
The Open-office Trap - marchustvedt
http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/01/the-open-office-trap.html
======
aeberbach
Why stop at having an office merely "open"? Hot desking is the new thing -
it's nothing to do with cost saving, it's all about "flexibility". Except that
your organisation might also have a policy against working from home. There's
no implicit message that you are simply a replaceable functional unit, not at
all. You might even find there's no desk left when you arrive at work - who
doesn't love the suspense of arriving for an oversold airplane? Now you can
have that at work every single day!

Truly modern offices have hot desks AND are wired for teleconferencing - right
in the open areas! That's right, if "open" is good for communication then a
60" screen on the wall with video cameras pointing at you is even better! You
can share in the dull roar of collaboration with people on other continents
ALL DAY! In the average open space you can fit at least two, maybe three such
screens. When you have them installed, get the tradesmen to come during office
hours. It costs way more if they come after hours and your employees should
get the chance to see drills, saws and nailguns operated by professionals,
they may learn something.

We all know there's nothing that stimulates productivity like the sound of
productivity, right? So when you plan your next office, leave the kitchen open
too - the scrape of chairs on the tiles, the sound of the dishwasher being
unloaded, the happy PING of the microwave - not to mention the aromas of hot
food - all these things will make employees feel right at home. Using only the
most modern materials in the office - lots of glass and steel - will ensure
the entire workforce shares the joy. You don't want to be damping the precious
sound waves with carpet or plasterboard.

I wish I was joking.

~~~
matwood
_Hot desking is the new thing_

I visited a place that was a giant room of ~100 people working. No one had
their own computer, instead you just sat down and whatever computer was there
and started working. The guy running this insanity said they re-image all the
machines all time taking settings from one of the machines that has been in
use. His theory was that over time everyones preferences would merge.

It was interesting to see and a little frightening. Right off the bat the
noise level would have turned me off. I asked how hard it was to hire and he
said interviews are held in the room with him or another senior person pair
coding with the candidate.

~~~
eloisant
At my university, 15 years ago, we had network profiles. So you would log to
any machine in the university, your home directory would be your own. That
worked with dual boot Windows and Linux, so you'd get the same files on either
platform.

The machines were pretty much stateless. When you booted a machine you could
choose between Windows, Linux, or reset the whole machine. The third one was
what you did when the machine acted funny, it would wipe the hard disk and
reinstall both OS' from a network image. The whole process was completely
automatic and was done in 20 minutes.

So it was real hot desking, and it worked great. You sat at any computer, it
became your computer. Way before Google started to talk about stateless
computers and their chromebook.

~~~
randallsquared
We had this for meeting rooms at a previous job. It worked quite poorly, since
it took a _long_ time to pull in your profile. Meeting runners learned to get
to the thirty-minute meeting ten minutes early so that there was some hope of
being able to use the computer for part of the meeting. Also, the Windows
profiles we were using didn't include applications, so there was the fun of
each person who needed, say, Skype, or Chrome, downloading it onto each
computer that they hadn't previously used it on.

~~~
marcosdumay
The university I went on used a similar setup, and pulling the profile took no
time.

I don't know what's wrong with corporate enviroments, that Windows profiles
take so long to roam. That seems to be true to all of them. Also, corporate IT
has an extremely irrational aversion to simply installing the software on all
the computers for once. Even when it's free software, or things that everybody
uses. That also repeats everywhere.

~~~
fred_durst
I remember from the old days when I used to deal with this. It was most often
a case of people putting a lot of big files on their Windows desktops.

Certain people refused to put their big files on the network share because
they said it took to long to load and then complained that their roaming
profiles took to long to load because they had those big files on their
desktop.

------
pbiggar
We've just moved into our first place where everyone has a private office.
It's absolutely amazing! I had been complaining for years about open-plan
offices [1], but I was actually surprised at just how much more productive it
is to have a door that closes!

[1] [http://blog.circleci.com/silence-is-for-the-
weak/](http://blog.circleci.com/silence-is-for-the-weak/)

~~~
greggman
I've personally had the opposite experience. I'm far more productive in a team
environment. In video games my most product times are when an artist and/or
designer and I sit together and work together. Even when we are not directly
interacting with each other seeing stuff on each other's screens lets us see
what each other is working on and communicate early and often.

