
The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies - romain_g
http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-floor-plans-in-tech-companies.html
======
abalone
Suffers from the same flaw as most critiques of open plan: it focuses on
individual productivity while failing to understand how it contributes to team
productivity.

Cornell did a study of open plan awhile back that you should all read. I
posted it here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507404)

The misunderstanding here is that it's just about serendipitously
"overhearing" other conversations.

1\. Open plan makes it easier to ask questions. Those are "disruptions", yes,
but what the Cornell study found is that in open plan it's actually easier to
"read" a person and see if it's an ok time to ask a question, and to quickly
reply or say ask me later, and so forth, to efficiently manage those
disruptions. Compare that to offices where you are _much_ less likely to ask
questions, knock on a door, etc., and where when it does happen it may turn
into a much longer disruption.

2\. They found it also gives us more courage to ask potentially "silly"
questions. Which can be the genesis of good ideas and help us get unstuck,
contributing to team creativity and productivity.

3\. They noted that developer reactions to office plans are often biased
towards maximizing personal productivity in order to maximize (short-term)
personal benefit, whereas the company benefits from a balance of personal and
team productivity. That's a fancy way of saying we'd rather spend our time
coding than helping others, so we may not instinctively appreciate the
benefits of open plan as much. Which I think is the case here.

~~~
msluyter
I call your one study and raise you 100:

 _In 2011, the organizational psychologist Matthew Davis reviewed more than a
hundred studies about office environments. He found that, though open offices
often fostered a symbolic sense of organizational mission, making employees
feel like part of a more laid-back, innovative enterprise, they were damaging
to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and
satisfaction. Compared with standard offices, employees experienced more
uncontrolled interactions, higher levels of stress, and lower levels of
concentration and motivation. When David Craig surveyed some thirty-eight
thousand workers, he found that interruptions by colleagues were detrimental
to productivity, and that the more senior the employee, the worse she fared._

Source:
[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/01/the-o...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/01/the-
open-office-trap.html)

Edited to add: the study by Matthew Davis referenced above is behind a
paywall; if anyone can actually access it, I'd be curious to know for sure if
this summary is accurate/correct.

~~~
Anderkent
It's not clear from the article if the study measures individual productivity
or team results. The pdf is paywalled unfortunately, can anyone clarify?

~~~
shaneofalltrad
These studies are all great, but fall under what type of students and/or test
subjects that already have been filtered in other ways before being tested. We
all are different. Along your request to clarify, I would like to request any
studies on a 7-9 man team.

I am one of those people who get distracted easily and am a new programmer.
Working on a Scrum team of less than 10, I found this has grown into being
very productive for the team and my growth, as I pick up the conversations, I
am actually learning things and I throw my music on if the chatter is
unproductive. I think the amount of dev's in the pit really can max out and
that is what the writer of this article has probably experienced.

------
patio11
_I 'm not sure on the exact numbers, but in San Francisco a programmer
probably costs you on average $100K a year in salary. With benefits the total
cost is in the neighborhood of $120K. So a programmer is a $10K / month
investment._

For what it's worth: assuming white-collar employees, the multiplier is
typically 50% to 100% depending on your location and how generous you are with
perks, rather than 20%. If you only have $120k available in the budget to hire
someone, don't offer a salary higher than $80k, or you're going to have a very
unfun meeting with your accountant saying "OK, would you prefer I took the
money from somewhere else in the business, or do you want to go to prison for
not paying our portion of the payroll taxes?"

There exist many folks who have more experience with San Francisco hiring than
I have, but the word on the street for e.g. funded startups trying to pay
market salaries is that you should be budgeting $15k~$20k a month to increase
your team size by one.

~~~
edanm
Can you (or anyone) go into more detail on what the number "$100K yearly
salary" includes and doesn't include, in the US? Helpful for those of us not
in the US. I.e. what makes up that extra 50%-100%?

Our own multiplier (Israel) is usually 30% extra over the stated salary,
although the salary here is usually stated as a monthly, not yearly, number.

~~~
patio11
The universal understanding of salary numbers among employees in the United
States is that it is gross cash pay before deductions. We typically quote them
annually for professional positions, and they're typically paid out in
approximately equal bi-weekly installments, with a bit of variation for cash
bonuses (which are common in some industries/locales and not in others).

The biweekly paycheck for someone with a $100k salary would thus be
approximately $4,000 gross. It would list a deduction for payroll taxes, a
deduction for anticipated federal and state income tax, a deduction for the
employee's portion of health insurance, and perhaps some miscellaneous
deductions for unemployment insurance premiums, automatic contribution to
their retirement account, and what have you. This leaves them with net pay
(probably in the $2,700 region or so but it's heavily sensitive to their
family situation because that makes a huge difference in how much anticipated
income tax is withheld) which is actually transferred to their account.

So all of that is included "within" the $100k yearly salary. What isn't, such
that business owners have to model it separately?

1) Payroll taxes are typically divided half between employees and half between
employers. For example, there's a ~14% levy on the first ~$100k in salary, for
Social Security (primarily a form of compulsory retirement savings which the
vast majority of working Americans are legally required to contribute to). ~7%
is deducted from each paycheck for this (so ~$280 out of $4,000). An
equivalent sum is contributed by the employer, without ever appearing on a
paycheck. So the employee's _real_ salary is actually about $107,000 but
$7,000 disappears to taxes prior to the point where they're told the salary
that they are going to be taxed on.

2) For historical reasons, the United States does not tax many forms of health
insurance if provided as a perk to employees. The United States also
historically did not have a national health insurance scheme. (We've got
Obamacare these days but it doesn't meaningfully interact with the math for
Valley engineers.) The combination of these two facts means that virtually all
white collar employees expect to have employers fund fairly generous health
insurance plans as an employment perk. The pricing for these gets a little
weird, but you're in the right ballpark at about $10k to $20k per employee per
year.

3) In addition to our national retirement savings program, we have
"individual" retirement savings. These programs have substantial tax
advantages. These are not compulsory, and can be funded by either an employee,
an employer, or both. It is the common practice of most employers of engineers
to fund these retirement accounts on a matching basis. The offer is at the
company's discretion (up to a legal cap). A common offer is "We will match $2
of your contributions with $1 of our own money, up to a maximum match of 3% of
your salary."

4) American engineers are commonly offered perks. Many are comparatively
inexpensive when bought at company size -- free gym memberships for all
employees, for example. Some are not exactly inexpensive -- free lunches and
dinners on the company's premises daily, prepared by gourmet chefs, for
example. Americans do not customarily include the implicit cost of perks in
salary figures.

5) There's a bunch of business overhead that I haven't accounted for above
(desks, prorated rent, computers, etc), but they're substantially the same as
in Israel, so I won't belabor the point.

Anyhow: health care, taxes, and perks is what gets you to 50 to 100%.

