
Research: Cubicles Are the Absolute Worst - summerdown2
http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/11/research-cubicles-are-the-absolute-worst/
======
rayiner
Unsurprisingly, private offices score the best, by a huge margin. Right now,
I've got a huge office to myself (separate from a two-person office next to me
by an open passageway). It's super quiet because there are bookshelves full of
books to absorb any noise, as well as thick 1970-era carpeting. It's the most
productive place I've ever worked. I have no idea why tech companies would pay
engineers gobs of money,[1] spend gobs of money on huge office campuses,[2]
then inflict open plan or cubicles on said engineers.

[1] Office space is expensive, but not that expensive relative to an
engineer's salary. The going rate for class A space in Manhattan is about
$70/square foot per year. That puts a 10x10 office (assuming 85% usable space)
at about $8,000 per year + build-out + maintenance.

[2] Apple's new spaceship building (in the middle of a faceless suburb) will
cost $5 billion and have 2.8 million square feet of space. One World Trade
Center (in downtown Manhattan) will cost $3.9 billion and have over 3 million
square feet of class A office space. A lower-profile project, the New York
Times building in Midtown West, was constructed for $850 million and has 1.5
million square feet.

Apparently Google spent almost $2 billion on a squat 18-story structure in
Manhattan with an over-abundance of depressing window-less interior spaces...
I'm going to assume it was the difficulty of getting 2.9 million square feet
in one place rather than just bad taste.

EDIT: I'm not saying Apple's offices are open plan. I have no idea what
Apple's setup is. I'm pointing out that companies are certainly willing to
spend a lot of money on these big suburban office parks, multiples of what it
would cost to just buy a couple of skyscrapers in SF. Thus, cost does not seem
to be the motivating factor (except maybe in a penny-wise pound-foolish sort
of way).

~~~
throwaway1460

        > Apple's new spaceship building (in the middle of a faceless suburb)
        > will cost $5 billion and have 2.8 million square feet of space
    

… that no employee below VP level can afford to live near. It's OK, though;
Apple doesn't have to pay them for the tenth of their lives they waste
commuting.

And above the entrance these words appear: “My name is Jobs, CEO of CEOs: Look
on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”

~~~
mwfunk
They can absolutely afford to live near it. Based on my own anecdotal
experience at least, the people who work for the big tech companies in the
South Bay with the long commutes are generally the ones who choose to have
long commutes so they can work in the South Bay but live in SF. If
affordability were their concern, they could save a ton of money by just
living nearby in Sunnyvale or Campbell or wherever.

I also know people who work for those same companies who have long commutes
for affordability reasons, but they seem to be the exceptions rather than the
rule. Even in their case, it's usually for reasons other than there's just no
way they can afford to live in the South Bay. More often, it's because they
are determined to have a really big house with a really big yard and are
unwilling to concede on that (such a thing is quite a luxury in the South
Bay). Even then, they're accepting the commute for because they want to, not
because they have to. It really sucks that housing is that ridiculous in the
Bay Area, but it's not like any of these huge companies are going to pick up
and leave and build their giant new campus out in the middle of the desert or
something.

~~~
throwaway1460

      > not like any of these huge companies are going to pick up and leave and
      > build their giant new campus out in the middle of the desert or something.
    

Or something.

Typically a programmer's daily work product can be moved half way around the
world in a fraction of a second, for a fraction of a cent.

Perhaps there should be an addition to _Latency numbers every programmer
should know_ :

    
    
      Programmer drives to work .... 3,000,000,000,000 ns

------
beat
Anyone who has read Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language"[1] can easily
extrapolate his ideas to cubicles. Alexander pointed out that if you drop any
human in an open field with a tree, within a few minutes they'll be sitting
with their back to the tree, facing the sun.

We are animals. We get physically and psychologically uncomfortable when our
vision is restricted and our backs are exposed. It means we are vulnerable to
predators. As such, cubicles are pretty much a nightmare.

[1] Christopher Alexander wrote about architecture, but his terminology was
adopted by the design patterns movement in computer science, so it's familiar
to most programmers. It's one of two building architecture books I recommend
to programmers - the other is Stewart Brand's "How Buildings Learn".

~~~
tieTYT
Why would you want to _face_ the sun? Wouldn't that blind you? I'd think it'd
be better to sit with your back to the tree facing away from the sun.

~~~
SamuelMulder
Probably depends on whether you are in Minnesota, trying to get warmth, or in
Phoenix trying to stay in the shade...

~~~
beat
I'm a Minnesotan, so...

------
toddmorey
This fascinates me. I find open-plan offices really hard to work in.
Meanwhile—perhaps surprisingly—my favorite places to work are coffee houses or
college libraries. I'm surrounded by strangers, but their anonymous presence
starves off the feelings of loneliness that I can get working from home.

