I don't think open offices are necessarily bad, but that they're harder to get right. What you need is:
- A a decent cultural protocol around it. One place I worked had the very strong rule that you start all non-emergency communication asynchronously (usually text chat), even if the person is right next to you. Another place I worked at strongly respected headphones as the "don't bother me" signal.
- A reasonable number of walled-off rooms for anyone to use. Need to take a phone call? Have a quick 1-on-1? Debate something loudly with 3-5 people? You need to have rooms, of varying sizes, to handle these use cases near at hand.
- Minimal noise that's not related to collaboration. Eg, no loud ringing phones. No phone-based customer support department in the same room as the devs. No kitchen (full of dishwashers, coffee grinders, etc) area facing the open workspace.
Open offices can work, but only if you go out of your way to make them work. Just throwing a few dozen devs in a warehouse is a recipe for dissatisfaction. I think that that happens more often than not, resulting in things like this study.
You mentioned headphones. Headphones seem to be an essential part of open plans. Not only do they send a don't-bother-me signal, they also drown out the noise.
But that's also a really annoying part of it. I don't want to have to put on headphones all the time.
One of the worst things for me in open plan offices is you can hear people eating at their desks. For me nothing is more annoying and distracting than to hear someone crunching on cookies or popcorn or potato chips at his desk. That's an instant headphones-on for me. It's worse than all the other background noise/conversations put together.
> One place I worked had the very strong rule that you start all non-emergency communication asynchronously (usually text chat), even if the person is right next to you.
A little bit off topic, but I too have experienced this, and I have to say, it's awful for productivity, team building, and team assimilation. As a new hire, I would send my mentor a question and it might be ten minutes to fifty minutes before I would get a reply. By then, I'd all but forgotten what I was asking about in the first place, since I had moved on because of not knowing how long I'd have to wait. That led to wasted time and an overall loss of focus.
No matter the environment, text-based and asynchronous communication just aren't very effective compared to spoken communication, even when considering the interrupted party momentarily losing their flow.
But if you implement all of that perfectly, doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of having an open office? (I.e. to stimulate more spontaneous collaboration)
I would add to that: don't have fewer rooms than you have continual need for.
In a previous job, we had an open office layout with a handful of small conference rooms. The rooms were always being fought over -- resulting in the institution of a byzantine booking system involving Outlook calendars and admin permissions, with the office manager as bottleneck to booking a room.
As a client-facing person (i.e., someone who needed to be on the phone a lot), I hated it. More often than not, I found myself walking around downstairs, in the building lobby, or out on a balcony somewhere when trying to conduct business. I got sick of fighting over conference rooms, and sicker still of trying to evict squatters from rooms that I'd booked for urgent meetings or calls. And if I ever needed a quiet place to go concentrate on something, that was pretty much out of the question for most of the day. I ended up taking a lot of work home with me every night, simply because I couldn't get it done at the office.
I enjoyed some great chit-chat with coworkers, and I probably saw more YouTube videos and memes in that office than I have anywhere else. Productivity kind of sucked, though.
> Open offices can work, but only if you go out of your way to make them work. Just throwing a few dozen devs in a warehouse is a recipe for dissatisfaction. I think that that happens more often than not, resulting in things like this study.
No, they're universally bad. No door, no privacy and a constant stream of chatter from other people. Yuck.
Open office does not scale beyond 6-10 people. There was an article though about a firm that did have open office but had special function areas - like quiet work area or meeting room are. If you are in quiet room area, you don't talk there at all. Huge open office I think is bad as it invites distraction.
Many companies grow from open offices as startups but then they have to change they way they do the open office if they want to preserve the "open office".
my 2c.
I worked in one of these places where we were expected to do real engineering work, but with an overhead loudspeaker paging system for incoming sales and service calls. "Bong, Rick Line 1, Bong Dale Line 6" Those were the days... (not really).
But if no one talks in the open plan layout, what's the benefit of open plan at all? Might as well give people their own private space free of visual distractions.
I'm in a cube farm right now and I don't find that the cubes make the noise any softer than my co-workers in another office that have an open plan. I can still plainly hear everything that people around me are talking about. I still find headphones a necessity.
It's increasingly becoming evident how ineffective offices can be as workplaces, especially in light of better and better communication for developers over the internet. Obviously this isn't true for all places and all cultures, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't frequently question my basic physical presence in the office sometimes. It is common for me to not talk to a single coworker about work throughout the day. Meetings are rare, always scheduled ahead of time, and always short. I feel like our office mostly exists as a vestige of past tradition, a celebration of our success (it's styled after our products), and also out of a deep-seated paranoia about the productivity of workers you can't see, even though as developers we have very, very concrete ways of measuring productivity.
(Also, the nondevelopers are in constant verbal communication.)
