

Open plan offices are a nightmare - jon_black
http://jonblack.org/2013/01/29/open-plan-offices-are-a-nightmare/

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furyg3
I've enjoyed working in an open-plan office until recently, mostly because of
our growth.

As I write this the person next to me is on the phone having a distracting
conversation (about one of our projects), someone is engaged in a dramatic
battle with the nearby printer, two guys across the aisle are making jokes
about a difficult vendor, some guests arrived, and it also sounds like someone
is playing frisbee with plates in the kitchen, without much success.

At the moment my headphones can't help and serve only a symbolic function.
Instead of fighting the waves of distraction I decide to roll with it an
refresh HN...

~~~
aurelianito
I also find same-project talks really distracting. And the most complicated
thing is that those talks are needed. It is easy to request someone to use
headphones instead of speakers but, how could I request other people not to
work on their assigned tasks?

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blowski
Can't see the article - site is down. So what I write here is based solely on
the premise of the headline and existing comments on HN.

I work for a co-working space in London, which is like an open plan office
taken to the extreme. Before that I worked in a variety of environments (I'm
in my 30s), including public sector 'one-office-per-person' through to agency
'3-people-per-desk' type situations, and working from home as a freelancer.

Criticisms about working space often come down to 'the garden on the other
side of the fence would be easier to work in'. If you work from home, you miss
having people to have coffee with at lunch. If you work in a crowded office,
you miss having 2 hours of unbroken flow. So the best offices try to combine a
bit of everything - quiet space, play space, etc.

Some people talk about the 'email-only' office like the Holy Grail of Offices.
But it's not - it's cold, impersonal and unfriendly. It often results in
unnecessary arguments resulting from people misinterpreting something. So a
culture of "speak, don't write" is definitely a good thing, as long as there
are some rules about when it's OK to talk to someone.

The problem is whether people respect the rules. We try to follow the
headphone rule - if I'm wearing headphones, don't interrupt me unless the
building is about to burn down. The corollary - if I'm not wearing headphones,
feel free to walk up and talk to me.

So it's as much about culture as it is architecture, and that's something that
often gets overlooked.

~~~
alexkus
> Criticisms about working space often come down to 'the garden on the other
> side of the fence would be easier to work in'.

Yep.

There are 150 people on our floor, all open plan. The partitions are only 1m
high. It's not a problem. Some people cope fine without even needing
headphones. I probably wear headphones 50% of the time. It's relatively quiet
but I've learnt to zone out of the background noises.

Likewise I've worked from home, worked in cramped "5 people to 2 desks"
conditions, in vast cube farms in the US (with 8ft high cube walls) with 400
people per area. All have their pros and cons. Distractions come in all forms,
IM software, street noise, email notifications, people having conversations
right next to your desk, other 'phones ringing, etc.

You just learn to adapt to what you've got and cope with it.

~~~
blowski
I think you can try to improve it. However, too often people do use the
environment as an excuse - "I couldn't hit the deadline because Geoff was
typing too loudly".

There's also an element of the cultural perceptions of offices. "Important
people have their own offices. I want to be perceived as important. Therefore,
I must have my own office."

~~~
jon_black
People ineed use it as an excuse, but sometimes it's a valid point that's
disregarded because others, especially when it's a consensus, don't agree that
the environment causes a problem. You end up with people being labelled as
"anti-social misfit loners".

------
kabdib
I work at a company which has open areas capable of holding from 4 to perhaps
20 people. The desks are on wheels. You choose where to work, where to put
your desk, who to put your desk next to.

There are offices available, and if you want to you can put your desk in one.
Few people do; the social environment is _really_ important.

Mobility and choice make a huge difference. People are smart and know the
difference between environments that are supportive of cooperative work, and
simple cheap-ass accountancy coupled with power games.

~~~
X-Istence
Valve?

------
michaelochurch
I'm surprised that few people mention age discrimination when this topic comes
up. To a large degree, that's what open-plan offices are really about. It's
not explicitly presented that way, but the purpose of the brogrammer culture
_is_ to exclude people-- especially women and older men.

By the time people are in their 40s and 50s, work-related health problems
aren't things people joke about during an annoying project. They're things
that actually happen. Your typical competent 45-year-old sees an open-plan
office and says, "No thanks", knowing from experience that such environments
are not only unproductive but dangerous (cardiac issues, anxiety disorders,
digestive problems).

Also, it's not only the noise that makes open-plan offices hell. It's the
social overload of being visible to other people. (Open-back visibility, which
causes vertigo and neurological problems, is especially bad.) People are bad
at multitasking-- men are especially bad at it, but suffer from a Dunning-
Kruger effect-- and having to dedicate a constant slice of brain-space to the
appearance of productivity, in addition to actual productivity, means that a
person is forced into a state of ineffective, frustrating, and just plain
_stupid_ multitasking for over 8 hours.

