11 ms·

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

175 points by __Joker 11y ago

joelrunyon 11y ago
The author's argument is basically "I don't like open offices, so they're bad." Yawn. I would have liked to see some studies on actual productivity level fluctuations based on these moves. Otherwise, it's simply another variation of "I'm not used to it, so it's bad."
- db48x 11y ago
  Find a copy of Peopleware.
- crazy_geek 11y ago
  Study after study show that open distraction office plans are bad for productivity, and increase stress and sick days -- even among those who like open office plans.
  - threeseed 11y ago
    Sure. It is intuitive that this would be the case. However those aren't the only important factors in a workplace. Team cohesion, collaboration, minimising politics etc. It also seems intuitive to me at least that these would be improved by an open plan office. Personally I have seen private and public ways of working succeed for different styles of projects which seems to be the newest trend i.e. having mix use spaces.
    - hvidgaard 11y ago
      My experience tells me that the open office plan, enables poor work ethics to ruin it collectively. I've been in open officies that worked just fine, because everybody had enough deciplin to make it work, and it was okay to tell people to move to a meeting room if they got too noisy. The best model I've heard about is "work rooms" for everyone, with facilities to move to when you're collaborating.
  - joelrunyon 11y ago
    That wasn't my point (I don't have a side here). I'm mostly asking to see those studies & have a nuanced breakdown of them (rather than simply saying they exist or (as the author did in their piece) saying they had a bad experience)).
    - Hytosys 11y ago
      The article has two direct links to supporting studies[1][2] and a link to an article giving roughly a dozen sources[3]. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413000340 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413... [2] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/255498?uid=3739696&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103198134427 http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/255498?uid=3739696&uid... [3] http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-t...
      - john_butts 11y ago
        Yeah but still. Yawn.
  - hanspeter 11y ago
    Your links to the studies aren't clickable.
    - mattmanser 11y ago
      It's kinda tiresome, on HN there's is this rabid pro-open plan brigade, even though all the studies show otherwise. It's the same as the "I can work 60 hours productivly" brigade. All the studies, for over a century (yes, century, not decades) have shown otherwise. They are studies that show that people delude themselves into thinking they are more productive than they are. And yet, no matter how many articles and papers you post, nope. HN insists. They are ingrained memes on HN that won't, despite all the evidence you ever post, go away. So why bother? You can google it yourself, and then promptly ignore all the professional studies and still believe in open plan offices. It's simply not worth the effort.
      - ramblerman 11y ago
        It's a conspiracy, and you have proof of this. But are reluctant to show us as we wouldn't believe you anyway. Interesting.
        mattmanser 11y ago
        It's not a conspiracy, what tend to happen is you post a bunch of articles and then the parent starts picking at 1 point in 1 article as if that invalidates all of them and you get drawn into this long tiresome discussion with what is nothing but a crackpot using loads of anecdotes or worse, blog posts, against large scientific studies. And quite often it's nonsense any way, they just misunderstand it. For some reason working conditions and working hours are incredibly emotive subjects, similar to women in tech, that tend to bring out the irrational side of otherwise lucid HN posters.
    - Ygg2 11y ago
      Here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139.2013.871064#.VWXFfNKqpBc http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139.2013.871... ---------------------------- But seriously, how can NOT putting large number of people together for long times not cause diseases? That's one of major reason flu starts during the winter...
- mrweasel 11y ago
  As pointed out: "Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco. I would like to see the studies that show ANY positive benefit from open office plans, other than: "They are cheaper to built and run".
  - threeseed 11y ago
    https://hbr.org/2014/10/workspaces-that-move-people https://hbr.org/2014/10/workspaces-that-move-people "data suggest that creating collisions—chance encounters and unplanned interactions between knowledge workers, both inside and outside the organization—improves performance" Just one of many notable quotes from the article. It isn't a formal study but it is pragmatic i.e. "Managers might be tempted to simply build big social spaces and expect great results, but it’s not that simple. Companies must have an understanding of what they’re trying to achieve (higher productivity? more creativity?) before changing a space"
    - CHY872 11y ago
      BUT frequently this is actually done. One of my old professors works on positioning, and a client he did consulting for wanted to track their employees around the office; and then design new offices based on what came out of it. If you're a company with hundreds of worldwide branches, then the potential benefits make asking questions like this a worthwhile endeavour. Very large companies actually try to design their buildings around what will lead to the greatest productivity. If you're a smaller company, then you might want open plan offices for very different reasons (a perception of cohesion etc). Data can and is applied to this, but it typically isn't because the companies aren't large enough for it to matter too much in terms of productivity; the benefits start to be dwarfed by more pressing matters.
    - GFischer 11y ago
      Peopleware also suggests having open ("communal") spaces as part of the solution, I really like their approach. http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13 http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13 Tom de Marco quotes Cristopher Alexander, his first rule is that there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution :) but there are patterns :) Alexander identifies the need for all three of - a communal space - a semiprivate/team space ("war rooms", etc) - a private space Also: "Each team needs identifiable public and semiprivate space and each individual needs protected private space." They also say that: "enclosed offices need not be one-person offices. The two- or three- or four-person office makes a lot more sense, particularly if office groupings can be made to align with work groups. Even in open-plan offices, co-workers should be encouraged to modify the grid to put their areas together into small suites. When this is allowed, people become positively ingenious in laying out the area to serve all their needs: work space, meeting space, and social space. Since they tend to be in interaction mode together or simultaneously in flow mode, they have less noise clash with each other than they would with randomly selected neighbors." http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces
ronnier 11y ago
I truly dislike open offices. The constant sound of mechanical keyboards clacking really gets to me, and I'm not sure why. I wear headphones listening to loud music to cancel out the sounds of these damn keyboards.
- thescrewdriver 11y ago
  Keyboards, random conversations, people getting up etc. so much noise and so many distractions. I also do the earphones thing, but it seems to be contributing to long-term hearing loss.
  - eterm 11y ago
    Wear a good pair of ear defenders over your earphones so you can turn down the volume greatly while still blocking out all external sound.
    - bigiain 11y ago
      I escalate to noise cancelling earbuds worn inside noise cancelling headphones - when that's not enough, I throw a tatrum of go work in a library (or just go home and do something else). I like my work colleagues, but sometimes I need to concentrate (or I'm just grumpy for some reason).
    - DanielBMarkham 11y ago
      You can also use foam earplugs, then a noise-canceling headset for sound. Works even in extremely high noise environments.
  - fosap 11y ago
    Most active noise-canceling head-phones work pretty well even if you don't listen to anything.
    - Cthulhu_ 11y ago
      Active noise-cancelling only seems to work (in my very limited experience) with 'constant' noise though - predictable. Spoken conversations often aren't. But, I might've just had a bad experience with those in the store. I'll stick with passive noise cancelling / in-ear with foam things. Or, you know, tell people to be quiet.
fridek 11y ago
Everybody needs a balance between productive alone time and creative brainstorming time. Most companies I've seen achieve this with an open space and plenty of WFH for all employees. Basically we meet 2-3 times a week to organize and share ideas, and spend there rest of the week heads down at home, coding in whatever pace and setting we like. Closed private offices enable people to slack at work and pretend to work 80h week while actually dozing off most of the day. I'm not saying everybody does that, but it's certainly a possibility and something I have observed few times. Once I was tasked with "doing something about" a manager who played competitively StarCraft at work. In reality that's a symptom of a larger issue, where we are (consciously or not) evaluated on how long we stay at the office over how productive we are. IMO it's nobodys business if I play StarCraft at work, as long as it helps me, or doesn't prevent me from achieving my objectives.