I understand that some people in certain roles would do much better with no
interruptions in a private office but it's not a one size fits all solution.
If your work consists of something you can mostly do on your own that's
certainly one case where private offices might be a win. If your work consists
of lots of collaboration it seems less clear. At least to me.

I'll also note that at least for me I'm much happier around other people than
isolated in a private office. I'm not saying I want to be an a 1960 bullpen
but a room/area with 2 or 3 other coworkers I'm working on stuff with is my
personal ideal.

~~~
burriko
Working alongside 2 or 3 other coworkers isn't really the same thing as an
open-office though. At the moment I'm sitting in an office of approximately
30+ people. Working on my own in this environment is annoying. Working with my
team (2-3 other people) is also annoying, as we can't speak without being
overheard. And I'm sure when we're working as a team, and conversing a lot,
we'll be annoying others who require some quiet.

A private office doesn't mean you have to work on your own, it just means you
have the option to.

~~~
collyw
I am in an office of 4. It used to be an office of two, which was great - most
productive time of my working life.

Even with just 4 of us, it means there is a good chance someone will be asked
something, and regularly the head comes down to discuss stuff with one of us
(often me). I can deal with it for the standard bug fix type work, but trying
to learn something new is really difficult with constant interruption.

------
hliyan
The office depicted in this article looks almost exactly like the office I
used to work in before I moved to a smaller place a year ago. It was a
nightmare for those who are sometimes loosely (and perhaps erroneously)
categorized as type-A personalities:

I want to focus on one thing and do it as perfectly as possible before moving
onto the next thing; I hate multitasking unless the situation calls for it; I
have highly (and perhaps unnecessarily) attuned peripheral vision and hearing.
The chatter was impossible to tune out -- especially design discussions taking
place two workstations over. People who did 'soft' jobs kept suggesting that I
listen to music to drown out the chatter without realizing that mine is not
the sort of work that can be done while music is playing.

People walking about in the background behind my screen would distract me from
the complicated problem displayed on it. It was difficult to have private
chats with people -- the moment I asked to see someone in one of the glass
cubicles, everyone (including the person called) would assume that person was
in trouble.

My current office layout is very 'residential' \-- smaller rooms, wooden
furniture, doors and windows, no sterile white partitions and ceilings etc.
Needless to say, I haven't had any problems concentrating.

------
NateDad
What's funny is that I actually have no idea what a non-open office would look
like. I've worked for 15 years and have never even walked in an office that
wasn't open. How do you give each person an office without using like 5x the
space as a cubicle farm? That's the real reason that companies like open
offices - because they can jam a lot more people in the same space. Someone
who is ok with a 6x6 cubicle would feel trapped in a 6x6 office.

~~~
Spooky23
The fully loaded cost of IT people is $50-75/hr.

I worked in office space in NYC a few years ago that was $80/sqft. 6x6 cube is
$3k/year. Using your assumption that an office is 5x bigger (not sure if
that's accurate or not), you're looking at around $15k/year for an office.

So the delta is $12k/year, equivalent to 160-240 hours/year or 8-16% of a
salary. IMO, with many developers you'll regain productivity far in excess of
that by shelling out for an office.

The reasons companies eschew offices has more to do with taxes and lack of
giving a hoot than cost.

~~~
pavel_lishin
What do you mean by taxes?

~~~
Spooky23
Cubes and other modular arrangements are easy to quickly depreciate, which
reduces taxes.

Buildouts and other capital expenses depreciate over longer periods.

------
chrisgd
Interesting article. My favorite sentence is this though, "Open offices may
seem better suited to younger workers, many of whom have been multitasking for
the majority of their short careers."

Despite what I want to believe and what I have been told (all companies only
want to hire multitaskers!), multitasking is neither productive nor really
possible. You can really only do one project at a time.

