Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

calnewport.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 483 posts

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#161

Post by arcanus »

nilkn wrote: post #108
caleblloyd wrote: post #27

I worked for a year at IBM's RTP campus. Everyone had their own dimly lit cube with 5-foot walls, no natural daylight, and white noise playing over speakers to drown out conversation. The depressing undertone of the office was part of what pushed me to quit. My team at my present job works in an open setting with 8 people in the room and windows with natural daylight. It's quiet enough to focus but gives us the oppor…

Natural light is one of the most important aspects of an office to me. A few years ago I actually turned down an offer because I realized I'd be sitting in an interior team-sized room with no windows and just a door to a hallway, again with no windows. I would have been giving up a seat next to huge windows with light flooding into the room. I just knew that I'd end up depressed in those working conditions and decide…

I worked for the better part of a decade on my phd in an office with no windows and no clocks on the wall, and a coffee machine.

We liked to joke it was a near equivalent to a Vegas Casino for mathematicians.

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#162

Post by TylerH »

cousin_it wrote: post #133
ptomato wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> easily start a design discussion with 4 or 5 engineers or, rephrased, the ability to destroy 3 man-hours of productivity on a whim.

That depends on the person. I like when other people come to my desk and ask me for help on a whim, even when I'm in the middle of something. It doesn't destroy my productivity, and often it even gives me ideas how to make my work more useful. I do respect when other people don't want to be interrupted, though.

If you stop what you are doing then, by definition, it is breaking your workflow and stopping your productivity.

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#163

Post by Consultant32452 »

There's an over-representation of autistics in engineering firms. These crowded noisy spaces can be absolutely maddening for people on the spectrum. I wonder if there's room to get the Americans with Disabilities Act applied to autistic people so they can get quiet workplaces.

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#164

Post by jrs235 »

jnbiche wrote: post #79
throwaway2016a wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why we have them... we literally can't afford to give everyone (or anyone for that matter) a private office.

> That's why we have them... we literally can't afford to give everyone (or anyone for that matter) a private office. You know, if a prospective employer was straight up with me about that, I'd give it serious consideration. I can understand that not every company can afford an endless supply of private offices in urban areas (although obviously this is not the case with companies like FB). What bugs me the most abou…

It's tempting to ask "leadership" "If it's so great for productivity, why doesn't leadership/management forego their private offices and sit in the middle of the open office floor plan?"

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#165

Post by Consultant32452 »

QuercusMax wrote: post #35
dilap wrote: post #13

An open office wouldn't be so bad if library-like codes of silence were enforced.

Where I work (at Google), it's generally pretty quiet; you'll occasionally have conversations going on, but most of the time all you hear is typing. It's not quite "library-like", but making phone calls at your desk is very strongly frowned upon. At my last company, we generally had 1-2 person offices; it was very easy to stay in your office all day long and never interact with other developers. With the open plan he…

Did you not have a team chat application in your 1-2 person offices? In my experience that has always provided an excellent balance between distraction and isolation.

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#166

Post by LeoBerthold »

fatlasp wrote: post #7
DougN7 wrote: post #4

Open offices were developed by people who don't have to really concentrate for their job. They're awful for developers.

I always thought open offices became popular because it was literally the cheapest set up for facilities. For startups it worked because all you had to buy was desks. Somehow that got spun in to 'open offices are so sexy!' Open offices are horrible for productivity imo. Moved to a job with an office and it is so. much. better.

This makes sense in context of the article. The article states Facebook pays 40-50% more. They've converted (some of) the savings from open office planning to higher salaries for their hires, making the company more attractive for job seekers.

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#167

Post by fivesigma »

caleblloyd wrote: post #27

I worked for a year at IBM's RTP campus. Everyone had their own dimly lit cube with 5-foot walls, no natural daylight, and white noise playing over speakers to drown out conversation. The depressing undertone of the office was part of what pushed me to quit. My team at my present job works in an open setting with 8 people in the room and windows with natural daylight. It's quiet enough to focus but gives us the oppor…

I wonder if you could cheat natural daylight by using big RGB LED area lights emitting at just the right amount of Kelvin.

The aural equivalent (https://rainymood.com/) certainly works for me.

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#168

Post by vonmoltke »

nilkn wrote: post #108
caleblloyd wrote: post #27

I worked for a year at IBM's RTP campus. Everyone had their own dimly lit cube with 5-foot walls, no natural daylight, and white noise playing over speakers to drown out conversation. The depressing undertone of the office was part of what pushed me to quit. My team at my present job works in an open setting with 8 people in the room and windows with natural daylight. It's quiet enough to focus but gives us the oppor…

Natural light is one of the most important aspects of an office to me. A few years ago I actually turned down an offer because I realized I'd be sitting in an interior team-sized room with no windows and just a door to a hallway, again with no windows. I would have been giving up a seat next to huge windows with light flooding into the room. I just knew that I'd end up depressed in those working conditions and decide…

I had several years of that when I worked in a DOD closed area. Never going back to that again.

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#169

Post by thurn »

jowiar wrote: post #46
thurn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer open offices. You get a pretty significant echo chamber effect on articles like this because people who don't like it turn out to comment. Personally, I have no difficulty with noise (I prefer working in coffee shops to at home), and being able to easily start a design discussion with 4 or 5 engineers when necessary is extremely valuable. I totally get why some people don't like it though.

"Being able to easily start a design discussion with 4 or 5 engineers" means "easily break 4 or 5 engineers out of their flow" along with "easily create a distraction for the other 15 engineers within earshot of the easily-started discussion". I'm fine with coffee shops over home (and did the same in college), but coffeeshop noise is "white noise" -- whirring espresso grinders, a blur of conversations between people…

Maybe it depends on the domain. "Flow state" makes sense for something like a startup where single coders are writing huge diffs on their own. I work on a huge codebase where "figuring out what code to write" occupies dramatically more of our time than "writing code".

Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

#170

Post by vonmoltke »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #160
combatentropy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone has their own office, then someone coming into your office is an everyday affair. They could be talking about a programming problem, lunch, or something personal. You don't know, but you would go crazy wondering about it, because it happens all day. In an open room where half a dozen or so people sit, if two people stand up, walk into a conference room, and shut the door, that's weird and curious.

> In an open room where half a dozen or so people sit, if two people stand up, walk into a conference room, and shut the door, that's weird and curious. This also happens all the time, thus not weird. (or people don't talk ...)

Or people just have non-sensitive conversations right at their desks.
Post reply on HN