
Ending the open office epidemic - efedorenko
http://wildbit.com/blog/2015/03/06/wildbit-hq-ending-the-open-office-epidemic/
======
lallysingh
I guess I'm in a real minority here, but I'm pretty happy with open-office.

Some qualifiers:

\- The team has a good culture of respecting each other, and we're busy enough
not to want to banter too much outside of certain times (e.g., lunch, when we
see it already going on, etc.).

\- I've got good headphones hooked to a 24-bit-DAC'd USB amp. I don't hear
anyone unless I'm trying to.

\- My screen's big enough where visual noise isn't an issue.

On the upside:

\- Asking someone a quick question is really, really quick.

Downsides of my prior each-their-own-office experiences:

\- I sometimes felt a bit lonely.

\- I certainly felt disconnected from the rest of my team.

\- I was disconnected from the rest of my team - there were always important
conversations I would've liked to been part of.

[edited for getting the bullets formatted]

~~~
koof
If you are listening to headphones loud enough to block out other
conversations, you are almost certainly going to damage your hearing.

~~~
lallysingh
Etymotics. They're also part ear-plug. I run them at very low levels.

------
joesmo
Another negative about open office plans that I don't see people mentioning is
the hearing loss due to having to wear headphones up to eight hours a day.
Headphones are generally not recommended to be used more than an hour a day
and even then, they need to be at a low volume, something that's impossible in
the open-office plans I've seen/worked in.

"As a rule of thumb, you should only use MP3 devices at levels up to 60% of
maximum volume for a total of 60 minutes a day"
([http://www.osteopathic.org/osteopathic-health/about-your-
hea...](http://www.osteopathic.org/osteopathic-health/about-your-
health/health-conditions-library/general-health/Pages/headphone-safety.aspx)).

~~~
elithrar
> "As a rule of thumb, you should only use MP3 devices at levels up to 60% of
> maximum volume for a total of 60 minutes a day"
> ([http://www.osteopathic.org/osteopathic-health/about-your-
> hea...](http://www.osteopathic.org/osteopathic-health/about-your-hea...)).

Out of curiosity, is there a peer-reviewed study on this? Moderation sounds
good, but I'd like to understand at what intensity (dB) for what period could
potentially constitute hearing loss.

The 60% cited in that link seems to be based on a 120dB max (so: 72dB), which
is a fair bit higher than most consumer devices (with consumer headphone
impedance levels). Some cursory research shows that it's a bit closer to 103 -
109dB for an iPhone (and similar devices), which puts it around 63dB.

For context, I use canalphones for the isolation, and so I can keep the output
down. I also understand that these aren't viable and/or comfortable for
everyone.

TL;DR: How long can someone sustain ~63dB without potential hearing damage?

~~~
banjomonster
85-90dB seems to be the where the concerns for hearing damage start, if
sustained for 8+ hours.

Some useful (official) tables and charts:
[https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/noise/standards_more.html](https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/noise/standards_more.html)
[https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/new_noise/images/fig3.gif](https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/new_noise/images/fig3.gif)

And this has a nice listing of levels/safe listening times:
[http://www.dangerousdecibels.org/education/information-
cente...](http://www.dangerousdecibels.org/education/information-
center/decibel-exposure-time-guidelines/)

------
athenot
I remember the library at my university being excellent at getting me in the
"flow". It's not so much about "open office vs private office" as it is the
expectation in those places.

I'm toying with the idea of recreating a library-like environment that is
super quiet and zen-like, but not limited in number of people. Go there for
flow-type work. On the flip side, have a cafe-like environment for animated
collaborations. Of course, there needs to be a great insulation between the 2,
perhaps have them on a different floor.

~~~
cnagele
That's a great point. It reminds me of the "Library Rules" at the 37 Signals
office: [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3357-an-office-with-
ldquolibr...](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3357-an-office-with-ldquolibrary-
rulesrdquo)

At the same time, I think visual distractions also need to be taken in
consideration.