All that said, I'm not dissatisfied. Our office is always very quiet and cool. The kitchen is stocked. The chairs are comfortable. It's not a bad set up at all and I don't find that it really hinders my productivity too much. But it does feel unnecessary, and I personally know I'd be more productive telecommuting 3-4 days a week. Dressing up and behaving professionally for 8-9 hours straight does take a toll on my ability to output good code, albeit a minor one, and the location of the office in the city certainly takes a huge toll on my bank account (housing is 2-3x more expensive in this area, but the commutes are horrible from far out).
>An open plan workplace, in which enclosed rooms are eschewed in favour of partitioned or non-partitioned desks arranged around a large room, are supposed to promote interaction between workers and boost teamwork.
Instead, everyone's too busy maintaining social facades for the entirety of their day, day after day, rather than focusing on their work.
My lord this is truth. I don't care what you did yesterday, what you're doing tonight, what you're doing this weekend, why you're wearing what you're wearing, who got you that thing, when you got in, when you leave, why you hate brad, why you hate brad but love donna, why donna's nice but you'd prefer to be home studying. did you get an extra $30 deducted from your paycheck? doesn't that suck? it only takes me 20 minutes to get work, it use to take me 15.
I don't care. I've come here to work.
I enjoy interacting socially, but I really honest-to-goodness would rather talk about work at work. I really truly don't care about your personal life at work. I would feel so relieved if I never had a conversation about something personal at work.
It doesn't have to be Nazi Germany, but it doesn't need to be constant chatter.
Open plan offices are one of many signals that make me very wary of modern management concepts. In trade publications 20 years ago, you'd read breathless articles about the end of cubicles and the advent of minimalist, modern, open office plans.
gasp! collaboration!
gasp! accountability!
gasp! blah blah
Now years later it's obvious why they took over the world, CEOs everywhere saw the bright open office spaces, with just desks and
gasp! cost savings!
Open office plans are a way for a company to be cheap and that's about it. No investment in offices needed, no investment in fussy cubicles, no interior decorators needed (just expose the brick!). Rent a warehouse, buy desks at IKEA , assemble and voila instant office.
These days management even tries to get strategic about open plans. I'll put this department next to this one and this one so they can talk to each other more freely and voila synergy!
Absolutely the worst environment for thinking jobs possible (the contrapositive is, if it's a good environment for your job it's probably not a thinking job).
I think that my company's open office is a good environment for my job as a developer. We have a strong culture of being quiet during the day, and often the office is totally silent, with a soft hum and clicking keyboards.
There are closed off spaces to make phone calls, and client-facing people are sectioned off slightly so their phone calls don't bother the rest of us. If we were in a big farm of fluorescent-lit cubicles or airless private offices I think I'd be less productive simply because I'd be fantasizing about not being there.
Open offices that don't have a culture of quiet, however, could indeed be total hell for 'thinking' roles, but an open office doesn't have to be the unequivocally bad working environment that you make it out to be.
For me the thing that is really the worst about the open workspace is not the noise--I can put in ear plugs and then noise reducing headphones. The worst is seeing people move around in my peripheral vision, that just makes it impossible to concentrate.
I'm pretty happy with my current open environment, coming off of a fairly negative open environment.
Here's what I think they did right:
- High partitions around team cluster, low partitions within cluster. Means you don't see just anybody who's standing, but can easily get eye contact with the people you actually need to communicate with.
- White noise generators. All ambient noise is suppressed--I can't hear the people in the next cube if they're talking quietly. Only the shrillest beeps or sneezes disrupt my concentration.
- Lots of natural light. If you're going to do open concept, at least take advantage of the #1 benefit.
- Lots of small meeting rooms with whiteboards.
Even then, I noticed a massive difference in how much I enjoyed the open plan when I transitioned from working on a project that was very collaborative (pairing being the norm) to a project that required a lot of solo effort. I'm very conscious of distractions now, and end up working later hours to take advantage of the quiet when everyone's gone home.
So I think there's a lot to be said about the dynamic of your team. And in that regard, my current employer again does well by giving QA, support, and other "solo acts" individual high partitions.
Are you in an environment where you're often working together and collaborating on shit? Open plans are great.
Do you need quiet time where you're thinking for 5 hours a day and coding for 1? You need your own office.
Graphic designers, phone support, this kind of stuff seems to work great in an open office. Crazy team trying to crank out something fast? Also works great.
But they just add to burnout and aren't a good fit for writers or programmers. If this is the case, give everyone a small, modest office with drywall and a drop ceiling, and then have LOTS of common areas or meeting rooms so people can get together to chat or bang stuff out.
I used to trade on the largest trading floor in the world. It's the ultimate open office plan - MD next to associate director next to operations analyst next to napping beer cart attendant. Information flowed like quicksilver, and bureaucratic hurdles were resolved in a rapid sequence of huffs and grunts. For pounding through a structured list of tasks, there was no match. For more cerebral work, I hated it.
My most productive and cherished hours were those after the close, when I could snap in headphones and burn through theoretically intense if P&L-vague projects. Incidentally, it was those projects which made the bank's quarter for every quarter I worked there.
