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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 compa

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
[deleted]
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.
ams6110 11y ago
DeMarco and Lister (Peopleware) saw the problems with open offices decades ago. The notion that open offices were a bad idea is not a new discovery. Companies like them because they are initially a lot cheaper than giving people their own offices.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  Initially? Not so much. My understanding from when a company I worked for built a building is that bespoke offices would have been cheaper - it's just a few (steel) studs, some sheetrock , wiring and labor. Cubicles can be quite expensive. The appeal appears to be flexibility. Actual open offices - no cubicles, just tables - approximate a continuous meeting.
  - greenyoda 11y ago
    "it's just a few (steel) studs, some sheetrock , wiring and labor" It's a bit more than that. For example, individual closed offices require their own ducts/convectors/filters for heating and air conditioning, their own fire sprinklers and smoke detectors, their own overhead lighting fixtures, etc. Also, the walls of offices generally need to be painted (nobody wants bare sheetrock), unlike the walls of cubicles. Cubicles can indeed be expensive, but the labor to build offices is even more expensive. (As someone who works in a private office, I think the increased productivity it gives me is well worth the expense.)
    - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
      All very true. Still... The HVAC has to be there anyway. It's just a few more ducts. The labor to build offices isn't that expensive, and it's not like the boss is gonna have you some in on Saturday to do it :) People who sell cubicles also sell (or contract) the labor to do installations.
normloman 11y ago
"Is it a coincidence that companies who pioneered the open office plan are also some of the most successful in the world?" Yes. If a successful company had their employees sitting in bean bag chairs all day, that wouldn't mean that somehow bean bag chairs we're responsible for their success.
- calinet6 11y ago
  Suffices to say that it is difficult to determine a correlation either way, which was exactly my point.
nilkn 11y ago
Surely you don't actually need to measure anything. Just ask people what they prefer. And to be fair, I've met people, online and off, who legitimately like open offices or would prefer a hybrid. But I've met roughly an order of magnitude more people who don't like them at all and just want a quiet, personal space. And you're right, there are a lot of confounding factors when you look at companies like Google. For instance, I'm sure the prospect of getting filthy rich was pretty enticing for early employees, who probably found the work conditions nearly irrelevant in comparison. Same thing goes for Facebook. There's a well-known notion that some companies are just so successful so fast that they can basically do anything in terms of office dynamics and it will work for them. This is commonly applied to Valve's management strategy (or lack thereof). Also, you could fairly easily argue that both Google and FB met with the majority of their success before they engineered massive open office farms. You could also fairly easily argue that both have been doing a pretty mediocre job lately, with some successes but lots of failures, mostly just maintaining their status (especially Facebook, in my humble opinion). I'd imagine that the more upside there is for employees, and the more empowered the employees are in general, the more they'll tolerate and perform well in an open office on average.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  I've found asking people to be notoriously unreliable. Folks want quiet and comfort, sure. But is that the best thing for productivity? Ok, in this case, probably. But standing desks are apparently a good thing, and the vast majority of us eschew them. And so on. Anything that seems like an inconvenience gets demonized as a rule. So just asking is a minefield.
  - nilkn 11y ago
    I get what you're saying, but I think there's an easy solution: just ask people who've experienced both. That way you're not experiencing the classic but very real problem of people not knowing what they want until they've got it. At my workplace, for instance, not once in the history of the company has anyone with an office ever given it up, under any circumstances, to move into a cubicle again. Likewise, someone with a cubicle next to a window has never, in my tenure at the company, moved to a cubicle not next to a window. As for standing desks, I didn't realize that people actively eschewed them. My impression is just that they're impractical for a lot of people to actually obtain. If your workplace doesn't provide them and won't on request, your options get sort of limited. I have a coworker who made a makeshift standing desk but it's not very ideal. I imagine a ton of people are in this situation. Ok, but let's suppose that, by some ingenious study, you're able to determine that nobody prefers the open office, everybody prefers private offices (quite strongly), and yet productivity for the company is better with an open office. That's pretty counter-intuitive, but the world is filled with counter-intuitive things. Does that mean that companies should all switch to open offices? Should a company do something just because it can be shown to increase productivity? I don't think that's necessarily the case. For instance, it might be that the productivity gain is somewhat minimal and that over the years a number of great employees are lost (or not able to be hired) due to the office layout. So in that case the illusion of temporary increased productivity will lead to a long-term net decrease in productivity.
CHY872 11y ago
If two things correlate, it doesn't mean that there's a causal link between them; it means that there's a third thing that causes both of them. Those companies who pioneered the open office plans also do a lot of other things that set themselves apart from other companies. It doesn't necessarily mean anything important. For all you know, the open plan office could be a failed attempt to optimise their workforce.
- calinet6 11y ago
  For all you know, it could be a successful attempt. It's extremely difficult to determine causality in a highly complex system such as a company. That's the point, and that's why I posed the question.
  - CHY872 11y ago
    Then your argument degenerates. What you've said isn't factually incorrect, but it's boring; you've picked a property that no one can possibly prove or disprove (but that is obviously not true) and used that as an argument against the analytical method in general. It's boring for two reasons; firstly because it doesn't allow you to make any decision at all based off it - it's the intellectual equivalent of sticking your head in the sand. Secondly, it's not a fact you need to know in order to judge success; there are many proxies for 'better/worse' which can be tested and quantified. These are widely used by big companies in order to optimise their workforces. The reason that it's not really done in tech is simply because they're so much smaller, and so the benefit of someone spending the time on devising and performing such tests is lower.
    - calinet6 11y ago
      That's the entire point: no one can possibly prove or disprove that open office plans are a significant contributing factor to company success, or if they're just correlated, or if they're entirely irrelevant. Yet the popular story here is that they're highly detrimental and have a causal relationship with low productivity. That might be true for individuals, but we have no evidence (as far as I know) that it's true at an organizational level. The benefits to the company from a systems perspective could far outweigh the difference in individual productivity. We don't know, yet people act as though that systems view is not relevant. I'm not making an argument, anyway, I'm pointing out a hole in the analysis: there are factors that are possibly involved that are more difficult to quantify that everyone seems to be alright with just ignoring. My hunch is that the lack of quantifiability of the cultural, social, and human factors resulting from office plans makes them a blind spot for people with more logical/analytical perspectives, like yourself. I fail to see how that's boring or irrelevant.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
Yes, the open office nature of Facebook may have been crucial to its early success. But that was when Facebook was less than 10 people! Many people consider small team offices to be more akin to private offices than to open plan offices.
- calinet6 11y ago
  Surely their success also had something to do with their work and culture when they had more than 10 employees.
frostmatthew 11y ago
> Is it a coincidence that companies who pioneered the open office plan are also some of the most successful in the world? Many companies that have been among "the most successful in the world" got there without open offices. Just because a company does something doesn't mean it was a major factor in its success. We have no way of knowing if Google (or whoever) would have been less successful had they not been such fans of open offices (conversely they may have been even more successful - we have no way of knowing). > Show me how you'd even begin to disprove that Aside from the studies mentioned in this article there have been many other articles[1][2][3][4][5] written citing numerous studies (some spanning decades!) that consistently show open offices are terrible. Just because some companies have been successful despite that doesn't mean the science is wrong (that would be like saying smoking isn't bad for you because you know healthy 90 year-olds that smoke a pack a day). > What is the true impact of an open office on a culture of collaborative interaction? As developers we spend the vast majority of our time not collaborating. For jobs where you're interacting with others for most of the time you can make a stronger argument for an open office - but when you only spend a small amount of time doing so it doesn't make sense to optimize for that (given the numerous downsides). [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...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

