
Ask HN: What are some tech companies that do not use an open floor plan? - cs44
It seems every tech company has fallen for the open floor plan. I&#x27;d love to find a company that respects the desk as a workspace that facilitates concentration and deep-thought. It seems the answer to this problem has become headphones.<p>How is this acceptable?
======
wskemper
I work for Viasat; all of our new-build offices in the past few years have
been designed around what we call the neighborhood concept. A neighborhood is
a set of individual offices (maybe 60sqft-ish?) with three solid walls, and
one glass/wood wall with a sliding door. All the offices open into a central
room that can be outfitted in a bunch of different ways. There are
neighborhoods of different sizes, and basically, each team gets a neighborhood
to themselves. The whole concept was developed through a series of experiments
that took several years.

Some teams make use of the space better than others, of course, but for my
group it's been a _huge_ boon to our collaborative culture. The offices are
well-insulated, so you don't need headphones to achieve quiet, but if you want
to, you can leave your door open and hear what your teammates are discussing
at any time.

Over time we're upgrading our older facilities to the same model, but in
general there are few open-plan offices or cube farms in the company, and I
highly doubt we're going to build more. Many years ago, our founders made it a
company priority to give folks a door they can close, to get away from "it
all" and focus.

~~~
kabdib
I worked in a similar environment at Apple, when Infinite Loop first opened:
Pods with offices that surrounded a central courtyard, which was furnished
with sofas, chairs and whiteboards. Each office had a simple (and heavy) door
alongside a tall and narrow window.

The door provided effective sound isolation, and years later I realized the
window was a psychological link to what was going on in the inner "courtyard",
after spending time in a completely closed office at Microsoft. The message at
Apple seemed to be "Okay, we know you need to concentrate on work, but
remember that you're part of a community" while the office of the particular
group I was in at Microsoft seemed to say "Please just sit there and write
code and do email -- we will feed you under the door".

Architecture matters in the weirdest ways, and sometimes tiny tweaks make a
big difference.

~~~
kpil
+1 for the Microserfs reference!

~~~
noir_lord
I'd forgotten that book existed,I need to read it again, it's up there with
"office space" for humourous tech related media.

~~~
cdeutsch
What book are you referring to? Sounds good :)

------
motohagiography
Funny behaviors from an open office plan I experienced:

\- tribes claiming spaces: there was a couch area where a natural affinity
group formed based on common personality types typical of urban/suburban
tribal divide. developed an in-group/out-group mentality. a counter group
formed in a lunch area.

\- posturing: top tech individual contributor used main boardroom for "really
important video conference meetings," and it became his de facto office unless
you had it booked.

\- tragedy of the commons: with no private space other than common spaces,
meeting rooms were booked up with standing meetings so that it became
impossible to get one when you needed it.

\- Callout/performative drama: challenging people would use the availability
of earshot to try to draw others into their conflicts. Callout culture, where
instead of addressing issues, people would call out others to demand
explanations in front of teams, managers, or in main slack channels.

\- lack of personal boundaries: technical managers with low charisma routinely
embarrassed in open meetings where everyone felt they could table complaints
and make others accountable in front of a group, further wrecking morale as
result of perceived weak leadership.

Interior design wouldn't solve all these problems, but the aesthetic of a
kindergarten or hipster daycare certainly exacerbated them. I may long form
this post into something, as the anti-patterns in that org were an effect of
its culture, which was expressed by aesthetics rooted in beliefs that would
have benefited from more insight.

~~~
jupp0r
A cynic could argue that only an open office plan made this toxic work
environment transparent to you.

~~~
Bartweiss
A bunch of those definitely look like "being a jerk" problems where the open
office only drove a specific incarnation.

The tragedy of the commons part, though, looks like a structural problem to
me. It's pretty common to want a discussion with 3-5 people for 5-10 minutes.
With offices or even cubes, you can just have that in the workspace. With open
plan, you either annoy everyone around you or book a conference room, which
takes it away from standard users.

I'm not sure what anyone at the peon or even manager level can do about this,
except try to keep meetings short or relegate them to slack/email. It really
is a design issue.

------
ubermonkey
I get I'm part of the privileged few, but: I've been working for a small
software company for almost 11 years, and EVERYONE at my company is remote. We
don't lease any real estate anywhere, unless a mailbox and a colo rack count.

It's AWESOME, but there are caveats. The biggest one is that we can't really
hire newbies; everyone we've brought in has to be mid-career at a minimum
because the absence of the "water cooler effect" makes it harder to ramp up
quickly. Folks with some experience handle this better.

