7 ms·

I guess I'm in a real minority here, but I'm pretty happy with open-office. Some qualifiers: - The team has a good culture of respecting each other, and we're

I guess I'm in a real minority here, but I'm pretty happy with open-office. Some qualifiers: - The team has a good culture of respecting each other, and we're busy enough not to want to banter too much outside of certain times (e.g., lunch, when we see it already going on, etc.). - I've got good headphones hooked to a 24-bit-DAC'd USB amp. I don't hear anyone unless I'm trying to. - My screen's big enough where visual noise isn't an issue. On the upside: - Asking someone a quick question is really, really quick. Downsides of my prior each-their-own-office experiences: - I sometimes felt a bit lonely. - I certainly felt disconnected from the rest of my team. - I was disconnected from the rest of my team - there were always important conversations I would've liked to been part of. [edited for getting the bullets formatted]

koof 12y ago
If you are listening to headphones loud enough to block out other conversations, you are almost certainly going to damage your hearing.
- lallysingh 12y ago
  Etymotics. They're also part ear-plug. I run them at very low levels.
- aqme28 12y ago
  Not if the headphones are good at noise isolation, which most are.
- blumkvist 12y ago
  I wonder how people are so confident when they spew bullshit.
skriticos2 12y ago
Asking someone a quick question while they are in the middle of something is a good way to break their focus. It takes a lot of effort to "get into the zone", so you will not only lower the productivity of the person you "ask a quick question", but you'll also make him frustrated. He may even get a head-ache. How can you live with yourself? This mostly applies to jobs which involve a higher degree of complexity, like programming.. but as you are on HN, I assume you meant something IT related.
- trose 12y ago
  I reject this assertion that people get ripped "out of the zone". What are you doing that is so complex that you can't jump right back into it? I've met plenty of people that like to act like they're some super elite programmer that is juggling complex class structures and debugging them inside their head. In my experience so far, those people are full of shit and make overly complex spaghetti code. Idk though, maybe this is different between web development and something like game engine development.
  - warfangle 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_deficit_hyperactivity_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_deficit_hyperactivity... Adults have it; amphetamines help but don't cure it; the ADA requires reasonable accommodations for it.
  - dangerlibrary 12y ago
    It comes down to how quickly you are working. If under time pressure, efficiently completing straightforward sets of tasks - even writing Rails or Java boilerplate in all the right places - is complicated enough that I don't want to be knocked out of a flow state. Of course I can do those things without intense focus, but I can't get them done in under an hour.
  - swift 12y ago
    The phenomenon of being "in the zone" is considered real by most psychologists, as far as I'm aware. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29 FWIW while I think interruptions are a real problem, I have certainly encountered some people who I think demand more quiet than is really needed. But some of this may just come down to differences in how tolerant people are of noise, or perhaps how stressed they are.
    - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
      It seems there may also be a link between creativity and sensitivity to ambient noise. http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/03/creative-genius-driven-by-distraction.html http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/03/creat...
jared314 12y ago
> My screen's big enough where visual noise isn't an issue. > I've got good headphones You may not have issues with open-office plans, but you did find a way to add the walls back.
- trose 12y ago
  sure, but they're more like screens that can be looked around or removed.
rm445 12y ago
The middle ground is small group offices, and many (most?) people are fairly happy there. Actual giant open-plan offices can be distracting beyond what's tolerable.
- stephengillie 12y ago
  Our open office of ~30 developers and engineers is fairly happy, once we got managers out of their offices and stuck the noisy client services/salespeople into the offices.
  - ardacinar 12y ago
    You're probably one of the outliers, then.
- marmot1101 12y ago
  I thrive in the small group office. You get the flow of ideas that are trying to be achieved with the open plan, but without as much of the noise. And it's easier to call out one or two people for being difficult to work with than it is many. I hated a private cube(big effin cube with high walls and all) because I felt like I was in solitary. Sometimes I want to bullshit about what I did over the weekend, or discuss a philisophical question about what I'm doing. Seems weird to pop into someone else's private space to do so.
  - sukilot 12y ago
    So you prefer to shoot he breeze with 100 people at once (80 of whom are trying to work at that moment) than with one other person who wants a break?
pakled_engineer 12y ago
Everybody with headphones on never notices how loud they are eating/drinking/coughing/murmuring/adjusting things however. Seems extremely petty but work beside somebody long enough like this and you end up joining the headphone club yourself to block it out. Where I work there's a group chat for low priority questions you can check whenever you're not totally immersed in something. It's also anonymous chat so nobody is embarrassed to ask "stupid" questions.
- yaddayadda 12y ago
  > It's also anonymous chat so nobody is embarrassed to ask "stupid" questions. That's awesome!
  - nevir 12y ago
    Wow, yeah, that's really smart! (Though, I guess, with a small enough team it probably isn't all that anonymous)
girvo 12y ago
I agree with all your points. I don't mind open-plan either, but my noise cancelling headphones and three 27" monitors do well to block everything out when I need it. It's quite good, because I can join into collaboration on the fly if I want to, but ignore everything otherwise.
rnovak 12y ago
- The team has a good culture of respecting.... The problems I've personally found with the open office setting is that there are a lot of people out there who don't respect the quiet and peace of others. For instance, in my office, there is someone here who will literally speak to their team members despite having an ongoing LYNC chat open with them, in a voice that you can hear from a football field away (opposed to a whisper/quiet/ "inside voice"). I think respect and consideration could go a LONG way to making open office plans tolerable for most.
dmitrygr 12y ago
> "Asking someone a quick question is really, really quick." Ever wonder why that someone then complains about distractions and lack of productivity? This is why
- fsk 12y ago
  I'm wondering if open offices are good for junior people (who need to ask for help more often) but bad for senior people (who get interrupted more often). For me, it's almost so bad that I don't bother trying to get in the zone/flow, because I know I'm going to be interrupted.
- lallysingh 12y ago
  A quick glance on their screen and facial expression, and you can tell if they're busy. If they're busy or if I'm not sure, I'll just ping them on chat. When they're ready, they look up, and we talk. Quite fast.
pauleastlund 12y ago
Yeah, I agree with this. I worked at a big software company with big open office spaces. I really didn't experience the constant frustration with interruptions -- I didn't feel it much and I didn't hear other people grumble about it too much, either. Everyone understood that asking questions makes the whole group more efficient, and everyone appreciated getting a chance to help their teammates. Lots of people are commenting to your post and others about the inefficiency of frequently interrupted work, but I actually think the efficiency argument runs the other way. let's say I'm working on some problem and I run into some really obscure issue coming up from a system I've never dealt with. I might kill 10 minutes of your productivity by asking you, but I could also easily kill 30 minutes digging into stack traces on various servers I've never heard of before looking for an answer you know off the top of your head. Also, usually in a fairly close-knit team most people know who is going to be irritated by the interruption and who isn't, and they go to the folks who are friendly about being interrupted. I get these theoretical concerns about open office spaces but in real life I just don't encounter them that often.
lewisl9029 12y ago
Personally, I loved working in an open office at my last job (a software consultancy). Knowledge sharing by osmosis was a very real phenomenon there. I can't count the number of times I discovered interesting new technologies or was enlightened on some architecture tradeoffs thanks to a discussion taking place around me. I realize that the whole experience around open-offices is very YMMV but I feel it can have many tangible and valuable benefits for the right kinds of people (i.e. those who are not too easily distracted and/or can easily context-switch back and forth).
sukilot 12y ago
You are conflating a small "team room" with a 50+ person "open office"

