I am not surprised. I was working in an open-plan office for a few years, and I also preferred talking to colleagues sitting only a few meters away via mail. It's incredibly stressful to talk to a person face-to-face knowing that everyone on the team listens to the conversation. Not only do you have to constantly weight and evaluate your sentences, you also have the constant feeling that you are disturbing other team members just by talking. On the other hand, you also don't want to drag a person into another room for privacy if you just want some quick update on something. Some team members might use noise-cancelling headphones to keep out the typing noise and occasional conversation, but these headphones are an additional barrier for face-to-face talk. You don't want to snap them out of a musical experience, and getting a person with noise-cancelling headphones to notice you are standing behind him/her might get very awkward.
If you are convinced that stuffing people into a room with little to no privacy leads to increased social interaction, you should start riding public transit during rush hour.
Totally. At my last $dayjob, we had a group chat for the room, where we would type stuff instead of saying it out loud. This way, conversation only flowed between people who were willing to participate at the moment.
(It didn't work perfectly. Typing is silent, but laughing at what you just read isn't.)
>It's incredibly stressful to talk to a person face-to-face knowing that everyone on the team listens to the conversation. Not only do you have to constantly weight and evaluate your sentences, you also have the constant feeling that you are disturbing other team members just by talking
Fortunately I don't have this physiological barrier. I don't care if everyone on the team listens to the conversation.
I'm probably an outlier, but I love open-office. I've worked in all the different environments over the last 25 years, single office, shared office, cubicle, remote and open office. Open office was weird at first, but I find it much more social. I don't get distracted by noise or movement so that could be a big factor, so I can code without any problems.
The least social for me was the single office. I would stay in there all day long and I would have privacy but I would literally not see anyone. The worst was a cubicle where it had none of the privacy (couldn't eat fish or fart or have private conversations) but you still have the lack of social interaction.
You truly are an outlier. I immediately started assuming that you might be in a more right-brain role, but realized my mistake when I saw your comment about coding. You're clearly better than I am at focusing...
I disagree with the opinions of this comment, but I'm glad you made your opinion and your experience heard. Even when for most people an open office works worse, for some people it is preferable
new people: please don't down vote people just because you disagree.
Some people can work even though they get interrupted and disturbed all day, others are very averse to being distracted and try to reach deep work or get in the zone. The problem with an open office is the first group.
I doubt you’re an outlier. I think that open offices have a place, but are over-used especially in the Bay Area tech scene, so the opponents are particularly vocal. I’ve worked at a few open offices for fairly small companies and almost without exception I loved the dynamic.
I found open offices to be an incredibly alienating experience, felt about as personal as a a cubicle since everyone is pretty much using headphones and "deep working" and you can't really make much noise since you're disturbing an entire org if you are.
My favorite experience was working on a team where the open office was essentially a large office for about 6 people only. That felt great since there was a more communal vibe and I had sufficient personal space. We had a couch, a table with a chessboard and some people brought snacks over.
Not surprising in hindsight. See lqet's and kylia's comments elsewhere on this thread for first-hand accounts.[a]
In my view, Steve Jobs had the right idea when he helped design Pixar's headquarters: plenty of private and semi-private working areas interconnected by multiple larger, more central, common areas through which everyone would have to travel throughout the day, increasing the odds of spontaneous interaction and collaboration with colleagues from different areas:
I work for a company that not only has an open plan office, but no assigned seating either. It's honestly the worst, mostly because I like to have my own environment at work. I can't bring in my keyboard or any of my other stuff, and as corny as it is i can't even bring in photos to keep at my desk since there's no assigned seating!
As much as i like open spaces, i miss at /least/ having my own desk.
No assigned desks with a badly implemented "flat structure" is a special kind of hell. You're a nobody with nowhere to go. No title, no fixed desk, no fixed chair, no identity. Developer #13 sitting at desk #21.
One of my previous employers had an open-plan office, and after a management change introduced mandatory hotdesking. You had to move desks every day -- management checked every morning and wrote people up if they sat at the same desk for two consecutive days.
Then they introduced a mandatory uniform and a complete ban on personal items -- all the Wallace and Gromit coffee mugs, the photos of family disappeared overnight.
It's the most sterile, depersonalising, demotivating work environment I've ever encountered.
Our negotiating position as engineers is way too good to put up with shit like this. I have savings precisely so that I can walk off the job the instant hot desking is announced.
Not having assigned seats is frankly just bizarre, and doesn’t seem to have any relation at all to open office. Individual closed offices with no assigned seats would be just as bizarre.
I'm not saying you're able to do this at your current workplace, but if I was stuck in this type of situation, I would heavily advocate for the ability to work from home at least 1-2 days a week.
Having worked in an open office like environment before, it was the only way I was able to get a lot of stuff done.
