I was the engineering manager at my previous employer and we were reconfiguring our office layout. I talked to the engineers and with one exception each person wanted private offices. We set up one floor of the office with high cubicle walls, and a lot of sound isolation. So not exactly private offices, but really a pretty nice setup (with the best equipment and furniture available).
On a separate floor we had a bullpen with ops folks, people who were on the phone a lot, etc. One by one, each engineer gravitated towards the bullpen until no one spent more than perhaps 1 day per week in the dedicated office space. The part of the office that each engineer had claimed to want to work in became abandoned.
I think, in spite of the theoretical want for quiet space and isolation, there's a very human need at work to be in the middle of the action -- to hear what's going on, and to be connected to your colleagues. There were certain tasks and problems for which engineers would walk downstairs and make use of the dedicated space, but it was ultimately not where folks wanted to be on a daily basis.
Research has shown that engineers really tend to dislike being interrupted by outsiders (managers, salespeople, etc), but really tolerate a lot of interruptions from other engineers[1]. I feel like there has to be a happy medium. Ok, so we're not going to end up getting (and maybe shouldn't end up getting) private offices or dedicated workspaces. Those may inhibit our ability to collaborate with other engineers. But open bullpen layouts leave the worker with no privacy and allow unlimited interruptions by outsiders.
You can't really take from this experience that people don't want private offices, though (you didn't exactly say it, but I think the implication is there). As you admitted, your engineers didn't actually get private offices, they got cubes with high walls! That's a pretty major difference.
Just having that dedicated space, though, could have been invaluable. Of course, I can't speak to any specifics and can only speculate here, but the fact that at any moment they could just walk downstairs to find a quiet dedicated space for serious work probably was pretty liberating. They probably felt at ease to utilize the noisy, energetic space upstairs because they knew they weren't confined to it should they need privacy.
> I think, in spite of the theoretical want for quiet space and isolation, there's a very human need at work to be in the middle of the action
This is why I, and many others like working in coffee shops. There's usually an ambient background noise which makes it feel like you are involved in something, but it doesn't require your direct attention. I think there's also a subconscious element to having activity around you which keeps you focussed. I personally find it easy to look at cat videos on the internet when no one can see my screen, but when I know people might walk past me when at a coffee shop, or at work, it keeps me focussed.
People tend to enjoy private alcoves with a view on the action, which is kinda best of both worlds. Christopher Alexander describes that pattern in _A Pattern Language_.
I used to think like you guys, how the fuck would I get any work done if I'm in the middle with so many people doing so many different things in the same time. Someone is narrating his/her life story, other one talking about his views on x and so on. However, after working on similar environment for a year and now working on a really private cubes. I prefer the open spaces, it's more fun. YOU CANNOT SLACK IN OPEN SPACES. I used only code code code whole day and now in a private cube I spent hours on HN, reddit and 2/3 hrs for work. Yes, the company is fine but I don't feel I'm producing as much as I can. Why? Because I can slack in private cubes unlike in open spaces where I want to prove among these peoples.
edit: Sorry for bad English. I cannot slack in open spaces, that's why I like them.
Programmers work in multiple modes, for me they are:
Mode 1: Preparing to program
Mode 2: Programming
Mode 3: Reviewing my code
The mix varies among projects and even days, but I usually spend more than half of my time in Mode 2: Programming.
With a few exceptions, I can do Modes 1 and 3 almost anywhere, and sometimes they need to be done with others, so an open office/meeting room can be great for these.
But for Programming with any quality, I must have silence and no interruptions. I have never found this in an open office or cubicle. I can only do Mode 2 in a private office or at home.
Programmers want offices because they could need a safe haven for Mode 2 at almost any time.
If you're in an office, you can always find another place to be with others, but if you're not in an office, you constantly struggle to find a place to get into Mode 2.
Your employees had the choice between drab isolating cubicles bathed in depressing internal lighting and something else, which they eventually chose. I think maybe you should reconsider what that means. Perhaps your engineers weren't as interested as other parries in pretending cubicles--no matter how fancy--are the same thing as offices.
Anecdotally, at my current job I prefer working in a room where there are from three to five other engineers and lots of electronics around over working in the cube I'm assigned, but if I had a genuinely private office with a window, even overlooking a parking lot, I'd take it and work there 99% of the time, and be more productive if past experience is any indication.
Did the private offices feel nice or soulsickingly without character?
I dont' know why, but your description makes the offices sound like the last place I would want to be. Small, cramped, dark, and soulsuckingly unalive.
