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Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices?

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

#111

Post by huffmsa »

matsemann wrote: post #92
huffmsa wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, except it happens every other day and all you do is "revise the product" and never build or ship the product. It's a one way express train to feature creep. It often doesn't involve all of the stakeholders, so then you're having multiple 15 minute meetings to get everyone in sync. Meetings are for meeting, not meetings are for shutting up and doing your assigned work.

> not meetings are for shutting up and doing your assigned work Like a mindless drone? Or are you advocating for more meetings?

I'm saying timebox discussion like anything else. Have discussions regularly, but in a scheduled manner.

Meetings suck because people aren't prepared / the meeting isn't scoped or well defined. They don't suck "just because".

Treat your meetings just like any other assignments. Clearly define it and expect people to have their shit together. Then you don't have to have discussions all the time and you can actually execute on what's been discussed and planned.

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

#112

Post by gt565k »

Open office plans for software developers is like the worst thing ever, unless your culture is one where people are quiet and put their headphones in and get to work.

I had that experience at one company, but others were a total mess.

A software developer needs at least a good 3-4 hour block of uninterruption to produce something valuable. Context switching and distractions are a productivity killer when it comes to building software.

At one company, we would have upper management come into our shared office (5 desks) where we had 3 developers working, and they would have their personal and business calls right next to us. Total disregard for people's personal space, peace of mind, and work environment.

For shared open offices to work, you need a strong culture and understanding that unless you are to be quiet and work on your tasks, you need to get out of the shared office and go discuss group matters in a conference room.

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

#113

Post by gumby »

The open plan office was the norm until the cubicle was invented (by Herman Miller I believe) as a tool of liberation in the 1960s. Just look at any film from the 50s (like The Apartment or Desk Set) to see.

Some research institutions, inspired by academia, had offices (IBM, PARC, IAS, Bell Labs..) and mingling areas it that was less common.

I saw open plan offices reappear around 2000 when the price of Palo Alto real estate started shooting up and frankly it shocked me. It’s crazy to me that this is considered savings given how much it costs to recruit and pay a person. I can’t concentrate with noise or visual clutter (people moving in my field of view).

Some jobs do do better with an open plan, like sales teams. It’s a cultural issue.

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

#114

Post by tzs »

jlengrand wrote: post #6

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…

> I'd like team size cubicles. That would sound to me like a good compromise between collaboration, and deep work.

Small clusters of real offices (i.e., floor to ceiling walls, doors, all lights under control of occupant) opening on a shared space might be better for that. I worked at a place like that once. There are some diagrams of the arrangement in this comment [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3730655

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

#115

Post by apohn »

>What's wrong with just putting some headphones on if you want to put your head down and do some deep, quiet work?

I can't do focused work with headphones and music. I get headaches because I have to put extra effort to focus and think. I've tried headphones, earphones, IEMs, and earbuds. That includes regular, audiophile, and noise cancelling. I just can't do it. I need quiet to think. Even noise cancelling headphones need music playing to block out noise an in office when you are next to people (e.g. sales, HR) who are in meetings all day.

Let me flip this another way. Imagine if a business decided that they were going to lower the temperature to 50F/10C to save money. Somebody then said "Well if you are cold just wear a thick jacket, gloves, etc. I do it and it's fine" A lot of people would be miserable and would have some parts of their bodies freezing and hurting (hands, feet) and other parts of their body (e.g. underarms) would be sweating and uncomfortable. How much focused work could you do in that situation?

Does the above situation sound ridiculous? Well that's exactly how I feel about the expectation that everybody can just put on headphones and focus.

I've been in private small cubicle offices in multiple jobs and done just fine. But the noise and visual distraction in open offices is just too much.

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

#116

Post by thomaslord »

gmtx725 wrote: post #107
TeMPOraL wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a request, but just issuing a request to a developer in a state of deep focus stands a good chance of kicking them out of that focused state, ruining anywhere between half an hour and the rest of the day for them. So you need to be really mindful of the cost of just asking someone if they have time. The usual solutions I've employed or been subjected to in the past are: 1) headphones on == no interruptions of an…

I feel like you're being a bit precious. If someone asks you 'hey, can you help out with this', and you respond 'no not right now i'm busy', that knocks you out for half an hour to the rest of the day ??? FWIW I'm a pretty independent worker and I agree people should try and work things out on their own before asking for help

It's not necessarily about having that happen once though. That can happen the many times throughout the day, and 2-3 interruptions in one day can be a lot. I think a lot of the point of not doing open-plan is to engineer an environment where it happens less often.