~~~
edanm
Excellent! Thanks for the breakdown.

If anyone is interested, here in Israel we usually talk about the gross
monthly salary, and we add around 25%-30% above that for the "true" employer
cost.

Similar to the US system, but we usually don't include perks like gym
membership when thinking of "employer costs". I think they're also less
common, which might explain it. We do include the employer portion of the
taxes, the employer portion of the pensions, potentially the employer portion
of other savings accounts, and - unlike the US, I believe - one perk that is
very common here is a company car, which is usually leased out to the
employee.

------
duncans
Joel Spolsky has written a lot about open plan vs private offices (most of it
inspired by Peopleware
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0932633439](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0932633439))

> Not every programmer in the world wants to work in a private office. In fact
> quite a few would tell you unequivocally that they prefer the camaradarie
> and easy information sharing of an open space.

> Don't fall for it. They also want M&Ms for breakfast and a pony. Open space
> is fun but not productive.

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/07/30.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/07/30.html)

See also:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDeveloper...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDevelopers.html)

------
robinhouston
“Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts
about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if
you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and
tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow
you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard
work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door
open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as
to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause
and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a
closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation
between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do
important things, although people who work with doors closed often work
harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but
enough that they miss fame.”

– Richard Hamming, “You and Your Research”
[http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html)

~~~
gjm11
Notice that Hamming takes it for granted that everyone has an office; the only
question is "office with closed door, or office with open door?".

This is a very different question from "offices or open plan?".

(My own preference is one I've seen others express here: rooms for groups of
roughly 4-10 people, private rooms for intense concentration and private
meetings, and some communal space.)

------
georgebarnett
Open plan offices are only part of the problem. The other more serious issue
is that we as a society have collectively ruined out ability to concentrate.

Email clients, chat clients, Social media, rapid fire short form articles,
distraction wherever you look; these all contribute to a reduced attention
span.

I do think it's possible to change the habit, but that requires mindfulness to
engage in less context switching activities. That's really, really hard.

~~~
theadmyral
I'd argue this is more a symptom of how fast things change, than how well we
are able to concentrate or our ability to focus.

------
bjourne
In my experience, regular programming is doable in open floor plans. You can
write stupid crud sites and winforms apps just fine. As long you have
headphones on.

But when you have a system crash and need to dive through 100mb of log files
to try and figure out what went wrong. Good luck doing that in a standard open
office! You just have to schedule a few hours after everyone else has gone
home so you can have some peace and quiet to do your log diving.

I honestly think the traits that make you able to hack the Linux kernel,
optimize the linear algebra required for the internals of a 3d engine, write
Haskell etc are incompatible with preferring open floor plans.

Edit: Btw, if you _are_ able to do these "high level advanced" programming
tasks while in a noisy open floor plan I would be very amazed. For me it's
like trying to play chess against a highly rated opponent and that is
impossible to do competently if you have to endure constant interruptions.

~~~
TillE
This really says it all. If you're doing something which involves a great deal
of concentration or careful thought (eg, software design) or learning
something new, then interruptions are death.

Simpler work where you know exactly what you're doing, where there are no
difficult choices to be made, can probably be accomplished in any environment.
Sometimes that's the vast majority of the work you're doing, sometimes it's
not. It really depends on the type of application.

------
mmcconnell1618
I think the best arrangement is private offices / cubes surrounding a central
team area where more interaction can occur. Pixar had a really cool idea where
Steve Jobs put all of the bathrooms on one side of the building in a central
area so people were forced to bump into each other spontaneously throughout
the day but only when they were already interrupted.

~~~
jusben1369
Really? Most people go to the bathroom once or twice a day. The chances of you
timing that to coincide with someone else for whom it's beneficial that you
start to spontaneously chat seems kind of low. To put it another way if Steve
thought it was important to have that I suspect he would have found a
different mechanism that the one above.

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

------
jodrellblank
Has anyone studied open plan offices and choice of programming language?

Does an environment with a high chance of interruption lead to languages where
you have to write a lot to do a small task, because you can write simple code
between interruptions, and over time get enough code to do the task - and if
you get interrupted well you only lose one minute's thinking.

Contrast with a powerful language where you need half an hour of thinking to
build an intricate machine in your head, then you write it down in a little
code, and need to hold its workings in mind while you test it. With no long
spans of concentration you won't go slower or write half an intricate
mechanism, you will write nothing.

Or to put it another way, is the problem of working in an open plan office:
you aren't choosing the right tools and work pattern for your environment?

Or to put it another way: are enterprise languages 'blub' languages _because_
they come from big offices and academic languages 'powerful and terse'
_because_ they come from people with time and quiet for deep thought.