- hvidgaard 11y ago
  I would argue that if you cannot restrain yourself to be productive in a closed office, why would you be it from home? That said, I agree, evaluating on time at the office is the wrong metric, but for the vast majority of managers, they have no idea how to evaluate it otherwise because they do not understand the tasks at hand.
  - fridek 11y ago
    At home nothing prevents me from not working and I often don't. The difference is, at home you can spend your time with a book, cooking, with kids or spouse - which all is refreshing and in general will improve your performance once you get back to work. In the office not working constitutes mostly of playing dumb games or reading hacker news, the latter being kind of ok, but certainly it doesn't leave me refreshed and willing to go back to my not-so-hip-after-the-latest-js-framework code. I don't think it's realistically possible to put a metric on one's performance, that would allow us to break from time-based evaluations completely. That being said, I see how my colleagues are progressing with their work and it has nothing to do with which are working from home, which from office and there is also no clear time-value correlation either. It has more to do with how motivated they are, what internally drives them and how skilled they are. I have a friend at work who believes deeply in software craftsmanship principles and it's a privilege to see how he works. He stays at home more than most of us, but provides a steady and consistent stream of small, high-quality pull requests, all day, every day. I watch how not slacking at work can have a great impact on the project and on the team morale. It has very little to do with an open space, WFH, what kind of laptop you work on and what blend of coffee you are given. I grew to believe those are just excuses I (and others) are giving themselves to not fully focus on work. Once I admitted that to myself, I decided to spend my slacking time in a way that improves my performance later. I hope one day it will go away completely, or I will get organized enough to be consistent in my output regardless of interruptions.
louhike 11y ago
This article has been discussed several times, mostly https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9404006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9404006 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065.
v4n4d1s 11y ago
They should switch to libreoffice. Fixed everything for me.
- umairsiddique 11y ago
  lol
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
mattdlondon 11y ago
How is this Google's fault? Google's name is used in the article title, but then it is basically not mentioned again apart from in a list of equally well-known companies?
- jasonwocky 11y ago
  I don't think the article is blaming Google. Just har-har'ing with attitude that Google maybe isn't as smart as its cracked up to be.
  - stevesearer 11y ago
    The title was probably chosen because the editors believe adding something about Google will generate the most views and sharing.
wodenokoto 11y ago
Just a different opinion here. I have never worked in a single office space. I honestly can't imagine such a thing. But I do know how incredible good I am at distracting myself at home. Just having someone around, who are working on a different piece of the same puzzle is a major motivator.
- Rainymood 11y ago
  I am exactly the same. At home, I can find ANYTHING to entertain me. At work, when I have a group of motivated peers around me who are focused on the same goal, so am I.
- GFischer 11y ago
  That's the point, it's not binary between open plan or individual offices... you can have 2, 3 or 4 - people shared offices. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces "enclosed offices need not be one-person offices. The two- or three- or four-person office makes a lot more sense, particularly if office groupings can be made to align with work groups. Even in open-plan offices, co-workers should be encouraged to modify the grid to put their areas together into small suites. When this is allowed, people become positively ingenious in laying out the area to serve all their needs: work space, meeting space, and social space. Since they tend to be in interaction mode together or simultaneously in flow mode, they have less noise clash with each other than they would with randomly selected neighbors."
  - carapat_virulat 11y ago
    I find the atmosphere in a room with 2, 3 or 4 people far more oppressive that a room with a 100. Probably something to do with being able to ignore people when they are a multitude, but things getting too personal when it's a small group. I always found it very easy to concentrate in big spaces as long as I feel nobody cares about what I am doing, and that seems easy in a big room. I also don't care much about small distractions or noises, I always hear people complaining about getting out of the zone when they have to chat a bit with a coworker. It takes me a big effort to get into the zone when I am starting to work, some kind of a starting period while I load all the relevant information in my head, but once I'm there I can get in and out and attend subtasks or have a conversation with somebody with no problem.
amolgupta 11y ago
Not to mention the situation in a startup where the tech team is sitting next to the sales and marketing teams who are constantly on the phone.
deleted 11y ago
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calinet6 11y ago
We get it, HN is majority introvert, and really likes logical optimization using data. But some things aren't easily measurable. Is it a coincidence that companies who pioneered the open office plan are also some of the most successful in the world? Show me how you'd even begin to disprove that and I'll show you a dozen confounding variables making it silly to even try. What is the true impact of an open office on a culture of collaborative interaction? And what's the impact of that type of interaction on success? Hard to measure. Sometimes we look at the things we can easily make into numbers and assume they describe the whole truth. Not always so. "The most important things are unmeasurable." —W. Edwards Deming
- deleted 11y ago
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- makeitsuckless 11y ago
  The success of these companies is largely irrelevant: they became successful before they started creating huge open office farms. Also, companies that exploit sweatshops and factories with atrocious working conditions are also successful. What does it matter if it's successful when it's abusive. And putting introvert geeks in an open office even if it does give you an extra ounce of efficiency until they burn out from the emotional stress is abusive.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  > "The most important things are unmeasurable." —W. Edwards Deming I always like the quote at the end of the post, that proves absolutely nothing but is just there for the sake of a cheap punchline. > s it a coincidence that companies who pioneered the open office plan are also some of the most successful in the world? I would rather consider the coincidence of younger companies being easily influenced by the last thing that's fashionable because of young CEOs at their head, instead of relying on any particular dataset to make rational decisions on how tom best work between people. > We get it, HN is majority introvert, Arent Hackers more likely to be introvert anyway ?
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  But are they successful because of the open office, or because they have a very good product at its base? Correlation / causation / etc. You can't judge the individual performance of 3000 people in an open office floor plan from a product.
chrisBob 11y ago
There are worse things than open offices. One of the new trends is open lab space. Chemistry labs at UNC made the transition a few years ago. Did someone, anywhere on the floor, open something that produces hazardous vapors? Why contain it to one room when you can expose 1/3 of the building? The University of Michigan's Biology program currently has a building under construction with the same "feature", and I am sure there are others.
teekert 11y ago
"Meanwhile, “ease of interaction” with colleagues — the problem that open offices profess to fix — was cited as a problem by fewer than 10 percent of workers in any type of office setting." Here it is the other way around, the open office parts of the building are very quite, nobody dears make too much sound. It is much more social to walk into an office for a quick chat, only disturbing 1, 2 or 3 others.
- thoastbrot 11y ago
  Just imagine how "ease of interaction" is not a problem if you don't mind not to interact at all. That's another problem fixed forcefully by open offices. I like not being alone in my office, having the whole team of a dozen people in my reach. I don't like loud discussions either, but I can mute those with my ear plugs. I cannot unmute a solo office box.