~~~
enraged_camel
What they call "multi-tasking" is actually an inability to stay focused on one
task due to a combination of procrastination and sheer boredom. So if you keep
switching between writing a sales report, reading incoming email and
conversing with your neighbor, congratulations, you may not be getting
anything done, but you are multi-tasking!

~~~
chrisgd
I am an expert multi-tasker!

------
emsy
Open-offices are downright dangerous. We had an Indian colleague who had
tuberculoses. After it was diagnosed, every employee had to get an
examination. One colleague got infected. Worst of all, the management handled
the matter rather unserious and kept jamming everyone in the same office
(including the infected colleague!) Gladly, I worked remotely for that
company.

~~~
seizethecheese
Why is it relevant that he is Indian?

~~~
emsy
You're right, it's not relevant at all, it may only evoke bad sentiments. I'll
edit it.

Edit: forgot I can't edit it -.-

Remembered why it was relevant: Since tuberculoses is still a problem in
India, they already assumed that he may have tuberculoses before the diagnosis
(he was coughing heavily and had signs of an ulcer). But not only did they
keep him working, he was still in a tightly packed office with all the others.

~~~
seizethecheese
On second thought, this should have been obvious! Sorry for the snark, and I'm
glad that you followed up with this.

------
austinz
I am thoroughly disillusioned with open offices. Headphones are a paper-thin
barrier against being interrupted while in the midst of thinking; a good,
solid, closed door might do the job better.

~~~
levosmetalo
there is also this small minority that can't stand headphones, especially if
there's any sound coming out of them. being part of such a minority in an open
space environment in one of my previous jobs wasn't fun. at all. what did i do
when i needed to concentrate? just schedule a meeting with myself and use the
meeting room for work when i need concentration. or just do the easy things
and avoid complicated stuff. it's the bug count they cared about, not the
essence. then only good thing about that is that I would return home mentally
fresh, and could concentrated very well on my personal projects.

------
bitwize
Open-plan offices are a cost-effective panopticon: cheap, effective way to
ensure that not only the boss, but other co-workers are aware of where you are
and -- more or less -- what you're doing. The "other co-workers" bit is
crucial because even if the boss can't find Dave himself he can ask anyone in
the space "hey, have you seen Dave" and be led to a meaningful answer.

Companies will get rid of open-plan offices when they stop being such gift-
wrapped boons to middle management, and not a second before. If you don't like
it, adjust or exercise your right to be fired. This is America.

~~~
dalek_cannes
First, the answer to "Hey, Have you seen Dave?" should be "In his
cubicle/office". If a coworker (or worse yet, the boss) does not know this,
then there is a different problem. But yes, it does work well for management-
by-surveillance. Whether that's a good thing is yet another different problem.

Second, not all readers of HN are American. Nor do they subscribe to the same
political/ethical/social beliefs. The article was about whether open offices
are _productive_ or not, not whether we _should or should not_ have them.

~~~
VLM
There is tangentially a correct aspect to it, in that playing geolocation and
SPOF games are non-productive so they fit well with an open office.

If you need to talk to Dave, first of all Dave being a SPOF is a bug or
management failure to be worked around. Secondly geolocating Dave is almost
certainly non-productive. If you need to converse with Dave you call/text his
phone to maximize productivity.

This is an insightful observation about the core values of open office vs
alternatives... an open office simply isn't interested in productive activity.
Its interested in non-productive activity, which has been proven over and over
in scientific studies.

Its unpleasant, perhaps even inhumane for a large segment of the population,
and unproductive for everyone but in a cause and effect relationship the bug
is in the core values of the organization, that productivity doesn't matter.
Its not that they don't know its non-productive, its that they don't care that
its non-productive.

Also note you can't fix that core value epic fail by merely generating a new,
technically superior architectural fad. You merely end up with an organization
that's non-productive that has really nice private offices.

In that way its kind of like a HOA... I don't want the weirdos and dirtbags to
be hidden, I want to be able to glance at a companies office and tell
instantly if they have screwed up values, so in a weird way I want failing
companies to implement open offices, so I can identify them and avoid them.

