11 ms·

Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace

165 points by ghosh 12y ago

nextos 12y ago
Things are getting so insane that even some top universities have open-plan offices. Am I supposed to prove theorems or to write Lisp in such an environment? Seriously?
- kyllo 12y ago
  I saw an anecdote on a different thread here yesterday saying that assistant professors are basically becoming managers. Their job is to write grant proposals and have meetings with other faculty and staff all day, and navigate the political systems of academia in order to secure approvals and funding, while their graduate students do all the actual research work. I don't doubt that at all, and to me it would explain why university offices are trending toward open-plan. Managers tend to like open-plan.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Is that a new development? I thought open-plan study halls were common in universities and libraries. http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/5914733818/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/5914733818/
  - Symbiote 12y ago
    But in a library silence is expected; not conference calls, chat and collaboration.
    - nextos 12y ago
      Exactly. A library doesn't count as open plan. Silence policies are very strict. Open plan offices on the other hand...
    - icebraining 12y ago
      Fair enough; I work in an open plan office, but conference calls and meetings are held in separate rooms.
dgreensp 12y ago
Open floorplans are worse than cubicles. Not worse than four people crammed into a sweaty two-person cubicle, but worse than 1-2 people in a cubicle. Significantly, obviously worse. We've gone from half-walls to no walls.
- a_c_s 12y ago
  Personally, I find cubicles to be the worst of both worlds: too spread out for much collaboration with neighbors, but open enough go have nearly all the noise and distraction of an open office.
  - michaelochurch 12y ago
    Cubicles are horrible because they also don't deal with the worst aspect of these office spaces, which is visibility from behind. They typically have the worker facing a wall, not backed by a wall facing out. Cubes are to claustrophobia as open-plan spaces are to agoraphobia. That said, comparing open-plan offices to cubicles is like comparing horse shit to pig shit. They're both low-status office arrangements and it's amazing to me that programmers tolerate them. I actually don't think that open-plan offices are used because they're cheap or because they're effective (which they're clearly not). They market well. So much of the current "tech industry" is about marketing and the open-plan frat-house environment looks busy and vibrant. It just also happens to make for a terrible place to work.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    I find working from home to be the best out of all three choices. I'd never go back to working in an office, cubicles, open office space, whatever. If your business structure is so terrible that you can't manage a remote team, you're probably not that great at managing folks onsite either.
    - fsloth 12y ago
      I've learned that for the kind of stuff I do face to face communication next to a whiteboard is the best place to discuss complex technical topics. Also, co-location does create serendipitous instances of sharing information. It's not a matter of management. It's about does the organization need the maximum communication bandwidth between individuals possibly from separate teams or not. If we take for granted that silos are bad, then that leads to the notion that cross-segment communications are good, and the easiest way to have those is co-locate everyone. There is something lost in organizational potential by not co-locating if the culture is open and encourages individual initiative. Working remote does have it's values as well, I grant that. I feel I'm much able better to concentrate at home. But I recognize the value face to face communication has as well.
manigandham 12y ago
Absolutely agree, especially for think-intensive things like software development where "flow" is so important. Closed offices are marginally more expensive but the productivity improvements massively outweigh the investment. The lack of privacy is just uncomfortable. It always feels like you're being watched, even if you're not.
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  If the purpose of open-plan offices is to intimidate people into working, they backfire. I fuck around way more in an open-plan office than when I have privacy. There are many reasons for it. The first is that I have a fixed amount of "goofing off" (which is just giving my mind some rest) that I'll do per day. In a private office, it might take 20 minutes and I'm done and back to work. In an open-plan office where I have to intersperse it with the appearance of working and it takes longer (and the goofing off is less mentally restful, so I do more). The second is that, contrary to what a lot of people say, I find that 15- to 30-minute slivers of time (between other engagements) can be very productive, but not in an open-plan office. So the meeting multiplier is more severe. If lunch is 12:00 then a meeting from 10 to 11 kills the rest of the morning, whereas with private offices you'd still have 45-55 minutes of useful time. The third is that I've always felt like if getting work done efficiently were important, I'd have a legitimate working environment to get it done in. Being visible from behind suggests low status, which suggests that the work isn't that important. So if I'm intellectually engaged or the work is helping my career, I'll do it very well... but if neither is true, the surrounding physical environment supports me in not caring. Fourth, of course, is the anxiety caused by the aggravating and unreliable work environment. It would be bad to deal with a constantly noisy environment, but that would at least be predictable. Open-offices add to the evil by failing you at unpredictable times. Someone might tap you on the shoulder. Broken. Someone might pair with the person sitting next to you. Broken. The person behind you might get a phone call. Broken.
  - manigandham 12y ago
    Yep. Open-plan benefits are few and far between and to me just feels like forced teamwork and socialization. It certainly depends on the industry/team but most of the time, people don't need to chat with each other all day and instead need to just get shit done. I remember getting interrupted by jokes or background chatter or just physical movement from people walking around but the worst is how easy it becomes for people to ask minor questions that were far better suited for email/chat. Lots of communication can be async but this setup actively encourages interruptions so we can all "collaborate".
gfodor 12y ago
counterpoint: https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-teams https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-te... edit: In summary, the more pairwise interactions between people your team has, the more likely they are to be a productive, successful team. Open office plans lend themselves to more serendipitous interactions between people. My 2c, is that open office vs closed office is simply a matter of tradeoffs. It seems easier to 'opt-out' of distractions (by putting on headphones) than 'opt-in' to interaction (by say wandering the halls talking to random people in their cubes.) People who complain about open offices probably are complaining about a culture where an open office results in distraction, not the office itself. If you have a culture where people can be sitting next to you but can signal they shouldn't be interrupted, or there is ample quiet space for private work to be done, you can have the best of both worlds.
- pilgrim689 12y ago
  I'm a big proponent of ~3 people offices as opposed to an open floor plan. There are many ways to "opt-in" to interactions: - lunch/dinner is done in a dining area - I invite people out for a coffee break - I can go hangout in a common area - I can just walk in to someone's office just like I would walk to someone's desk in an open floor plan - I bump into people while walking down the hall, grabbing a snack from the kitchen, etc. There's just so many ways I interact with people at the office, that making sure I'm surrounded by people I can't look away from or mute all the time is completely unnecessary. And I don't want to have to blast music into my ears all day and wear horse blinkers just to get some continuous hours of distraction-free creative thinking done.
- HarryHirsch 12y ago
  Open office plans lend themselves to more serendipitous interactions between people. Open offices with the inevitable Loud Howard from Dilbert lead themselves to serendipitous interactions? Do they? Throw in Angry Dude, who goes through a Model M keyboard per month as well. You get interactions all right, but it's not the productive kind. The serendipitous interations happen in coffee kitchens, a fact that the best architects already know.