There is a personality that thrives on open office plans. I, sometimes, am one of them. But open layouts encourages rapid, myopic collaboration over deep thinking. The ideal solution might be an open office layout with a "library" retreat.
- higher skilled workers are in closed offices more often
* and satisfaction varies by skill level
- p(open office) varies by industry
* and satisfaction varies by industry
- people feel more comfortable doing non-work items behind a door
* and they like getting personal tasks done
As a developer I'm happy in an open office, as long as I have enough space, and I'm separated from the sales (phone) staff
I happened to read this right after the article on Simpson's Paradox, and you put your finger on exactly what I was thinking - it's almost certain that there are many hidden variables that predict whether or not you work in an open office, and many of these likely correlate very strongly with job satisfaction, potentially inverting the relationship just based on relative employment rates in different areas. Just knowing that satisfaction correlates with open floorplans doesn't tell us anything solid about whether you should choose one or not.
The first thing I think of when I hear "open office" is a call center. Of course those people hate their jobs. Did they control for that sort of work?
That said, I have worked in a few class A office spaces and the difference between class A and any other arrangement is huge. Always the perfect temperature, designed to muffle noise, enough glass to see what's going on but enough partitioning to avoid distraction. I'm not sure the cost can be easily justified, however.
I was lucky enough to have my own office at Apple even during all of the pairing up when the company doubled, tripled, etc. the size of the engineering team.
My most productive moments were when I could close the door and turn my music up on my high end speakers and blast through the work.
My office was also cozy with an old chair that people came in and sat down for impromptu meetings. No need to schedule conference rooms and we all had our own white boards.
Jumping to startups that tout open spaces and the engineers I've met since who've praised them, I wonder if it's because these engineers haven't worked at companies who have actual real offices for everyone.
The collaboration is definitely different for sure, in open spaces you can share in the tension and keep pace with everyone. Yet I find I need a day or two a week to work from home to get in those purely productive days.
I'd love it if engineering culture went back to demanding offices as a perk, but I fear those days are gone now that we demand living and working in expensive cities.
I guess I should be saying "it's hard to argue with the numbers," and yet my temptation is precisely to argue against the numbers at least for my job (programming for a tech company). I just don't understand what I would be doing in my own office, other than wasting space and spending more time leaving my office to find coprogrammers I have questions for.
That you have to spend a lot of time with other programmers asking questions raises another question: why is this? If the other programmers were better able to concentrate and churn out specs/documentation for their work that you could consult at your leisure, would there be as much need for constantly interrupting each other with questions? If you had all the information you needed at your fingertips, why couldn't you stay in your office and focus 100% on developing your part of the software?
As an analogy, it's like saying "Who has time to implement safety measures when we're so busy administering first aid because of all the accidents?"
You would be NOT annoying the guy next to you with your loud chewing/constant throat clearing/conversations/talking through problems/music heard through your earphones.
I've worked in open plan, cubes, and my own office. Open plan is by far the worst. For me, it comes down to perceived privacy more so than noise.
A lot of you guys would absolutely hate to work where I do. Next week is my last week, but for unrelated reasons.
We're an open office plan and I love it. I couldn't imagine working in an office where everyone is quietly tucked away in their offices. Worth mentioning, is that we're a pair programming shop and everyone on the team is a big fan of pairing all the time.
But it is loud as shit in the team room. We have a Spotify playlist constantly going in the background. When a BA passes a story for completion, this is signified by the ringing of a cowbell, at which point everyone will pound on their desk and play with noise makers to celebrate. That happens a few times a day. When a build breaks, a siren goes off and noises play from the build computer to let everyone know.
I think part of it might be the pair programming. Before I started pairing, I was a headphones kind of guy, too. I liked it quiet and I was easily distracted. But when you're talking through a problem with your pair and you have someone to help keep you on task, it's really easy to avoid being distracted.
I guess the point is, in the right culture and with the right personalities, open office can work really well. No one complains about it being hard to focus on my team and it's rarely quiet. We also get shit done and everyone is pretty happy.
In a couple weeks, I'm moving on to another pair programming shop in an open office, but really only because I felt like it was time for me to see some different challenges. When I'm ready to move on from there, I'll probably be seeking a similar atmosphere.
* High school: desk in bedroom. Unaware there are worse options: Productivity: 9.
* College, year 1: dorm with roommate, cop-style desks facing each other. Shut up! Productivity: 4.
* College, years 2-4: two roommates, desk under bed. Vaguely cramped, but not bad. Productivity: 6.
* First ship: Flight of the Intruder style aluminum desk/dresser/bookcase measuring 24" wide, aligned athwartships, so every roll of that frigate dumped my work all over until I hacked some retaining straps in. (http://www.maritime.org/tour/img/fbc/fbc-captain.jpg, except our bunks were 3 high). Productivity: 3.
* Second ship: Double-wide version of same but it's a carrier, no rolling. Productivity: NA because I also an actual office, with a door, and it was right next to wardroom. Downside: back wall of office was next to the trap wires. Had to wear double hearing protection during flight ops. Office productivity: 6-9.