~~~
waps
> Its unpleasant, perhaps even inhumane for a large segment of the population,
> and unproductive for everyone but in a cause and effect relationship the bug
> is in the core values of the organization, that productivity doesn't matter.
> Its not that they don't know its non-productive, its that they don't care
> that its non-productive.

No the problem is that most management activity, including program management,
project management and the like is fundamentally unproductive. People who
don't know what they're doing (ie. middle managers, project managers and
program managers) can't productively contribute to real efforts.

The problem is the people judging whether this is true or not are exactly
those middle managers/project managers and program managers.

Once management infects a company, it always just keeps increasing in my
experience. A European bank I worked at had 3 project/program managers or
architects per developer. You were lucky to get 2 hours of actual work in on a
day. They were actually working to expand, not the developer team, but the
management team.

------
psychometry
Can we stop pretending open offices are about anything more than spending a
minimum on an office construction? Let's face it: it's much cheaper to convert
an empty warehouse space into a office space than to buy or build a
traditional one.

~~~
pessimizer
They're also for management or sales to walk potential clients through while
waving a hand through the air like a magician opening a curtain, before they
take the client back to their nice, quiet corner offices. Also interior design
showcases for hipster cred.

------
dsymonds
This is a dupe from January of this year. Here's the discussion from then:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024488)

~~~
Adrock
Even though I know it's a dupe, I'll upvote it every time.

------
bluedino
I can't believe we're still having this debate, how many years has it been?

You can't simply take a closed-office environment and just knock the walls
down, pass out headphones and cram everyone in one room.

You need to change the work culture so that open offices work. You have to
adapt things like pair programming and remove things like phones and email.
Put everyone on a certain project at the same table. Switch partners out.

You can't have people who sit by themselves, don't communicate and don't work
together in an open office environment. You're nuts if you think that's going
to work.

~~~
sheepmullet
I suspect a lot of the productivity we get from peer programming comes from
the ability it gives us to focus better in a noisy environment.

I've found when working from home I'm significantly more productive on my own
than two of us peer programming in the office.

------
rl3
It's clear that both open and closed office plans have their advantages and
disadvantages. Ditto hot desking.

I'm surprised that no hybrid solution to this problem exists, or at least one
that's taken hold. The best solution we currently have seems to be giving
everyone a private office and augmenting it with really good team
collaboration software. In most cases however, this does not eliminate the
need for direct human collaboration, which is partly why open office plans
exist in the first place.

It seems you could accomplish a hybrid approach by somehow giving each
employee the ability to toggle the privacy of their workspace on or off. How
you would accomplish that remains an interesting question. Some ideas that
come to mind:

a) Have two physical workspaces for the employee: one private, one open.

b) Some sort of _The Jetsons_ -esque enclosure around the workspace that can
be toggled. Might use technologies such as electronic smart glass (for
privacy) and/or active noise cancellation.

c) Have two floors and lifts under each desk. Want privacy? Just ascend or
descend into it. It could even support hot desking on both floors, provided
the proper visual cues and safety features existed. The cool part about this
approach is it could in theory make moving your desk much easier.

d) In the future it could just be a matter of telling your standard ocular and
cochlear implants to filter your peripheral vision and hearing accordingly.

Disclaimer: Some of these are admittedly crazy.

