
Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace - epenn
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/30/google-got-it-wrong-the-open-office-trend-is-destroying-the-workplace/?tid=sm_fb
======
kyleashipley
I'll play contrarian for a moment: the most productive office I've ever worked
in was an open office layout. What worked for us:

* Separate clusters by function / noise level -- We didn't put sales people and developers next to one another. People who spent all day on the phone were near other people who spent all day on the phone.

* Keep clusters small -- We had 4 person "pods" of desks for most of our early lifecycle. You weren't constantly interrupted by a dozen people from every direction, but you had a few people you could bounce ideas off of when you needed to.

* Lots of breakout spaces -- If you need to have a conversation that lasts more than a minute or so, find a private space. It was nice to hear a snippet of a conversation and decide "I care about this topic, let's break out and discuss further" or "This is not relevant right now, I'm going to disregard."

* Be respectful of flow -- If someone is deep in focus, just leave a post-it on their desk or send a message via chat. (This was a good form of one-bit communication for us.)

I don't think it's impossible to create a great open office layout. People
just copied the ceremony without the essence. It's no different than "Agile is
broken! We have 20 minute standups 3 times a day and nothing gets done!" Maybe
the reason is because you're doing it wrong.

~~~
bad_user
Your advice is on the same level as "eat healthy" and "exercise more". It's
nice, we should all do it, however for some people it never happens.

And here's the problem - some people just cannot be respectful of other
people's time or flow and also you can find a lot of variation between
communication styles (e.g. synchronous vs asynchronous) or noise tolerance of
people.

For example, some people only want to work from home, whereas I cannot work
from home, but on the other hand I need a very distractions free environment.
I have really good and respectful colleagues and yet I find myself saying no
to requests and interruptions several times per day even, actively declining
attempts at synchronous communications between us, just so I could get
anything done. This happens to the point of becoming nauseating, not only
because " _Alex, can you talk?_ " is distracting enough, but also because I
have to say NO a lot. And I'm probably labeled as being a jerk, yet I cannot
help being one, because contrary to other people, I really, really need to be
left alone when focusing on something.

On your experience, I'm not arguing that the open office in question wasn't
productive _for you_ or for your close peers, but have you asked the others
about it?

~~~
logfromblammo
I'm bothered by people who prioritize synchronous communication over
asynchronous. On a recent project, I worked with someone who was remote. Every
time I sent an e-mail, he picked up the telephone. Then he took a long time to
get to the point, and couldn't ever seem to disengage cleanly.

Open floor plans would probably work great for people like that. I prefer to
not be pre-empted from my current task, and to have a written record of the
things you wanted to tell me, so I can refer to it later. Face-to-face
conversations are fine if I'm not already doing something else, but don't
force me into one just because you're doing your "manager walk" or can't be
arsed to have a specific agenda for the conversation.

If I have a door, I can hang a "do not disturb" sign on it, and lo, I am not
disturbed. Otherwise, it may just be closed because the compressor from the
fridge in the break area bothers me. I don't mind interruptions, provided they
are more important than what I am currently doing, but it seems like open
plans lower the threshold for interruption. Some people see that as also
lowering the threshold for collaboration. But there are ways to design a space
to encourage one without also encouraging the other.

~~~
jackmaney
> I'm bothered by people who prioritize synchronous communication over
> asynchronous.

Amen. My voicemail greeting for my work phone is "Hi, you've reached the
voicemail box of Jack Maney. Instead of leaving me a voicemail, please leave
me an email. Thank you."

~~~
ryandvm
I don't get it. They're both async.

~~~
jackmaney
What voicemail system allows you to "skim" through voicemails (roughly the
equivalent of fast-forward and 2x speed playback capabilities) and is as
convenient to use as email? Honest question. Because if you can name such a
voicemail service, I'm sold!

~~~
mulligan
FYI: Google voice will transcribe your voicemails.

~~~
jackmaney
Great. Now please talk the IT people at the Enterprise company at which I work
to either a) ditch their voicemail system and go with Google Voice or b)
integrate Google Voice into their existing voicemail system.

------
badmadrad
Open offices are type A/extroverted personality wet dreams. Everybody they
need is within earshot and they can see EVERYTHING so they can properly
control everything. However for introverts, people with noise sensitivity, or
people with ADD this is an absolute nightmare. I find a lot of engineers tend
to be either introverts or have some type of manageable ADD so it doesn't
surprise me that many people would be negatively affected by an office layout
like this.