* Staff at the Naval Academy, Annapolis: more desk acreage than I could use, huge vaulted window, rich blue carpet, could hide out all day. Productivity: 0-8. Home office: got an Ethan Allen desk on clearance. Productivity: 6.
* Med school, year 1: Katrina. 5' folding table next to the foldout couch two very kind University of Houston students let me sleep on all year. Still have that folding table. Not bad. Productivity: 6-8.
* Med school, years 2-4, New Orleans: Ethan Allen desk tried in every room of the house, but little kids make it impossible. Productivity at home: 0. Starbucks: 7.
* Internship. Same as above, but also had a cubicle in the 180 desk "resident storage facility". Had no desire to be there and rare could be. Productivity at cubicle: -1.
* First job as a doc: moved to San Diego, converted falling-apart cubicle desk in our office (incidentally the server closet, possibly the only reason it had an air conditioner) into a standing desk. Joy. Could work all day. Had a 34" stool that helped on occasion. 3 officemates: productivity: 5. A Navy clinic, "doctor's office" set up during the weekdays I took clinic, productivity: 4 (they seemed to feel doctors were cheaper than medical assistants). Starbucks: 7.
* Oh, during that job, worked at an urgent care on the weekends: sterile "doctor's office" with a desk and computer. 4 exam rooms. Highly routinized workflow seeing 30+ patients in 12 hours. Productivity: 11.
* Currently: professionally designed cubicle set up in an office with one office mate. We face opposite directions, neither face away from the door. Most productive ever. Productivity: 8-9. Starbucks 7. But also moved my Ethan Allen desk into my bedroom and installed a door lock. Home productivity: 4-8.
My favorite part of the setup was the utterly useless desk safe, easily jimmied open (and then permanently broken) by using two Navy-issue pairs of scissors. Then, invariably, someone would forget to wedge their safe door open and you'd have to barge through staterooms in officer country during heavy seas at 3 a.m. to look for the offending thunk, thunk that was driving everyone insane.
Its not the open space per se that is the problem but rather the ratio of the number of people occupying how much space.
I have now had 15 years of experience with different plans, 6 of those with my own 60 people agency and a lot of time spent trying to figure out the optimal space.
Its really simple. Size vs. number of people is the defining factor.
You know, I've never worked in nor seen an office that wasn't "bullpit" style with people grouped onto many desks.
Maybe this is just NZ. Is having your entire development team each having their own private office something that actually happens in America (bar the amazing fantasy land that Spolsky's office sounds like).
Also, it's worth mentioning that this is just a survey, and just addresses how people "feel", not efficiency or anything like that. My ideal "work" environment (i.e. a beach) doesn't necessarily line up with my most productive.
Yes. I am in my own office. I've more or less been in a single office since, oh, 95 or so.
It's impossible to think in bullpen/cubes. Well, that's hyperbole, but it is both wearying and distracting. I'm sure there are personality types that thrive in that situation, but it is just really hard for me to be in an environment like that for long. There's a reason there's a "no talking" rule at libraries, after all.
I had my own office, complete with door, the entire time I was at Apple. It was fantastic. I've worked in open plan offices before and since, and I vastly prefer individual offices.
My team recently moved from dedicated offices to open offices and the cultural changes have actually been quite interesting to watch.
Not being able to go into someone's office and talk for an hour cuts down on one form of interpersonal bonding. On the flip side, having larger group conversations encourages another type of bonding.
Arranging dinner and lunch outings is 100x easier, we go out as a team quite often now.
Code reviews are fast and fluid. It is easy to get someone to walk on over and take a look at something. Junior programmers worrying about their designs can easily ask more senior members for help.
Productivity in some regards is down, noise level is higher for some things (yes even with headphones), and there are certainly some days where it is hard to think. On the other hand, really hard problems can get a lot of brain power thrown at them really quickly and solved in a matter of minutes. No more of that "well if I had known you were working on that, turns out I found a fix for it yesterday, I could have saved you 4 hours!"
Time spent chit chatting is probably the same. I have gotten to know some coworkers I didn't know before.
I'd say it has overall helped with code quality and team cohesion. Then again our areas are not that small, 8x10, so we are by no means cramped. I have two actual desks in my area so people on external teams can drop in with a laptop if they need to work with me.
It is a royal pain when trying to focus on solving a really hard problem however. Especially if doing pair programming on a super hard problem, when two people's thoughts are all that should be occupying a space.
I've been going at this professionally for over 20 years, and in that time have worked in all sorts of environments. Cubes, private offices, smoke-filled private offices with good friends, and also open plans in both spacious and cramped rooms. Oh, and I've also worked in a garage for a startup!
I've found that it's extraordinarily difficult for me to do my best work in a cramped open space when there is activity surrounding me. From my own experience, it seems that some % of our minds are actively processing movement or sound, even if we're not consciously aware or distracted by it.