~~~
GFischer
In "Peopleware", Tom de Marco tries to solve the problem, based on Christopher
Alexander's observations:

[http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13](http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_13)

Edit: see also the discussion at

[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces)

His first rule is that there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution :) but there
are patterns :)

He does identify the need for all three of

\- a communal space

\- a semiprivate/team space ("war rooms", etc)

\- a private space

Also:

"Each team needs identifiable public and semiprivate space and each individual
needs protected private space. "

------
danso
Anyone here _not_ ever work in an open-office since professional employment? I
was going to say that I had never had an office, including my stints in food
service and construction...and I had never even had a real cubicle, i.e.
partitions where I _couldn 't_ see the person across from me.

But that's not true...I had about a year in the "dungeon" when I was moved to
my newspaper's online multimedia team, in a windowless basement...by then I
already had the habit of surfing the Internet, but I did manage to learn
enough PHP and MySQL to build a crime-mapping site and do other data projects,
and even do things like get Drupal working (which ended up not being very
useful, but still, my first web framework).

~~~
noir_lord
Yes.

I threatened to quit if I didn't get moved out the main room with sales (fully
expecting to actually have to quit, I was already half out the door).

Boss begrudgingly gave me an office, 3 months later he said it was one of the
best idea's he ever had (he was a boss after all).

These days I work for myself (small consulting supported startup) so I have an
office at work and an office at home.

------
PythonicAlpha
It is amazing, how a so old wisdom (I read it many years from now in a book
called "Peopleware" from 1987! could be ignored so many decades (by people,
who claim to be reasonable).

But it just seems that some ideas, because they are economical interesting,
stick so much, that management people come up every 6 month with an other idea
or excuse, why the dead horse must be ridden again (and not buried).

------
cel1ne
Old news.

If work is boring, routine or extremely exhausting open spaces are great
cause' you can talk to each other and lift each others spirits.

If work is any type of creative, where you need to concentrate, it's better to
have your own space.

~~~
waps
It makes management feel better if they can constantly spy on the people they
employ because they have zero trust in them.

And of course this immediately leads to the situation that the workers are out
to exploit the company merely to rebel against this situation. Or at least,
that's the attitude it brings out in me.

------
pnathan
I have worked in cubes, private offices, shared offices, and open offices. For
productivity and thinking, I found the physical barriers were proportional to
the thinking. For communication, in any of these, company IM worked quite well
most of the time, and when it failed, face to face worked out.

I strongly advocate for private or team-member-shared offices at any chance I
get. It's just that much better.

------
ThomaszKrueger
I work in such open office arrangement. The worse is when the two guys across
your desk have their phones on a conference call on speaker phone and the echo
of both come through as they speak, utterly distracting, I might as well just
pack and go home.

------
luka-birsa
Couldn't agree more. Open offices, while fancy looking, sport apalling
usability. After moving into ours we had super issues with the team adapting
to the noises and layout. Things got better only after most of the people
started using headphones.

Separate office with a closed door = productivity boon.

------
rjbwork
Would love it if my company would get us each an office. We have the money for
it. I feel like since we've expanded and I moved out of the 2 person office I
shared with one of the front end devs (I'm back end) and into the 5 person
back end space, my productivity has plummeted.

------
dredmorbius
Previously posted to HN: "Creativity is Not a Team Sport"

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

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494705)

One of the best lectures I've seen on the topic.

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

 _Let 's imagine billions of neurons in my head communicating with stuff
they've been talking about all their lives together: there's a high
probability that occasionally they'll come up with something new. Let's now
think of the line of communication that you and I have got between each other,
which is impoverished, because we have to try and translate complex ideas into
language, and how many times do you find you've got a good idea, it's almost
in symbolic thought inside your head, and you really_ can't _articulate it to
someone. And when you_ do, _they get the wrong idea, because really, language
can 't encapsulate it until it's fully formed. There's no good evidence that I
know of that these brainstorming sessions will come up with a solution or a
new idea._

 _What they_ might _do is improve a little bit of team spirit, or show some of
the people in the group, "well, if that's the best they can come up with then
I'm doing OK". The idea that you can marshal creativity is an error. I'd go a
little bit further than this: if there is somebody who's spending 80 hours a
week running a creative team, I'd stop them right there and tell them "you
don't_ run _a creative team, you_ allow _a creative team to run ". That would
be the first thing I would jump on. People ask themselves "how do I make a
team be creative?" You don't. You_ allow _a team to be creative._

(Emphasis in original.)