~~~
Executor
I've spent many projects in an "open" environment, never had bad side-effects.
You can divide and conquer projects where people focus on only one task...
that's efficient group multitasking. The only inefficiency comes through the
time taken to synchronize with people.

~~~
michaelochurch
You are multitasking in an open-plan office because you have two jobs that are
often at odds. One is being productive. The other is appearing productive as
part of what actually matters at work: managing your own social status within
the group.

Even if you're not aware of it, your brain is dedicating resources to the
latter of these jobs. Over 9 hours, that wears you down. You may not notice
it. You may attribute your end-of-day fatigue and digestive problems to aging
even though you're not actually old.

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jon_black
Looks like my website can't handle being on the front page of HN. I'm talking
with my provider to try and get it resolved.

It's showing up in Google, but there's no cache link.

Apologies to those trying to access the article.

~~~
kaugesaar
a working cache link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://jonblack.org/2013/01/29/open-
plan-offices-are-a-nightmare/&hl=en&tbo=d&strip=0)

~~~
jon_black
Good job!

------
fnordfnordfnord
The only place I've ever seen this done well is at National Instruments in
Austin. Working groups get their area cordoned off with high cube walls. I
didn't work there, so I have no idea how well it functioned. But it looked
reasonable to me. It had to be better than the open-plan cube-farm that I
worked at.

In my old co's cube-farm, they even had a paging system where service/tech-
support calls to certain individuals were blasted over the whole building. So,
every 5-15 minutes you'd get a (BEEP - "Rick/John/Dale/Pam/etc, line 2"
click). The paging-lady was very proper too, so she always used people's first
and last name.

The HR people & bean-counters loved it because they got to watch everyone
(real-time worker productivity analytics!). They never really understood why
nothing ever got done on time; or why some people liked to work late, or come
in early.

It was an old manufacturing business run by bunch of boomers, who hadn't been
outside in decades, and who thought they'd made it a big (100 employees!)
company (but in my mind it was a parody of). Another funny note, they'd built
this place in response to growth, and planned/expected more growth. However,
the building (new, purpose built) only had additional floor space for a few
more cubes, so when the growth happened, they had to wiggle, shove, & stuff
people into every nook and cranny they could find. Well, that was therapeutic.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Oh yeah, I always found JWZ's tent-of-doom inspirational.

------
cpursley
I wouldn't get shit done in an open office as someone with a degree of low
latent inhibition. I can listen to music - but only lyric free while I'm
working. I don't even have TV in my own house for that reason - background
noise drives me insane because I cant filter any of it.

I'm not a programmer (professionally, anyways) but an analyst, which also
requires huge blocks of uninterrupted time. Clients don't understand why I
don't answer the phone all the time and refer them to email communication for
non-major stuff.

~~~
jon_black
I do the same with email. Some people don't grasp that communication has a
priority. The panic I see in people's faces after ten minutes when a text
message goes unreplied. If it's important, call them!

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viseztrance
The last place I worked at was an online advertising agency. My experience was
similar, and managed to get things done only by coming early (often before
anyone else) and wearing a good pair of headphones.

I particularly disliked the fact that some people lacking a technical
background don't really understand that we often need a distraction free
environment. Perhaps it's because their creative spark comes by brainstorming
in a more lively environment or they have seen too many people coding at
Starbucks.

~~~
michaelochurch
Starbucks and open-plan offices are worlds apart.

In a Starbucks, it's loud, but you can tune out the noise without social
penalty. No one is going to look over your shoulder or interrupt you in a
coffee shop. You can put on noise-canceling headphones and sit with your back
to a wall. Only a small percentage of the evil of open-plan offices is noise-
related.

It's the emotional load of being visible to people who can fuck with their
livelihood for any reason or no reason that makes open-plan offices terrible.
People become resentful, competitive, and miserable. Those environments are
said to foster collaboration, but have the opposite effect, because most
people shut down at a certain level of sensory and social overload, the result
being that communication grinds to a halt.

Open-plan offices are said to be egalitarian, but in practice, they increase
rank discrepancies and social inequalities, because they reflect an
unconditional right of management to harass and monitor subordinates.

The other interesting thing is that there's a lot of evidence suggesting that
almost everyone (over 90%) will develop work-related health problems in an
open-plan office. The question is how long it will take. Median seems to be
about 10-15 years, making open-plan offices a legal way to say, "We don't want
to hire anyone over 40".

~~~
Robin_Message
Do you have a citation for _"there's a lot of evidence suggesting that almost
everyone (over 90%) will develop work-related health problems"_?

I mean, come on, _over_ 90%? If the evidence was that clear then you would,
for example, expect some worker-friendly country like France or Sweden to have
banned or regulated open plan offices. As far as I know, they haven't.

