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The Open-Office Trap

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Re: The Open-Office Trap

#181

Post by a3n »

frostmatthew wrote: post #166
untog wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a team chatroom? Are you ever distracted by messages you receive in it? For me the two are very similar. I work in an open plan office and enjoy being able to talk to my co-workers - often someone will pull their chair up to someone else's to pair program for a while, or just discuss the issue they're having. If you don't want interruptions, you put headphones on. It works well.

> If you don't want interruptions, you put headphones on. It works well. It works well for some people . While you may be able to code perfectly well with music blasting in your ears (loud enough to drown out nearby conversations) that is not the case for everyone. I wear headphones at work but the volume (at which I can actually concentrate on my work) is only sufficient to drown out/filter random background noises…

I cannot use headphones to counter noise and distraction. If I use music, I pay attention to the music. White noise I feel like I'm in a science fiction movie. And regardless of how comfortable a particular headphone may be, something on my head is itself a distraction.

Headphones may be at best a distraction mitigation, but what they really are is evidence that your environment is crap.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#182

Post by awjr »

lakis wrote: post #178
awjr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

After 22 years in software development, I have to say I am tired of all the new tools that supposedly solve all the world problems only to be abandoned in the next quarter. There is nothing wrong to talk to somebody when you want to tell them something. A lot of times it's more efficient then email, IMs or other more fancier tools.

"There is nothing wrong to talk to somebody when you want to tell them something. A lot of times it's more efficient then email, IMs or other more fancier tools."

For you maybe, for them no. That's not to say you should not talk to them, but your interruption of their workflow has a cost you may not perceive.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#183

Post by seanmcdirmid »

pixelcort wrote: post #179
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When you say level 65, do you mean the 64th floor or seniority?

The latter, Microsoft speak.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#184

Post by danielweber »

shortstuffsushi wrote: post #169
varelse wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to work in an open floor plan that was without barking dogs, nerf guns, loud meetings, and the occasional R/C helicopter. I work from home 75% now. When I'm in the office, I get next to nothing done.

Perhaps this is more of the norm in the Bay Area (I assume that's where you're from, from your other comment), but I've never seen anything as open as that (dogs at least). I don't think anyone would claim that a "bring your dog to work and let it roam around freely" sort of environment would be productive. I'm surprised they would allow that at all, seems like it could cause other problems as well. I still don't thi…

I was interviewing at a company in Chicago with the open office plan, foosball table right next to the engineers, and people blasting the Indiana Jones theme over the speakers.

They said they had trouble finding senior people. If I had been more aggressive I would have told them "have you considered having an adults table?"

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#185

Post by opo »

davidmerriman wrote: post #39

The upside to the open office is that collaboration is effortless. The downside is that collaboration can become a crutch. It will only hinder you when you need to do the kind of "nose to the grindstone" work that's often needed. To me, the ideal working scenario includes a private working space for each person and a public space for when collaboration is needed.

>...To me, the ideal working scenario includes a private working space for each person and a public space for when collaboration is needed.

I agree. The best working environment I ever had was private offices with soft seating areas at the rend of each hall. It was easy to collaborate with others and easy to get a quiet environment. You never felt like you were interrupting several other people if you went to ask a person a question. If you had to take a phone call to talk to deal with a private family issue or call a Dr or lawyer, you could just close your door. If you had to send a private email you didn't need to worry that others will see something they shouldn't see. Offices also had much more usable desk space than I have had in open office settings.

I can see why people like offices (except for Zuckerberg are there any CEOs who sit in an open floor plan?), where I work now, the only people who like the open office arrangement are the managers who naturally have private offices.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#186

Post by jdbernard »

ryandrake wrote: post #175
jdbernard wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I haven't. It's a big part of why I have changed jobs frequently over the last couple of years. It continues to be a source of frustration. Looking back on my comment I was more harsh than I intended and a lot of that is because I am so frustrated with the current standard working environment. If I didn't have a family to take care of I would be extremely tempted to leave software as a profession entirely because…

I didn't take any offense. As someone else upthread put it, the open-vs-cubicle-vs-office debate is full of opinion and personal preference. I was simply explaining mine, as was requested.

I'm glad you didn't take it personally, it wasn't meant to be personal. But in hindsight I feel like I used you as a stand-in for the objects of my frustration. That's not really fair to you. I'm sorry for that.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#187

Post by MrDom »

michaelochurch wrote: post #53
NhanH wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify on "open-back visibility", it means that people can see you from behind (ie your back is facing the door/ open space rather than a wall, and by extension it means that they can see your screen), right? If that's the case, I agree with you, but I'd like to see more details on how/why it is the case. Do you by any chance have any more evidences?

I don't have papers on it. Just years of painful experience, but something I've noticed is that (a) people with walls at their back are generally more productive, and (b) successful or powerful people usually choose seating arrangements that give them a barrier. Visibility from behind suggests low social status and makes people feel "watched".

I can confirm that with a couple dozen n=1 anecdotes. I used to have a mirror on my monitor so I could see people coming up behind me. That calmed the lizard brain down a bit, but I was still distracted every time somebody walked behind me. I've known dozens of programmers who also hate having their back exposed because it's a distraction.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#188

Post by robwilliams »

interesting_att wrote: post #120

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…

Do you have a source for any of this? I don't work in an open office but people are very lenient with WFH. Especially the second point; without a source those numbers sound too good to be true.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#189

Post by shortstuffsushi »

danielweber wrote: post #184
shortstuffsushi wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is more of the norm in the Bay Area (I assume that's where you're from, from your other comment), but I've never seen anything as open as that (dogs at least). I don't think anyone would claim that a "bring your dog to work and let it roam around freely" sort of environment would be productive. I'm surprised they would allow that at all, seems like it could cause other problems as well. I still don't thi…

I was interviewing at a company in Chicago with the open office plan, foosball table right next to the engineers, and people blasting the Indiana Jones theme over the speakers. They said they had trouble finding senior people. If I had been more aggressive I would have told them "have you considered having an adults table?"

As someone who is in no way a senior developer, I can't imagine working in this sort of environment. Then again, I've been working exclusively in enterprise up to this point.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#190

Post by kyllo »

cherry_su wrote: post #156
rayiner wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dogs at work?!

Google[1], Pinterest[2], et al let you bring dogs to work. [1] http://www.mnn.com/family/pets/photos/10-companies-that-let-... [2] http://www.quora.com/What-San-Francisco-startups-allow-emplo...

Add Amazon to that list.
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