~~~
laxatives
I don't feel this way at all, and judging from the number of similar comments
that popped up while writing this, I don't think I'm in the minority either.
Why can't an introvert put on headphones or simply disregard irrelevant
conversations in an open office? Why do type A extroverts feel the need to
control things they happen to be nearby?

~~~
fsloth
"Why can't an introvert put on headphones or simply disregard irrelevant
conversations"

The whole point with the office (for me) is to provide an environment to
maximize developer output of value.

I do not need to serendeptiously eavesdrop on every discussion on the floor
with 40 people to provide maximum ouput. What I do need, is quiet.

Vice versa it is fair to ask why cant the people who yearn extra stimulus to
install disco lights in their offices and play some bazar tape from their
headphones :)

------
virmundi
I wouldn't attribute the movement to Google, strictly speaking. I worked at a
large insurance agency for a few year. They had partially open cubes (low
walls). I don't presume they've ever been influenced by what Google does.

The low walls were a blessing and a bane. My team worked well like that. None
of us are particularly loud people. We all had headphones and quiet music. The
flow of the pen allowed easy communication and rolling between each others
cubes.

The bane came from other teams around us. There was a woman that was going
through an extremely messy divorce (attempted murder of herself and children
by arson). She was understandably upset. Rather than taking family medical
leave she would talk to her mother for hours in her cube. Her voice was
particularly grating to me. I ended up leaving one day to buy a pair of firing
range headphones and firing range earplugs.

Sadly the headphone/earplugs only sort of worked. They're designed to reduce
low noises like a gunshot. Her voice was higher. They did help. I was able to
concentrate.

~~~
darkstar999
> large insurance agency

> she would talk to her mother for hours in her cube

Hello HR, they would be all over that.

~~~
virmundi
I know, but two things kept me from doing that. 1) I was a contractor.
Historically that made me little better than dirt at the client. So I didn't
want to rock the boat. 2) Given that her husband tried to kill her, I felt
that the emotional toll on her having to get a talking to might be a bit much
at that time. That was entirely an emotional argument, not a rational one. I
could be wrong.

On the plus side I have firing range headphones now. So I can go to the actual
firing range a few blocks from my house. I am also prepared if I ever have a
child. Crying gets to me. So I'll put those on and be one of the most loving
fathers ever. I'll probably have music earbuds in too.

------
dschiptsov
I thought it has been solved years ago. Open offices have the same benefits as
huge halls in a 20th century industrial factories as long as workers are doing
"routine, mechanical tasks". Filing forms, coding html, translating a small
specifications into Java code, any kind of a "drone work" \- repetitive tasks
with a little or no variation - could be done in an open space with the best
benefits/costs ratio for an employer.

The only kind of work which cannot be done efficiently in a constant noise and
distractions are these "engineering tasks" which require intense mental
concentration (or what they usually call "meditating on a problem").

But such kind of high-skilled jobs are about 5% (and the best guys have their
rooms, because they are worth it) so there is no wonder that 90% is an open
space.

An example of such a task, which requires a quiet place would be "analyzing
and decomposing an unfamiliar problem domain into a reasonable, valid
metrics/heuristics to be used within machine-learning algorithms, given that
you have no PhD in ML or problem domain's field". Very common scenario, isn't
it?

~~~
trhway
yep, when programming had the status of academic or engineering discipline it
was done in the offices, when it got down to "technical associate/stuff" it
moved into cubicles, now it is just a blue collar job of the 21st century and
thus it is done on an open factory floor.

------
gortok
I wrote about this some time ago in a ranty way:
[http://georgestocker.com/2014/04/15/how-to-destroy-
programme...](http://georgestocker.com/2014/04/15/how-to-destroy-programmer-
productivity/)

I really believe that the open office floor plan led me to leaving my former
job -- I simply could not be as productive as I needed to be in an open floor
plan environment.