I don't doubt open plan is unpleasant; nor that it can cause health problems;
and I accept that the rise in health problems may be hard to measure because
most companies moved to open plan. However, what you said about >90% health
problems and 10-15 year worker lifetimes oversells and undermines what are
otherwise very good points.

~~~
michaelochurch
_If the evidence was that clear then you would, for example, expect some
worker-friendly country like France or Sweden to have banned or regulated open
plan offices. As far as I know, they haven't._

The problem is that an open-plan ban is not appropriate for all work
environments. One example would be a hospital. If you can't handle the stress
of an operating room (and many people can't) then you shouldn't be a surgeon.
The job has intrinsic stress, and that's a factor in the compensation.

That's the fundamental problem with regulation and government intervention:
it's hard to get the special cases right. An open-plan ban would be a good
thing for the vast majority of white-collar office workers, but it clearly
can't be applied to all work environments (medicine, military).

If I recall correctly, many countries do have lower limits on personal working
space, usually in the neighborhood of 10 m^2. It'd be hard to enact a blanket
open-plan ban because the concept isn't well-defined, but work space
regulations are already in place.

An additional factor that is hard to regulate: the health load of an open-plan
office seems to be a function of the person's age, position in the hierarchy,
and the amount of personal space. Open-plan wouldn't be so bad if people had
the recommended 200 SF (18.6 m^2) with barriers at their backs. At the typical
50 SF, with the person visible from behind and prone to managerial harassment,
it's a catastrophe.

 _However, what you said about >90% health problems and 10-15 year worker
lifetimes oversells and undermines what are otherwise very good points._

Perhaps 90% is high, but the going assumption people make when designing
office spaces is that the typical open plan office (< 100 SF, open-back
visibility) will increase attrition by about 10% per year for younger people
and 20% for older people. How much of this one wishes to attribute to health
issues, and how much to less serious garden-variety unhappiness, is somewhat
of an open question.

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asthasr
I currently work in an environment with about 40 people -- managers,
developers, "operations" people -- all in an "open plan" office with half-
height partitions. The distractions are constant; my field of view is always
busy, someone is always talking, I can hear every phone conversation in the
area, and even the coffee machine is loud. The printer is in the middle of the
area, so whenever someone prints, it becomes a squeaking, beeping distraction.
If I check my bank account balance before going to lunch, everyone can see;
even if I have head phones on _over earplugs_ , people still interrupt me!

My productivity has fallen by at least half, probably more.

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silverbax88
I've had a couple of experiences with this type of floor plan. It's absolutely
awful, especially for programmers.

Whenever someone suggests a 'bullpen' or 'open' office, I cringe, because,
well, I actually want to get things done.

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ghc
The only good thing about an open office plan, in my opinion (as a
programmer), is that my boss can see me working. That means he is forced to
acknowledge, when I can't get anything done due to constant interruptions,
that it's because I'm constantly being pestered to do unimportant busywork.
When I'm home telecommuting, he must imagine that I'm somehow blowing off work
despite the same meaningless interruptions following me around via Skype and
phone calls.

Can you tell I am not having a happy experience being acquired and working at
$BIGCORP?

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andrewcooke
peopleware [http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-
Second-...](http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Second-
Edition/dp/0932633439) goes into this a lot. i know it's an ancient classic
that everyone has heard of, but it's actually still worth reading, imho (i
found it much more relevant/useful/interesting than mythical man month - not
sure why, it just clicked somehow).

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ry0ohki
The article mentions open plan with no partitions. In my book, there is a HUGE
difference between completely open like that, and open plan with low
partitions. A low partition blocks a huge amount of sound, while still
preventing people from being isolated. Completely open with no partition, once
you get above 4 people is almost unworkable.

~~~
alistairSH
Agreed. Totally open office sounds like a disaster.

I'm on a team of about 10 people, mostly developers, with a few QA specialists
mixed. 3 are remote.

At my office, we have normal cubes on the first floor. But, we spend 90% of
our work hours in a "lab" on the second floor. The lab has one central
conference table, so we're all facing each other.

So, if we need quiet time to talk on the phone or concentrate, we go
downstairs. But, the default for most of the developers is upstairs. Our
analyst splits about 50/50.

I really like this arrangement. I find I'm LESS distracted when I'm working in
a group, even it we're just sitting around the table and not actually talking
or pair programming.

Of course, we can also work from home should the need arise. Overall, my
employer is pretty flexible about all of this.

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dalore
I toured the Facebook offices in Menlo Park. It's all open plan, even Mark's
desk. It's a big deal over there as they are converting the whole building to
be open plan. If you want some privacy/uninterruption you can go to a few
places around for it.

~~~
mmcconnell1618
I just interviewed with Microsoft in Bellevue and the offices were all open-
plan. I thought Microsoft was famous for every programming getting their own
private office. They told me their building was the prototype and all other MS
offices were converting to open plan in the near future. They could have a
revolt on their hands if that's true.

~~~
Spooky23
Revolt == old people leave.

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regomodo
404ing already. Anyone with a mirror/cache?

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swah
If you use Chrome, you can prepend the URL with 'cache:' (available in this
case).

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pc86
Did anyone happen to post a mirror or have a cached version? I'm getting a
timeout.

