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The Open-Office Trap

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Re: The Open-Office Trap

#81

Post by ebiester »

untog wrote: post #66
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…

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.

Have you figured out "eye headphones" to remove the visual noise as well?

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#82

Post by georgemcbay »

DigitalSea wrote: post #67

I have primarily worked in open plan offices and even though a few studies have indicated that they are worse than closed office spaces, honestly sometimes some environments thrive with open planned spaces, others do not. I am currently in my mid twenties and most people in my age bracket have not really experienced a non open plan office space, it is all they have ever known. I have worked at a couple of corporate c…

"instead of getting up and talking to a colleague in the office, people would just use Skype even if the person was a 10 second walk away"

We all have different personalities and everyone is different, so I'm not suggesting I'm right and you're wrong, but for me I don't see that as a negative.

Receiving a skype (or other IM-type of service) query is far less intrusive to my work than talking to someone in person at my desk. Better yet, ask me in an email if you don't need the answer right away since email signals that you don't expect an immediate response and maybe I'm deep in thought and answering your question to a useful degree will pull me out of the 5 levels of abstraction my brain is currently working under, losing me half an hour of real work to get back to that point later.

On the flip side of your points I've found that open offices encourage people to ask me questions that they could easily google and find the answer in about as much time as it takes me to answer them, which means they are burning my time (and more importantly, my focus/flow) wastefully. Not to mention they are distracting everyone else around us as well. Multiply this by half a dozen times or more per day and it really starts to be a productivity sink.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#83

Post by ryanobjc »

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 article makes a very clear case against this notion that it's a personal opinion. The problem is while you might like it, you also don't have a continuing objective measure of your own costs of working in an open office plan. For example, are you measuring your epinephrine levels?

As one of the developers who has a interruption surplus (get interrupted more than I interrupt others), I really dislike open offices, they actively prevent me from getting work done.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#84

Post by watwut »

vacri wrote: post #30

The regular classroom, not the 'open classroom', is the analogue of the open office - a group of people with a common task, unseparated by walls. A private tutor would be the educational equivalent of a private office. Additionally, 'open-office' to me means OpenOffice, and while I can accept that it doesn't to everyone, be consistent . It's one of the rules of good journalism. The hyphen in the heading is not used i…

When it comes to studying, most people I know seek a calm place without interruptions where you can concentrate on reading or solving hard exercise. Like your own room or a library. Office is equivalent of that.

Open office is equivalent of trying to study in a busy corridor where groups of people chat, come and go and every 15 minutes someone stops by to tell you hello.

Now, five or other small team in one room is a great thing. Kind of the best solution I would say. You can discuss when you need and it can be calm most of the time. However, open office is usually six such teams together overhearing each other while having next to zero chance to actually concentrate on anything.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#85

Post by MCRed »

jondishotsky wrote: post #75

In San Francisco the pendulum has definitely swung back closer to center (the scale being all open to combination of open and private to private office intensive) with most startups occupying a hybrid solution with a myriad of breakout rooms and smaller meeting spaces / soft seating. The trend over the last decade began with die-hard open office plan fanpeople (breaking free of dads private office intensive historica…

I don't see meeting rooms as a balance. It doesn't solve the increased distraction of an open floorpan. Also, meeting rooms that are communal are not as useful- consider a whiteboard on a communal meeting room vs. one in a small office that houses 2-3 developers. That office whiteboard can have project info on it for weeks, while the communal one can't be left there.

For me, in an open office, having headphones on is not enough. There's visual distraction as well. People interacting in your field of vision are also a distraction.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#86

Post by pbreit »

briandear wrote: post #54
toomuchtodo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have your developers work from home then. I work for a fully funded startup where the entire team is remote. I would never go back to an office (I have insane levels of productivity compared to my last gig that had an open office plan, not to mention 0 commute time).

Bravo! My productivity (and motivation) is orders of magnitude higher when I can work in my house in the South of France or at my mother in law's house on the Mexican Riviera.) I will give you 10 hours a day of full productivity if you can save me from my old Jersey City-NYC commute. I don't need to play ping pong with you to build great software for you.

There are very few companies that enjoy outsized success with such a setup. So I think the retort to your final sentence is likely "Yes, you do".

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#87

Post by aareet »

I like the open office layout most of the time because I find that learning and team bonding occurs very quickly in these setups.

An ideal environment for me would be an open office most of the time but with four walled offices available for me to occupy on a weekly reservation basis where I can get some coding work done when I need to focus. Something soundproofed maybe, to allow me to play music without needing headphones.

We had such a setup in one of the engineering buildings in university and I found that I really thrived when I was able to "plug-out" when I needed to focus and "plug-in" when I needed to work with other people - all while not having to wear headphones!

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#88

Post by metaphorm »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #2

Everyone seems to hate open offices, but since it's all I've ever known, what's the alternative? Everyone get a 4-walled office?

4 walled offices for everyone is a nice ideal but its just not affordable in a lot of places. I work in New York City. There just isn't enough space for that. Its totally cost prohibitive to provides offices like that for everyone.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#89

Post by trhway »

open office is very easy to get wrong, and thus it is usually the case. Myriad of wrong details immediately surface. For example, shades - any issue with it and people get the direct or once-reflected or significant part (they installed these modern fashionable semi-shades in our office which block too little) of sunlight right into your eyes as there are no cubicle walls to protect you.

Near the passageway the lights are not soft/spread fluorescent, instead it is individual light bulbs, so forget sitting face toward that direction (which would be happily back to the sunlight mentioned above) as those bright dots of lights on your peripheral vision field are just like small suns.

Compare to those lightning problems the issues like highly collaborative excited guys running like herd of elephants from one workplace to another across the space is just nothing.

Re: The Open-Office Trap

#90

Post by nextstep »

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…

>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.

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