
But Where Do People Work in This Office? - strangetimes
http://www.mattblodgett.com/2015/01/but-where-do-people-work-in-this-office.html
======
numlocked
I was the engineering manager at my previous employer and we were
reconfiguring our office layout. I talked to the engineers and with one
exception each person wanted private offices. We set up one floor of the
office with high cubicle walls, and a lot of sound isolation. So not exactly
private offices, but really a pretty nice setup (with the best equipment and
furniture available).

On a separate floor we had a bullpen with ops folks, people who were on the
phone a lot, etc. One by one, each engineer gravitated towards the bullpen
until no one spent more than perhaps 1 day per week in the dedicated office
space. The part of the office that each engineer had claimed to want to work
in became abandoned.

I think, in spite of the theoretical want for quiet space and isolation,
there's a very human need at work to be in the middle of the action -- to hear
what's going on, and to be connected to your colleagues. There were certain
tasks and problems for which engineers would walk downstairs and make use of
the dedicated space, but it was ultimately not where folks wanted to be on a
daily basis.

~~~
droob
People tend to enjoy private alcoves with a view on the action, which is kinda
best of both worlds. Christopher Alexander describes that pattern in _A
Pattern Language_.

~~~
sanderjd
I really don't understand why you hardly ever see 4 to 6 person glass-walled
offices with doors around an open collaborative area with comfy seats and
coffee tables. That seems like a great and still fairly cost-effective setup.

~~~
jdcarter
I worked at General Magic, one of the mid-90's "super startups" in silicon
valley, and this is very close to how our workspace was structured. While we
had cubes, they mostly had high walls except for where the opened to a common
space. The common spaces had couches and whiteboards, perfect for
collaboration. But when you just needed to focus and write code, there was
enough quiet and privacy for that, too.

------
rilita
Generally software developers at any level are treated as the lowest level of
person at companies, even when the company specializes in software. As a
result, they are packed in wherever they fit.

The theory seems that developers benefit from feeling like a frathouse of some
sort, where they play in most of their area, but otherwise cram together to
study for a bit, so that they can go back to goofing off afterwards.

Developers are not treated as professionals. They are treated as animals;
herded together to make them work, but otherwise just giving them big grassy
fields.

~~~
mgkimsal
My first reaction was that this was a bit over the top, but... on reflection,
not really. Fog Creek's setup looks nice, but outside of that, I've rarely
seen any company treat their developers like they treat their marketing folks,
legal, financial and other areas. Financial/accountants aren't generally
expected to sit in an open room with 15 other people with foosball games going
on in their line of site.

Should we encourage "pair accounting" and have accountants share a laptop
screen to get their work done?

There's an element of mentoring and support that can go on in those open
environments - adhoc help, etc - but that _seems_ to be partially a cover for
the fact that many people aren't all that good at what they do, and the better
people need to help train (sorry, "lead") the less experienced folk.

My own experience in open plans, beyond the general noise, is that it's harder
for people to admit they have a question, because it's visible to an entire
group. Likewise, it's harder to call someone out for not pulling their weight
in an open plan setting, without calling more attention to the interaction.

"private by default" seems to work well for OO developers, just not when it
comes to their office space.

~~~
king_jester
> Should we encourage "pair accounting" and have accountants share a laptop
> screen to get their work done?

Have you ever seen finance people work? That happens all of the time.

~~~
mcguire
Most "finance people" are indeed the very definition of clerical work.

Are the certified professional accountants treated the same way?

------
basicallydan
Check out Fog Creek's office:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html)

> Gobs of well-lit perimeter offices. Every developer, tester, and program
> manager is in a private office; all except two have direct windows to the
> outside (the two that don't get plenty of daylight through two glass walls).

The longer I spend in this environment (coming up to five years) the less I
like it. I like the idea of having large, interesting open spaces for more
social activities including work, but most of the work I do lends itself well
to being not surrounded by people having conversations or - in some cases -
literally just messing around _all day_.

There's gotta be a balance.

~~~
df07
Stack Exchange's office is very similar. Starting to feel like Joel is the
only one who still believes in private offices.

[https://www.google.com/maps/@40.708933,-74.006578,3a,75y,203...](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.708933,-74.006578,3a,75y,203.61h,72.75t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1sAVBuqvu0UUUAAAQIt-
PqBw!2e0!3e2?hl=en-US)

~~~
raphael_l
[http://i.imgur.com/Kk0jP5o.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Kk0jP5o.jpg)

Pretty interesting people working there, I see.

~~~
bartkappenburg
Indeed:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@40.708501,-74.006614,3a,75y,190...](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.708501,-74.006614,3a,75y,190.84h,77.2t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1savFPUDF8FIgAAAQIt-
NLUQ!2e0!3e2?hl=en-US)

~~~
slowmovintarget
Are those... cells?

------
davidu
People do the open office floor plan because it's efficient and economical,
not because it's the the best for the workers.

We designed a ton of cubbies (like in your university library), 1 person
private rooms, 2 person conference rooms, etc. in our office to accommodate
for the fact that many people need to more privacy and quiet than just
headphones. We also break up the main open plans to help quiet the noise and
distraction.

We have about 45,000 sq. ft today, and will be adding another 45,000 sq. ft
this year. When we do, there will be much less open floor plan. I do think
there's a happy medium, with team rooms of 6 to 15 people, depending on role
and requirements.

~~~
wylee
I think it's more accurate to say that it's because open office are _cheap_
(*up front). It's pretty clear that they reduce efficiency in many, if not
most, cases, which can be very expensive.