stevesearer 11y ago
One facet that never comes up in these anti-open office articles is that it is 100% impossible to design the perfect office for you as an individual, for every other individual, all while designing an office that is perfect for the organization. Many people here advocate private offices, which are great, but as soon as you start putting up walls, you've totally restricted access to natural light in the interior of the building. Access to natural light and breaking down the hierarchy that came with private offices (exterior for high-level employees, corner for the highest) are partly responsible for creating an environment where open office are desirable alternatives. With all of condemnation for open plan office happening, I'm excited to see what the next swing of the pendulum back toward privacy will bring us. Hint: It won't be private offices. Some of the things I'm excited about in this regard are: -Activity-based working office designs -Increased working from home/telecommuting arrangements The most important part of office design is to consider your company's culture, and then develop an office that will best support it rather than jumping onto what types of designs have worked for the unique cultures of other companies.
- bachmeier 11y ago
  The trend will be the elimination of offices. There's nothing lower cost than forcing employees to provide their own offices and work equipment.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    It's not hard to check out equipment to work with for use offsite. Offsite work is a challenge, but at least for me, I'm probably doubly productive that way. Was the overall team doubly productive? I have no real way to know.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  As Joel Spolsky noted, getting natural light to a large number of small rooms is basically a solved problem: how many hotel rooms do you see without a window? Sure, private offices are smaller than hotel rooms, but offices generally have large numbers of meeting rooms, labs and common areas that don't need windows. Of course, that means that you need to build office buildings more like hotels; you can't so easily retrofit existing office buildings.
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Is this open office = for work of a highly creative and collaborative nature, the team owns their own workspace, which they customize as they choose, and folks on the team are in physical proximity? Or is this open office = packing everybody into one huge area like sardines no matter what their job role or what their team is doing with little or no account for ownership? I find we lump a huge amount of stuff into the category "open office", much of it crappy, then stand outside and throw rocks at the entire concept. Let's not do that.
bunkydoo 11y ago
If you don't like this, why not go start your own company or find a new job? There is nothing forcing you to stay in this job. I for one have to agree that the communal aspect of working in an open office has its benefits and downfalls. But if one day I came in and didn't like it to the level you described - I'd quit and go find a job where I can get right with myself.
- frostmatthew 11y ago
  > why not go start your own company That's not a realistic solution for the vast majority of people. Many people (such as myself) have absolutely no desire to start a company - and many who would want to aren't in a financial position to go an undetermined amount of time without a paycheck. > find a new job With most companies choosing to ignore the countless studies done on this subject and instead just do what the cool kids are doing there aren't many jobs to pursue that are not in an open-office.
- georgehotelling 11y ago
  If you don't like this article, why not go start your own website or find a new website to read? There's nothing forcing you to stay on this website. Or maybe there is more to consider than just one issue, but it's still worthy of criticism? Maybe an job can offer great benefits, exciting challenges, a valuable product and great coworkers but still have room for improvement in the office layout. Your solution to that situation would be "shut up and quit" over "raise awareness of the issue to improve things for everyone"?
- johnaspden 11y ago
  I think this is a good suggestion. I've given up on 'contracting' these days, solely because I hate open plan, and just consult freelance. I rent my own office to work in and it's lovely. I get lonely though! I miss the technical and social conversations we used to have in the kitchen or round the coffee machine. What would be ideal is if I were to rent an office inside the company I'm working for. I would actually be quite happy to pay my client to rent a bit of their space if it's ever a possibility. After all rental costs are chickenfeed compared to developer compensation.
kendallpark 11y ago
Every few months there's an opinion piece on HN about open offices. Then everyone gets into the same debate over whether they like the open offices or not. What I'd like to see are new STUDIES about open offices, not the rehashing of personal experiences and anecdotes.
- frostmatthew 11y ago
  > What I'd like to see are new STUDIES about open offices The article we're discussing mentions multiple studies...beyond that there's a great New Yorker article[1] from last year that references a number of studies. This blog post[2] links to a couple others and addresses costs/alternatives. A "study of over 40,000 survey responses collected over a decade has found that the benefits for workers are quickly outweighed by the disadvantages"[3]. A Washington Post article[4] on office furniture designers realizing (citing multiple studies) "open-plan spaces are actually lousy for workers." And a TIME article[5] highlighted decades of research that associated open layouts with "greater employee stress, poorer co-worker relations and reduced satisfaction with the physical environment." [1] http://www.newyorker.com/currency-tag/the-open-office-trap http://www.newyorker.com/currency-tag/the-open-office-trap [2] http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-floor-plans-in-tech-companies.html http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-flo... [3] http://theconversation.com/open-plan-offices-attract-highest-levels-of-worker-dissatisfaction-study-18246 http://theconversation.com/open-plan-offices-attract-highest... [4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/04/22/office-designers-find-open-plan-spaces-are-actually-lousy-for-workers/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/04... [5] http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/15/why-the-open-office-is-a-hotbed-of-stress/ http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/15/why-the-open-office-is-a-ho...
- johnaspden 11y ago
  It doesn't look like much of a debate! Everyone hates them and is trying to work out whether they're caused by stupidity or evil.
jguimont 11y ago
SAP star building in Germany headquarters are a good example of what to do with office spaces: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gOgdHlT33Jo/TQ7zXFqaxjI/AAAAAAAAAJA/zS6O1oE5zSU/s320/IMG01473-20101217-1045.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gOgdHlT33Jo/TQ7zXFqaxjI/AAAAAAAAAJ... http://www.mz-web.de/image/view/2012/4/23/17117282,16301136,dmData,maxh,480,maxw,480,SAPZentrale+%25281334258355914%2529.jpg http://www.mz-web.de/image/view/2012/4/23/17117282,16301136,... http://www.donfeidner.de/assets/images/P1000400_SAP_Star_Building_2.jpg http://www.donfeidner.de/assets/images/P1000400_SAP_Star_Bui... The wings have offices which can sit 6 to 8 people and at the center there are the meeting rooms, restrooms and lunch area.
- kbody 11y ago
  A different way for a cubicle farm.
- wahsd 11y ago
  Group spaces are quite prevalent in Germany from what I can tell. It makes total sense, in Germany. There is a bit of a difference in the USA though, where employers think you get productivity out of surveillance. We are not a very deeply thinking society, so it makes sense on the face of it that if you can see people working they are being productive. What we miss though, is that all the surveillance and lack of protections and benefits leads to massive amounts of squandered energies and effort on busy work. Busy work is work that is noise which serves a couple different types of purposes. It can make you look like you are working because you are working on something; whether it is relevant, important, or useful is totally irrelevant though. It can serve to make the system as inefficient as possible in order to assure job security. There are other purposes but those are some of the most prevalent. At the core of the problem lies a misunderstanding of the problem that open plans are/were meant to address and can also be tied back to our problem with management models and incentives in our corporations and society. It's a complicated matter that I can't do justice here, but if you have incompetent management trying to satisfy abusive demands from "investors" aka Wall Street, incompetent management leads to believe the problem of gaining ever more "productivity" out of a corporation and workers is solved by squeezing ever harder to get that last drop out. Which incompetent management and incentives lead them to believe can be done by putting everyone in a big open space so they feel surveilled and monitored and will do what they can to appear like a good worker by doing busy work and staying longer doing. This is largely all due to a system without employee protections where anyone in the 99% can be fired at a moment's notice because some executive screwed up or needs to be paid more. It's more obviously presented as exercise metaphor, but the following post about "Why Productive People Always have Time to Exercise"http://riskology.co/sharpen-the-saw/ http://riskology.co/sharpen-the-saw/ also applies to these types of circumstances. On a side note: Why the hell doesn't HN support markdown? The site's already kind of embarrassingly styled, it's shameful that you can't even link somehow.