The bullpen wasn't more productive, but it had character. It made people feel good. Made them feel welcome.
I wonder if that just shows that having the both the open bullpen and quiet space as dueling options is ineffective. FOMO is extremely strong in everyone, so even though engineers might prefer and be more productive in a quiet space, they're afraid of missing out on the action in the bullpen so migrate there.
I would probably be a holdout for the private office. I've been opting to work from home as much as I can from my quiet home office rather than go to the office. My colleagues are all very responsive via email/IM so that helps a lot when we need to converse.
I worked at a place that had a kind of combination -- actual offices, but with 2-4 people in them. I actually loved it, but I also got along with who I was paired with. We could talk all day, play loud music we liked, and still have "privacy".
It sounds like the people in the bullpen were defining the work products for the engineers. If your current "customer" (for lack of a better word) is used to working in a bullpen, you had better be in the bullpen as well, if you want to get anything done.
Lately, I've been doing two sorts of things: short turn-around bug-fixes and enhancements and longer-term major development. If I try to do the short turn-around work without being in the same room as the customer/tester/what-have-you non-developer, the latency of email/IM means less work gets done, which is frustrating for both sides. On the other hand, if I try to do major development while in the same room as the other people, my work simply won't get done due to the interruptions and general inability to concentrate.
Generally software developers at any level are treated as the lowest level of person at companies, even when the company specializes in software. As a result, they are packed in wherever they fit.
The theory seems that developers benefit from feeling like a frathouse of some sort, where they play in most of their area, but otherwise cram together to study for a bit, so that they can go back to goofing off afterwards.
Developers are not treated as professionals. They are treated as animals; herded together to make them work, but otherwise just giving them big grassy fields.
> Gobs of well-lit perimeter offices. Every developer, tester, and program manager is in a private office; all except two have direct windows to the outside (the two that don't get plenty of daylight through two glass walls).
The longer I spend in this environment (coming up to five years) the less I like it. I like the idea of having large, interesting open spaces for more social activities including work, but most of the work I do lends itself well to being not surrounded by people having conversations or - in some cases - literally just messing around all day.
I don't understand if you like Fog Creek's environment or you don't.
At any rate, I'm so over the open floor plan/cubicle mazes. I get really distracted by the doppler effect that conversations (sometimes LOUD conversations) that pass by my cubicle, have. Perhaps I'm just a curmudgeon, but I much prefer the solitude that an office with a door provides.
Offices are a really great example of the push to keep programmers from thinking of themselves as professionals, either by treating them like IT or tech support, or like college kids. Google or Facebook's revenue per engineer is probably 3x that of a law firm or consulting firm, but the overwhelming practice in the latter sorts of places is for each professional to have an office with a door.
When you're a growing startup, having private offices costs you flexibility as well as cash because open plan is easier to reconfigure as you grow. If you're at the point where you're commissioning a Ghery, you're well past that excuse.
Until 2009 or so, we used to have private offices at Cray. There were plenty of impromptu conversations. I would argue that they were more pleasant and productive, since we didn't have to worry we were upsetting everyone around us while brainstorming or discussing tech trends. We would meet in an engineer's office so not everyone had to hear the whole thing.
How are those offices private when there's a full glass wall on the corridor, and what looks like an opening below the ceiling to the next office? That appears to add up to neither visual nor audio screening.
(Audio distraction causes trouble in conversation for me, and visual distraction disrupts any kind of concentration. I might actually prefer a tall cubicle to this setup, not to endorse the cubicle.)
I've worked on open plan floors and also had a private office before. Currently, I share an office with one other dev and I feel it's the best setting I've ever had.
>> Every developer, tester, and program manager is in a private office
> The longer I spend in this environment (coming up to five years) the less I like it
> I like the idea of having large, interesting open spaces for more social activities including work, but most of the work I do lends itself well to being not surrounded by people having conversations
This is confusing.. Are you saying you do like Fog Creek's setup, or you don't?
People do the open office floor plan because it's efficient and economical, not because it's the the best for the workers.
We designed a ton of cubbies (like in your university library), 1 person private rooms, 2 person conference rooms, etc. in our office to accommodate for the fact that many people need to more privacy and quiet than just headphones. We also break up the main open plans to help quiet the noise and distraction.
We have about 45,000 sq. ft today, and will be adding another 45,000 sq. ft this year. When we do, there will be much less open floor plan. I do think there's a happy medium, with team rooms of 6 to 15 people, depending on role and requirements.