~~~
davidu
Yeah, I meant in the CFO kind of way. It's now clear it's not a long-term win.

------
jarcane
Having worked in offices like these (in a call center, of all things), I
really don't understand how the hell you could get any work done. We had
people going home with migraines after two days in conditions like that
Facebook photo, and that was just reading scripts into a phone headset for 8
hours. Actually producing anything like an intelligent thought in that kind of
corporate tuna can is unthinkable to me.

"We have our own indoor artisanal cheese maker! ... but our actual workspace
looks like it was cobbled together after a day of frantic Costco purchases."
How about sparing the free Sun Chips and putting some walls in, eh?

~~~
oinksoft
Having spent a day at Atlassian's office in SOMA when contracting for them
recently, if this sort of setup is done right (with the additional caveat of
having an energetic staff) the effect is positively electrifying. The "Costco
purchases" jab is overly broad, because this office had very nice motorized
standing desks for everybody. Also, the complex was large enough that you
could escape into some personal space without feeling like you were hiding.

On the other hand, Gannett attempted a setup like this, except it was out of
cheapness (they wanted to lease office space in their Tysons HQ) and was
carried out mindlessly. They mixed developers with technical support,
managers, etc. thoughtlessly. And they installed "white noise" machines which
made matters worse. Working in that place was almost impossible and I quit
after a month.

~~~
MereInterest
As someone with flat feet, I certainly hope that they would have traditional
sitting desks as well.

~~~
sp332
A motorized standing desk can be adjusted (up and down) with the push of a
button. Or you can just leave it down without even pushing any buttons :)

------
geebee
Open floor plan offices are generally pretty unpleasant, but some of the
negative effects can be mitigated.

I worked at Sun Micro a while ago (the place that is now Facebook), and we all
had offices at the time. However, Sun had also started to create numerous
drop-in work centers. One of them was in downtown SF, just south of market.

This was an "open" office with three largish rooms with cubicles and desks,
and a smaller number of offices with doors that close (reservable or walk in).

Here's what made it work - one of the rooms was designated a "zone of
silence", and it really was enforced. The two outer rooms had phones at each
desk, the quiet room did not. Sales people and other workers who needed to
make noise worked in the outer rooms, programmers and other heads down people
worked in the quiet room.

Not surprisingly, there were plenty of people who wanted to break the rules.
This generally happened when all the desks in the loud room were taken. Then
you'd get people trying to take phone calls in the quiet room on their cell
phones. Some felt that as long as they spoke in a relatively hushed tone of
voice, it would be ok (though everyone could still hear their conversation).
Others figured that the phone could ring, and they could start their
conversation in the room, as long as they were actively walking outside the
room as they talked.

What saved it was an office manager who simply wouldn't tolerate it. She would
absolutely tell people that they couldn't do this, and that their right to
work from the drop in center would be revoked if they continued to do it. She
didn't care about their rank, or if they liked her.

I did have a couple of ugly moments about it. I very politely asked people on
a couple of occasions not to use their phones in the designated quiet room
(with signs everywhere about it), and more than once, they started in on how
much more important their work was than mine.

But it was relatively rare, because the signage and vibe of the room really
was pretty clear about it, and the office manager was very strict and just
didn't have the kind of personality that was easily pushed around.

------
bane
I'm currently working at a place where I have 4 locations I can work from:

1 - my office (shared with one other person)

2 - a team room, about 10 people right now

3 - an office across from my client, it's a "guest cube" in a cube farm

4 - from home

Plus the normal mix of conference rooms.

I find that in any given week, I'll rotate through about 3 of those pretty
comfortably. My officemate also has a similar work schedule, so I'm alone in
my office most of the time, so I use it for deep concentration. It's too
isolated though to spend all my time there.

The team room is great if I need to collaborate, or get my energy up. It's
also not too bad if I need to concentrate as everybody there is working.

The guest cube is where I go if I need to do document editing, presentations,
client meetings...stuff that's so distracting I can't get any technical work
done anyway.

And home, because well, who doesn't want to work from home every once in a
while?

So far, it's the best workplace I've ever been, and this includes about 5
years of working from home, various client sites, cubes, personal offices,
open floor plans. The best part is that it doesn't cost the company a fortune,
but I get flexibility, privacy when I need it, collaboration when I need it,
different work contexts etc.

I've been more productive in the few months I've been here than I've been
anywhere else in my career.

~~~
stevesearer
I run officesnapshots.com, where the majority of the photos in the blog post
are from, and what you have described is the exact direction office designs
are heading. Europe has been moving this way for a while and the US is
(finally) beginning to as well.

The idea is to offer a variety of places where employees can work and let them
move between them freely depending on what needs to get done.

Need privacy? Work in this private room. Need to collaborate? There's a room
for that too.

