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The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies

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

#211

Post by mh_yam »

twic wrote: post #197
mh_yam wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me share some perspectives on the 'other side'. 1) I don't want people to be able to see me all the time. It's extremely nerve-racking and I feel like an animal in a zoo. And from my experience, people usually don't care whether I'm deep in some code or doing something less intense - they come over anyway. And people don't care whether their question is important enough to interrupt! As soon as someone taps my sh…

> I don't want people to be able to see me all the time. It's extremely nerve-[w]racking and I feel like an animal in a zoo. I don't feel like this at all. In fact, that seems like an unhealthy reaction to me (so apologies for being judgmental). May i ask if you feel like this in other environments where there are other people around? Like, in a restaurant, or on public transport?

No, because in public places there is a degree of anonymity.

At work, people all know each other. Inevitably, you get nosy and annoying people who constantly check out what others are doing and peer into their screens.

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

#213

Post by npsimons »

Crito wrote: post #169
RyJones wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing all the managers get offices but the ICs get productivity-enhancing cubes.

Stratification. Putting "regulars" into an open floor plan and leaving managers with offices is this concept on steroids (yes, I've actually seen that). I believe that there is an unplanned unorchestrated ongoing attempt throughout the industry to prevent programmers from being seen as professionals. Reverse dress codes (you'll get odd looks and questions if you aren't dressed casually, but instead throw on a suit or…

Seconded; it's a cost and politics issue to have open floor plans, and mostly to "put those uppity programmers in their place." Wouldn't want them asking for what they're worth, now would we? And hey, by having them constantly distracted and not able to concentrate, they won't be as productive and therefore not feel justified in asking for what they're worth! I mean, if open floor plans and cubicles were really that conducive to thinking work, you'd see it in many more places, such as research, doctors offices, law firms, etc, etc.

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

#214

Post by walshemj »

edanm wrote: post #198
patio11 wrote: post #5

I'm not sure on the exact numbers, but in San Francisco a programmer probably costs you on average $100K a year in salary. With benefits the total cost is in the neighborhood of $120K. So a programmer is a $10K / month investment. For what it's worth: assuming white-collar employees, the multiplier is typically 50% to 100% depending on your location and how generous you are with perks, rather than 20%. If you only ha…

Can you (or anyone) go into more detail on what the number "$100K yearly salary" includes and doesn't include, in the US? Helpful for those of us not in the US. I.e. what makes up that extra 50%-100%? Our own multiplier (Israel) is usually 30% extra over the stated salary, although the salary here is usually stated as a monthly, not yearly, number.

I was always told that for "standard" jobs 2x or 3x was the OH rate I did work for one world leading RnD organization that was well over 5x and heading towards 7x.

When the cost of the a single piece of equipment for a single experiment cost in excess of $5 million you can see why - in the end we did not go down that route. A pity as the ML neural networks aspects of machine vision would have looked very cool on my CV

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

#215

Post by resu_nimda »

brudgers wrote: post #118

The issue isn't open floor plans or private offices. It's quality of design, and indirectly hipsterism. Good open floor plan designs are driven by acoustics and sitelines - management of audible and visual distractions. Yeah, staining the concrete slab and exposing the brick wall and using the metal pan and joists of the floor above as the ceiling and hauling in oak library tables as desks, just echos "lookie here, w…

Do you have any primers on good open office design? Ideally something more accessible than a full textbook, to start with.

It sounds like you're saying that the optimal design is the incredibly dreary Office Space setup. You seem pretty critical of "hipsterism," a lot of which could be more charitably called "caring about aesthetics." Is there no middle ground?

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

#216

Post by pbiggar »

patio11 wrote: post #5

I'm not sure on the exact numbers, but in San Francisco a programmer probably costs you on average $100K a year in salary. With benefits the total cost is in the neighborhood of $120K. So a programmer is a $10K / month investment. For what it's worth: assuming white-collar employees, the multiplier is typically 50% to 100% depending on your location and how generous you are with perks, rather than 20%. If you only ha…

For some anecdata, our multiplier is about 1.4 in SF.

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

#217

Post by walshemj »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #57

I've noticed lots of programmers make unsupported assertions that a quiet workplace is better than a noisy one. But why? Have there been any studies demonstrating higher productivity if programmers have their own office? I don't think so. We should be suspicious of such claims. Think of von Neumann: At Princeton he received complaints for regularly playing extremely loud German marching music on his gramophone, which…

Read Steve McConnell in "rapid development taming wild software schedules" he quotes an IBM study that found a 15% increase in productivity with private offices and that was for all levels of programmers even the less good ones.

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

#218

Post by tieTYT »

npsimons wrote: post #213
Crito wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stratification. Putting "regulars" into an open floor plan and leaving managers with offices is this concept on steroids (yes, I've actually seen that). I believe that there is an unplanned unorchestrated ongoing attempt throughout the industry to prevent programmers from being seen as professionals. Reverse dress codes (you'll get odd looks and questions if you aren't dressed casually, but instead throw on a suit or…

Seconded; it's a cost and politics issue to have open floor plans, and mostly to "put those uppity programmers in their place." Wouldn't want them asking for what they're worth, now would we? And hey, by having them constantly distracted and not able to concentrate, they won't be as productive and therefore not feel justified in asking for what they're worth! I mean, if open floor plans and cubicles were really that…

Sounds like a conspiracy theory. Why would a company want its own employees to be unproductive?

I think it's more likely that open floor plans cost less per square foot or seem productive.

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

#220

Post by briantakita »

msluyter wrote: post #112
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…

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…

> he found that interruptions by colleagues were detrimental to productivity, and that the more senior the employee, the worse she fared.

My personal take. Learning a craft is a lifelong endeavor. Experience builds. The path is organic & fractal-like.

If someone is senior, they have a context of experience that a more junior person does not have. Their brains are literally wired differently.

It's less satisfying to be around ignorant (I don't mean judgement, just lack of context) people. Especially ignorant people who affect how you do your job.

Being a senior person means there is an aspect of leadership involved. You mentor & lead the more junior people in your craft. However, masters don't spend most of their time mentoring. They spend most of their time growing their own personal craft. They try to instill this process of continuous improvement onto their students.

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