The other drawback is mostly theoretical: I'm really not sure I could go back
to working in an office. I control the music, the temp, the food, the coffee,
when I take a break, whether or not I take a midday snooze, and my cats are
everpresent. I mean, an office sounds like a dystopian hellscape by
comparison.

~~~
afoot
This is very interesting, because your office sounds like hell to me. Any time
I work from home I'm absolutely desperate for meaningless social interaction,
a walk and a chat while out for coffee, a beer with my team at lunch or after
work and face to face discussion. I guess it's hard to find something that
works for everyone.

~~~
PeterStuer
Interesting. I work from home most often, and I find that not having to tack
on a 2 1/2 hr daily car commute leaves me time for actually socializing IRL as
opposed to trying to cram that need into the office.

~~~
BurritoAlPastor
Yeah, but where do you find anybody to socialize with?

~~~
klez
If you only socialize with co-workers I'd say that is the bigger problem. All
my interaction with people outside office hours are with people I don't work
with.

Should I consider myself privileged in this respect?

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
How dare you have friends, you privileged person!

------
benzesandbetter
If avoiding open-plan is a priority, I recommend you focus on negotiating for
a remote work arrangement, rather than excluding good companies. My last two
long-term engagements have been at Fortune 100 companies and I've worked
remotely for both.

In the first case, I was the only remote employee in my business unit. I was
hired because I had a high level of competency with a technology they were
investing heavily in. When I first interviewed, they told me that the were
only considering on-site, and that my rate was too high. So, they first hired
an on-site employee at a lower rate, but he failed to deliver a working
installation and the project got perilously behind schedule. When I re-
approached them about two months later they were no longer hung up on my rate
or request to work remote. It's worth noting that I took a gamble here and put
in about 6 or 8 hours interview and follow-up process, after being told that
remote was not an option, and then being given the initial "no". During the
project, I did stop by their Silicon Valley campus for a few hours of meetings
every month or two, which was probably 1% or less of my total billable hours.

In my current engagement, my entire team is remote, so it was a non-issue. The
gig was secured for me by a recruiter who had previously contacted me about an
on-site position, and I told her I was only considering remote (and followed
up periodically).

Both of these positions had multiple technical screens which were very
rigorous. Both resulted from initial contacts where I was given at least one
"no". You can have a private office at any company if you negotiate for remote
and set yourself up with the office you like (e.g. home, co-working, etc.)

~~~
gdulli
Working alone at home would be a worse option for me than working in an
unfavorable office environment. More like a non-starter than worse. I get that
there are people who love the idea of being isolated. But I think there are
more who want to be around people instead of alone. And there should be a
reasonable option for them, not open plan.

~~~
jschwartzi
Remote does not mean isolated. I spend most nights and weekends out with
friends and groups. When I worked in an office I would frequently be too tired
from interacting with people to plan things.

------
DisruptiveDave
I juuuust got off a catch-up call with an old college buddy who works at one
of the big wireless companies. He described what I read about here on HN and
in some blog posts: The company completely changed its "culture" in a
desperate attempt to "attract millennials" (and be on trend). Moved to an open
floor plan where nobody has an assigned desk. You literally cannot leave
anything overnight or you get some sort of a citation. His words: "I spend my
day with a headset covering one ear and my finger in the other ear, as I'm on
calls most of the day." He also noted how they computerized the cafeteria so
you don't have/get to interact with food workers anymore. "All my sandwiches
have too much mayo now and I can't do anything about it."

~~~
PeterStuer
It's called 'hot-desking'. In practice everyone still sits in the same place
every day, and sublimizes their territorial marking. Sitting in 'someone
else's' spot is seriously frowned upon. This trend happened when the 'open
plan' needed a next level of hell.

~~~
Bartweiss
> _This trend happened when the 'open plan' needed a next level of hell._

I seem to remember Dilbert explaining this as a way to ensure employees felt
more like company-owned sacks of potatoes than actual humans. Hot-desking
really does seem like one of the most dehumanizing office designs I can think
of.

I know the supposed benefits of open offices, but I'm not even sure what hot-
desking _claims_ to achieve? Except in call centers I guess, where it's
explicitly "to speed up firing people".

~~~
ghaff
>not even sure what hot-desking claims to achieve

It's mostly for environments in which the company's short on space and a lot
of employees don't routinely come into the office. Hot desking eliminates
permanently provisioning office space that may be only used for one day in
five or ten.

If that's not the problem being solved, I'm not sure what is. Now no one knows
where anyone is sitting and teams are at least theoretically all scattered
around.

~~~
jdmichal
I'm pretty sure this is the correct explanation. We have a site that recently
moved to this setup, and I know for a fact that there are roughly 20% fewer
seats than employees. That's what they came up with as acceptable after
crunching the numbers on absentee rate.