These types of open offices are a deathknell for productivity and great for people who use work as their only social outlet.
Hmm... there should be digital photo frames, and a stapler with LEDs inside. When you “check in” to your station, your phone activated, your family photos go on the photo frames, and the stapler lights up in your preferred color.
I agree that open-plan offices drive the opposite behavior than they are touted to. They make it impossible to have impromptu discussions that have any sensitive aspect to them. I have a lot of those conversations.
I work from home or a coffee shop down the street from my office as a result and almost never even see my coworkers faces.
But the main driver of open-plan offices is usually density / cost. I suspect many of the cost savings of the most recent wave of office design are coming from employees who no longer come into the office because the conditions aren’t conducive to working.
We use MS Teams to chat with people at the next desk. Especially since some uses headphones and you would have to scream.
How much space does a indoor wall take in comparation to the space between the desk there are anyway in open offices.
You have to put cabinets on the floor since shelves can't hang on walls.
Whiteboards are on feet in the "hallway".
I have never been in an open office and though "Jeez look at all the space they save by not having walls" if you would compare to 6 or 4 person offices.
>They make it impossible to have impromptu discussions that have any sensitive aspect to them.
The only place I ever worked with an open floor plan, I worked as a security analyst/engineer. Behind me were contracted programmers from various outsourcing firms who could see my screens and hear my conversations when discussing sensitive security issues.
So much time was wasted trying to find an empty conference room for an impromptu discussion about an active security incident.
My favorite work environment I was initially skeptical about.
I had done in the past cubicles, private office, shared office, etc - but this one was somewhat unique because the company that I was hired on with didn't have any other place to put me and the rest of the "new guys".
So they stuck us in their small conference room. Which had terrible air flow (aka - none).
We had this long table-like desk; there were four of us, two on each side. We all had a dual-monitor setup with regular PCs - nothing fancy there.
It was crazy hot in there - we called it "the oven".
But we made it ours while we had it. Our team lead played a crazy mix of music from spotify. We could easily collaborate as needed. We could keep the lights off and not be bothered with that.
Eventually we got a portable AC unit to help with the comfort of the room.
We got a lot of great work done in that room. About a year later, we moved offices, and the owners decided to go "open floorplan" (we later learned this was all a scheme towards selling the company). Things changed greatly. While our entire team could be together (we had a couple other members of the team who were outside of the oven at the old office) at one "desk" - the open office didn't facilitate talking amongst ourselves as much or collaboration, because sales was nearby, etc.
Most of the time, we listened to music or whatnot on headphones, and just used Hipchat and email to communicate.
I wish this happened in my office. Instead there are face-to-face conversations at desks all the time, and those looking to do quiet focused work are basically out of luck.
What experience has ever led you to believe that what software engineers like or dislike factors into how their work environments are set up? The Important People consider us, at best, a necessary nuisance.
The biggest downside of an open office for is that I type really fast and loud on a mechanical keyboard some of my colleges are bothered by. But other people find the noise relaxing, so maybe I need to just have all the loud clackers get together in a single room.
this "study" is riddled with issues. only 2 companies studied. i can't imagine how different every place is depending on its culture. how comfortable are employees ? are the teams next to people they don't know? was this measurement amortized over project volumes after the move? are these companies designed with some private areas easily accessible on every floor for teams to discuss / have daily stand ups if needed?
seems one could easily come up with 2 new companies example where the opposite is true given a different design / team layout / project types and so on
sctb|6 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17572141
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17448187
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17513843
commandlinefan|6 years ago
lqet|6 years ago
If you are convinced that stuffing people into a room with little to no privacy leads to increased social interaction, you should start riding public transit during rush hour.
TeMPOraL|6 years ago
(It didn't work perfectly. Typing is silent, but laughing at what you just read isn't.)
unknown|6 years ago
[deleted]
matz1|6 years ago
Fortunately I don't have this physiological barrier. I don't care if everyone on the team listens to the conversation.
docker_up|6 years ago
The least social for me was the single office. I would stay in there all day long and I would have privacy but I would literally not see anyone. The worst was a cubicle where it had none of the privacy (couldn't eat fish or fart or have private conversations) but you still have the lack of social interaction.
hliyan|6 years ago
richardhod|6 years ago
new people: please don't down vote people just because you disagree.
matz1|6 years ago
>I don't get distracted by noise or movement so that could be a big factor, so I can code without any problems
Same here.