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.

ams6110 11y ago

DeMarco and Lister (Peopleware) saw the problems with open offices decades ago. The notion that open offices were a bad idea is not a new discovery. Companies like them because they are initially a lot cheaper than giving people their own offices.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago
Initially? Not so much. My understanding from when a company I worked for built a building is that bespoke offices would have been cheaper - it's just a few (steel) studs, some sheetrock , wiring and labor. Cubicles can be quite expensive. The appeal appears to be flexibility. Actual open offices - no cubicles, just tables - approximate a continuous meeting.
- greenyoda 11y ago
  "it's just a few (steel) studs, some sheetrock , wiring and labor" It's a bit more than that. For example, individual closed offices require their own ducts/convectors/filters for heating and air conditioning, their own fire sprinklers and smoke detectors, their own overhead lighting fixtures, etc. Also, the walls of offices generally need to be painted (nobody wants bare sheetrock), unlike the walls of cubicles. Cubicles can indeed be expensive, but the labor to build offices is even more expensive. (As someone who works in a private office, I think the increased productivity it gives me is well worth the expense.)
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    All very true. Still... The HVAC has to be there anyway. It's just a few more ducts. The labor to build offices isn't that expensive, and it's not like the boss is gonna have you some in on Saturday to do it :) People who sell cubicles also sell (or contract) the labor to do installations.

normloman 11y ago

"Is it a coincidence that companies who pioneered the open office plan are also some of the most successful in the world?" Yes. If a successful company had their employees sitting in bean bag chairs all day, that wouldn't mean that somehow bean bag chairs we're responsible for their success.

calinet6 11y ago
Suffices to say that it is difficult to determine a correlation either way, which was exactly my point.

