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The Open-Office Trap

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Re: The Open-Office Trap

#111

Post by gcb0 »

mwfunk wrote: post #22

Open office plans seem really polarizing on HN, but it surprises me how often people defend them here (or even evangelize them). For software development, it seems like something that has no upside at all (aside from saving money on office space), and tons of downsides. For the people who do prefer them (and also spend most of their time writing code), I would be curious to know the following: (1) How many years have…

if you actually read the papers they mention (and others) you will notice that people that defend it are often:

1) mislead by the initial sense of acomplishment and better communication.

it is like working in a war room. you get tons of stuff done, but it is crazy, stressful and you have lots of people working on a little thing that demands attention. your return for all those people is actually less, but you need a war room in some situations.

open office work the same way. you get a initial difficult thing done. but at the usual high cost of having lots of people working on it and ignoring/half-assing others.

2) people like micro-management.

there is no denying. open office plans and war rooms are perfect for the micro manager boss.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#112

Post by rayiner »

pbreit wrote: post #97
ColinCochrane wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting point. It reminds me of something Joel Spolsky wrote: 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 na…

Does FogCreek still have the "Bionic Offices"? http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html I thought the "light on two sides" was particularly clever. One thing holding back enclosed offices in SF is the very high ceilings in many of the older buildings. would high walled cubes work?

The punchline:

> The monthly rent for our offices, when fully occupied, will run about $700 per employee.

That's $8,400 per year in Manhattan.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#113

Post by click170 »

ryandrake wrote: post #94
mwfunk wrote: post #22

Open office plans seem really polarizing on HN, but it surprises me how often people defend them here (or even evangelize them). For software development, it seems like something that has no upside at all (aside from saving money on office space), and tons of downsides. For the people who do prefer them (and also spend most of their time writing code), I would be curious to know the following: (1) How many years have…

I'm apparently one of the few unashamed Open Office boosters here, so let me see if I can help. I've worked as a developer for about 12+ years, then as a product/project manager for about 4 years. As a developer, I worked about half that time in soft-walled cubicles of various heights and another half in open office environments. I spent a year or so in a shared walled office. As a project guy, I spent about 3 years…

Thank you for your comment, it provides perspective other than my own which is refreshing and valuable.

I think one of the OPs points touches on this directly though. What is the ratio of questions asked to answers provided, or to put it another way, how many questions are you asking vs how many people come to you for help with their own question? I humbly submit that perhaps you are asking more questions than you are answering - and there's nothing wrong with that, but IMO it does explain a bit why we don't see eye to eye about this. Have you thought about asking one of your subordinates about their perspective on this?

With respect, I disagree about the cost of context switching being BS. I think it heavily depends on the complexity/sensitivity of the task being interrupted, but for any non-trivial task there is almost always a non-trivial cost as well.

> I've never been offended when someone stopped by to discuss a problem they're having...

I just wanted to clarify, I think it would be rather unreasonable to actually feel offended because someone asked your help or advice. I never feel offended in those situations. I do sometimes feel a bit frustrated or aggravated, but it's always about the fact that I was interrupted and never towards the colleague asking for help, and I take extra care to make sure that this frustration or aggravation never shines through to the person I'm helping because that would discourage them from asking for help and I would rather they asked for help than make an incorrect assumption (for example).

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#114

Post by seanmcdirmid »

pixelcort wrote: post #96

I'm curious about private offices and regions. While it was possible to find companies in the Bay Area that offered private offices, I have yet to find any here in Tokyo. I've assumed it's because real estate in Tokyo is more expensive, but what about other cities around the world?

I work in Beijing and we have 4 desk cubicles in an open space (so you get cubicle walls and around each quad. What is nice is that they put the open office area around the exterior, so I got a window! In contrast, we have offices for the level 65+ crowd, and they are quite unappealing to me because of they are interior, no natural light windows. Now I just have to avoid getting promoted.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#115

Post by pjlegato »

modoc wrote: post #20

The open/closed office thing seems like chocolate vs. vanilla. Some people love one and hate the other. Some are okay with both. I've worked in both, at several companies. I generally prefer open office plans. Clearly other people don't. Everyone is different. There is no RIGHT answer, just RIGHT for you, or for your team...