Exgavin 11y ago
I'd further add that "agile" workspaces reminds me of sweatshops in India. It makes other "open" office plans look appealing. It puts the open concept on a gradient much to your point.
contergan 11y ago
I fully agree. I currently work for a startup and after we moved into a new office last month our management had the glorious idea of putting the programmers next to the customer support team in an open office :/ It's horrible - I have to endure the customer support calls the whole day long and can't find even 5 min. in silence, in order to concentrate on the programming tasks I'm supposed to do. I tried putting on headphones and listening to white noise etc., but that doesn't cut it either. I need silence to work efficiently and it's been that way ever since I cam remember. My productivity has absolutely tanked in the open office and coming this Friday, I will quit the job and spend the coming weeks getting back into self-employment and working from home.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  Have you at least provided feedback to the managers? Like cold, hard feedback "I cannot work like this, I and my colleagues are going to quit and you're fucked when we do" kinda feedback.
  - mgkimsal 11y ago
    No one ever does this, unfortunately. Getting a group to band together and threaten collective action is something few people even consider - most people I know are scared of entertaining that idea.
    - mkopinsky 11y ago
      It's not about making a collective threat, it's letting management know that the new conditions are making you consider options "up to and including departure", and that you think the other devs may be in the same boat.
      - snx 11y ago
        Just make sure you don't talk for other people (for example naming your peers). Otherwise i strongly agree.
- 11y ago
phkahler 11y ago
Agree with all of it except the end. Don't fall for the "work from home" bit. Sure there is privacy, but it's also isolating and destroys the primary barrier to working around the clock.
dpcan 11y ago
The first 2 startups I worked for back in the early 2000's were open offices, though there were only 6 of us in one room at the first startup, and 3 at the other. At the first startup, thankfully, customer service was in an open office in another part of the small building. Couldn't imagine having to work next to those conversations. In the first company it wasn't so bad, we had all our computers circled and pointed toward the center (mostly) which afforded us a little bit of privacy at least, but it was awkward looking up to have a thought and making eye contact with a fellow coder across from me. Though sometimes it was funny. I think the hardest part was the distraction of being the end-point for anyone's conversation at any time they felt like talking to me - no matter how good a coding groove I was in. Or maybe it was having to listen to 2 other coders figure out a problem together in the same office where I was trying to work. Hmm. Either way, I prefer private offices. At the next startup I went to, the computers faced the wall in the office. It was designed this way so the management could look over our shoulder all day long. Needless to say, I quit within months. Constantly being questioned why I was working in a certain file, or viewing part of the project's website that the boss didn't understand made me cringe. I'd go home grumpy everyday. I'd eat in my car at a creepy park across the street just to get away from the place. It was awful. Worked for myself ever since. In an office.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  6 and 3 in one room isn't bad at all, as long as everyone's working on the same project / the same tasks - that way, discussions you overhear are relevant to what you're working on at the time, and not a distraction / irrelevant noise. With the managers though... Yeah that's annoying. I'd invite them to sit down next to you for a nice four-hour pair programming session - and if they refused, they probably didn't really care and they can leave you to it. Glad you left, micro-management like that just says that the management thinks you're inept and / or doesn't trust you.
- webtards 11y ago
  I do wonder sometimes, if all the startups that followed Googs lead into open offices have been pranked, much like the interview folks who blindly followed Googs wacky and wanky interview questions, which have also been shown to be a useless idea. There is probably a pranks team in Goog that publicises the ideas to see who will blindly follow.
aethertap 11y ago
The best working environment I was ever part of in terms of productivity was set up with private offices, but at the team level. We'd have a team of people who were all working on the same component (five or six people) in a room with each other, but otherwise insulated from the bustle of the office. It was hugely helpful to be in a room with all of the people who were relevant to your work, and no other distractions. That may have just been due to having a good team, but I have a lot of good memories from that time.
moron4hire 11y ago
A small amount of friction in communication is a good thing. People become intellectually lazy if they can ask questions of anyone they want, at will.
xasos 11y ago
Is it really that black and white? I prefer a nice combination where the workplace is relatively open, but people still have space for privacy. It's not like Google throws all their engineers into a room... > If employers want to make the open-office model work, they have to take measures to improve work efficiency. For one, they should create more private area Many companies already split up like this, breaking teams down and giving all the members ample space and privacy. The truly open model that I've seen work the best is sales teams, where it has a "sales floor" feel and employees can be energetic making sales.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
After 14 years working remotely in a home office I worked at Google in 2013 in an open office. It was an adjustment but I enjoyed it. I shifted my work hours to 6:15am to 4pm for a few hours of quiet work time everyday. Also, there were many places to work away from my desk. Most managers seemed to have more private work spaces.
keerthiko 11y ago
My preference has always been a shared workspace with the option for coders to pick up their computer and head outside to a coffee shop or unoccupied conference room or something to hack away in the zone when they felt like it. This worked especially well when our startup was based out of a coworking space that had lots of temporary private spaces for individuals aside from the per-company office rental, when we were just four people.
vermooten 11y ago
Lots of people in our organisation equate non-open offices (in our case, cubes with high walls) with a we've-always-done-things-this-way attitude. And with a lack of transparency, the desire not to share 9and so remain vital) etc. However in our UK office we have the opposite - our development room is like a 1980s trading floor, impossible to focus for more than a few minutes at a time even with sweaty decent headphones. Work-from-home is the way forward - LINQ combined with trust mean I can work in my pyjamas. Win!
wahsd 11y ago
Very good piece. I am sure the Author is quite a pleasant person and all, but I really hate her just for going to the Beats store. She got what she deserves.
doppel 11y ago
At my current workplace, we have a shared room for the developers and designers (5-9 people depending on the day and time), while the rest (~20 people) are spread in other bigger open spaces. I find that it works well, because we are mostly stationary and focused on a specific task, while the rest (sales, marketing, customer development, etc.) are constantly moving around, in meetings, visiting customers. In a mostly-tech company I couldn't imagine not having some compartments so that you don't suddenly find yourself 1 among 30 people in the same room - I'd go completely insane.
mcv 11y ago
Articles about how X doesn't work tend to use examples of where X is really badly implemented. In the case of this article, it seems the office she was working had a really toxic culture, with micromanaging managers, coworkers judging you when you leave, excessively noisy people, etc. I've always worked in shared offices, ranging from 3 people to, currently, and entire department of 40 or thereabouts. Never seems to be a problem. But with large rooms, you do need to consider acoustics of course. And letting managers keep a close eye on people is a terrible reason for anything.
yawz 11y ago
Peopleware (by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister) must be a mandatory read for anyone working in a team and office environment.
ryan90 11y ago
This conversation again?