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

------
qwerta
I am ok with open-office if company provides paid sick leave. In Ireland there
is at least one week every year, when 70% of company is at home with flu.

~~~
mrweasel
Would you really trade your health, physical and mentally for paid sick leave?

I rarely get sick, but then again we're seven people in one office and only
one have kids ( kids makes a difference ). Mentally it's different story. I
can't begin to count the number of days where I get home stressed out due to
the noise of my co-workers and people going in an out of the room to talk to
one of my colleagues.

Maybe I'm just special, but for me to completely focus and do my best work, I
need an almost eerie silence. That's doesn't mix well with co-workers talking
on the phone or a radio playing.

Open offices have been known to be a bad idea since Peopleware, but they are
just so cheap to build.

~~~
qwerta
People in open-space are more sick, paid sick leave ensures that employer is
not passing his cost savings on me. Non-paid sick leave indicates
dysfunctional company and lack of trust (at least in Europe). It is a
principle.

Open-space was major reason (together with new born children) why I quit
corporate world and started my own business two years ago.

------
geebee
This is another interesting and good article, and I'm glad to see it getting
(yet more) mainstream attention. But eventually, I think we should probably
look at this as a solved problem and try to figure out what's going on
upstream.

In other words, I'm completely convinced that open offices (and cubicle farms,
where I work) are harmful. To me, the more pressing question is: why are they
still so common?

~~~
vonmoltke
> To me, the more pressing question is: why are they still so common?

To quote a very cynical and jaded friend of mine, "It increases shareholder
value".

Yes, studies show that open plan offices, especially badly-designed open plan
offices, hurt knowledge worker productivity. The problem is, knowledge worker
productivity is not expressed as a nice, neat number on a balance sheet.
Facilities cost is. Thus, when a business gets into the mode of increasing
profits by decreasing costs, all they see with respect to this topic is that
office space expense. Cue the management bullshit stream about
"collaboration", switch to open plans, and watch that number drop. The
productivity drop tends to lag, however. Since many executive suites can't see
forward past the next earnings report, or backwards past the previous, they
see a nice increase in margins for a quarter or two, followed by a drop in
revenue, schedule slips, or increasing costs in other areas caused by the open
plan switch. They then move on to fixing this "new" problem, not realizing
they caused it with their previous "fix".

------
josefresco
Do we have to have one or the other? Can an office have private/personal work
spaces, and communal open social places that can sometimes host real work? I
feel often that managers/owners feel they have to force one or the other on
their staff, not considering that their people are probably very diverse, and
seek differing models from individual to individual.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Inevitably there's a limited amount of floor space; somebody ends up on the
wrong side. I'd say, why not have closed offices space entirely, and let the
socializers wander from room to room?

------
dang
Burying this thread as a dupe:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=open+office+trap#!/story/forever/0...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=open+office+trap#!/story/forever/0/open%20office%20trap).

Once a story has had significant attention, reposts are treated as duplicates
for about a year.

------
squozzer
At my last job I had a private office, my first. Now I work in the most open
office I've had since leaving the Army - my office there was called "The Motor
Pool"

I didn't find it as distracting as I thought - but I am someone who can tune
out everything when watching TV.

I miss being able to break wind somewhat discreetly though.

~~~
pessimizer
>I miss being able to break wind somewhat discreetly though.

"What’s more, Evans and Johnson discovered that people in noisy environments
made fewer ergonomic adjustments than they would in private, causing increased
physical strain."

