
Open-plan offices decrease face-to-face collaboration: study - simonebrunozzi
https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/its-official-open-plan-offices-are-now-dumbest-management-fad-of-all-time.html
======
jefftk
Here's the paper:
[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239)

Roughly, they found two big companies that were about to switch "from assigned
seats in cubicles to similarly assigned seats in an open office design, with
large rooms of desks and monitors and no dividers between people's desks".
Roles included "technology, sales and pricing, HR, finance, and product
development, as well as the top leadership". They compared interaction metrics
before and after the change.

------
RivieraKid
For me the problem is not really distractions (I don't care if people
interrupt me from time to time, in fact I like it). My problem is the mental
strain that stems from lack of privacy, the knowledge that people can see me
and my monitor all the time, it's like there's a background process in my mind
that checks whether what I want to do (move a lot in my chair, comment on HN,
eat something) is ok with people around me. And this constant monitoring and
self-control is tiring.

~~~
switch007
Foucault wouldn't be surprised at all at the prevalence of open-plan offices.

~~~
lioeters
The association of open-plan offices to the Panopticon:

> ..The fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched means
> that they are motivated to act as though they are being watched at all
> times. Thus, the inmates are effectively compelled to regulate their own
> behaviour.

> ..Foucault used the panopticon as metaphor for the modern disciplinary
> society in Discipline and Punish.

> He argued that discipline had replaced the pre-modern society of kings, and
> that the panopticon should not be understood as a building, but as a
> mechanism of power and a diagram of political technology.

> ..In the landmark surveillance narrative Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), George
> Orwell said: "there was of course no way of knowing whether you were being
> watched at any given moment ... you had to live ... in the assumption that
> every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement
> scrutinised."

~~~
nkingsy
Orwell was way off. Our every movement is scrutinized even when it’s dark.

------
bcrosby95
I've worked in a variety of settings, and my favorite is a small team in a
conference room/tiny open office. 3-8 people.

People tend to be respectful of each other's concentration at that number of
people. And since you're in the same team, most interruptions are likely to be
useful to other members of the team. But if we wanted to just bother 1
specific person, we would just use instant message.

Our manager worked in the same conference room too. But he would step outside
for any calls he had to make.

It also gave an exiting "small startup" feel for me, even when working for a
large company.

~~~
Davertron
I guess I'll be the exception here. I'm in a psudeo-open workspace right now
which is pretty much what you're talking about except that we're not in a
room, it's what the company calls a "pod" with high walls and a single
doorway. I would say 90% of all distractions etc. come from inside the pod.
Moving us into our own room would make no difference. It does get pretty loud
sometimes in the building, but it's mostly white noise and easy (at least for
me) to ignore. The only way to work mostly without distractions here is to
wear headphones, which generally signals to others that they should leave you
alone, but even then people will still just wander over and bother you because
you're right there. For some people the idea of chatting someone who's sitting
5 feet away from them is super weird.

The most productive times I have, hands-down, are when I work from home.

~~~
techsupporter
> For some people the idea of chatting someone who's sitting 5 feet away from
> them is super weird.

This is exactly what happens in my employer's "pod rooms." There are 10 of us
and inevitably someone will be all, "Jack; Jack!; HEY, JACK!!" and someone
else says "he has his headphones on just send him an IM" and the first person
replies "ugh!" and then gets up to walk over and stand at Jack's shoulder
until Jack takes off his headphones and looks up at the person.

It's not just one person that does this or we might could get the behavior to
change. Apparently humans in group spaces just really, really, _really_ want
to verbally speak to other humans in those spaces and there's no amount of
"hey guys I'm really trying to work here could you keep it down" that doesn't
come across as rude or condescending.

I guess part of it for me is there seems to be no escaping from the noise of
life any more. At least at work I used to have an office with a door that I
could close for a couple of hours of solitude and heads-down real work. Now,
after the building redesign, there are 950 people in the building and a
pittance of conference rooms and phone rooms and "team rooms" (little
conference rooms supposedly shared between just two or three teams sitting in
larger "pod rooms" but, in practice, squatted in by one or two people all
day). I've spent twenty minutes walking around my building and the adjacent
one just trying to find somewhere to do a phone screen for an interview
candidate.

Combine that with the rest of the world getting louder[0] and it's becoming a
little frustrating.

0 - Right now I can hear my neighbor upstairs walking around on the hardwood
floors all of our apartments have with his hard-soled shoes like he's been
doing for the past hour, the traffic outside because apparently density should
only exist next to busy arterials in the city where I live, planes loudly
going overhead because the cloud ceiling is lower and they're taking a more
direct route to the airport, and now the backup generator for the newly-
constructed senior home is running its weekly test.

~~~
LordFast
> Right now I can hear my neighbor upstairs walking around on the hardwood
> floors all of our apartments have with his hard-soled shoes like he's been
> doing for the past hour, the traffic outside because apparently density
> should only exist next to busy arterials in the city where I live, planes
> loudly going overhead because the cloud ceiling is lower and they're taking
> a more direct route to the airport, and now the backup generator for the
> newly-constructed senior home is running its weekly test.

Cities grew too quickly and are now kind of like the startup that never
planned for its explosive growth and is struggling to cope trying to keep the
wheels from falling off. A paradigm shift is needed, and will come about at
some point- I'm just not sure when, and in what form.

Or I'll just move to Montana and do a self-sustainable ranch(hah). I don't
necessarily want to be that far out, but looking at the way things are going,
wife and I rarely go out anymore anyways due to the overcrowding, so the
benefits of having a city is rapidly diminishing.

~~~
techsupporter
> so the benefits of having a city is rapidly diminishing.

To be 100% clear, I still love living in the dense city where I do and I have
no plans on moving away from it. But I don't think employers have yet figured
out that taking away the quiet(er?) spots at work does a lot of harm because
it means loss of hours of quiet.

I also readily admit that a good chunk of this is on me. I am increasingly a
curmudgeon, probably because of changes at work, and so I take it out on the
other parts of my environment by quietly being frustrated.

I've lived in the middle of nowhere before and hated it. I've lived in the
"quiet" suburbs and hated it. At least living in the city, with the attendant
noise, I get more out of it than I lose; I'm just still frustrated at my
employer (and my industry) for taking away my office door.

~~~
LordFast
Ahh, gotcha. Sorry for misunderstanding your point.

------
dkersten
The best office I've experienced (but sadly only visited for two week, the
branch I worked at had typical open plan garbage) had the building split into
sections where along both sides were small single-person offices (large enough
that two people could sit at a desk and work, or 3 to 4 people could sit for a
meeting) with closing sliding doors. In the space between the two rows of
offices was a small amount of hot-desk space (maybe 6 to 8 desks), some
armchairs and sofas and a conference table with projector. The layout was
basically:

    
    
        +--+--+--+--+--+
        |  |  |  |  |  |
        +- +- +- +- +- +
        |
        |HHHH  CCC  ####|
        |
        +- +- +- +- +- +
        |  |  |  |  |  |
        +--+--+--+--+--+
    

Where H was the hotdesk space, C the casual sofas/armchairs with coffee
tables, and # the conference table with projector against the wall on one end.
Not drawn to scale, of course.

~~~
erik_seaberg
That looks so much like
[https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Workshop_desi...](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Workshop_design)
that I kinda want potential employers to start publishing their office designs
as Dwarf Fortress saves.

~~~
dkersten
Hah, thanks for that! :D That would be fun, alright.

Completely off topic, I just got Tarn Adams' latest book (procedural
storytelling) today. I'm looking forward to reading it when I get time.

~~~
reificator
I've added that book to my list of possible reads.

I must say I am actually disappointed that it doesn't appear to have been
written in an algorithmic fashion.

~~~
dkersten
At a quick flip through the pages, it also doesn’t cover that much in terms of
technical details, code or diagrams, but seems to be mostly a discussion of
techniques and case studies.

I’d personally like a more technically focused book because some of the
struggles I have is that I can hack together a grammar-based system (eg an
L-system) easily enough, but turning it into a production quality reasonable
performance/memory system is much harder. Eg I made an L-system using a string
as the data and characters as the nodes and I was doing string matching and
manipulation to implement the production rules. It worked great as a little
demo, but was much much too inefficient for a real system. Converting it into
something more efficient was too much work for me at the time. Perhaps time I
try again though!

I’ll see. I have a train journey tomorrow so I’ll start reading it then :)

------
ksd482
I am a millennial (born in '88) and I would LOVE to have a cubicle. My first
job was at Cisco in San Jose, California which had cubicles. I was fortunate
enough to be introduced to the corporate environment with cubicles.

I loved my cubicle. Like you said: just enough privacy to get things done.
People would come by only if absolutely necessary otherwise they would mind
their own business.

Having cubicles also prevented useless chatter.