Much of the pushback from developers on Hacker News regarding open floorplans
seems to be that their offices default to 'open office' rather than 'private
office'. But given that many tech companies are founded by developers and
technical people, and this hasn't changed yet, I suspect companies just aren't
trying to optimize for individual developer productivity.

~~~
strangetimes
The author thanks you. Your website (Office Snapshots) is awesome.

------
peterwwillis
Why do people like working in coffee shops?

It's cramped. It's noisy. There's barely enough power outlets (if at all).
Uncomfortable chairs. Annoying conversations. Hipster baristas.

Yet people all over the world cram into coffee shops like Starbucks, sucking
up the free wifi with a grande half-calf mocha latte, churning out a report or
answering e-mails, sometimes even on a conference call. Conditions that could
border on sweatshop if it weren't for the food and drink. It seems completely
unintuitive.

Are there benefits to this environment? Perhaps.

For one thing, you don't know anyone there; nobody is going to interrupt you,
or tell loud inappropriate jokes while tossing a football, and you are so
close to people you are forced to focus on what is right in front of you. You
get the comfort of being near other humans without any requirement to ever
interact with them. Then there's the convenience of easy access to food, a
bathroom, and that miracle drug we're all dependent on. Add the internet and a
table and chair and it's like some utopian Japanese vision of the future of
all offices. The music is a nice bonus.

But there's one thing I think really makes the coffee shop an ideal place to
work: no expectations.

You can come and go as you please. No assigned seats. No meetings. No
interruptions. Nothing but your coffee and chair and table space and internet.
Who cares if it's loud? Who cares if it's impractical to stay there? If you
just need to get something done and break away from the commitment to a
typical monotonous working life, this is your hideaway.

I think all offices should just be giant coffee shops.

------
uniformlyrandom
It depends on your responsibilities. If you are in devops, ops or support,
open office is great for you.

If you are a coder, an engineer, or an architect, then open office is painful.

If you are a manager, then open office is embarrassing.

~~~
scourge
> devops

You keep using that word. I don't think you know what it means.

(Coming from a contract 'devop')

There is no such thing. Either you code, and your code helps a company's
devops requirements. Or you're in ops because you can't code. I need to
collaborate less than devs do. My clients know for a fact that most of my work
is done more productively at home in the quiet. Yes we need to talk, plan,
work with others (sometimes) but who doesn't?

~~~
warcher
It turns out that devs are great at a lot of ops type tasks.

Basically what you get is developers' innate tendencies towards laziness and
over-automation yield _really good_ ops solutions.

Where your typical sysadmin will be perfectly comfortable running a hodgepodge
of shell scripts and byzantine commands through the terminal every time he
wants a server push, your typical developer just wants the fucking code up on
the server so he can get back to work he finds less objectionable.

This is absolutely how you want to approach ops. Just get the shit running
with as little human interaction as possible.

------
georgeecollins
Managers like bullpens because they are very cheap. They cram a lot of people
into a small space. They don't require the maintence of door locks or even
cube walls. People can be moved around very easily.

I think they also like that everyone can look over everyone else's shoulder
very easily, which creates peer pressure to work. In my experience, the
maangers that advocate this are often the ones that are really spending all
their time in special break-out rooms or conference rooms.

~~~
nilkn
I've always believed that the direct manager of a team should have to work in
the same conditions as the team itself. I find it distasteful when the team
members are crammed into cubicles or just open desks in some sort of bullpen
while the manager has a spacious private office and becomes disconnected from
the conditions that the rest of the workers experience.

If you feel the need to delineate different power levels in the company with
different working spaces, that's fine, but it needs to be done intelligently.
Let executives who only work with other executives have their own offices. If
you must put the workers in an open bullpen, though, then their immediate
manager should be a part of it as well.

------
aswanson
It's funny how most of these places hire the top cs grads and dont realize
they're implemented an n^2 noise generation (audio and visual) algorithm for
their developers, deoptimizing the very thing you hired them for: concentrated
brain power.

Maybe the best thing to do is layout things like a microprocessor, where
everyone gets their own isolated location (ram/register address), a place
where people who need to be associated come together periodically (a local
cache), and a meeting place for larger groups (an ALU) for bigger operations.

------
sibelius7th
Why does it have to be either or? Why not provide a variety of different work
environments, encourage employees to find the one that best suits them, and
work there? I think back to my days at the University. Sometimes a louder,
open space was great so I'd head to the student union or the group floor of
the library. Or maybe I needed some isolated quiet time, find a private room
in the library so I could think. I've worked in places that had only open
spaces, and it was very difficult to find any quiet, more private rooms. There
are times that I like a more open environment, and I get work done there, but
when there are no quiet places I can retreat to when I need it, then it can
become very frustrating to get any work done. And no, don't tell me you
provide me headphones to 'block out' the noise. Sometimes its quiet I want,
not louder noises to block out the existing noises (not to mention the fact
that it doesn't block out visual stimulation which can be equally
distracting).

~~~
perlgeek
> Why does it have to be either or?

Thank you for writing that. It seems much this discussion is very black-or-
white.

I work in an office with four desks, though typically only three are occupied.
It's a nice mixture between not being alone, and not being too loud either.

In vacation time, when I'm the only one around, I do tend to feel a bit lonely
after two days or so, even though I still do breaks, take lunch with other co-
workers and so on.

------
ghshephard
We should have someone like Ben Horowitz who has been a line manager of
engineers, CEO of a large company that cranks out code - both the pure "New
technology" type code, as well as the "Lots of framework code" type
engineering, comment on this. But, from memory, I think he said something like
this:

"Engineering productivity, counterintuitively, appears to _increase_ as you
move them out of private offices into contact with one another, both through
cross-pollination of different ideas, as well as the energy inherent in
working in a team environment. This graph of productivity, though, does have a
maxima as density increases, until it begins to once again _decrease_ as the
distractions become a dominating effect. With that said, not all engineers are
alike, and there are some individuals that are far more effective in a quiet
room, than those who benefit from the open office layout. The efficient
engineering organization should make opportunities for both types of engineers
to excel."

~~~
Bahamut
I am in agreement here with that - there are benefits to both types of spaces.
I am surprised there are not more companies willing to just let people pick
their workspace smartly, whether it is a private office or open office.