Or another way: could we redesign our languages, tools and their UI to make us
as effective, and feel as good, in open plan offices, like f.lux changes a
screen for night use instead of complaining that it's not daytime.

~~~
tbrownaw
_Contrast with a powerful language where you need half an hour of thinking to
build an intricate machine in your head, then you write it down in a little
code, and need to hold its workings in mind while you test it._

That's not a powerful language, it's a bad language.

A powerful language isn't one that's overly concise to the point of
crypticness, it's one that allows you to express yourself naturally. Meaning,
there is a clean and strong conceptual mapping between the code and the
problem domain. Meaning, it requires _less_ mental effort to use.

------
travisl12
As an Acoustic Consultant turned Developer I have to stress that from the
perspective of "noise" alone, open plan offices are detrimental to
concentration. I define concentration as time spent without interruptions.

Even the use of headphones, can in a sense, be a distraction. Music being
played too loud creates stress in the body, and if you are trying to listen to
music to drown out a busy office then chances are you are not increasing
concentration by much (if any).

As an Acoustician I visited many tech open plan offices who wanted to hear
suggestions on quieting down conversations, and phones ringing. And I always
laughed to myself at this because the best suggestion is to build walls!
Cubicles help, but generally only the kind with the 6-8ft walls.

As a developer these days, I honestly feel that working from home can be much
more productive than the office because it is peace and quiet.

Quiet is good for me as a developer.

------
fiatpandas
My ideas:

1\. For core teams, ditch the open floor plan and instead put teams into small
(4-5 person max, with smaller options) private rooms that line the perimeter

2\. Project rooms are not permanent. A team should expect to move around
perhaps once every 3-4 months

3\. Team leaders / managers would of course work in the same room as their
team

4\. In the center of the perimeter of team rooms could be a hacker workspace,
shared areas, supplies, snacks, etc. With breakout meeting rooms around the
space as well

5\. executive leadership would work sitting with other specific staff (like
finance, HR, office managers, etc) in an open floor plan-like area; most
importantly, execs wouldn't have private offices because ideally they should
be moving around meeting with the teams, jumping into conference rooms,
jetting out of the office, etc.

6\. this open area should be relatively quiet

7\. people working in this open area should have ample access to private
spaces for breakout meetings, private phone calls, reflection, relaxation, etc

Obviously these rules won't apply perfectly to every company and work type,
but I'm just brainstorming

------
nwatson
For me, noise isn't the problem. Since moving from the SF bay area to North
Carolina, I work at home a lot for my California job.

I like to get out for several hours almost every day, though. I head to either
Krankies Coffee or Camino Bakery in Winston Salem, and both venues have: a lot
of people talking about family, studies, work, business, gossip; the espresso
machine; music; and at Krankies the coffee-roasting machine. __*
Undifferentiated noise actually helps a lot! __* I find the background din
soothing and conducive to designing and coding. The one thing that 's annoying
is the occasional person who insists on carrying on their half of a conference
call very loudly, but I don't see that much.

I've had pretty good experiences with open floor plans in companies too.
They've never been the row-upon-row of adjacent tables depicted in the post,
but close enough see/hear everything that's going on. In the open environment,
a lot of the noise will probably be discussions about coding/design matters on
other projects, or general office hijinx. There are downsides to that, but
there's a lot of benefit too. You don't need to wait till the water cooler to
see some matter needs discussion.

I can see how both the open floor plan and coffee shop environment will be
distracting for some. I always hated libraries as a student, and always did my
best work in non-quiet environments.

(I miss having coworkers just five steps over -- they're now 2700 and 8000
miles away.)

~~~
thejosh
I'm willing to bet noise isn't the problem for a fair chunk of developers who
complain about open offices because they aren't annoyed by noise, they are
annoyed by constant interruptions to work.

~~~
collyw
I can deal with the noise for day to day stuff - like normal debugging /
writing features that I know how to do.

Trying to learn something new, with new concepts, and I really struggle.

------
chrisbennet
Joel Spolsky writes of this in his essay "The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better
Code"

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html)

See #8 "Do programmers have quiet working conditions?"

"Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that
if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away 15
minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff and
Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal-fattening
farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy
function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff,
which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he asks Jeff.
Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to save Mutt 15
seconds)."

------
Zigurd
It's not so much open plan vs offices. It's quiet vs. not-quiet.

One of the most effective office setups I have seen had two kinds of work
areas:

1) Reconfigurable "team rooms" where most of the team can work together. These
have a door that is kept closed to reduce conversation noise leaking into
other areas, and a glass wall so you can see who is in the team room. The
other two interior walls can be moved to adjust the size of the team room.

2) On a different floor, there is an open quiet area equipped with large
monitors for individual coding, writing, and CAD work.

There are other workspaces, such as lab rooms for fabricating things. Their
larger locations have large shops with all kinds of fabrication equipment.

Everything is hot-desked. Many people spend part of the week working at home.
The company with this workspace is a major design firm, and I'd wager they put
a lot of thought and objective measurement into the design of their
workspaces.

------
hershel
Instant messaging has some interesting research[1] as a solution for solving
the communication/interruption conflict:

" Analysis of these data indicates that IM use has no influence on overall
levels of work communication. However, people who utilize IM at work report
being interrupted less frequently than non-users, and they engage in more
frequent computer-mediated communication than non-users, including both work-
related and personal communication. These results are consistent with claims
that employees use IM in ways that help them to manage interruption, such as
quickly obtaining task-relevant information and negotiating conversational
availability."

[1][http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00384.x/pdf)

~~~
userbinator
That tends to be my experience as well; IM, while more "urgent" than email, is
also not as distracting as being physically interrupted - it's a lot easier to
ignore an IM or email than someone standing beside you waiting for you to
finish whatever you're doing.

Some companies use IRC on their intranet; that's a setup I've used, and I
found it useful and not very distracting.

------
molbioguy
One size doesn't fit all [situations]. In my experience, open plans work when
active collaboration is necessary by shortening the communication paths. They
also work in the short term when everyone is focused on subsets of a common
task. However, open plans are abysmal (again in my experience) when you need
time to concentrate (most of my day when I'm programming anything non-
trivial).

I hear the same tired arguments about fostering communication and the
serendipitous meetings that spark great ideas. However, every single day and
for at least 50% of the day, everyone in my open office either grabs
headphones or runs away to another spot in the building when they need to get
work done individually.

When I bring up objections, I'm told that I can work remotely or wear
headphones. I don't see how forcing people to seek all sorts of ways to find
privacy is any great recommendation for a purely open plan. If you spend the
majority of your day talking and listening to others, I don't see how you can
actually get programming done.