Unless I'm bootstrapping something, or working at an ~angel seeded company, I'll refuse to work in an open space unless there is a flexible policy about working from home, where I do have my own private office.
I'll agree with what others have said: Open spaces are about saving money, but they're also a big part of the dog & pony show that tech company executives put on when courting potential investors. This is possibly more important now that most software deployments are no longer happening on accessible data centers. Beyond that, open spaces provide an easier path to scaling engineering headcount, often in a Fred Brooks-ian sort of way.
To me, more than anything these decisions speak to the engineering or C level culture established within a business. If the talent feels the need to wear noise canceling headphones to function, then there is a problem that isn't being addressed.
If a company is FORCED to implement this because they have decided to base their operations in an urban area with outrageous rent, then give the talent the flexibility to work offsite. If the management doesn't trust their people enough with that degree of autonomy, well, I guess that's a different discussion altogether.
I love my open plan office because it is open plan for my team, but still has walls between us and other teams. It definitely facilitates collaboration.
I think the holy grail of offices would be to let you choose at any time where you want to work...grabbing an isolated office some times and being in an open area at others.
As I recall, Microsoft designed X-shaped buildings with shared spaces towards the middle.
Every developer has a private office with "a door that shuts". They all have a view that doesn't look into another office. When they need to work alone, they can work alone.
Each office is large enough that a second person can come in and work alongside them, whiteboard together etc.
Social areas are placed towards the centre of the X. Offices are on the outer. This controls the spread of noise from the social areas.
These buildings were inspired by IBM's Sillicon Valley Lab (née Santa Teresa Lab), which itself was inspired by studies of programmer productivity which found that private offices improved performance markedly over cubicles and open-plan offices.
I don't know many people who like their open office plan.
Yet, why are startups trumpeting these as great places to work? Particularly as an engineer, having a door I can close is essential. (That's why I love working on Fridays, when nearly everyone else works from home.)
The biggest stressor for me in an open office is overhearing personal conversations. It's not the noise that bothers me, but the fact that I hear things I really just feel awkward hearing.
My ideal office is just lots and lots of rooms. Maybe you could do an open office if complete silence were enforced on the floor and all meetings were held in adjourning rooms, but that'll never get buy-in.
[+] [-] fishtoaster|12 years ago|reply
- A a decent cultural protocol around it. One place I worked had the very strong rule that you start all non-emergency communication asynchronously (usually text chat), even if the person is right next to you. Another place I worked at strongly respected headphones as the "don't bother me" signal. - A reasonable number of walled-off rooms for anyone to use. Need to take a phone call? Have a quick 1-on-1? Debate something loudly with 3-5 people? You need to have rooms, of varying sizes, to handle these use cases near at hand. - Minimal noise that's not related to collaboration. Eg, no loud ringing phones. No phone-based customer support department in the same room as the devs. No kitchen (full of dishwashers, coffee grinders, etc) area facing the open workspace.
Open offices can work, but only if you go out of your way to make them work. Just throwing a few dozen devs in a warehouse is a recipe for dissatisfaction. I think that that happens more often than not, resulting in things like this study.
[+] [-] abalone|12 years ago|reply
But that's also a really annoying part of it. I don't want to have to put on headphones all the time.
[+] [-] ams6110|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aimhb|12 years ago|reply
A little bit off topic, but I too have experienced this, and I have to say, it's awful for productivity, team building, and team assimilation. As a new hire, I would send my mentor a question and it might be ten minutes to fifty minutes before I would get a reply. By then, I'd all but forgotten what I was asking about in the first place, since I had moved on because of not knowing how long I'd have to wait. That led to wasted time and an overall loss of focus.
No matter the environment, text-based and asynchronous communication just aren't very effective compared to spoken communication, even when considering the interrupted party momentarily losing their flow.
[+] [-] jyrkesh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonnathanson|12 years ago|reply
In a previous job, we had an open office layout with a handful of small conference rooms. The rooms were always being fought over -- resulting in the institution of a byzantine booking system involving Outlook calendars and admin permissions, with the office manager as bottleneck to booking a room.
As a client-facing person (i.e., someone who needed to be on the phone a lot), I hated it. More often than not, I found myself walking around downstairs, in the building lobby, or out on a balcony somewhere when trying to conduct business. I got sick of fighting over conference rooms, and sicker still of trying to evict squatters from rooms that I'd booked for urgent meetings or calls. And if I ever needed a quiet place to go concentrate on something, that was pretty much out of the question for most of the day. I ended up taking a lot of work home with me every night, simply because I couldn't get it done at the office.
I enjoyed some great chit-chat with coworkers, and I probably saw more YouTube videos and memes in that office than I have anywhere else. Productivity kind of sucked, though.
[+] [-] gradstudent|12 years ago|reply
No, they're universally bad. No door, no privacy and a constant stream of chatter from other people. Yuck.
[+] [-] perlpimp|12 years ago|reply
Many companies grow from open offices as startups but then they have to change they way they do the open office if they want to preserve the "open office". my 2c.