I wouldn't be surprised if Open-Office floor plans cost more in productivity
than they save in rent. I don't mean to 'hate' on it so much; but it's hard to
explain just how distracting, noisy, and damaging to productivity it can be.

~~~
a3n
Yeah, but the difference between rent and salary is that they're taxed
differently (probably, I assume, I'm ignorant), and while the amount of space
you get from a given amount of rent is constant, you can always coerce, shame,
or threaten an employee to worker longer hours. For, you know, the crunch.

------
DanielBMarkham
Yay. Another "Let's argue about open floorplan offices" article. Never can
have enough of those.

I'm not going to take apart the article: there's simply too many errors to get
into. I will say in the author's defense that many companies will jump onto a
bandwagon without having any idea of why other people are riding or where it's
going. [insert long list of good ideas that corporate america adopted and
killed]

On a personal note, I do not like co-location. I also do not like open plan
offices. I like it quiet, with my space, my music, my 3-screen development
setup, and my door. Which I can shut.

And that's what makes this discussion so painful for me to both watch and
participate in. You see, as somebody who helps teams perform better, for
certain kinds of work -- creative work where there is a lot of change and risk
-- open plan beats the hell out of other setups. It's not even close. [for the
proper definition of open plan.]

In the past couple of years I have seen several teams that were unable to
accomplish much of anything start working much more effectively by simply
sitting beside each other and being there during the day. In some cases, they
did nothing else: just sat beside each other. Still, work improved. The effect
is so noticeable you could almost write a book and start a movement just on
open floorplan.

The last misconception I'll address, since it seems to run rampant, is that
open floor plan is not about productivity or cost savings. It's about having
people work with each other. This may actually mean _less_ work gets done; but
it's the right work. Open floor plan is where the guy at the end of the table
late on a Friday afternoon observes aloud to himself "You know, maybe we
should be doing X instead of Y" and everybody has the social and emotional
context to realize that you just changed the scope of the work from 10x to x.
[insert many more examples here]

------
chrisbennet
At some point, open-offices will be the only thing that the majority of
software developers know. If you've never experienced the productivity that
comes from being able to think without interruption, you won't know what you
are missing. At that point, the trend will probably be irreversible.

For me personally, this trend isn't all bad:

When I work someplace with this setup it's kind of nice to "hang out with my
friends" even if it isn't nearly as productive.

When I'm working for myself, being able to think deeply gives me a competitive
advantage over places with open-offices. :-)

~~~
sheepmullet
"If you've never experienced the productivity that comes from being able to
think without interruption, you won't know what you are missing."

I keep a diary of learning notes and have throughout my career. It's
interesting to go through it and see that in my university days I was picking
up concepts, tools, and techniques far faster than I do now despite the fact
that I am considerably better and more experienced. I chalk it up to the fact
that I can't just "go dark" for a week to properly learn something distraction
free even if it would be in my companies best interests.

------
falcolas
That anybody got it wrong is not the problem. That those same companies do not
recognize the problems and just chalk it up to a failed experiment and restore
offices is the real failure that is impacting workplaces.

~~~
a2tech
Yup. When it becomes clear that it's not helping anyone actually get work
done, companies just stick to their guns and refuse to change.

Which helps illustrate that point that its never been about increased
productivity and collaboration-its always been about cutting the cost of
office space and increasing the supervisor's ability to monitor what you're
doing every second of the day.

------
a2tech
The best office setup I've ever worked in was a narrow building that had
smallish offices (big enough for two people) on the outside (each had a small
window) and open meeting space in the middle. Everyone had their own space
(like to leave junk on your desk? clean freak? everyone is happy) and if you
wanted to hang out or hold an impromptu meeting the common area was literally
outside your door. Most of the time people's office doors were wide open so no
one was closed off but if you wanted to really focus or take a call or listen
to a video or just disconnect for a minute you could shut your door.

~~~
kornakiewicz
The best one from my history was a startup (aprox. 15 people at this time)
simply in house which was designed as home for 2+3: 2-3 people in a room,
normal kitchen, front-yard and even attic for stuff.

I don't get why we stuck in cookie-cutter office spaces which leads to
everything expect producitivty.

~~~
galfarragem
+1 My experience as an architect and as an office worker confirm what you say.
Somehow a mixed solution is the best. Spaces for small teams (max. 5 people),
keep some privacy but also allow communication. Spaces of 15-20m2 are perfect
for that, making a small house the best option. "Normal kitchen, front-yard
and even attic for stuff" are also a great complement.

------
mullingitover
Open plan offices: 30% drop in productivity for a 20% drop in real estate
costs.

~~~
nilkn
Plus an approximately 0% chance of hiring anybody who currently has their own
private office, unless you have something really special to offer
(considerably above-market compensation or prestige or a position on a
remarkably interesting project).

~~~
tjdetwiler
I went from private office to open floor plan when I switched jobs last. It
was towards the bottom of things I cared about when I was considering the
move.

Private offices are definitely nice, but I also enjoy the positives of an open
office

~~~
nilkn
I could see going from a private office to, say, a well-designed cubicle, but
I definitely think for a lot of folks the transition to an open floor plan
could be incredibly disruptive.

I suppose it depends on the personality. Generally, though, with private
offices, well-designed communal areas, and huddle rooms (plus larger
conference rooms), it's hard to see how an open floor plan has any advantages
other than supposed cost cutting. The crux of the issue, I think, is that it
requires a rather special type of personality to be really productive in a
more chaotic open floor plan, whereas it requires a much less special type of
personality to be really productive when one has the option of retiring to an
office.

