Often when I suggest to non-programmers that programmers should get their own offices, I'm met with incredulity: "Where do any programmers get their own offices???" Microsoft and Fog Creek come to mind, but where else?
On the general question of open vs. private offices, my views have tempered over time. The first time I worked in an open office, I hated it. But I've come to realize that a lot depends on the layout of the office and that there are better and worse ways to configure one.
The first case -- the one I hated -- had a) long rows of desks, b) bright overhead fluorescent lights, c) a lot of noise due to being in a large room with sales/marketing, d) a lot of visual distractions due to people walking up & down the aisles, and e) few available areas to go to collaborate away from your desks.
Now, I'm also in an open office, but I find it quite livable, because: a) my desk faces the wall, for fewer visual distractions, b) the room is comfortably lit (ie, not too bright)[1], c) it's a smaller room with only engineering and is generally quieter[2], d) there are enough areas to go if you need to collaborate.
All this is to say that, while the evidence is that open offices generally suck, there's probably a number of ways to ameliorate their problems to some degree without having to resort to private offices. I don't think I'd prefer an office to my current setup, actually.
[1] I think this element is underrated. In fact, I'd be curious to know if there's a verifiable correlation between brightness levels and how loud people tend to talk. There's something about a dim room that seems to induce people to lower their voices.
[2] Small, but not too small. There's a sort of sweet spot. I was once in a room with 3 other people and it was maddening because it was generally quiet but every little noise -- coughing, swallowing, etc... -- was seemingly amplified by the overall quietness to became hugely annoying. (An inverse concept explains why I can work quite well in a coffee shop despite the background din.)
a) my desk faces the wall, for fewer visual distractions
I'm sitting here feeling stunned that anybody could ever want their desk facing a wall, as the implication (in terms of any "open plan" environment) is that their back is facing, well, nothing. IOW, somebody can walk up behind you unnoticed. Me personally, I hate that with a passion. I'd pay money to have my desk facing out with my back to the wall, just so nobody can walk up behind me.
I work in a team. The team of 5-10 people sit in the same office. That way we can talk to each other when needed. Some say that's disturbance, I call it collaborating.
I'm not a code monkey. I don't sit alone in an office all day hammering out code. If that was what expected of me, I would change job.
So, not exactly open floor plan, but not separate offices either. I think that's perfect.
One thing that matters a lot is the behaviour of the people.
I used to work in a small open office where one guy would constantly hold debates with everyone. It was pretty hard to stay out of it, and very distracting.
Now I'm in an office with a similar layout and staff, but it's like a library. There's the occasional group discussion or banter, but not enough to bother.
I've worked in finance my whole career, so it's all open plan, lots of screens. Never had my own office, people always needed (well so they say) to be accessible.
>I'd be curious to know if there's a verifiable correlation between brightness levels and how loud people tend to talk. There's something about a dim room that seems to induce people to lower their voices.
Almost every open office I've worked in has been super loud and disruptive, but one of them that happened to have high ceilings and very soft, warm lighting turned and turned out to be the fantastic. Something about the space gave the room a kind of library-style hush, which I think helped create a feedback loop compelling people to speak quietly and move longer conversations into closed rooms.
I think there's also an element to establishing the culture of how you interact in the open space early on, I think even with the hushed atmosphere of the room itself, it only worked because people had been talking quietly and taking louder conversations into private rooms for as long as they'd been working in the space. Pulling back from a culture of having a boisterous open space to a quiet one is, I think, much harder than doing it from the get-go.
I generally hate open offices. I've worked in enough open space / half-height-cubie-space to detest them. In one case I refused a job (well, a transfer) because the other group was basically cheek-to-jowl and in a place with little ventilation (it smelled bad in there); I've done crappy working conditions in startups, but I refuse to do them in a multi-billion dollar corporation.
However, the ability to move your desk at will makes open space work well, assuming you have enough space to work with. If your desk is on wheels and your company lets you, you can just relocate: Find a quieter spot to work, or go sit next to a few people you're working closely with for a while.
But the combination of open offices and assigned seating is terrible. It feels like preschool. I prefer to be treated like an adult at work, not a child or a slave.
In regard to [1] your hypothesis is probably correct. There exists technology that dims the lights automatically when the volume level of an area is too loud, in order to make people lower their voices.