Edit: At this moment I can overhear conversations about opening day in
baseball, April Fools day, SAP, reporting about inventories in Epicor, the
weather, CNN, 3 people scheduling meetings and having phone conversations and
one person trying to talk to our network provider. Not to forget, there are 2
people in the hallway complaining about personal issues and getting coffee.
And an elevator that keeps beeping every few seconds. I can't wait to see what
great idea all this is going to generate in my head.

~~~
cab_codespring
Everybody here walks circuitous routes around cubes and through hallways in
order to minimize any possible chance of running into another human being. I
say just let everyone work at home of they want. It's the inevitable course of
the future.

------
ben336
I don't have strong opinions on whether open floor plans are good and bad but
I strongly disagree with "The primary task of a programmer is writing code,
which involves sitting at a desk and thinking and typing."

The primary role of a programmer is to solve the technical problems an
organization is facing. This often involves writing code. It also involves
understanding problems and planning solutions that scale across an
organization.

------
mattzito
I think the issues arise partially on how "open" the open floor plan is. If
it's just one big room, poorly designed, it seems like a disaster for
productivity. If it's a series of pods or areas, with some effort made to
provide space between them, and a healthy amount of huddle rooms or conference
areas, I think it can work great.

The trick is to provide enough separation and space that people don't feel
claustrophobic, and manage a culture that encourages people to take group
conversations into a room if they're going to be loud/passionate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

------
zecg
"Unlocking creativity is the third biggest swindle perpetrated by managment
consultants, after open floor plans and managment consulting." \--
[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/03/who_can_know_how_much...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/03/who_can_know_how_much_randi_zu.html)

------
taybin
Aren't they just cheaper? Seems to me that is the biggest reason why. Although
there always seems to be money for the managers to have an office with a door.

------
InclinedPlane
Inexplicable? Open floor plans are cheap. They are the cheapest of all options
most of the time. Which makes it that much easier to fall victim to
confirmation bias when deciding to adopt an open floor plan.

------
srimech
I used to work in a company which had "a culture that enforces a library-like
environment on an open floor plan" as indicated (it wasn't a written rule,
just the way the culture worked). I found it extremely stressful and
depressing, so wasn't working well, and ended up quitting as soon as I could.

I'm now in an open-floor office in which people talk a lot and interrupt me
when it's necessary, and I'm a lot happier and more productive.

"Now maybe you're different than me" is probably the most important phrase in
there.

------
jemfinch
> Establish a culture that encourages employees to work from home as much as
> they want. They should really understand that face time is completely
> irrelevant. Then, measure how many people come in each day.

As someone who works in an open floor plan (and basically hates it) this
proposal only works when your workforce is younger. No matter how unproductive
the office gets for me, it's going to be more productive than staying home
with three munchkins running around.

------
dkhenry
I like open floor plans. I find I get more done in my open floor plan office
then my closed off private office at my house. I hate how all these critiques
are so absolute in that "Open Floor Plans are Bad". Open floor plans work, and
they work well. Like Eric Schmidt if there was some secret benefit to having
offices for everyone that could make workers so much more productive don't you
think companies would jump at the productivity boost ?

~~~
pekk
So the reason businesses shifted to open floor plans when they didn't use them
before was that they suddenly became optimal?

Or maybe there are fashions in management as there are in anything else.

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

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

------
mathattack
I've found that most open floors at software firms actually turn into exactly
the opposite of what they're trying to accomplish.

The goal: Sacrifice a little bit of individual productivity to increase
communication and team productivity.

The reality: A couple people are very loud, so the rest put on headsets.
80-90% of the office now only communicates online via instant messages and
email. Internal communication suffers a little. Customer communication suffers
a lot.

------
furyg3
We thought about this, and while we acknowledge the company's interest in
shaping culture, we felt that the company doesn't have a right to dictate one
mode of working when dealing with experienced professionals. When renovating
our office, we came up with the following modes and solutions to give people
choices:

1\. Working efficiently in a library mode: A silent room, for people who want
to work in quiet with no distractions. No talking, no phones, if you need to
talk to someone in the library you need to IM or email them. Good monitors and
mice / keyboards.

2\. Working in a ‘normal’ mode: Standard open floor plan, good
monitors/mice/keyboards, you can take a call if you want to or talk to someone
next to you.

3\. Teamwork mode: Tables in the open space with nothing on them, for teams
working together or semi-independently. Usually a whiteboard nearby.

4\. Small and/or impromptu meetings not requiring privacy: We have quite some
semi-closed booths which are un-reservable. Very nice if you want to work on
something intensely with 1-4 people.

5\. Private phone calls or small meetings requiring privacy: fully closed
booths which can seat 1-4 people.

6\. Presentations, large meetings, meetings with externals, or meetings
requiring a formal setting, or lockdown mode: bookable conference rooms.

7\. Total autonomy: Work from home or somewhere else.

The results is that (surprise!) most people choose to work in the open-plan
mode, not the silent mode. If a particular employee is not working most
efficiently in the mode he chooses or not, I can't really tell you...

------
arca_vorago
My company has a slight variation on the open plan, in which each department
has an open space that is separate from the other departments (but you can
walk into another for questions). The one critique I had was how screens were
inward facing and it was a privacy/security issue. We changed this so now
people have screens facing towards outer walls and people face inward, and it
preserves the benefits of the open space and keeps a good level of privacy.

One issue is that some people simply don't do well with noise and other people
around, for them they need solitary workstations to be fully productive, but
that is easy to provide and should be provided. People should work in a
comfortable way. Overall, I have been getting used to it and love just being
able to ask a few questions of a programmer while I am doing other work.

I do not think I could deal with a single large open space though. Luckily, I
also don't field stupid questions as much as some people might in an open
plan, as I am one of the only people in the company without a PHD. (it still
happens occasionally though)

------
dredmorbius
"Creativity is not a Team Sport" was a key takeaway from this video by
Improvides interviewing Prof Vincent Walsh on neuroscience of creativity. A
couple of key points:

 _[There 's] a very long and well-established literature in psychology that
getting groups of people together is no way to come up with ideas. Creativity
is not a team sport. What you're looking for is somebody's individual,
intellectual trunk to make new connections and come up with something new._

What's necessary for devising new thoughts is liberating the brain from
workaday tasks and letting them operate offline. When people have ideas is
when they're not thinking about them -- because the 90% of the brain that
you're not aware of is what's key for creativity. This is way daydreaming,
afternoon naps, and sleep are key for good ideas.

In the modern world, we often find ourselves doing too much -- too much
ordinary stuff. There's a great history of people and institutions giving
themselves downtime -- time to do nothing and explore new things, which is
when you get great ideas. The workaholic doesn't come up with great ideas.

Open-plan offices (with their constant interruptions -- not just from
colleagues but visitors, delivery men, salespersons) and interrupt-driven
tools (phones, IM, even email) disrupt that creativity.

Creating _a time and a place_ for collaboration is helpful. Making that _all
the time_ is not. I despise open-plan (though there's some use for a small-
group, shared-task, common space).

[http://fixyt.com/watch?v=QfMvqkrQkYQ](http://fixyt.com/watch?v=QfMvqkrQkYQ)

More: [http://redd.it/21qgiv](http://redd.it/21qgiv)

------
balls187
Reading the arguments made in comments against open floor plans aren't
inherently problems specific to open spaces, but rather, problems with
ineffective management/leadership.