~~~
warfangle
Visual distractions are huge. Huge huge huge. As someone who has trouble
concentrating in the first place, tiny visual distractions (even just someone
shifting in their seat in the peripheral) are enough to pull me out of flow.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
I manage that with three 27-inch monitors, arrayed slightly concave towards
me.

~~~
warfangle
I'm jealous that your workplace springs for such luxurious accommodations :)

~~~
ThrustVectoring
I could get them for $250 each, so combined they came in cheaper than the
standard Apple branded monitor.

------
ChuckMcM
I hope they also publish a follow-up after living in their new office for a
year.

Specific things that I'm interested in:

1) How would folks relate the understanding of what is going on at the company
now, and compared to before?

2) How do folks compare their effectiveness in getting things done for
themselves? for others? as a group?

3) What is the one thing they would change?

When I joined NetApp it had just acquired a caching company, the original
company had open plan, NetApp had offices. They kept the open plan for the
caching employees for the transition and then offered anyone who wanted to
move into an office or a cube that option. A number of people took them up on
that offer.

In the non-open plan version the same people got less done and felt more out
of touch than they had when they were open plan, but they enjoyed their work
environment with an office more than they enjoyed the open plan space. From a
company perspective it was clear that it was in the company's interest in
doing open plan, and in the employee's interest it was better to do offices.
Of course as an anecdote it provides no statistically valid data to the
debate. But it left me with the questions above which, in a different
experiment like Wildbit's I would love to have another data point.

~~~
diek
Can you quantify "got less done" in the non-open plan? Fewer projects?

My anecdotal data is that people in an open plan sling more code, but better
architectural decisions that don't require as much rework down the line (and
as a result smaller 'output') come from private offices.

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is a good quantitative question. The 'sling less code' is the metric I
was using.

I would love to come up with a good architectural quality test that was more
quantitative. I've got a script that can go count how many times a given
function or module was rewritten but running that on our code base of a few
million lines of code really doesn't correlate with a 'gut' feeling of good
architecture or bad architecture. For example, the Blekko crawler has
essentially been rewritten from first principles three times over the 7 years
we've been doing this. Generally that was not a result of "bad architecture"
so much as it was unknown unknowns, basically writing a crawler that can run
unattended for weeks or months is a really complex and often subtly nuanced
problem. And sometimes is clear that the rewrite was just because someone
didn't understand how something originally worked and so re-implemented it in
a more understandable way. What I'm getting to is that code "touches" are not
the quantitative measure I'm looking for.

------
rdtsc
Open office "advantage" is the story owners who can't afford to pay for a
better location tell the developers.

Sort of like the guy whose car broke so he is taking his tractor to work. He
would tell the world how tractors are so much better and have all these great
advantages compared to regular cars.

~~~
beamatronic
I've seen managers with a huge budget rip out the tall cubicles and replace
them with the small ones, to get these "advantages".

Result: Everyone was unhappy

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Kinda like when 'Office Space' and 'Idiocracy' had a bastard child.

------
kazinator
Open offices instantly "out" anyone who comes late, leaves early, takes a 2.5
hour lunch breaks, or surfs the web instead of working.

And that's really the whole point.

It's why they are popular in Japan, together with the fact that thanks to the
open structure, transgressor can apologize in front of everyone at once.

~~~
josephschmoe
Except you're sitting next to your coworkers - not your boss. Your coworkers
don't want to out you - that only hurts their reputation and gives them more
work.

If anything, this prevents one person from being singled out because it's
difficult to get mad at one person for slacking when everyone is slacking to a
similar degree.

At least, that's my experience being in a 4 person cubicle. It built trust
between coworkers and against the company.

~~~
kazinator
Four person cubes are not quite the open office concept, or don't represent
all instances of it. In Japan, open offices include everyone. You look away
from your monitor and there is your boss ("buchou" \-- department head)
looking back at you! If you have to leave before the buchou, you apologize,
e.g. "O saki ni, shitsurei shimasu".

