Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies

nathanmarz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 259 posts

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

#21

Post by Goladus »

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…

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.

For what it's worth, most of the open plan proponents have a similarly frustrating tendency to completely ignore the individual productivity trade-offs.

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

#22

Post by danielweber »

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…

why_not_both.png ?

People should have private offices so they can be alone to think when they need, and also have bullpen areas where they can collaborate.

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

#23

Post by stephencanon »

Goladus wrote: post #13
mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #3

I think the best arrangement is private offices / cubes surrounding a central team area where more interaction can occur. Pixar had a really cool idea where Steve Jobs put all of the bathrooms on one side of the building in a central area so people were forced to bump into each other spontaneously throughout the day but only when they were already interrupted.

Pixar had a really cool idea put all of the bathrooms on one side of the building I'd be interested to know how much they saved on plumbing costs. That seems to me like an architectural decision driven by financial concerns and sold as a benefit. Not that it isn't a benefit, many of the most interesting designs are a consequence of some practical constraint.

Apparently you haven't seen the Pixar buildings; it's pretty clear that little of their design was guided by financial constraints. They are about as far as it's possible to get away from typical cheap office construction.

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

#24

Post by jusben1369 »

The trouble I have with these arguments by programmers against open floor plans is I directly correlate the dramatic increase in popularity to the rise of programmer rather than non programmer led startups. If in fact it was counter productive wouldn't the (presumably smart) developer/leaders of these startups switch as soon as they got their first Series A check? Or is there a sense they can't because a) they feel stuck due to the cost of rent or b) some herd mentality that means they can't attack talent unless they have the open floor plan?

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

#25

Post by Goladus »

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…

I've managed people in all of those environments as well, and I can tell you that openness leads to more synergy and more overall productivity.

In my experience, synergy and productivity is far more closely tied to clarity of goals and effective leadership than floor plan. Open floor plan advocacy, when it involves dragging people out of the offices they are quite happy with, is often a sign of leadership with misplaced priorities.

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

#26

Post by robinhouston »

“Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.”

– Richard Hamming, “You and Your Research” http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

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

#27

Post by dkhenry »

I like open floor plans. I find I get more done in my open floor plan office then my closed off private office at my house. I hate how all these critiques are so absolute in that "Open Floor Plans are Bad". Open floor plans work, and they work well. Like Eric Schmidt if there was some secret benefit to having offices for everyone that could make workers so much more productive don't you think companies would jump at the productivity boost ?

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

#28

Post by bguthrie »

Goladus wrote: post #21
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…

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. For what it's worth, most of the open plan proponents have a similarly frustrating tendency to completely ignore the individual productivity trade-offs.

At most organizations I've worked at that use an open floor plan for programmers, we pair-programmed aggressively. Subjectively, a good pair more than offsets the distractive drawbacks of an open floor plan. If instead you hand each programmer a pair of headphones as they walk in the door then yes, productivity's going to take a hit compared to closed offices. Working in isolation in an open floor plan is worse than working in isolation in offices.

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

#29

Post by TeMPOraL »

ronaldx wrote: post #6
hawkharris wrote: post #2

Many developers have the ability to work remotely, which offsets this problem.

Right. If your job can be done in a closed office without interacting with anyone, why do you need to be in an office at all?

Because home might be an even worse place to concentrate in than open-space office. I know it is for me, it's the only reason I actually come to work instead of doing it remotely (which costs me additional 2h/day of commute time).

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

#30

Post by jusben1369 »

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #3

I think the best arrangement is private offices / cubes surrounding a central team area where more interaction can occur. Pixar had a really cool idea where Steve Jobs put all of the bathrooms on one side of the building in a central area so people were forced to bump into each other spontaneously throughout the day but only when they were already interrupted.

Really? Most people go to the bathroom once or twice a day. The chances of you timing that to coincide with someone else for whom it's beneficial that you start to spontaneously chat seems kind of low. To put it another way if Steve thought it was important to have that I suspect he would have found a different mechanism that the one above.
Post reply on HN