175 points by __Joker 11y ago

The author's argument is basically "I don't like open offices, so they're bad." Yawn. I would have liked to see some studies on actual productivity level fluctuations based on these moves. Otherwise, it's simply another variation of "I'm not used to it, so it's bad."

db48x 11y ago
Find a copy of Peopleware.
crazy_geek 11y ago
Study after study show that open distraction office plans are bad for productivity, and increase stress and sick days -- even among those who like open office plans.
- threeseed 11y ago
  Sure. It is intuitive that this would be the case. However those aren't the only important factors in a workplace. Team cohesion, collaboration, minimising politics etc. It also seems intuitive to me at least that these would be improved by an open plan office. Personally I have seen private and public ways of working succeed for different styles of projects which seems to be the newest trend i.e. having mix use spaces.
  - hvidgaard 11y ago
    My experience tells me that the open office plan, enables poor work ethics to ruin it collectively. I've been in open officies that worked just fine, because everybody had enough deciplin to make it work, and it was okay to tell people to move to a meeting room if they got too noisy. The best model I've heard about is "work rooms" for everyone, with facilities to move to when you're collaborating.
- joelrunyon 11y ago
  That wasn't my point (I don't have a side here). I'm mostly asking to see those studies & have a nuanced breakdown of them (rather than simply saying they exist or (as the author did in their piece) saying they had a bad experience)).
  - Hytosys 11y ago
    The article has two direct links to supporting studies[1][2] and a link to an article giving roughly a dozen sources[3]. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413000340 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494413... [2] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/255498?uid=3739696&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103198134427 http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/255498?uid=3739696&uid... [3] http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-t...
    - john_butts 11y ago
      Yeah but still. Yawn.
- hanspeter 11y ago
  Your links to the studies aren't clickable.
  - mattmanser 11y ago
    It's kinda tiresome, on HN there's is this rabid pro-open plan brigade, even though all the studies show otherwise. It's the same as the "I can work 60 hours productivly" brigade. All the studies, for over a century (yes, century, not decades) have shown otherwise. They are studies that show that people delude themselves into thinking they are more productive than they are. And yet, no matter how many articles and papers you post, nope. HN insists. They are ingrained memes on HN that won't, despite all the evidence you ever post, go away. So why bother? You can google it yourself, and then promptly ignore all the professional studies and still believe in open plan offices. It's simply not worth the effort.
    - ramblerman 11y ago
      It's a conspiracy, and you have proof of this. But are reluctant to show us as we wouldn't believe you anyway. Interesting.
      - mattmanser 11y ago
        It's not a conspiracy, what tend to happen is you post a bunch of articles and then the parent starts picking at 1 point in 1 article as if that invalidates all of them and you get drawn into this long tiresome discussion with what is nothing but a crackpot using loads of anecdotes or worse, blog posts, against large scientific studies. And quite often it's nonsense any way, they just misunderstand it. For some reason working conditions and working hours are incredibly emotive subjects, similar to women in tech, that tend to bring out the irrational side of otherwise lucid HN posters.
  - Ygg2 11y ago
    Here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139.2013.871064#.VWXFfNKqpBc http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139.2013.871... ---------------------------- But seriously, how can NOT putting large number of people together for long times not cause diseases? That's one of major reason flu starts during the winter...
mrweasel 11y ago
As pointed out: "Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco. I would like to see the studies that show ANY positive benefit from open office plans, other than: "They are cheaper to built and run".
- threeseed 11y ago
  https://hbr.org/2014/10/workspaces-that-move-people https://hbr.org/2014/10/workspaces-that-move-people "data suggest that creating collisions—chance encounters and unplanned interactions between knowledge workers, both inside and outside the organization—improves performance" Just one of many notable quotes from the article. It isn't a formal study but it is pragmatic i.e. "Managers might be tempted to simply build big social spaces and expect great results, but it’s not that simple. Companies must have an understanding of what they’re trying to achieve (higher productivity? more creativity?) before changing a space"
  - CHY872 11y ago
    BUT frequently this is actually done. One of my old professors works on positioning, and a client he did consulting for wanted to track their employees around the office; and then design new offices based on what came out of it. If you're a company with hundreds of worldwide branches, then the potential benefits make asking questions like this a worthwhile endeavour. Very large companies actually try to design their buildings around what will lead to the greatest productivity. If you're a smaller company, then you might want open plan offices for very different reasons (a perception of cohesion etc). Data can and is applied to this, but it typically isn't because the companies aren't large enough for it to matter too much in terms of productivity; the benefits start to be dwarfed by more pressing matters.
  - GFischer 11y ago
    Peopleware also suggests having open ("communal") spaces as part of the solution, I really like their approach. http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13 http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13 Tom de Marco quotes Cristopher Alexander, his first rule is that there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution :) but there are patterns :) Alexander identifies the need for all three of - a communal space - a semiprivate/team space ("war rooms", etc) - a private space Also: "Each team needs identifiable public and semiprivate space and each individual needs protected private space." They also say that: "enclosed offices need not be one-person offices. The two- or three- or four-person office makes a lot more sense, particularly if office groupings can be made to align with work groups. Even in open-plan offices, co-workers should be encouraged to modify the grid to put their areas together into small suites. When this is allowed, people become positively ingenious in laying out the area to serve all their needs: work space, meeting space, and social space. Since they tend to be in interaction mode together or simultaneously in flow mode, they have less noise clash with each other than they would with randomly selected neighbors." http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces

ronnier 11y ago

I truly dislike open offices. The constant sound of mechanical keyboards clacking really gets to me, and I'm not sure why. I wear headphones listening to loud music to cancel out the sounds of these damn keyboards.

thescrewdriver 11y ago
Keyboards, random conversations, people getting up etc. so much noise and so many distractions. I also do the earphones thing, but it seems to be contributing to long-term hearing loss.
- eterm 11y ago
  Wear a good pair of ear defenders over your earphones so you can turn down the volume greatly while still blocking out all external sound.
  - bigiain 11y ago
    I escalate to noise cancelling earbuds worn inside noise cancelling headphones - when that's not enough, I throw a tatrum of go work in a library (or just go home and do something else). I like my work colleagues, but sometimes I need to concentrate (or I'm just grumpy for some reason).
  - DanielBMarkham 11y ago
    You can also use foam earplugs, then a noise-canceling headset for sound. Works even in extremely high noise environments.
- fosap 11y ago
  Most active noise-canceling head-phones work pretty well even if you don't listen to anything.
  - Cthulhu_ 11y ago
    Active noise-cancelling only seems to work (in my very limited experience) with 'constant' noise though - predictable. Spoken conversations often aren't. But, I might've just had a bad experience with those in the store. I'll stick with passive noise cancelling / in-ear with foam things. Or, you know, tell people to be quiet.

