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

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

#181

Post by delecti »

Marazan wrote: post #166
tribune wrote: post #46

I wish everyone would give up on the "increases collaboration" thing and just admit that open-plan offices are about shoving as many people as possible into a given space

I like open plan offices. The increased collaboration is a plain and albviius benefit for me as a developer. A site crushing issue was solved in 30 seconds due to me overhearing a conversation in ouropen plan office. Without that it would have been at least 3 hours of pass the parcel to work out what incredibly obscure thing with timezones had happened.

How many such situations don't happen despite an open office, because the person who could have solved it was wearing noise blocking headphones? Most discussions near me don't require my attention, so none of them get my attention.

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

#182

Post by aidenn0 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #137
rayiner wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That and dogs in the office. Jesus what’s wrong with people. (The fact you’re being downvoted is proof we are living in the end times.)

One dog usually isn’t a problem, but it might not scale up from there depending on the dogs. When will they allow us to take our toddlers to work? Could really save on daycare costs :)

Not a toddler, but I did take my 4 year old to work for a half day once when childcare fell through. I have my own office though and she was quiet, playing with blocks in a corner.

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

#183

Post by imgabe »

I mention this every time open offices come up, but it bears repeating. The "collaboration" excuse is nonsense. Companies choose open offices because they're cheaper. You can fit more people in less square feet which means cheaper rent.

I'm pretty damn sure that if private offices were somehow cheaper they would do that instead and figure out some other way to handle collaboration.

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

#184

Post by mikec3010 »

Cyph0n wrote: post #79
ghosterrific wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I've been waiting for years for a bunch of new Anime releases and other shows. Should they just give me a break to watch TV at work?

Not really, because it's probably just you. Quite a few people in this thread really don't understand how big of an event thr World Cup is...

It isn't a big event though. They kick a ball into a rectangular volume.

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

#185

Post by tombert »

watwut wrote: post #138
tombert wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, sorry, it's a bit of local expression from where I grew up. People would say "grab-ass" when people are running/playing around and yelling like children at the office. It's not too uncommon for startups to have Nerf guns or something.

Gotcha, thanks. > people are running/playing around and yelling like children at the office. It's not too uncommon for startups to have Nerf guns or something. I hate this sort of environment combined with expectation to stay late. It always seems to me that if people would work instead of playing, we might not have to stay late. And that we are not working as much as we brag about, because people play a lot.

I agree. I typically come in at about 9:15am, leave anywhere from 7pm-8pm, and it's not because I'm some great worker. It's because I need to finish up the sprint and too much crap is happening around the office.

I don't know that I wouldn't work late even if I had a private office, but I do think that I'd be able to accomplish more.

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

#186

Post by mwcampbell »

groby_b wrote: post #163
mwcampbell wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm building my own company now, fully remote How do you counter the common argument that face-to-face communication is the most high-bandwidth and one shouldn't throw away that competitive advantage unnecessarily? I'm not a proponent of that position; on the contrary, I don't want to accept it. But a lot of people think that way.

Face-to-face is more effective than video conferencing, but not in the way that you'd trivially expect. Most designated meetings, you can have just fine over a video conferencing system. Where f2f excels is in the conversations after you leave the meeting room - just a casual question to some other person from the meeting, which evolves into an impromptu 5-minute chat. (That is usually more valuable than the entire m…

It does seem plausible that requiring an in-person team to switch to IM and other electronic communication would be more difficult than starting out remote.

I work on accessibility for people with disabilities, and I'm blind myself (well, legally blind), so I think a lot about including people with disabilities. It seems to me that working with people with some kinds of disabilities, e.g. deafness or a severe speech impediment, would be akin to forcing an in-person team to switch to IM. (I have no direct experience working with people with those disabilities, so I'm happy to be educated.) So I speculate that starting out remote would also make the team more inclusive in this area.

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

#187

Post by Felz »

sotojuan wrote: post #88
geebee wrote: post #87

Here's what I posted three years ago on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9760414 Is it time to get depressed yet? This has been a topic for such a long time. It was in peopleware in 1987. I thought I discovered the topic when Joel (On Sofware) wrote about it in 2000. While a few people seem to enjoy open offices, the overwhelming majority of developers I know, or who chime in on HN, value a quiet place…

Reminds me of Dan Luu's take: > This book seemed convincing when I read it in college. It even had all sorts of studies backing up what they said. No deadlines is better than having deadlines. Offices are better than cubicles. Basically all devs I talk to agree with this stuff. > But virtually every successful company is run the opposite way. Even Microsoft is remodeling buildings from individual offices to open plan…

Personally, I'm fairly certain that this stuff does matter, but that a successful company will inevitably backslide to the corporate mean. The things that initially made it successful will be lost. Anything not an immediate disaster from management's perspective (open offices) will creep in. It might be decades before people realize the company was running off inertia, though.

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

#189

Post by magduf »

ghaff wrote: post #171
magduf wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in a place with younger developers, who basically run things themselves with management's blessing. They love the open-plan office layout. I think a lot of this is generational: younger programmers are much more social and like noisy environments where they can chat and banter endlessly.

Personal preferences vary but, yeah, a lot of overall preferences are probably age-related. I remember in a long-ago job I had for quite a few years (with an old-style high cubicle arrangement), we had a lot of walking the hallways F2F informal catchups, ate lunch together, had sports teams, etc. These days I mostly work remote by choice and am good with that. Some of it is better tech to work remote; I didn't even h…

I'm not claiming that it's age-related, but that it's generational. The people who are going into programming these days are not the same type of people who went into it a generation ago. In the 80s, these people would have gone into a different career field.

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

#190

Post by phyzome »

The one benefit of open floor plans, in my experience, is that I get to look out the window. Cubicles cut down on the amount of natural light that can infiltrate the room.

...orrrrr I could work from home, which I do 2 days per week, and it's very nice. No distractions, "private office", all the natural light I want, good food.

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