Then I left that company and my productivity and mental peace has never been
the same. Not even near.

~~~
Velofellow
I think people's experiences and what they consider cubicles vary widely. When
I started, I had a true cubicle with a standing 'U' shaped desk around the
cube perimeter, which could've housed two employees. The cubicles had tall
walls (7ft) so there was some actual privacy. those were Cubicle Nirvana, but
for density reasons have seen two iterations of smaller, and smaller cubes.
'drive-by' type meetings were easy to accommodate without disrupting others.

Currently, our cubicles are a honey-comb type arrangement. (think pods of
three cubicles on one side, two on the other) There is no privacy, and rows
behind you leave 18" of space to the employee behind you. Gone are the tall
walls for working while standing. Edges of the cubicles do not stand proud of
the desks, so it's not much to work with.

We've seemingly taken the worst of both worlds when it comes to cubicle AND
open office concepts. I wouldn't even know what to call it, other than awful.

~~~
JohnFen
Ironically, we have collectively forgotten why cubicles were invented, and why
office workers originally hailed them as wonderful things: they ended the open
office workspaces that were dominant at the time.

~~~
bitwize
Indeed. This was a common office layout through much of the 20th century:
[https://youtu.be/5cNJNKkCQ2E](https://youtu.be/5cNJNKkCQ2E)

~~~
kmstout
That was unexpected. Holy crap. I think it's time for a beer.

------
Misdicorl
Meta response.

There has to be a better way to aggregate than having this same article
(effectively) pop up every other week. And then like 30% of all
hiring/firing/workplace discussions devolve into the open floor plan
discussion.

The responses are always the same and the conversation hasn't moved an inch in
five years.

No, its not that hard to just hide the submission and close the comment chains
which veer. But my brain constantly says 'what if someone said something new
and novel on the subject?!'. So its friction for me because I'm either
spending 10 minutes reading a rehash or 5 minutes thinking 'I should just
glance at it just in case'

The problem with reddit's solution is discoverability. Also, who would want a
feed dedicated to kvetching/discussing open floor plans? Some/lots of people
clearly want the articles and discussion, but would anyone actually subscribe
to a feed like that?

~~~
anon9001
> There has to be a better way to aggregate than having this same article
> (effectively) pop up every other week.

I disagree. I think this is actually the best way HN can bring about change,
even though the arguments haven't changed in years.

IMO the reason these posts get upvoted is out of protest and to raise
awareness. HN is probably the most influential source in tech. If every time
you look at HN there's threads complaining about something, it must be pretty
important.

After watching memes travel around the internet and cross over into mainstream
thinking, I put a lot of weight on how much HN's front page matters. Slashdot
used to have a similar effect, then Digg, then Reddit, now HN.

~~~
deepsun
Well, HN votes are (at least designed) not for liking/protesting, but to give
feedback that something was interesting and curious.

~~~
LeonenTheDK
IIRC it's similar for Reddit (I believe it's meant to be if the comment
contributes to the discussion or not). Few people seem to follow it though.

------
notduncansmith
I work in an open office environment. I never thought I’d say this, but it
works excellently; there’s always energy in the air, collaboration is easy,
and it’s a great space to hold company all-hands meetings. I’d say there are 4
keys to making this work:

1) The founders have a great sense of aesthetic and our office is a beautiful
space as a result (also stays very clean), meaning it stays less stressful and
promotes a positive mood. This may not be strictly necessary but it sure helps
it not feel like the hellscape that “open office” evokes.

2) There are plenty of closed-room office spaces available if you need focus
time

3) Both of our open-office sections are in rooms much bigger than the rows of
desks, so despite having a large number of people in one room, it never feels
crowded

4) There is Sonos in both open-office areas and people are pretty good about
not hogging it or playing obnoxious/too-loud music

I’ve also worked in open offices that were nightmarish, but saw these same
factors (minus the aesthetic portion) make for an effective office environment
elsewhere as well. Music, breakout offices, and non-desk space seem to be the
musts (but do decorate nicely because it matters more than I ever would have
thought before).

EDIT: I should add that it’s usually pretty quiet, and the music very low. I
don’t consider it a distraction, but I also like my coworkers’ music so this
may not work for everyone. Also, headphones are universally respected as a “do
not disturb” signal.

~~~
0xffff2
>There is Sonos in both open-office areas and people are pretty good about not
hogging it or playing obnoxious/too-loud music

If my only choices were working in this office and homelessness, I would
honest to go choose homelessness.

~~~
commandlinefan
There's always a third option of coming in before everybody else and smashing
the Sonos into a thousand pieces with a sledge hammer.

------
soapboxrocket
So I worked in a legacy industry and they co-located a couple of teams near
our biggest client. They decided to put in place an open office concept for
the engineers and support staff, and gave the VPs and sales guys private
offices.

Especially when we first moved into the office the VPs loved to take the
customers on a tour and stand at the top of the space and tell them how great
this open office was. I was in a bad mood one time when this happened and the
VP asked me if I agreed (with the customer) and I said, "it is perfect for
what it was built for, it was built to show our customers how many resources
we have and to imply that we have no walls separating our BUs from working
together." He was not happy, but also had no lines of responsibility to me or
my business segment.

And like all open offices it was loud so everyone put on headphones and we had
zero cross-BU interaction and very low inter-BU interaction. At one point
corporate tried to push a no headphones rule because it looked bad when they
brought in customers and it did not land well in the cube dwellers. A
compromise was reached to not allow headphones when customers leadership
visits where planned, about once a month.

My biggest problem with the design was that they guy in the desk that faced me
spent around 80% of his time on conference calls. Now he wasn't loud at all,
almost never said anything on these calls, but he would sit silently with his
headset on staring directly at me the whole time. Now he wasn't looking at me,
just looking forward but it was really disconcerting.

What I always find funny about the whole concept is that the open cube was
really first imagined by Taylor as he tried to apply physical labor
efficiencies into the office world. You would have everyone in an open office
with the manager slighly raised up behind everyone so he could monitor them to
ensure everyone was working at peak efficiency. Plus the modern leader of open
offices, a company I forgot the name of in Colorado implemented and pushed
open offices into the modern world, and then killed the practice internally in
less than 2 years.

~~~
sct202
I hate the open office plans with no view blockers or ones that are too low
that peoples eyes peek over. It's so distracting to see movement or peoples
eyes that I now deliberately lower my chair as far as it goes so that the tiny
short wall blocks everything.

------
jackfoxy
35+ years in the IT workforce here.

Yep, dumbest idea ever.

The vast majority of my office time was in cubicles, which are pretty good.
Usually enough privacy to get things done. I did have a glassed-in private
office for about a year at one company. That was productivity heaven. In
retrospect I was dumb to leave that company when I did, but they started
demolishing offices for cubicles about 2 years later. It is all about
efficient use of real estate.

I've been at a millennial run company for the last 6 years, first 4 in open
space. What a productivity fuck, for all the often repeated reasons. And I
really consider them de-humanizing. I gave up on trying to explain this to
management years ago.

Working from home the last 2 years. Whenever I do visit the home office
nothing gets done. Looking at what my colleagues do, I think they only ever
get much done on work form home days.

~~~
dehrmann
> The vast majority of my office time was in cubicles, which are pretty good.

I remember watching "Office Space" circa 2000 and it looked pretty soul
crushing, and working in pre-FAANG big tech around 2006, it felt very
mechanical and depressing. I get your gripes, but I think some is also rosy
retrospection.

~~~
debaserab2
It was dull, gray, and lacking in character but it sure beats sitting elbow to
elbow cafeteria style trying to get work done.

~~~
falcolas
I did appreciate how easy it was to liven it up inside your own cubicle
though. There are entire lines of office products designed to work with
cubicle walls. I had posters, calendars, and random knicknacks, and I was able
to create a space where I felt happy. I've never been able to personalize a
space the same way since.

Hell, at my current job personalization of your space is actively discouraged,
since there's a culture of hot-desking if you're coming in from another
office.

~~~
moron4hire
Ah yeah, hot-desking, the next progression in cost-savings-cum-"oh no,
actually, this is about collaboration!" So much collaboration that I can't
expect to always have my seat with my team?

------
Apocryphon
If workers rights or material concerns won’t inspire software engineers to
consider organizing, perhaps day to day work “lifestyle” hassles like open
offices will. It’s been often repeated that developers eschew organizing
because one can always go and find a better paying job if they don’t like the
work environment they’re in- but good luck trying to find a workplace that
gives the average developer their own office instead of adhering to the
industry standard.

Perhaps if engineers had some type of labor union, professional association,
or guild, then they can collectively stand up to management and get rid of
annoyances like open offices. Why not? If it’s something universally unpopular
with hackers, yet embraced by management, doesn’t that provide a valid use
case for organizing? Or are we just going to forever grouse about it until
management loses interest on their own and embraces an even worse floor plan
fad?