If the boss is not there, then it's not quite the open office; it's a slightly
strawman version of the open office which doesn't quite include everyone. Even
so, the boss can come out peek at the workspace at any time and tell at a
glance who is there and who isn't, and who is doing what.

------
jobu
_" As a company grows, the cost of restructuring an office to accommodate more
people in different layouts is time consuming and expensive. By having desks
in an open plan and telephone rooms for quiet time, the idea is that you can
solve the cost and flexibility problems while still offering a quiet place to
retreat if needed. From a growth perspective this is smart. If I planned to
add 30 employees to our office in the next 12 months I might not have a choice
otherwise."_

Well said. Some people like to blame it on founders too cheap to buy decent
furniture, but rearranging people every few months is time consuming and
disruptive (It can also kill morale when someone loses a window or gets stuck
under a vent.)

~~~
Swizec
I still prefer to just stay home when I have to _actually_ get stuff done.
Offices are weird.

It's not even about open or not. But I can only be really productive if I'm
completely alone.

~~~
practicalpants
This is the elephant in the room in these open office debates.

Yes, for programming at least, concentration and productivity is better when
you move from an open office to something slightly more insular... But you're
still thinking within a traditional office paradigm. If your goal is truly
increased productivity, let's talk about remote flexibility.

Yet... for stake holders, it just seems wrong to have your workers be too
independent. "Company culture" and "we're all in it together" is great for
company owners, but at it's core it's really just a now widely normalized
practice to get workers to invest even more energy and mindshare.

I can only imagine an increased openness to remote work setups (for
geographically local workers) in the coming years. Makes too much sense.

~~~
Swizec
This is the elephant in the room in remote work debates: remote makes you more
productive at work work, on-site makes you more productive at office politics.

Which is better for your career? Hint: it's not remote.

------
dba7dba
The pics showing what-it-looks-like and what-it-feels-like made me chuckle.
Very true.

I got to visit Autodesk in Northern California in mid 1990s. In that office
each employee was in an enclosed office.

Down a long hallway were rows of offices with enough room for a desk/chair and
2 chairs in front of the desk for visitors. Wall facing the hallway was glass.
Wall between rooms were actual dry walls.

I remember some friends who were even the most junior level engineers were
given an office. When they were working late, they could just put down a
sleeping bag under their desk and take a nap. None of the shared napping room
non-sense.

I think that arrangement is the best.

------
teamonkey
One of my favourite anecdotes about open offices is 22m in to this video[1],
where Gabe Newell of Valve talks about his desire to have one office per
person and how it didn't work out in practice. Bonus: he mentions Peopleware.

[1] [http://youtu.be/t8QEOBgLBQU?t=22m](http://youtu.be/t8QEOBgLBQU?t=22m)

------
JimboOmega
I will say that not all open offices are the same. The one I work in currently
is constantly noisy - people will wander around on the phone arguing loudly,
for instance. But others I've visited were wonderfully quiet, with the few
conversations occurring in hushed voices.

That said, what annoys me the most about the open plan office is also having a
boss who cares a lot about what's currently on my screen. (e.g., hacker news
rather than vim). I hate having the instinct to cmd-tab every time I see
someone walking by. (even if I'm already doing work!)

~~~
pdenya
I do that whether or not I have a boss that cares. It's easy to feel judged by
people walking behind you glancing at your screen. A little privacy is
amazing.

------
someotherdb
A chap in our office runs to work each day, changes and leaves his damp sweaty
clothes around his desk to dry. This means people give him lots of space, and
practically his own office.

~~~
tarikjn
In my opinion, a good office should have (a) shower(s) -- unless it's right
next to a gym, a spot to take naps, and a spot to take private calls. In
addition of a layout fit for the way teams are organized.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
This seems like a good rule - but it would be easier to look for office space
near gyms than build those out yourself, I would think. Or perhaps it's a
business opportunity waiting to happen for some pop-up gyms to open amongst
office towers...

