It's interesting how bad trends persist even though most people say they are a problem. Open office is one, excessive meetings is one, E-mail overload, Slack and so on.
My theory is that the people in power (management) quickly get to the level where everything they do in their jobs requires talking to multiple people and coordinating and they apply that need to everybody's work so they think all work is about "Collaboration" and "Connecting".
At least for engineering I think there is not that much need for constant collaboration but there is a big need for focused work which is hard to do in an open office.
In addition open offices even fail for collaboration. I work in a cube farm with some open office space and I rarely see people actually collaborate there. Instead people have headsets and are desperately trying to focus. I used to work in team rooms before and there we talked to each other a lot in comparison.
It costs probably less than 1/2 in terms of square footage and overhead.
Expenses are easy and tangible, the social stuff, not so much, so the 'hard data' of cost efficiency wins.
I've worked in open spaces and it drives me absolutely batty, I can't get anything done. I refuse to consider that mid-level business professionals should be resigned to wearing 'headphones' to have to keep the noise out, it's undignified.
I really like the team-room idea mentioned near the end. The noise from my immediate peers doesn't bother me. It really is useful to overhear others' conversations sometimes, or pull someone in on a moment's notice, and when there's a high level of social connection people can agree on when to be quiet. What really drives me nuts is constantly hearing the conversations of people two aisles over, talking about something that couldn't possibly be of interest to me. And the people walking through, because not everyone gets to be around the edges. (In one workspace I sometimes occupy, the edge is all taken up by conference rooms so everyone is in the middle with people walking past.) There's a reason that every desk in an open-office layout seems to have at least one pair of headphones on it. That's a poor solution where an obviously better one exists.
I've actually worked in a small team environment several times and I really love it. At one point we were in an old vault with no windows and concrete walls, and it was great. We all had the same taste in music so we just cranked it up and let the sales guys outside do their thing and they left us alone.
In another case I was in a room with 8 people arranged into 2 "pods". We all worked on similar projects and would often turn to each other to get help, show something off, etc. I got sick more often that year (I think the ventilation in that room was bad) but we were very productive and I really enjoyed working there.
I have always been blessed (and cursed) with the ability to block out everything around me. It bothers people, actually, because they will come talk to me and I won’t realize they are standing at my desk talking.
I still don’t like open offices. I hate the lack of privacy.
Why are "open offices are bad" stories so popular on HN?
I've only ever worked in open plan offices, and can't say I've ever had a problem concentrating. I'm not sure what alternatives are popular, but if an employer forced me to work in a cubicle I'd immediately quit without hesitation. Having visited cubicle offices, they strike me as inhumane detention centres.
I spent two summers of my PhD at research labs with private offices. It was awesome. At grad school, I work in an open plan lab. When reading or writing papers I find it very difficult to concentrate when people are having overlapping Skype calls on speaker phone or loud conversation near my desk. In a private office, I could take a paper and a whiteboard and really focus.
Also, interruptions become less jarring. If I'm focusing deeply in an open office, I have headphones on. That means if someone wants my attention, they have to come up close behind me and tap me on the shoulder, which is pretty intrusive of the personal space. In my private office, I wouldn't have to wear headphones in the first place, and if someone wanted to interrupt, they would knock on the door. Much less intrusive.
Interruptions also become less frequent. In an open office people seem to think that they can just come over to your desk and grab you to ask you, well, anything. The closed door has a good deterrent effect, people will interrupt you only for serious things, like lunch, "the building is on fire," and so on.
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Why are "open offices are bad" stories so popular on HN?
I often say that programming is 8 hours high-performance mind sport a day. Every serious high-performance sportsperson would be furious if he/she were forced to perform training with, say, cheap sneakers from the next discount supermarket. So it is quite logical that programmers get furious about open offices.
I've worked in a high walled cube, a low walled cube, and an open office. The open office looked nicer and more modern, but the high walled cube was the most comfortable of the 3.
You could work in the high walled cube without feeling like someone was watching over your shoulder, and people were a little more respectful about interrupting you when they came by. Low walled cubes encouraged more conversation over the cube walls, but open office somehow encouraged it less than the cubes because everyone had headphones and earplugs in.
Because open offices are fucking terrible if you are a programmer, with people moving around in your line of sight and yammering coming nonstop from everywhere. Concentration becomes far harder than it needs to be, and productivity plummets.
My boss occasionally brings up the idea of swapping out of having private offices and dumping everyone in a big bullpen. I have to keep reminding him that I'm either quitting or working 95% from home if that ever happens.
Pure speculation: HNs perhaps more likely to have a personality type that values personal time and extreme concentration, which open plan might be less useful for. Also HNs perhaps have tendency towards being contrary or iconoclastic, so as open plan popular, articles decrying it popular here
I always thought of it like university, sure there's a few people who study in the cafeteria but most of us preferred the much more quiet areas of the library or own rooms to get hours of intensive work finished.