------
ericjang
Pixar does not have an open floor plan. It's 2-3 folks to an office, and the
animators are well known for decorating their offices in fairly quirky ways
during the "off-season" when they have finished their portion of the work for
a movie
([https://www.google.com/search?q=pixar+animator+offices&sourc...](https://www.google.com/search?q=pixar+animator+offices&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3oZaqqMPaAhURBHwKHbG0AVkQ_AUICigB&biw=1309&bih=709))

------
hordeallergy
It's not acceptable. I've moved from a dev background to having a go at
sre/devops/something-or-other; work aside, the culture is excrutiating, with
people shouting across the office all day. Best case, someone talking to
themself hour after hour, as if anyone wants to hear that. The idea that open
floor plans are productive is farce. I effectively have two jobs, the first
being just trying to get any work done.

~~~
aphextron
It's also extremely unhealthy. I've never been so sick in my entire life as
since I started this job a year ago. Literally herded like cattle into an open
air room with hundreds of other people from all around the world coughing and
sneezing in your face all day. I'll never _ever_ accept another position with
this kind of setup.

~~~
dmoy
Hah this hits close to home, literally just getting off being sick the last
couple days cus someone in the tiny aisle between a sea of desks coughed a few
times directly at my face last week as I passed to and from the kitchen.

My current spot is particularly bad because they have us jammed up 5' away
from 4 conference rooms with thin glass walls so we get to hear loud
conference calls every day all day long.

Edit: to too two? I can English

------
carlosdp
Fog Creek famously has a non-open office space [1]

[1] [https://medium.com/make-better-software/beyond-open-
offices-...](https://medium.com/make-better-software/beyond-open-offices-the-
new-fog-creek-headquarters-bc2f70d7c7dc)

~~~
ben1040
I don't know if Trello still works this way after the spinoff from Fog Creek
and subsequent Atlassian acquisition, but I visited Trello's NYC office and
they had a similar setup to Fog Creek's. Trello also has a significant number
of remote employees.

~~~
thedufer
Trello shared an office with Fog Creek until last December or so, so no
surprise that they're similar. I suspect Trello retained the offices layout
since Fog Creek was the one that moved out.

------
cryptonector
Headphones are not good enough. It's much too easy to damage your hearing.

Sun Microsystems, Inc., had offices. More junior engineers would share
offices, with two or three engineers per office, while more senior engineers
would have private offices. Seniority also dictated office location (think of
having windows vs. not). This worked _very_ well. It's not that expensive
either (it's certainly not why Sun died).

~~~
therealdrag0
I don't like open office. But Bose QuietComfort work pretty well with
music/noise on very low volume.

(eg. [https://asoftmurmur.com/](https://asoftmurmur.com/))

~~~
loco5niner
I use Bose QuietComfort 20's and even though they are awesome, they still not
good enough. Active noise cancellation is great for airplane noise
(predictable, repetitive), but not for voices.

~~~
cryptonector
And even for airplanes, it's not that good. All noise canceling headphones
I've looked at or owned have a sampling frequency of 21KHz, which is a bit
low, and results in high-frequency (if low amplitude) noise that I _can_ hear,
and it's annoying or even painful.

I don't quite understand why there are no 44KHz noise-canceling headphones on
the market...

------
os72
Virtually everyone has an individual office where I work. Our CEO has the
motto "give them a door, a window and the fastest computer money can buy".