[+] [-] fnordfnordfnord|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pixelcort|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] normloman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Osiris|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zackbloom|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nilkn|12 years ago|reply
(Also, the nondevelopers are in constant verbal communication.)
All that said, I'm not dissatisfied. Our office is always very quiet and cool. The kitchen is stocked. The chairs are comfortable. It's not a bad set up at all and I don't find that it really hinders my productivity too much. But it does feel unnecessary, and I personally know I'd be more productive telecommuting 3-4 days a week. Dressing up and behaving professionally for 8-9 hours straight does take a toll on my ability to output good code, albeit a minor one, and the location of the office in the city certainly takes a huge toll on my bank account (housing is 2-3x more expensive in this area, but the commutes are horrible from far out).
[+] [-] aspensmonster|12 years ago|reply
Instead, everyone's too busy maintaining social facades for the entirety of their day, day after day, rather than focusing on their work.
[+] [-] debt|12 years ago|reply
I don't care. I've come here to work.
I enjoy interacting socially, but I really honest-to-goodness would rather talk about work at work. I really truly don't care about your personal life at work. I would feel so relieved if I never had a conversation about something personal at work.
It doesn't have to be Nazi Germany, but it doesn't need to be constant chatter.
Yes I'm an engineer.
[+] [-] zebra|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bane|12 years ago|reply
gasp! collaboration!
gasp! accountability!
gasp! blah blah
Now years later it's obvious why they took over the world, CEOs everywhere saw the bright open office spaces, with just desks and
gasp! cost savings!
Open office plans are a way for a company to be cheap and that's about it. No investment in offices needed, no investment in fussy cubicles, no interior decorators needed (just expose the brick!). Rent a warehouse, buy desks at IKEA , assemble and voila instant office.
These days management even tries to get strategic about open plans. I'll put this department next to this one and this one so they can talk to each other more freely and voila synergy!
Absolutely the worst environment for thinking jobs possible (the contrapositive is, if it's a good environment for your job it's probably not a thinking job).
[+] [-] macNchz|12 years ago|reply
There are closed off spaces to make phone calls, and client-facing people are sectioned off slightly so their phone calls don't bother the rest of us. If we were in a big farm of fluorescent-lit cubicles or airless private offices I think I'd be less productive simply because I'd be fantasizing about not being there.
Open offices that don't have a culture of quiet, however, could indeed be total hell for 'thinking' roles, but an open office doesn't have to be the unequivocally bad working environment that you make it out to be.
[+] [-] sahglie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PMan74|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peeters|12 years ago|reply
Here's what I think they did right:
- High partitions around team cluster, low partitions within cluster. Means you don't see just anybody who's standing, but can easily get eye contact with the people you actually need to communicate with.
- White noise generators. All ambient noise is suppressed--I can't hear the people in the next cube if they're talking quietly. Only the shrillest beeps or sneezes disrupt my concentration.
- Lots of natural light. If you're going to do open concept, at least take advantage of the #1 benefit.
- Lots of small meeting rooms with whiteboards.
Even then, I noticed a massive difference in how much I enjoyed the open plan when I transitioned from working on a project that was very collaborative (pairing being the norm) to a project that required a lot of solo effort. I'm very conscious of distractions now, and end up working later hours to take advantage of the quiet when everyone's gone home.
So I think there's a lot to be said about the dynamic of your team. And in that regard, my current employer again does well by giving QA, support, and other "solo acts" individual high partitions.
[+] [-] bluedino|12 years ago|reply
Do you need quiet time where you're thinking for 5 hours a day and coding for 1? You need your own office.
Graphic designers, phone support, this kind of stuff seems to work great in an open office. Crazy team trying to crank out something fast? Also works great.
But they just add to burnout and aren't a good fit for writers or programmers. If this is the case, give everyone a small, modest office with drywall and a drop ceiling, and then have LOTS of common areas or meeting rooms so people can get together to chat or bang stuff out.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|12 years ago|reply
My most productive and cherished hours were those after the close, when I could snap in headphones and burn through theoretically intense if P&L-vague projects. Incidentally, it was those projects which made the bank's quarter for every quarter I worked there.
There is a personality that thrives on open office plans. I, sometimes, am one of them. But open layouts encourages rapid, myopic collaboration over deep thinking. The ideal solution might be an open office layout with a "library" retreat.
[+] [-] klochner|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bermanoid|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a8da6b0c91d|12 years ago|reply
That said, I have worked in a few class A office spaces and the difference between class A and any other arrangement is huge. Always the perfect temperature, designed to muffle noise, enough glass to see what's going on but enough partitioning to avoid distraction. I'm not sure the cost can be easily justified, however.
[+] [-] jarjoura|12 years ago|reply
My most productive moments were when I could close the door and turn my music up on my high end speakers and blast through the work.
My office was also cozy with an old chair that people came in and sat down for impromptu meetings. No need to schedule conference rooms and we all had our own white boards.