------
gdulli
I never thought I'd feel thankful for having high cubicle walls, but here we
are.

~~~
artmageddon
I've been on both sides, cube vs open plan. I used to liken cubes to prisons,
but now I look at them the same way a cat will look at a box that it tries to
squeeze itself tightly into, because the cat wants to be there.

~~~
NittLion78
Yeah, I never realized how much I would miss having my own office with a door
until I moved to an open floor plan.

Utterly impossible to concentrate on things w/out headphones.

~~~
anon13839
I work in an open office, and everyone wears headphones for hours when they
need to concentrate.

The thing is, these people are doing irreversible damage to their hearing.
Listening to headphones at a volume that will drown out conversation is not a
good thing.

Furthermore, I've never experienced as many migraines as I have before
switching to an open office. I have to keep pills at my desk. Never had to do
that before.

------
Morgawr
I am currently working at Google as an intern and I'm probably going to be the
contradicting opinion in this thread but I really appreciate the openspace
office we have here. Maybe because it's my first "real" office job, but I do
not find much of a problem working here. When I want to be on my own to think
on stuff, I just put my headphones on (sometimes with music, sometimes
without, since they are good at canceling noise anyway) and it's like being in
my own isolated office. And if that is not enough, we have small cubicle-like
mini-rooms where you can go and isolate yourself, most people use them to have
phone conversations or do interviews, but nothing stops you from working in
there with your laptop.

All in all, though, maybe it's my floor that is very quiet but there's not
much distraction or annoying background noise as most people are busy working.
When they are not working, they go somewhere else (the pub, the relax rooms,
etc etc). If they want to have a work-related conversation that lasts more
than 5-10 minutes, we have open areas with whiteboards separated from the desk
area, or we have separate conference rooms you can use. Most of the time, I
enjoy taking my headphones off and listening to a couple of coworkers making
remarks on stuff (either work or non-work related), it helps me relieve stress
and boredom much more than just staring at a wall or reading some articles
online.

Ironically, the major source of annoyance in our floor recently has been the
old AC system that sometimes starts making very loud noises and bothers
everybody, but this is not the fault of the openspace office so it doesn't
count :)

~~~
k__
I liked them too, when I was an intern and the first few years of my real job.

But after I acquired more knowledge it became more stressing, because everyone
was asking me stuff all the time. Also I had to listen to all the
communication that was going on around me.

Headphones are but a crutch and a bad one too, since all I want is silence
when working and no music or anything...

~~~
Morgawr
Mind I recommend earplugs if you want absolute quietness? Sometimes I do wear
headphones on without anything playing, because they provide really good sound
isolation. You could get specifically noise-canceling headphones for that.

Regarding getting asked all the time by other people, I would think that is
more of an organization problem. Nothing stops me from pinging coworkers on
irc or any other IM program for help or actually going to their office in
person. As an advantage to openspace office, I can just raise my head, look at
my coworker and ask "hey, do you have a second?". More often than not I get a
"sure, give me a few minutes" if they are busy or they can just lean over or
walk to my desk without wasting too much time. And if it's a more serious
issue it's "Shall we move to a more private place?".

I honestly don't see a problem, nobody stops you from telling your coworkers
to check the documentation regarding their question (if there is one, is it a
common question? Maybe you should write something up since you are more
knowledgeable on the matter and don't like being interrupted about it). But
yeah, this is probably because I'm just an intern and I don't have experience
on the matter, but I enjoy working like this.

~~~
smacktoward
The fact that you have to wear noise-canceling headphones (bought on your own
dime, no less) to get work done is an indication that the space has failed in
its primary purpose, which is to enable you to get your work done. A good
office layout (or any good architecture, really) does not force the people who
live in it to fight against the environment it creates.

~~~
Morgawr
You don't _have to_ , you can do it. And who said anything about buying it on
your own dime? It depends on the company but I'm fairly sure any of the big
companies with such open offices will provide them to you for free upon
request.

I would say the benefits of getting your work done vs having complete and
entire silence are not so easy to summarize. A lot of people in this thread
seem to assume that an open space office is super noisy full of people talking
where in my (very limited, I admit) experience there's hardly any noise other
than the sound of people hammering on keyboards (and the AC). There are
occasional conversations but those last a few seconds because, as I already
said, if they were longer, people would move out of the way.

Maybe it depends on the company, people and office.

~~~
OneMoreGoogler
I am a SWE for Google and my area is super noisy. Construction, dogs barking
(on our floor), phone calls, etc. My job requires me to work with a lot of
PCBs, so I have to stay at my desk; I can't exactly curl up somewhere quiet.

I hate the noise level here. I haven't yet worked up the courage to expense a
good pair of noise canceling headphones, but it may come to that.

~~~
bagels
Why are barking dogs tolerated in a software office? That's preposterous.

~~~
OneMoreGoogler
Google HQ is officially a "dog friendly" campus, and dogs are welcome in the
engineering offices, where some bark. Some owners respond by taking their dogs
outside immediately, but others just shush their pet, which of course resumes
barking half a minute later.

Polite requests to take it away are met with "Oh, she's usually not like this,
I don't know what's wrong, I'm sure she'll be quiet now..." And nobody wants
to be "that guy" by telling the owners to take their dog and GTFO. So the dogs
end up staying.

------
morgante
Unfortunately corporate culture has shifted to the point that it's seen as
incredibly wasteful to give people private offices. Literally the only
technology company I know of which provides private offices for everyone is
Fog Creek.

Moreover, even if a startups wants to give their engineers private offices,
external forces make it challenging. VCs think it's unnecessary overhead, and
even some developers are turned off by the prospect when recruiting
(particularly new grads).