~~~
tarikjn
I know at least of one company in San Francisco, AKQA, that a shower installed
(in their previous space) at the request of employees.

------
trhway
office -> cube -> open floor plan -> next? what can be even worse than the
open floor? Transparent floors? No walls at all? I'm sure in a few years we'll
know.

~~~
shubb
Pair programming.

~~~
mattmanser
Pair programming with daily shame meetings where you have to justify your job
by how much work you did yesterday.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
While the whole thing takes place in a 3D wireframe beehive.

~~~
bstamour
Maybe a kind of torus?

~~~
shubb
Is tuple programming a thing yet?

------
MAGZine
So, I've worked at what is essentially a F500 company, and am currently
studying at University. My feelings:

\- I really like collaborative spaces/pods _except_ when I'm trying to really
hammer on work, independently. I don't like being isolated. If I come into the
office at 7-or-8am before everyone arrives, those two hours will outstrip the
rest of my day (except after 6pm). Noise, mid-afternoon, is especially bad and
distracting. Some people in my group have taken to occupying entire meeting
rooms just so they can focus in quiet.

\- I am most productive at University in quiet spaces. The library, mostly.
BUT, in an environment where I'm working with other people, bouncing ideas,
etc, it's not a productive environment because libraries demand QUIET. My
second favorite place to work is in one of our "group study" rooms. They're
small, private rooms with space for up to 6 people. Whiteboards and TVs,
outlets, etc are provided.

I think separating people into these rooms would be my ideal configuration.
I'm not sure that I'd necessarily partition people officially (except in cases
where people want an office to e.g. store belongings), just give people a
notebook and say sit where you want. I can therefore sit in whichever room I
want, and multiple people who demand quiet working conditions are able to
share a space. This combines the nicety of social interaction, being able to
discuss with someone about work-or-non-work related things, with long
stretches of quiet, uninterrupted worktime.

The ideal office (or at least one I'd like to try working in) would be where
there are many offices small offices that represent these group study rooms.
Natural light (with blinds), comfy chairs, TVs for presenting, whiteboards,
climate control, etc. Take one room and copy/paste it. Add some open areas as
well, for people who prefer to work in those spaces. Destress/common areas.

~~~
cnagele
Your first point reinforces our decision on private offices. We encourage only
working 8 hours a day. This way you don't have a chance to stay late or work
long hours to find that "quiet time" when everyone is gone. It's up to us, the
founders, to make sure you are productive during the day.

We believe that when you come to work you should make the best of those hours
so you can spend the evening with your family, friends, or just relaxing.

~~~
MAGZine
I'm glad that you feel that way! I'm a big proponent of work-life balance, so
being able to be productive enough through the day so I can leave without
feeling guilty is a huge plus. I wish more companies held similar views.

Hopefully, if there are enough productivity gains and as the startup
transitions out of super-lean mode, you could represent that increased
productivity with a shortened work day/week!

------
shmerl
Agreed. I don't get it, why are they so popular? Some psychologists came up
with this lame idea and now everyone runs to implement it. Crowded open spaces
are distracting any time you need to concentrate. They impose a feeling of a
factory and monotonous work.

~~~
33W
My understanding is accounting - furniture is depreciated or amortized at a
different rate than offices, and it is beneficial to the bean counters.

~~~
shmerl
Reduced productivity will bite it from the other end. Shouldn't accounting
worry about that too?

~~~
khuey
Accounting doesn't worry about what they can't measure.

------
j_baker
I think there's more to the open office epidemic than mere cost. Facebook is
pouring tons of money into the largest open office in the world. Eric Schmidt
and Jonathan Rosenberg wrote in "How Google Works" that offices should be (and
I wish I were making this up) "crowded, messy, and a petri dish for
creativity".

I think many companies use open office formats out of _principle_. Misguided
principles, but principles nonetheless.