~~~
gpvos
Which company is it? (If you didn't want to give away where you work, you
could have named the company without saying you work there. That was the
original question, after all.)

~~~
os72
Apologies. Here is a link: [https://www.cmgl.ca/](https://www.cmgl.ca/)

------
pradn
Well, a famous example is Microsoft. Though the recently built and renovated
buildings are moving toward open plan offices, about 80% of the buildings in
the Redmond campus are full of offices. Which office you get is purely based
on tenure. I remember it took 11 years of tenure to get a window office in my
old building. Some new hires were doubled up due to space constraints. But I
was in the 70% of office holders who had a single office from the beginning.
It was fun to be able to decorate my office. You could really see people's
personalities in their offices. Offices would also double as quick meeting
rooms for up to 5 people. No overhead for booking conference rooms. All in
all, it was a great perk of the job. If only they had free food...

Even if you have offices, people would still barge in, cutting into your
uninterrupted time. Funny enough, in the open-plan at Google, where I am
currently, I get far fewer walk-up interruptions. It's always good to ping
people on chat so they can respond async.

------
hantonsen
I feel your pain. I found this video from Vox very interesting, to see the
rationale behind the original open office space, and contrast it with what
modern organizations has made it into.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p6WWRarjNs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p6WWRarjNs)

------
codeulike
Stackoverflow/Stackexchange

[https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-
believe-i...](https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-in-
private-offices/)

------
stefanoco
Bluewind is a small consulting company based in Italy (embedded systems). We
switched from "almost all devs in a room" to 2/3 devs per room maximum while
building our own offices recently. And common spaces for meetings, conferences
and telephone calls. Encouraging to work from home when possible also.
Interesting: working this way and adopting Agile principles makes enhances
collaboration a lot, much more that in the previous open space where having
everyone in the same room makes it almost impossible for people to talk each
other when needed.

------
at-fates-hands
It's funny, about six or seven years ago, most of the companies I worked for
had gone to an open floor plan. Within a few years, all of them had gone back
to cubes for a number of reasons.

I just started at a large corporation three years ago and they spent millions
going to an elaborate open office plan which was similar to what others have
referred to as "neighborhoods". At first it was called "hoteling" where we
just had a ton of desks with monitors and a dock so you didn't have a set
place or cube to work.

After about six months, teams had taken over areas without telling anybody,
they pushed other teams out to other areas. Then they shifted a ton more
people to our building so now space was even more limited. They started moving
desks into common areas meant for collaboration where people met and ate lunch
in order to handle in the influx of new people. People started "squatting" on
their desks, putting personal pics and their mouse and other stuff to claim
their desks so nobody would/could sit there. This clearly was not what the
architect/designer had in mind. I quickly got to the point where I was so
frustrated, I just tapped out and now I work from home almost 100% of the
time.

It's funny how they had this great idea and it was totally ruined by standard
human behavior.

~~~
mattmanser
More like it's funny how designers have no clue about basic human needs.

Our brain is wired for habits. We form them to ease our cognitive burden, it's
a built in mechanism. You don't have to think about reversing out your
driveway because of habits, brushing your teeth, checking your email, etc.

People don't want to hunt for a desk every morning because it is fundamentally
incompatible with how our brain works, not because they're being difficult. So
they adopt a desk. And then someone takes 'their' desk, which is a burden, a
bit of thinking they shouldn't be doing. So they naturally mark out 'their'
desk.

So in reality, it's a stupid idea because of the way the human mind works.
Might as well rage at the tides.

------
inopinatus
Best office I ever worked in (in both productivity AND developer happiness)
was subdivided into 4m x 4m rooms each with two or three developers, wood
panels between adjacent rooms, glass corridor walls with privacy frosting, and
floor-to-ceiling glass exterior walls with Melbourne city and parkland views.
Each space was decorated and equipped as the occupants pleased. Company was
acquired in 2004 and that office sadly no longer exists.

------
tomohawk
The schools in our area are in the final phases of remodeling, getting rid of
the open floor plan layout that was in vogue when many of the schools were
built, and was such a disaster. Nice to see taxpayer money hard at work.

It's funny that a business as reactionary as the education system seems to
have learned this lesson but tech companies haven't.

~~~
lnsru
German universiteties in Munich, Dresden and probably elsewhere have separate
rooms for the staff. Usually 2-4 persons per room. It’s really nice and
productive.

Later I found similar setting during interview at Viavi Solutions. All other
bigger enterprises had open space offices. Some with cubicles, some with glas
walls and some with tables only.

~~~
nextos
Sadly many universities in Europe are shockingly moving to open plan spaces.

------
lowlevel
They're all going this way. I've had to started adding 'well, I can' t do the
work here' in front of every 'when can you have this done' response.

~~~
KozmoNau7
It has gotten to the point where I'm seriously considering just working from
home every day, even though that's strictly not allowed.

Open-plan offices are absolutely maddening, I get pulled out of my thoughts
constantly, and there's no effective way to shut it out. Earplugs aren't
enough, and with headphones I would have to play music so loudly it would be
annoying my colleagues, just in order to cut out the constant noise. We have
so-called "focus rooms", but 1) there are far too few of them, and 2) they're
supposed to only be used for short phone meetings and such.

I raise this with my manager every time we have a "pit talk", as they're now
called. But there is seemingly nothing he can do.

~~~
brian-armstrong
You might try earplugs and earmuffs at the same time. It's a pretty effective
level of sound isolation.

~~~
geekbird
Some people, like me, can only wear headphones or earplugs for a short period
of time - like 2 hours - before they develop ear infections.

Furthermore, administrative controls (headphones) for what is actually a
safety and health problem (excess noise) are the solution of last resort from
a health and safety perspective. A good health and safety person would advise
structural mitigation, not forcing everyone to put on personal protective
equipment (headphones.)

When open plan offices can regularly burst up to 95 dB (yes, I took in a meter
and measured the last one I was in) and are often 65 dB when they are "quiet",
noise is absolutely a health and safety issue. Constant noise, even if not
immediately damaging to hearing, can cause increased stress and other
physiological issues.