So far the solution we've found is to have a separate "sanctuary" room. It's
located right next to our main office, but it's kept completely silent. All
conversations have to be kept out in the open office or conference rooms. So
far it's working pretty well—when you want to hunker down and work, there's
space for that but we can also collaborate easily.

It's also interesting to see where people have set up their "desk" (ie.
default location, with their monitor). The majority of the company gravitates
towards the open office by default, but a few writers and one engineer default
to the sanctuary. Perhaps the open office _is_ more attractive, even if it's
less productive.

Personally, I put my desk in the sanctuary but end up spending most of my time
in the open office.

------
chrisbennet
I _like_ this trend toward giant open plan offices - it gives us folks who
work in our own quite offices a competitive advantage. :-)

------
kateho
As much as it pains for me to say it, I do think small, quiet 1-2 person
offices are great for thinking and getting real work done. I believe the IDEO
offices in the Bay Area have a combination of a centralised area for
discussions and collaboration, but a set of smaller offices for more focused
work time. Something which would actually be quite nice to see more of ...

~~~
moron4hire
I don't understand, why does that pain you to say? That sounds like a great
idea.

------
bixmix
Is it a generation gap? Old programmer vs new? The open office trend may be
the death of my 2 decade career in writing software.

I do not need a spacious office: a room with a door, a distinct lack of
distracting windows, and a 4x6 desk and an overflow side table would be
perfect. Closing a door means I can focus and block out traffic, noise and the
general hubbub of an office.

------
gook
Has this guy even worked in any of these environments? I've worked at Facebook
and it is surprisingly quiet. If people want to have meetings or talk, there
are plenty of conference rooms to take advantage of. Worst case, the free
Sennheisers in the tech vending machines takes care of any other noises that
you might not like.

I personally work better in an open office environment. I work off the energy
of others and it allows me to focus more than being alone in an office.

While I understand if people legitimately don't like an open office
environment, this type of article seems like it is just trying to put down
these companies with little knowledge about how loud it really is in these
offices.

And if you don't like the environment at Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc, just
move to another company. Let's not pretend that it is hard to get another job
with one of those companies on your resume.

~~~
krschultz
That's the problem with _large_ open plan offices. The only way for it to be
workable for everyone is if everyone shuts up. I find it incredibly stifling.

My ideal environment is the team I'm working on in one big room, the music
going, everyone jamming on the project together. Getting shit done. That's
probably what Zuckerberg et al remember from when they started the company,
and that's why they want to recreate it for 3,000 people.

Unfortunately, once you have more than 1 team in the room, it breaks down. You
just shipped something awesome and want to shout about it? The other team
gives you dirty looks and want you to just STFU because they're 3 days from
shipping and in total crunch mode. Some people just like quiet all the time,
they'll give you a dirty look when you get noisy.

Thus the big rooms of people end up being completely silent, it's the only way
to make it work. They are terrible for collaboration. The only conversations
happen in conference rooms, otherwise you disturb 100+ people.

In my mind small rooms, holding 4-10 people, are ideal. Each team gets a room.
If the team likes it quiet, it will be quiet. If you want to bounce ideas
around, you can do it without feeling like you are disturbing other teams. If
you want to play music, you can play music. I think it's the feeling that the
open plan offices are going for, but people haven't connected the productivity
of open plan office with the actual size of the open room yet.

~~~
gook
Facebook has 'War Rooms' for teams who are shipping a large release soon. They
are smaller rooms that can fit 12-18 people. Most of the time they have
separate desks but sometimes teams just commandeer a conference room.

This sounds a bit like your idea, though a few more people.

------
k-mcgrady
Those office all look nice - until you get to the place where work actually
takes place. I don't care if the foosball table is in a nice room or if the
kitchen is fancy. I spend 95% of my time at my desk. Focus some energy on
making that area bearable.

------
jayess
I look at those wide-open office spaces and get anxious. I need my lonely,
quiet space to work.

------
skynetv2
I have a semi-private office (two of us) in a ~15X15 office with a door, I
would not give it up for anything in the world. openspaces are terrible for
productivity. too many distractions.

------
markolschesky
I used to work at Epic (the Health IT company), which is known for its
interesting office design and giving its staff individual offices [1]. Now
that I've been working for startups, I've worked in more bullpen-type offices.

A few things:

1) Having my own office did not mean that there weren't distractions. It's
impractical to build sound-proof walls between offices and the guy across from
me loved to try to sing opera for hours a day. I eventually moved offices to
another part of campus for that reason.

2) Likewise, I've worked in open offices that were pretty monastic. Engineers
are quiet, everyone is wired in and most people talk on Slack/HipChat. The
only interruption was when the mailman would drop off the daily mail.

3) I think the worst thing about open offices are the logistics of staff that
need to take phone calls. As a customer-facing programmer that does sales
support and configuration assistance it's sub-optimal not having a dedicated
space for phone calls. When the perfect storm arises of too many people
needing to take calls, everything flies into anarchy where I'm forced to take
a call in a common space and try to be quiet. A bullpen that has some
separation and accommodation for those needs is ok. A bullpen that doesn't
have that is not.

[1] [http://www.xconomy.com/wisconsin/2014/09/19/epic-hopes-wi-
ca...](http://www.xconomy.com/wisconsin/2014/09/19/epic-hopes-wi-campus-can-
help-in-talent-war-with-apple-facebook/)

------
bunderbunder
My company recently built out a schmancy new open plan office and moved a
bunch of people from my team there. Based on what I've seen so far the answer
is that people don't work in that office. They work from home, because that's
the only place you can get any actual work done. They do come into the office
one or two days a week, but only so that management doesn't feel like they
wasted money on all those ping-pong and pool tables.