- vonmoltke 12y ago
LoSboccacc 12y ago
google is also aiming at recreating the frat environment for their 20-something workforce. apples and oranges. I'd lean more on private space for every team working on a single deliverable, but that's just my preference.
- rewqfdsa 12y ago
  "Deliverable" is one of words that provokes a "nope" reaction from me. I am not a resource that produces deliverables. I am a human being.
  - LoSboccacc 12y ago
    you're right, but at some point one needs to describe what a team do - I'm not a native English speaker, and I use what I learned. I accept alternatives, especially if they don't involve a ten word paraphrase of that.
    - rewqfdsa 12y ago
      How about "work on the same project"?
      - LoSboccacc 12y ago
        you can have multiple smaller teams working on different aspect of the same project, I've seen project with 50+ devs and I wouldn't put the full project on a single room. but I see your point, it works for small projects, I'll figure out something on those lines.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Why can't you be a human that produces deliverables? Seems like a weird hung up to have.
    - Symbiote 12y ago
      We have an ongoing joke about issuing 20p fines for using stupid phrases like, "going forward, I'm leveraging the stakeholders for additional resource to in-flight the next key deliverable". That one's worth at least £1.20. What's wrong with "I'll ask for another developer to work on this project"? This started with the observation that what's presently called "Human Resources" used to be called "Personnel" and before that simply the "Staff Department". A progression of euphemistic bullshit words. Letters and parcels are "deliverable". How about "task", or "feature", or "report", or just "thing".
freshyill 12y ago
I got a lot more done than I expected when I worked in an open office. Not as much as I would have liked, but it wasn't a complete wash. That said, for productivity, nothing beats being able to close my door and put on headphones in my current office.
eosrei 12y ago
Open offices are an immense waste. Guess much work I get done when the five people near me have visitors resulting in three separate concurrent discussions? I already have Bose noise cancelling headphones. They are amazing, but cannot be expected to stop that level of interruption. I have a strong work ethic. The productivity loss actually makes me sad. It's a waste of my employer's money, the customer's money, and everyone's time. Just let me be productive. Please.
iMark 12y ago
I've never worked in anything other than open plan offices. Some are definitely better than others. The worst are offices without breakaway spaces, which cause impromptu meetings to happen at desks, which can be immensely distracting. On the other hand, I have found that open plan offices can be a boon when working in small teams. One arrangement I remember quite fondly had groups of 4 desks in an X configuration with L shaped desks. We were working 4 to a team and it was a friendly and cooperative environment. The L shaped desks were also significantly roomier than I've encountered elsewhere. I should note that my experience is in London, where I suspect there's a greater premium on floorspace than in many other places.
Ironlink 12y ago
Previous discussion, 4 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065
fillskills 12y ago
Probably what's more important than the open office plan is the underlying idea : collaboration. Collaboration between various siloed parts of the organization. You can achieve that without creating open offices . When you force an open office where u actually were trying to encourage collaboration it may not always have the effect you were going for
jkot 12y ago
I was big promoter ofs smaller offices, but it is also wrong. Way forward is location independence and remote teams.
stevesearer 12y ago
The pendulum seems to swing on this issue every 20-25 years on this issue so it makes a lot of sense we are seeing so many articles about how the open plan is terrible now. Wait 20 years and there will have been a big transformation in the workplace with more people working privately - likely with the addition of more work-from-home/remote arrangements. But there will be a push again at that point with new articles written about how people are typing away without any personal contact and how 'insert early adopter' is the devil and how they are crushing the souls of their workers. Smart workplace design appropriately accommodates the needs of workers for the types of work they do as well as the needs of the worker as a human. Total cop-out answer, but it really comes down to balance between communication and privacy. I think workplace design needs to keep in mind a variety of factors, and they cannot always be optimized totally for the company itself or totally for the individual employees... which would be an impossible notion anyway. We rave about how fast companies can scale up from small startups to have hundreds or thousands of employees, but I'd love to see that work in the Bay Area with all staff getting private offices. Quickly build more highrises? Not likely. Not all employees want - or need - private offices in the first place. And even if there would be a benefit to providing them, maybe the company doesn't feel like optimizing individual productivity is the most important thing in the business. All that said, there is likely a decent overlap in the Hacker News Venn Diagram of people who loathe open plans and people who start companies. I've wondered why we don't hear about more new companies who have adopted a privacy-first office strategy. Surely it would give them an edge in hiring those staff who desire such workplaces.
- seanp2k2 12y ago
  Office space in the Bay Area is expensive, so is construction (even indoors). When you can put employees into 6x6 plots in an open space, everything else looks egregiously expensive.
sgt101 12y ago
Yeah, but it's cheap.
dillon 12y ago
I think this has been a discussion going on for a long time now. What I believe to be true is it really depends on the person. If you're someone who is self-conscious then yes you'll feel like everyone is judging you all the time. If you have the ability to stay focused on your work without being around colleagues then you should be allowed to work from home. I've worked in open offices, offices with high partitions and from home. When I work from home what's stopping me from opening up news or playing video games? When I work in a partition and I need to talk to another engineer face-to-face I can't just glance over to see if they are available. Open offices lets me be around my colleagues and inspires me to focus on my work and get access to help promptly when I need it. I don't give a damn if they see me in a snuggie or sleeping under my desk. I believe the real problem is the lack of choices. You should be able to choose the kind of environment you want to work in and not feel like you're forced in a situation you don't like. I think it's wrong to say "open offices are destroying the workplace".
- stevesearer 12y ago
  Agreed. I like the concept of Activity Based Working. http://space.ucsf.edu/activity-based-workplace http://space.ucsf.edu/activity-based-workplace
  - amelius 12y ago
    I think I'd prefer to be in the focus room almost all day :)
- fsloth 12y ago
  "Open offices lets me be around my colleagues and inspires me to focus on my work and get access to help promptly when I need it. " Actually any co-location scheme allows this, walls or no walls. It's a matter of culture, not of vertical dividers. But I concur, it's a bit over the top to say that "everyone" hates open offices since clearly some people don't. Personally, to me it feels like a quarter suffers, of which there is a vocal minority, half don't give a damn and quarter thinks it's ok. Personally I think open office is the worst to happen to the modern workplace. I like being around my team but I don't enjoy being consciously aware of the doings of the four other teams who share the space I'm in. Team rooms. Those are golden. Better yet, rooms of 2-3 persons.
jkire 12y ago
It all depends on the culture and dynamics of the workplace I think. If everyone keeps their voices low (I don't mean whispering, just not booming), and are concious that when people have their headphones and have a look of deep concentration they shouldn't be disturbed, then it really is not that bad. Then again, I'm the sort of person that prefers to work with a bit of background noise rather than in deathly silence where each tiny sounds causes me to jump. It also sounds like the writer works in a place that doesn't really need much inter-person communication on an hour by hour basis. As a software develop I find being able to quickly ask those 5 second questions invaluable, questions I wouldn't necessarily have bothered to ask if I had get up or send an email. > Each day, my associates and I are seated at a table staring at each other, having an ongoing 12-person conversation from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. It takes a certain amount of self control to avoid this; just as it takes self control not to spend your entire day browsing HN...
