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Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#121

Post by opo »

jlengrand wrote: post #6

I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. I'm against open plan offices at large corp level. I have 300 people on my floor, the group closest to us is from business and spends 2/4 hours a day on the phone. It saddens me because the largest openly claimed benefit of Open Plan offices is "increase collaboration". What I literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide in…

>I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level.

Having now worked in one of these at a large company, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is relativley small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early without having having to have formal meetings and delays. A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple question (or to just see what they are working on) becomes a big deal because you are now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people. Unless you really know the other person well, we found people just are very hesitant to do it.

In big companies, there usually isn't a problem with communicating within a team - the problems occur when teams aren't communicating with people in other teams. These team rooms ruin informal inter-team collaboration and communication.

With the pandemic it isn't hard to see that a small enclosed team room with people packed in it is also a pretty good way to guarantee a virus will be spread to others.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#122

Post by rglullis »

gmtx725 wrote: post #107
TeMPOraL wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a request, but just issuing a request to a developer in a state of deep focus stands a good chance of kicking them out of that focused state, ruining anywhere between half an hour and the rest of the day for them. So you need to be really mindful of the cost of just asking someone if they have time. The usual solutions I've employed or been subjected to in the past are: 1) headphones on == no interruptions of an…

I feel like you're being a bit precious. If someone asks you 'hey, can you help out with this', and you respond 'no not right now i'm busy', that knocks you out for half an hour to the rest of the day ??? FWIW I'm a pretty independent worker and I agree people should try and work things out on their own before asking for help

Yes, it is that bad for some people. But most importantly, even if it meant "just" 5 minutes to get back into flow, you still have an organization that doesn't know how to share information and you have a manager that is crippling team productivity without even knowing.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/02/12/human-task-switche...

> I agree people should try and work things out on their own before asking for help

That is far from ideal in two ways:

- knowledge sharing suffers. You do your research and solve your problem or you don't and you have to ask to someone else more experienced. Knowledge sharing is kept to an oral tradition. Teams quickly start depending on one or two key members and juniors are often with a feeling with being left alone.

- you still have this anxiety of "when is it okay to interrupt?" On both ends. Everyone's threshold is different, so there is always someone who will be annoyed by the interruption and suffer.

The way to fix this is by promoting collaboration (pair-programming sessions are great and both partners already expect the communication, so "flow" is easier to maintain, also it is terrible to do on open-floor plans) and having a clear written practice to share knowledge and documentation.

There is no single situation where an open plan office leads to more team and individual productivity.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#123

Post by opo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #66
gmtx725 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that not just create silos though. So many things require cross-team working. If each team has its own private space then information bottlenecks will occur

You have to compare the cost of potential information bottlenecks with the cost of no deeper work being done at all. To combat the bottlenecks, just include shared spaces - a kitchen with a water cooler, a foosball table, a customary time where people go to lunch as a group. Serendipity will happen there, and workstations can be reclaimed as places for concentration.

The best approach I have seen is individual offices with shared collaboration areas nearby. People can do deep work by closing their office door. People can pair-program, have someone look over their code, have a private conversation etc by going to another's office without disturbing everyone else. The shared collaboration area allows for quick easy group discussion when helpful. In terms of preventing information bottlenecks, it is easy for someone in another team to walk by and ask a question of someone or run an idea by them without it being a big deal.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#124

Post by sngz »

jlengrand wrote: post #6

I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. I'm against open plan offices at large corp level. I have 300 people on my floor, the group closest to us is from business and spends 2/4 hours a day on the phone. It saddens me because the largest openly claimed benefit of Open Plan offices is "increase collaboration". What I literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide in…

this, the best office I worked at was in a Large room where me and 4 other engineers sat in an open office layout in 4 corners of the room. People from other teams would peek in and talk to us when they need us. When we need to have an engineering meeting people just gathered in our room and we closed the door.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#125

Post by ryandrake »

rglullis wrote: post #122
gmtx725 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you're being a bit precious. If someone asks you 'hey, can you help out with this', and you respond 'no not right now i'm busy', that knocks you out for half an hour to the rest of the day ??? FWIW I'm a pretty independent worker and I agree people should try and work things out on their own before asking for help

Yes, it is that bad for some people. But most importantly, even if it meant "just" 5 minutes to get back into flow, you still have an organization that doesn't know how to share information and you have a manager that is crippling team productivity without even knowing. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/02/12/human-task-switche... > I agree people should try and work things out on their own before asking for help T…

In my experience, "Being able to be productive while not in The Zone" is a job skill like any other that can/should be learned and improved with practice. I used to be like that, where if you said peep to me while I was focused, I snapped out of it and couldn't work my way back up to productivity easily. This is kind of a "junior developer" problem that IMHO developers just need to overcome with practice. Having a kid helped me a lot. Suddenly there were distractions all day, and I was forced to learn how to be productive in 30 minute spurts.