The whole point of the article is that the differences are empirically and objectively measurable on a wide variety of axes, and almost universally against the open office. It is not a question of personal preference.

That is, there actually is a "right" answer that is the same for everyone. Measuring it is "science."

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#116

Post by knowaveragejoe »

nextstep wrote: post #90
michaelochurch wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For software development, it seems like something that has no upside at all (aside from saving money on office space), and tons of downsides. Commercial real estate is about $3/SF (per month) in San Francisco (Class A) and $4/SF in Manhattan. Open plan offices save about 75-100 SF per employee (more, if you're looking to be sadistic and impractical, but at this point, the productivity loss is obvious.) So the employe…

>Commercial real estate is about $3/SF (per month) in San Francisco (Class A) and $4/SF in Manhattan. I think you're off by quite a bit with your price-per-square-foot estimates: http://therealdeal.com/blog/2013/10/01/manhattan-leasing-str... That is from last year and the average price in Manhattan was about $60/sf.

$60/sf by the above poster's metric(monthly) would be insanity.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#117

Post by knowaveragejoe »

awjr wrote: post #106
ryandrake wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm apparently one of the few unashamed Open Office boosters here, so let me see if I can help. I've worked as a developer for about 12+ years, then as a product/project manager for about 4 years. As a developer, I worked about half that time in soft-walled cubicles of various heights and another half in open office environments. I spent a year or so in a shared walled office. As a project guy, I spent about 3 years…

I have to say, what you describe as a manager seems to be more about the benefit to yourself and the way you 'control' your developers and less about trying to provide an environment that is efficient for your devs to deliver code. A lot of the benefits you think you get from an open plan office seem to be achievable through tools like slack.com . Open plan really really sucks as a developer.

The problem is that people hate adopting tools like Slack. They see it as just another tool they have to look at, and they totally discount that the communication is happening otherwise(either in person or another tool). It's not necessarily net new data that they now need to keep abreast of if you are, for example, replacing most email with it.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#118

Post by RachelF »

michaelochurch wrote: post #40
mwfunk wrote: post #22

Open office plans seem really polarizing on HN, but it surprises me how often people defend them here (or even evangelize them). For software development, it seems like something that has no upside at all (aside from saving money on office space), and tons of downsides. For the people who do prefer them (and also spend most of their time writing code), I would be curious to know the following: (1) How many years have…

For software development, it seems like something that has no upside at all (aside from saving money on office space), and tons of downsides. Commercial real estate is about $3/SF (per month) in San Francisco (Class A) and $4/SF in Manhattan. Open plan offices save about 75-100 SF per employee (more, if you're looking to be sadistic and impractical, but at this point, the productivity loss is obvious.) So the employe…

Saving money on office space is the main reason management goes for Open Plan. Note that in most companies more senior staff typically get their own office still.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#120

Post by interesting_att »

Most people in this thread are focusing on developer effectivenss as the sole criteria for office layout. But developer effectiveness != startup's health.

There are three things many people in the discussion are forgetting:

1) Open office vs closed office is not a strict binary- I have noticed that employees in open office layouts are also the most lenient on WFH. I do not see as much leniency/openness towards WFH in closed workplaces. So we have to compare Open Office with lots of WFH vs Closed Office with less WFH.

2) Open offices lead to higher employee retention- Open offices might lead to more interruptions, which might decrease developer effectiveness. However, I have also noticed that open offices lead to a greater social cohesion (since people are more likely to talk and form social bonds), which in turn leads to higher employee retention. It is hard to leave a company where all your friends are. Which would you prefer as a CEO: A company where developers are 20% more effective but 50% more likely to leave, or developers who are more likely to leave? In my experience, CEOs would prefer the latter, as it's difficult to onboard new engineers.

3) Open offices engender more diverse ideas- Companies are also filled with product managers, designers, sales teams, marketing heads, customer and community support, finance, QA, and other teams. An open office will more likely lead to different teams talking to each other, which in turn creates a whole new batch of ideas. Startups rely on new ideas. New ideas often come from diverse group of people interacting.

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