Writing software is a very mental intensive task, and interruptions and
distractions cause major fracks in productivity. I take this is FACT.

Offices allow you to deal with some of these issues by closing the door. That
isn't a guarantee that you won't be interrupted, but generally speaking a
closed door is a universal sign to say "not right now, I'm busy."

Also office walls tend to be sound proof, so they can be much quieter, unless
you share a wall with a team of sales staff :(

Offices solve two problems: a way to universally say "I'm busy" and keep
things quiet.

I believe you can replicate those things in an open floor plan, but it's much
harder to do without buyin from the team and good leadership/management to
ensure that people are allowed to work without distractions and interruptions.

------
BenSS
There's a HUGE difference between a corporate open office plan and a co-
working layout. Corporate typically is "here is your desk, don't change
anything" combined with the judgmental politics of having to watch what you
do. The more informal spaces that you can actually choose where, and what
you're doing is far different.

------
brudgers
The issue isn't open floor plans or private offices. It's quality of design,
and indirectly hipsterism.

Good open floor plan designs are driven by acoustics and sitelines -
management of audible and visual distractions. Yeah, staining the concrete
slab and exposing the brick wall and using the metal pan and joists of the
floor above as the ceiling and hauling in oak library tables as desks, just
echos "lookie here, we're rebellious and unconventional." Then again
everything echos. That's the pysics of sound meeting hard surfaces and since
the echo reaches everyone, everyone will be tempted to look.

Architecture is sometimes said to be the world's second oldest profession - or
the oldest when architects talk cynically amongst themselves about the nature
of actual practice and dealing with the clients who pay them for their special
talent...but anyway, good open floor plan design is a solved problem, all
except for the fact that it hasn't photographed well since Gordon Bunshaft and
SOM designed Lever House and CIGNA in the 50's and 60's.

Which is to say is that the problem with good open office design is that it
doesn't look like photographs of office spaces in recent issues of magazines
(aka "archiporn"). Instead it looks a lot like class "A" office space in a
suburban office park - carpet, gypsum wall board, acoustic ceiling tile, and
fabric covered modular office walls (aka "cubicles"). All these reduce sound
transmission and reflection and impact noise - and if cubicle height is
thoughtfully selected provide reasonable balance between visual communication
and visual isolation and hopefully shared natural light. And if the holy grail
of being able to select HVAC systems exists, then good white noise acoustic
masking can be provided and that is even better than chasing sound
attenuation.

Sharing the natural light means putting the private offices on the core and
the serf farm by the windows. This of course means overcoming the _sina qua
non_ of hipsterism - status consciousness. But then again at the point where a
leadership team has bought functional design over archiporn, this is just the
last hurdle.

The problem of course is that corporate grade solutions require corporate
grade budgets. Good systems furniture is more expensive than cheap doors,
drywall and paint - as is good open plan office space versus lower quality
space. On the flip side, acoustic ceiling tile and carpet are less than
painted ductwork and stained concrete.

Anyway, the important change to architectural design over the past century is
not an evolution of visual style. It's the increasingly sophisticated material
options and the need to integrate an ever growing number of building service
systems. The problem as always remains convincing lay people that living in a
house isn't a good basis of experience for designing a workplace for others.
The optimization problems are radically different.

Truly useful innovations in architectural design occur far less frequently
than useful innovations in algorithms.

~~~
resu_nimda
Do you have any primers on good open office design? Ideally something more
accessible than a full textbook, to start with.

It sounds like you're saying that the optimal design is the incredibly dreary
Office Space setup. You seem pretty critical of "hipsterism," a lot of which
could be more charitably called "caring about aesthetics." Is there no middle
ground?

~~~
brudgers
According to Alan J. Perlis, the best book on office design for the layman is
_Alice in Wonderland_.

~~~
resu_nimda
Good to know, thanks.

~~~
brudgers
[http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-
alan/quotes.html](http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html)

Architectural design is like programming except that the first run of the
compiler is the last and even a cheap building office building costs a
multiple of a fuck you exit money. So there's no ok let's walk away. Users are
going to live with the first executable for thirty years or more.

That said, there's a reason that Alexander's book launched the idea of
software architecture twenty years ago. It's that fertile in design values for
the working humanist. Libertarians and corpratists perhaps not so much.

~~~
resu_nimda
Yeah I found the reference. I like your offbeat and rather non-sequitur style
(what did that compiler analogy have to do with anything?), but I would have
appreciated at least one earnest recommendation for reading up on office
layout theories from the architectural perspective.

Guessing you're referring to something by Christopher Alexander, _Notes on the
Synthesis of Form_ or _A Pattern Language_? Those predate your timeline by a
few decades but I couldn't find anything else that fit. Whatever it is, I
don't think it has quite the seminality in software architecture that you
imply...

~~~
brudgers
_A Pattern Language_ is where Cunningham got the idea of design patterns, and
Alexander has had far more impact on the world via software than construction
- even though the approach in _Notes on the Synthesis of Form_ [which
Alexander largely disowned] is probably more like the way software really gets
developed...stringing together components rather than implementing patterns -
it's engineering over architecture.

On the whole, architects tend to be a fairly illiterate group and the practice
of architecture is largely a craft creating one off designs, so there aren't
really any standard references on office layout or design - and certainly not
any theories as theories of office space. There's just a guild that where the
academy was still debating the utility of CAD in the year 2000 - I know, I was
there. It's still not sold on Building information modeling - aka "using a
database."

In so far as architecture is a science, actual buildings are its experiments
[an idea stolen from E. H. Gombrich] Unlike a program, there's one shot at the
artifact - the building gets built and the budget spent and there's no way to
do test driven development or serious integration testing, let alone
refactoring or versioning. The plans are like code and the construction
process is their one and only pass through the compiler.

Anyway, you might find something in an architectural school library on office
layout, but in practice a few pages from something like Time Saver Standards
for Building Types is about as much reading as a practicing architect is going
to do. The big drivers of schema are soft - the psychology of clients and the
architect's empathy for those who have to inhabit the space...that's the whole
of whether offices in the core and serfs by the windows gets built or not [and
that's not the way to bet].