Jumping to startups that tout open spaces and the engineers I've met since who've praised them, I wonder if it's because these engineers haven't worked at companies who have actual real offices for everyone.
The collaboration is definitely different for sure, in open spaces you can share in the tension and keep pace with everyone. Yet I find I need a day or two a week to work from home to get in those purely productive days.
I'd love it if engineering culture went back to demanding offices as a perk, but I fear those days are gone now that we demand living and working in expensive cities.
[+] [-] nikatwork|12 years ago|reply
...because it makes upper management feel good to keep the peons in a bullpen.
[+] [-] joezydeco|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baddox|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biot|12 years ago|reply
As an analogy, it's like saying "Who has time to implement safety measures when we're so busy administering first aid because of all the accidents?"
[+] [-] flax|12 years ago|reply
I've worked in open plan, cubes, and my own office. Open plan is by far the worst. For me, it comes down to perceived privacy more so than noise.
[+] [-] prophetjohn|12 years ago|reply
We're an open office plan and I love it. I couldn't imagine working in an office where everyone is quietly tucked away in their offices. Worth mentioning, is that we're a pair programming shop and everyone on the team is a big fan of pairing all the time.
But it is loud as shit in the team room. We have a Spotify playlist constantly going in the background. When a BA passes a story for completion, this is signified by the ringing of a cowbell, at which point everyone will pound on their desk and play with noise makers to celebrate. That happens a few times a day. When a build breaks, a siren goes off and noises play from the build computer to let everyone know.
I think part of it might be the pair programming. Before I started pairing, I was a headphones kind of guy, too. I liked it quiet and I was easily distracted. But when you're talking through a problem with your pair and you have someone to help keep you on task, it's really easy to avoid being distracted.
I guess the point is, in the right culture and with the right personalities, open office can work really well. No one complains about it being hard to focus on my team and it's rarely quiet. We also get shit done and everyone is pretty happy.
In a couple weeks, I'm moving on to another pair programming shop in an open office, but really only because I felt like it was time for me to see some different challenges. When I'm ready to move on from there, I'll probably be seeking a similar atmosphere.
p.s. I'm a pretty extreme introvert.
[+] [-] niels_olson|12 years ago|reply
* High school: desk in bedroom. Unaware there are worse options: Productivity: 9.
* College, year 1: dorm with roommate, cop-style desks facing each other. Shut up! Productivity: 4.
* College, years 2-4: two roommates, desk under bed. Vaguely cramped, but not bad. Productivity: 6.
* First ship: Flight of the Intruder style aluminum desk/dresser/bookcase measuring 24" wide, aligned athwartships, so every roll of that frigate dumped my work all over until I hacked some retaining straps in. (http://www.maritime.org/tour/img/fbc/fbc-captain.jpg, except our bunks were 3 high). Productivity: 3.
* Second ship: Double-wide version of same but it's a carrier, no rolling. Productivity: NA because I also an actual office, with a door, and it was right next to wardroom. Downside: back wall of office was next to the trap wires. Had to wear double hearing protection during flight ops. Office productivity: 6-9.
* Staff at the Naval Academy, Annapolis: more desk acreage than I could use, huge vaulted window, rich blue carpet, could hide out all day. Productivity: 0-8. Home office: got an Ethan Allen desk on clearance. Productivity: 6.
* Med school, year 1: Katrina. 5' folding table next to the foldout couch two very kind University of Houston students let me sleep on all year. Still have that folding table. Not bad. Productivity: 6-8.
* Med school, years 2-4, New Orleans: Ethan Allen desk tried in every room of the house, but little kids make it impossible. Productivity at home: 0. Starbucks: 7.
* Internship. Same as above, but also had a cubicle in the 180 desk "resident storage facility". Had no desire to be there and rare could be. Productivity at cubicle: -1.
* First job as a doc: moved to San Diego, converted falling-apart cubicle desk in our office (incidentally the server closet, possibly the only reason it had an air conditioner) into a standing desk. Joy. Could work all day. Had a 34" stool that helped on occasion. 3 officemates: productivity: 5. A Navy clinic, "doctor's office" set up during the weekdays I took clinic, productivity: 4 (they seemed to feel doctors were cheaper than medical assistants). Starbucks: 7.
* Oh, during that job, worked at an urgent care on the weekends: sterile "doctor's office" with a desk and computer. 4 exam rooms. Highly routinized workflow seeing 30+ patients in 12 hours. Productivity: 11.
* Currently: professionally designed cubicle set up in an office with one office mate. We face opposite directions, neither face away from the door. Most productive ever. Productivity: 8-9. Starbucks 7. But also moved my Ethan Allen desk into my bedroom and installed a door lock. Home productivity: 4-8.
N=1
[+] [-] hudibras|12 years ago|reply
My favorite part of the setup was the utterly useless desk safe, easily jimmied open (and then permanently broken) by using two Navy-issue pairs of scissors. Then, invariably, someone would forget to wedge their safe door open and you'd have to barge through staterooms in officer country during heavy seas at 3 a.m. to look for the offending thunk, thunk that was driving everyone insane.