~~~
sukilot
Note that Schmidt and Rosenberg never worked in open offices -- they just
decided they liked the idea after they bubbled off the top of the company and
stopped doing any sort of desk job.

------
tzs
(This is an updated version of a comment from a similar discussion 3 years
ago)

A layout I've worked in, and that I'd happily work in again, is this:

    
    
       +---------+---------+
       |         |         |
       |         |         |
       +-----+  -+-  +-----+
       |                   |
       |     |       |     |
       +-----+       +-----+
       |     |       |     |
       |                   |
       +-----+       +-----+
       |     |       |     |
       |                   |
       +-------|   |-------+
    

The area in the middle is a common area for the group. It can have a table or
two and chairs so people can hang out there, or even bring their laptops out
and work there, when they are feeling social.

The bottom and middle side rooms are private offices. They should have doors
that close and be reasonably insulated from sound, so that a worker can work
without disturbance when they want to. Ideally, the wall wall facing the
central area should have a big window (with drapes or blinds!) so that the
person in the office can see if anything interesting is going on in the
central area. Each office should have its own light switch capable of turning
off all lights in that office.

The top two rooms can be bigger offices, or conference rooms, or break rooms
for breaks that might be too noisy in the central area. The gap in the bottom
wall is the connection to the hallway.

With this environment, you can easily work in private, no distraction mode (go
into your office, close the door, and close the blinds, and you can even play
some music on speakers without disturbing others if that helps you work), or
in full social mode (take your laptop to the middle area), or in between (work
in your office, but leave the door and window open, so you can keep an ear and
eye on what's going on in the social area.

Note that if you have two groups working on different things, but that have a
manager or senior engineer working with both, you can extend this concept and
put the two groups side by side, with a large office (or more) in the middle
connecting to both:

    
    
       +---------+---------+---------+---------+
       |         |         |         |         |
       |         |         |         |         |
       +-----+  -+-  +-----+-----+  -+-  +-----+
       |                   |                   |
       |     |       |     |     |       |     |
       +-----+       +-----+-----+       +-----+
       |     |                   |       |     |
       |             |                         |
       +-----+       +-----+-----+       +-----+
       |     |       |     |     |       |     |
       |                   |                   |
       +-------|   |-------+-------|   |-------+

~~~
cnagele
When we were searching for space this was our preferred choice. We wanted a
large single floor space with offices on the perimeter. Each office would have
a glass wall to see the open space. This way, as you said, people can see what
is going on. Searching for office space is hard, so we ended up where we are
and made the best of it. We still get the offices on the perimeter and the
glass wall, but separated by multiple floors. Maybe we just put Dropcams
everywhere so people can see when lunch is ready :)

------
washadjeffmad
Between industry, offices, and schools, I bring earplugs with me everywhere
and hand them out to people who have to work in these types of environments.

A lot of the time, people can't get away to hear themselves think, and it
stresses them out more than they realize. Imagine never feeling like you're as
focused and productive as you're used to being and the impact that might take
on your self appraisal; it's like never being able to get comfortable in bed,
night after night. Using the plugs helps people get away mentally and maintain
their focus when they can't separate themselves from their environment.

Also, the people who might more casually chatter at you stop when they notice
you've got them in without you having to decide whether to be polite and
acknowledge them, which besides sparing your focus might help the ones who
have a harder time controlling their socializing reign theirs in.

~~~
r00fus
Earplugs are not a panacea. I find when they're plugged up I can't breathe
properly (seriously). Over-ear headphones are ok to isolate noise, but have
their own comfort issues.

------
vitd
I'm glad someone's talking about this. There was some talk of moving my office
to open-space, and I've tried hard to discourage it because it would make me
less productive.

One recommendation to wildbit, though - that staircase with the neon-green
diagonal lines may make some people nauseous as they walk down it. We have one
similar to it in one of our offices and some employees have to avoid it
because they get vertigo walking down it.

------
reitanqild
I guess you can judge what management really thinks about open offices by
looking at how many line up to get their place out there.

