The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

> And for what? Because a minority of people kinda like that configuration? Because it’ll look good in a few photos? Because it’ll impress strangers who visit the office?

Somehow the author missed the primary reason for the open office configuration: "Because it cuts the costs of office space by a HUGE amount (certainly more than half)."

I suppose "Because it makes it easier for managers to keep an eye on their employees and see when they are slacking off." figures in also. Although it's probably a sign of poor management.

> We were already working from in open office, but at least I had a desk facing the wall behind me, so there was a modicum of privacy and psychological safety. Then management decided that it would “look better” if we went to circular desks where several of us would be sitting with our backs to the hallway, so everyone walking past would be looking at our screen as they passed.

This seems dishonest to me. Can some body explain if I'm missing something?

I understand the argument that open-plan offices increase distractions in general, and the damage that loud people do in particular. But if you really intend on being super focused and productive, I don't understand why it would bother you that someone would look at your screen.

I have worked in an open-plan office and the only times when I was embarrassed that someone saw my screen was because I was wasting my time on reddit/HN, which I shouldn't because that's not what they're paying me for... Once I managed to force upon myself the discipline of just don't open reddit/HN, I was happy to accept one of the desks with the back to the center of the room, because I no longer cared that someone was looking at my screen.

Am I missing something?

The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of negated when people have the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant cheering, which is my current situation.

Even when soccer is over, you have to contend with people playing grab-ass all over the office, or jerks (like me) with annoyingly loud keyboards. The modicum of utility of me "jumping into a conversation" really goes out the window when I'm forced to wear headphones all day.

I really don't have a good way of measuring or fully quantifying how much less productive I am personally, but haven't there been a ton of studies that indicate anywhere between 1-1.5 hours a day is wasted per employee due to the open office? I assume that labor is the most expensive part of any big-ish company, so it feels like the "offices are cheaper" argument shouldn't work.

This smacks to me of an "If you have nothing to hide why do you care about your privacy?" argument. Which we should all know is a major fallacy.

There's plenty of reasons to not want others looking over your shoulder that have nothing to do with goofing off. Private emails, even totally business related ones are just that, private. If you're struggling with a problem, having an audience can make it that much worse. Et cetera, et cetera.

The nature of software development makes it hard for a lot of people to do with lots of distractions around them.

- There's also way too much stigma against "time wasting." Your brain needs breaks and distractions to work through problems. Spending some time on a goof off site each day is not a bad thing in and of itself. If your productivity suffers, that's a problem that needs to be addressed. But it can happen via burn out just as easily as via spending too much time reading fan theories on Infinity War Pt. 2.

Open plan offices have been known to be bad since at least 1987, when the first edition of Peopleware was published. A good portion of the book discusses issues with employee distraction and its inverse relationship to productivity. They use evidence from the field to discuss office layout, and also other issues like office wide paging systems (that used to be a thing!), phone calls, and email.