And consider the other nearly-ubiquitous or common annoyances in tech- unpaid
overtime, lack of support for remote work, whiteboard interviews. Why don’t
the workers in the industry rally to solve them, if those in charge are
unwilling to? If we care so much about “disruption”, why are we so content
with the status quo of work?

Upton Sinclair said of _The Jungle_ that he was aiming for the public’s heart
and hit it in the stomach. Perhaps software engineers will not be appealed to
by arguments or neither the heart, nor the stomach- but of the flow.

~~~
duxup
Man "The Jungle" ... that's a far far cry from open offices.

Open offices is a crazy reason to organize / take the union route.

~~~
Apocryphon
It is, but engineers are compensated at (relatively) crazy levels , so
different incentives will need to be given for them to organize. Sometimes
social change occurs over the most trivial of issues- certainly wars have been
fought over less.

And again, what’s the solution to a problem that management almost universally
ignores, while workers mostly detest, if applying organized labor pressure
isn’t feasible? To wait for management to change their minds? To invent cheap
real estate where each engineer can be granted their own office? To fight for
remote work- so another industry standard that would also involve either mgmt.
fads to change or workers to collectively protest?

------
rrauenza
Isn't increasing workspace density the real reason this is done with
collaboration just used as the public rationale?

~~~
Mikeb85
Pretty much. Real estate is expensive.

~~~
montagg
I’d be really curious how much of a hit to people’s salary they would be
willing to take, or the reduced capabilities of their business, to get an open
office environment.

I worked with an internal team that created a brand new office for a decently-
sized tech company. We had this exact debate: open or closed. We explored
closed, or versions of it (see Spotify’s team rooms as a great example of a
compromise), but the end result was the same: if we expected to grow
substantially and expand our business a lot, real estate would be the biggest
bottleneck. We’d literally have to pay people less and deliver slower if we
wanted to make that trade off, and all the companies we talk to who had gone
with some form of closed office had shifted to open over time because the
costs were huge.

We did the next best thing, because we definitely heard the concerns of people
that getting work done at work really was harder than it should be: we created
as much private space for 1-2 people as possible that lots of people could
use, so you got to decide whether you were in at your desk mode or heads down
mode. Several years later, this seems to work all right. There’s still a
desire to work from home occasionally, and my teams are pretty understanding
about that. Even with the open office plan, though, we still have to rent
virtually every open space around us.

~~~
falcolas
It wouldn't have to be much of a salary cut. If you amortize the up-front cost
for around a 110 square foot office, the total is only about $5,000 a year
(more than an open office).

45 additional square feet at (a vastly overestimated) $100 per year per square
foot for rent. $5,000 construction costs amortized over 10 years.

~~~
montagg
The way we thought about it was primarily butts in seats. For simplicity, if
open office = about 1000, a reasonable closed office environment for us would
have housed about half of that. If we needed 1000 to deliver product X, we’d
either deliver product X over double the time or for double the (real estate)
cost plus the non-local collaboration cost (not insurmountable, but it’s part
of the tradeoff).

We’d need to see a closed office productivity increase of double or more to
justify it, and we just couldn’t, even talking to other companies that had the
kind of collaborative environment we thought of as ideal if we had infinite
space. They didn’t see increases at that level.

To be clear, I’m seriously simplifying here. There are so many other
considerations like workplace happiness, some amount of creative “collision”
differences, churn and burnout, different individual needs for privacy,
whether certain collaboration styles enabled by space fit the company culture,
the type of work that’s happening, how likely that team structures will be the
same in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years. Ultimately, we bet on space flexibility and
giving teams more control over their space than giving everyone an office or
team room. It’s hard to say what the alternate history would have been, but we
do pretty regular surveys about workplace happiness and have seen significant
positive increases compared to our old office (also open but much more rigid,
far fewer private spaces) and general happiness with people’s access to
private space and ability to get work done.

Edit: I also don’t want to overgeneralize. This made sense for us, but I think
there are lots of situations where it does not make sense to have an open
office, especially if you have a smaller company stocked primarily with very,
very high performers doing individually-driven but very deep creative work (in
the sense of integrating a lot of information). I would hope all companies
would be more thoughtful about it, but I wanted to provide a little look at
how a company that values privacy and enabling deep work might still arrive at
an open office.

~~~
loco5niner
> giving teams more control over their space

Unfortunately, in an open environment, the most important factors are
uncontrollable.

------
dualboot
The other side of this is that a very large percentage of folks in our
industry seem to have social anxiety-spectrum issues.

Folks without those don't seem to understand how much energy is being burned
through just being out in the open and on display for all of your coworkers.
It's not something I, personally, have control over.

The time I've spent in "open concept" work places, I finish every day
frustrated with my ability to accomplish tasks and physically and emotionally
drained.

That takes a very serious toll over time.

I've moved on from jobs due to this type of work environment.

~~~
Enginerrrd
I've had the opposite experience. I had a job where half the floor plan was
cubicals and half was open plan where you had groups of 2-3 people in a sort
of cove.

I started in the cubicle section. And I hated my job. Every day felt draining
to the soul. I felt invisible and isolated and I hated it. I was making no
progress in the organization. I'd constantly find excuses to leave my desk
just to see another human face. My desk was a cluttered mess and I just hated
my life. We got some new hires, so I got to shuffle over to one of the coves.

It was like getting a totally different job where all of a sudden I loved
coming into work. I loved seeing people. We communicated efficiently, I
organized my space effectively because it was so visible to everyone. I could
catch errors others were making as they were going and pretty soon they'd come
line up to get help on stuff. We were so much more efficient than letting
people fail for longer, run up the client bill, and then have to redo
everything. The lines of communication were opened up with me acting as a hub
of sorts and so we came up with a lot of innovations in that time that made
our processes more efficient.

And when we had to do overtime, it was a communal activity. The feeling was
that of a team.

Open concept is my jam.

~~~
ergothus
One of my offices, after vocal complaints about the open office plan, did a
quick survey.

Roughly 50% were fine with the open office plan. (this office was mainly devs,
HR, recruiting, and data scientists) As someone that is drained by social
interactions (I _like_ them, but afterwards I'm drained, not energized), that
is easily distracted by movement, and who can't hear conversations in the
background without instinctively trying to focus on what is being said, open
offices are hell for me.

I was utterly mystified by the "other" 50%. How do you just "choose" what to
focus on? That's like controlling a reflex. I knew there were extraverts, but
SO MANY?!

~~~
mumblemumble
Can't find it anymore, but I could swear there was a study that recently hit
the HN front page that found that everyone's productivity objectively takes a
hit in a distracting environment. But, subjectively, extraverts _perceive_
themselves as being more productive, while introverts don't.

~~~
bjornjajajaja
Yup it’s been proven that libraries are good places to get work done not
cafeterias.

They really should have collaborative AND personal spaces. Not a forced
airport-like office setup.

What were they smoking when they designed those?

~~~
im3w1l
For me, a little noise is the worst. A busy cafe with a constant level of
noise is easy for me to tune out. If everyone is silent but like every 30s
something happens: Someone coughs, a bag of snacks is rustled, a cardboard
strap is opened. That's the worst.

~~~
cmroanirgo
Agreed.

I'm fine when the general level of noise is way up, because there's less for
the brain to latch onto and get distracted by. I've churned out serious lines
of code in a noisy cafe, but always churn out more when I'm at home: my
noises, no distractions.

It's the human interaction though that drags me away from the work-from-
home/work-in-a-cubicle lifestyle.

I find even quiet conversations in an open environment to be the worst of all
distractions. The clacking of pens and the slurping of drinks in a library set
my teeth on edge, forcing me to wear headphones, which means I may as well be
outside with the rabble.

~~~
whalabi
This makes me wonder if the core of the problem is the lack of control over
your own environment somehow

------
achow
> _The Harvard study, by contrast, undercuts the entire premise that justifies
> the fad. And that leaves companies with only one justification for moving to
> an open plan office: less floor space, and therefore a lower rent._

From beginning this was the reason - because when planning for the office the
cost difference between open/close office would show up in the Excel files -
loss of productivity no Excel or Project Mgmt software can capture (it is
hand-wavy stuff for CFO office).

Apart from rent, the cost of HVAC (heating, cooling) is drastically reduced -
installation, operation and maintenance - open office has more efficient
distribution due to no obstructing walls, lesser duct outlets - in closed
office plan, each office needs to have at least one outlet, most of the time
more than one.

