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The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies

nathanmarz.com

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Re: The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies

#171

Post by mikevm »

abalone wrote: post #10

Suffers from the same flaw as most critiques of open plan: it focuses on individual productivity while failing to understand how it contributes to team productivity. Cornell did a study of open plan awhile back that you should all read. I posted it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507404 The misunderstanding here is that it's just about serendipitously "overhearing" other conversations. 1. Open plan makes…

> 1. Open plan makes it easier to ask questions. Those are "disruptions", yes, but what the Cornell study found is that in open plan it's actually easier to "read" a person and see if it's an OK time to ask a question, and to quickly reply or say ask me later, and so forth, to efficiently manage those disruptions.

So just for the off-chance that someone could ask me a question, I have force myself to wear headphones every day just to get any work done? What the fuck? Maybe most people are not like me, and are not distracted by the moving, talking and noise making of other people around them -- but I am. I need as much silence as I can get.

What is absurd about this is that some companies make special "quiet zones" for people to go to and think, which means they implicitly admit that the actual work environment is not conductive to thinking.

You want to ask me a question? Send me an IM.

Re: The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies

#173

Post by travisl12 »

As an Acoustic Consultant turned Developer I have to stress that from the perspective of "noise" alone, open plan offices are detrimental to concentration. I define concentration as time spent without interruptions.

Even the use of headphones, can in a sense, be a distraction. Music being played too loud creates stress in the body, and if you are trying to listen to music to drown out a busy office then chances are you are not increasing concentration by much (if any).

As an Acoustician I visited many tech open plan offices who wanted to hear suggestions on quieting down conversations, and phones ringing. And I always laughed to myself at this because the best suggestion is to build walls! Cubicles help, but generally only the kind with the 6-8ft walls.

As a developer these days, I honestly feel that working from home can be much more productive than the office because it is peace and quiet.

Quiet is good for me as a developer.

Re: The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies

#175

Post by BrownBuffalo »

abalone wrote: post #10

Suffers from the same flaw as most critiques of open plan: it focuses on individual productivity while failing to understand how it contributes to team productivity. Cornell did a study of open plan awhile back that you should all read. I posted it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507404 The misunderstanding here is that it's just about serendipitously "overhearing" other conversations. 1. Open plan makes…

Nailed it. A lot of "collaboration" is not derived from isolated silos of knowledge but when its "shared". People who can't operate in an open environment lack the focus required for such an activity in the first place. I'd rather blame a lack of "integration" into an environment like this on HR than the business owner / layout designer. There is a reason why start-up thought process is injection molded into an office "feel". So ... if you lack the ability to concentrate ... you lack the ability to function for a successful company.

Re: The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies

#176

Post by shaneofalltrad »

Anderkent wrote: post #119
msluyter wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call your one study and raise you 100: In 2011, the organizational psychologist Matthew Davis reviewed more than a hundred studies about office environments. He found that, though open offices often fostered a symbolic sense of organizational mission, making employees feel like part of a more laid-back, innovative enterprise, they were damaging to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and s…

It's not clear from the article if the study measures individual productivity or team results. The pdf is paywalled unfortunately, can anyone clarify?

These studies are all great, but fall under what type of students and/or test subjects that already have been filtered in other ways before being tested. We all are different. Along your request to clarify, I would like to request any studies on a 7-9 man team.

I am one of those people who get distracted easily and am a new programmer. Working on a Scrum team of less than 10, I found this has grown into being very productive for the team and my growth, as I pick up the conversations, I am actually learning things and I throw my music on if the chatter is unproductive. I think the amount of dev's in the pit really can max out and that is what the writer of this article has probably experienced.

Re: The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies

#177

Post by collyw »

thejosh wrote: post #73
nwatson wrote: post #7

For me, noise isn't the problem. Since moving from the SF bay area to North Carolina, I work at home a lot for my California job. I like to get out for several hours almost every day, though. I head to either Krankies Coffee or Camino Bakery in Winston Salem, and both venues have: a lot of people talking about family, studies, work, business, gossip; the espresso machine; music; and at Krankies the coffee-roasting ma…

I'm willing to bet noise isn't the problem for a fair chunk of developers who complain about open offices because they aren't annoyed by noise, they are annoyed by constant interruptions to work.

I can deal with the noise for day to day stuff - like normal debugging / writing features that I know how to do.

Trying to learn something new, with new concepts, and I really struggle.

Re: The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies

#178

Post by rimantas »

crusso wrote: post #20
abalone wrote: post #10

Suffers from the same flaw as most critiques of open plan: it focuses on individual productivity while failing to understand how it contributes to team productivity. Cornell did a study of open plan awhile back that you should all read. I posted it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507404 The misunderstanding here is that it's just about serendipitously "overhearing" other conversations. 1. Open plan makes…

it focuses on individual productivity This is one of those "beat the drum" issues on HN where we keep seeing article after article trying to drive the same one-sided point home. When I see this as the top article on HN, I just have to wonder if many of the people who come to HN are looking to disrupt the startup community. I've worked in environments that run the gamut from individual offices, to cubes, to small work…

mmm, synergy. I also suspect that some think of "we talk a lot about our product" as a productivity.

Re: The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies

#180

Post by chrisbennet »

Joel Spolsky writes of this in his essay "The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code"

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

See #8 "Do programmers have quiet working conditions?"

"Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away 15 minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff and Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal-fattening farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he asks Jeff. Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to save Mutt 15 seconds)."

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