The point about facing the wall is interesting. I find it very difficult to concentrate if I'm not facing _away_ from a wall. Knowing that people can come up behind me as I'm working or taking a break makes me very uncomfortable, to the point that I can't really relax and get into the flow of my work. It just feels like I'm being constantly watched.
Of course, cubes or offices would let us have the best of both worlds, but ...
> But I've come to realize that a lot depends on the layout of the office
A lot also depends on the people that work around you.
If everyone respects one another, then it's usually OK.
However, there is often at least one person who talks and talks and talks for most of the day (and somehow keeps their job), and at least one person who talks VERY LOUDLY on the phone all day (because they're far away, so obviously you need to shout to be heard?!).
I had a similar experience with coffee shops. I was working from home for a stretch and discovered (almost by accident) that I could focus well at a coffee shop in spite of the noise. It gave me a mild sense of urgency for whatever task I had chosen that helped me tune out the distractions. It was mostly quieter at home but there always seemed to be more potential distractions. I found going once or twice a week helped me stay more focused overall - also for when I was home all day.
In that environment, you also lose the ability to shut your office door and have a private meeting. Sure, you can put 3-4 person meeting rooms next to big open offices, but I've never worked in a building that had enough small conference rooms to make up for the loss meetings in offices with doors
Lighting is such a big issue for me. Our office, luckily has a bunch of large windows in it. But, I've worked places with no windows and too much florescent lights. It's an awful environment.
Stack Overflow does. I'm an engineer there and we still think providing private offices to our engineering team is important for their productivity. This includes engineers, SREs, designers, data scientists, PMs, and others.
However, most of our engineering team is remote and if they're not in one of our locations, we give them pretty much what they'd like to build their own home office or go to a coworking space.
For me, I'm actually nomadic, so I tend to work from wherever I'm staying or end up in cafes a lot of time. I still get the support I need if my work "station" isn't optimal.
TL;DR Stack Overflow provides private offices, but is really flexible, especially given its remote policy.
I'm still occasionally sad that I bombed an interview at SO a while back. I had prepped for more of a front-end/full stack JS role, and got asked a series of low-level data structure questions. I thought I did alright given the circumstances (I did work out the correct answer to each one), but the interviewer wasn't impressed.
I asked for a do-over and they said no. Oh well...
Old Microsoft: it was a BillG ethic: anyone touching software got an office: software design engineers, PM's, QA, even admins ... it allowed one to be quiet and focus. And signaled to co-workers - do not disturb ...
I was a contractor at MS many moons ago, I got an entire office to myself. Later when we had a crunch, we had to double up, but it was both perm and contract, not contractor specific. There was no lack of collab due to offices, close your door when in the zone. Open in it when accepting visitors. Absolutely loved it.
I have a small private office that I just lease myself. I bicycle in every day and work "remote" for IBM. It's fantastic.
If I want some noise, I'll work from home (I have a 3-year old.)
The down side is that IBM's management has recently done a 180 on remote working and is now "strongly encouraging" me to move to one of their offices and work in a cubicle.
I'm pretty sure they won't actually fire me for not moving, but any promotion is probably going to be harder to come by until things (hopefully) swing back in the other direction.
Or I'll just retire. The benefit of living in Ohio is that I can save like 40% of my salary and still live comfortably. (And lease an office for $225/month!)
Colour me green with envy. I'm working in one of those fabled "cubical farms" mentioned in the post.
Half of the company has gone full open office, and the laggers (who didn't get redone before the last CEO suddenly quit) seem to not be changing. I could wander elsewhere in the building to work once in a while, but eventually people would start questioning where I am.. and I'd be missing out on my single monitor and ergonomic seating. I work for a modern company with 30 year outdated office structure... At least its feeling that way today. Yep, right there -- there's the envy!
Work at Stack here. We still provide private offices for developers when they're in one of our offices. A lot of the engineering team is remote too, which lets people have their own workspace as well.
My programming career involved an office at every position
(Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cisco, HP, XTime, VMWare, and a handful of private equity groups). As I was transitioning into another field, the "open office" craze was taking over. I could be wrong, but I have a strong feeling I would not have enjoyed it. Nothing like being an hour into analyzing a core dump to be jerked back to reality by someone interrupting you!