~~~
loco5niner
Well said, thank you.

------
blabla_blublu
Several teams in Apple don't have an open floor plan. They pair two
individuals in an office.

~~~
ghostcluster
Except that the gigantic multibillion dollar new space ring was explicitly
designed around big open office units, long tables with _bench seating_ , and
the 'privacy pods' are exposed clear glass on all sides..

~~~
hfdgiutdryg
_long tables with bench seating_

So everyone at the table has to have identical ergonomics?

~~~
fzzzy
What an absolute nightmare.

~~~
piccolbo
You just need to hire engineers that fit the space (between 5'9" and 5'11"
tall). What is the problem? Hiring is difficult anyway ...

------
davidmoffatt
Yes I too would love to see this. Noise canceling headphone seem to cancel
everything but voices and that is the opposite of what you need.

~~~
raducu
I use industrial ear muffs over my in-ear headphones. Not very comfortable but
they work great.

Now I wish my work wouldn't suck so I could actually use all the focus I get
this way :)

~~~
alexfringes
I’ve found that custom molded in-ear hearing protection combined with
industrial ear muffs is the closest I can get to drowning out nearby
conversations (including loud ones) without requiring a layer of music on top
or bothering with headphones underneath the ear muffs.

~~~
KozmoNau7
I've been considering this as well, but it'll get really uncomfortable over
the course of a day. And then you have the colleagues who think they can just
interrupt you all the time, with minor questions. Or the ones who just hover
around, waiting for you notice them.

------
rifung
When I worked at Extrahop the engineers had offices with two to an office. It
was a great place to work

------
amriksohata
I work in a very open office plan where meeting rooms have no walls and even
directors sit amongst the staff. It's noisy and distracting, I can never
concentrate

~~~
maxxxxx
"even directors sit amongst the staff"

At least they are eating their own dogfood. I have had several occasions where
I was belittled when I complained about noise and lack of daylight by our
managers who have private offices with windows.

~~~
jrootabega
They have no idea (or have forgotten) what doing Dev work is like. Their jobs
are basically distraction, so to them there's no problem.

~~~
VLM
Its a social hierarchy thing; its baked into the cake of the architecture of
the office.

Something like: We don't care about the message it sends that "concentration
workers" are prevented from working by the very architecture of the office yet
we support "distraction workers". I guess "concentration workers" are a lower
caste at that company and they find it amusing to enforce that value
judgement.

It is exactly like making certain races sit in the back of the bus. No matter
how many times you claim it doesn't matter or everyone does it and its really
trendy, the people subjected to it none the less understand exactly what
message it is sending and are insulted. The point of open offices is literally
insulting knowledge workers and not caring that they know their noses are
being rubbed in it. Sort of an adult version of revenge of the nerds pranks
and bullying.

~~~
geekbird
Bingo.

The first time I got moved from an office to an open plan it felt like exactly
what it was: a severe demotion. I was being told that I didn't rate an office
or even a cube and the ability to concentrate without being interrupted like a
low level clerical worker.

------
dcchambers
When I worked in academia (working for a high throughout computing research
group at a large state university) we all had our own offices. I don't know if
individual offices are all that common any more due to space issues at
universities, but I think they're almost all shared offices or cubes at worst.
I've never seen an open office plan at a University.

I work in healthcare now and share a "large" office with 3 other developers.
It feels tight at times, but I still prefer it to the hot-seat style open
office that was our other choice.

~~~
dsign
My only experience with an open floor plan was in academia :-) ... terrible
thing, I suffered a lot and made other people suffer as well, since I'm a loud
typist ... I have never understood how some people think open floor plans are
a good idea for getting work done.

------
lgessler
Epic (the EMR vendor) has all employees in an office of at most two people,
with one per office being the goal.

~~~
goda90
And the goal is practically reached. Almost every office without a window has
one person unless otherwise requested.

------
dancalle
I worked for the MITRE Corporation
[https://www.mitre.org](https://www.mitre.org) for many years, and can confirm
they use offices. There are some open floor plan labs, but almost all
employees have an office, usually shared with one other person.

------
throwaway_18
At Netapp in Sunnyvale everyone has 6ft by 8ft cubicles, with full sized walls
(66” high). Some people have combined cubicles which are 6ft by 12ft.

------
kamaal
Never understood the rationale behind open floor offices. I currently work in
a cubicle set up, and people set up war rooms anytime they want close
collaboration. Open offices seem to take this exceptional case and make it the
norm.

At the same time open floor offices cause a lot of trouble to people in non-
exception situations.