------
stox
Open offices are awesome during a crisis. On the other hand, they really suck
when you need to focus on a problem. They work well for young start-ups, as
crises tend to be quite frequent, but as a company matures, I think they
become more of a liability than an asset.

~~~
lreeves
I find them awful in a crisis; generally there are a few people that can
actually fix and work on the crisis and people start hovering behind them
trying to drive from the back.

------
amake
I wonder how dependent all this is on culture and expectations.

I've spent my entire career in Japan, and have never _not_ worked in an open
office. To my knowledge, non-open offices basically don't exist in Japan.

So is every Japanese company just leaving productivity lying on the floor by
insisting on open offices? I wonder if there have been studies on switching to
closed floor plans in Japan.

(Of course traditionally the cultural emphasis has been on consensus, not
productivity, so there hasn't been a lot of impetus to experiment. Things are
changing, however.)

~~~
PythonicAlpha
It is simply a myth, that the Japanese make everything right. This myth arose,
because of the success of their industries and the quality engineering
movement they coined. But they just don't do everything right. They do of
course some things right. How is, that they have stagnating industry for
decades now. How is, that they produced Fukushima and showed, how a country
can fail in letting one totally incompetent corporation mess everything up.
(Fukushima was _not_ the first problem, this corporation produced -- but the
bureaucrats did let them continue and problems where pushed under the carpet).

------
general_failure
Not sure what the definition of open-office is. In our office, we have
gazillion cubicles (the classic valley office). No sound proofing. And people
of a team don't sit near each other. This means that you can end up with sales
guys around who are constantly on the call and meetings. What's worse is that
they keep pitching the same lines over and over again and you have to listen
to it. It makes you empathize about a sales person's job but you end up hating
your job and never want to step into office.

~~~
bitJericho
Now imagine that but with no cubicle walls!

------
DanBC
There is definitely a need for better working environments.

This small table with a wool shell looks nice, and the idea could (with heavy
modification) be used to create long benches of private working space where
noise and visual distraction is reduced and people are not boxed into
cubicles.

[http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/13088/gamfratesi...](http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/13088/gamfratesi-
the-rewrite-desk.html)

~~~
lucasjans
I get a 404 on that link. Can you check it out? \---- Edit: found it
[http://www.designboom.com/design/gamfratesi-the-rewrite-
desk...](http://www.designboom.com/design/gamfratesi-the-rewrite-desk/)

------
NikhilVerma
Like anything taken to the extreme open offices are bad for you. I personally
have worked in an open office and a semi-open office (where your team is in a
part enclosure/room with a door). And I much prefer to have a semi-open office
rather than a private office.

A private office for me would totally kill any social interaction I have with
anyone. A semi-open office keeps it private on the team level.

~~~
rwallace
> A private office for me would totally kill any social interaction I have
> with anyone.

Perhaps a better working environment would allow your day to be spent more
efficiently and leave you with spare time and energy to get an actual social
life, instead of requiring your job to double as your social life and end up
performing both functions badly?

~~~
collyw
You are likely to spend more than half of your time awake in your workplace.
You might as well try to make it a pleasant place to be. And being sociable at
work is hardly likely to exhaust you to the point of preventing an social life
outside work.

~~~
capisce
Do workers prefer spending more than half of their awake time in their
workplace in order to make more money, or do they simply not have enough
bargaining power to negotiate for a shorter work day?

~~~
collyw
Its been discussed on this site that competition for remote work is fierce.
That would suggest a lack of bargaining power.

------
pbreit
I've already bought in to the notion that open arrangements may have short-
comings.