Around here I have visited one company where it seemed like management where
actually out in the open and I think I know one major branch office at one
major telco that also does (or did? I haven't heard anything the last few
years.)

------
jleyank
Re: hearing loss, let an old fart offer some advice. I loved listening to
music loud as you could feel it in various ways (physically and emotionally).
However, the result is real expensive head jewelry and the need to run iPods
at 95+% volume through good earphones to hear what I want. Trust me, you don't
want to have this happen. No matter how good the digital signal processors
are, they suck in restaurants and crowds.

Take an hour or so and get a hearing check done by an audiologist. This will
give you a baseline. If there's nothing wrong, great, you can check again in
5-10 years. However, if there's problems you can alter your behaviour and
hopefully preserve your hearing. And if "oh s*ht" results from such a test,
you will find out that hearing aids cost 10-15x great earphones/headphones and
insurance tends not to cover them. In North America at least.

------
sopooneo
I am a programmer with my own office. I like it better than shared space,
especially if that space is shared with other departments. Especially
especially if one of those other departments is sales. Those folks are great
for a night out, but I'm not working beside that endless frat party ever
again.

However, are we, the fans of private offices, claiming that our corporate
overlords are not only greedy, but misguided? That in fact individual offices
would be better _both_ for their bottom line _and_ our happiness as
programmers?

I ask this only because I find myself increasingly suspect of all arguments
which end by declaring that our stance "would be better for them anyway!" I
call it arguing on both hands. As in, "on the one hand, this circumstance
favors my position, but on the other hand so does this one!"

------
tarikjn
I have reservations on WildBit's approach based on single person office cores.
In my experience 2-4 person project spaces has been the ideal size. But it's
their business, that might be what fits them best.

------
bsg75
"Why is everyone going toward open offices? I ask myself this question a lot.
My main answers come down to cost and flexibility."

Cost. Flexibility is a very, very distant second.

------
Fede_V
That office plan looks fantastic. I was worried this would be another
'thinkpiece' about replacing the traditional open office plan with something
which is more or less the same thing, but somehow has the best of both worlds
and was pleasantly surprised.

Anyway - those offices look amazing. Great job.

------
ThrustVectoring
Anything you can do to keep the entire company on the same floor is a good
idea. Putting different people on different floors is enough to get an "us vs.
them" dynamic going on. That's the only concrete thing I'd want to improve on
from the office plan they described.

------
zachberger
Perhaps instead of one or the other we should have a choice of our work
environments instead of the other side dictating how to work. I, for one,
prefer the open office environment.

------
forkandwait
The office I want is two big well lit rooms, one quiet one loud, and rolling
desks assigned to emplyees.

------
metaphorm
lets talk practical concerns. this company is based in Philadelphia, where
real estate is still relatively affordable. If your company is based in New
York or San Francisco you simply cannot afford an office like the one
described in this article.

------
geebee
I'm coming in late here, but I have experienced an open office environment
that I found relatively productive. This was at Sun Micro's drop in center in
SF (about 15 years ago now).

The drop in center had three separate rooms. Two were loud rooms, with phones
at each desk. One was a smaller "quiet room", with no phones, intended for
people who do quiet, focused work. I suppose there was some "back visibility",
since the workstations were set up on round (might have been hexagonal)
tables, so it would have depended on where you sit. Another big factor in the
success of a quiet room was an office manager who absolutely enforced the
noise rules, since a lot of people who would push the limits if allowed (when
spaces in the loud rooms were all taken)

There were also a few offices/small conf rooms for meetings and so forth.

I think it worked, but that's probably because it didn't have the same goals
of "collaboration" or "openness" that modern open office proponents often
claim to provide. Most importantly, the open office and quiet room was clearly
not intended to keep an eye on workers in any way. It was a drop in center in
the first place, so while you might see the same people around, nobody was
really monitoring anyone else. Also, there was no status associated with where
you sat - open seating, grab what you like. And of course, the quiet room
showed a great respect for people like developers who need extended periods of
quiet focus.