dba7dba 12y ago
I have said it before here, but the best office layout I saw was at Autodesk HQ in mid 1990's. EVERY single engineer (or was it every employee) got an enclosed small office. One office per employee. Full height glass wall between the hallway and the office. Big enough for a desk, chair, 2 chairs for visitors. Oh and one more thing. Maybe because I work in IT but what is it with installing AC related machinery ABOVE/NEAR the server room (like ceiling)? The machinery makes SO much noise in the office.
- WalterGR 12y ago
  That was bog standard at the Microsoft campus in Redmond as of when I left in 2006. Microsoft is/was well-known for giving employees their own office.
copsarebastards 12y ago
The Washington Post got it wrong. One-size-fits-all rules applied to teams containing a variety of people are destroying the workplace.
Ironlink 12y ago
I currently work in an office made of small-ish rooms, each with 5 to 10 persons in an open floor plan. The people sharing a room are in the same team. I don't think I could go from this to having a private office, the cold and quiet loneliness would be depressing. I love the banter that comes up while waiting for a test suite to complete, and the ability to quickly do some pair programming or have an impromptu team meeting. At any time, we can simply turn around to face each other instead of the desk.
ianstallings 12y ago
It's about noise and distractions. Programming takes concentration and in an open office layout all you see is people trying their best to not be distracted. Why not let good architecture solve that problem instead? Let the experts, architects, do their job and stop second-guessing them.
michaelochurch 12y ago
Open plan offices are another bad idea dishonestly sold to tech workers. They aren't more "collaborative". The low-level anxiety and misanthropy that they foster is being informally called "open plan syndrome" by psychiatrists in the Bay Area. People collaborate less in open-plan offices and, while some think their purpose is to intimidate people into working, people actually fuck around way more. I actually don't think the purpose of open-plan offices is intimidation, nor that they are cheap. It's marketing. "Startup" is now a brand. At high levels, it's an excuse for bad behavior. ("We can't afford the severance cost or publicity of a layoff, so we'll fire 10 percent for phony 'performance' reasons. They knew this was a risk when they joined a startup.") For the rest, it's a useful ruse that allows companies that are even more cutthroat (just as young gangsters are typically more violent than older criminals who recognize that bloodshed is bad for business) to somehow present themselves as Not Corporate. And let's be honest: open-plan offices look sleek, busy, and vibrant. They're photogenic. They're also awful places to work, just as Times Square is (to New Yorkers, anyway) an undesirable place to live. Open-plan offices also raise interesting questions about legality and discrimination. There's a solid argument that they discriminate unfairly against older workers, people with disabilities, and women. I certainly wouldn't go into anywhere typical tech office if I were pregnant; I can handle the open-plan stress with enough meds, but can the baby? The nagging but chronic stress of being visible from behind can't be good for the fetus. So what should the legal status of open-plan offices be? Obviously, they shouldn't be banned outright. Trading floors need them, and companies under 20 people should be allowed to use whatever office space makes sense for them. Ultimately, though, while I think open-plan work environments should be legal, I think the burden of proof out to lie with the employer, and "we're a tech company" is not sufficient. I also think that companies using open-plan offices should be taxed to pay for a public disability fund in order to compensate for the health costs that companies can currently get away with externalizing.
Osiris 12y ago
When I worked at an office with cubicles, it wasn't any less noisy than the open office I work in. You could hear everyone talking and it was impossible to tell who was in the office and who wasn't. It seems to me that a better compromise would be to have small private rooms in addition to open collaborative spaces. Cubicles are the worst of both.
ffn 12y ago
This seriously depends on the person. I personally hate having to commute to an office and would much prefer to work remotely from home, but I know plenty of folks who enjoy the social interaction at an open (or closed) work space. Besides, open, close, or remote work place is much more of a personal preference (like preference for different IDEs) than some inherently right or wrong decision a company can make (like decreeing no employee is allowed to become pregnant). So the smart company should leave the choice of whether to work at the open office, in a closed cubicle, or remotely at home up to the employee so that the details of how an employee maximizes his productivity is left to him, instead of handed down from up-top based upon statistical studies. After all, if you as an employer is going to trust your employees to be able to properly optimize your dataflows, innovate new databases techniques, not "drop table users", etc., why not also trust your employees to know what work environment works best for him?
cthalupa 12y ago
I love open offices, but then, everyone on my floor is part of the same team. Yes, I get a lot more walk up traffic from other team members than I did when I had a private office, but I don't see that as a bad thing. If people are looking for my help, they probably need it, and I'm happy to give it. Some people are just naturally louder, and yeah, it can be a little distracting. It's not without trade offs. But for every time I have to ask someone to quiet down, there's four or five situations where everyone being easily accessible has been a good thing for getting my job done.
dilap 12y ago
I've worked in closed-off private offices, and I'm working in an open office right, and there are definitely plusses and minuses to both, IMO. Especially if you're all working on the same product, there is something really nice feeling about being physically around everybody; it creates a sense togetherness. The noise sucks though, especially for tasks that require full concentration. Headphones and/or earplugs can help a bit, but it's no substitute for a truly tranquil environment. Working from home can help there, but then that's the other extreme of connectedness. I've pondered a bit if you could have a "no loud conversations" policy (think: like a library), with a bunch of rooms off to the side that could be used for conversations. Seems like it might give a bit of best of both worlds. Edit: Also, the open office is made worse by the current stylistic trend of no carpet and shiny hard surfaces everywhere. It looks cool, but it amplifies noise like crazy.
vegabook 12y ago
I can't help thinking this whole trend started with the industry which epitomises the values that our working society holds, that is finance, and the trading floor. I worked on one of these for 15 years - it was fantastic for getting deals done and increasing teamwork when sales, trading, and research all need to work together. Indeed it was when research was moved off the trading floor in around 2005 that I decided to leave, because in that industry, not being "in the thick of it" a huge disadvantage. I think a lot of the open plan idea comes from a misguided view that if trading floors can make so many millions, then they must be extended everywhere. Now that I have gone back to my coding roots, but still work on a "trading floor" (open plan tech office), I have found myself having to enforce my will to my partners to inform them that I will be working only half day in the office, because my productivity skyrockets as soon as I get home in front of my computer, with nothing to distract me. Luckily, I have the luxury of being able to do this. I believe my productivity in the open plan office is easily less than 50% of what it is at home. I do not believe that coding is a collaborative activity beyond periodic (twice a week max?) discussions to ensure teamwork. It's an intensely private activity, as is all work which demands high concentration, including writing.
PennyWhistle 12y ago