Really, what's most important to me is that one has the option of retiring to
a private space when the extra concentration is needed. If one were to sit in
an open space by default, but always was guaranteed a small private space when
needed, I wouldn't see many issues. But I've seen very few open office plans
that can legitimately offer that sort of dynamic. Headphones do not constitute
a private space -- they're more of a bandaid.

~~~
tjdetwiler
I personally find cubes to be the worst combination of collaboration vs
privacy. You still have people who will walk up to you when you're working,
but the cubes really break up the space.

In my office, they have small "conference rooms" which really only have space
for 2-3 people that you can reserve if you want to hide away in somewhere
quite. I usually fall back to these if I need to go heads down on something.

The best part of the office is the ability to close/lock the door to prevent
the annoying "walk ups" that really disrupt work.

------
ghaff
Many moons ago, interviewing for my first full-time job out of school, I
visited a certain large aerospace company in the Seattle area :-) One of the
things that turned me off and helped lead to my turning down their offer was
their bullpen-style office arrangement. (Arguably even worse than today's
incarnations, it was just a bunch of desks in a large open area though we seem
to be heading back in that direction.)

Mind you, it wasn't the only thing. Everything about the hiring process and
people I spoke with screamed replaceable cog--they actually hired me solely
based on my resume and only gave me a plant visit when I asked for one--but
the bullpen office arrangement sure didn't help.

~~~
double0jimb0
I believe I interned for the same said company :)

A fun-fact(tm) proudly shared on a tour still haunts me to this day:

"Behold the largest office space (er...cubical farm) in the US... 5,000 or so
seats."

------
ryan90
This article is a classic case of "link journalism".

Not a single study she linked to is conclusive and applicable to all
situations. The studies merely suggest that there may be drawbacks to open
offices.

Additionally, she mentions the camaraderie among teammates masking lost
productivity. Who's to say that this doesn't contribute to the overall well
being of the office? Even if it does mean some near-term productivity is lost.

Each company is different, and each department within the company is
different. We just moved into an office space, and our sales floor is much
different than our dev area. Sweeping generalizations like the one made in
this article aren't helpful for anybody.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
"Near-term productivity"? What can that mean? If you are in an open office all
day, every day, the it means "all productivity" is lost.

~~~
r00fus
Sounds like an extreme position you're taking. Anecdote to disprove your
negative - one day I was talking with a customer about an issue, one of my
open-office coworkers heard me then IM'd me an internal forum page that helped
me seamlessly resolve the issue.

Were I working from home or out of that persons earshot, I would have dug
around for potentially hours or days before finding my solution.

Were I heads down writing code a lot (I don't do that very often these days),
I'd head over to the private (no-noise-policy) work rooms nearby.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Hoping for one random interaction a week, and torpedoing productivity the rest
of the week, is a net loss.

------
nchammas
Nathan Marz (of Apache Storm fame) also wrote about this topic recently:

"Now, I don't want to comment on the effectiveness of open floor plans for
fields other than my own. But for software development, this is _the single
best way to sabotage the productivity of your entire engineering team_."

[http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-
flo...](http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-floor-plans-
in-tech-companies.html)

------
a2tech
Yup. Its impossible to really focus in an open-office work area. I have to
meet with another team occasionally that's management bought into the open-
office hypetrain. Its awful. The noise is overwhelming, there's constant
distractions (even small noises like people shifting in their chairs can
become overwhelming when its coming from you from every direction)

~~~
kzrdude
It sounds like the acoustics are pretty bad if small noices are that
noticable. Can you get them to install sound dampening?

~~~
nobodysfool
Whatever you do, don't do what my office did - they installed speakers that
play pink noise. It helps with the noise (so much chatter) but it's annoying
as hell.

~~~
a2tech
That sounds like the closest thing to work hell that I can imagine

------
beachstartup
i never thought anyone would come up with something worse than cubicles, but
it turns out that's easy; just remove them.

------
jokoon
I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that some people are
introverts, and that those people work best when they're nobody around them.

Also programming requires a minimum of focus, I might not consider programming
a hard, highly intellectual task, but personally I'm very easily distracted. I
also have a very hard time concentrating at something properly if I can sense
I'm watched or analyzed.

Maybe it has something to do with how people want team interaction. You could
ask teams to meet at least twice a day, and they might prefer having their own
office.

The best way, I think, would be to always workers if they either prefer to
have their own small office or to work in a open space.

To me, the best is to use my laptop in a empty park, with or without internet
access, preferably without. I just download any documentation, some article or
tutorial, eventually some wikipedia offline browser, and I'm able to
concentrate.