~~~
Lammy
Follow the money. It’s cheaper to build, easy to shuffle, and people will put
up with it. I know I do.

~~~
brann0
Cheaper in the short term. If your engineers productivity is constantly
tanking because of noise and interruptions it will mean lots of wasted money.

But you can't factor that in a spreadsheet, right?

~~~
kamaal
I wonder how many of these problems happen because of outdated management
practices since the days of serfdom that treat people as two hands and with
hours in a day whom they have to whip enough to pick as much cotton as they
can.

So many companies are full of upper management who think as engineering output
the way one would run a chair manufacturing firm. Too many people think
everything there is in a chair has been made, and the only scope left now is a
little innovation here and there. All they have to do is get people to saw,
hammer and glue as quickly as they can.

------
mud_dauber
Every semiconductor co I've ever worked for, across 30 years, provided
cubicles or offices for their employees. This includes both Fortune 500 firms
and scrappy 8-person remote offices.

------
sametmax
Any companies whose business model is security may want to avoid open spaces.
Among those I worked with, like some chip makers (gemalto, safran, etc), space
agencies (the CNES comes to mind) or banks (labanquepostale/banque populaire
have a few old school offices, bank of luxembourg has lots open plan though).

I don't think founders think the geeks wellbeing is ever a criteria to choose
a floor plan. Money, space and ability to check on your team mates are the
first points.

~~~
FanaHOVA
I know from experience that a few banks have open office spaces with hot
desks. (Clearly not for all employees, but part of their tech staff works like
that)

~~~
sametmax
Yes, I didn't say "all", I said "some" that I visited.

------
dalbasal
Where I have found open floor to be fine is small companies of 5-15 people, as
long as there are quite corners to retreat to. There are some collaboration
advantages to open plan, and I feel that for some (small) size, these can
outweigh the distraction and blender-brain effect.

I always wonder why people don't split the difference, chop up the big company
office into 5-10 person mini open plan offices.

~~~
geekbird
I've always thought that the idea of a "team room" with mini cubicles around a
central whiteboard and gathering space would be a good compromise. People
could do heads down in cubes, the team as a whole could close their door at
crunch time, but people could meet, collaborate and brainstorm when they
needed to.

------
tbassetto
Cisco Norway (where I work) doesn't have open floor plans. Cisco San Jose (the
HQ) is a different story though.

Also, I doubt that Basecamp (formerly named 37signals) has open floor plans.

~~~
icebraining
They do have open floor plans, but also five "team rooms":
[https://basecamp.com/about/office](https://basecamp.com/about/office)

~~~
briandear
And they also treat that open plan “like a library.” Vastly different than the
frat house open plans of most companies.

------
brongondwana
FastMail has 5 in a single office, because they chose to cluster there.

The standard room is 3 people in 6x6m space, which is actually way too much
for just our desks, but we have collaboration tables in the middle of each
room where we can put laptops or paperwork when discussing things - plus tons
of whiteboard space.

------
eeks
IBM Research. Each researcher has his own office.

------
carapace
I've told people that I'll knock $20,000 off of my pay for an office with a
door that closes. Everyone treats it like a joke.

~~~
theandrewbailey
Then when your productivity shoots through the roof, you can ask for a $20,000
raise. :P

------
denimnerd
i work from home when i need to concentrate and go to the office occasionally.
it’s prerty selfish really as the entire team can’t do that but whatever. it
works for me.

------
stacksavings
why not just find remote work positions and set your own environment?

~~~
sametmax
I mostly remote work and love it.

But it's not for everybody.

It involves:

\- being able to motivate yourself;

\- being disciplined;

\- being autonomous;

\- being capable to communicate efficiently asynchronously, with time and
space constrains on limiting medium;

\- accepting less social time;

\- juggling private and pro time/space. Which includes your friends and
family. My GF still hasn't get used to the fact that when I'm home working,
she should consider I'm not home. It makes things harder.

Honestly, you should never, on hiring, accept remote work right away. First,
assess the person on site on all those points for a few months, then make a
short test of remote, then decide. And don't be afraid to say no.

I know more devs that are not fit for remote that devs that are, despite most
of them stating the contrary. Particularly, a lot of my colleagues can quickly
work on a non priority topic if left unchecked, just because they don't have
the client as a priority, but the tech. You can loose a lot of time to this.

~~~
raducu
I completely agree with your points.