fridek 11y ago

Everybody needs a balance between productive alone time and creative brainstorming time. Most companies I've seen achieve this with an open space and plenty of WFH for all employees. Basically we meet 2-3 times a week to organize and share ideas, and spend there rest of the week heads down at home, coding in whatever pace and setting we like. Closed private offices enable people to slack at work and pretend to work 80h week while actually dozing off most of the day. I'm not saying everybody does that, but it's certainly a possibility and something I have observed few times. Once I was tasked with "doing something about" a manager who played competitively StarCraft at work. In reality that's a symptom of a larger issue, where we are (consciously or not) evaluated on how long we stay at the office over how productive we are. IMO it's nobodys business if I play StarCraft at work, as long as it helps me, or doesn't prevent me from achieving my objectives.

hvidgaard 11y ago
I would argue that if you cannot restrain yourself to be productive in a closed office, why would you be it from home? That said, I agree, evaluating on time at the office is the wrong metric, but for the vast majority of managers, they have no idea how to evaluate it otherwise because they do not understand the tasks at hand.
- fridek 11y ago
  At home nothing prevents me from not working and I often don't. The difference is, at home you can spend your time with a book, cooking, with kids or spouse - which all is refreshing and in general will improve your performance once you get back to work. In the office not working constitutes mostly of playing dumb games or reading hacker news, the latter being kind of ok, but certainly it doesn't leave me refreshed and willing to go back to my not-so-hip-after-the-latest-js-framework code. I don't think it's realistically possible to put a metric on one's performance, that would allow us to break from time-based evaluations completely. That being said, I see how my colleagues are progressing with their work and it has nothing to do with which are working from home, which from office and there is also no clear time-value correlation either. It has more to do with how motivated they are, what internally drives them and how skilled they are. I have a friend at work who believes deeply in software craftsmanship principles and it's a privilege to see how he works. He stays at home more than most of us, but provides a steady and consistent stream of small, high-quality pull requests, all day, every day. I watch how not slacking at work can have a great impact on the project and on the team morale. It has very little to do with an open space, WFH, what kind of laptop you work on and what blend of coffee you are given. I grew to believe those are just excuses I (and others) are giving themselves to not fully focus on work. Once I admitted that to myself, I decided to spend my slacking time in a way that improves my performance later. I hope one day it will go away completely, or I will get organized enough to be consistent in my output regardless of interruptions.

louhike 11y ago

This article has been discussed several times, mostly https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9404006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9404006 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065.

v4n4d1s 11y ago

They should switch to libreoffice. Fixed everything for me.

umairsiddique 11y ago
lol
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

mattdlondon 11y ago

How is this Google's fault? Google's name is used in the article title, but then it is basically not mentioned again apart from in a list of equally well-known companies?

jasonwocky 11y ago
I don't think the article is blaming Google. Just har-har'ing with attitude that Google maybe isn't as smart as its cracked up to be.
- stevesearer 11y ago
  The title was probably chosen because the editors believe adding something about Google will generate the most views and sharing.

wodenokoto 11y ago

Just a different opinion here. I have never worked in a single office space. I honestly can't imagine such a thing. But I do know how incredible good I am at distracting myself at home. Just having someone around, who are working on a different piece of the same puzzle is a major motivator.

Rainymood 11y ago
I am exactly the same. At home, I can find ANYTHING to entertain me. At work, when I have a group of motivated peers around me who are focused on the same goal, so am I.
GFischer 11y ago
That's the point, it's not binary between open plan or individual offices... you can have 2, 3 or 4 - people shared offices. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces "enclosed offices need not be one-person offices. The two- or three- or four-person office makes a lot more sense, particularly if office groupings can be made to align with work groups. Even in open-plan offices, co-workers should be encouraged to modify the grid to put their areas together into small suites. When this is allowed, people become positively ingenious in laying out the area to serve all their needs: work space, meeting space, and social space. Since they tend to be in interaction mode together or simultaneously in flow mode, they have less noise clash with each other than they would with randomly selected neighbors."
- carapat_virulat 11y ago
  I find the atmosphere in a room with 2, 3 or 4 people far more oppressive that a room with a 100. Probably something to do with being able to ignore people when they are a multitude, but things getting too personal when it's a small group. I always found it very easy to concentrate in big spaces as long as I feel nobody cares about what I am doing, and that seems easy in a big room. I also don't care much about small distractions or noises, I always hear people complaining about getting out of the zone when they have to chat a bit with a coworker. It takes me a big effort to get into the zone when I am starting to work, some kind of a starting period while I load all the relevant information in my head, but once I'm there I can get in and out and attend subtasks or have a conversation with somebody with no problem.

amolgupta 11y ago

Not to mention the situation in a startup where the tech team is sitting next to the sales and marketing teams who are constantly on the phone.

deleted 11y ago

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calinet6 11y ago

We get it, HN is majority introvert, and really likes logical optimization using data. But some things aren't easily measurable. Is it a coincidence that companies who pioneered the open office plan are also some of the most successful in the world? Show me how you'd even begin to disprove that and I'll show you a dozen confounding variables making it silly to even try. What is the true impact of an open office on a culture of collaborative interaction? And what's the impact of that type of interaction on success? Hard to measure. Sometimes we look at the things we can easily make into numbers and assume they describe the whole truth. Not always so. "The most important things are unmeasurable." —W. Edwards Deming

deleted 11y ago
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makeitsuckless 11y ago
The success of these companies is largely irrelevant: they became successful before they started creating huge open office farms. Also, companies that exploit sweatshops and factories with atrocious working conditions are also successful. What does it matter if it's successful when it's abusive. And putting introvert geeks in an open office even if it does give you an extra ounce of efficiency until they burn out from the emotional stress is abusive.
ekianjo 11y ago
> "The most important things are unmeasurable." —W. Edwards Deming I always like the quote at the end of the post, that proves absolutely nothing but is just there for the sake of a cheap punchline. > s it a coincidence that companies who pioneered the open office plan are also some of the most successful in the world? I would rather consider the coincidence of younger companies being easily influenced by the last thing that's fashionable because of young CEOs at their head, instead of relying on any particular dataset to make rational decisions on how tom best work between people. > We get it, HN is majority introvert, Arent Hackers more likely to be introvert anyway ?
Cthulhu_ 11y ago
But are they successful because of the open office, or because they have a very good product at its base? Correlation / causation / etc. You can't judge the individual performance of 3000 people in an open office floor plan from a product.

chrisBob 11y ago

There are worse things than open offices. One of the new trends is open lab space. Chemistry labs at UNC made the transition a few years ago. Did someone, anywhere on the floor, open something that produces hazardous vapors? Why contain it to one room when you can expose 1/3 of the building? The University of Michigan's Biology program currently has a building under construction with the same "feature", and I am sure there are others.

teekert 11y ago

"Meanwhile, “ease of interaction” with colleagues — the problem that open offices profess to fix — was cited as a problem by fewer than 10 percent of workers in any type of office setting." Here it is the other way around, the open office parts of the building are very quite, nobody dears make too much sound. It is much more social to walk into an office for a quick chat, only disturbing 1, 2 or 3 others.

thoastbrot 11y ago
Just imagine how "ease of interaction" is not a problem if you don't mind not to interact at all. That's another problem fixed forcefully by open offices. I like not being alone in my office, having the whole team of a dozen people in my reach. I don't like loud discussions either, but I can mute those with my ear plugs. I cannot unmute a solo office box.