> with team rooms of 6 to 15 people, depending on role and requirements
I absolutely agree. Team rooms seem to be the optimal. The room gets to set the rules. It's amazing how different team cultures grow, develop and optimize for the team composition and the work they're doing.
Provide a few quiet ultra-concentration nodes that people can reserve and use and conference rooms for inter-team coordinating and you're set.
You get the benefits of quick communication and collaboration, without the downsides of other people's/group's conversations disrupting what you're working on AND the ability to comfortably complain that your teammate is being disruptive...which is socially harder to do with strangers/people in other parts of the company.
If your rule is "put headphones on if you want privacy" you're doing it wrong. If you need to have "flow time" in the afternoon because the warehouse you've stuffed your people into is too noisy to get any real work done (so you have to schedule time to actually concentrate) you're doing it wrong.
Some places even go so far as having re-configurable team rooms, they can change size and shape to accommodate growing and shrinking teams without too much fuss.
I think it's more accurate to say that it's because open office are cheap (*up front). It's pretty clear that they reduce efficiency in many, if not most, cases, which can be very expensive.
I love the idea of actually having a quiet room with the sign "library rules" on the door. In the quiet room, if you make noise -- even to have a work-related conversation, you get shushed. GTFO into the open-office area. No apology needed, no excuse accepted.
I'm curious if you have any "team rooms" with private rooms directly off of them -- such that the team can have a collaborative space and heads-down coding space.
Having worked in offices like these (in a call center, of all things), I really don't understand how the hell you could get any work done. We had people going home with migraines after two days in conditions like that Facebook photo, and that was just reading scripts into a phone headset for 8 hours. Actually producing anything like an intelligent thought in that kind of corporate tuna can is unthinkable to me.
"We have our own indoor artisanal cheese maker! ... but our actual workspace looks like it was cobbled together after a day of frantic Costco purchases." How about sparing the free Sun Chips and putting some walls in, eh?
Having spent a day at Atlassian's office in SOMA when contracting for them recently, if this sort of setup is done right (with the additional caveat of having an energetic staff) the effect is positively electrifying. The "Costco purchases" jab is overly broad, because this office had very nice motorized standing desks for everybody. Also, the complex was large enough that you could escape into some personal space without feeling like you were hiding.
On the other hand, Gannett attempted a setup like this, except it was out of cheapness (they wanted to lease office space in their Tysons HQ) and was carried out mindlessly. They mixed developers with technical support, managers, etc. thoughtlessly. And they installed "white noise" machines which made matters worse. Working in that place was almost impossible and I quit after a month.
I imagine a call center is a lot more noisy than the average open plan office, though. The open space I work in sounds a lot like a coffee shop (a few muted voices, but not much else)
Open floor plan offices are generally pretty unpleasant, but some of the negative effects can be mitigated.
I worked at Sun Micro a while ago (the place that is now Facebook), and we all had offices at the time. However, Sun had also started to create numerous drop-in work centers. One of them was in downtown SF, just south of market.
This was an "open" office with three largish rooms with cubicles and desks, and a smaller number of offices with doors that close (reservable or walk in).
Here's what made it work - one of the rooms was designated a "zone of silence", and it really was enforced. The two outer rooms had phones at each desk, the quiet room did not. Sales people and other workers who needed to make noise worked in the outer rooms, programmers and other heads down people worked in the quiet room.
Not surprisingly, there were plenty of people who wanted to break the rules. This generally happened when all the desks in the loud room were taken. Then you'd get people trying to take phone calls in the quiet room on their cell phones. Some felt that as long as they spoke in a relatively hushed tone of voice, it would be ok (though everyone could still hear their conversation). Others figured that the phone could ring, and they could start their conversation in the room, as long as they were actively walking outside the room as they talked.
What saved it was an office manager who simply wouldn't tolerate it. She would absolutely tell people that they couldn't do this, and that their right to work from the drop in center would be revoked if they continued to do it. She didn't care about their rank, or if they liked her.
I did have a couple of ugly moments about it. I very politely asked people on a couple of occasions not to use their phones in the designated quiet room (with signs everywhere about it), and more than once, they started in on how much more important their work was than mine.
But it was relatively rare, because the signage and vibe of the room really was pretty clear about it, and the office manager was very strict and just didn't have the kind of personality that was easily pushed around.
I'm currently working at a place where I have 4 locations I can work from:
1 - my office (shared with one other person)
2 - a team room, about 10 people right now
3 - an office across from my client, it's a "guest cube" in a cube farm
4 - from home
Plus the normal mix of conference rooms.