Here is a "revolutionary" idea: Ask your employees what kind of setup they like and accommodate! Some people like private offices and some people don't - I don't understand why companies look at this in absolute terms.
krschultz 12y ago
The ultimate irony of open plan offices is that if you are considerate of your neighbors, you can't actually collaborate in the open part of the office. Every single time I want to talk to someone for an in depth period of time, we almost immediately move to a conference room so we don't disturb the people around us. If everyone had offices, I would walk into their office and we would not need to move after starting our discussion because we wouldn't be bothering anyone. I don't see any advantages to an open plan office with more than 1 team in it (i.e. max 10 people) other than cost and startup-chic aesthetics.
- mwfunk 12y ago
  People characterize DRM as something that doesn't deter criminals but punishes honest consumers. I've often thought of open office plans in the same way. Unless someone's a jerk, they're not going to want to talk to anyone about anything in the actual open office area, which is the whole point of "increasing collaboration". They're going to whisper (which impedes communication) or grab whoever they want to talk to and go someplace where they're not disturbing other people. On the other hand, the jerks are not going to think twice about it, and they'll just walk over to someone's desk and start talking at them, and not always with an indoor voice, much less actually trying to keep it down. Jerks 1, non-jerks 0. Another very, very, VERY common thing I see on places like HN is people talking about how much they love being able to walk over and ask their coworkers questions all the time with open offices. Meaningfully, I don't see them complaining about other people asking them questions all the time due their increased visibility. This always makes it sounds like it just enables people who always ask someone else before trying to figure things out on their own. Jerks 2, non-jerks 0. On the other hand, open offices are really good at making engineers deeply unhappy and unproductive, while allowing some director or VP to look like a hero for saving a bunch of money while "increasing collaboration". Jerks 3, non-jerks 0.
- jschwartzi 12y ago
  It's distressing to me that I have the strong urge to move to a private area to talk to a coworker about their day because the guy next door immediately jumps in and has Opinions about Stuff, so the conversation immediately becomes about him.
steven2012 12y ago
I'm in my 40's and I thought going from cubes to open office was going to be hard. I couldn't have been more wrong: I love it. I guess I don't need headphones to be productive, and I don't care if someone sees what I'm doing on my screen, because I'm already at the office > 10 hrs a day, plus at home, so they can judge all they want if I have Facebook up in one window. I do understand that some people need solitude to do there work, which means that if a company goes open-office, they need to also have some spaces allocated for private rooms. My wife is in finance, and I stopped by her work place the other day, and you could hear a pin drop. It was like a library filled with people, I couldn't believe I used to work in an environment like this. The only drawback that I agree with the author is the vulnerability to disease. We have suffered throught his as well, and I'm not sure what to do about it besides wearing masks all the time. If a more dangerous disease did flare up in our area, I would probably work from home, and I think the employer should offer this as an alternative, especially if there is something particularly dangerous going around.
father_of_two 12y ago
I started my career working at a team room, which was exclusive for the technical people and had no more than 7 people at its peak. Then progressively went from open-office to open-office. And man, how I hate those. I can't get focus, which forces me to bring the deep-thinking work home, proceeding on a two-shift day, similar to what Paul Graham describes on the "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" essay (http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html). Even simple things like sending a page-length email took more time than needed, and were high frustrating. Yet, recently I've been working on a company which only have team rooms. I'm on a 3 persons' room, but the rooms vary from 1 to 6 persons. Furthermore they have lots of perforated plates on ceilings and rooms are (mostly) sound isolated from adjacent ones by a foam-like thing they stuff between the division separations. When I started here I just had that -wow- moment. I couldn't believe I was actually doing software design, reading documentation and others immerse thinking tasks during normal work time. No need to carry stuff home no more. Did I mentioned already how I hate open-offices? :)
j-c-m 12y ago
Open offices are primarily designed to save money, and they save a ton of money when compared with private offices combined with collaborative working spaces (fancy word for conference rooms/areas). It is very easy to quantify this cost difference, and this cost savings is immediate. It is much more difficult to quantify productivity impact vs costs, and this would not be realized clearly and immediately. So 10/10 times now companies pick the option that costs 2x-3x less, be dammed with trying to figure out its impact on productivity.
- w4 12y ago
  Bingo. This is what these discussions so often miss: open office floorpans translate to immediate savings on the company's balance sheets. They permit companies to stuff more workers into fewer square feet, and those square feet are how commercial real estate is priced. All of the stated benefits of open office floor plans (culture, collaboration, communication, etc) are subordinate to, or justification for, those savings.
lotsofmangos 12y ago
Both is probably the answer here. There is a range of characteristics in people and ideally you need to accommodate them, so if you want to get the best out of your employees you need a range of work environments. The ideal office building would probably be fairly fractal.
simonsarris 12y ago
I imagine when google interviews candidates they don't do it in the open office, they probably go into a (quiet) conference room. That's at least a little telling, isn't it? Suggestion: Request to be interviewed in the actual seat/location that you're going to be working in and see what they say.
- lrem 12y ago
  They'll probably tell you there are security considerations against that. The next time you interview with Google, if you get a building tour, pay attention to the "no photography past these point" and similar notices...
yason 12y ago
Give me a dark cave where I can munch my thoughts in private without seeing or listening to anybody else unless I choose to do so, and you've got yourself a winner employee here. Office layout is certainly an area where one size does not fit all.
father_of_two 12y ago
Another give-away against open-offices is that people who decides them usually reserve a single office for thy selves. A real story: a given company moved to new, but existing, installations. The original facilities were organized in small rooms. The boss ordered a full redesign of the interior into a single large open space, with one exception: a closed office for himself. This ancient philosophy of "what's good for others doesn't suit me" never convinced me. :)
mariojv 12y ago
I totally agree with this piece. Some may prefer an open office space, and that's fine for them - but they can probably still work well in a private office. For those who are noise-sensitive, though, it can be a huge distraction. I've started working from home a lot more just because of how loud it is in the office. A lot of our developers and admins have voices that ... carry, to say the least. It's lucky that I can work from home and not be too distracted, but for some people with kids/stay-at-home partner, it may be difficult. It would be great if employers at least gave people the option to have an office.
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ryan90 12y ago
<insert beating dead horse gif here>
ryan90 12y ago
The biggest bias in the discussion that occurs on HN, is that most people commenting are engineers. Programming is inherently heads down, whereas a large number of professional jobs are not. If you want to run a sales team, open office is almost mandatory. The energy you hear from others closing deals causes you to become energized, creating a compounding effect. An ops/customer success team needs to be open office so that agents can quickly exchange off the cuff conversations with each other in real time. The point is, there are different office layouts that work for different types of people & workers.