~~~
dtech
You company already seems quite progressive in accepting so much being done
from home.

------
kylec
Wherever my next job is, I'll make sure to take a tour of the working
environment. If it looks anything like these photos, I'll decline an offer.

~~~
teddyh
That’s a good idea:

“ _But I just couldn 't stop thinking about one thing: the AT&T offices were
dingy and dark, in some kind of a stone age office that smelled of 1930s
bureaucracy. People were starting to look like mushrooms. There were torn
Dilbert cartoons all over the cubicles. (Warning sign number one.) The
furniture was falling apart. It was just nasty. But Viacom was in a nice,
shiny, modern, bright office building that felt like lawyers' offices. It was
clean and new and pleasant. I know I should have been thinking about something
more substantial as I made my decision, but I just could not get over how_
unpleasant _it would be to spend my days working in the AT &T dungeon._”

— Joel Spolsky, _Whaddaya Mean, You Can 't Find Programmers?_, June 2000

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html)

------
blktiger
The author is incredulous that any of these companies get any work done. Yet.
All of these companies are tremendously successful and produce great software.
Obviously there is quite a bit of disconnect between what the author thinks
and what happens in reality.

Personally I think it's because none of these places are about productivity.
In fact I think it's the exact opposite. Take Google for instance. If you
think about working on improving Google search what kinds of things do you
think are important? Productivity? Or Creativity? My bet is on creativity
which I think is where these kinds of workspaces excel.

You are in a room full of smart people who are all collaborating on the same
set of problems. Innovative solutions are more likely to occur in that
environment than closed off in a personal office. Personally, I like the trend
of offering both kinds of workspaces. Private offices for when you just need
some time to think. Public workspaces for collaboration and creativity.
Conference rooms for meetings. Leave it up to the individual to determine when
they need to work in each space.

~~~
gohrt
> All of these companies are tremendously successful and produce great
> software.

Well, they _were_. More recently (since the headcounts exploded and the open-
office fad picked up) they've been coasting along with the S&P500 overall
performance and upseting users.

> If you think about working on improving Google search

I thnk about concentrating to deeply analyzing lots of subtle data using
advanced mathematics, not spitballing cool ideas.

> Productivity? Or Creativity?

Lots of creativity with no productivity: great idea that never launch, or
launch with fatal flaws that never get fixed, and products that get shuttered.

> smart people who are all collaborating

Most humans can barely remember the identities of 100 people at once. How can
they be "all collaborating" all day in the office.

Hmm.

------
mellery451
I've worked in a bunch of these kinds of spaces - all utterly distracting.
Turns out I'm more productive in my own quiet space at home. If you are doing
this to your workers, give 'em the option to work from home and save the rent.

------
Haul4ss
If those office layouts don't appeal to you, it's because those companies
don't want to recruit you.

Deep-pocketed companies like Facebook (who surely have enough money to build
any kind of office space) choose to build open layouts as a signal. They want
to attract a certain kind of developer, and they probably have a platoon of
operations researchers telling them they need to arrange their offices like
this to get them.

If you like quiet private offices then you will not work at Facebook. But
that's okay because Facebook doesn't want you anyway.

~~~
mynameishere
Nice theory but a lot of shittier companies use open plans as well.

~~~
Haul4ss
Most companies (the ones who lease space, anyway) are at the mercy of the
commercial real estate agencies they rent from. They don't always have the
money to raze the whole space they rent and build a developer's utopia in its
place.

I was referring specifically to companies who have the money to build any kind
of office space, and choose to build sardine cans with arcades.

------
tessierashpool
As a remote worker, I sometimes work at my desk, I sometimes work at coffee
shops, and I get a nice blend that way. Sometimes I log into IRC, sometimes I
don't, and again, I'm able to find the balance which works for me personally.

Background noise is up to me. Interacting with co-workers is up to me (to a
point, of course).

Some of my rent will be tax-deductible for me personally, none of it will be
an expense for my employer.

Meanwhile, none of the existing research supports open-plan offices. Yet it's
the norm in the industry.

------
rodeoclown
Scalability is a reason that many growing companies use open floors. When you
are growing rapidly, you're often put in a situation where you need the most
flexible possible floor plan, otherwise you have to move offices. Having way
more offices than employees sitting empty waiting for the hiring to happen in
the next few years feels too much like a waste of space. This makes the open
office plan very seductive when making decisions about how to lay out the
floors.

~~~
mmagin
The problem with this argument is that aside from work space and meeting
space, there aren't many other uses to which most places are going to allocate
the surplus space. And furthermore, I've seen non-load-bearing partition walls
in existing buildings go up just about as fast as I've seen cube farm put in.

------
TheSageMage
Personally, I think that most office designers take the concept of open
offices too far. From what I've seen of several offices, as a Software
Engineer, is that Open Office is meant to be entirely open. This means that
the only dividers/partitions are for things like meeting rooms. The rest of
the office is open, such as halls, cafeterias/break rooms, etc. This is what
causes my hatred of open offices.

I am on the fence about cubicles/private offices, because I do like the fact
that my team is close by and I can have a conversation by turning around and
talking to them. The annoying noise for me is all the idle chatter from people
in meeting rooms near by coming out of their meeting and deciding to carry on
a conversation right outside the meeting room, or while walking back to their
desk.

Ideally, I'd like an open office to mean that it's open for my team, where we
are partition/sectioned together, but that there is a door or some way of
keeping out all the ambient office noise/sights. I believe if I had this, I
would be able to get a lot more work done as I'm not having to wear headphones
to cut out the general clutter of distractions from my environment.

------
codingdave
My favorite space was the one we laid out for our startup back in the dotcom
boom.

We had large cubicles that housed 4 developers each. We each had a corner, and
there was a small conference table in the middle so we could just turn around
and collaborate. It was a great mix of a shared environment and private, where
it was easy to talk to the folks on your team, but also easy for everyone to
just work quietly for much of the time.