With a specific open office space, bringing in the modular systems vendor is
how the actual layout of cubicles is done. The reason is that architecture is
commoditized to the point that chasing through endless swaps of Suzy and Joe
and Clay among the cubicles [and whose name goes where is an O(n^3) PITA] and
only the person actually selling systems furniture can afford the handholding
(unless you're Frank Gehrey and explicitly getting paid to do it and able to
assign a $15 an hour intern with an March from Harvard's GSA).

If I were inclined to argumentation I'd point out that architecture was a
couple of thousand years old when Vitrivuvious dedicated his 10 books to
Augustus Caesar and thus you can pretty much be assured that any proposition
that links software and architecture is grounded in all that history and
floating free upon the mere sixty years that the concept of software has
existed.

Habraken's _Structure of the Ordinary_ is the way territoriality and control
express themselves spatially and I find it informative for the sort of
problems upon whose solution good office design depends. It's not rules for
layout but the effects that various configurations create.

[http://www.habraken.com/html/structure_of_the_ordinary.htm](http://www.habraken.com/html/structure_of_the_ordinary.htm)

Anyway, if there ever was a field of obsolescence ripe for disruption, it
would be architecture here and now - and of course it's already happening. The
infrastructure needed to provide many services ain't no building any more. The
guild thinks technological progress is faster horses to speed up the
production of drawings - or to anchor the analogy better pens. The idea of
providing better solutions is inconsistent with the model of architecture as
craft because a better solution might not require a building and with a
business model that couples fees to a percentage of construction cost, there's
no money in it.

Gosh, that was fun.

------
alistairSH
Can anybody comment on the usefulness of open plan space when there is a wide
range of programmer ability? I can see if everybody on the team is a rock star
that the benefits of open space could be smaller. But, what if you have a mix
of senior engineers and junior developers (who presumably need more active
mentoring)?

I ask because in my current role, I'm the product architect for a large web
application. In addition to the usual design and development tasks, part of
this role is bringing new development teams up to speed on technologies they
have not used before. I find it much easier to be in a team room with those
teams, they get immediate feedback, can ask questions, etc. If I was in an
office or cube, I'd have a constant stream of emails from individuals to
answer.

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

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

------
FollowSteph3
The problem is, and always will be, that the 9.2% cost difference is very
visible whereas to non-technical people whereas the productivity differences
aren't. And unfortunately more often than not it's the non-technical people
making the decisions on office space...

------
cab_codespring
I hate open office plans. I want my privacy. if I need to hike up my skirt and
and adjust something I want to be able to do it. if I need to call my
gynecologist I want to be able to do it. If I want to surf the web I don't
want anyone looking at my screen. I don't want people to be able to see when I
floss my teeth. I would like an office with a door. Barring that, a cubicle
with high walls and a door. Barring that, a cubicle with high walls that isn't
missing the fourth wall. Barring that I want to get the hell out of there.
Management that does an open office is doing it because they're cheap and
don't trust employees to do work if they can't see you. All that other stuff
is pure horseshit.

------
amaks
"But once you start to get bigger, say the 15 person range, it starts becoming
unwieldy."

I think this is a good indication that a team is getting too large, needs to
be split into smaller teams. There is a notion of "two pizza teams" described
by Werner Vogels ([http://derivadow.com/2007/02/20/two-pizza-
teams/](http://derivadow.com/2007/02/20/two-pizza-teams/)) to keep things
efficient and organized. For teams this small, open floor is very productive
and efficient for collaboration, including software development.

------
jusben1369
The trouble I have with these arguments by programmers against open floor
plans is I directly correlate the dramatic increase in popularity to the rise
of programmer rather than non programmer led startups. If in fact it was
counter productive wouldn't the (presumably smart) developer/leaders of these
startups switch as soon as they got their first Series A check? Or is there a
sense they can't because a) they feel stuck due to the cost of rent or b) some
herd mentality that means they can't attack talent unless they have the open
floor plan?

~~~
antimagic
As with most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle of two extremes.
When you are developing a new product there are big changes being made all of
the time, and you need good communication in the dev team so that everyone can
stay abreast of what's happening - there is a good chance that the changes I
am making will have a direct impact on your work. The size of the team also
tends to be small, making the "openspace" much closer to a "team office" in a
larger company.

This is pretty much the optimal situation for an openspace floor layout. Now
compare that with the situation in a more mature company. The first thing any
sane lead engineer wants to do once v1.0 is out the door and making money, is
to pay down on the inherited technical debt. Organise code so that it is
modularised, so that changes in one area don't have a major impact on other
areas. As money is being made, the team starts to expand as well, so
simultaneously you have less need for close interaction between team members
(due to improved software structure) and greater opportunity to be distracted
by irrelevant discussions, as the scope of the product has now grown so much
that most of the engineers will never master all of it, but instead become
experts in one particular aspect.

Let me give you a real-world example from my current job. At the moment, I'm
deep in the source code of an OpenGL driver, identifying performance problems.
The thing is, we already have a product, and it works well, but it uses a 2D
graphics APIs, and the designers want iOS7-style blurring. So I've re-
implemented the graphics APIs using OpenGL. This is completely independant
work. No-one else knows OpenGL, and none of them even see the API, as it's
hidden behind a facade that they already know. I had pretty much zero
interaction with the team whilst implementing the OpenGL backend, as all I had
to do was implement an existing API. I now _still_ have zero interaction,
because if the team don't know much about using OpenGL, they know even less
about how it's implemented under the hood. I don't need to know about their
problems with what happens when the user presses "back", and they don't need
to know about my problems with the vsync callback.

Yet, we are still in an openspace. The designer with the ridiculously loud
laugh is still distracting me every thirty minutes or so. The two guys having
a discussion about the latest ministry shake up in the government, yup,
they're doing that about 2m from my ears and not making it any easier for me
to concentrate. They programmer talking about the first run sequence with a
project manager one desk over? Absolutely of no interest to me.

OK, so much for why openspaces objectively suck once your past the project
startup phase. Why do ex-developers / current-CEOs still stay with openspaces?
You would have to ask them, but maybe it's because they remember how
wonderfully productive it was at the start of the adventure and don't realise
that the situation has changed. Or maybe their much more interested in raking
in the cash,and are now just waiting to flip the company - future productivity
is of no interest. Keeping the costs down to make the company more attractive
to buyers though, that might be very interesting to them. Anyway, the fact
that they persist with openspaces is not necessarily a ringing endorsement for
openspaces.

------
moron4hire
Every open floor plan I've worked in devolved into all-day Friday nerf
battles. If we're not getting any work done today, I want to go home, not hang
out with a bunch of overgrown man-children.

------
Shivetya
Having worked in many environments, currently cubicle style, which included
personal offices, lunch room tables, and open floor, I find that it comes down
to effective management more than the provided work space. By that I mean, we
were just fine three abreast on a lunch room table because we knew what we
were doing, who was doing what, and where we all were, and on and on.

Too many times I see these floor plan discussions and just wonder if its an
excuse for poor management or worse, developers.

------
cjf4
My work has a relatively unique (I think) set up that in my opinion pulls the
best of both worlds. Basically, it's a big semi circle of 6-8 half cubes
around the manager. So if you are looking straight forward at your computer,
there aren't too many distractions. But if you want to talk to a
teammate/manager, you just need to pivot your chair 180 degrees. It's a good
balance of collaboration/help and concentration.