koof 12y ago

If you are listening to headphones loud enough to block out other conversations, you are almost certainly going to damage your hearing.

lallysingh 12y ago
Etymotics. They're also part ear-plug. I run them at very low levels.
aqme28 12y ago
Not if the headphones are good at noise isolation, which most are.
blumkvist 12y ago
I wonder how people are so confident when they spew bullshit.

skriticos2 12y ago

Asking someone a quick question while they are in the middle of something is a good way to break their focus. It takes a lot of effort to "get into the zone", so you will not only lower the productivity of the person you "ask a quick question", but you'll also make him frustrated. He may even get a head-ache. How can you live with yourself? This mostly applies to jobs which involve a higher degree of complexity, like programming.. but as you are on HN, I assume you meant something IT related.

trose 12y ago
I reject this assertion that people get ripped "out of the zone". What are you doing that is so complex that you can't jump right back into it? I've met plenty of people that like to act like they're some super elite programmer that is juggling complex class structures and debugging them inside their head. In my experience so far, those people are full of shit and make overly complex spaghetti code. Idk though, maybe this is different between web development and something like game engine development.
- warfangle 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_deficit_hyperactivity_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_deficit_hyperactivity... Adults have it; amphetamines help but don't cure it; the ADA requires reasonable accommodations for it.
- dangerlibrary 12y ago
  It comes down to how quickly you are working. If under time pressure, efficiently completing straightforward sets of tasks - even writing Rails or Java boilerplate in all the right places - is complicated enough that I don't want to be knocked out of a flow state. Of course I can do those things without intense focus, but I can't get them done in under an hour.
- swift 12y ago
  The phenomenon of being "in the zone" is considered real by most psychologists, as far as I'm aware. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29 FWIW while I think interruptions are a real problem, I have certainly encountered some people who I think demand more quiet than is really needed. But some of this may just come down to differences in how tolerant people are of noise, or perhaps how stressed they are.
  - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
    It seems there may also be a link between creativity and sensitivity to ambient noise. http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/03/creative-genius-driven-by-distraction.html http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/03/creat...