Social norms change. You end up messaging a lot w/ people you can physically touch and it's not considered rude to just ignore someone coming up to you if you're concentrating.
I'm not sure if you're just lucky based on the setups at previous jobs, but for me it has been open floor plan so far.
The only people who have offices are managers or C-Level executives. Currently I sit next to a door that is constantly opened which really kills my productivity.
My team at Parse.ly is fully remote/distributed -- and one of the motivating reasons I formed the team that way was to reproduce the feel of Fog Creek's "bionic office", but in each engineer's home office space.
I discussed this a little in my "Notes on Distributed Teams" presentation here:
At Garmin in Salem, OR, they have four-person quads. These are enclosed spaces with an additional central table, storage, ceiling and door. Though not my own office, I liked it. Quiet, everyone had a corner with ample space, and a nice group dynamic formed. Devs would move occasionally and you'd get to know other people pretty well.
That's why programmers should work remotely. It's the best thing I've ever done for my career. Moved back from Management to IC because it was remote and it's been amazing.
Remote work is great for so many reasons. Off the top of my head:
For the company:
* less office space expense
* bigger talent pool
* low cost benefit
* increased documentation
* encourages the trend towards outcome based management (as opposed to butts in seats)
For the programmer:
* more control over their work environment
* more control over their time
* no "commuting" subsidy for their employers
* arbitrage payscales and standard of living
* working vacations become possible
There are some downsides in terms of increased coordination costs and I have some friends that will never get to work remote because of security concerns, but for most developers this trend is fantastic.
Yes... for the first time in my career my desk is next to a window with natural light and fresh air. All previous positions have been in cubicles or stuck in the middle of an open floorplan.
Remote isnt for everyone though. I much prefer to go into an office with coworkers.
If remote works for you, great, but for me, i get far more work done being in an office.
but you need to do it properly: work-space/office physically separated from the living space (especially when you have a family), well-defined work hours (and free time that's really free) and at least some level of self-discipline...
My 600-person company, a wholly-owned part of a much, much larger national multi-billion dollar company has single or double private offices, with doors, for the entire staff, new hires, IT, admin, everyone, at our headquarters in SV as well as our smaller, satellite offices. AFAIK, there is no plan to change this. If, however, our current lease isn't renewed and the company moves, all bets are off. I've heard rumors that our parent company isn't happy with the "wasted" space. We'll see.
AccuLynx - we aren't even in a tech hotbed. Just little ol' Beloit, WI. We got to build a brand new office building with offices for all devs. Great place to work, awesome perks. We saw a marked throughput improvement after moving to the new office.
I manage developers for the publishing arm of a professional association. While I did not have an office when I started as a dev here over a decade ago, all of our developers now have their own offices while we two managers share one. Priorities.
Immediately prior to this, as a junior member of a non-IT/IS-department rapid development group for a utility company, I was relegated to whatever cubicle they could find to stuff me in, usually on the periphery of the call center area. This is also where they'd stick the COBOL guys they'd had to hire back as consultants, along with others who didn't fit into any of the (many) union contract workflows.
(I was a listed as a line-item in the same cost code group as a rented photocopier or scanner, meaning that for most of my tenure there I had ZERO contact with anyone from HR. It was glorious.)
Most people programming in National Labs get offices, though you might need to share with one person. If you are in the bay area, think about SLAC or LBNL.
Honestly, I'm less concerned about an "office." A cube with high walls is more similar to an "office" than an open layout where everyone shares a table.
What's more important is company culture. Does your company expect you to accept interruptions at any time for any reason, no matter how trivial? Is your manager willing to run interference when suddenly every new employee in every department shows up expecting that you'll handhold them?
You can have an office with a bad company culture; you'll find that your office door is always full of lurkers, or you'll find that you can't walk between your office and the bathroom without getting mobbed with "urgent" requests that need your attention immediately.
What's more important is to ensure that management avoids distractions, that newcomers in other departments are trained, and that processes are established and followed when needed. Handholding should not be required from any engineers; instead mentoring and process refinement goes a lot further than a door that you can close.
Micro Focus in Provo, UT provides offices. The last company I worked for was a mature startup with an open floor plan. Most of the noise complaints were mitigated by noise cancelling headphones which were purchased for each engineer.
I think choice is important. Some people prefer one, some the other. The best working environment I've experienced in my life as a software developer was at Bell Labs in the 80s, where small private offices was the norm.
