Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices? • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by therufa » Tue, May 12, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

There's a reason why noise cancelling headphones gained so much popularity.

If you enter an open plan office and see a bunch of people sitting with headphones on, it should be immediately clear to you that most of them are suffering from noise pollution. The headphones are usually a coping mechanism to keep out the noise, not primarily to enjoy some music.

The problem with open plan offices is usually the fact, that it gets incredibly noisy. increased noise levels lead to being distracted, which leads to exhaustion, which leads to lower productivity, which in some cases causes mental problems like burnout syndrome etc...

this might be not the case for every type of person, but i had the "pleasure" of experiencing the upper situation personally and a few times in other ex-coworkers who just couldn't cope with the constant noise.

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

#132

Post by sloaken » Tue, May 12, 2020, 11:21 PM UTC

huffmsa wrote: post #50

majewsky wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I destroyed my hearing by putting loud music over noise-cancelling headphones Huh? The point of noise-cancelling headphones (at least to me) is that you can drown out the rest of the noise with fairly quiet music.

But the notion that I need to "drown the noise out" is wrong. Quiet should be the default state. If you want to be loud, go find a room where you can be, instead of forcing everyone else to block you out.

Great in theory, and I agree completely, but invariably you will have a set of people who live for getting attention and they are noisy.

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

#133

Post by em-bee » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:12 AM UTC

photonios wrote: post #129

opo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. Having now worked in one of these at a large company, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is relativley small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early without having having to have fo…

> A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple question (or to just see what they are working on) becomes a big deal because you are now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people. Isn't that kind of the point of having team offices?

the question is, what is better for collaboration. if getting a question to another team is a such a big deal, then it will happen less and hurt interteam collaboration

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

#134

Post by em-bee » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

opo wrote: post #121

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'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. Having now worked in one of these at a large company, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is relativley small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early without having having to have fo…

once you have people working from home, or teams spread over multiple locations then any offline communication becomes a problem because the remote people are excluded. interteam communication is not an officelayout problem but a company communication culture problem.

changing the office layout may be one approach to address the problem, but it may not always make the problem go away.

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

#135

Post by em-bee » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:21 AM UTC

arantius wrote: post #130

opo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. Having now worked in one of these at a large company, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is relativley small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early without having having to have fo…

> A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple question (or to just see what they are working on) becomes a big deal because you are now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people. Which is better than interrupting the hundred plus people in the giant open-office space?

in a 100 people room there will always be people walking around. what an open office does is to train people to ignore the noise around them (pity those that can't adjust). you'll see people walking by and you'll ignore them. in a team room, if someone enters, you know that it's for the team, and everyone will perk up to see what the 'intruder' wants.

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

#136

Post by em-bee » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:29 AM UTC

iso1631 wrote: post #44

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…

Hotdesking often means team members can't sit near each other. I find it hilarious that you have people who spend their entire day on zoom calls with collegues in different parts of the buildings, who also claim they can't possibly work from home.

that's not hilarious. some people just need the occasional face to face interaction, and can't tolerate being alone. i used to work in a kind of hackerspace where i'd sometimes pick the large kitchen as my workspace with others there doing completely unrelated things just because it felt better than being locked up in my room.

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

#137

Post by iateanapple » Wed, May 13, 2020, 9:54 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #125

rglullis wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is that bad for some people. But most importantly, even if it meant "just" 5 minutes to get back into flow, you still have an organization that doesn't know how to share information and you have a manager that is crippling team productivity without even knowing. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/02/12/human-task-switche... > I agree people should try and work things out on their own before asking for help T…

In my experience, "Being able to be productive while not in The Zone" is a job skill like any other that can/should be learned and improved with practice. I used to be like that, where if you said peep to me while I was focused, I snapped out of it and couldn't work my way back up to productivity easily. This is kind of a "junior developer" problem that IMHO developers just need to overcome with practice. Having a ki…

> In my view you just need to deal with this reality and learn how to be productive in it.

IMO, senior developers who are “productive in it” are getting by on pattern matching.

Just like I can drive to my local mall without even thinking about it.

They haven’t actually learned how to be productive working this way.

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

#138

Post by huffmsa » Wed, May 13, 2020, 10:17 AM UTC

sloaken wrote: post #132

huffmsa wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the notion that I need to "drown the noise out" is wrong. Quiet should be the default state. If you want to be loud, go find a room where you can be, instead of forcing everyone else to block you out.

Great in theory, and I agree completely, but invariably you will have a set of people who live for getting attention and they are noisy.

Of course, but there are plenty more that only join in if it's easy, and reducing the easy of participation means you only have to think about the attention junkies.

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

#139

Post by DedlySnek » Wed, May 13, 2020, 10:25 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

This sentence describes me. I have my headphones plugged in almost all times because I cant focus with all the noise.

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

#140

Post by DedlySnek » Wed, May 13, 2020, 10:30 AM UTC

rofws wrote: post #94

Because working is a collaborative activity, not a social activity. By nature, social activities need your brain to be focused on things happening around you. Work activities need your brain to focus on that task at hand, and not on your surroundings. Hence your brain needs to overcome all the distraction to focus on work, if you're in an open (social) environment. No wonder people feel exhausted at the end of the da…

> I think a good office is one that combines the best aspect of both.

Couldn't agree more. My last job was in a large organization, cubicles everywhere and almost quiet all the time. The current one is an open office, noise all the time. Overall, I dislike both of them, and just like you said, could use a combination of best aspects of both.