I find that in any given week, I'll rotate through about 3 of those pretty comfortably. My officemate also has a similar work schedule, so I'm alone in my office most of the time, so I use it for deep concentration. It's too isolated though to spend all my time there.
The team room is great if I need to collaborate, or get my energy up. It's also not too bad if I need to concentrate as everybody there is working.
The guest cube is where I go if I need to do document editing, presentations, client meetings...stuff that's so distracting I can't get any technical work done anyway.
And home, because well, who doesn't want to work from home every once in a while?
So far, it's the best workplace I've ever been, and this includes about 5 years of working from home, various client sites, cubes, personal offices, open floor plans. The best part is that it doesn't cost the company a fortune, but I get flexibility, privacy when I need it, collaboration when I need it, different work contexts etc.
I've been more productive in the few months I've been here than I've been anywhere else in my career.
It's cramped. It's noisy. There's barely enough power outlets (if at all). Uncomfortable chairs. Annoying conversations. Hipster baristas.
Yet people all over the world cram into coffee shops like Starbucks, sucking up the free wifi with a grande half-calf mocha latte, churning out a report or answering e-mails, sometimes even on a conference call. Conditions that could border on sweatshop if it weren't for the food and drink. It seems completely unintuitive.
Are there benefits to this environment? Perhaps.
For one thing, you don't know anyone there; nobody is going to interrupt you, or tell loud inappropriate jokes while tossing a football, and you are so close to people you are forced to focus on what is right in front of you. You get the comfort of being near other humans without any requirement to ever interact with them. Then there's the convenience of easy access to food, a bathroom, and that miracle drug we're all dependent on. Add the internet and a table and chair and it's like some utopian Japanese vision of the future of all offices. The music is a nice bonus.
But there's one thing I think really makes the coffee shop an ideal place to work: no expectations.
You can come and go as you please. No assigned seats. No meetings. No interruptions. Nothing but your coffee and chair and table space and internet. Who cares if it's loud? Who cares if it's impractical to stay there? If you just need to get something done and break away from the commitment to a typical monotonous working life, this is your hideaway.
I think all offices should just be giant coffee shops.
Managers like bullpens because they are very cheap. They cram a lot of people into a small space. They don't require the maintence of door locks or even cube walls. People can be moved around very easily.
I think they also like that everyone can look over everyone else's shoulder very easily, which creates peer pressure to work. In my experience, the maangers that advocate this are often the ones that are really spending all their time in special break-out rooms or conference rooms.
It's funny how most of these places hire the top cs grads and dont realize they're implemented an n^2 noise generation (audio and visual) algorithm for their developers, deoptimizing the very thing you hired them for: concentrated brain power.
Maybe the best thing to do is layout things like a microprocessor, where everyone gets their own isolated location (ram/register address), a place where people who need to be associated come together periodically (a local cache), and a meeting place for larger groups (an ALU) for bigger operations.
Why does it have to be either or? Why not provide a variety of different work environments, encourage employees to find the one that best suits them, and work there? I think back to my days at the University. Sometimes a louder, open space was great so I'd head to the student union or the group floor of the library. Or maybe I needed some isolated quiet time, find a private room in the library so I could think. I've worked in places that had only open spaces, and it was very difficult to find any quiet, more private rooms. There are times that I like a more open environment, and I get work done there, but when there are no quiet places I can retreat to when I need it, then it can become very frustrating to get any work done. And no, don't tell me you provide me headphones to 'block out' the noise. Sometimes its quiet I want, not louder noises to block out the existing noises (not to mention the fact that it doesn't block out visual stimulation which can be equally distracting).
We should have someone like Ben Horowitz who has been a line manager of engineers, CEO of a large company that cranks out code - both the pure "New technology" type code, as well as the "Lots of framework code" type engineering, comment on this. But, from memory, I think he said something like this:
"Engineering productivity, counterintuitively, appears to increase as you move them out of private offices into contact with one another, both through cross-pollination of different ideas, as well as the energy inherent in working in a team environment. This graph of productivity, though, does have a maxima as density increases, until it begins to once again decrease as the distractions become a dominating effect. With that said, not all engineers are alike, and there are some individuals that are far more effective in a quiet room, than those who benefit from the open office layout. The efficient engineering organization should make opportunities for both types of engineers to excel."