Oh, to be 23 again...
[+] [-] needacig|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abalone|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|12 years ago|reply
I have now had 15 years of experience with different plans, 6 of those with my own 60 people agency and a lot of time spent trying to figure out the optimal space.
Its really simple. Size vs. number of people is the defining factor.
[+] [-] SCdF|12 years ago|reply
Maybe this is just NZ. Is having your entire development team each having their own private office something that actually happens in America (bar the amazing fantasy land that Spolsky's office sounds like).
Also, it's worth mentioning that this is just a survey, and just addresses how people "feel", not efficiency or anything like that. My ideal "work" environment (i.e. a beach) doesn't necessarily line up with my most productive.
[+] [-] RogerL|12 years ago|reply
It's impossible to think in bullpen/cubes. Well, that's hyperbole, but it is both wearying and distracting. I'm sure there are personality types that thrive in that situation, but it is just really hard for me to be in an environment like that for long. There's a reason there's a "no talking" rule at libraries, after all.
[+] [-] wooster|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kruipen|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] com2kid|12 years ago|reply
Not being able to go into someone's office and talk for an hour cuts down on one form of interpersonal bonding. On the flip side, having larger group conversations encourages another type of bonding.
Arranging dinner and lunch outings is 100x easier, we go out as a team quite often now.
Code reviews are fast and fluid. It is easy to get someone to walk on over and take a look at something. Junior programmers worrying about their designs can easily ask more senior members for help.
Productivity in some regards is down, noise level is higher for some things (yes even with headphones), and there are certainly some days where it is hard to think. On the other hand, really hard problems can get a lot of brain power thrown at them really quickly and solved in a matter of minutes. No more of that "well if I had known you were working on that, turns out I found a fix for it yesterday, I could have saved you 4 hours!"
Time spent chit chatting is probably the same. I have gotten to know some coworkers I didn't know before.
I'd say it has overall helped with code quality and team cohesion. Then again our areas are not that small, 8x10, so we are by no means cramped. I have two actual desks in my area so people on external teams can drop in with a laptop if they need to work with me.
It is a royal pain when trying to focus on solving a really hard problem however. Especially if doing pair programming on a super hard problem, when two people's thoughts are all that should be occupying a space.
[+] [-] rcb|12 years ago|reply
I've found that it's extraordinarily difficult for me to do my best work in a cramped open space when there is activity surrounding me. From my own experience, it seems that some % of our minds are actively processing movement or sound, even if we're not consciously aware or distracted by it.
Unless I'm bootstrapping something, or working at an ~angel seeded company, I'll refuse to work in an open space unless there is a flexible policy about working from home, where I do have my own private office.
I'll agree with what others have said: Open spaces are about saving money, but they're also a big part of the dog & pony show that tech company executives put on when courting potential investors. This is possibly more important now that most software deployments are no longer happening on accessible data centers. Beyond that, open spaces provide an easier path to scaling engineering headcount, often in a Fred Brooks-ian sort of way.
To me, more than anything these decisions speak to the engineering or C level culture established within a business. If the talent feels the need to wear noise canceling headphones to function, then there is a problem that isn't being addressed.
If a company is FORCED to implement this because they have decided to base their operations in an urban area with outrageous rent, then give the talent the flexibility to work offsite. If the management doesn't trust their people enough with that degree of autonomy, well, I guess that's a different discussion altogether.
[+] [-] outside1234|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evv|12 years ago|reply
You know, not everybody is young and cool enough for this lifestyle..
[+] [-] saosebastiao|12 years ago|reply
I think the holy grail of offices would be to let you choose at any time where you want to work...grabbing an isolated office some times and being in an open area at others.
[+] [-] jacques_chester|12 years ago|reply
Every developer has a private office with "a door that shuts". They all have a view that doesn't look into another office. When they need to work alone, they can work alone.
Each office is large enough that a second person can come in and work alongside them, whiteboard together etc.
Social areas are placed towards the centre of the X. Offices are on the outer. This controls the spread of noise from the social areas.
These buildings were inspired by IBM's Sillicon Valley Lab (née Santa Teresa Lab), which itself was inspired by studies of programmer productivity which found that private offices improved performance markedly over cubicles and open-plan offices.
There's a discussion in Peopleware.
[+] [-] morgante|12 years ago|reply
Yet, why are startups trumpeting these as great places to work? Particularly as an engineer, having a door I can close is essential. (That's why I love working on Fridays, when nearly everyone else works from home.)
The biggest stressor for me in an open office is overhearing personal conversations. It's not the noise that bothers me, but the fact that I hear things I really just feel awkward hearing.
My ideal office is just lots and lots of rooms. Maybe you could do an open office if complete silence were enforced on the floor and all meetings were held in adjourning rooms, but that'll never get buy-in.