But I believe the real cause is not some personal defficiency but the shitty
corporte/factory type of work where politics is a huge part of day to day job,
where nobody really wants others to do meaningful, deep work, nobody wants to
commit and give clear answers and offer personal responsibility.

That's why devs need to communicate(read interrupt) so much in person with
each others; add in "agile" which in 99% of the cases means nobody really
knows or is imaginative enough to know how things should progress, what the
requirements are, what resources should be available before the project
starts.

~~~
sametmax
I wish most work were interesting, meaningful and full feeling. That we could
be proud of it. That it was well done. Or even useful.

But the reality is it's not.

We have a lot of shitty things to do, and bosses are part of the machine to
make you do those things. Remote bosses have less grip on you.

And I'm lucky enough to like my job. I feel like I have 10x more interesting
things to do in my day to day activity that the average Joe. But a lot - a lot
of a lot - of people don't.

------
a-dub
In the '90s I worked for an audio/video compression company. We started out in
a ramshackle open plan office. Tables thrown against walls, duct tape covering
cords, computers stacked on bakers racks. Then some of our products really
started moving, most video cards came with our MPEG player, the internet
business was taking off and we had some money.

Everybody was excited as we could finally afford cubes.

------
sweettea
Red Hat's westford office has proper cubicles.

~~~
ghaff
Proper modern cubicles, which are sort of a hybrid between more traditional
cubicles (i.e. ones with about 5 ft. high walls with about a 3 ft. opening)
and an open office plan. So short walls on mostly 3 sides. It definitely gives
you better isolation than a full open office plan but, for better or worse,
it's not the clear delineation of Dilbert-style cubicles. (I guess it says
something that cubicles like this are now something that people miss.)

------
e-_pusher
Microsoft is slowly switching to open floor plans, but for now a lot of folks
have their own offices, or are doubling up at most.

~~~
jmspring
SVC is being redone in open floor plan. Those in Redmond being converted often
have PMs and Engineers doubling up in the same office - two total separate use
cases. Some roles mitigate this with remote work.

~~~
kabdib
The Studio buildings at MS were open plan when we moved in. Pods of six people
sat in a kind giant cubical corraled by high walls, with these "six-packs"
strung down the length of the building's wing. Managers and the privileged few
received offices.

When space got tight, they removed most of the interior partitioning and
furniture in the six-packs and crammed more people in. The most I ever saw was
ten people stuffed into a six-pack in the building's interior (no windows,
ugh), and let's just say that the ventilation was not up to the task of
servicing ten bodies and many computers and game consoles. Towards the end of
a crunch-time it got pretty ripe.

Facilities never budgets enough power. I think the planners assume "Excel"
workers with a desktop computer and a phone, and ("yeah, yeah, okay")
grudgingly double that number for engineers, while the actual engineers have a
black market going in sufficient power strips to run all the hardware they
need. Facilities ran additional power several times while I was working there,
and this was just a _software_ group . . .

~~~
crzwdjk
Each new major generation of NVIDIA GPU was accompanied by an upgrade to the
power transformer to the building that the software teams sat in, because it
turned out during bringup that the building was already exceeding the capacity
of the transformer.

------
alanfranzoni
My opinion: open floor plan is acceptable up to a certain room size
(100/150m2), provided that the people inside do the same job (mixing devs and
salesman is a sin), that the room is not too crammed (6-10m2 per person being
the sweet spot) and that there're other meeting/recreational areas.

------
amyjess
I work for Masergy. We're a cube farm. I love it.

Give me a conservative cube farm over a hipster open office any day.

------
the_snooze
Not a "tech company" in the traditional sense, but everyone had an office
(shared with one, maybe two, other people) when I was at a university lab. It
was great because those really facilitated conversations, both work-related
and otherwise.

I spent two years in a "tech company" after that, which had a cubicle setup,
and I totally hated it.

I'm back in academia now with my own office, which is pretty sweet. "Non-
office" setups are probably a dealbreaker for me at this point.

------
bcohen123
Here at Kensho we try to accommodate everyone's preferences. We've got single
offices, 2-3 person offices, and open floor areas for whose who prefer that.

~~~
orips
If you weren't located at Ramat HaHayal that could almost become relevant.

~~~
bcohen123
We're in Cambridge MA, NYC and DC. Not sure where you got Israel from!

~~~
orips
I'm sorry. I've got you confused with Kenshoo (two Os).

------
m4tthumphrey
Our office is technically open plan. We have a about 3/4 of a floor
(7500sqft). The 1/4 is still empty but my team are based in the section with
the "fake" wall that separates the two. It is only us in this section so it
kind of acts as it's own office. We still get distracted but it's much better
than being in the thick of it.

