Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dude, your jonesing my idea. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9978487
I've got second-mover advantage now! Wanna split the three commas?
I'l take new york, you can have SF.
Why Open Offices Are Terrible
51–60 of 61 posts
Re: Why Open Offices Are Terrible
#52Every now and then, it's time to stop concluding that you're right, and start to ask why nothing has changed. The data at this point seems overwhelming that open offices are bad for health, stress, productivity, and personal happiness, and they don't save a whole lot of money. So why are they still around, and how can this be changed? That's the article I'd love to read, though the issues go very deep. PG was certain…
The reason is simple, it's cheaper than giving people offices.
Re: Why Open Offices Are Terrible
#53Here are some other HN posts about the open office problem "Google got it wrong" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065 and "Headphones are the new walls" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9797606
Anecdotally, I think I see a new post about this topic every week or two on HN. When it comes to software culture, this has to rank pretty highly in terms of how much discussion gets generated.
Re: Why Open Offices Are Terrible
#54Every now and then, it's time to stop concluding that you're right, and start to ask why nothing has changed. The data at this point seems overwhelming that open offices are bad for health, stress, productivity, and personal happiness, and they don't save a whole lot of money. So why are they still around, and how can this be changed? That's the article I'd love to read, though the issues go very deep. PG was certain…
The reason is simple, it's cheaper than giving people offices.
You may be right, though I'd say more in perception than actuality. I'm not sure it actually is cheaper, since the amount saved is minimal and the lost productivity may be very high.
However, in the land of externalized costs, that could be the reason. It's easier to point to the cost savings for cubicles or open offices and say "hey we saved that" than it is to point to the amount of software not written (or even harder to prove, written but lower in quality) and say "hey, we lost that".
Re: Why Open Offices Are Terrible
#55the more i work in an open-space office, the more i want to work remotely.
Re: Why Open Offices Are Terrible
#56Someone needs to write an article "why no one office plan will make everyone happy". Discussions around office layouts always devolve into different groups vehemently defending how everyone should love their preferred choice, and very few people recognizing that different people work differently . Some people thrive in an open office, while others can't function due to distraction, interruption, and an expectation of…
Agreed. I personally work well in an open office. Half way through the article, or really it was just citing other peoples research with no other analysis, I got mad. It just comes back to -- if you want to prove a point there will be data out there to help you justify it. This article is trying to pretend to be objective, but really is just citing a slew of studies that, presumably, had really small sample sizes. /r…
Is your open office very loud?
To me, the real problem is noise, not the lack of an office. I work very well in libraries, which are generally very quiet. I don't work at all well in open offices where people are constantly having phone conversations[1]. The "quiet room" that was provided at Sun Micro that I described in a post below also worked very well for me. Interestingly, I also work well in coffee shops, provided that there are no audible cell phone conversations (again, person to person conversations just aren't that distracting to me).
Overall, while I agree with you that it's not a one-size-fits-all situation, I think it's fair to say that loud noisy offices where developers are put next to a manager or marketing worker who is on the phone all day are generally harmful to a developer's productivity.
[1] These seem to be a worse distraction than person-to-person conversations. I've read that this is a common reaction, probably because people try to "fill in" the unspoken words, causing a greater cognitive impairment.
Re: Why Open Offices Are Terrible
#57Someone needs to write an article "why no one office plan will make everyone happy". Discussions around office layouts always devolve into different groups vehemently defending how everyone should love their preferred choice, and very few people recognizing that different people work differently . Some people thrive in an open office, while others can't function due to distraction, interruption, and an expectation of…
Yeah, that would be an important article to write. I think the compromise where everyone "wins" with the open office is more inter-team communication.
I've read that communication may be diminished as well, though, as some people don't want to make noise or cause distractions, or may be uncomfortable having personal conversations near coworkers. In short, the people most distracted by this sort of noise may be most reluctant to engage in it.
I don't have a cite here, and there's a lot of contradictory evidence anyway, but I can easily see how some kids of important inter-team communication might diminish, even if the overall amount of chatter greatly increases.
This is why I tend to agree with people that open offices are more about the appearance of productivity than actual productivity (appearance of communication rather than real communication, illusion of cost savings rather than real cost savings).
Re: Why Open Offices Are Terrible
#58it is terrible
some stuff to survive in open offices: https://www.quora.com/What-drugs-do-you-put-into-your-bug-ou...
it is mostly about sport supplements for mental performance and stress resilience. quite long to repost.
warning! the use is somehow violating original instructions, but it is working.
also applicable for software developers work and outdoor activities.
Re: Why Open Offices Are Terrible
#59Working in an open office is horrible. I would rather try to work in a noisy, overpriced, obnoxious, coffee chain, than spend another minute in an open office plan...
Re: Why Open Offices Are Terrible
#60Here's an idea for a hybrid. Have a robotic X Y conveyor in the ceiling that will drop a soundproof box on top of a cubicle when the occupant needs silence, privacy, etc. The box will seal off air, so you only get about 10 minutes of the virtual private office.
And when you want to allow two people to have a conversation without disturbing the people around them, you use this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Silence