Then ofcourse saving on drywalls, doors, locks, etc.

~~~
whatsmyusername
Yep, and I've used those arguments to justify working from home permanently
before.

Last time I just found out when the bean counters were coming around and
worked from home the days they were in the office. When the plan came out and
they hadn't figure out a slot for me I just told them I work from home and
started doing it full time. Problem solved.

Caveat: It helped we were an acquisition. Roles and norms were very in flux.
I'd done work in other areas to pass off all my onsite responsibilities to the
purchaser.

------
duxup
I worked in an office that was redesigned several times.

After the last round of absurdly low / no cube walls. I bought myself some
shooting earmuffs to block out the noise / a socially friendly way of
signaling to others I should not be interrupted.

It was telling that within a week half the team had amazon boxes on their desk
and similar earmuffs.

Now for very small teams with EVERYONE handling the situation properly. I
think the open space can work, but it has to be VERY specific to department
and folks who work well together.

Eventually I ended up in a quiet corner of the office with half a dozen folks
who were really good about talking to each other and it was super efficient
... but MAN that is not something you can just "make happen" and if one person
/ manager (especially managers) is bad about it... it's a mess.

------
monkeynotes
I am not sure why employees would message and email more if they can just turn
their chair around to chat about something they are working on.

Does anyone have experience of this? I have worked in open plan offices since
1999 and I've never experienced productivity problems. If anything I'd expect
working in a cube would lead to more time wasted cruising websites since your
screen is more obscured. I dunno, I've only worked in cubes a handful of
times.

~~~
Androider
Simple, when you go visit someone in a private office you can close the door
and have a long conversation about your topic and really hash out the details.
If you turn around and start blabbering to one of your teammates in an open
office plan, everyone within hearing distance will want to murder you. If
you're not aware of this, I guarantee everyone within 30 feet of you is
already wearing headphones and hates you.

So now you have to coordinate on Slack to go to one of the shared team meeting
rooms instead. At that point you might as well have your conversation in
Slack, even if the person is sitting right next to you. And that's the state
of open offices today, co-located but void of any actual collaboration.

I've worked in single person offices, 2-3 person offices and open offices. 2-3
person offices where everyone works on the same thing is the best, by far.
Remote work is the new private office, not quite as good as a 2-3 person
office, but infinitely better than an open office.

~~~
bradlys
Honestly, I don't see this as a thing once you get to a certain size. It used
to be a thing at my workplace when we were smaller. However, now, the place is
just so loud with conversation/whatever on a daily basis that people are less
bothered by individual conversations near them. It's like complaining about
conversation next to you when you're in a cafeteria full of it already.

Everyone wears headphones at my place if they're trying to focus. Last job
literally handed out construction ear muffs.

Also, all the rooms are taken up by meetings. Mostly by business/product.
There's no rooms left for engineers to hash things out, frequently.

~~~
munificent
_> However, now, the place is just so loud with conversation/whatever on a
daily basis that people are less bothered by individual conversations near
them._

I cannot adequately describe the horror this sentence induces in me.

~~~
bradlys
Feel like it's pretty normal in SV - but, I don't like it either.

I haven't really been in a startup office that wasn't this way in quite a
while. First startup I was at played music all the time - that wasn't great.
Second place (not a startup) had engineers stationed next to sales people who
had to be on the phone all the time at their desks. Third one - the sales
folks were further away but everyone not in engineering was so loud that they
gave those muffs out (lots of customer service reps sat near engineering too -
lots of phone calls). And now I am at one where everyone is next to everyone
even at a billion dollar company. Each person gets a 60"x30" desk (it might be
smaller actually) and they shove 6-8 of them together in groups of 2x3 or 2x4.
Then put them in really close proximity where you have about 12-18" between
your chair at your desk and the person behind you. Not uncommon to run into
the person behind you. This is for a company with over $100mil in funding.
There's about 100 people in the office. It's not a very large office at all.

Most people just don't join the company if it's an issue - but I don't think
anyone has cited that as an issue yet. Most people complain more about the
terrible codebase or poor management or bad numbers or poor compensation.
(Inclusive or)

------
abawany
I was reading "Bloomberg by Bloomberg" over the weekend and I thought his
opinion on the topic was relevant since I believe Bloomberg was one of the
first major workplaces that placed everyone in tight open-office type
environments. My understanding of his opinion on the topic was: yes there are
distractions but you also learn new things. Fundamentally I think there is
considerable misunderstanding between people who subscribe to the above view
and people (like me) who see considerable personal performance improvements
when allowed to work distraction-free. It is not clear to me that
"concentration spaces" and etc. are a solution/concession since IME most of
the time they are filled with people on phone meetings; even if you find an
empty one, you will still hear the people next to you due to the thin walls
and the necessary loudness. Edit: the relevant part in the book was at page
163 for my edition in the chapter "Management 101".

~~~
mumblemumble
> yes there are distractions but you also learn new things

I've found that, in open plan offices, attempting to mentor or be mentored on
something is a great way to earn dirty looks from anyone who's unfortunate
enough to be sitting nearby. If you do it often, people will start griping
about you behind your back.

Mini meeting rooms _can_ work, when you can find them, for about a year. After
that, the company will respond to complaints that people will hang out in them
for hours on end (which I could swear was the point, but I digress) by
requiring them to be reserved ahead of time in Outlook. Which puts the brakes
on using them for genuine collaboration, because reserving meeting rooms in
Outlook is a minor hassle, especially if you're a Linux or Mac user, and it's
ultimately easier and less demoralizing to just not talk to each other than it
is to play a game of, "Mother may I," whenever you want to have an impromptu
discussion.

~~~
beart
The reason you can't hang out in them is because there are never enough
rooms... which is really the root of the problem.

~~~
mumblemumble
Yep.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out that the square footage you
need for an open plan office plus a sufficient amount of meeting space ends up
being greater than the square footage you need for a more traditional style of
office. The last open plan office I worked at was probably 1/3 meeting spaces,
and it still didn't feel like enough.

~~~
beart
Yes - this is because cubes double as offices for small meetings. For every
cube you remove, you also remove a 2 or 3 person office.

------
erikbye
My biggest gripes with open-plan offices (aside from the usual productivity
cost):

\- Listening to coworkers' lengthy private calls.

\- You can't talk in confidence with any of your coworkers, so the only talks
you have, the only things you say, are what you are OK with everyone nearby
hearing. It hurts possible relationships/bonding (probably a positive for
management), but it also hurts professional growth.

\- When we ask questions, we learn from each other and solve problems; we get
things done. However, many are not that cool with asking what they think might
be a stupid question (or one that reveals a lack of knowledge). With several
people nearby listening in? Forget it!

~~~
devmunchies
>You can't talk in confidence with any of your coworkers, so the only talks
you have, the only things you say, are what you are OK with everyone nearby
hearing. It hurts possible relationships/bonding.

very insightful. makes perfect sense. Even a mild joke might offend someone so
you subconsciously decide to not say it in public, which definitely prevents
bonding.

------
habosa
There are definitely problems with the open office but one thing I can say is
that there is truly a different energy to the office when it's open and people
can chat spontaneously. Some of my best projects have started this way, as
have all my office friendships.

I'd definitely get more heads-down work done in a private office setting.
However in that setting I'd mostly be annoyed I couldn't just work from my
home office, since I'd be commuting to spend 80%+ of my time alone anyway.

~~~
0xffff2
I never understand this line of reasoning. I have my own office. It's right
next to most of my team's offices. My door is open 90% of the time. If someone
wants to chat spontaneously, I don't think walking 15 feet is going to stop
them.

~~~
victords
Wouldn’t you agree it’s much more practical and inviting if you could just
turn around a talk?

I’d imagine that if I needed to get up, walk up there and knock on my
coworker’s door, I’d rather just message him.

And a text conversation and face to face one are very different and could lead
it to different places.

~~~
organsnyder
My experience has been the opposite. People in open offices tend to avoid in-
depth conversations because they don't want to disturb their neighbors;
instead, they take conversations into conference rooms. The only people
holding conversations in the open space are those talking about non-work
topics (usually TV shows, movies, or sports), and seemingly lacking all
awareness that they're disturbing the people trying to be productive.

~~~
falcolas
And since all conversations require a conference room, the conference rooms
are always full of people talking.

~~~
MandieD
Unless the conference room has already been booked by someone wanting a
private office for a few hours.

------
kazinator
The interaction _will_ take place if it is scripted in a dialog.

Open-plan offices are useful in movies and dramas that have office settings or
scenes.

It makes these scenes more dynamic, since several characters can see each
other across the room and interact directly, and lots of "extras" can be shown
in a single camera angle.

I have a feeling that such scenes may have driven some of the open office
initiatives in actual workplaces. ("It was so cool in that movie ...").

------
PopeDotNinja
The dumbest thing about open office plans is everyone puts on headphones and
wants to communicate through Slack. I've got an idea. Let's all commute to the
office and pretend we're remote!