------
zenogais
This has been known to be a productivity killer for years, but I still haven't
seen significant moves being made to change it. From a management standpoint I
know an open layout allows you to pack a lot more people into the same space,
so perhaps the costs outweigh the benefits for many businesses?

~~~
robotkilla
An open floor plan is one of the big reasons I started abusing our work from
home policy at my last job, and a huge reason for not wanting to return to the
work force since leaving that job.

------
givan
Open office + headphones was the best place work space for me, one big reason
for me to have a job is to be surrounded by people and feel that I'm part of a
team, otherwise I could just work from home instead of a stupid cubicle that
makes me feel like a gear in a big machinery.

------
cubano
_These new floor plans are ideal for maximizing a company’s space while
minimizing costs. Bosses love the ability to keep a closer eye on their
employees..._

From my limited experience working in these areas, I do believe this is the
crucial insight and the real reason behind the movement...Occam's razor and
all that.

Where I last worked in an open-office environment, we had a fairly strict "no
talking" policy, and were expected to use IM to communicate to the people next
to us.

I always thought, "well, isn't this defeating the purpose of the open
floorplan?", and of course it does, unless you factor in the above insight.

------
bdhe
This keeps coming up every so often, so here's a different discussion I'd like
to get into. How do we measure something as ambiguous as productivity?

And I contest some of the points raised: For companies where people are mostly
left to themselves save for meetings and sync ups, is it really about a
supervisor's ability to monitor what you're doing? Collaboration is probably
the driving force, which again raises the question as to how does one measure
and evaluate such things?

~~~
ProAm
I think it's pretty easy. Can you honestly say you get more work done in a day
with constant interruptions and distractions? Not only output is affected but
the quality of the work completed. I might get the same volume of work out the
door but if Im distracted I promise there are bit and pieces that have
careless errors in it, which leads to re-work. This is something that you can
easily ask your employees if they'd like private working quarters vs open
office.

~~~
enoch_r
Even if people got more and better work done in private offices, maybe the
increased communication in open offices is causing people to work on more
important things, which could be worth the tradeoff. (I don't think it is, but
such an effect is not something you'd notice with introspection.)

Plus, are private offices really the alternative for most people working in
open offices? I think the cubicle is a much more likely replacement than the
private office.

Amusingly, Wikipedia's page on cubicles has a photo captioned "before
cubicles: open office with desks arranged in rows, 1937."[0]

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubicle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubicle)

~~~
ProAm
I dont think they need to go full enclosed office, privacy cubes might work. I
prefer an office being a programmer, but I can see how other people, like the
marketing or sales department, might not need that extent of quiet and/or
privacy. I know cubes are much cheaper than offices, so for any employer,
unless you are flush with cash, cubes are probably what you are willing top
pay for.

I wonder if open offices spread illness faster than other layouts? (I say this
has I'm listening to half my office coughing their lungs up with a cold)

------
mhomde
Still relevant:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html)

------
whiddershins
It's really interesting. I think it has to do with whether the teamwork
necessary to do the task is real, or only exists in the mind of managers.

My first job was on a newspaper production floor. It was an open office
clustered by role, with matching support people clustered nearby. I have never
seen an environment that had the astonishing level of productivity per person
of this team, and I mean by easily a factor of 10x. Any question I had I could
get an answer in 2 seconds. We were using laughably old equipment, but there
was no emailing anything, and there was no possibility of miscommunication. It
was exhilarating.

OTOH these were well defined tasks, with a deadline at the end of each day. So
it was like running a team tough mudder every week.

My next office job, years later, had a semi-open floorplan. It was an absolute
nightmare. My coworkers would listen to Howard Stern every morning, and then
leave the radio on afterwards. People would have protracted calls on
speakerphone. Compared to the newspaper, it seemed like no one was ever
actually working, instead they were just talking about nonsense, and torturing
me in the process. Typically someone would send you an email, then immediately
walk over to your desk and explain it to you with no regard for whether you
were busy.

But this work was complex, boring, intricate, different every time, and the
deadlines were months away, the biggest challenge was planning and focus.
There was much less reason for teamwork and a much greater need to delve in to
your task and be left alone.

So I think generalizing about open floorplans is difficult. It obviously has
to do with company culture and the type of work.

------
galfarragem
Last year I designed an office for a small business with 20 employees. Having
worked in several offices (with different layouts) made me very "bearish" on
open-offices so I advised the business owner against it. While explaining all
my arguments to him, he told me:

 _I completely agree with you but without an open layout how do I control my
employees?_

And:

 _With an open layout I can put more people in less space._

This is what business people think. All the rest is poetry.