That being said, it's entirely possible that some tasks will require absolute focus and having a 2 minute conversation will legitimately lose you a large amount of productive time. There may also be a subset of people who are more likely to get these particular tasks, and those people will feel the negative effects of an open plan office much more than others working on more easily interruptible tasks.

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

#117

Post by snazz »

randomchars wrote: post #109
snazz wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? I much prefer an objective measure of volume instead of a school staff member just writing individual kids up for being subjectively too loud---the machine should have much less bias.

Why do they need to be quiet? This is in a cafeteria, not in a classroom.

I remember the elementary and middle school cafeterias being host to an occasional screaming match, so I can see why they would want to keep it at a reasonable volume. It might be a little over the top to have the traffic light thing, but it's better than the subjective alternative.

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

#118

Post by perrylaj »

mFixman wrote: post #13

Working from home for the past 3 months taught me that a lot of my constant tiredness and apathy came from the constant noise you get in an open office. Some people can't handle being productive in a extremely loud, and extremely bright environment. It doesn't matter how much I destroyed my hearing by putting loud music over noise-cancelling headphones, I always felt tired after ~2 hours of work. Open offices seem to…

> As a positive, if I were 20 years older I'd probably have started working in cubicles, which have all the negatives of an open office but without any natural sunlight.

Having worked in an environment that was essentially 'medium sized rooms with sizable cubicles', I would MUCH prefer that over open-office. In one environment I found particularly effective, cubicles were about 2m x 2m, with separator walls that were around 1.5m tall. This was great for reducing chatter and visual distraction, and offering a modicum of privacy, but readily enabled 'gophering' discussions and impromptu technical discussions. The cubicle walls allowed just enough friction to noticeably minimize social chatter while not preventing fruitful organic discussions.

Granted, this was in a nice building, with tons of windows and natural light. On the other end, I've worked in a cubicle-farm call center that had 'cubicles' that were really just shoulder-width dividers on long tables, all crammed into deep, dark cavernous office space. Having only suffered temporary exposure to open office environments, still not sure which I'd pick if given the choice, but it was definitely not a pleasant work experience/environment.

Guess point being, not all cubicles/cubicle environments are created equally, so at least for me, preferences are about more than just seating arrangement.

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

#119

Post by _jx7j »

mFixman wrote: post #13

Working from home for the past 3 months taught me that a lot of my constant tiredness and apathy came from the constant noise you get in an open office. Some people can't handle being productive in a extremely loud, and extremely bright environment. It doesn't matter how much I destroyed my hearing by putting loud music over noise-cancelling headphones, I always felt tired after ~2 hours of work. Open offices seem to…

>Working from home for the past 3 months taught me that a lot of my constant tiredness and apathy came from the constant noise you get in an open office.

I can completely agree with this. I've had a lot of jobs, and I had one in a big (but crammed) open office space where I sat next to people in roles (e.g. HR) that required them to talk all day. The constant noise, movement, and loss of privacy just sucked out all my energy. Going home after work did nothing to refresh me because it was like recharging a battery that was at -80% to -60%. Ironically, it was the highest paying job I've ever had and also the one where I got the least accomplished in the time I was there due to that office.

Mind you, this was in NYC. Going outside into the chaos of NYC noise and traffic felt relaxing compared to that office.

>As a positive, if I were 20 years older I'd probably have started working in cubicles, which have all the negatives of an open office but without any natural sunlight.

I don't think cubicles have all the negatives of open offices. At one job I had a small cubicles where the dividers were about 5 feet high. Despite all the cubicles around me being people from tech support (who were on the phone all day), I just had a much greater sense of isolation and privacy. I was very productive in that environment. The tech support people were enterprise support people though, so their conversations had lots of pauses while somebody dug through log files, made config changes, etc. Might have been very different if they were support regular consumers.

I've seen cubicles where the dividers are chest/shoulder height. Those cubicles might as well be an open office, but at least you have some allocation of personal space on your desk.

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