Perhaps you were the cafeteria guy or gal, but most of us do worse trying to abstract extremely complex data flows in visually and audially noisy environments.
Alternatively, maybe you worked in a quieter open office. A lot of mine have been inundated by chatter about Games of Thrones, uproarious laughter, and the smells and sounds of people masticating.
None of which I find particularly conducive to work.
Before I started work I was waiting for stories of cubicle farms.
When I started, reality was you didn't even get your own cubible, just a desk. Now you don't even get a desk, it's all hotdesking.
I'm so glad I work from home now (most of the time), I get my own office, my own desk, and don't have to wear headphones. If I do go into the office for some face time, or to do something physical in the equipment room, I usually end up in the pub as there's nowhere to actually sit.
Depends on the workplace. My last one was open office, but people were mostly on their headphones, so I never had a problem concentrating there. My current one has me seated near people who, apparently, have quite a bit of free time on their hands, so they spend most of the day talking to each other about nothing in particular. It's extremely difficult to think if you're not piping white noise into your ears.
Have you worked in an office building where individual developers have their own private offices to compare? From past experience, having a private office limits distractions and allows one to focus completely on the task at hand.
As for cubicles, they're significantly worse than private offices; you get the drawbacks of both open plan offices and private offices, without getting either the privacy or the noise isolation.
I feel the opposite. The open plan has parallels in communist/collectivist systems with all the negative aspects (surveillance, lack of privacy, etc.) but with none of the “positives” (not being able to get fired, ability to slack off, make up production goals, etc). It’s the worst of both worlds.
Can anyone chime in regarding the economics and cost savings of open floor plans vs. private per-team offices (or the like)?
As an employee working in an open space, their costs on subjective well being, quality of work & etc. are so obvious to me that I sometimes get upset that employers and I do not agree on the issue.
I had an office (in the company which pioneered individual offices for their dedicated building for creatives many decades ago), and I have worked in open office settings. There are times when you want to think on your own, but I don't think it is impossible to achieve if you have a good pair of noise cancelling headphones. In return, you get to interact with peers more openly. Not to mention the cost savings for the company. This is absolutely a win-win. Although, the devil is in the details, and they are neither easy nor cheap: Open office settings have to be implemented with the flexibility to occasionally work from home; ample amount of meeting rooms for impromptu huddles; well designed ergonomics; absolutely relaxing decor and setup.
The cost-savings argument doesn't really work. For one thing, those savings aren't real. What does "ample amount of meeting rooms" mean? It means a higher seat-per-employee ratio, just to make up for the inconvenience of their main seats not being usable for those huddles. And speaking of inconvenience, time spent walking to/from rooms and waiting outside rooms for the last group to get out and adjusting chairs and wiping boards and picking up your crap is all time not spent producing. I've seen many people lose 5-10 minutes of productivity every hour of every day like that. That's not cost savings. Neither is the effect on productivity when people are in their primary seats. Look at any company's expense breakdown. Personnel will be at or near the top; real estate will be much further down. Keeping people more productive is a much bigger cost savings than cheaping out on real estate.
I contend that there is no way to implement an open-office system that truly reduces costs. The only reason they're so common is a combination of cost insensitivity and cargo culting.
These and some other trends are originated in Agile methodologies, are they not? Software engineering is being taken over by pseudo scientific ideology is what it is. Funny thing is, no proof/studies are needed to make sweeping changes like these.
It's interesting to me how quickly this trend has evolved. 5-6 years ago, every recruiting email and startup job posting I saw advertised open floor plans as if they were a top benefit. Now, lots of enterprises have copied the trend (expectedly since it's cheaper) and I'm getting recruiting messages from startups on LinkedIn bragging about how their office has "lots of quiet space" or "private offices."
my enterprise has gone full tilt. open offices, w/ hot desking and instead of laptops its a thin client. so yeah when you need or want to work from home you have to use the slow citrix client. fun..
Are there even "closed office" designs? I've never worked in one. I think I might have been in a couple maybe once or twice over the course of last 5 to 6 yrs while visiting someone. Everybody in my office, right up to senior VPs sit in open plan. I didn't even know the guy sitting next to me was one when I joined before someone pointed it out.
They're uncommon nowadays, but Sun Microsystems [1] and Microsoft [2] had them. Apparently Microsoft is replacing them with open office designs these days though. FogCreek [3] is adamant about private offices.
[+] [-] maxxxxx|7 years ago|reply
My theory is that the people in power (management) quickly get to the level where everything they do in their jobs requires talking to multiple people and coordinating and they apply that need to everybody's work so they think all work is about "Collaboration" and "Connecting".
At least for engineering I think there is not that much need for constant collaboration but there is a big need for focused work which is hard to do in an open office.