------
raldi
The thing is, if you ask any rank-and-file Google engineer, they'll totally
agree that the sweatshop layout -- oops, I mean the _open-office_ layout -- is
hugely detrimental to productivity and morale.

So it's not like the company isn't aware; it's just that they seem to believe
the negative effects aren't bad enough to offset the cost of more office space
(or the opportunity cost of slower hiring)

------
abalone
Really, open office leads to more flu infections?? Based on her utterly
anecdotal evidence of a bunch of her co-workers got sick. If that's the
standard for evidence for the rest of the claims in this article, I would cast
it aside.

Cornell did a study while back that found that communication gets worse with
private offices. The pernicious thing is that employees' very perception of
"frequent communication" _changes_ depending on which kind of environment
they're in. If they're in open plan it's several times a day often on the fly.
If they have a private office, it plummets to "several times a week in a
scheduled meeting". [1]

So that's consistent with private office people saying everything's fine --
because their very perception of the standard for team interaction has vastly
diminished.

They also noted that office workers may be biased to favor plans that maximize
their personal productivity _even at the expense of team productivity_ ,
because their compensation is tied more to the former. Whereas management sees
the bigger picture of both elements.

That may go a long way towards explaining why employees and management are
often at odds over how to arrange the office.

(Having said that, by no means do I think that a constant barrage of noise in
your face in a maximally open office is optimal. There are many degrees of
openness, and I'm just pointing to evidence that private offices may swing too
far in the other direction.)

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20140615182702/http://iwsp.human...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140615182702/http://iwsp.human.cornell.edu/file_uploads/office_ex2_1238259706.pdf)

------
sousousou
For me, it really comes down to energy.

It takes me lots of energy to ignore something. Like someone walking behind my
computer monitor. Like someone having a loud unrelated conversation next to
me. Like being conscious of my appearance and behavior (out of respect for
others). And it takes energy to solve problems and write great code.

I simply can't do it all every day, day in and day out. Monday is fine. I can
work long hours on Monday in the office, getting lots of good work done. But
on Tuesday, I am irritable and can't focus as well. By Wednesday, I'm useless.
If I go into the office, I come home exhausted, unable to even speak.

Fortunately I can work from home, but it's a heartbreaking trade. It's not as
much fun (or productive) to collaborate over the internet as it is in person.
I am definitely not going to accidentally end up going out to lunch or coffee
with a new friend. Etc.

Comments to the tune of "suck it up", "wear headphones", are nothing new to
the ears of introverts. We've been dealing with this _extroverted culture_ all
our lives. Extroverts thrive on stimulation. Introverts drown in it.

------
bachmeier
I'm not a big fan of these articles. It depends on what you're doing. I'm a
professor, and in order to get certain tasks done, you need a private space. I
don't even know how you could grade exams, for instance, without a private
space in order to concentrate and prevent others from seeing what you're
doing. When I'm working on a paper, on the other hand, it's way more
productive to have my coauthors right next to me.

The effect on productivity therefore cannot be determined without knowing what
you're going to be doing.

I do find these articles fascinating from the perspective of an economist.
Economists frequently assume workers get paid based on their productivity.
Then we see that in the real world employers are willing to adopt an open
office model that workers hate, even one that can reduce productivity, because
they want to monitor the workers to see what they are doing. If workers were
paid according to productivity, it wouldn't matter how many times they checked
Facebook between 8 am and 5 pm.

~~~
sheepmullet
"When I'm working on a paper, on the other hand, it's way more productive to
have my coauthors right next to me"

And this is why a lot of startups work well in an open plan. When there are
only 5 people in the company it can work well.

It is a completely different situation than the typical 80-150 people per
floor open plans of larger companies.

------
zedpm
Ugh, open offices are toxic for development. Low cubicles are almost as bad,
tall cubicles are almost tolerable. Barring private offices for everyone, my
best experience was with a very large office occupied by my team (myself and
two others).

The shared space is much more tolerable when everyone is part of the same role
(developer in this case), meaning approximately the same sensitivity to
interruptions, the same frequency of phone conversations, etc. Contrast that
with the open office I worked in, with Customer Service and Sales folks mixed
in with sysadmins and developers. That environment isn't good for anyone: the
devs are irritated by all the chatter from the CSR and Sales folks, who in
turn feel guilty even though it's their job to be jabbering on the phone all
day. Ironically, the office space was occupied largely by people who were
rarely IN those offices because they were all in meetings constantly.

------
harmonicon
Open office is by no means a new thing Google invented. It existed a long,
long time ago.
[http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/04/23/opinion/23rfd...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/04/23/opinion/23rfd-
image/23rfd-image-blogSpan.jpg)

------
nine_k
I work on a large open-plan floor. My two 24" screens completely fill my field
of view. My earphones block my ears and fill them with beautiful, not very
loud, flow-inducing music. A low wall separate my desk from passing people.

On the other hand, when I want to give my eyes some rest, I can focus on
Manhattan high-rises in the window. When I need to talk to my colleagues face
to face, or just see if they are at their desks, it is easy to do, too. If we
need to talk for more than a minute, we could walk to the coffee point of to a
meeting room.

I can imagine an open space implemented badly: people cramped together, with
little elbow room, phone-talking sales reps next to code-laden programmers
next to number-crunching financial guys, and no meeting rooms. I won't like
such a setup either.

But from where I sit, the open space plan looks pretty okay.

------
kabdib
I work at a company where most people are in open areas. The key that makes
this work IMHO is that the desks are trivially movable; just unplug two wires
and wheel the desk elsewhere. Want to work next to Joe? Move there. Need to
get away from a noisy cow-orker? Move his desk, or yours (both have happened).

There is closed office space available, if you want it. Most people choose not
to use it.

Once you have mobility, you get to choose who you work with. You can get
together in ad-hoc groups for a while, bring more people in as necessary, and
leave for some other place when you need to. It sounds too simple and maybe
too stupid to be as powerful as it actually is.

I've also worked in open plans where you don't have a choice of where to sit.
It sucked hard. I wouldn't do that again.

------
FabianBeiner
Nobody likes the feeling that someone is watching over your shoulder. Not at
work, not at home, nowhere.