As one gets more senior in their development career, their days will get more and more punctuated with meetings. You start gradually moving from the "maker" to "manager" schedule. So your reality will be a day with a handful of 1 hour time slots available for deep work. In my view you just need to deal with this reality and learn how to be productive in it.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#126

Post by jlengrand »

opo wrote: post #121
jlengrand wrote: post #6

I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. I'm against open plan offices at large corp level. I have 300 people on my floor, the group closest to us is from business and spends 2/4 hours a day on the phone. It saddens me because the largest openly claimed benefit of Open Plan offices is "increase collaboration". What I literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide in…

>I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. Having now worked in one of these at a large company, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is relativley small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early without having having to have fo…

Yeah, I mean I'll leave pandemic out of the discussion simply because airco will make sure the virus is spread everywhere in the building, not just the team anyways.

I do agree with you in a way, that's one of the dangers. But I also see today that a lot of teams are not even sure what's being done just next to then, simply because everyone has headphones on all day. Creating a climate of inter exchange and communication in between teams is indeed key.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#127

Post by rglullis »

ryandrake wrote: post #125
rglullis wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is that bad for some people. But most importantly, even if it meant "just" 5 minutes to get back into flow, you still have an organization that doesn't know how to share information and you have a manager that is crippling team productivity without even knowing. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/02/12/human-task-switche... > I agree people should try and work things out on their own before asking for help T…

In my experience, "Being able to be productive while not in The Zone" is a job skill like any other that can/should be learned and improved with practice. I used to be like that, where if you said peep to me while I was focused, I snapped out of it and couldn't work my way back up to productivity easily. This is kind of a "junior developer" problem that IMHO developers just need to overcome with practice. Having a ki…

Yeah, after two kids I did manage to learn to deal better with interruptions, but I still feel a difference between "able to work" and "being in the zone". I am able to be interrupted in the middle of a list of actionable items and resume to it somewhat painlessly, but ask me to, e.g, plan a sprint or write a longer-term strategy doc and I will just wait until all the lights in the house (or office) are out.

I do disagree, however, about it being a problem related to lack of experience. It is good when someone can learn to handle interruptions, but it's even better when they don't have to. Handling interruptions and impediments are the main responsibility of a good manager, not of the developers.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#128

Post by opo »

jlengrand wrote: post #126
opo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. Having now worked in one of these at a large company, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is relativley small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early without having having to have fo…

Yeah, I mean I'll leave pandemic out of the discussion simply because airco will make sure the virus is spread everywhere in the building, not just the team anyways. I do agree with you in a way, that's one of the dangers. But I also see today that a lot of teams are not even sure what's being done just next to then, simply because everyone has headphones on all day. Creating a climate of inter exchange and communica…

>Yeah, I mean I'll leave pandemic out of the discussion simply because airco will make sure the virus is spread everywhere in the building, not just the team anyways.

If the air con is recirculating the air like in the case of that restaurant in China, that is true. Otherwise the risk isn't as clear:

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/can-air-conditioning-...

>...But I also see today that a lot of teams are not even sure what's being done just next to then, simply because everyone has headphones on all day. Creating a climate of inter exchange and communication in between teams is indeed key.

I agree. The best environment I've seen for that is individual offices with shared collaboration spaces near the offices.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#129

Post by photonios »

opo wrote: post #121
jlengrand wrote: post #6

I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. I'm against open plan offices at large corp level. I have 300 people on my floor, the group closest to us is from business and spends 2/4 hours a day on the phone. It saddens me because the largest openly claimed benefit of Open Plan offices is "increase collaboration". What I literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide in…

>I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. Having now worked in one of these at a large company, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is relativley small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early without having having to have fo…

> A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple question (or to just see what they are working on) becomes a big deal because you are now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people.

Isn't that kind of the point of having team offices?

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#130

Post by arantius »

opo wrote: post #121
jlengrand wrote: post #6

I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. I'm against open plan offices at large corp level. I have 300 people on my floor, the group closest to us is from business and spends 2/4 hours a day on the phone. It saddens me because the largest openly claimed benefit of Open Plan offices is "increase collaboration". What I literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide in…

>I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. Having now worked in one of these at a large company, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is relativley small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early without having having to have fo…

> A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple question (or to just see what they are working on) becomes a big deal because you are now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people.

Which is better than interrupting the hundred plus people in the giant open-office space?

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