~~~
commandlinefan
> puts on headphones

In addition to which, music in your ear can be just as distracting when
actually trying to focus on _learning_ something new as a co-worker blabbing
on a conference call. The assumption behind open offices is that nobody will
ever need to learn anything new: the exact opposite of what this new
“knowledge economy” was supposed to be about.

~~~
PaulStatezny
Agreed.

I regularly wear earplugs with headphones over them, blasting white noise.
That way I can block out the noise of loud conversations 10 feet away without
(1) getting distracted by music or (2) damaging my hearing.

It's kind of ridiculous, but if I'm going to get focused work done it's my
best option.

I'd get more done in a library-like space or an office for sure.

------
CM30
They're also a genuine hassle/pain for anyone who happens to be on the
autistic spectrum, or who has trouble with social anxiety in general. As
someone in that situation, open plan offices are basically a recipe for
constant stress and sensory overload.

Either way, it's worrying given those in said situation are statistically
likely to find it challenging to find employment as it is, and software
engineering/web development/programming is an area which is seen as more
suitable for them.

As for why it's so common? Well there are a few reasons given in other
comments, but I suspect a major one is that managers/boss/CEOs tend to be more
extraverted than average. So they end up going with office designs that they
would have wanted to work in, not ones their employees would work better in.

------
raindropm
and here I am, at my newly renovate office with _gasp_ open plan. We have some
cliché things like table tennis desk, rock climbing space(that no one have a
time to climb, of course) and garden plot with fresh vegetable(just for show
off at new office opening day), that HR staff told us that employee can plant
their own after that(good luck with that) Everything about it screams
pretentious and dumb.

What's better, we have a meeting room that decorate like a kitchen, with no
door and the wall that is not rise to the ceiling, if you know what I mean.
The noise level comes from that 'meeting room' is just unbearable. The worst
meeting room design I've seen in my life.

The only thing I can do is put on my trusty noise-cancelling headphones,
thanks god for this miraculous technology in this noisy world.

~~~
slumdev
> The only thing I can do is put on my trusty noise-cancelling headphones

That's not literally the only thing you could do. You could quit.

I'll never again make the mistake of hiring on somewhere without first seeing
the working environment. Too many times...

~~~
raindropm
> That's not literally the only thing you could do. You could quit.

Well, that's one big choice to make haha.

------
cjfd
Normally I don't suffer that much from having roommates but today I was
diagnosing a difficult problem and the noise from people talking to each
other, then on the phone, then leaving, then coming back and so on. Every time
that happened my train of thought was lost again. It was pretty terrible.

Incidentally, the problem was a memory leak in asynchronous code and the cause
turned out to be the google test framework keeping a reference to a future
that could otherwise have been destroyed.

------
lliamander
One of the biggest things I miss not being in a cubicle is that I no longer
have my own whiteboard. Without whiteboard space, you hamstring a developers
ability to think and to communicate with others.

~~~
anthonypasq
there is this revolutionary technology called paper that still exists

~~~
lliamander
You know, I tried it[1], but it's still got some kinks to work out.

[1][https://www.dropbox.com/paper](https://www.dropbox.com/paper)

------
anthony_barker
IBM did some productivity study in the 70s. Top productivity was 2 people in
an office.

I had one of those IBM offices back in the day. Great for IT productivity.

~~~
devmunchies
What do you do about gas? I work remote in my own rented space and I can let
one _RIP_ without thinking about it. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPP... PFFFFFTTtt...

I can't imagine its comfortable holding it in until you use the bathroom.

------
pradn
I'm currently at the Google NYC office and no one here says it's more
efficient. It's just a way to pack more people into valuable real estate. Full
stop.

------
cmsonger
For the first time in a VERY long career, I joined Google a few years ago,
which is an open office company.

The thing I noticed in the first week: Everyone avoided eye contact all the
time. The thing I noted after six months: I'd learned to avoid eye contact at
all times.

So I'm kind of not surprised. It was counter intuitive to me that open office
was less social; but personal experience suggests that open office is less
social.

~~~
devmunchies
I've been working remote and i don't remember this. Is it because you don't
want people to talk to you? Kind of like avoiding eye contact with someone who
is going to ask you for money?

~~~
clarry
If you pay attention to people at all, it has a potential to distract you from
whatever work you're trying to focus on, every time. If you're in a space
where you have people moving about and coming and going in and out of your
field of view, you need to learn to pay no attention so that you don't get
distracted all the time. The best way is to focus on the screen in front of
you and avoid making accidental eye contact with people.

------
knightofmars
I realize it's opinion, but I'm amazed that people think cubicles are privacy.
I get that you feel more productive and that there is likely a reduction in
visual distraction but it's an illusion of privacy, it ends up being a "lesser
of two evils" scenario. Providing everyone with an office that has a closing
door (while more expensive) has the highest productivity outcome.

Fun dive into history, the guy who invented cubicles regretted doing it[1].

[1] [https://www.history.com/news/why-the-inventor-of-the-
cubicle...](https://www.history.com/news/why-the-inventor-of-the-cubicle-came-
to-despise-his-own-creation)

~~~
munificent
I think you may be taking "privacy" a little too literally. A "privacy fence"
in your backyard does not literally shield your entire property from
observation. But it interrupt sightlines and lower how "social" the space
_feels_. When it comes to focus and productivity, that is often enough.

~~~
knightofmars
"When it comes to focus and productivity, that is often enough."

Based on your own personal criteria of what "enough" is. And what you're
attempting to optimize for. An office is a place where people are intended to
be productive. If _real_ privacy enables people to be the most productive then
optimizing for something else (cost) is quite possibly a huge mistake on a
long running timeline.

Having been in cubicles, I've overheard enough conversations from co-workers
that should have been private related to both business and personal life.

I don't know what your experience is, but having spent years in a "cube farm",
I'm intimately aware of the differences between having a cube and an open
office. Distractions in a cubicle may be reduced but noise, smells, and other
distractions are the facts of life when you have over a certain number of
people within a small enough area. I've lived it, it's a half-measure and
while it may improve productivity over an open office it's also just a cost-
saving measure with the side-effect of having a tax write-off at the end of a
day.

------
veeralpatel979
I wonder if ease of setup has something to do with the popularity of open
offices, especially for startups?

1\. After choosing an office setup, a company is not likely to change it
unless it needs to

2\. You can set up an open office in an afternoon. Buy some desks and chairs
from Ikea and let people arrange them

3\. On the other hand, I wouldn't know where to start in order to procure
cubicles/private offices.

4\. Also, setting up cubicles and private offices involves some construction
work. So it takes longer

Also: open offices may be used to try to create a culture of openness and
egalitarianism (if even the managers are made to use desks).

For large companies, the reasons above don't make sense, but they do for
startups, in my view.

~~~
xp84
^- THIS. And to be fair, it's probably nearly always the right decision for a
startup that has no idea if it will even be able to put out its first product.
Sinking like $300k into an office build-out of any kind before you hire your
first key staff would be nuts.

So a startup pretty much automatically is gonna start out looking like what
you described in #2. And the inertia keeps them with that setup even after
they have the funds to do it right. AND then the big companies wanted to
"skin" their environments to _look like_ a startup - so they opt for
commercial open office furniture that, while the costs are still dramatically
more than the IKEA route, usually offers little actual advantage over the $60
tables and chairs of the real early-stage startup.

~~~
veeralpatel979
If I build a startup that gets to the stage where I'm hiring people, I'm going
to consider providing offices (private or shared) for my engineers, as a way
to attract talent.

I'm surprised more employers aren't doing this. Yes it costs more but (1) you
get a lot more output out of your employees and (2) it helps you hire and
retain good employees.

------
let_var
Something else to think critically - 1\. Open space has a greater chance to
skew your peer evaluations. Social aspects ends up being the numero uno
factor. With cubicles you know others thru their work. This is not entirely
black and white, but I strongly believe there's some truth to it. 2\. Deep
thinking is difficult if not impossible in open spaces.

I was fortunate enough to start my career in cubicle in a research lab. That
was fantastic! I had a dip when I was introduced to open space. Got lucky
again with another company that had cubicles. For the last 5 years, it has
been open space mayhem.

------
acd
Totally agree.

IT and other staff needs peace and quiet to concentrate to be productive.
People interact less in open plan offices and tend to put on head phones to
silence the noise. Since you produce less in open plan offices yes they are
not smart.

Also there is link to noise pulltion and overall health. Open Office spaces
will be more noisy than private offices. [https://www.pac-
intl.com/pdf/NoisePollutionTakesTollonHealth...](https://www.pac-
intl.com/pdf/NoisePollutionTakesTollonHealthandHappiness.pdf)

Plus you are more likely to get sick in an open office, for example if you
neighbor sneezes. "Compared to cellular offices, occupants in 2-person offices
had 50% more days of sickness absence [rate ratio (RR) 1.50, 95% confidence
interval (95% CI) 1.13–1.98], occupants in 3–6-person offices had 36% more
days of sickness absence (RR 1.36, 95% CI 1.08–1.73), and occupants in open-
plan offices (>6 persons) had 62% more days of sickness absence (RR 1.62, 95%
CI 1.30–2.02)."