jared314 12y ago

> My screen's big enough where visual noise isn't an issue. > I've got good headphones You may not have issues with open-office plans, but you did find a way to add the walls back.

trose 12y ago
sure, but they're more like screens that can be looked around or removed.

rm445 12y ago

The middle ground is small group offices, and many (most?) people are fairly happy there. Actual giant open-plan offices can be distracting beyond what's tolerable.

stephengillie 12y ago
Our open office of ~30 developers and engineers is fairly happy, once we got managers out of their offices and stuck the noisy client services/salespeople into the offices.
- ardacinar 12y ago
  You're probably one of the outliers, then.
marmot1101 12y ago
I thrive in the small group office. You get the flow of ideas that are trying to be achieved with the open plan, but without as much of the noise. And it's easier to call out one or two people for being difficult to work with than it is many. I hated a private cube(big effin cube with high walls and all) because I felt like I was in solitary. Sometimes I want to bullshit about what I did over the weekend, or discuss a philisophical question about what I'm doing. Seems weird to pop into someone else's private space to do so.
- sukilot 12y ago
  So you prefer to shoot he breeze with 100 people at once (80 of whom are trying to work at that moment) than with one other person who wants a break?

pakled_engineer 12y ago

Everybody with headphones on never notices how loud they are eating/drinking/coughing/murmuring/adjusting things however. Seems extremely petty but work beside somebody long enough like this and you end up joining the headphone club yourself to block it out. Where I work there's a group chat for low priority questions you can check whenever you're not totally immersed in something. It's also anonymous chat so nobody is embarrassed to ask "stupid" questions.

yaddayadda 12y ago
> It's also anonymous chat so nobody is embarrassed to ask "stupid" questions. That's awesome!
- nevir 12y ago
  Wow, yeah, that's really smart! (Though, I guess, with a small enough team it probably isn't all that anonymous)

girvo 12y ago

I agree with all your points. I don't mind open-plan either, but my noise cancelling headphones and three 27" monitors do well to block everything out when I need it. It's quite good, because I can join into collaboration on the fly if I want to, but ignore everything otherwise.

rnovak 12y ago

- The team has a good culture of respecting.... The problems I've personally found with the open office setting is that there are a lot of people out there who don't respect the quiet and peace of others. For instance, in my office, there is someone here who will literally speak to their team members despite having an ongoing LYNC chat open with them, in a voice that you can hear from a football field away (opposed to a whisper/quiet/ "inside voice"). I think respect and consideration could go a LONG way to making open office plans tolerable for most.

dmitrygr 12y ago

> "Asking someone a quick question is really, really quick." Ever wonder why that someone then complains about distractions and lack of productivity? This is why

fsk 12y ago
I'm wondering if open offices are good for junior people (who need to ask for help more often) but bad for senior people (who get interrupted more often). For me, it's almost so bad that I don't bother trying to get in the zone/flow, because I know I'm going to be interrupted.
lallysingh 12y ago
A quick glance on their screen and facial expression, and you can tell if they're busy. If they're busy or if I'm not sure, I'll just ping them on chat. When they're ready, they look up, and we talk. Quite fast.

pauleastlund 12y ago

Yeah, I agree with this. I worked at a big software company with big open office spaces. I really didn't experience the constant frustration with interruptions -- I didn't feel it much and I didn't hear other people grumble about it too much, either. Everyone understood that asking questions makes the whole group more efficient, and everyone appreciated getting a chance to help their teammates. Lots of people are commenting to your post and others about the inefficiency of frequently interrupted work, but I actually think the efficiency argument runs the other way. let's say I'm working on some problem and I run into some really obscure issue coming up from a system I've never dealt with. I might kill 10 minutes of your productivity by asking you, but I could also easily kill 30 minutes digging into stack traces on various servers I've never heard of before looking for an answer you know off the top of your head. Also, usually in a fairly close-knit team most people know who is going to be irritated by the interruption and who isn't, and they go to the folks who are friendly about being interrupted. I get these theoretical concerns about open office spaces but in real life I just don't encounter them that often.

lewisl9029 12y ago

Personally, I loved working in an open office at my last job (a software consultancy). Knowledge sharing by osmosis was a very real phenomenon there. I can't count the number of times I discovered interesting new technologies or was enlightened on some architecture tradeoffs thanks to a discussion taking place around me. I realize that the whole experience around open-offices is very YMMV but I feel it can have many tangible and valuable benefits for the right kinds of people (i.e. those who are not too easily distracted and/or can easily context-switch back and forth).

sukilot 12y ago

You are conflating a small "team room" with a 50+ person "open office"