I think the difference between a public place and an office is that it's
really unlikely for any of those strangers outside of an office to interrupt
your work. In an open office, every conversation and set of footsteps feels
like a potential disruption.

~~~
tieTYT
> I think the difference between a public place and an office is that it's
> really unlikely for any of those strangers outside of an office to interrupt
> your work.

Yes, I think this is the difference. The noise around you becomes
background/white noise.

But honestly, I don't know how you can work in these areas. Doesn't it prevent
you from making phone and conference calls? Assuming yes, maybe that's another
reason you can become more productive.

~~~
porsupah
I'd agree. Back when I was working on campus (now, mercifully, purely
remotely), I'd sometimes head off to the main coffee joint instead of the
completely open-plan office. Whilst it was hardly any quieter, it somehow
worked much better for me, probably just as you describe.

For my part, I avoid phones anyway - which seems more commonplace than I'd
imagine, amongst other technically-minded sorts.

------
summerdown2
I worked in a company that changed their old, legacy office block for a brand
new open plan one. Everyone was out in the open, and though there was an
obvious hierarchy of seating, most of the desks were unassigned and changed
ownership each day. The floors themselves opened out into a huge open space,
and all the meeting rooms had glass sides.

I have to say I wasn't a fan. There was a lot of background noise, and it was
very difficult to have a private conversation. I constantly felt like someone
might look over my shoulder (a problem if dealing with sensitive documents),
or interrupt work I'd struggled to get focussed into. It was also hard to have
private conversations about sensitive topics without having to search for a
space away from everyone's desk. Previously we'd just talk about stuff without
moving.

My biggest frustration, though, was the fact it was very hard to be anything
other than corporately bland in our attitudes. When we were split into floors
and rooms, it was much easier to laugh and joke, and I often saw people bring
something in to announce someone's birthday and make a fuss of them.

After going open-plan, it seemed the only way to celebrate anything was to
interrupt the entire office, which put a large dampener on it.

There's also the issue that if you tend to be introverted, open-plan offices
can be exhausting.

------
DanielBMarkham
Remember that what we're asking folks is to self-report on what they like or
not.

This may sound either pedantic or highly-controversial, but what people like
and what might be best for the work they are doing are two different things.
We do a great disservice to both to confuse the two.

I would like to have a great big office. Better still, I'd like a cabana at
the beach, a laptop, and a hammock. What's best for my team or the project I'm
on? Different things entirely.

What disturbs me is this idea we see repeated over and over again that _if I
like it, it must be good_. No, that's not true at all. Going to medical school
and having a brutal internship are not things you like, but they are things
that take you somewhere you want to go. Life is full of things that are
unpleasant yet work out for some greater good. We cannot blithely assume that
we can follow our instincts on what feels good with every project we engage
in. It doesn't work that way.

This may turn out to be one of those things. Or maybe we get our cake and eat
it too: what feels good is what's best. But that determination has not been
made, and this study doesn't advance the conversation along these lines at
all.

~~~
jodrellblank
We could take an anecdote from Richard Hamming's talk "You and Your
Research"(+) - speculation on why some scientists do great work and go on to
win Nobel prizes, and others don't, even if they are also clever and hard
working. It includes this paragraph:

 _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._

It might be similar with open plan offices - less pleasant and more difficult
to concentrate in today and tomorrow, but resulting in better, more
competitive, more coherent software in twelve months.

(+)
[http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I coach teams to perform better, so this topic is a bit of a sore point for
me. I think Hamnming was on to something.

I've worked in about every possible configuration, and I've seen teams work in
about every possible configuration. In addition, I've coded in all of these
environments.

After working from a nice, quiet home office for many years, I'm trying out
coworking. When I'm not with clients I drive an hour to an office to work with
random people.

Why would I do this? Don't I value my time? Sure thing. But I find that the
hassle and pain of being interrupted actually helps me to a reset to think
about whether what I'm doing or not is important. Without that reset, I'll
just grab on to some problem and keep tweaking it. I'm like that -- and I
suspect many others are like that too. We desire uninterrupted time because we
desire a deep problem to dive down in and forget about everything else. And
sure thing, there are problems like that.

But 99% of the time problems are not like that, and we hurt ourselves more
long-term than we help.

All of this is just conjecture, mind you. But this is an area where I see the
natural inclinations of technology people diverge for what looks better for
the effort as a whole. It's non-intuitive and uncomfortable. But that's the
way life is, right? Dang humans.

------
andrew_wc_brown
I like cubicles and would prefer to be in my own box than in an open space
concept room. Cubicles reduce noise. Respects my privacy, and puts up barrier
against people distracting me.

I wish more startups had cubicles.