Link to study
[https://www.sjweh.fi/show_abstract.php?abstract_id=3167](https://www.sjweh.fi/show_abstract.php?abstract_id=3167)

[https://www.rivier.edu/academics/blog-posts/the-price-of-
col...](https://www.rivier.edu/academics/blog-posts/the-price-of-
collaboration-open-office-environments-and-employee-productivity/)

~~~
onion2k
_IT and other staff needs peace and quiet to concentrate to be productive._

I'm not disputing that open plan offices are unproductive, but if you run a
company it's just much cheaper to have an open plan office. In many places in
the worls rent is high enough for more complex layouts that it would be
cheaper to have a few extra junior staff than to have a different office
structure.

While it could definitely be less productive, it might actually be more
profitable to have an open layout.

This doesn't really explain why companies that build their own offices stick
to open plan, but it's definitely the reason for small companies.

~~~
acd
Increased real estate prices has removed private offices for many.

------
jodrellblank
What happened to Joel Spolsky’s blog-famous push for private offices in Fog
Creek Software, when he moved to StackExchange did they carry that idea on?

If open plan offices are so bad for “productivity”, why don’t they get
selected out by market forces?

Is it Price’s Law, the square root of the number of employees do half the
work, and the rest doesn’t matter if they have offices or cattle desks, high
or low productivity - what most of us do doesn’t matter enough to matter?

~~~
epicureanideal
I think bad productivity office plans don't get selected out by market forces
because almost everyone is doing it. And the small number of companies not
doing it are still competing with a much larger number of companies in a
situation where luck is a big part of the outcome. So the effect gets drowned
out, I'm thinking.

------
monkin
It's interesting to see how studies like that change over time. I remember
many from early 2000 saying that open-space are mind-changing and better for
productivity.

Few examples:
[http://www.luchetti.com/links/cwe_neocon.pdf](http://www.luchetti.com/links/cwe_neocon.pdf),
[https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-
magazine/pages/0902cov...](https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-
magazine/pages/0902covstory_offices.aspx) or
[https://www.apa.org/monitor/may02/cubicle](https://www.apa.org/monitor/may02/cubicle)

I never cared about office design, until only I can see my screen. Just hate
when people watch how I work, ask questions or giving unwanted advice.

~~~
loco5niner
It doesn't seem like those studies say that...

Here are quotes from all 3 links.

> Becker concedes that no office environment is perfect. In open offices, for
> example, there will still be those who irritate peers by bellowing into the
> phone. Wireless phones may be one solution to such problems, he says, but a
> more ideal one is giving workers a choice of work environments to fit the
> demands of different tasks--what he calls the "cafeteria-style office."

> The three most often reported workplace qualities that have the greatest
> effect on individual and team performance, as well as job satisfaction, were
> ranked as follows: 1\. Ability To Do Distraction-Free Solo Work 2\. Support
> for Impromptu Interactions 3\. Support for Meetings and Undistracted
> Groupwork

> ...he’s identified the 10 most important predictors of job performance. The
> top two are: The ability to do distraction-free work for teams and
> individuals. The ability to have easy, frequent, informal interactions.

> For Brill, the equation is simple: Workers spend the majority of their time
> in private or near-private activity. As a result, he advocates giving each
> person a private office, no matter how small.

------
venantius
This article is from 2018 and gets posted pretty regularly. I happen to agree
with its core thesis but I'm not sure we get anything out of having it on the
front page again.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Good point - I stumbled on the article again and decided to post it. It
already has ~20 comments, and it's on the front page. My take is that even if
the article is not the best on the topic, the conversation about it is
happening.

I don't think there's an article out there that I would consider far superior
to this. If there is, please post it, I'd upvote it in a heartbeat.

Context: I mostly work remote (a combination of luck, laziness, and my ability
to ask for things I really want), but every time I have to be in the office
(like today, leaving home in ~30 minutes), I have a weird, unpleasant feeling.

I know I don't like open floor plans.

I particularly don't like that people walking behind me can see my monitor.

I don't like that I can't take calls without disturbing others. Or that
getting a private room to talk or make a video call is difficult.

Yesterday, for example, I had to leave a room where I was having a call
because someone else had booked it, but I needed to extend the call by another
~15 minutes, so I ended up finishing it in the corridors next to the
restrooms.

And mind you, I work with (not for) a great firm, people are super nice - but
nobody seems to fully understand how toxic an open office space can be for
people.

Finally, I also don't like that startups trying to partially solving these
problems are getting funded like crazy, based on a relatively crappy product
[0] and an expensive price tag.

[0]: [https://room.com/](https://room.com/)

------
conductr
I like how it’s discussed as a surprise side effect. Collaboration and
productivity are inversely related. Adding collaboration can rarely ever
increase productivity and the fact that we needed years of open office plans
and a Harvard study to tell us this is insane.

------
johnminter
I had a cubicle before they were popular - at Florida State U as an
undergraduate from 1973-1977. They were great for studying and I could monitor
my experiments in the lab just outside my cubicle.

I had a small office in grad school and in my first job I shared an office
with another scientist for a couple of years before I got my own. Having a
space of my own made it easier to concentrate. Because I worked in a
analytical sciences lab, interruptions were frequent (clients dropping of
samples ), so I learned to get in 1-2 hrs before most others so I could focus
on critical projects.

The commotion in open bull-pens really interrupts one's train of thought and
greatly reduces productivity.

------
rochak
Couldn't agree more. I have a problem where I can't concentrate on anything if
there are people talking around me. I have to put on my headphones and put on
some soft music but sometimes even that is not enough. I don't know if this is
a problem with me or many people, but I need silence to think clearly. It is
also the reason why I fail interviews where the company is interviewing many
people in parallel in the same room. How the hell is anyone supposed to solve
a problem with people constantly murmuring all around you?

------
neilobremski
It's harder to have conversations in an open office because they disturb non-
participants. I find myself wasting time booking conference rooms when I could
have simply popped into so-and-so's office.

I remember a long long time ago when the company I worked for did a big move
and went from offices to cubes. I was young and naive and willing to try the
experiment but within a month or two I regretted the change and things haven't
gone back since.

I'd prefer sharing an office rather than an entire floor.

------
musicale
At one large company I am aware of they actually asked people what they wanted
and the overwhelming response was walled offices with doors, even if they were
small. So that's what they built, and it was very popular. Most of them had
outward and inward windows with blinds that could be closed, which was also
nice.

Unfortunately over time the company shifted to open plan for newer buildings
since that enabled them to cram more people into smaller spaces.

------
leto_ii
Since I started following HN I've seen these types of articles being posted
with some regularity.

The findings usually point in the same direction and the press write-up always
tries to come up with explanations for why companies decide to do open space
offices, how these were thought to improve collaboration etc.

At my previous job I have worked for 4 years exclusively in an open space,
sometimes even with hot-desking (including for developers and data
scientists!).

The impact on my ability to focus and on my mood has been catastrophic. Over
time I ended up losing a lot of my ability for deep focus and I became stuck
in this mode of superficial thinking that pushed me to switch between a bunch
of menial tasks all the time.

My firm belief is that open plan offices are used simply because they're the
cheapest way to cram people in a space. The lack of walls and barriers makes
it really easy to add desks, the cost of furnishing the place is minimal,
management can always walk up to people to delegate tasks or ask questions
etc.

I think that this so-called fad is here to stay as long as employees (and
especially those in tech) do not collectively demand some changes.

~~~
marcosdumay
> as long as employees (and especially those in tech) do not collectively
> demand some changes

If my employer has a procedure that reduces the productivity of everybody that
they hire, why should I care? It does not reduce my competitivity, and my
salary is set by the market, not by any single employer.

~~~
dijit
I think the parent gave a good example of how it affected him long term. And I
have to say the experience is mirrored with me. My attention span is not even
1/10th what it was when I started in this industry (where I had a team-
office), and I don't think it would return very quickly if ever.

There could be other factors, for sure, but your brain is a muscle, if you do
not exercise it (focus) then it will atrophy.

------
tonfreed
Always worked in open plan offices, would never work in cubicles. I'd find it
soul destroying if I felt like I was alone all day.

The thing that shits me is hotdesking. That there is some bullshit. I worked
with a client on site where everything was a hotdesk, I had to fight for the
good monitor setups every day and deal with a clean desk policy which meant my
notes and shit were always in my locker when I needed them.

------
briandilley
What about team based offices? Where a team of ~4 or ~5 people share an
office?

~~~
munificent
This is my favorite layout. My hunch is that tech companies shy away from this
in part because team sizes change pretty frequently and it's more hard to
physically accomodate that.

------
tannerc
Not every solution will solve every problem for every person.

Some people thrive in open environments, some don’t. Some people need
accidental encounters to propel innovative change, some don’t.

To say these types of cultures are “dumb” (or even the opposite) is akin
saying “peanut butter is the worst possible thing you could ever eat!” just
because _you’re_ allergic to it.