On the other hand, its good to have open working areas available when they are appropriate. In Bell Labs, we'd often congregate near the railings overlooking the Holmdel atrium while our build finished or downstairs in the large open seating areas.
The last place I worked where I got a private office (and probably the last place I ever will) was the MITRE Corporation in Bedford, MA, a federally-funded R&D corporation. Level AC-5 and above got solo offices, AC-4's had to share.
Two places that allow you (actually they prefer) to work remotely are Avaaz (avaaz.org) and Canonical. Both may share the cost of a rented office. I can't speak highly enough of either - awesome teams, awesome missions.
[+] [-] msluyter|8 years ago|reply
The first case -- the one I hated -- had a) long rows of desks, b) bright overhead fluorescent lights, c) a lot of noise due to being in a large room with sales/marketing, d) a lot of visual distractions due to people walking up & down the aisles, and e) few available areas to go to collaborate away from your desks.
Now, I'm also in an open office, but I find it quite livable, because: a) my desk faces the wall, for fewer visual distractions, b) the room is comfortably lit (ie, not too bright)[1], c) it's a smaller room with only engineering and is generally quieter[2], d) there are enough areas to go if you need to collaborate.
All this is to say that, while the evidence is that open offices generally suck, there's probably a number of ways to ameliorate their problems to some degree without having to resort to private offices. I don't think I'd prefer an office to my current setup, actually.
[1] I think this element is underrated. In fact, I'd be curious to know if there's a verifiable correlation between brightness levels and how loud people tend to talk. There's something about a dim room that seems to induce people to lower their voices.
[2] Small, but not too small. There's a sort of sweet spot. I was once in a room with 3 other people and it was maddening because it was generally quiet but every little noise -- coughing, swallowing, etc... -- was seemingly amplified by the overall quietness to became hugely annoying. (An inverse concept explains why I can work quite well in a coffee shop despite the background din.)
[+] [-] mindcrime|8 years ago|reply
I'm sitting here feeling stunned that anybody could ever want their desk facing a wall, as the implication (in terms of any "open plan" environment) is that their back is facing, well, nothing. IOW, somebody can walk up behind you unnoticed. Me personally, I hate that with a passion. I'd pay money to have my desk facing out with my back to the wall, just so nobody can walk up behind me.
[+] [-] maaaats|8 years ago|reply
I'm not a code monkey. I don't sit alone in an office all day hammering out code. If that was what expected of me, I would change job.
So, not exactly open floor plan, but not separate offices either. I think that's perfect.
[+] [-] lordnacho|8 years ago|reply
I used to work in a small open office where one guy would constantly hold debates with everyone. It was pretty hard to stay out of it, and very distracting.
Now I'm in an office with a similar layout and staff, but it's like a library. There's the occasional group discussion or banter, but not enough to bother.
I've worked in finance my whole career, so it's all open plan, lots of screens. Never had my own office, people always needed (well so they say) to be accessible.
[+] [-] macNchz|8 years ago|reply
Almost every open office I've worked in has been super loud and disruptive, but one of them that happened to have high ceilings and very soft, warm lighting turned and turned out to be the fantastic. Something about the space gave the room a kind of library-style hush, which I think helped create a feedback loop compelling people to speak quietly and move longer conversations into closed rooms.
I think there's also an element to establishing the culture of how you interact in the open space early on, I think even with the hushed atmosphere of the room itself, it only worked because people had been talking quietly and taking louder conversations into private rooms for as long as they'd been working in the space. Pulling back from a culture of having a boisterous open space to a quiet one is, I think, much harder than doing it from the get-go.
[+] [-] kabdib|8 years ago|reply
However, the ability to move your desk at will makes open space work well, assuming you have enough space to work with. If your desk is on wheels and your company lets you, you can just relocate: Find a quieter spot to work, or go sit next to a few people you're working closely with for a while.
But the combination of open offices and assigned seating is terrible. It feels like preschool. I prefer to be treated like an adult at work, not a child or a slave.
[+] [-] martindelemotte|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] el_benhameen|8 years ago|reply
Of course, cubes or offices would let us have the best of both worlds, but ...
[+] [-] GordonS|8 years ago|reply
A lot also depends on the people that work around you.
If everyone respects one another, then it's usually OK.