165 points by ghosh 12y ago

Things are getting so insane that even some top universities have open-plan offices. Am I supposed to prove theorems or to write Lisp in such an environment? Seriously?

kyllo 12y ago
I saw an anecdote on a different thread here yesterday saying that assistant professors are basically becoming managers. Their job is to write grant proposals and have meetings with other faculty and staff all day, and navigate the political systems of academia in order to secure approvals and funding, while their graduate students do all the actual research work. I don't doubt that at all, and to me it would explain why university offices are trending toward open-plan. Managers tend to like open-plan.
icebraining 12y ago
Is that a new development? I thought open-plan study halls were common in universities and libraries. http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/5914733818/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/5914733818/
- Symbiote 12y ago
  But in a library silence is expected; not conference calls, chat and collaboration.
  - nextos 12y ago
    Exactly. A library doesn't count as open plan. Silence policies are very strict. Open plan offices on the other hand...
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Fair enough; I work in an open plan office, but conference calls and meetings are held in separate rooms.

dgreensp 12y ago

Open floorplans are worse than cubicles. Not worse than four people crammed into a sweaty two-person cubicle, but worse than 1-2 people in a cubicle. Significantly, obviously worse. We've gone from half-walls to no walls.

a_c_s 12y ago
Personally, I find cubicles to be the worst of both worlds: too spread out for much collaboration with neighbors, but open enough go have nearly all the noise and distraction of an open office.
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  Cubicles are horrible because they also don't deal with the worst aspect of these office spaces, which is visibility from behind. They typically have the worker facing a wall, not backed by a wall facing out. Cubes are to claustrophobia as open-plan spaces are to agoraphobia. That said, comparing open-plan offices to cubicles is like comparing horse shit to pig shit. They're both low-status office arrangements and it's amazing to me that programmers tolerate them. I actually don't think that open-plan offices are used because they're cheap or because they're effective (which they're clearly not). They market well. So much of the current "tech industry" is about marketing and the open-plan frat-house environment looks busy and vibrant. It just also happens to make for a terrible place to work.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  I find working from home to be the best out of all three choices. I'd never go back to working in an office, cubicles, open office space, whatever. If your business structure is so terrible that you can't manage a remote team, you're probably not that great at managing folks onsite either.
  - fsloth 12y ago
    I've learned that for the kind of stuff I do face to face communication next to a whiteboard is the best place to discuss complex technical topics. Also, co-location does create serendipitous instances of sharing information. It's not a matter of management. It's about does the organization need the maximum communication bandwidth between individuals possibly from separate teams or not. If we take for granted that silos are bad, then that leads to the notion that cross-segment communications are good, and the easiest way to have those is co-locate everyone. There is something lost in organizational potential by not co-locating if the culture is open and encourages individual initiative. Working remote does have it's values as well, I grant that. I feel I'm much able better to concentrate at home. But I recognize the value face to face communication has as well.

manigandham 12y ago

Absolutely agree, especially for think-intensive things like software development where "flow" is so important. Closed offices are marginally more expensive but the productivity improvements massively outweigh the investment. The lack of privacy is just uncomfortable. It always feels like you're being watched, even if you're not.

michaelochurch 12y ago
If the purpose of open-plan offices is to intimidate people into working, they backfire. I fuck around way more in an open-plan office than when I have privacy. There are many reasons for it. The first is that I have a fixed amount of "goofing off" (which is just giving my mind some rest) that I'll do per day. In a private office, it might take 20 minutes and I'm done and back to work. In an open-plan office where I have to intersperse it with the appearance of working and it takes longer (and the goofing off is less mentally restful, so I do more). The second is that, contrary to what a lot of people say, I find that 15- to 30-minute slivers of time (between other engagements) can be very productive, but not in an open-plan office. So the meeting multiplier is more severe. If lunch is 12:00 then a meeting from 10 to 11 kills the rest of the morning, whereas with private offices you'd still have 45-55 minutes of useful time. The third is that I've always felt like if getting work done efficiently were important, I'd have a legitimate working environment to get it done in. Being visible from behind suggests low status, which suggests that the work isn't that important. So if I'm intellectually engaged or the work is helping my career, I'll do it very well... but if neither is true, the surrounding physical environment supports me in not caring. Fourth, of course, is the anxiety caused by the aggravating and unreliable work environment. It would be bad to deal with a constantly noisy environment, but that would at least be predictable. Open-offices add to the evil by failing you at unpredictable times. Someone might tap you on the shoulder. Broken. Someone might pair with the person sitting next to you. Broken. The person behind you might get a phone call. Broken.
- manigandham 12y ago
  Yep. Open-plan benefits are few and far between and to me just feels like forced teamwork and socialization. It certainly depends on the industry/team but most of the time, people don't need to chat with each other all day and instead need to just get shit done. I remember getting interrupted by jokes or background chatter or just physical movement from people walking around but the worst is how easy it becomes for people to ask minor questions that were far better suited for email/chat. Lots of communication can be async but this setup actively encourages interruptions so we can all "collaborate".

gfodor 12y ago

counterpoint: https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-teams https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-te... edit: In summary, the more pairwise interactions between people your team has, the more likely they are to be a productive, successful team. Open office plans lend themselves to more serendipitous interactions between people. My 2c, is that open office vs closed office is simply a matter of tradeoffs. It seems easier to 'opt-out' of distractions (by putting on headphones) than 'opt-in' to interaction (by say wandering the halls talking to random people in their cubes.) People who complain about open offices probably are complaining about a culture where an open office results in distraction, not the office itself. If you have a culture where people can be sitting next to you but can signal they shouldn't be interrupted, or there is ample quiet space for private work to be done, you can have the best of both worlds.

pilgrim689 12y ago
I'm a big proponent of ~3 people offices as opposed to an open floor plan. There are many ways to "opt-in" to interactions: - lunch/dinner is done in a dining area - I invite people out for a coffee break - I can go hangout in a common area - I can just walk in to someone's office just like I would walk to someone's desk in an open floor plan - I bump into people while walking down the hall, grabbing a snack from the kitchen, etc. There's just so many ways I interact with people at the office, that making sure I'm surrounded by people I can't look away from or mute all the time is completely unnecessary. And I don't want to have to blast music into my ears all day and wear horse blinkers just to get some continuous hours of distraction-free creative thinking done.
HarryHirsch 12y ago
Open office plans lend themselves to more serendipitous interactions between people. Open offices with the inevitable Loud Howard from Dilbert lead themselves to serendipitous interactions? Do they? Throw in Angry Dude, who goes through a Model M keyboard per month as well. You get interactions all right, but it's not the productive kind. The serendipitous interations happen in coffee kitchens, a fact that the best architects already know.
vonmoltke 12y ago