stevesearer 11y ago

One facet that never comes up in these anti-open office articles is that it is 100% impossible to design the perfect office for you as an individual, for every other individual, all while designing an office that is perfect for the organization. Many people here advocate private offices, which are great, but as soon as you start putting up walls, you've totally restricted access to natural light in the interior of the building. Access to natural light and breaking down the hierarchy that came with private offices (exterior for high-level employees, corner for the highest) are partly responsible for creating an environment where open office are desirable alternatives. With all of condemnation for open plan office happening, I'm excited to see what the next swing of the pendulum back toward privacy will bring us. Hint: It won't be private offices. Some of the things I'm excited about in this regard are: -Activity-based working office designs -Increased working from home/telecommuting arrangements The most important part of office design is to consider your company's culture, and then develop an office that will best support it rather than jumping onto what types of designs have worked for the unique cultures of other companies.

bachmeier 11y ago
The trend will be the elimination of offices. There's nothing lower cost than forcing employees to provide their own offices and work equipment.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  It's not hard to check out equipment to work with for use offsite. Offsite work is a challenge, but at least for me, I'm probably doubly productive that way. Was the overall team doubly productive? I have no real way to know.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
As Joel Spolsky noted, getting natural light to a large number of small rooms is basically a solved problem: how many hotel rooms do you see without a window? Sure, private offices are smaller than hotel rooms, but offices generally have large numbers of meeting rooms, labs and common areas that don't need windows. Of course, that means that you need to build office buildings more like hotels; you can't so easily retrofit existing office buildings.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

Is this open office = for work of a highly creative and collaborative nature, the team owns their own workspace, which they customize as they choose, and folks on the team are in physical proximity? Or is this open office = packing everybody into one huge area like sardines no matter what their job role or what their team is doing with little or no account for ownership? I find we lump a huge amount of stuff into the category "open office", much of it crappy, then stand outside and throw rocks at the entire concept. Let's not do that.

bunkydoo 11y ago

If you don't like this, why not go start your own company or find a new job? There is nothing forcing you to stay in this job. I for one have to agree that the communal aspect of working in an open office has its benefits and downfalls. But if one day I came in and didn't like it to the level you described - I'd quit and go find a job where I can get right with myself.

frostmatthew 11y ago
> why not go start your own company That's not a realistic solution for the vast majority of people. Many people (such as myself) have absolutely no desire to start a company - and many who would want to aren't in a financial position to go an undetermined amount of time without a paycheck. > find a new job With most companies choosing to ignore the countless studies done on this subject and instead just do what the cool kids are doing there aren't many jobs to pursue that are not in an open-office.
georgehotelling 11y ago
If you don't like this article, why not go start your own website or find a new website to read? There's nothing forcing you to stay on this website. Or maybe there is more to consider than just one issue, but it's still worthy of criticism? Maybe an job can offer great benefits, exciting challenges, a valuable product and great coworkers but still have room for improvement in the office layout. Your solution to that situation would be "shut up and quit" over "raise awareness of the issue to improve things for everyone"?
johnaspden 11y ago
I think this is a good suggestion. I've given up on 'contracting' these days, solely because I hate open plan, and just consult freelance. I rent my own office to work in and it's lovely. I get lonely though! I miss the technical and social conversations we used to have in the kitchen or round the coffee machine. What would be ideal is if I were to rent an office inside the company I'm working for. I would actually be quite happy to pay my client to rent a bit of their space if it's ever a possibility. After all rental costs are chickenfeed compared to developer compensation.

kendallpark 11y ago

Every few months there's an opinion piece on HN about open offices. Then everyone gets into the same debate over whether they like the open offices or not. What I'd like to see are new STUDIES about open offices, not the rehashing of personal experiences and anecdotes.

frostmatthew 11y ago
> What I'd like to see are new STUDIES about open offices The article we're discussing mentions multiple studies...beyond that there's a great New Yorker article[1] from last year that references a number of studies. This blog post[2] links to a couple others and addresses costs/alternatives. A "study of over 40,000 survey responses collected over a decade has found that the benefits for workers are quickly outweighed by the disadvantages"[3]. A Washington Post article[4] on office furniture designers realizing (citing multiple studies) "open-plan spaces are actually lousy for workers." And a TIME article[5] highlighted decades of research that associated open layouts with "greater employee stress, poorer co-worker relations and reduced satisfaction with the physical environment." [1] http://www.newyorker.com/currency-tag/the-open-office-trap http://www.newyorker.com/currency-tag/the-open-office-trap [2] http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-floor-plans-in-tech-companies.html http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-flo... [3] http://theconversation.com/open-plan-offices-attract-highest-levels-of-worker-dissatisfaction-study-18246 http://theconversation.com/open-plan-offices-attract-highest... [4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/04/22/office-designers-find-open-plan-spaces-are-actually-lousy-for-workers/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/04... [5] http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/15/why-the-open-office-is-a-hotbed-of-stress/ http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/15/why-the-open-office-is-a-ho...
johnaspden 11y ago
It doesn't look like much of a debate! Everyone hates them and is trying to work out whether they're caused by stupidity or evil.

jguimont 11y ago

SAP star building in Germany headquarters are a good example of what to do with office spaces: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gOgdHlT33Jo/TQ7zXFqaxjI/AAAAAAAAAJA/zS6O1oE5zSU/s320/IMG01473-20101217-1045.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gOgdHlT33Jo/TQ7zXFqaxjI/AAAAAAAAAJ... http://www.mz-web.de/image/view/2012/4/23/17117282,16301136,dmData,maxh,480,maxw,480,SAPZentrale+%25281334258355914%2529.jpg http://www.mz-web.de/image/view/2012/4/23/17117282,16301136,... http://www.donfeidner.de/assets/images/P1000400_SAP_Star_Building_2.jpg http://www.donfeidner.de/assets/images/P1000400_SAP_Star_Bui... The wings have offices which can sit 6 to 8 people and at the center there are the meeting rooms, restrooms and lunch area.

kbody 11y ago
A different way for a cubicle farm.
wahsd 11y ago
Group spaces are quite prevalent in Germany from what I can tell. It makes total sense, in Germany. There is a bit of a difference in the USA though, where employers think you get productivity out of surveillance. We are not a very deeply thinking society, so it makes sense on the face of it that if you can see people working they are being productive. What we miss though, is that all the surveillance and lack of protections and benefits leads to massive amounts of squandered energies and effort on busy work. Busy work is work that is noise which serves a couple different types of purposes. It can make you look like you are working because you are working on something; whether it is relevant, important, or useful is totally irrelevant though. It can serve to make the system as inefficient as possible in order to assure job security. There are other purposes but those are some of the most prevalent. At the core of the problem lies a misunderstanding of the problem that open plans are/were meant to address and can also be tied back to our problem with management models and incentives in our corporations and society. It's a complicated matter that I can't do justice here, but if you have incompetent management trying to satisfy abusive demands from "investors" aka Wall Street, incompetent management leads to believe the problem of gaining ever more "productivity" out of a corporation and workers is solved by squeezing ever harder to get that last drop out. Which incompetent management and incentives lead them to believe can be done by putting everyone in a big open space so they feel surveilled and monitored and will do what they can to appear like a good worker by doing busy work and staying longer doing. This is largely all due to a system without employee protections where anyone in the 99% can be fired at a moment's notice because some executive screwed up or needs to be paid more. It's more obviously presented as exercise metaphor, but the following post about "Why Productive People Always have Time to Exercise"http://riskology.co/sharpen-the-saw/ http://riskology.co/sharpen-the-saw/ also applies to these types of circumstances. On a side note: Why the hell doesn't HN support markdown? The site's already kind of embarrassingly styled, it's shameful that you can't even link somehow.

