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Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

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Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#51

Post by Macross8299 »

TheTruth1234 wrote: post #31
jdsully wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That office is mostly empty space, and with all the effort to noise damp one has to ask - why bother? Just add offices at that point. At Microsoft you could always chat in the halls and people would just close their doors.

Did you read the part about 'Library Rules'? It's a cultural leap, but that would make all the difference. Christ, I'm sitting in an open plan office right now with two telephone conversations going on in my right ear. Thank the hardware overlords for headphones ...

Yeah, I wonder how much of the disdain for open offices is more of a company culture issue rather a problem with open offices.

What causes people to whisper in libraries but talk loudly and disturb others in an open office plan?

Perhaps some segmentation of open office plans would also be interesting -- a "loud" zone, a semi-quiet zone and a silent zone. I don't know how workable this would be for teams unless you had hot-desking, which is something else people seem to hate, but still. Engineers who need to work on a difficult problem for a while can use the silent zone, while groups who need lots of communication and the perennial extroverts are free to use the louder spaces.

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#52

Post by rb808 »

One thing I do like about working in a hot desk environment is that its easy for people to move around regularly. Its nice to mix groups of people, work close with those your current project is with and even mix up your day.

One problem with offices is that it gets territorial. People get their office then its really difficult to move. Some offices have a better view or more/less sun. Do you take turns or goes to most experienced or senior person on the team? It becomes political and ripe for stupid games.

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#53

Post by nathanaldensr »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #25
MagnificRogue wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now everything is moving to open office or has already moved :(, I envy the people that still have their own office.

I've noticed it's usually the management.

They tend to say "Well, you know I have to occasionally participate in super-secret phone calls," which we all know is an excuse.

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#54

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x »

saberience wrote: post #44

Every time this topic comes up there are a bunch of HN people saying open-plan is "clearly the worst" and that they want cubicles back. Note: this is hardly scientific. It's just your personal anecdote, ok, you don't like being around many other people and would prefer a cubicle or private office. That's fine. However, don't discount the fact that other people exist that, gasp, actually like open-plan offices. Like m…

It seems you either like open or not.

My company had an open plan warehouse in it's building before we went full remote. We had "break-out" rooms where we could work privately in an office. Some days people would work in them, I personally claimed one for myself to work permanently. Everyone else seemed to enjoy the open plan, I however, could not.

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#55

Post by loa-in-backup »

drofmij wrote: post #27
mrob wrote: post #17

I think the real reason is that the bosses like watching all their subordinates at once. They can see that nobody is slacking (or at least everybody is pretending not to, which signals social submission almost as well), and enjoy the feeling of power. Productivity statistics don't produce the same feeling, partly because they're too abstract, and partly because they're evidence of submission to the organization as a…

I can slack off just as easily in the office as I could at home. :D or work just as hard at home as in the office.

You're lucky.

I automated my deployments and test analysis, which were the most time consuming tasks (sequential process, with few quirks along the way) as a developer. This gave me reliably 30-40 minute forced breaks.

Soon I got notices that there were complaints that I do not conform to the office norms, and that apparently I "sleep instead of working", and people "ask if they can work like I do" (never got any further explanation). I got passed the slip and I'm moving on to a different job next week.

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#56

Post by thatswrong0 »

saberience wrote: post #44

Every time this topic comes up there are a bunch of HN people saying open-plan is "clearly the worst" and that they want cubicles back. Note: this is hardly scientific. It's just your personal anecdote, ok, you don't like being around many other people and would prefer a cubicle or private office. That's fine. However, don't discount the fact that other people exist that, gasp, actually like open-plan offices. Like m…

I like bantering and chatting too, but I definitely don’t think it’s that conducive towards me being a productive engineer. Sometimes it’s nice being able to freely walk about and bounce ideas off others, and I’m sure this has resulted in some positive benefits, but 70+% of the time I really just need to go heads down on something and not be distracted. Always being near people who are talking is very distracting. As a result I get more done when I’m not in the office.

I think it’s pretty obvious that you could have a hybrid approach where you have open areas for collaborating as well as a lot of private booths or rooms for people who actually need to get things done. But of course that wouldn’t be cheap..

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#57

Post by hmottestad »

I have my own office. Very happy with this! Everyone where I work has an office, so not that special here.

Where I worked before I fought tooth and nail to get an office, by the time I was leaving I had the smallest office in the building crammed in with 2 others, while other (non-developers) had offices twice as big all for themselves.

Management wanted to cram 10 people into an office space the size of the office for the boss. HR put a stop to that plan luckily.

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#58

Post by floren »

floren wrote: post #12

At my previous employer, I worked in an office with real walls and a real solid wood door, in a cubicle with a sliding plastic door, in a cubicle with no door, and in a couple of larger open areas with between zero and three other people sharing the space. The real office was by far the best, but having a cubicle with a couple cabinets and a sliding door was almost as good. I've experienced an "open plan" setup that…

Posting a follow-up rather than editing:

I also wonder if open-plan offices are a symptom of the increasing centralization of tech companies. These days people seem to think the first step of starting a tech company is to move to the Bay Area. If we were founding companies in Redding, Rochester, Yakima, Grand Rapids, or Albuquerque, could we afford to give everyone an office with a real door for the same price as a San Jose hellhole?

We've got better connectivity than ever before, but we insist on clustering up more and more. Cray was out in the Wisconsin woods. Microsoft got started in Albuquerque. DEC and Data General were both well outside Boston in small towns.

Re: Open-plan office is the worst. Why can't we kill it?

#60

Post by falcolas »

wlesieutre wrote: post #8

Because it's cheap. Less walls to build, more employees packed on to a floor. Do you lose more money than you're saving due to decreased productivity? Maybe. But that's hard to prove, and "This office proposal is $X million cheaper because we can lease three fewer floors" is very straightforward.

The cost is lower, since you're looking at around 60-100 square ft per employee as opposed to 100-150 sq ft for an office. That said, even in New York or SF (say, ~$80 per sq ft per year), that's still well under $8,000 per year per employee. That is, less than 4% of the average software developer salary cost in those same locations.

Of course, the follow-on argument is typically "but we can't find enough sq ft of office space in one location!" to which I say: hundreds of businesses do this every day, what makes you special? Stop making excuses and invest in your assets.

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