~~~
thetrb
Same here. Cubicles with walls high enough that I don't constantly see
everyone and vice-versa work pretty well for me.

------
ctdonath
Methinks "open offices" score better than cubicles on many points precisely
because there is _no_ expectation of privacy/quiet/etc. Lacking the
expectation of better, there is less dissatisfaction with reality being worse.
Cubicles at least give the occupant a semblance, and thus hope for,
privacy/quiet/etc. so one is more keenly annoyed that it's not up to par.

~~~
clarkm
Agreed. Many people in cubicle farms won't think twice about taking a phone
call at their desk. But this is frowned upon in an open office plan, where it
is usually expected that you step into the hallway or a phone room.

~~~
bsg75
You must have worked in different open plans than I, which resembled more of a
giant chatter box.

Problem was mixing different types of work/communication (engineering and
sales), and management who did not care about the impact.

------
pstuart
What's worse is open space workbenches. They make cubicles seem like a luxury.
Grrr...

~~~
rhizome
Just a room full of picnic tables, let's live the dream.

------
jlgreco
In the past 6 months I've worked in a cubicle, open office space, and in an
office of my own, with a proper door. I would say that productivity was lowest
in the cubicle, and is highest in the office. Open office space was the most
unenjoyable however.

------
Zigurd
The best combination I have seen is a two-floor suite connected by stairs. One
floor has project rooms, which are small-ish open plan rooms, holding up to
about 10 people, with reconfigurable walls tables and seating. The upstairs
has some traditional offices (seemed like for business development and other
phone-bound users), conference rooms, and a very quiet, library-like open plan
area for individual on-site work.

------
JoeAltmaier
Worst in employee satisfaction. What about productivity? All the stats quoted
were surveys, not measures of work done.

~~~
morganw
Haven't read it, but the source I've always heard cited in claims that less
distraction leads to real productivity gains (3x) is Peopleware
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321934113/ref=ox_sc_act_ti...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321934113/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER)

------
cagenut
I keep wondering if there's a market for "co-working" spaces that _don 't_
follow the open-plan style. What would it look like? I know Joel tried to
floor-plan the ultimate developer office, has anyone followed up or built on
that since?

~~~
rhizome
Rent-a-carrel seems like it could at least make a go of it in a high-density
coworking market like SF. Heck, it would be cool if a coworking space had
various areas with varying degrees of openness.

------
coldcode
We were previously in a crowded open space where I had like 10 sq feet to
myself (open). Now we have a modern cube farm 6x8 and it seems luxurious.

------
com2kid
Open spaces are interesting.

Some problems get solved really quickly because of them. The number of times
the person who knows the solution overhears others having a problem is
astounding.

But then there are problems that just cannot be solved due to the level of
noise. Especially some collaborative problems, where a problem requires two
people to focus on it really carefully. Distractions just from hearing others
talking can interrupt lines of thought and beyond a certain point limit mental
ability.

~~~
w0rd-driven
This is never a positive thing to me. It helps when everyone has the same
level of problems but it really sucks when you never need help from others.
This is a personal problem with the open office I deal with now. I had a
coworker that would make disruptions interesting and light hearted. Now its
just me and a junior and his disruptions are everything from eating to talking
to himself to having conversations with others at volume level 11. The last is
not really his fault when someone else leads that charge but a fidgety person
is not a great fit for an open floor office shared among 4 people. A much
bigger open plan where that can be dissipated by the distance between others.
Right now it just feels like someone is constantly in your ear eating potato
chips loudly. I purposefully eat potato chips with my mouth closed and always
think about my "audible footprint" but when someone else doesn't it's just so
fucking annoying.

------
Nicholas_C
I currently work in an open office space and I enjoy it. I love being able to
ask the analyst across from me how s/he goes about doing something without
having to get up and peer over a cubicle wall or walk into an office. Bouncing
ideas off people and getting an immediate response is great. I could see it
being more distracting than a cubicle or a real office. I've never worked in a
place with those so I can't compare.

~~~
voidlogic
>I love being able to ask the analyst across from me how s/he goes about doing
something without having to get up and peer over a cubicle wall or walk into
an office.

So now it takes less effort to interrupt another persons work-flow and
potentially make them restart a long train of thought.
[http://ubuntuone.com/27zU9Q5Tlqkoohp6cO4sF2](http://ubuntuone.com/27zU9Q5Tlqkoohp6cO4sF2)

~~~
Nicholas_C
Your cartoon doesn't really pertain to this because telling someone they have
an e-mail is zero value added. Me asking my neighbor how to forecast something
and saving what could be minutes to hours, despite interrupting a train of
thought and setting them back a few seconds, definitely does add value.

~~~
voidlogic
> Me asking my neighbor how to forecast something and saving what could be
> minutes to hours, despite interrupting a train of thought and setting them
> back a few seconds, definitely does add value.

Only if either A, your interruption costs them less time then it saves you, or
B you believe your time is more valuable than theirs.

I think its a good idea to establish within a workplace, esp. an open seated
workplace, a way of broadcasting the price of interrupting you. Sometimes this
is informal with headphones as a sign, other times people make DND signs or
lights, etc. Its just much easier when everyone has an office- you can shut
your door.

------
Symmetry
I don't think you can meaningfully compare open workspaces to cubicles without
talking about how densely people are packed. I really like the open plan
office at my last job, but that was because people were spread far enough
apart. And we had side rooms for taking phone calls, having discussions, etc.