LoSboccacc 12y ago

google is also aiming at recreating the frat environment for their 20-something workforce. apples and oranges. I'd lean more on private space for every team working on a single deliverable, but that's just my preference.

rewqfdsa 12y ago
"Deliverable" is one of words that provokes a "nope" reaction from me. I am not a resource that produces deliverables. I am a human being.
- LoSboccacc 12y ago
  you're right, but at some point one needs to describe what a team do - I'm not a native English speaker, and I use what I learned. I accept alternatives, especially if they don't involve a ten word paraphrase of that.
  - rewqfdsa 12y ago
    How about "work on the same project"?
    - LoSboccacc 12y ago
      you can have multiple smaller teams working on different aspect of the same project, I've seen project with 50+ devs and I wouldn't put the full project on a single room. but I see your point, it works for small projects, I'll figure out something on those lines.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Why can't you be a human that produces deliverables? Seems like a weird hung up to have.
  - Symbiote 12y ago
    We have an ongoing joke about issuing 20p fines for using stupid phrases like, "going forward, I'm leveraging the stakeholders for additional resource to in-flight the next key deliverable". That one's worth at least £1.20. What's wrong with "I'll ask for another developer to work on this project"? This started with the observation that what's presently called "Human Resources" used to be called "Personnel" and before that simply the "Staff Department". A progression of euphemistic bullshit words. Letters and parcels are "deliverable". How about "task", or "feature", or "report", or just "thing".

freshyill 12y ago

I got a lot more done than I expected when I worked in an open office. Not as much as I would have liked, but it wasn't a complete wash. That said, for productivity, nothing beats being able to close my door and put on headphones in my current office.

eosrei 12y ago

Open offices are an immense waste. Guess much work I get done when the five people near me have visitors resulting in three separate concurrent discussions? I already have Bose noise cancelling headphones. They are amazing, but cannot be expected to stop that level of interruption. I have a strong work ethic. The productivity loss actually makes me sad. It's a waste of my employer's money, the customer's money, and everyone's time. Just let me be productive. Please.

iMark 12y ago

I've never worked in anything other than open plan offices. Some are definitely better than others. The worst are offices without breakaway spaces, which cause impromptu meetings to happen at desks, which can be immensely distracting. On the other hand, I have found that open plan offices can be a boon when working in small teams. One arrangement I remember quite fondly had groups of 4 desks in an X configuration with L shaped desks. We were working 4 to a team and it was a friendly and cooperative environment. The L shaped desks were also significantly roomier than I've encountered elsewhere. I should note that my experience is in London, where I suspect there's a greater premium on floorspace than in many other places.

Ironlink 12y ago

Previous discussion, 4 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065

fillskills 12y ago

Probably what's more important than the open office plan is the underlying idea : collaboration. Collaboration between various siloed parts of the organization. You can achieve that without creating open offices . When you force an open office where u actually were trying to encourage collaboration it may not always have the effect you were going for

jkot 12y ago

I was big promoter ofs smaller offices, but it is also wrong. Way forward is location independence and remote teams.

stevesearer 12y ago

The pendulum seems to swing on this issue every 20-25 years on this issue so it makes a lot of sense we are seeing so many articles about how the open plan is terrible now. Wait 20 years and there will have been a big transformation in the workplace with more people working privately - likely with the addition of more work-from-home/remote arrangements. But there will be a push again at that point with new articles written about how people are typing away without any personal contact and how 'insert early adopter' is the devil and how they are crushing the souls of their workers. Smart workplace design appropriately accommodates the needs of workers for the types of work they do as well as the needs of the worker as a human. Total cop-out answer, but it really comes down to balance between communication and privacy. I think workplace design needs to keep in mind a variety of factors, and they cannot always be optimized totally for the company itself or totally for the individual employees... which would be an impossible notion anyway. We rave about how fast companies can scale up from small startups to have hundreds or thousands of employees, but I'd love to see that work in the Bay Area with all staff getting private offices. Quickly build more highrises? Not likely. Not all employees want - or need - private offices in the first place. And even if there would be a benefit to providing them, maybe the company doesn't feel like optimizing individual productivity is the most important thing in the business. All that said, there is likely a decent overlap in the Hacker News Venn Diagram of people who loathe open plans and people who start companies. I've wondered why we don't hear about more new companies who have adopted a privacy-first office strategy. Surely it would give them an edge in hiring those staff who desire such workplaces.

seanp2k2 12y ago
Office space in the Bay Area is expensive, so is construction (even indoors). When you can put employees into 6x6 plots in an open space, everything else looks egregiously expensive.

sgt101 12y ago

Yeah, but it's cheap.

dillon 12y ago

I think this has been a discussion going on for a long time now. What I believe to be true is it really depends on the person. If you're someone who is self-conscious then yes you'll feel like everyone is judging you all the time. If you have the ability to stay focused on your work without being around colleagues then you should be allowed to work from home. I've worked in open offices, offices with high partitions and from home. When I work from home what's stopping me from opening up news or playing video games? When I work in a partition and I need to talk to another engineer face-to-face I can't just glance over to see if they are available. Open offices lets me be around my colleagues and inspires me to focus on my work and get access to help promptly when I need it. I don't give a damn if they see me in a snuggie or sleeping under my desk. I believe the real problem is the lack of choices. You should be able to choose the kind of environment you want to work in and not feel like you're forced in a situation you don't like. I think it's wrong to say "open offices are destroying the workplace".

stevesearer 12y ago
Agreed. I like the concept of Activity Based Working. http://space.ucsf.edu/activity-based-workplace http://space.ucsf.edu/activity-based-workplace
- amelius 12y ago
  I think I'd prefer to be in the focus room almost all day :)
fsloth 12y ago
"Open offices lets me be around my colleagues and inspires me to focus on my work and get access to help promptly when I need it. " Actually any co-location scheme allows this, walls or no walls. It's a matter of culture, not of vertical dividers. But I concur, it's a bit over the top to say that "everyone" hates open offices since clearly some people don't. Personally, to me it feels like a quarter suffers, of which there is a vocal minority, half don't give a damn and quarter thinks it's ok. Personally I think open office is the worst to happen to the modern workplace. I like being around my team but I don't enjoy being consciously aware of the doings of the four other teams who share the space I'm in. Team rooms. Those are golden. Better yet, rooms of 2-3 persons.

jkire 12y ago

It all depends on the culture and dynamics of the workplace I think. If everyone keeps their voices low (I don't mean whispering, just not booming), and are concious that when people have their headphones and have a look of deep concentration they shouldn't be disturbed, then it really is not that bad. Then again, I'm the sort of person that prefers to work with a bit of background noise rather than in deathly silence where each tiny sounds causes me to jump. It also sounds like the writer works in a place that doesn't really need much inter-person communication on an hour by hour basis. As a software develop I find being able to quickly ask those 5 second questions invaluable, questions I wouldn't necessarily have bothered to ask if I had get up or send an email. > Each day, my associates and I are seated at a table staring at each other, having an ongoing 12-person conversation from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. It takes a certain amount of self control to avoid this; just as it takes self control not to spend your entire day browsing HN...

dba7dba 12y ago

I have said it before here, but the best office layout I saw was at Autodesk HQ in mid 1990's. EVERY single engineer (or was it every employee) got an enclosed small office. One office per employee. Full height glass wall between the hallway and the office. Big enough for a desk, chair, 2 chairs for visitors. Oh and one more thing. Maybe because I work in IT but what is it with installing AC related machinery ABOVE/NEAR the server room (like ceiling)? The machinery makes SO much noise in the office.

