The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by dkhenry » Tue, Apr 01, 2014, 1:04 PM UTC

pekk wrote: post #39

dkhenry wrote: post #27

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…

So the reason businesses shifted to open floor plans when they didn't use them before was that they suddenly became optimal? Or maybe there are fashions in management as there are in anything else.

There are totally trends in management, however the "shift" to open floor plans is not the new trend its a return to the trend we had _before_ we went on the quiet isolation kick in the late 60's. I think now that we have actual data point of isolation vs open businesses are seeing tangible benefits from the open floor plan. There is still experimentation going on with how to strike a balance, but to say open floor plans are all bad ignores the fact that in practice they work better then most everything else we have tried.

The real thing people are finally paying attention to is that not all human workers are the same. Some people thrive in an open noisy collaborative environment, while some can't operate at all in that environment. It is the real task of management to manage the work environment of all your employees.

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

#52

Post by canvia » Tue, Apr 01, 2014, 1:04 PM UTC

jusben1369 wrote: post #30

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.

You should drink more water if you're only using the restroom once or twice in a typical work day.

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

#53

Post by Touche » Tue, Apr 01, 2014, 1:04 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #29

ronaldx wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Geez, isn't there anywhere closer to home that you can work to cut down that commute?

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

#54

Post by lawnchair_larry » Tue, Apr 01, 2014, 1:05 PM UTC

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…

This is pure hell for people who actually do work, and often repeated by managers who don't "get it." Silly questions are not the genesis of good ideas, they're a denial of service attack on good work.

Read Peopleware.

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

#55

Post by DanielBMarkham » Tue, Apr 01, 2014, 1:06 PM UTC

Ye gods, another open floor plan rant. Never see enough of these any more.

Instead of point-by-point, I'm just going to offer one critique.

"...Programming is a very brain-intensive task..."

Sure thing, buddy. But guess what? You're not a machine for cranking out little bits and bytes. Instead, you're part of a team that's trying to provide value to a user. That means that most of your job, whether you like this or not, is human in nature. The computer part should just be a "gimme".

The physical space around a team should represent the mental space of the team. One hundred guys in a big cafeteria? Not so much. 40 guys in clusters of 3-6 with rolling whiteboards and allowances for breakout discussions? Much different.

There are things I would love in software development. I would love to sit on the beach fanning myself coding while money is deposited in my account. (Actually, I've done that.) I would love to work alone in my office in the wee hours of the morning in an awesome state of flow (did that many times too.)

But at some point you have to separate "things I want to do" from "things that optimize the value I provide". They aren't the same thing.

I'm all for private offices if it works for you and optimizes value. Same goes for distributed teams. Right now nobody has all the answers. On average, though, it looks like these things are counter-productive for projects that require creative new ways of thinking of things. I wish it weren't so, but it is.

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

#56

Post by clubhi » Tue, Apr 01, 2014, 1:06 PM UTC

robinhouston wrote: post #26

“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 impo…

The world is all about American Idol and Baby booboo. That is what is important. I'll keep my door shut.

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

#57

Post by JetSetWilly » Tue, Apr 01, 2014, 1:08 PM UTC

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 distracted those in neighbouring offices, including Einstein, from their work. Von Neumann did some of his best work blazingly fast in noisy, chaotic environments, and once admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. He never used it, preferring the couple's living room with its TV playing loudly.

It seems to me to be a personal preference only. Some people like noisy and some people don't, there's not necessarily any one correct answer. But folk like Joel and others (usually American where private offices are much more common) constantly push absolute silence and the myth of never being interrupted or distracted, seemingly without much to back it up.

I really prefer an active office close to others. If someone taps me on the shoulder I have no problem continuing my train of thought.

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

#58

Post by maaaats » Tue, Apr 01, 2014, 1:08 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #44

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 think some of the best and most productive days I have had have been where I have been in the same cramped office as the rest of my team and we were all working on different chunks of the same problem - "Bob - are you using a list or a dictionary to pass the foobars in?" That's great for a single team all working on one thing - but I do not see the open plan office as a series of nicely appointed open plan offices…

I agree, team rooms is a suitable middle ground. You get the info and time-saving disrupting between members of the team, and get to ignore stuff from outside the team. If there's people running between all the rooms, a designated "contact person of the day" for each team is a good idea.

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

#59

Post by maxgaudin » Tue, Apr 01, 2014, 1:08 PM UTC

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.

I like the cube idea better than just an open desk layout. Seems to work well for SpaceX.

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

#60

Post by csmatt » Tue, Apr 01, 2014, 1:09 PM UTC

At my first job, 6 of us (all programmers) sat around a large conference table. If I had a question about the code, I peaked over my laptop's screen, someone else noticed and asked "What's up?" It was great for that quick collaboration, but it also exposed us to every annoyance possible. There was a guy who burped a lot and liked to sing show tunes. The guy next to me bought me earbud-style headphones because the cheap ones I was using leaked out a lot of sound. We also needed an always-be-working atmosphere to prevent a conversation unrelated to work from taking more than 5 minutes.

I've had my own office for the last 3 years and enjoy the privacy, but occasionally miss the instant answers and social aspects of that open plan.