It's also clear that the "open office" quality of this drop in center wasn't
based on flawed notions of increased communication or collaboration. At that
time, developers at Sun had their own offices (well, I did, and I wasn't high
on the org chart), so the drop in center was for convenience. It was set up so
that people who had meetings in other spots, or who wanted to telecommute, had
a place with a workstation if they needed it, and had a phone or a quiet room,
depending on how they needed to work that day. The idea that the office would
be a place for constant open communication wasn't part of the plan - in fact,
the quiet room ensured that this sort of thing didn't constantly distract the
developers.

Kind of depressing, now that I think about it, that the only time in my life I
had my own office was my first job. The industry has really moved away from
that model over the last 15 years. Facebook has moved into the old sun
offices… did they tear them all out and replace them with open offices?

I also had shared offices quite a few times, and I enjoyed those (actually, I
liked them more than my own office in many ways, provided I shared with
another developer). Cubicles and open offices are pretty horrible, but I think
that if we had a "quiet room" approach to them, they might not be so bad.

------
michaelochurch
The open-plan monster is now self-reinforcing and runs on its own sort of
cargo-cult momentum, but historically there was an under-reported and rather
offensive motivation: backdoor age (and, to a lesser extent, gender and
disability) discrimination.

I think that 90 percent of companies that are now using them are doing so for
more respectable reasons (either they believe that "collaboration" shit, or
they are aggressively cutting costs... which is unpleasant but not evil) but,
for many in the past, one of the motivations in the move toward less workplace
privacy over the past 20 years was... to push out older programmers.

It doesn't make sense when there's a lot to do, because the older programmers
are often the most efficient in terms of value per salary (i.e. they get 5
times as much done, but only cost 2x as much). You want old programmers when
you have too much work to do. But when you have a slowdown and don't need
high-end work, those older programmers will be seen as (expensive) excess
capacity. If you're also looking to shave costs, moving to a crappier office
space kills two birds with one stone.

All of that said, I doubt that open-offices have the discriminatory effect now
that the entire tech industry uses them. They used to push out older
developers, but now, the people who absolutely can't stand them (or whose
health can't handle them) have long-since left, and they're just making
everyone's life hell.

Of course, these offices also discriminate against people with a large array
of health problems, and they aren't exactly pleasant for women... and I
wouldn't be surprised if there were a massive class action suit in the next 10
years over it. It'd be hard to prove discrimination in most cases, but I'm
sure that the bigger tech companies have discussions about office layouts and
age that wouldn't look good in discovery.

They're also not a great economic trade. Office space is _really_ cheap in
comparison to having your people be distracted. $40/SF per year would be high-
end commercial real estate, and you only need 150-200 SF to give developers a
decent layout.

~~~
api
"is now self-reinforcing and runs on its own sort of cargo-cult momentum"

Loads and loads of stuff in business runs on cargo cultism.

It is very, very hard to say what precisely causes businesses to be successful
or to fail. Correlation does not equal causation, etc. As a result, you have
lots of "fewer pirates, higher global temperatures" type conclusions being
drawn.

The discriminatory motives you cite factor into it -- correlations get
promoted to causation when doing so will reinforce one's worldview or
otherwise lead to a desired outcome. Sometimes this is subconscious.

Real heavy cargo cultism kicks in when someone with "juice" (a "thought
leader" \-- gag) draws such a conclusion and codifies it, or when a
sufficiently large number of people independently do so and a herd mentality
kicks in.

------
ripb
I want some of whatever their investors are smoking.

Edit: Is it the smoke from all those dollar bills going up in those flames?

~~~
cnagele
That's the best part, we are not funded at all and are building this office
after eight years of profits from our products: Beanstalk, Postmark and
dploy.io. We count every dollar that goes into the space and it is purely an
investment in our team and culture. I'm personally researching everything from
glass panels, to steel sourcing to carpet with our architects to keep costs
down.

