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Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?

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

#171

Post by evanelias »

For me, density and team layout makes a big impact between a good open plan space and a horrible one.

I worked for FB in NYC, and found that when visiting Menlo Park hq, the open plan there didn't bother me at all -- if anything, I was actually way more productive there. The density at MPK was low enough that the noise/distraction level was minimal, and all of the surrounding teams were working on similar parts of the stack. I've previously been skeptical of open plan, but this setup was really ideal for collaboration. (that said, this was one of the older formerly-Sun buildings; I never experienced the new, larger, more open building.)

But meanwhile in NYC, the density was much much higher, and team layout totally random, to the extent that I left the company for these reasons alone. It was impossible to concentrate without wearing noise-cancelling headphones, but I couldn't wear those for 9+ hours a day without getting a migraine.

It was frustrating since I otherwise liked my job, loved my team, loved the technical challenges. Space-wise, it looks like things are finally much better in the NYC office these days, but I'm still very hesitant to consider returning to the company after my previous experiences.

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

#172

Post by vonmoltke »

namiller2 wrote: post #97
taurath wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had this and private offices... what happens is that difficult conversations can't take place except outside of the office (unless there is another space to go). Need to have a 1-1? Everyone else hears it. No meta conversations can take place unless someone is willing to go out for some coffee. The team banter ends up being trivial, and can be incredibly distracting if you need to buckle down to get something do…

Your office doesn't have a single shared meeting room? Most places I've seen with open offices have some sort of meeting rooms to use for private conversations. How do you have a client call or anything of that matter?

The company I just left does not. The company I was at previously had so little meeting room space that it was almost impossible to get a room without booking days in advance.

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

#173

Post by Melchizedek »

jondubois wrote: post #54

I don't like open offices. Sometimes they can be downright harmful though I can deal with them if I'm sitting with my back to the wall. Many years ago, when I was fresh out of uni, I lost my job because of an open office; I was sitting relatively close to a bathroom and people kept walking past behind me - After 1 week this made me feel stressed and paranoid and I couldn't concentrate. One month in, the boss asked me…

Oh but your psychological wellbeing means nothing to the dimwit who loves open offices and thinks he can still do "deep work" (most likely trivial crap like stitching together some libraries to make the front end of a CRUD application) while spending half the day disturbing others with endless non productive talk ("team work").

Or even worse, someone whose job is to talk on the phone and use the stupid CRUD app, and who has never done anything cognitively demanding in their entire life, literally.

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

#174

Post by vonmoltke »

geofft wrote: post #140
schiang wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Team sized rooms are definitely the way to go. You can avoid conversation from other teams that you don't care about. When there is a conversation in the room, it's probably related to what you're doing so it's not necessarily distracting you. I worked in a room with just my team and it worked out great. We were able to have discussions and draw stuff on white boards on the wall without distracting anyone else. It al…

That seems like a way to exacerbate Conway's law problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law . Most of the technical debt I try to fight off is based on my team doing something that makes sense for us based on what we're good at / what we think other teams want, but doesn't line up with what other teams want / what they think we can deliver; we end up essentially building abstraction layers around other tea…

It sounds like you are trying to compensate for a lack of systems engineering by changing the office layout. You shouldn't be relying on serendipitously overheard conversations for coordinating things like this.

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

#175

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

geofft wrote: post #140
schiang wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Team sized rooms are definitely the way to go. You can avoid conversation from other teams that you don't care about. When there is a conversation in the room, it's probably related to what you're doing so it's not necessarily distracting you. I worked in a room with just my team and it worked out great. We were able to have discussions and draw stuff on white boards on the wall without distracting anyone else. It al…

That seems like a way to exacerbate Conway's law problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law . Most of the technical debt I try to fight off is based on my team doing something that makes sense for us based on what we're good at / what we think other teams want, but doesn't line up with what other teams want / what they think we can deliver; we end up essentially building abstraction layers around other tea…

That's a project management problem, not an interior design problem.

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

#176

Post by 21 »

fivesigma wrote: post #167
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.

It's not only the Kelvins, but the intensity also.

Natural light is around 100K lux. That is crazily expensive to generate.

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

#178

Post by tomc1985 »

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.

You'd be surprised at how many pragmatic decisions get spun as "sexy" for the world of business halfwits

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

#179

Post by pmiller2 »

arcanus wrote: post #161
nilkn wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I literally had a 4th floor corner office with a window in grad school. Unfortunately, the window measured about 10"x24", with a lousy view, and the office literally wasn't big enough to accommodate the three of us who shared it all at the same time. :P

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

#180

Post by vonmoltke »

whateveracct wrote: post #142
sangnoir wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Open offices are horrible for productivity imo. Individual productivity or team productivity? If you are optimizing for individual productivity - you could be hitting a local maxima... I do say the above in half-jest: I would love to see any research done in this area. When I was a new joiner, it was convenient to swivel around/walk across the room and talk to someone. Sure, it sucks now that I'm an old hand and no…

> Individual productivity or team productivity? If you are optimizing for individual productivity - you could be hitting a local maxima... Forum discussions like this one seem to be all about individual productivity. In my experience, open offices are really great for ad hoc collaboration and conversation. To combat interruptions, individual developers can easily take steps to not be interrupted when they are doing s…

> If anything, I like that my teammates feel comfortable to walk over to my desk (or, more commonly, IM me "are you free?" and then walk over) and talk as a default.

This is orthogonal to the office layout, though.

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