~~~
influx
My hypothesis is that this style of office is detrimental to most software
engineers. Not sure how to prove that though!

~~~
vikramkr
A randomized controlled trial with some clear prospectively defined measure of
detriment would be how to prove that. Actually running a trial like that is
going to be logistically near impossible though.

------
ajkjk
I like open offices. I feel like you only hear the angry voices on subjects
like this. I would get so depressed in a closed office that I just wouldn't
work there, so you'd never find me in one.

I'm also a person who had to be at cafes or libraries to do good work. Working
at home drives me crazy.

But I think offices should accommodate every kind of person.

------
jmilloy
Regardless of your personal preference, it should be obvious that offices and
productivity are not one-size-fits-all.

We seem to enjoy sharing personal anecdotes and preferences here regarding
open plan, cubicles, home office, etc, and I find these discussions
interesting. But I think the OP is a bit more interesting, because it
summarizes some studies about both personal productivity _and_ interactive
teamwork.

Furthermore, they make the argument that it is a bad "management fad". In
other words, since different folks/teams/projects work best in different
arrangements, when an office accomodates all sorts, it should succeed, whereas
management that forces _any one_ arrangement will fail for some people. The
fact that it is a fad is precisely the problem inasmuch as causes management
to select open plan offices _exclusively_.

------
user00012-ab
Every open office I've worked in, the decision to have an open layout was made
by people that were in offices.

~~~
loco5niner
... and remained in offices (whether an official office, or a conference room
that became an "unofficial" office)

------
ulfw
God I couldn't agree more. Sadly most of my last couple of jobs found it so
hip and cool for even the CEO to have 'no office' (in reality each and
everyone had a 'meeting room' only bookable by them with personal affects in
them. Uhuh. No 'office')

------
ehmish
As a millennial who has worked in open plan environments all my career, open
plan offices are pretty good, so long as you've got headphones. I've got no
problem with people interrupting people of they need me, but otherwise the
noise of people chatting about things is completely drowned out by the music.
The benefit is that if you've got an issue that you can't solve yourself you
literally just have to just walk across the room at most to ask someone, which
reduces the friction of doing that and thereby increases the likelihood hood
of me doing it, meaning I spend less time blocked on solving a problem that
others have solved before.

------
peterhunt
The article doesn't mention that open-plan offices let you allocate much less
square footage per employee. In high-rent markets like American tech hubs,
this is a very real priority for tech companies (especially cash-strapped
startups).

------
WWLink
The only way to make an open office tolerable is to give its inhabitants a lot
of space. You can resist the temptation to cram people in by giving them
really big desks.

My comfort level is, if I can smell my coworkers, then we're sitting too
close.

------
Havoc
Works for me. I can see and hear most of the people I’m responsible for and
everyone is generally on the same page since everyone overheard everything.

It’s more collaborative work than say programming though so I can see how it
doesn’t work for all

------
ww520
WeWork charges more on office than open desk. That shows the office is more
valuable. People pay more to get office because they can produce more to
justify the cost. That shows office is better for productivity.

------
yellowapple
From the paper:

> an F2F interaction was recorded when three conditions were met: two or more
> badges (i) were facing each other (with uninterrupted infrared line-of-
> sight), (ii) detected alternating speaking, and (iii) were within 10 m of
> each other.

Condition (i) seems like it'd result in a lot of false negatives in various
situations common in open-office environments, e.g. two people talking to each
other without actually leaving their desks (especially if they're across from
each other, since that'd mean there's likely at least one screen in the way).

------
nojvek
Probably has been said before. I think there is a healthy balance of
open/closed office hybrid spaces

In closed offices, not everyone can have windows and natural light. Open
offices lend better to that.

Hybrid being assigned open desks and bookable/shareable closed rooms of
various sizes. One person box to 30 people conference rooms. A quiet room
(library). A boom box room with a jukebox.

Honestly I love hybrid with a healthy balance of work 2/5 days from home.

I have set days of meetings and planning “shit” Set days of getting the shit
done.

Yin Yang!

------
CivBase
> They start using email and messaging with much greater frequency than
> before.

Couldn't the same focus that drove the open-office transition also be
responsible for driving more effective communication tools? Or just more
collaboration in general, which naturally results in an increased use in
communications tools?

Or maybe the tools have just been improving over time, which results in an
entirely unrelated increase in use?

There are so many potential explanations here. This seems like a non-point.

~~~
pidg
The author of the article (and, presumably, most businesses) are living in the
past.

I work in an open-plan office in a place that makes heavy use of the latest
collaboration software, and it works great. There is virtually no use of email
or IM internally. Just persistent chat and collaboration with Teams.

------
cormacrelf
Loving the video at the bottom where they exhibit one of those people whose
careers are tied to the success of their new open office layout. Very _chef 's
kiss_.

------
mmhsieh
this story has been posted multiple times but it should be reposted in new
form over and over until all the pointy haired bosses have read it and
repented

------
marto1
Wouldn't be surprised if there are 1000+ comments under this one. I don't
think any sane programmer would be entirely on board with the entire open
office fiasco if completely honest of course.

My favorite bit on this topic starts here
[https://youtu.be/7fdQJ5ry_NI?t=2393](https://youtu.be/7fdQJ5ry_NI?t=2393) .

------
mlochead
One of primary points of article is that open office plans have resulted in
less communication and collaboration. However, I have to wonder if it's just a
timing thing, where the expansion of open office plans have also coincided
with the more expanded use of tools like Slack, which has resulted in less in
person collaboration overall.

------
thanatropism
Much of the contemporary world is driven by how opex and capex accounting.

Open-plan office make perfect sense if you consider how visible real estate
costs are, and how subtle and variable productivity it is.

If "Management" micromanaged productivity as some people expect here, they'd
fire everyone showing signs of ADHD.

------
dqpb
The nice thing about open office plans is that executives aren’t the only
people who get to enjoy natural light.

------
pwthornton
I don’t know about this!

There are so many bad management fads. How does one choose?

I am actually amazed that people don’t take management more seriously and
don’t follow actual research. It’s amazing that we spend so much on employees
and then leave so much of what happens to essentially personal beliefs and
astrology.

------
Dirlewanger
Don't think they're any worse than any other layout, most implementations are
just lazy. There needs to be sane guidelines (no music overhead playing,
relatively quiet, move discussions into a closed room) or obviously it won't
work. I prefer it over cubicles.

------
neycoda
C'mon, the original title was better:

"Open-Plan Offices Are the Dumbest Management Fad of All Time"

------
ulfw
For me the best thing by far are the extremely rare "team open offices" where
you put anywhere between 10-20 people inside that all work on the same type of
product. Much better than your team of 10-20 people sitting in a room fitting
400 people.

~~~
opo
Those team offices can hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open
floor plans. In large companies, the random conversations between people from
different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved
early. A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple
question or to see what they are working on becomes a big deal because you are
entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people - unless you
really know the other person well, people just are hesitant to do it. In big
companies, there usually isn't a problem with communicating within a team -
the problems occur when teams aren't communicating with people in other teams.

