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Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

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Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#1

Post by gmtx725 »

This topic seems to come up time and time again on here. As someone young and new to the industry I have only ever experienced open plan offices, so I don't really know what the alternative is like. However I'm inclined to say I don't think I would enjoy cubicles or private offices. I feel like you'd miss out on so much collaborative effort and serendipitous & spontaneous conversations with colleagues that solve problems out of the blue. I also think it's just plain isolating being on your own in a room all day. What's wrong with just putting some headphones on if you want to put your head down and do some deep, quiet work?

Having said all that as I admit I haven't experienced the alternative so I'm open to being convinced I'm wrong.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#2

Post by dylz »

You can hear everything. Coughs and other sharp noises go straight through ANC headphones.

You're exposed to everything.

People will tap you on the shoulder.

While I'm the same as you, I don't particularly enjoy the feeling of having noise cancellation headphones on for the entire workday - it starts to feel a bit vertigo-ey.

Some people don't like making small talk.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#3

Post by alexgmcm »

I don't want to be on my own all day.

The best set-up I've ever had was when I had an office with just my team (and only the other engineers) so just the people who I was actually working with.

This meant discussions could actually be useful as we were working on very similar stuff, if not the same - and as they were other engineers we were all capable of offering solutions and not just being a distraction.

In my current open office the vast majority of the people have no idea what I even do and have such entirely different skillsets it's not like we can have productive work discussions. Therefore, it's just noise and distraction.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#4

Post by lcuff »

As someone who has worked in private offices, cube farms and open offices, I have to say the private office space allowed me to think deeply about things in a deliciously uninterrupted way. But then again ... I once spent the whole day thinking about a class I was designing, making just a few marks on a white board. The modern approach, AFAICT is to whip up a test and start coding. I don't believe it's better, but it is the current fashion.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#5

Post by eesmith »

Individual offices != "being on your own in a room all day"

The negatives are pretty well known. I've seen information like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan#Evaluation

> A systematic survey of research upon the effects of open-plan offices found frequent negative effects in some traditional workplaces: high levels of noise, stress, conflict, high blood pressure and a high staff turnover.[16][17]

> The noise level in open-plan offices greatly reduces productivity, which drops to one third relative to what it would be in quiet rooms.

since reading the chapter about it in Steve McConnell's "Rapid Development" in the 1990s.

Ahh, see chapter 30, "Productivity Environments", https://archive.org/details/rapiddevelopment00mcco/page/504/... . You'll need an archive.org account. It doesn't really cover open plan offices - that era was more about cubicles.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#6

Post by jlengrand »

I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. I'm against open plan offices at large corp level.

I have 300 people on my floor, the group closest to us is from business and spends 2/4 hours a day on the phone. It saddens me because the largest openly claimed benefit of Open Plan offices is "increase collaboration". What I literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide in rooms to get some silence. I mean, people literally have to walk around teams to go to the toilet or get a coffee.

I'd like team size cubicles. That would sound to me like a good compromise between collaboration, and deep work. I'm sure people would open up more. In fact, it is how it was setup at Bell Labs back in the time [1], not the pale copy we see everywhere today.

A bit like Agile has become Scrum I'm guessing :).

[1] https://aquicore.com/blog/bell-labs-office-design/

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#8

Post by blackrock »

Finally! Bring back some sanity to the office!

Get rid of the open office! And all it took was a little virus that can decimate the human civilization.

If companies want to cram their employees together, and make them sit shoulder to shoulder on a little table, then just let us work from home. We don’t need to be smashed together like sardines in a can.

By keeping us so close to one another, without physical distancing, and walls that block airflow and people’s germs, then I believe we have gotten sicker over time. Every season, I would always get sick, and I attribute it to the open office. The past 2 months of working from home, has been great, because I avoided getting the flu.

Their principle complaint, was that open offices save money. Well, here’s finally a way for them to save even more money! Remote telecommuting!

Re: Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

#10

Post by rootsofallevil »

> I feel like you'd miss out on so much collaborative effort and serendipitous & spontaneous conversations with colleagues that solve problems out of the blue

This happens for sure

In my experience the ratio of beneficial to detrimental serendipitous and/or spontaneous conversations that result in any benefit is extremely low, so low in fact as to not being worth it. The problem is that people tend to remember the useful one conversation and forget the other 100.

At my current job, never have I ever been involved in anything that has resulted in a solved problem from a casual conversation, yet I was regularly interrupted by other people before I started working from home.

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