~~~
d3gamer
This is a very good point.

I've been in an open workspace that had three or four people to a desk and it
was a nightmare. Now I work at an open workspace where everyone is spread out
and it is much better. The closest person to me is ~2 meters away.

------
beat
The best setup I think I've ever seen was a large room with tiny personal
cubicles lining the walls, and islands of open work areas in the center. You
could go to your cubelet for phone calls, email, storing your coat, etc, but
coding work was done at the islands. Each island consisted of five
workstations two on each side and one at one end. Each workstation had two 24"
monitors and a wide berth, with two chairs and more available. Pair
programming was comfy, and getting four or five people around a single piece
of work was easy.

If you were at the islands, you were working and available to be called over.
If you were in your private cubicle, you were to be left alone unless it was
really important. From total openness to decent privacy in a few steps. That's
as good a balance as I've seen.

------
mathattack
I would like to see something that talks about the efficiency of both
approaches - ideally from a controlled test.

The reality is offices are much more enjoyable then cubes. Many years ago I
was part of a consulting project that cube-farmed a large organization
previously used to offices. Everyone but the senior-most execs were pushed out
of offices. It was done under the guise of improved teamwork. I saw lot of
theoretical support for this, but never did see empirical evidence. Maybe it
exists - I'd like to see it.

------
pbreit
I was going to suggest that the headline needed editing since the article
doesn't seem to support that conclusion. But then saw that HBR actually used
that mis-leading headline.

The research seems to only deal with employee preference and not much with
performance.

I'm surprised there is still so much disagreement on what works best and even
more surprised how popular open plans are. Open plans only work for the very
few people who either never need to talk to anyone and/or are comfortable with
do-not-disturb headphones on.

------
dhughes
Weird. I think it was on the Discovery Channel recently ( Past month? So also
"recent research") where a study on open-plan offices was mentioned and how
workers felt they had no privacy saying cubicles were better.

I think it comes down to the person, why not offer both choices?

By the way that graph near the end woke my inner 80s teenager:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1sLICo-
Cxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1sLICo-Cxo)

------
VLM
There's also a self selection bias. I'd never subject myself to open plan
voluntarily due to the performance hit. I suspect having personal standards
probably has a major influence on general attitude.

"They pretend to house us, we pretend to work" type thing vs being a bit more
driven resulting in, on average, more grouchiness.

------
goggles99
> _The bottom line: workers in enclosed offices were by far the happiest,
> reporting the least amount of frustration on all 15 of the factors surveyed.
> Workers in cubicles with high partitions were the most miserable, reporting
> the lowest rates of satisfaction in 13 out of those 15 factors._

Really? you don't think that he people with personal offices are not in
better, higher paying, less menial jobs to begin with? I think that would be
obvious and clearly a better reason that they are happier. If there are some
distractions and lack of total privacy, but you love what you are doing, do
you really think that you are going to be miserable?

Please stop with the correlation posts where there is more obvious potential
conclusions. So annoying.

~~~
owenmarshall
While I share your (healthy) skepticism about scientific reporting, a good
researcher would've attempted to structure their experiment to control for
this very effect.

I don't have ScienceDirect access so I can't check the research or
methodology, but from reading the abstract & the tables I can see it appears
the reporter's conclusion came directly from the experiment, so it's far less
likely that this is a reporter mistaking correlation for causation.

~~~
pekk
A good researcher would have the cash to hire hundreds of people and
intentionally randomly assign them to different work environments, I guess.

Then we would be picking on how they measured productivity and whether the
results held up over long periods.

~~~
goggles99
> _A good researcher would have the cash to hire hundreds of people and
> intentionally randomly assign them to different work environments, I guess._

Wrong, you lack the same basic, problem solving logic that I am referring to.

A good researcher would have asked additional questions such as "On a scale of
1-10" \- "how enjoyable is the actual work that you do here?", "how satisfied
are you with the amount of money that you are making?", "where do you see
yourself in five years". These aren't the best quesions that I could come up
with, I am just giving examples off the top of my head.

It would be easy to see how unhappy these workers are with other things in
their lives rather than if they were in a cubicle vs a private office.