I am currently working at Google as an intern and I'm probably going to be the contradicting opinion in this thread but I really appreciate the openspace office we have here. Maybe because it's my first "real" office job, but I do not find much of a problem working here. When I want to be on my own to think on stuff, I just put my headphones on (sometimes with music, sometimes without, since they are good at canceling noise anyway) and it's like being in my own isolated office. And if that is not enough, we have small cubicle-like mini-rooms where you can go and isolate yourself, most people use them to have phone conversations or do interviews, but nothing stops you from working in there with your laptop.
All in all, though, maybe it's my floor that is very quiet but there's not much distraction or annoying background noise as most people are busy working. When they are not working, they go somewhere else (the pub, the relax rooms, etc etc). If they want to have a work-related conversation that lasts more than 5-10 minutes, we have open areas with whiteboards separated from the desk area, or we have separate conference rooms you can use. Most of the time, I enjoy taking my headphones off and listening to a couple of coworkers making remarks on stuff (either work or non-work related), it helps me relieve stress and boredom much more than just staring at a wall or reading some articles online.
Ironically, the major source of annoyance in our floor recently has been the old AC system that sometimes starts making very loud noises and bothers everybody, but this is not the fault of the openspace office so it doesn't count :)
Unfortunately corporate culture has shifted to the point that it's seen as incredibly wasteful to give people private offices. Literally the only technology company I know of which provides private offices for everyone is Fog Creek.
Moreover, even if a startups wants to give their engineers private offices, external forces make it challenging. VCs think it's unnecessary overhead, and even some developers are turned off by the prospect when recruiting (particularly new grads).
So far the solution we've found is to have a separate "sanctuary" room. It's located right next to our main office, but it's kept completely silent. All conversations have to be kept out in the open office or conference rooms. So far it's working pretty well—when you want to hunker down and work, there's space for that but we can also collaborate easily.
It's also interesting to see where people have set up their "desk" (ie. default location, with their monitor). The majority of the company gravitates towards the open office by default, but a few writers and one engineer default to the sanctuary. Perhaps the open office is more attractive, even if it's less productive.
Personally, I put my desk in the sanctuary but end up spending most of my time in the open office.
As much as it pains for me to say it, I do think small, quiet 1-2 person offices are great for thinking and getting real work done. I believe the IDEO offices in the Bay Area have a combination of a centralised area for discussions and collaboration, but a set of smaller offices for more focused work time. Something which would actually be quite nice to see more of ...
Is it a generation gap? Old programmer vs new? The open office trend may be the death of my 2 decade career in writing software.
I do not need a spacious office: a room with a door, a distinct lack of distracting windows, and a 4x6 desk and an overflow side table would be perfect. Closing a door means I can focus and block out traffic, noise and the general hubbub of an office.
Has this guy even worked in any of these environments? I've worked at Facebook and it is surprisingly quiet. If people want to have meetings or talk, there are plenty of conference rooms to take advantage of. Worst case, the free Sennheisers in the tech vending machines takes care of any other noises that you might not like.
I personally work better in an open office environment. I work off the energy of others and it allows me to focus more than being alone in an office.
While I understand if people legitimately don't like an open office environment, this type of article seems like it is just trying to put down these companies with little knowledge about how loud it really is in these offices.
And if you don't like the environment at Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc, just move to another company. Let's not pretend that it is hard to get another job with one of those companies on your resume.
[+] [-] numlocked|11 years ago|reply
On a separate floor we had a bullpen with ops folks, people who were on the phone a lot, etc. One by one, each engineer gravitated towards the bullpen until no one spent more than perhaps 1 day per week in the dedicated office space. The part of the office that each engineer had claimed to want to work in became abandoned.
I think, in spite of the theoretical want for quiet space and isolation, there's a very human need at work to be in the middle of the action -- to hear what's going on, and to be connected to your colleagues. There were certain tasks and problems for which engineers would walk downstairs and make use of the dedicated space, but it was ultimately not where folks wanted to be on a daily basis.
[+] [-] j_baker|11 years ago|reply
[1] Source: http://books.google.pl/books?id=QZPpdB_yfqgC&printsec=frontc...
[+] [-] Blackthorn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nilkn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nolk100|11 years ago|reply
This is why I, and many others like working in coffee shops. There's usually an ambient background noise which makes it feel like you are involved in something, but it doesn't require your direct attention. I think there's also a subconscious element to having activity around you which keeps you focussed. I personally find it easy to look at cat videos on the internet when no one can see my screen, but when I know people might walk past me when at a coffee shop, or at work, it keeps me focussed.
[+] [-] droob|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idkMaybeImonly1|11 years ago|reply
edit: Sorry for bad English. I cannot slack in open spaces, that's why I like them.