nilkn 11y ago

Surely you don't actually need to measure anything. Just ask people what they prefer. And to be fair, I've met people, online and off, who legitimately like open offices or would prefer a hybrid. But I've met roughly an order of magnitude more people who don't like them at all and just want a quiet, personal space. And you're right, there are a lot of confounding factors when you look at companies like Google. For instance, I'm sure the prospect of getting filthy rich was pretty enticing for early employees, who probably found the work conditions nearly irrelevant in comparison. Same thing goes for Facebook. There's a well-known notion that some companies are just so successful so fast that they can basically do anything in terms of office dynamics and it will work for them. This is commonly applied to Valve's management strategy (or lack thereof). Also, you could fairly easily argue that both Google and FB met with the majority of their success before they engineered massive open office farms. You could also fairly easily argue that both have been doing a pretty mediocre job lately, with some successes but lots of failures, mostly just maintaining their status (especially Facebook, in my humble opinion). I'd imagine that the more upside there is for employees, and the more empowered the employees are in general, the more they'll tolerate and perform well in an open office on average.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
I've found asking people to be notoriously unreliable. Folks want quiet and comfort, sure. But is that the best thing for productivity? Ok, in this case, probably. But standing desks are apparently a good thing, and the vast majority of us eschew them. And so on. Anything that seems like an inconvenience gets demonized as a rule. So just asking is a minefield.
- nilkn 11y ago
  I get what you're saying, but I think there's an easy solution: just ask people who've experienced both. That way you're not experiencing the classic but very real problem of people not knowing what they want until they've got it. At my workplace, for instance, not once in the history of the company has anyone with an office ever given it up, under any circumstances, to move into a cubicle again. Likewise, someone with a cubicle next to a window has never, in my tenure at the company, moved to a cubicle not next to a window. As for standing desks, I didn't realize that people actively eschewed them. My impression is just that they're impractical for a lot of people to actually obtain. If your workplace doesn't provide them and won't on request, your options get sort of limited. I have a coworker who made a makeshift standing desk but it's not very ideal. I imagine a ton of people are in this situation. Ok, but let's suppose that, by some ingenious study, you're able to determine that nobody prefers the open office, everybody prefers private offices (quite strongly), and yet productivity for the company is better with an open office. That's pretty counter-intuitive, but the world is filled with counter-intuitive things. Does that mean that companies should all switch to open offices? Should a company do something just because it can be shown to increase productivity? I don't think that's necessarily the case. For instance, it might be that the productivity gain is somewhat minimal and that over the years a number of great employees are lost (or not able to be hired) due to the office layout. So in that case the illusion of temporary increased productivity will lead to a long-term net decrease in productivity.

CHY872 11y ago

If two things correlate, it doesn't mean that there's a causal link between them; it means that there's a third thing that causes both of them. Those companies who pioneered the open office plans also do a lot of other things that set themselves apart from other companies. It doesn't necessarily mean anything important. For all you know, the open plan office could be a failed attempt to optimise their workforce.

calinet6 11y ago
For all you know, it could be a successful attempt. It's extremely difficult to determine causality in a highly complex system such as a company. That's the point, and that's why I posed the question.
- CHY872 11y ago
  Then your argument degenerates. What you've said isn't factually incorrect, but it's boring; you've picked a property that no one can possibly prove or disprove (but that is obviously not true) and used that as an argument against the analytical method in general. It's boring for two reasons; firstly because it doesn't allow you to make any decision at all based off it - it's the intellectual equivalent of sticking your head in the sand. Secondly, it's not a fact you need to know in order to judge success; there are many proxies for 'better/worse' which can be tested and quantified. These are widely used by big companies in order to optimise their workforces. The reason that it's not really done in tech is simply because they're so much smaller, and so the benefit of someone spending the time on devising and performing such tests is lower.
  - calinet6 11y ago
    That's the entire point: no one can possibly prove or disprove that open office plans are a significant contributing factor to company success, or if they're just correlated, or if they're entirely irrelevant. Yet the popular story here is that they're highly detrimental and have a causal relationship with low productivity. That might be true for individuals, but we have no evidence (as far as I know) that it's true at an organizational level. The benefits to the company from a systems perspective could far outweigh the difference in individual productivity. We don't know, yet people act as though that systems view is not relevant. I'm not making an argument, anyway, I'm pointing out a hole in the analysis: there are factors that are possibly involved that are more difficult to quantify that everyone seems to be alright with just ignoring. My hunch is that the lack of quantifiability of the cultural, social, and human factors resulting from office plans makes them a blind spot for people with more logical/analytical perspectives, like yourself. I fail to see how that's boring or irrelevant.

bryanlarsen 11y ago

Yes, the open office nature of Facebook may have been crucial to its early success. But that was when Facebook was less than 10 people! Many people consider small team offices to be more akin to private offices than to open plan offices.

calinet6 11y ago
Surely their success also had something to do with their work and culture when they had more than 10 employees.

frostmatthew 11y ago

> Is it a coincidence that companies who pioneered the open office plan are also some of the most successful in the world? Many companies that have been among "the most successful in the world" got there without open offices. Just because a company does something doesn't mean it was a major factor in its success. We have no way of knowing if Google (or whoever) would have been less successful had they not been such fans of open offices (conversely they may have been even more successful - we have no way of knowing). > Show me how you'd even begin to disprove that Aside from the studies mentioned in this article there have been many other articles[1][2][3][4][5] written citing numerous studies (some spanning decades!) that consistently show open offices are terrible. Just because some companies have been successful despite that doesn't mean the science is wrong (that would be like saying smoking isn't bad for you because you know healthy 90 year-olds that smoke a pack a day). > What is the true impact of an open office on a culture of collaborative interaction? As developers we spend the vast majority of our time not collaborating. For jobs where you're interacting with others for most of the time you can make a stronger argument for an open office - but when you only spend a small amount of time doing so it doesn't make sense to optimize for that (given the numerous downsides). [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...