~~~
morsch
Sounds like a panopticon to me.

------
brlewis
_The open floor plan really only works when you 're really small, when it's
essentially equivalent to one of those "5 man offices". But once you start to
get bigger, say the 15 person range, it starts becoming unwieldy._

The Boston Fitbit office has 12 engineers now. I'll pay attention to how
things progress as we grow past the 15 mark. Open plan seating seems to work
well for us so far.

------
jowiar
One of the reasons, at least at a startup, why open plans are common is that
they're logistically easier to deal with when growing. Rearranging the
furniture to make space usage a bit more efficient doesn't involve a
sledgehammer. Similarly, it's hard getting a custom buildout (office a-la-
Joel) for a short term lease.

------
ilovecookies
I agree with this, its the same story with every company. I had to use these
at my last job to get anything done...

[http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/shop_online/headphones/n...](http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/shop_online/headphones/noise_cancelling_headphones/quietcomfort_15/index.jsp)

------
joeldidit
Open floor plans came about originally to fit more people into a space, and to
get more work out of them (which it fails at doing, but the idiot management
theory is that if an employee is on edge, then they will always be alert and
productive due to fear of being seen not doing anything). And beneath it all
is the "breaking down of barriers" BS that permeates the business (sales in
particular) world. BS that ends up being nothing more than a bunch of needy
extroverted people setting things up such that they can constantly yap yap yap
all day long to the point that all their needs are met (at the expense of
everyone else).

People forget that this "keep it lively" (versus not negative, though they try
to claim that's all it is), "smile and say hi when we cross paths," "approach
me and kiss my ass to make me feel good," "always be open and approachable and
available" (read: always be there when I need something, then when I ask do it
blindly and with everything in you so I get what I want, then nod your head
acceptingly when I make up some BS excuse when asked to do something as though
it was ever about anything other than me ensuring I get everything I want
while ensuring you get nothing), and anything else that will avoid insulting
me or hurting my feelings nonsense is something out of a Dilbert cartoon and
should've been ancient history by now, not promoted as some sort of
superior/modern/good approach.

I hate open plan offices. The collaboration argument is BS, because I can
collaborate just as well when sitting in a cubicle as I would when in an open
plan environment. And, as a matter of fact, the cubicle (or some other) setup
would probably be better because we could huddle around someone's desk as
necessary to discuss anything that needs to be discussed, then go our separate
ways to work on what needs to get done. All without the constant tension,
anxiety, and noise of an open office environment that completely stalls out
any ability to think clearly. The only things that really affect collaboration
are proximity, and how well the group can collaborate (can they work well
together, do they like each other, have they minimized the effect of any idiot
managers and divisive employees, etc).

I hate cubicles as well, but I love silence, privacy, and the ability to
uninterruptedly do my work. And the cubicle set up allows that more than open
plan environments. Also, most open plan environments are setup such that
everyone can see what you are doing (as in they can stand over your shoulder
and blatantly watch for no reason, or can end up doing so unintentionally),
and in a way that would leave everyone in a state of paranoia thinking you're
watching them. Anytime I see something encouraged that heightens fear/anxiety
levels like this I start to smell BS. I start thinking that maybe this is
exactly what they are up to.

Open plan environments are good for those that like annoying or squeezing
others, who constantly need attention, who like sitting close to others, and
anyone else that needs to discuss every single thing with someone else before
they do it (but it's really that they have an aversion to thinking, don't know
what they are doing, and would rather get someone else to do the work (while
BSing that they are just being more open and communicative) then take credit
anyway). These environments are also great for management, an entity in most
companies that's always looking for a way to underhandedly (something they can
laugh about like they're so clever for doing it) squeeze more out of people
while making it look like they are giving them what they want, and are so nice
for doing it. That is, it amplifies so many negative aspects that any good
that it brings is overshadowed, and it seems like nothing more than gimmicky,
self-serving, overly hyped, faddish nonsense.

------
conformal
something that this article does not address is all the other things that need
to happen to give employees private offices, e.g. architect, permits,
construction.

i have previously leased and built out a high-end office in a building in
downtown chicago and the amount of time burned with the architect, waiting for
permits, and construction is serious. after doing that once, i will never do
an office build-out again unless i actually own the building. when you add in
the fact that the building is "union only", the delays in construction become
ridiculous.

after going through this part myself, i'm all for open-plan offices, despite
their being less than ideal for developers. the majority of our developers
work on remote anyhow.

------
peterwwillis
This presents two choices:

    
    
      A. annoy your employees but increase communication
      B. reduce employee stress but decrease communication
    

There is a third choice that nobody ever talks about:

    
    
      C. increase communication, let employees decide if they will work in open or closed spaces
    

How do you accomplish C? Two ways.

1\. Increasing communication: This is a huge, huge topic, and would be most
effective with training sessions that work on the varying problems with
communication. One size does not fit all, but general techniques exist to
allow people to collaborate easier in a variety of ways. You figure out what
works for your team and you maximize communication, which increases
collaboration.

2\. Movable partitions. Either people can work on an open desk layout, or
surround their desk with a movable partition that partially or completely
isolates them. These are cheap, flexible and allows the employee to dictate
their preferred level of comfort in physical interaction.

------
acinader1
Just as a point of reference, I worked in an open plan for a decade starting
in the early 90's where the boss DID actively SHUSH people. More than a little
odd, but I did like it, all of the benefits of an open plan without as many
drawbacks.