[+] [-] edw519|11 years ago|reply
With a few exceptions, I can do Modes 1 and 3 almost anywhere, and sometimes they need to be done with others, so an open office/meeting room can be great for these.
But for Programming with any quality, I must have silence and no interruptions. I have never found this in an open office or cubicle. I can only do Mode 2 in a private office or at home.
Programmers want offices because they could need a safe haven for Mode 2 at almost any time.
If you're in an office, you can always find another place to be with others, but if you're not in an office, you constantly struggle to find a place to get into Mode 2.
[+] [-] Iftheshoefits|11 years ago|reply
Anecdotally, at my current job I prefer working in a room where there are from three to five other engineers and lots of electronics around over working in the cube I'm assigned, but if I had a genuinely private office with a window, even overlooking a parking lot, I'd take it and work there 99% of the time, and be more productive if past experience is any indication.
[+] [-] Swizec|11 years ago|reply
I dont' know why, but your description makes the offices sound like the last place I would want to be. Small, cramped, dark, and soulsuckingly unalive.
The bullpen wasn't more productive, but it had character. It made people feel good. Made them feel welcome.
[+] [-] bsirkia|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mlwarren|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legohead|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcguire|11 years ago|reply
Lately, I've been doing two sorts of things: short turn-around bug-fixes and enhancements and longer-term major development. If I try to do the short turn-around work without being in the same room as the customer/tester/what-have-you non-developer, the latency of email/IM means less work gets done, which is frustrating for both sides. On the other hand, if I try to do major development while in the same room as the other people, my work simply won't get done due to the interruptions and general inability to concentrate.
[+] [-] rilita|11 years ago|reply
The theory seems that developers benefit from feeling like a frathouse of some sort, where they play in most of their area, but otherwise cram together to study for a bit, so that they can go back to goofing off afterwards.
Developers are not treated as professionals. They are treated as animals; herded together to make them work, but otherwise just giving them big grassy fields.
[+] [-] basicallydan|11 years ago|reply
> Gobs of well-lit perimeter offices. Every developer, tester, and program manager is in a private office; all except two have direct windows to the outside (the two that don't get plenty of daylight through two glass walls).
The longer I spend in this environment (coming up to five years) the less I like it. I like the idea of having large, interesting open spaces for more social activities including work, but most of the work I do lends itself well to being not surrounded by people having conversations or - in some cases - literally just messing around all day.
There's gotta be a balance.
[+] [-] gregd|11 years ago|reply
At any rate, I'm so over the open floor plan/cubicle mazes. I get really distracted by the doppler effect that conversations (sometimes LOUD conversations) that pass by my cubicle, have. Perhaps I'm just a curmudgeon, but I much prefer the solitude that an office with a door provides.
[+] [-] rayiner|11 years ago|reply
When you're a growing startup, having private offices costs you flexibility as well as cash because open plan is easier to reconfigure as you grow. If you're at the point where you're commissioning a Ghery, you're well past that excuse.
[+] [-] mncolinlee|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] df07|11 years ago|reply
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.708933,-74.006578,3a,75y,203...
[+] [-] abecedarius|11 years ago|reply
(Audio distraction causes trouble in conversation for me, and visual distraction disrupts any kind of concentration. I might actually prefer a tall cubicle to this setup, not to endorse the cubicle.)
[+] [-] phowat|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DigitalBison|11 years ago|reply
> The longer I spend in this environment (coming up to five years) the less I like it
> I like the idea of having large, interesting open spaces for more social activities including work, but most of the work I do lends itself well to being not surrounded by people having conversations
This is confusing.. Are you saying you do like Fog Creek's setup, or you don't?
[+] [-] letstryagain|11 years ago|reply
https://www.flickr.com/photos/atlassian/sets/721576316725737...
Guess who's winning the bug tracking market share
[+] [-] davidu|11 years ago|reply
We designed a ton of cubbies (like in your university library), 1 person private rooms, 2 person conference rooms, etc. in our office to accommodate for the fact that many people need to more privacy and quiet than just headphones. We also break up the main open plans to help quiet the noise and distraction.
We have about 45,000 sq. ft today, and will be adding another 45,000 sq. ft this year. When we do, there will be much less open floor plan. I do think there's a happy medium, with team rooms of 6 to 15 people, depending on role and requirements.
[+] [-] bane|11 years ago|reply
I absolutely agree. Team rooms seem to be the optimal. The room gets to set the rules. It's amazing how different team cultures grow, develop and optimize for the team composition and the work they're doing.