I think better alternative is to allow both option, allow employee to work remove if they prefer not to see their coworker.
awestroke|6 years ago
fxfan|6 years ago
baddox|6 years ago
jklinger410|6 years ago
Not sure what the point of doing studies on this is? It's incredibly cultural and business/job specific.
formalsystem|6 years ago
My favorite experience was working on a team where the open office was essentially a large office for about 6 people only. That felt great since there was a more communal vibe and I had sufficient personal space. We had a couch, a table with a chessboard and some people brought snacks over.
alexgmcm|6 years ago
The former is what I have in industry and if I forget my noise cancelling headphones I might as well go home.
cs702|6 years ago
In my view, Steve Jobs had the right idea when he helped design Pixar's headquarters: plenty of private and semi-private working areas interconnected by multiple larger, more central, common areas through which everyone would have to travel throughout the day, increasing the odds of spontaneous interaction and collaboration with colleagues from different areas:
https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-designing-pixar-o...
https://bcj.com/projects/pixar-animation-studios-emeryville
Think of it as "privacy when you need it, sprinkled with spontaneous interaction throughout the day, when you take breaks from private work."
--
[a] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683405 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683419
kylia|6 years ago
I work for a company that not only has an open plan office, but no assigned seating either. It's honestly the worst, mostly because I like to have my own environment at work. I can't bring in my keyboard or any of my other stuff, and as corny as it is i can't even bring in photos to keep at my desk since there's no assigned seating!
As much as i like open spaces, i miss at /least/ having my own desk.
switch007|6 years ago
philpem|6 years ago
Then they introduced a mandatory uniform and a complete ban on personal items -- all the Wallace and Gromit coffee mugs, the photos of family disappeared overnight.
It's the most sterile, depersonalising, demotivating work environment I've ever encountered.
Incidentally, BPS covered this in another article... "Why it’s important that employers let staff personalise their workspaces" -- https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/03/27/why-its-important-that-... . It's well worth a read.
closeparen|6 years ago
crankylinuxuser|6 years ago
Open offices are the first half of that, and open desks are the other half.
Who does it benefit? The company in cost per person of space. Any other metric applied shows gross inadequacies of open offices.
baddox|6 years ago
ok_coo|6 years ago
Having worked in an open office like environment before, it was the only way I was able to get a lot of stuff done.
These types of open offices are a deathknell for productivity and great for people who use work as their only social outlet.
anbop|6 years ago
glhaynes|6 years ago
exelius|6 years ago
I work from home or a coffee shop down the street from my office as a result and almost never even see my coworkers faces.
But the main driver of open-plan offices is usually density / cost. I suspect many of the cost savings of the most recent wave of office design are coming from employees who no longer come into the office because the conditions aren’t conducive to working.
rightbyte|6 years ago
How much space does a indoor wall take in comparation to the space between the desk there are anyway in open offices.
You have to put cabinets on the floor since shelves can't hang on walls.
Whiteboards are on feet in the "hallway".
I have never been in an open office and though "Jeez look at all the space they save by not having walls" if you would compare to 6 or 4 person offices.
freehunter|6 years ago
The only place I ever worked with an open floor plan, I worked as a security analyst/engineer. Behind me were contracted programmers from various outsourcing firms who could see my screens and hear my conversations when discussing sensitive security issues.
So much time was wasted trying to find an empty conference room for an impromptu discussion about an active security incident.
cr0sh|6 years ago
I had done in the past cubicles, private office, shared office, etc - but this one was somewhat unique because the company that I was hired on with didn't have any other place to put me and the rest of the "new guys".
So they stuck us in their small conference room. Which had terrible air flow (aka - none).
We had this long table-like desk; there were four of us, two on each side. We all had a dual-monitor setup with regular PCs - nothing fancy there.
It was crazy hot in there - we called it "the oven".
But we made it ours while we had it. Our team lead played a crazy mix of music from spotify. We could easily collaborate as needed. We could keep the lights off and not be bothered with that.
Eventually we got a portable AC unit to help with the comfort of the room.
We got a lot of great work done in that room. About a year later, we moved offices, and the owners decided to go "open floorplan" (we later learned this was all a scheme towards selling the company). Things changed greatly. While our entire team could be together (we had a couple other members of the team who were outside of the oven at the old office) at one "desk" - the open office didn't facilitate talking amongst ourselves as much or collaboration, because sales was nearby, etc.
Most of the time, we listened to music or whatnot on headphones, and just used Hipchat and email to communicate.
closeparen|6 years ago
scottlu2|6 years ago
plutonorm|6 years ago
commandlinefan|6 years ago
api|6 years ago
unknown|6 years ago
[deleted]
breakpointalpha|6 years ago
I've been working 100% from home for the last 8 months and rather enjoy it.
Should I just hold out for another remote job? I have about 10 months of burn left in my bank account...
ghostbrainalpha|6 years ago
Sutanreyu|6 years ago
SonicSoul|6 years ago
seems one could easily come up with 2 new companies example where the opposite is true given a different design / team layout / project types and so on