talk quietly and not scream their head off. BTW, I am usually the one that give advice and information instead the other way around.