Provide a few quiet ultra-concentration nodes that people can reserve and use and conference rooms for inter-team coordinating and you're set.
You get the benefits of quick communication and collaboration, without the downsides of other people's/group's conversations disrupting what you're working on AND the ability to comfortably complain that your teammate is being disruptive...which is socially harder to do with strangers/people in other parts of the company.
If your rule is "put headphones on if you want privacy" you're doing it wrong. If you need to have "flow time" in the afternoon because the warehouse you've stuffed your people into is too noisy to get any real work done (so you have to schedule time to actually concentrate) you're doing it wrong.
Some places even go so far as having re-configurable team rooms, they can change size and shape to accommodate growing and shrinking teams without too much fuss.
[+] [-] wylee|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teddyh|11 years ago|reply
Efficient for what or who, I wonder?
[+] [-] abalone|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JabavuAdams|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotharbot|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Someone1234|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jarcane|11 years ago|reply
"We have our own indoor artisanal cheese maker! ... but our actual workspace looks like it was cobbled together after a day of frantic Costco purchases." How about sparing the free Sun Chips and putting some walls in, eh?
[+] [-] oinksoft|11 years ago|reply
On the other hand, Gannett attempted a setup like this, except it was out of cheapness (they wanted to lease office space in their Tysons HQ) and was carried out mindlessly. They mixed developers with technical support, managers, etc. thoughtlessly. And they installed "white noise" machines which made matters worse. Working in that place was almost impossible and I quit after a month.
[+] [-] untog|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geebee|11 years ago|reply
I worked at Sun Micro a while ago (the place that is now Facebook), and we all had offices at the time. However, Sun had also started to create numerous drop-in work centers. One of them was in downtown SF, just south of market.
This was an "open" office with three largish rooms with cubicles and desks, and a smaller number of offices with doors that close (reservable or walk in).
Here's what made it work - one of the rooms was designated a "zone of silence", and it really was enforced. The two outer rooms had phones at each desk, the quiet room did not. Sales people and other workers who needed to make noise worked in the outer rooms, programmers and other heads down people worked in the quiet room.
Not surprisingly, there were plenty of people who wanted to break the rules. This generally happened when all the desks in the loud room were taken. Then you'd get people trying to take phone calls in the quiet room on their cell phones. Some felt that as long as they spoke in a relatively hushed tone of voice, it would be ok (though everyone could still hear their conversation). Others figured that the phone could ring, and they could start their conversation in the room, as long as they were actively walking outside the room as they talked.
What saved it was an office manager who simply wouldn't tolerate it. She would absolutely tell people that they couldn't do this, and that their right to work from the drop in center would be revoked if they continued to do it. She didn't care about their rank, or if they liked her.
I did have a couple of ugly moments about it. I very politely asked people on a couple of occasions not to use their phones in the designated quiet room (with signs everywhere about it), and more than once, they started in on how much more important their work was than mine.
But it was relatively rare, because the signage and vibe of the room really was pretty clear about it, and the office manager was very strict and just didn't have the kind of personality that was easily pushed around.
[+] [-] bane|11 years ago|reply
1 - my office (shared with one other person)
2 - a team room, about 10 people right now
3 - an office across from my client, it's a "guest cube" in a cube farm
4 - from home
Plus the normal mix of conference rooms.
I find that in any given week, I'll rotate through about 3 of those pretty comfortably. My officemate also has a similar work schedule, so I'm alone in my office most of the time, so I use it for deep concentration. It's too isolated though to spend all my time there.
The team room is great if I need to collaborate, or get my energy up. It's also not too bad if I need to concentrate as everybody there is working.
The guest cube is where I go if I need to do document editing, presentations, client meetings...stuff that's so distracting I can't get any technical work done anyway.
And home, because well, who doesn't want to work from home every once in a while?
So far, it's the best workplace I've ever been, and this includes about 5 years of working from home, various client sites, cubes, personal offices, open floor plans. The best part is that it doesn't cost the company a fortune, but I get flexibility, privacy when I need it, collaboration when I need it, different work contexts etc.
I've been more productive in the few months I've been here than I've been anywhere else in my career.
[+] [-] peterwwillis|11 years ago|reply
It's cramped. It's noisy. There's barely enough power outlets (if at all). Uncomfortable chairs. Annoying conversations. Hipster baristas.
Yet people all over the world cram into coffee shops like Starbucks, sucking up the free wifi with a grande half-calf mocha latte, churning out a report or answering e-mails, sometimes even on a conference call. Conditions that could border on sweatshop if it weren't for the food and drink. It seems completely unintuitive.