------
Infinitesimus
"The primary task of a programmer is writing code, which involves sitting at a
desk and thinking and typing"

Lost me there. The primary task of a (good) programmer is to solve problems
with code, that may involve 70% planning and design and 30% for some.

------
athenot
How about having a developer area that is treated like a library? Silence
enforced at all times, you have to whisper if you strike an impromptu
conversation. And if that bubbles to a brainstorm, get up and grab a
conference room to talk about it.

~~~
rohunati
I've thought about this too, but my suspicion is there are some good reasons
why more companies don't do this. Anybody care to chime in?

~~~
twic
It might just be that nobody's seriously tried it.

A practical concern might be that a library needs a librarian to shush people.
And it needs people to obey the librarian when they do that.

------
ianstallings
Inexplicable? Allow me to explain in one word - money. Or lack of it, to be
more precise.

~~~
walshemj
Actually its capture by a function that has no interest in the efficiency of
how people work just in lowing the cost to them.

ie I save 5% on office costs (and get a year end bonus) but I dont care that
performance went down by 15% (this is what IBM found was the benefit of having
a private office)

------
ironhide
Managers want to see people working. It makes them feel better.

I worked a place that had full office cubes, 8 foot walls, and enclosed but
the entrance. It was glorious. I felt good and I was extremely productive. It
reduced my stress greatly.

------
sireat
I used to work in an office with a much more experienced programmer. It was
great for me, but not so good for him to be peppered with the questions that I
could have looked up in a reference manual(before Google).

------
escape_goat
I'd like to note that his self-assessment of likely open-floor-plan
productivity appears to be an authentic QWANTZ moment. Personally, this is the
first time I have seen one in the wild.

~~~
gjm11
> an authentic QWANTZ moment

Would you care to explain what that means?

------
hokkos
I don't see the point of precisely calculating the price of a non open-floor
vs open-floor per programmer, when just after making up numbers about
productivity.

------
pbiggar
Just put in an LOI on offices for CircleCI, with private offices for all -
very excited!

------
hawkharris
Many developers have the ability to work remotely, which offsets this problem.

~~~
ronaldx
Right.

If your job can be done in a closed office without interacting with anyone,
why do you need to be in an office at all?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Because home might be an even worse place to concentrate in than open-space
office. I know it is for me, it's the only reason I actually come to work
instead of doing it remotely (which costs me additional 2h/day of commute
time).

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

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, if they hire me at local Google office, I could cut it down to ~40min /
day ;).

Anyway, as my commute is walk+tram+bus+walk, I do offset this time by reading
books and replying to e-mails while in transit. I'd be really, really angry if
I had to spend this time driving a car.

------
michaelochurch
Backdoor age and health discrimination.

Most organizations are so inept at choosing leaders (they can't tell who's
good at the job and who's not) that their only recourse is to set up pointless
contests that grind people down, and then determine the last person remaining
to be the leader. (Those who left weren't dedicated; those who broke were
"weak".)

Open-plan offices (and, especially, open-back visibility) are just another
shitty mechanism used to wear people down and make the attrition/sorting
process happen faster.

------
teemo_cute
Management/HR: most likely extroverts because they have to deal with people.

Developers/Tech People: most likely introverts because they are the analytical
type.

Management says, "What's good for us might be good for them. Right?" Developer
says (silently), "No."

------
fudisgud
>The primary task of a programmer is writing code, which involves sitting at a
desk and thinking and typing

This is most definitely is _not_ the case for most development positions.

Oh yes, there's plenty of code to write if your a developer. But there's
communicating with management/qa/business dev/other developers/support as to
what to work on, progress on tasks, clarification of requirements, bugs
discovered, issues raised, tests to run, ways to program, etc. Open spaces
will encourage these conversations to happen more organically instead of
scheduled strictly around meetings.

At the end of the day, companies wants developers to crank out code as much as
possible, but what they _need_ is development to communicate effectively -
among themselves and across teams. Hence, open floor plans, even if it reduces
the quality of code.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And that's where the disconnect happens. I assume you are a manager? Because
status meetings are useful for you, but absolutely a disruption to the
developer, a time sink and a sap to energy and productivity.

To imagine we want our work environment structured around Reporting what we
do, and not around actually Doing the work, is the tragic mistake of our
industry. And its largely why I became a consultant/contractor instead of a
corporate employee.

------
zemo
this is why I wear construction earmuffs at work.
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009LI4K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009LI4K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00009LI4K&linkCode=as2&tag=jordoreldotc-20)

~~~
mabbo
You too? I've got the blue pair. Some of my coworkers don't really get just
how much sound they block, and get pissed that I'm not responding to them when
they're standing behind me talking to me.

And half the time, I actually can't hear them.

~~~
zemo
yeah, at an old job they were given out to every employee as standard
workplace equipment. I found them really helpful so I bought a dozen of them
and passed them around to other people that wanted them. They're pretty handy.

------
JetSetWilly
I've noticed lots of programmers make unsupported assertions that a quiet
workplace is better than a noisy one. But why? Have there been any studies
demonstrating higher productivity if programmers have their own office? I
don't think so.

We should be suspicious of such claims. Think of von Neumann:

 _At Princeton he received complaints for regularly playing extremely loud
German marching music on his gramophone, which distracted those in
neighbouring offices, including Einstein, from their work. Von Neumann did
some of his best work blazingly fast in noisy, chaotic environments, and once
admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. He never
used it, preferring the couple 's living room with its TV playing loudly._

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

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

~~~
nbouscal
Say it is purely personal preference: 50% of people can work well in open
offices, and 50% of people cannot. Even if that were the case (which I highly
doubt), that would still be a solid argument for closed offices. Why? Because
while people who can work well in open offices can easily adjust their closed
office to suit their temperament (e.g. by blaring loud German marching music),
people who cannot work well in open offices have no recourse. Headphones are
the recommended strategy, but in my experience they still lead to a decrease
in productivity and are generally uncomfortable when worn for an entire day.
Further, they do not block out the visual distractions of people walking back
and forth, etc. They also do nothing for the feeling of lack of privacy, which
for me personally is one of the most egregious aspects of an open plan office.

I think that among programmers especially, the proportion of people who cannot
work at peak productivity in an open plan office is much higher than 50%, but
even if it were only 30% that would still be a strong argument for closed
offices.