However, there is often at least one person who talks and talks and talks for most of the day (and somehow keeps their job), and at least one person who talks VERY LOUDLY on the phone all day (because they're far away, so obviously you need to shout to be heard?!).
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pi_qed|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giaour|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] H1Supreme|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jonhmchan|8 years ago|reply
However, most of our engineering team is remote and if they're not in one of our locations, we give them pretty much what they'd like to build their own home office or go to a coworking space.
For me, I'm actually nomadic, so I tend to work from wherever I'm staying or end up in cafes a lot of time. I still get the support I need if my work "station" isn't optimal.
TL;DR Stack Overflow provides private offices, but is really flexible, especially given its remote policy.
[+] [-] nfriedly|8 years ago|reply
I asked for a do-over and they said no. Oh well...
[+] [-] kuharich|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sitkack|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Chris911|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bousaid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nfriedly|8 years ago|reply
If I want some noise, I'll work from home (I have a 3-year old.)
The down side is that IBM's management has recently done a 180 on remote working and is now "strongly encouraging" me to move to one of their offices and work in a cubicle.
I'm pretty sure they won't actually fire me for not moving, but any promotion is probably going to be harder to come by until things (hopefully) swing back in the other direction.
Or I'll just retire. The benefit of living in Ohio is that I can save like 40% of my salary and still live comfortably. (And lease an office for $225/month!)
[+] [-] qnk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 52-6F-62|8 years ago|reply
Half of the company has gone full open office, and the laggers (who didn't get redone before the last CEO suddenly quit) seem to not be changing. I could wander elsewhere in the building to work once in a while, but eventually people would start questioning where I am.. and I'd be missing out on my single monitor and ergonomic seating. I work for a modern company with 30 year outdated office structure... At least its feeling that way today. Yep, right there -- there's the envy!
[+] [-] jonhmchan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] module0000|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lonnyk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kzisme|8 years ago|reply
The only people who have offices are managers or C-Level executives. Currently I sit next to a door that is constantly opened which really kills my productivity.
[+] [-] pixelmonkey|8 years ago|reply
I discussed this a little in my "Notes on Distributed Teams" presentation here:
http://pixelmonkey.org/pub/distributed-teams/notes/#open-pla...
Here's how my personal home office looks:
https://flic.kr/p/v1NZ73
(Shameless plug, here are the positions we're hiring for, if you're interested! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14902227)
[+] [-] phaed|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taheca|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] LVB|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaegerpicker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mooreds|8 years ago|reply
For the company:
For the programmer: There are some downsides in terms of increased coordination costs and I have some friends that will never get to work remote because of security concerns, but for most developers this trend is fantastic.[+] [-] hashberry|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhumrich|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivanhoe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sizzzzlerz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdavisx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyrox420|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mpa000|8 years ago|reply
Immediately prior to this, as a junior member of a non-IT/IS-department rapid development group for a utility company, I was relegated to whatever cubicle they could find to stuff me in, usually on the periphery of the call center area. This is also where they'd stick the COBOL guys they'd had to hire back as consultants, along with others who didn't fit into any of the (many) union contract workflows.
(I was a listed as a line-item in the same cost code group as a rented photocopier or scanner, meaning that for most of my tenure there I had ZERO contact with anyone from HR. It was glorious.)
[+] [-] batbomb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwbas1c|8 years ago|reply
What's more important is company culture. Does your company expect you to accept interruptions at any time for any reason, no matter how trivial? Is your manager willing to run interference when suddenly every new employee in every department shows up expecting that you'll handhold them?
You can have an office with a bad company culture; you'll find that your office door is always full of lurkers, or you'll find that you can't walk between your office and the bathroom without getting mobbed with "urgent" requests that need your attention immediately.
What's more important is to ensure that management avoids distractions, that newcomers in other departments are trained, and that processes are established and followed when needed. Handholding should not be required from any engineers; instead mentoring and process refinement goes a lot further than a door that you can close.
[+] [-] jedwardhawkins|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baccredited|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s1gs3gv|8 years ago|reply
On the other hand, its good to have open working areas available when they are appropriate. In Bell Labs, we'd often congregate near the railings overlooking the Holmdel atrium while our build finished or downstairs in the large open seating areas.
[+] [-] DarkContinent|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caboteria|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|8 years ago|reply