Exgavin 11y ago

I'd further add that "agile" workspaces reminds me of sweatshops in India. It makes other "open" office plans look appealing. It puts the open concept on a gradient much to your point.

contergan 11y ago

I fully agree. I currently work for a startup and after we moved into a new office last month our management had the glorious idea of putting the programmers next to the customer support team in an open office :/ It's horrible - I have to endure the customer support calls the whole day long and can't find even 5 min. in silence, in order to concentrate on the programming tasks I'm supposed to do. I tried putting on headphones and listening to white noise etc., but that doesn't cut it either. I need silence to work efficiently and it's been that way ever since I cam remember. My productivity has absolutely tanked in the open office and coming this Friday, I will quit the job and spend the coming weeks getting back into self-employment and working from home.

Cthulhu_ 11y ago
Have you at least provided feedback to the managers? Like cold, hard feedback "I cannot work like this, I and my colleagues are going to quit and you're fucked when we do" kinda feedback.
- mgkimsal 11y ago
  No one ever does this, unfortunately. Getting a group to band together and threaten collective action is something few people even consider - most people I know are scared of entertaining that idea.
  - mkopinsky 11y ago
    It's not about making a collective threat, it's letting management know that the new conditions are making you consider options "up to and including departure", and that you think the other devs may be in the same boat.
    - snx 11y ago
      Just make sure you don't talk for other people (for example naming your peers). Otherwise i strongly agree.
11y ago

phkahler 11y ago

Agree with all of it except the end. Don't fall for the "work from home" bit. Sure there is privacy, but it's also isolating and destroys the primary barrier to working around the clock.

dpcan 11y ago

The first 2 startups I worked for back in the early 2000's were open offices, though there were only 6 of us in one room at the first startup, and 3 at the other. At the first startup, thankfully, customer service was in an open office in another part of the small building. Couldn't imagine having to work next to those conversations. In the first company it wasn't so bad, we had all our computers circled and pointed toward the center (mostly) which afforded us a little bit of privacy at least, but it was awkward looking up to have a thought and making eye contact with a fellow coder across from me. Though sometimes it was funny. I think the hardest part was the distraction of being the end-point for anyone's conversation at any time they felt like talking to me - no matter how good a coding groove I was in. Or maybe it was having to listen to 2 other coders figure out a problem together in the same office where I was trying to work. Hmm. Either way, I prefer private offices. At the next startup I went to, the computers faced the wall in the office. It was designed this way so the management could look over our shoulder all day long. Needless to say, I quit within months. Constantly being questioned why I was working in a certain file, or viewing part of the project's website that the boss didn't understand made me cringe. I'd go home grumpy everyday. I'd eat in my car at a creepy park across the street just to get away from the place. It was awful. Worked for myself ever since. In an office.

Cthulhu_ 11y ago
6 and 3 in one room isn't bad at all, as long as everyone's working on the same project / the same tasks - that way, discussions you overhear are relevant to what you're working on at the time, and not a distraction / irrelevant noise. With the managers though... Yeah that's annoying. I'd invite them to sit down next to you for a nice four-hour pair programming session - and if they refused, they probably didn't really care and they can leave you to it. Glad you left, micro-management like that just says that the management thinks you're inept and / or doesn't trust you.
webtards 11y ago
I do wonder sometimes, if all the startups that followed Googs lead into open offices have been pranked, much like the interview folks who blindly followed Googs wacky and wanky interview questions, which have also been shown to be a useless idea. There is probably a pranks team in Goog that publicises the ideas to see who will blindly follow.

aethertap 11y ago

The best working environment I was ever part of in terms of productivity was set up with private offices, but at the team level. We'd have a team of people who were all working on the same component (five or six people) in a room with each other, but otherwise insulated from the bustle of the office. It was hugely helpful to be in a room with all of the people who were relevant to your work, and no other distractions. That may have just been due to having a good team, but I have a lot of good memories from that time.

moron4hire 11y ago

A small amount of friction in communication is a good thing. People become intellectually lazy if they can ask questions of anyone they want, at will.

xasos 11y ago

Is it really that black and white? I prefer a nice combination where the workplace is relatively open, but people still have space for privacy. It's not like Google throws all their engineers into a room... > If employers want to make the open-office model work, they have to take measures to improve work efficiency. For one, they should create more private area Many companies already split up like this, breaking teams down and giving all the members ample space and privacy. The truly open model that I've seen work the best is sales teams, where it has a "sales floor" feel and employees can be energetic making sales.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

After 14 years working remotely in a home office I worked at Google in 2013 in an open office. It was an adjustment but I enjoyed it. I shifted my work hours to 6:15am to 4pm for a few hours of quiet work time everyday. Also, there were many places to work away from my desk. Most managers seemed to have more private work spaces.

keerthiko 11y ago

My preference has always been a shared workspace with the option for coders to pick up their computer and head outside to a coffee shop or unoccupied conference room or something to hack away in the zone when they felt like it. This worked especially well when our startup was based out of a coworking space that had lots of temporary private spaces for individuals aside from the per-company office rental, when we were just four people.

vermooten 11y ago

Lots of people in our organisation equate non-open offices (in our case, cubes with high walls) with a we've-always-done-things-this-way attitude. And with a lack of transparency, the desire not to share 9and so remain vital) etc. However in our UK office we have the opposite - our development room is like a 1980s trading floor, impossible to focus for more than a few minutes at a time even with sweaty decent headphones. Work-from-home is the way forward - LINQ combined with trust mean I can work in my pyjamas. Win!

wahsd 11y ago

Very good piece. I am sure the Author is quite a pleasant person and all, but I really hate her just for going to the Beats store. She got what she deserves.

doppel 11y ago

At my current workplace, we have a shared room for the developers and designers (5-9 people depending on the day and time), while the rest (~20 people) are spread in other bigger open spaces. I find that it works well, because we are mostly stationary and focused on a specific task, while the rest (sales, marketing, customer development, etc.) are constantly moving around, in meetings, visiting customers. In a mostly-tech company I couldn't imagine not having some compartments so that you don't suddenly find yourself 1 among 30 people in the same room - I'd go completely insane.

mcv 11y ago

Articles about how X doesn't work tend to use examples of where X is really badly implemented. In the case of this article, it seems the office she was working had a really toxic culture, with micromanaging managers, coworkers judging you when you leave, excessively noisy people, etc. I've always worked in shared offices, ranging from 3 people to, currently, and entire department of 40 or thereabouts. Never seems to be a problem. But with large rooms, you do need to consider acoustics of course. And letting managers keep a close eye on people is a terrible reason for anything.

yawz 11y ago

Peopleware (by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister) must be a mandatory read for anyone working in a team and office environment.

ryan90 11y ago

This conversation again?