~~~
anon4
Not everybody hates it. If you have the same interests as your manager, you
won't worry or be reprimanded for posting on your faovourite knitting forum
for 15 minutes of each day or answering an im from your friend who lives
halfway across the globe. Some people really feel like they're doing nothing
wrong and have nothing to hide and if you feel that way you're probably right.

~~~
FabianBeiner
See, this is your (and most peoples) mistake: Don’t mix up the fear of getting
caught watching a cute little cat playing the piano on YouTube and a natural
habit of around 95% of all people. A lot of companies which are using this
concept are totally fine with you watching cats, they don’t even care.

------
labmixz
I've been a developer for over a decade, where I'm currently employed they
have adopted low-partitions (lets be honest, no partitions). I can hear people
twitch, breathe, randomly talk with others 3 isles down. Every developer has
on headphones _trying_ to ignore all the movement/talking around them, it's
just a horrible setup. I find myself being less confident in my work, because
I can't concentrate due to a all the distractions around, wearing
headphones/earbuds is a nice work-around, but not a solution, I would like to
not have my earbuds on 6+ hours a day.

While I see the advantages to open offices, not everyone works the same way,
companies who want to maximize employee effectiveness should cater to both
types of needs.

------
fsloth
Yeah, cutting costs and Taylorian big brotherism.

Effectively companies trade productivity for higher transparency and cheaper
office space. What happened to the need to actually maximize productivity?

To give the benefit of doubt it is plausible people might confuse open plan
offices with team rooms.

~~~
marcosdumay
> What happened to the need to actually maximize productivity?

It has gone away since governemnts started supporting specific companies all
around.

------
trextrex
And there is also some evidence that open offices don't necessarily foster
closer relationship among employees. [1]

[1] [https://hbr.org/2011/07/who-moved-my-cube](https://hbr.org/2011/07/who-
moved-my-cube)

------
LukeWalsh
I'm fairly young but my experiences with open offices have been that they are
more distracting, but it's possibile to minimize the distractions with
headphones. It's difficult for me to listen to music while working so I use
coffitivity which pipes in background noise from coffee shops. It sounds like
hustle and bustle, but you can never actually latch on to a conversation since
there are none.

When I worked in a private office I found it hard to stay motivated. This is
in contrast to an open office when I can look at the people around me all
working hard on the same problem. It makes me feel motivated to keep working.

------
DLarsen
As an employee in a small early-stage startup, the open-office arrangement
suited me very well. Being able to at least eavesdrop on _all_ of the verbal
conversations from the tech challenges to product development to financial
concerns kept the information flowing very well. Every member of the team
could draw from the full context of our effort to strengthen their individual
contribution. As a developer I felt I learned a lot more about the business
and our customers than I would have if they had given me a quiet, productive
office. I think it was a net win in the early years.

------
robotkilla
Finally an article I can cite when people act like I'm just trying to hold on
to the old ways of development when I complain about open floor plans. No one
listens to the goddamn developers.

------
dang
This is an opinion piece with a baity title that points to a New Yorker
article which has had three extensive discussions on HN, including a month
ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8696391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8696391)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7832209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7832209)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024488)

~~~
stevesearer
This was the #1 story a few minutes ago but not to be found on any of the top
pages anymore. Out of curiosity, do you mod down stories you feel aren't
fitting and/or duplicate discussions?