------
fbonawiede
I’m guessing it is a combination of cost and constant team growth. Liquidity
is a scarce resource for startups and investing in a larger office than
necessary for the time being requires too much capital.

At our startup, Delibr, we try to combine these conditions with personal
preferences. We are 6 people and 3 of us have our own rooms.

------
smashface
SAS at the Cary, NC headquarters does not use open floor plans. I don't know
about other office locations though. Pretty much everyone gets their own
office with a door. Only time I've seen people without their own space was
interns in their own cubicle or contractors in a shared office.

------
doktrin
Not a 'tech company' per se, but at SEI / CERT research we had our own
offices.

------
Moodles
Have there been any studies on what kind of office floor plans are actually
optimal for work?

~~~
sheepmullet
> Have there been any studies on what kind of office floor plans are actually
> optimal for work?

It's hard - every study of individuals shows they are significantly less
productive in an open office environment.

But what second order effects are there?

You might be less productive individually but it might encourage team work and
make the team as a whole more effective.

~~~
tbrownaw
So where does all that supposed extra productivity come from? How does
something get done, without any individual having done it?

~~~
VLM
Distraction workers like managers measure productivity in issues handled and
amount of talking. By definition they don't do things, things don't get done.
This is maximized in an open office.

Knowledge workers like devs (mostly) measure productivity by things getting
done. Usually things getting done involves one individual passing unit tests
and committing the corresponding working code, not turning every minor issue
into a massive teambuilding exercise of endless talking and no doing. This
kind of productivity is minimized in an open office.

Its a classic talk about it vs do something about it argument. Both extremes
are pretty bad, unfortunately at this moment in the industry we're at one
extreme swing of the pendulum.

------
resalisbury
This is partly driven by costs. Where rents per square foot are less, more
companies have opted to have offices.

Just like how in Mountain View some Googlers live in the parking lot. It's not
cause they think parking lots are hip, space is expensive.

~~~
geekbird
But the cost "savings", even in high rent areas like San Francisco, are eaten
up by a significant loss of productivity.

In a high rent market like SF, a programmer's salary plus benefits and
employer taxes (loaded labor) is about $200K. Open plans have an anywhere from
25% to 50% productivity hit from increased distractions and sick time (sorry,
I can't look up the studies right now.) So while you might save $30K/year/dev
going from offices to open plan in an expensive market, you will lose
$50K/year/dev in productivity. Since those come from different budget buckets,
and management never really sees the productivity hit, management thinks
they've saved money and convinced people that open plan is "hip", "open" and
"collaborative", when in reality most people are unproductive, stressed,
unhappy and now despise their noisy, smelly and messy coworkers.

------
amelius
Just find some plywood and build yourself a nice cubicle :)

~~~
eli
Cubicles are far worse than open plan IMHO

~~~
geekbird
Nope, IMSHO. I've worked in everything from a solo office to benching in an
open plan.

Open plan anything makes me nostalgic for the smallest cubicle I ever had (4ft
x 5ft). Give me walls, even if they are short.

------
dijit
It doesn't help you, but I've never worked in non-open workspaces with desks
shoulder to shoulder and head to head in rows.

I legitimately don't know how it is.

------
nix0n
Look for older (relative to tech) companies.

My current employer was founded in the 80s and still uses cubicles.

------
sedatk
Microsoft, before they started adopting open plans. I had my own office and I
liked it a lot.

------
kuon
This does not answer your question, but I concur, I need my office to be
private.

------
baud147258
I'm currently working in a small open plan with 6 other people, but the
company is moving in June and I'll be in the big open space with 40 people. At
least it should only be developpers, so we won't have sales people shouting on
the phone.

~~~
geekbird
My condolences.

------
hiddentruth
National Instruments

------
bitL
Is this thread to identify all companies that are still having sane offices in
order to get "new wave" managers there to destroy them from inside as well?
;-)

------
aaronang
At PARC everyone has their own office.

------
kgc
Microsoft

------
matte_black
One thing that also matters, that people tend to neglect, is ceiling height.
In general when you need to do focused concentrated work, it’s best to work in
a room with a low ceiling, the lower the better. Ideally it’s a ceiling you
could almost touch.

If you need to do more creative thinking, it is better to have a high ceiling,
the higher the better (think cathedrals), though there must be a ceiling at
some point.

~~~
gpvos
Citation needed.

~~~
Dangeranger
Here is an example article[0] and a research study from Oxford[1] which
reinforce the claim.

[0] [https://www.fastcodesign.com/3043041/why-our-brains-love-
hig...](https://www.fastcodesign.com/3043041/why-our-brains-love-high-
ceilings)

[1]
[http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/519146](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/519146)