But in the Bay Area circa 2014 what arrangements are being tried out and
seeing advantages? Low cubes, high cubes, fully enclosed offices, bull pens,
mini bull pens, periodic re-arrangement, unassigned?

~~~
collyw
bull pens? I assume this is the name of some office arrangement. It isn't very
inspiring though.

------
jacquesm
The problem with the open-office / everybody in their own room / some mixture
articles and proponents of various solutions is that they all seem to ignore
the effect of calcification.

------
chrissyb
I always wonder when i see reports like this at the amount of cherry picked
data in the studies - and also the ability for the journalist to properly
interpret it. The problem i have with this piece and so many others is that
its just calls out a number of sometimes unrelated "problems", cites some
studies with open offices and calls it a day. They fail to really come up with
a strong conclusion or offer viable solutions.

As a designer working under an architect and having just completed an open
office building for a 150+ employee financial firm[1] - i feel i have a pretty
good handle on this subject. There a a couple key anecdotal design criteria
that i'd like to address in relation to open offices that the report does not
address.

Natural Light - Access to natural light

Artificial light - using the correct lighting for the task with the right
output measured in lumens for the particular task.

Ventilation - Natural and sufficient HVAC Acoustics - Are proper acoustic
absorbent materials being used.

Planning - has the space been thought out in a thorough way - is there a
meaningful program to which the open office functions in both arrangement,
flow and activities.

Psychology - Has there been effort to educate the staff about the new space
and general systems in place to govern how it functions.

All of these points above can be easily planned for by hiring and adhering to
the advice of design professionals like architects, electrical engineers,
hydraulic engineers, acoustic consultants etc. Does this happen? In my
experience - the answer is generally - no. Building offices and fitting thee
out is an expensive exercise and time and time again i see clients willing to
cut corners and forgo professional advice at the sake of saving a few thousand
dollars. It may be that the ROI in terms of employee productivity could be
significantly diminished due to a insignificant saving during the build phase.

I would agree in some respects that there are limitation to open office
layouts - but that its due more to the ill-conceived notion that achieving an
open office work environment is as easy throwing some workstation and humans
into a cavernous space and expecting it to just work.

Moreover that is why indeed planners are moving away from open office and
employing the newer philosophy of ABW (activity based working)[2].

[1][http://marklawlerarchitects.com.au/commercial/hunter-
street-...](http://marklawlerarchitects.com.au/commercial/hunter-street-
office-development/)

[2][http://www.jll.com.au/australia/en-au/Documents/jll-au-
activ...](http://www.jll.com.au/australia/en-au/Documents/jll-au-activity-
based-working-2012.pdf)

------
michaelochurch
Backdoor age and disability discrimination.

At some point, when an organization loses the purpose for its existence and
selecting leadership comes down to office politics alone, the selection
process becomes attrition. Since excellence no longer matters (there isn't
real work for a person to excel at) the leaders are selected by subjecting
people to artificial stresses and seeing who cracks (either a full-scale
nervous breakdown, or just a passive loss of interest) first. Those were the
weak, the less dedicated, etc.

Open-plan offices make that attrition faster, and provide more insight into
who is next to crack up and entertain the crowd with an open-plan-induced
panic attack.

That's also why this toxic micromanagement, in the name of "Agile" or "Scrum",
that programmers are subjected to will probably never go away. When there's no
good way to pick leaders (because the work isn't challenging or interesting)
the stress of being watched, hour by hour, is a powerful attritive tool.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
When I was younger I could probably handle a weirdo office like this for a
year or two. Now? No way. I need some level of quiet, non-social time, etc to
be focused and get things done. I imagine environments like this are the
equivalent of saying, "We don't hire anyone over 30."

~~~
michaelochurch
Moreover, "We don't hire anyone over 30" means "We don't hire anyone good".

That's not to say there aren't good people in their 20s. There are quite a few
of them. But they want to learn from people who are better than they are.
That's the trait of A players: they want to learn from the A+ players. If you
don't have anyone over 30, then the good under-30 people you get will quickly
leave.

~~~
vonmoltke
> If you don't have anyone over 30, then the good under-30 people you get will
> quickly leave.

At least the ones who are _actually_ good, as opposed to the ones who think
they are $DEITY's gift to engineering.

------
inanov
reading the title, i thought that it was about OpenOffice office software
suite.