~~~
patrickmay
This works better for me personally when there are a few high-walled cubes or
offices opening into a shared area. I have Billy the Kid syndrome and really,
REALLY hate having my back to the room or door.

------
eugenez
It's not about individual productivity - it's about team and company
productivity.

I doubt anyone questions whether individual effectiveness suffers from an open
layout. However open layouts have several benefits that more than compensate:
\- Impromptu conversations are easy. The barrier to ask someone a question is
lower - it's faster to get unblocked. \- Shared context. With conversations
happening in the open, others will often overhear, sometimes learn, and often
will choose to participate. \- Impromptu socialization leads to better morale.
Someone drops by to chat socially, others join in, people build personal
relationships. \- Function-specific spaces. The space saved by having a denser
desk layout is allocated to having everything from kitchens to massage chair
rooms to ping-pong tables. At the same cost per employee, an open space layout
has more 'perks'.

I've worked in both offices and open spaces and I far prefer open spaces with
a good etiquette about when to interrupt someone.

------
njloof
And bathrooms. Why are there never enough bathrooms in tech companies?

~~~
wellactually
Bathrooms are the limiting factor in most self-respecting venues. Yet as you
state, there are never enough bathrooms, and I'd add they're never private
enough. I do not want to hear or smell when other people are doing their
business, and I certainly don't want them to hear or smell mine. Why aren't
there more private bathrooms? Is it taboo to discuss bathrooms?

edit: But Where Do People Do Their Business In This Office?

~~~
lotharbot
Related: bathrooms tend to be all tile without much ambient cover noise, which
just amplifies the sounds from the next stall. A big, noisy fan would solve a
lot of the problem.

------
mbesto
1\. These are clearly marketing pictures taken by professional photographers.
Well done ones I might add. They are meant to demonstrate (perception/reality)
what daily life of an any employee is. Not every big tech company is a
composed of 99% engineers. Cassandra and HHVM were built there (or somewhere
similar), yet people whose only evidence is a bunch of marketing pictures
decide to question the design decisions of people with intimate knowledge
about their company's organization.

2\. There is yet to be conclusive evidence that open offices work or don't
work, and I don't expect this to change anytime soon. What _is_ clear to me is
that the correlation between good code and office does not exist. Think of how
much code has been written in kitchens, garages, vans, etc that may have
changed the world...

~~~
bane
> 2\. There is yet to be conclusive evidence that open offices work or don't
> work

There's actually quite a few studies that show that they most definitely do
not work.

Here's a meta-study that reviewed hundreds of specific studies [1] and the
conclusion is inescapable.

Here's a survey of tens of thousands of workers [2]

And here's a New Yorker article collecting lots of this [3]. It includes a
reference to a study that found actual measurable health detriment to open
offices.

Arguing that issues with open offices are ambiguous is a bit like arguing that
global climate change isn't happening.

1 -
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119992592.ch6...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119992592.ch6/summary)

2 -
[http://lubswww.leeds.ac.uk/fileadmin/webfiles/cstsd/Images/P...](http://lubswww.leeds.ac.uk/fileadmin/webfiles/cstsd/Images/PowerPoint_Presentations/Time_use_and_time_loss_-
_DEGW_7Aug2010_-_FINAL.pdf)

3 - [http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-
office-t...](http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap)

~~~
sgustard
It's staggering to think, if you are right, how much more profitable Facebook
or Twitter or Dropbox would be if they had productive office space, don't you
think?

~~~
nerfhammer
These companies have golden egg-laying geese products and 15% more or less
productivity won't make a big difference in making or breaking the market for
them. Think about it this way: did Google beat Altavista because its employees
were 15% more productive?

Meanwhile, Microsoft, Google, etc. have whole huge divisions that don't make
any money.

------
austenallred
I think there's a balance to be struck.

I used to think that programmers complaining about open office spaces were
just nitpicking... then I learned how to program. Open offices are a reason
for headphones at best and a nightmare at worst.

That having been said, I've worked in spaces where everyone had their own
private office. It was great for productivity, but I felt like I never got to
know anyone. All communication was forced, which caused a lot of annoying and
unnecessary meetings.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but it's probably somewhere in the middle.

~~~
bmj
Having worked in a variety of office environments over the last 15 years, my
favorite has been shared, closed office space. My employee moved into a
relatively small building which had 2-3 person offices in it. The devs were
one, QC in another, sales in another. It worked quite well. We could close our
door, but still collaborate when we needed to. We also had several meeting
rooms if we needed to talk between teams.

I'm also not against the "pod"-style cubes (4 or so people in a large cube),
assuming the pods aren't cramped on top of one another.

------
noir_lord
I can't stand open plan offices, I can just about cope with a shared office as
long as phone calls are very rare/none existent.

My current office [http://imgur.com/a/KmHEO](http://imgur.com/a/KmHEO) is
about perfect, Apart from the computer I spent essentially nothing on it, the
desk was off freecycle, the chair inherited from previous tenant etc.