Are there benefits to this environment? Perhaps.
For one thing, you don't know anyone there; nobody is going to interrupt you, or tell loud inappropriate jokes while tossing a football, and you are so close to people you are forced to focus on what is right in front of you. You get the comfort of being near other humans without any requirement to ever interact with them. Then there's the convenience of easy access to food, a bathroom, and that miracle drug we're all dependent on. Add the internet and a table and chair and it's like some utopian Japanese vision of the future of all offices. The music is a nice bonus.
But there's one thing I think really makes the coffee shop an ideal place to work: no expectations.
You can come and go as you please. No assigned seats. No meetings. No interruptions. Nothing but your coffee and chair and table space and internet. Who cares if it's loud? Who cares if it's impractical to stay there? If you just need to get something done and break away from the commitment to a typical monotonous working life, this is your hideaway.
I think all offices should just be giant coffee shops.
[+] [-] uniformlyrandom|11 years ago|reply
If you are a coder, an engineer, or an architect, then open office is painful.
If you are a manager, then open office is embarrassing.
[+] [-] georgeecollins|11 years ago|reply
I think they also like that everyone can look over everyone else's shoulder very easily, which creates peer pressure to work. In my experience, the maangers that advocate this are often the ones that are really spending all their time in special break-out rooms or conference rooms.
[+] [-] aswanson|11 years ago|reply
Maybe the best thing to do is layout things like a microprocessor, where everyone gets their own isolated location (ram/register address), a place where people who need to be associated come together periodically (a local cache), and a meeting place for larger groups (an ALU) for bigger operations.
[+] [-] sibelius7th|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghshephard|11 years ago|reply
"Engineering productivity, counterintuitively, appears to increase as you move them out of private offices into contact with one another, both through cross-pollination of different ideas, as well as the energy inherent in working in a team environment. This graph of productivity, though, does have a maxima as density increases, until it begins to once again decrease as the distractions become a dominating effect. With that said, not all engineers are alike, and there are some individuals that are far more effective in a quiet room, than those who benefit from the open office layout. The efficient engineering organization should make opportunities for both types of engineers to excel."
[+] [-] gdulli|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Morgawr|11 years ago|reply
All in all, though, maybe it's my floor that is very quiet but there's not much distraction or annoying background noise as most people are busy working. When they are not working, they go somewhere else (the pub, the relax rooms, etc etc). If they want to have a work-related conversation that lasts more than 5-10 minutes, we have open areas with whiteboards separated from the desk area, or we have separate conference rooms you can use. Most of the time, I enjoy taking my headphones off and listening to a couple of coworkers making remarks on stuff (either work or non-work related), it helps me relieve stress and boredom much more than just staring at a wall or reading some articles online.
Ironically, the major source of annoyance in our floor recently has been the old AC system that sometimes starts making very loud noises and bothers everybody, but this is not the fault of the openspace office so it doesn't count :)
[+] [-] morgante|11 years ago|reply
Moreover, even if a startups wants to give their engineers private offices, external forces make it challenging. VCs think it's unnecessary overhead, and even some developers are turned off by the prospect when recruiting (particularly new grads).
So far the solution we've found is to have a separate "sanctuary" room. It's located right next to our main office, but it's kept completely silent. All conversations have to be kept out in the open office or conference rooms. So far it's working pretty well—when you want to hunker down and work, there's space for that but we can also collaborate easily.
It's also interesting to see where people have set up their "desk" (ie. default location, with their monitor). The majority of the company gravitates towards the open office by default, but a few writers and one engineer default to the sanctuary. Perhaps the open office is more attractive, even if it's less productive.
Personally, I put my desk in the sanctuary but end up spending most of my time in the open office.
[+] [-] chrisbennet|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kateho|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bixmix|11 years ago|reply
I do not need a spacious office: a room with a door, a distinct lack of distracting windows, and a 4x6 desk and an overflow side table would be perfect. Closing a door means I can focus and block out traffic, noise and the general hubbub of an office.
[+] [-] gook|11 years ago|reply
I personally work better in an open office environment. I work off the energy of others and it allows me to focus more than being alone in an office.
While I understand if people legitimately don't like an open office environment, this type of article seems like it is just trying to put down these companies with little knowledge about how loud it really is in these offices.
And if you don't like the environment at Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc, just move to another company. Let's not pretend that it is hard to get another job with one of those companies on your resume.