------
lacker
This article is not paying any attention to the main justification for open-
plan offices, which is that they are cheaper. This is especially important in
areas with expensive real estate, or where the total office space is limited.

~~~
munificent
Did you not read the entire article?

 _> The Harvard study, by contrast, undercuts the entire premise that
justifies the fad. And that leaves companies with only one justification for
moving to an open plan office: less floor space, and therefore a lower rent._

 _> But even that justification is idiotic because the financial cost of the
loss in productivity will be much greater than the money saved in rent. Here's
an article where I do the math for you. Even in high-rent districts, the
savings have a negative ROI._

------
pimmen
Open plan offices became more frequent because office area is more expensive
because real estate has become more expensive. That's at least my guess of how
we ended up in this mess that everyone knows is bonkers.

------
celeritascelery
My company keeps threatening to make this change. But just before they do
something happens and they say they don’t have the budget. When they do
actually make this change I think I will look for another job.

------
DGAP
Open offices are popular because they're cheaper to build than private
offices, no one making these decisions ever believed they were doing it to
"increase collaboration."

------
jariel
It's not a management fad, it's a financial fad. It's mostly about the money,
nothing else. Short term gain (saving money) is much easier to calculate than
anything else.

------
SoylentOrange
To combat some of the anxiety I had about people looking over my shoulder at
my monitors, I bought a privacy filter for one of my screens.

It has really improved my personal feeling of being watched.

------
sandmansandine
There are a good amount of job boards which allow you to search for or only
show remote jobs, I think a job board which allows filtering open-plan offices
would be super useful.

------
eapen
Reading this while a recent re-org has made it feel like I am sitting in a
market and working. At the very least, if they separated PMs and managers away
from developers.

------
koala_man
People seem to either love or hate it. Has anyone ever worked in both an open
layout they liked, and an open layout they disliked? If so, what was the
difference?

------
gumby
The cubicle was invented as a way to liberate workers forum open plan offices.
Then it became perceived as soul crushing.

The work was the problem.

------
leoplct
Supposed a new startup wants to redesign its office taking this into
consideration. Where to start?

Ikea doesn't sell cubicles. Any solution on the market?

------
lliamander
Now that we've established open office spaces are bad, where can I find more
examples of what a good office space should look like?

------
uoaei
This jives with my personal experience. I feel like I'm distracting the whole
office if I go over to talk to a single colleague.

------
glun
A pair of noise cancelling headphones does wonders for minimizing distractions
in an open office.

------
artsyca
Look the open plan works amazingly at libraries but there's one rule: no
talking

------
chadlavi
This realization at the top levels of tech companies cannot come soon enough.

------
throw0101a
So is the consensus:

* private offices > shared offices > cubicles > open-plan offices

------
boromi
For me privacy is key. I get anxious when people are staring at me working.

------
bobly_today
I’m personally more productive and happy in open office layouts due to ease of
communication and the psychology of a pseudo-computer lab setting. Granted I
recognize I’m likely in a minority here. I even came from large personal
offices and prefer the open office layout

------
dominotw
isn't this for cost savings though? I don't think its a fad.

------
techntoke
You don't like having 100 distractions to help you work better?

------
mmhsieh
they claim it is to promote interaction but it is also to squeeze more desks
into a unit of space. do the geometry and it is obvious.

------
purplezooey
Wtf. Stack ranking is far from dead.

------
nybblesio
Open-plan offices are but one of many symptoms of the much larger problem in
the software engineering industry today: nobody in "the business" understands
what we do. I started working professionally in the industry in the late
1980s. Since that time, I regret to say that the people who hire we software
engineers don't see us as anything but factory labor.

To wit:

\- We've evolved into a world with "Agile", which our paymasters have defined
as the equivalent of warehouse/factory/shop floor process. Each engineer is
"the same"; thus, swappable;

\- In this view of the world, the only valuable thing to do is the tiny little
sliver of work in front of you. Spending time on anything related to real
engineering is verboten. When you're eventually asked why the application is
slow, producing work faster isn't possible, or new features are difficult to
implement, your "technical" answers about "the code", "the design", and/or the
"architecture" are derided as "lazy work" and "not valuable". We just don't
understand "the business";

\- Since you're a factory laborer now, and there is no expectation that you
must "think" to do this job, the notion that you require privacy is laughable.
"The business" does not give the shop floor guys privacy, why should they give
it to _you_? Oh, and how long do you suppose it will be before you must ask
_permission_ to use the bathroom? Just like factory workers;

\- Since you obviously don't need to "think", after all you just have to crank
out that next ticket/card/story, then being interrupted isn't an issue. As the
foreman of a factory floor, I can reallocate my "resources" however I see fit.
After all, they're all assembling the same "widget", right?

\- If you're lucky enough to _not_ be in the physical fish bowl of the modern
software engineering shop floor, then you're expected to be tethered to some
god awful chat client. Again, what you're doing isn't complicated, right? You
don't have to plan. You don't need to design. You don't need to think. That's
what all the tools, and frameworks, and geegaws they spend big money on are
for! So if you get pinged constantly by 20 different people for 8 hours -- and
_your_ work isn't getting done -- there is something wrong with _you_ ;

\- If you _are_ unlucky enough to be in the fish bowl itself, then being
interrupted now includes both the _physical_ and _virtual_ ;

\- Meetings are what "the business" does and what we do isn't important,
obviously. So whatever "top of the stack" issue is critical to them at any
given moment in time overrides any worthless thing you might be doing.

The simple truth is that software engineering is a low prestige career in the
majority of companies. There are a handful of _real_ software vendors that
still, on some level, grasp what it is we do. However, the vast majority gave
up decades ago and just decided to treat us like factory workers. Welcome to
the software industry in the 21st century.

------
swishbroom
Cost saving measure.

------
pacifika
2018

------
agentultra
_More than Agile?_

Snark aside, I have a personal office and I love it. I don't like to listen to
constant noise/music to cancel out the other noise/music. I like being able to
have private calls without all of the noise in the background. If I'm working
on something particularly difficult I like closing my door and having peace
and quiet. I also enjoy the sense of ownership and prestige. It's nice feeling
like I matter and my space and attention are worth something.

Working in an open office is too chaotic for me. Being around people is
exhausting and distracting. I like to have a space I can retreat to for a few
hours and get some deep work done. Silence is usually what I appreciate the
most.

~~~
ryandrake
Just to get the alternate view out there too: I had an office once with a door
that closed. As an extrovert it was awful. I felt lonely all day. The only way
to get any human contact besides email and text was to leave and go walk the
halls or find some common area. I ended up pretty much never using it and
instead worked from the break room. From time to time they’d give me an
officemate to share the office, but they were all extroverts too, so of course
were never around.

Different strokes for different folks. I love open offices and wouldn’t go
back to closed ones if given the choice. I also have difficulty WFH for the
same reasons.

More employers should offer more choices, as everyone is different and what
suits one worker might be awful for another.

~~~
bachmeier
> Just to get the alternate view out there too

This always comes up in these discussions. Extroverts say they prefer the open
office format because they can talk to others. That's nice and all, but
shouldn't you be working rather than satisfying your desire to talk to others?
(The same goes for workers not in an open office not playing on HN all day.)

~~~
ericwood
It's not necessarily just to idly chat with other people, but has more to do
with where you get your energy. I find I'm most productive and energized when
surrounded by other people. Conversation is a part of it, and the ability to
collaborate on the fly is great. If I'm heads down on something it's fine to
be isolated every so often, but if it's for more than a few days my energy
level is sunk and my productivity actually decreases dramatically.

~~~
agentultra
I get it and I totally appreciate my extrovert colleagues. I think the ability
to have both is good. Sometimes I do like to work with others.

It's just that often open-plan offices are an all-or-nothing affair. It's a
weird way to construct a space for people to work and collaborate given how
different we all are.

~~~
ericwood
These conversations always seem to be extremely one-sided, and it's
frustrating. I wouldn't even classify myself as an extrovert; it's a continuum
and people fall all over the place. Ultimately, though, an ideal office needs
to cater to everyone.

Some of my favorite offices have been ones that have the typical open office
structure, but also lots and lots of "hiding places" and different areas. I'm
super ADHD and changes in scenery were helpful, and being able to adapt my
environment to the task at hand, or even give people having impromptu
conversations a refuge so the desk areas weren't noisy.

The startup I work at currently encourages everyone to work from home tuesdays
and thursdays. It makes for a great mix; when I'm in the office I can engage
with my coworkers, catch up, or have those deeper discussions that inevitably
come up face-to-face. Work that requires intense concentration can be batched
for those days, or I can opt to take additional time at home if necessary.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Workplaces themselves are so egregiously one-sides in the other direction that
these discussions have to be one-sided, because by definition it’s the huge,
huge majority of people who find the existing actually workplaces to be one-
sidesly disergonomic.

You’re worried that the discussion is one-sides. I’m worried that _physical
workplaces_ are one-sided, today, for real, to such an extent that it’s deeply
cognitively harmful to many people.

~~~
ericwood
I mean, clearly it's not working for a large chunk of people, otherwise this
article wouldn't keep appearing on the front page of HN regularly.

What I'm saying is there's a way to meet in the middle.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
Is there? About the only thing I've seen suggested that might work is to offer
everyone a choice but as another poster commented, the vast majority would
choose an office over an open floorplan.

Group rooms, shared offices, etc., would be an acceptable compromise for some
but far from all. These middle solutions still have the negatives of the open
floorplan just on a smaller scale. If you prefer cola and I prefer water,
watered down cola isn't going to make either of us very happy.

------
0xff00ffee
'fad'?

30+ years working in cube farms for major Semiconductor and Operating System
companies. (cough _shmintel_ _cough cough_ _microshmoft_ ) They ain't going
away. Why? Because offices with doors are extremely expensive compared to
wide-open spaces.

It isn't going away.

~~~
opo
>...Because offices with doors are extremely expensive compared to wide-open
spaces.

No not really. In the bay area (and likely lots of other places), the costs of
employee salary, benefits, etc are a lot more than the costs for rent.

~~~
0xff00ffee
I said compared to wide open spaces, not compared to employee costs.

~~~
opo
The usual cost argument for open floor plans is that by devoting less square
feet to each employee, you save money on rent. (The costs to actually put in a
door and some sheet rock walls is a one time expense that isn't very high in
comparison to the monthly costs for rent.)

The reality though is that if employees are less productive, any savings in
rent will be small compared to the costs associated with lower worker
productivity.

~~~
0xff00ffee
Oh, now I understand your point. That makes a lot more sense. I've bought into
the "offices are more expensive" for years but never considered the one-time
costs as more of a write-off / deprecation.

------
british_india
Laying the groundwork for the attack on Bloomberg