In addition open offices even fail for collaboration. I work in a cube farm with some open office space and I rarely see people actually collaborate there. Instead people have headsets and are desperately trying to focus. I used to work in team rooms before and there we talked to each other a lot in comparison.
[+] [-] sametmax|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EngineerBetter|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sonnyblarney|7 years ago|reply
It costs probably less than 1/2 in terms of square footage and overhead.
Expenses are easy and tangible, the social stuff, not so much, so the 'hard data' of cost efficiency wins.
I've worked in open spaces and it drives me absolutely batty, I can't get anything done. I refuse to consider that mid-level business professionals should be resigned to wearing 'headphones' to have to keep the noise out, it's undignified.
[+] [-] notacoward|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Corrado|7 years ago|reply
In another case I was in a room with 8 people arranged into 2 "pods". We all worked on similar projects and would often turn to each other to get help, show something off, etc. I got sick more often that year (I think the ventilation in that room was bad) but we were very productive and I really enjoyed working there.
[+] [-] cortesoft|7 years ago|reply
I still don’t like open offices. I hate the lack of privacy.
[+] [-] EngineerBetter|7 years ago|reply
I've only ever worked in open plan offices, and can't say I've ever had a problem concentrating. I'm not sure what alternatives are popular, but if an employer forced me to work in a cubicle I'd immediately quit without hesitation. Having visited cubicle offices, they strike me as inhumane detention centres.
[+] [-] munin|7 years ago|reply
Also, interruptions become less jarring. If I'm focusing deeply in an open office, I have headphones on. That means if someone wants my attention, they have to come up close behind me and tap me on the shoulder, which is pretty intrusive of the personal space. In my private office, I wouldn't have to wear headphones in the first place, and if someone wanted to interrupt, they would knock on the door. Much less intrusive.
Interruptions also become less frequent. In an open office people seem to think that they can just come over to your desk and grab you to ask you, well, anything. The closed door has a good deterrent effect, people will interrupt you only for serious things, like lunch, "the building is on fire," and so on.
[+] [-] wolfgke|7 years ago|reply
I often say that programming is 8 hours high-performance mind sport a day. Every serious high-performance sportsperson would be furious if he/she were forced to perform training with, say, cheap sneakers from the next discount supermarket. So it is quite logical that programmers get furious about open offices.
[+] [-] JauntTrooper|7 years ago|reply
You could work in the high walled cube without feeling like someone was watching over your shoulder, and people were a little more respectful about interrupting you when they came by. Low walled cubes encouraged more conversation over the cube walls, but open office somehow encouraged it less than the cubes because everyone had headphones and earplugs in.
[+] [-] thrower123|7 years ago|reply
My boss occasionally brings up the idea of swapping out of having private offices and dumping everyone in a big bullpen. I have to keep reminding him that I'm either quitting or working 95% from home if that ever happens.
[+] [-] tompagenet2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codyb|7 years ago|reply
Perhaps you were the cafeteria guy or gal, but most of us do worse trying to abstract extremely complex data flows in visually and audially noisy environments.
Alternatively, maybe you worked in a quieter open office. A lot of mine have been inundated by chatter about Games of Thrones, uproarious laughter, and the smells and sounds of people masticating.
None of which I find particularly conducive to work.
[+] [-] isostatic|7 years ago|reply
When I started, reality was you didn't even get your own cubible, just a desk. Now you don't even get a desk, it's all hotdesking.
I'm so glad I work from home now (most of the time), I get my own office, my own desk, and don't have to wear headphones. If I do go into the office for some face time, or to do something physical in the equipment room, I usually end up in the pub as there's nowhere to actually sit.
[+] [-] dorkwood|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfim|7 years ago|reply
As for cubicles, they're significantly worse than private offices; you get the drawbacks of both open plan offices and private offices, without getting either the privacy or the noise isolation.
[+] [-] afterburner|7 years ago|reply
Ah, so you didn't actually work in them. Yes, they don't look good, but those walls provide privacy.
[+] [-] maxxxxx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfsdfsdfsdfs|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] plmpsu|7 years ago|reply
As an employee working in an open space, their costs on subjective well being, quality of work & etc. are so obvious to me that I sometimes get upset that employers and I do not agree on the issue.
[+] [-] utopkara|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notacoward|7 years ago|reply
I contend that there is no way to implement an open-office system that truly reduces costs. The only reason they're so common is a combination of cost insensitivity and cargo culting.
[+] [-] phakding|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cddotdotslash|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] denimnerd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enieslobby|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] umichguy|7 years ago|reply
I really can't compare.
[+] [-] jfim|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Work-is-where-you-ha... [2] https://officesnapshots.com/photos/22763/ [3] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/12/29/the-new-fog-creek-...
[+] [-] dasmoth|7 years ago|reply
The private sector does seem to have embraced the bullpen pretty thoroughly...
[+] [-] dwaltrip|7 years ago|reply