WalterGR 12y ago
That was bog standard at the Microsoft campus in Redmond as of when I left in 2006. Microsoft is/was well-known for giving employees their own office.

copsarebastards 12y ago

The Washington Post got it wrong. One-size-fits-all rules applied to teams containing a variety of people are destroying the workplace.

Ironlink 12y ago

I currently work in an office made of small-ish rooms, each with 5 to 10 persons in an open floor plan. The people sharing a room are in the same team. I don't think I could go from this to having a private office, the cold and quiet loneliness would be depressing. I love the banter that comes up while waiting for a test suite to complete, and the ability to quickly do some pair programming or have an impromptu team meeting. At any time, we can simply turn around to face each other instead of the desk.

ianstallings 12y ago

It's about noise and distractions. Programming takes concentration and in an open office layout all you see is people trying their best to not be distracted. Why not let good architecture solve that problem instead? Let the experts, architects, do their job and stop second-guessing them.

michaelochurch 12y ago

Open plan offices are another bad idea dishonestly sold to tech workers. They aren't more "collaborative". The low-level anxiety and misanthropy that they foster is being informally called "open plan syndrome" by psychiatrists in the Bay Area. People collaborate less in open-plan offices and, while some think their purpose is to intimidate people into working, people actually fuck around way more. I actually don't think the purpose of open-plan offices is intimidation, nor that they are cheap. It's marketing. "Startup" is now a brand. At high levels, it's an excuse for bad behavior. ("We can't afford the severance cost or publicity of a layoff, so we'll fire 10 percent for phony 'performance' reasons. They knew this was a risk when they joined a startup.") For the rest, it's a useful ruse that allows companies that are even more cutthroat (just as young gangsters are typically more violent than older criminals who recognize that bloodshed is bad for business) to somehow present themselves as Not Corporate. And let's be honest: open-plan offices look sleek, busy, and vibrant. They're photogenic. They're also awful places to work, just as Times Square is (to New Yorkers, anyway) an undesirable place to live. Open-plan offices also raise interesting questions about legality and discrimination. There's a solid argument that they discriminate unfairly against older workers, people with disabilities, and women. I certainly wouldn't go into anywhere typical tech office if I were pregnant; I can handle the open-plan stress with enough meds, but can the baby? The nagging but chronic stress of being visible from behind can't be good for the fetus. So what should the legal status of open-plan offices be? Obviously, they shouldn't be banned outright. Trading floors need them, and companies under 20 people should be allowed to use whatever office space makes sense for them. Ultimately, though, while I think open-plan work environments should be legal, I think the burden of proof out to lie with the employer, and "we're a tech company" is not sufficient. I also think that companies using open-plan offices should be taxed to pay for a public disability fund in order to compensate for the health costs that companies can currently get away with externalizing.

Osiris 12y ago

When I worked at an office with cubicles, it wasn't any less noisy than the open office I work in. You could hear everyone talking and it was impossible to tell who was in the office and who wasn't. It seems to me that a better compromise would be to have small private rooms in addition to open collaborative spaces. Cubicles are the worst of both.

ffn 12y ago

This seriously depends on the person. I personally hate having to commute to an office and would much prefer to work remotely from home, but I know plenty of folks who enjoy the social interaction at an open (or closed) work space. Besides, open, close, or remote work place is much more of a personal preference (like preference for different IDEs) than some inherently right or wrong decision a company can make (like decreeing no employee is allowed to become pregnant). So the smart company should leave the choice of whether to work at the open office, in a closed cubicle, or remotely at home up to the employee so that the details of how an employee maximizes his productivity is left to him, instead of handed down from up-top based upon statistical studies. After all, if you as an employer is going to trust your employees to be able to properly optimize your dataflows, innovate new databases techniques, not "drop table users", etc., why not also trust your employees to know what work environment works best for him?

cthalupa 12y ago

I love open offices, but then, everyone on my floor is part of the same team. Yes, I get a lot more walk up traffic from other team members than I did when I had a private office, but I don't see that as a bad thing. If people are looking for my help, they probably need it, and I'm happy to give it. Some people are just naturally louder, and yeah, it can be a little distracting. It's not without trade offs. But for every time I have to ask someone to quiet down, there's four or five situations where everyone being easily accessible has been a good thing for getting my job done.

dilap 12y ago

I've worked in closed-off private offices, and I'm working in an open office right, and there are definitely plusses and minuses to both, IMO. Especially if you're all working on the same product, there is something really nice feeling about being physically around everybody; it creates a sense togetherness. The noise sucks though, especially for tasks that require full concentration. Headphones and/or earplugs can help a bit, but it's no substitute for a truly tranquil environment. Working from home can help there, but then that's the other extreme of connectedness. I've pondered a bit if you could have a "no loud conversations" policy (think: like a library), with a bunch of rooms off to the side that could be used for conversations. Seems like it might give a bit of best of both worlds. Edit: Also, the open office is made worse by the current stylistic trend of no carpet and shiny hard surfaces everywhere. It looks cool, but it amplifies noise like crazy.

vegabook 12y ago

I can't help thinking this whole trend started with the industry which epitomises the values that our working society holds, that is finance, and the trading floor. I worked on one of these for 15 years - it was fantastic for getting deals done and increasing teamwork when sales, trading, and research all need to work together. Indeed it was when research was moved off the trading floor in around 2005 that I decided to leave, because in that industry, not being "in the thick of it" a huge disadvantage. I think a lot of the open plan idea comes from a misguided view that if trading floors can make so many millions, then they must be extended everywhere. Now that I have gone back to my coding roots, but still work on a "trading floor" (open plan tech office), I have found myself having to enforce my will to my partners to inform them that I will be working only half day in the office, because my productivity skyrockets as soon as I get home in front of my computer, with nothing to distract me. Luckily, I have the luxury of being able to do this. I believe my productivity in the open plan office is easily less than 50% of what it is at home. I do not believe that coding is a collaborative activity beyond periodic (twice a week max?) discussions to ensure teamwork. It's an intensely private activity, as is all work which demands high concentration, including writing.