~~~
dang
One task of HN moderation is penalizing stories that don't fit the mandate of
the site. Duplicates are part of that, though of course a story can be a
duplicate without being inappropriate.

We demote duplicates, but if there are already comments on the thread, we
leave the post open so discussion can continue.

------
analog31
Amusing historical note going back to 1939:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_Wax_Headquarters](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_Wax_Headquarters)

------
lettergram
I still firmly believe I work better from my house. Companies such as
automattic seem to work fine in that setting. I know peraonally I block off
10am - 2pm for meetings in the office (early lunch at 10am, or late a 2pm).

I then work from 3pm-5pm and 10pm-12pm at home. Im usually one of the most
productive and it keeps me fresh. Fyi I have done this at several companies
and my bosses always seem happy with it

------
thejerz
This debate is easily solved by simply asking people, "Which do you prefer:
open offices or closed door offices?"

90% of people will answer the latter.

Case closed.

~~~
enjo
That needs a citation. When I polled my largeish team in 2007 it was nearly
100% hard wall office.

------
at-fates-hands
My best friend works for Cargill and they're going to an open floor plan for
all of their offices. She said her and few of her co-workers are germ-a-fobes
so they're going to have a ton of Purell around.

I was pretty shocked since I thought the open office had been well debunked
over the past 4 years or so.

------
ixtli
This is just some writer who could easily do her job in a cave. Collaborative
efforts require as few barriers to collaboration as possible. Some of us like
to participate in things that are larger than we might be able to facilitate
entirely on our own.

------
mwsherman
Why must editors title articles this way?

The article says: there are many ways in which open offices are not great.

The headline says: they are destroying the workplace.

The article doesn’t come close to making that claim, even if “destroy the
workplace” were a meaningful idea.

~~~
ksk
Probably because it works. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a
newspaper that has survived using bland (read: accurate) headlines.

------
ar_turnbull
Anyone have good tips for surviving in an open office? There are the obvious
ones like noise-cancelling headphones — but are there any other good hacks for
making an open space at least somewhat tolerable?

------
dkhenry
I think googles own Eric Schmidt had the best response to this. If open
office's were bad for buisness or destroying the workspace the free market
would bear that out. There are tangable benefits which is why companies move
towards it. I understand some people hate it, but most don't so why do we keep
getting the same articles every few months saying the same thing. We get it
_you_ don't like the open office space others do. I am sorry your not able to
have the office the way you like it, I am upset that no one else seems to like
TV shows I find enjoyable and they keep getting canceled.

~~~
fsloth
If market _can measure it_ or understand it they will adjust.

Before Toyota and JIT factories were run generally really inefficiently.

"I am upset that no one else seems to like TV shows I find enjoyable and they
keep getting canceled."

You are comparing trivial entertainment with the environment most people spend
the most of their productive hours as adults?

"Oh, I see you have lost an arm. Well, my finger itches sometimes. It
happens."

~~~
dkhenry
You raise a good point in my defense. When Toyota introduce 6-Sigma the
benefits were so great that companies began moving to that methodology en
masse. Private offices and offices with more privacy exist and people are
moving _away_ from them towards open offices. In the case of 6-Sigma it costs
more to run your assembly line in accordance with its principles, but when
companies saw the tangible benefits they started to switch.

------
skizm
I'm in an open office situation. It is the worst. I spend most of my time
trying to adjust my posture so that my eyes don't meet anyone else's eyes.

------
31reasons
Why is it called open office ? It looks like factory floor to me.

------
jerseyguy505
Consider reading Peopleware by DeMarco and Lister

------
raverbashing
However

Communication between teams/etc IS IMPORTANT

And we need people to be able to be productive using other tools if they won't
meet face to face (like HipChat, or others)

------
michaelochurch
First of all, Google isn't to blame for this trend and Google's open-plan
offices, although flawed, are more spacious and better planned than what most
companies use. I've seen startups and banks under the 100 SF/employee barrier.

Second, it's not even the noise that wrecks people but visibility from behind
("open-back visibility"). That's not because people are constantly hiding
things. It suggests low status and makes it hard (and stressful) to perform at
one's best.

There are environments where open-plan offices are better, but they're rare.
One is a trading floor, where seconds matter (a lot) and information must be
broadcast quickly and verbally (i.e. yelling). Unless there's a real-time
sensitivity to what they're doing, programmers are better off with more
privacy.

If you are going to use an open-plan office, the least you can do is to give
everyone a 7-foot wall at his or her back.

