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Ask HN: What are some tech companies that do not use an open floor plan?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some tech companies that do not use an open floor plan?

#71

Post by KozmoNau7 »

kayamon wrote: post #8

Lots of (in fact most?) companies don't have an open plan office. When I used to work at Activision, they didn't and still don't. > How is this acceptable? Because it's totally fine. If you can't work with another human nearby you might want to get over yourself and think about what you're doing with your life.

If you can somehow work with 4-5 people having conversations and (loud) phone meetings right next to you, I envy your powers of focus and discipline.

Re: Ask HN: What are some tech companies that do not use an open floor plan?

#72

Post by regularfry »

rdl wrote: post #26
wskemper wrote: post #20

I work for Viasat; all of our new-build offices in the past few years have been designed around what we call the neighborhood concept. A neighborhood is a set of individual offices (maybe 60sqft-ish?) with three solid walls, and one glass/wood wall with a sliding door. All the offices open into a central room that can be outfitted in a bunch of different ways. There are neighborhoods of different sizes, and basically…

That's the office concept I've always wanted to build. It would be cool if someone from the company could document it/blog post/etc. -- might be good for recruiting too. (Especially since Viasat does pretty cool stuff -- excited about the new Exede sat expanding coverage...) I was thinking it would make sense to have roller doors or some other way to open the entire side of the office (on both sides -- "neighborhood"…

It sounds like a hub and spokes model. That's been known to be close to ideal for quite a long time, so it's good to see people actually using it!

Re: Ask HN: What are some tech companies that do not use an open floor plan?

#73

Post by m4tthumphrey »

Our office is technically open plan. We have a about 3/4 of a floor (7500sqft). The 1/4 is still empty but my team are based in the section with the "fake" wall that separates the two. It is only us in this section so it kind of acts as it's own office. We still get distracted but it's much better than being in the thick of it.

Re: Ask HN: What are some tech companies that do not use an open floor plan?

#74

Post by tomohawk »

The schools in our area are in the final phases of remodeling, getting rid of the open floor plan layout that was in vogue when many of the schools were built, and was such a disaster. Nice to see taxpayer money hard at work.

It's funny that a business as reactionary as the education system seems to have learned this lesson but tech companies haven't.

Re: Ask HN: What are some tech companies that do not use an open floor plan?

#75

Post by brann0 »

Lammy wrote: post #27
kamaal wrote: post #24

Never understood the rationale behind open floor offices. I currently work in a cubicle set up, and people set up war rooms anytime they want close collaboration. Open offices seem to take this exceptional case and make it the norm. At the same time open floor offices cause a lot of trouble to people in non-exception situations.

Follow the money. It’s cheaper to build, easy to shuffle, and people will put up with it. I know I do.

Cheaper in the short term. If your engineers productivity is constantly tanking because of noise and interruptions it will mean lots of wasted money.

But you can't factor that in a spreadsheet, right?

Re: Ask HN: What are some tech companies that do not use an open floor plan?

#76

Post by majewsky »

wskemper wrote: post #20

I work for Viasat; all of our new-build offices in the past few years have been designed around what we call the neighborhood concept. A neighborhood is a set of individual offices (maybe 60sqft-ish?) with three solid walls, and one glass/wood wall with a sliding door. All the offices open into a central room that can be outfitted in a bunch of different ways. There are neighborhoods of different sizes, and basically…

> maybe 60sqft-ish?

For those of us with non-ridiculous units, that's 5-6 m².

Re: Ask HN: What are some tech companies that do not use an open floor plan?

#78

Post by stefanoco »

Bluewind is a small consulting company based in Italy (embedded systems). We switched from "almost all devs in a room" to 2/3 devs per room maximum while building our own offices recently. And common spaces for meetings, conferences and telephone calls. Encouraging to work from home when possible also. Interesting: working this way and adopting Agile principles makes enhances collaboration a lot, much more that in the previous open space where having everyone in the same room makes it almost impossible for people to talk each other when needed.
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