PennyWhistle 12y ago

Here is a "revolutionary" idea: Ask your employees what kind of setup they like and accommodate! Some people like private offices and some people don't - I don't understand why companies look at this in absolute terms.

krschultz 12y ago

The ultimate irony of open plan offices is that if you are considerate of your neighbors, you can't actually collaborate in the open part of the office. Every single time I want to talk to someone for an in depth period of time, we almost immediately move to a conference room so we don't disturb the people around us. If everyone had offices, I would walk into their office and we would not need to move after starting our discussion because we wouldn't be bothering anyone. I don't see any advantages to an open plan office with more than 1 team in it (i.e. max 10 people) other than cost and startup-chic aesthetics.

mwfunk 12y ago
People characterize DRM as something that doesn't deter criminals but punishes honest consumers. I've often thought of open office plans in the same way. Unless someone's a jerk, they're not going to want to talk to anyone about anything in the actual open office area, which is the whole point of "increasing collaboration". They're going to whisper (which impedes communication) or grab whoever they want to talk to and go someplace where they're not disturbing other people. On the other hand, the jerks are not going to think twice about it, and they'll just walk over to someone's desk and start talking at them, and not always with an indoor voice, much less actually trying to keep it down. Jerks 1, non-jerks 0. Another very, very, VERY common thing I see on places like HN is people talking about how much they love being able to walk over and ask their coworkers questions all the time with open offices. Meaningfully, I don't see them complaining about other people asking them questions all the time due their increased visibility. This always makes it sounds like it just enables people who always ask someone else before trying to figure things out on their own. Jerks 2, non-jerks 0. On the other hand, open offices are really good at making engineers deeply unhappy and unproductive, while allowing some director or VP to look like a hero for saving a bunch of money while "increasing collaboration". Jerks 3, non-jerks 0.
jschwartzi 12y ago
It's distressing to me that I have the strong urge to move to a private area to talk to a coworker about their day because the guy next door immediately jumps in and has Opinions about Stuff, so the conversation immediately becomes about him.

steven2012 12y ago

I'm in my 40's and I thought going from cubes to open office was going to be hard. I couldn't have been more wrong: I love it. I guess I don't need headphones to be productive, and I don't care if someone sees what I'm doing on my screen, because I'm already at the office > 10 hrs a day, plus at home, so they can judge all they want if I have Facebook up in one window. I do understand that some people need solitude to do there work, which means that if a company goes open-office, they need to also have some spaces allocated for private rooms. My wife is in finance, and I stopped by her work place the other day, and you could hear a pin drop. It was like a library filled with people, I couldn't believe I used to work in an environment like this. The only drawback that I agree with the author is the vulnerability to disease. We have suffered throught his as well, and I'm not sure what to do about it besides wearing masks all the time. If a more dangerous disease did flare up in our area, I would probably work from home, and I think the employer should offer this as an alternative, especially if there is something particularly dangerous going around.

father_of_two 12y ago

I started my career working at a team room, which was exclusive for the technical people and had no more than 7 people at its peak. Then progressively went from open-office to open-office. And man, how I hate those. I can't get focus, which forces me to bring the deep-thinking work home, proceeding on a two-shift day, similar to what Paul Graham describes on the "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" essay (http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html). Even simple things like sending a page-length email took more time than needed, and were high frustrating. Yet, recently I've been working on a company which only have team rooms. I'm on a 3 persons' room, but the rooms vary from 1 to 6 persons. Furthermore they have lots of perforated plates on ceilings and rooms are (mostly) sound isolated from adjacent ones by a foam-like thing they stuff between the division separations. When I started here I just had that -wow- moment. I couldn't believe I was actually doing software design, reading documentation and others immerse thinking tasks during normal work time. No need to carry stuff home no more. Did I mentioned already how I hate open-offices? :)

j-c-m 12y ago

Open offices are primarily designed to save money, and they save a ton of money when compared with private offices combined with collaborative working spaces (fancy word for conference rooms/areas). It is very easy to quantify this cost difference, and this cost savings is immediate. It is much more difficult to quantify productivity impact vs costs, and this would not be realized clearly and immediately. So 10/10 times now companies pick the option that costs 2x-3x less, be dammed with trying to figure out its impact on productivity.

w4 12y ago
Bingo. This is what these discussions so often miss: open office floorpans translate to immediate savings on the company's balance sheets. They permit companies to stuff more workers into fewer square feet, and those square feet are how commercial real estate is priced. All of the stated benefits of open office floor plans (culture, collaboration, communication, etc) are subordinate to, or justification for, those savings.

lotsofmangos 12y ago

Both is probably the answer here. There is a range of characteristics in people and ideally you need to accommodate them, so if you want to get the best out of your employees you need a range of work environments. The ideal office building would probably be fairly fractal.

simonsarris 12y ago

I imagine when google interviews candidates they don't do it in the open office, they probably go into a (quiet) conference room. That's at least a little telling, isn't it? Suggestion: Request to be interviewed in the actual seat/location that you're going to be working in and see what they say.

lrem 12y ago
They'll probably tell you there are security considerations against that. The next time you interview with Google, if you get a building tour, pay attention to the "no photography past these point" and similar notices...

yason 12y ago

Give me a dark cave where I can munch my thoughts in private without seeing or listening to anybody else unless I choose to do so, and you've got yourself a winner employee here. Office layout is certainly an area where one size does not fit all.

father_of_two 12y ago

Another give-away against open-offices is that people who decides them usually reserve a single office for thy selves. A real story: a given company moved to new, but existing, installations. The original facilities were organized in small rooms. The boss ordered a full redesign of the interior into a single large open space, with one exception: a closed office for himself. This ancient philosophy of "what's good for others doesn't suit me" never convinced me. :)

mariojv 12y ago

I totally agree with this piece. Some may prefer an open office space, and that's fine for them - but they can probably still work well in a private office. For those who are noise-sensitive, though, it can be a huge distraction. I've started working from home a lot more just because of how loud it is in the office. A lot of our developers and admins have voices that ... carry, to say the least. It's lucky that I can work from home and not be too distracted, but for some people with kids/stay-at-home partner, it may be difficult. It would be great if employers at least gave people the option to have an office.

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ryan90 12y ago

ryan90 12y ago

The biggest bias in the discussion that occurs on HN, is that most people commenting are engineers. Programming is inherently heads down, whereas a large number of professional jobs are not. If you want to run a sales team, open office is almost mandatory. The energy you hear from others closing deals causes you to become energized, creating a compounding effect. An ops/customer success team needs to be open office so that agents can quickly exchange off the cuff conversations with each other in real time. The point is, there are different office layouts that work for different types of people & workers.