It's warm and quiet and beyond that I'm not fussed about architectural
masterpieces.

------
snlacks
They are kept in Bull Pens because they treat their employees as sterile
commodities to be herded around.

You don't become WalMart/Facebook/Twitter by treating your employees well. You
become big and profitable by cutting as many corners as you can and keeping
revenue up. Publicly traded companies generally get into this-quarter frenzy
that never leaves and kills any sort of long term viability as being a company
of and for people.

~~~
Igglyboo
>You become big and profitable by cutting as many corners as you can and
keeping revenue up.

Then why would they be spending millions of dollars on the office perks and
architecture? You're contradicting yourself, they're obviously spending a huge
amount of money on the office.

~~~
thirdtruck
Your assertion -- "they're obviously spending a huge amount of money on the
office" \-- is compatible with the previous assertion. They're spending it on
_the office_ , while employees are still treated as fungible cogs to be
plugged into said expensive office.

------
jim_greco
There's few if any private offices in trading. Even those who have them don't
use them except for meetings.

As an introvert I can understand the need for quiet time, but part of what
makes work 'fun' (and frankly tolerable) is the interaction with your
teammates who are working on similarly challenging problems. I definitely miss
the back and forth now that it's just me and my co-founder in a private
office.

------
ThrustVectoring
I code in an open office. My solution: headphones, and three 27 inch monitors
angled inward. It's not quite as good as walls, but it cuts out enough visual
distraction that it works well enough. I've also got an adjustable-height desk
that I leave at standing height, so there's not much going on above monitor
height.

A big chunk of the benefit of having an office is keeping your visual field
entirely work-related.

------
IshKebab
Ha, this is where I work:

[http://news.images.itv.com/image/file/257809/image_update_b4...](http://news.images.itv.com/image/file/257809/image_update_b4cb6308c19d7173_1378406786_9j-4aaqsk.jpeg)

That photo is quite old. There are about 80% more desks in that room now
(around 1000 in total). It's pretty loud. I put up with it though because the
job is otherwise pretty awesome.

------
abecedarius
That Dropbox office was a big damper on my enthusiasm interviewing there.
"Wow, this is the most beautiful office I've seen... but how do you all
concentrate?" They had some answers, fwiw, and maybe I'd have adapted, though
my experience of similar setups over a few months says no.

This is a real problem for recruiting if the recruitee is me.

------
TheRealDunkirk
As I commented on the article: I used to work at DeveloperTown
([http://developertown.com](http://developertown.com)) in Indianapolis. Their
"house" setup is both unique and awesome. Any article discussing office space
for programmers and designers needs to reference them.

------
tarikjn
Here is what I think about when someone says open office:
[http://www.belarus.by/relimages/000914_392548.jpg](http://www.belarus.by/relimages/000914_392548.jpg)

------
edpichler
Am I the only one here that does not like too much silent offices? I like to
feel my environment alive, I don't want silence, I want the low noise of smart
people discussing, sharing and interacting.

~~~
penguat
I love that too - where I work I get it 9 - 9.30 and 17.30 - 18.00

------
skatenerd
Is this some extension / perversion of the original XP principles? I feel like
XP Explained talks a lot about office layout and how it can foster
communication and teamwork.

------
spinlock
I put on headphones if I want quiet. What I really need to get away from is
flowdock/hipchat/etc... invading my screen. That kills my flow worse than
anything else.

------
diziet
I am not sure if the author visited any of the offices in question, but they
do have plenty of rooms/floors/isolated areas where people do work.

~~~
abecedarius
I've visited Twitter and Dropbox and am unconvinced that's enough: for best
flow you need a personalized space.

------
l-jenkins
We are set up in offices with 2-5 developers per room. Works out nicely. If
work styles don't meld, you can request to move (given there is space).

------
motbob
Would collaboration be hurt by spreading things out?

------
segmondy
I work in an open office and I love it, when this space was designed, we all
hated it, we cried, we moaned and grunted about it. We left our nice comfy
cozy private spaces and have to rub elbows with others. More than a year
later, I will pick it any day over any other space, collaboration at it's
best. For the first time I find myself enjoying to work more with others than
to work alone. So whilst some may not like it, please do realize that there
are those of us that love it.

------
jheriko
clearly the author does not understand how important both vanity and greed are
to most people - especially decision makers. XD

------
Kiro
I don't see the problem. When I put on my headphones it's like I'm sitting in
a private office.

~~~
RogerL
People are different. I can't work with music, for the most part. Some can
hardly work without it.

------
txu
I wonder what do people who disagree with open floor plans think the desks
should be like?

------
sogen
Introverts prefer a quiet place to be able to focus and work, a lot.

------
jedanbik
I've done some impressive work... From my bed.

------
benihana
This resonates with me so much. I currently work in a 'creative' and
'collaborative' open office and I just don't enjoy it. It's loud, distracting,
frustrating and worst of all, it makes me a hypocrite. I hate the noise, but I
am just as much a part of the problem as everyone else. I talk to teammates
and make jokes when other people are working, just as they do when I'm
working. I can't keep count of how many times per day I'm deep in thought and
then get startlingly pulled out of it when I notice my line-of-sight goes
right through someone and they're looking at me.

I find myself coming up with reasons to work from home, where I am much more
productive, much more comfortable and (I think) much more creative. I can take
the time I need, I can think out loud, I can pace, I can drop to the floor and
do some pushups (which I find helps reset my brain state and get a new line of
thoughts flowing) without distracting other people.

A private or semi private office wouldn't fix all these issues, but it would
go a long way in making me want to come into the office.

