
Open offices are a dead end - zeveb
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/opinion/wework-adam-neumann.html
======
ivl
I think I'd have a less negative reaction to open offices if it weren't for
the attempt to sell it as a _productivity booster_.

The article even mentions how they're "sold to workers as a boon to
collaboration — liberated from barriers, stuffed in like sardines, people
would chat more and, supposedly, come up with lots of brilliant new ideas".
Thankfully the author also quickly refuted that. Yet the insanity remains, and
people (often times the Agile evangelist types companies hire) continue to try
to convince developers that open offices are good.

I could buy into it if the rational is it's far cheaper to fit more employees
in less space. That's a fine reason. It sucks to work in, but I can at least
hear that without rolling my eyes and dismissing everything else that person
says as incredulous.

~~~
chomp
I think part of the problem is that (in my experience) open offices actually
do boost productivity somewhat, but only when the office is a small 2-5 person
pod. I lose productivity when I get dropped in a huge floor of people chatting
and talking about things not related to what I'm working on.

~~~
dtech
I wouldn't call that an open office though, just a team room.

A shared space is fine with <5 people, can become problematic at 5-10 people
and the frequently 20+ large floor spaces are just unworkable without noise
cancelling headphones.

~~~
tempguy9999
Agreed, it's just a small room with people in it. BTDT.

I worked in london in an open plan office maybe 40ft wide and getting on 200
ft long. _That 's_ open plan.

It's fine except for the noise. It's always the noise as the problem, all else
is ok.

(edit: not a single company, a collection of small and medium businesses)

~~~
toyg
_> It's fine except for the noise. _

And the utter lack of privacy. Want to tell your colleague that Alex is a
dick? Better do it in another building, or the entire office will hear it.

~~~
tempguy9999
It's probably best not to use such language at work or one may be labelled a
dick oneself. Keep it polite and any complaints formal.

------
scarface74
If I could craft the perfect job for me, the one I work at would be it

\- an intelligent straightforward manager who will speak his mind bluntly and
can take it just as well as he can dish it out. He’s mostly concerned with
results not whether you kiss his ring.

\- small company without a lot of bureaucracy -- I have full access to our
entire AWS infrastructure

\- relatively generous PTO

\- a decent free family health plan

\- Pay is line with the market

\- up to date with technology and great chances for resume building.

\- coworkers are decent

\- easy commute.

 _But_ , I’m still debating on whether I should leave in a year and find
either fully remote work, a job where I can have an office or at least a quiet
work area because of our open office where you have sales people (B2b),
customer support managers, and developers from different teams in one office
where it gets noisy.

~~~
tomp
> Pay is line with the market

Presumably pay should / can be lower in a place where you actually _want_ to
work for than in a shitty work environment?

> up to date with technology and great chances for resume building.

What do you mean "up to date with technology"? IMO most "recent" technology is
mostly hype and/or vaporware, and as I get more experienced, I see more and
more value in old, reliable, well-supported technology. I mean, I'm not
_dissing_ on _all_ new tech (Rust?), just saying that just being "new" doesn't
make it also "good".

~~~
scarface74
_Presumably pay should / can be lower in a place where you actually want to
work for than in a shitty work environment?_

My major _want_ is to get money deposited into my account. I'm at an age where
I need to focus on building wealth. But that's the other dilemma -- I _could_
go into working for a consulting company as a "digital transformation
consultant"/"cloud consultant" where I would be travelling or working from
home a lot, but that doesn't excite me either -- thus I stay where I am until
I can make up my mind.

 _What do you mean "up to date with technology"? IMO most "recent" technology
is mostly hype and/or vaporware, and as I get more experienced, I see more and
more value in old, reliable, well-supported technology. I mean, I'm not
dissing on all new tech (Rust?), just saying that just being "new" doesn't
make it also "good"._

"Up to date with market" _and_ "resume building". The only "value" I get out
of any technology is the ability for it to get money deposited into my
account. "Old reliable, well supported technology" doesn't get recruiters
beating down your door. At 45, I can't afford not to be competitive and
keeping up with new technology and then whine about "ageism"

I don't care about Rust or any other new technology until I see it appearing
on a lot of job reqs.

~~~
ryandrake
I’ve always considered the technology treadmill to be optional. You can ride
it and be successful, or you can become a good generalist on old technologies
and be successful too.

I’ve never even thought about messing with Rust or React or Angular or Ember
or Node or Haskell. I don’t know what a Kubernet is and I think Docker is what
happens when you take “it works for me” and turn it into a software deployment
tool. I don’t surf the Blockchain or care about Tensorflow. There are just too
many companies (big and small, FAANG and fun) who offer rewarding jobs working
on mature, boring tech for me to bother.

Maybe there will come a time when nobody on Earth is using C++ and Java
anymore but I don’t expect it to happen in my lifetime.

~~~
scarface74
Are you willing to move "anywhere on earth" to find a job? It doesn't matter
whether _anyone_ will hire you, what matters is if anyone will hire you in a
place that you are willing to move or allow you to work remotely and at the
pay you want.

Also how old are you? I've seen too many people in their mid 40s who couldn't
get a job because they called themselves "generalists" when a company could
just as easily hire someone cheaply that could hit the ground running. Also
there is a difference between the "right job" and the "right now" job. The
"right job" for me would be architect, consultant, team lead, or consultant.
But those jobs aren't as abundant. If I have three or four months to plan and
look, I can get the "right job". If circumstances dictate that I need to get
the "right now" job or contract (and get on my wife's insurance), I need to
find a job quickly and be marketable.

~~~
ryandrake
Good point. There is a technology treadmill and a “moving around for work”
treadmill. I’m in my 40s and have been ok with the moving around treadmill all
my life. Not for everyone though. Landed in SV ten years ago and haven’t run
into the need to move again so far. Fingers crossed the bull market runs on...

------
rootusrootus
Of all the places I have worked over the years, my preferred office layout so
far is conference rooms. That is, each team has their own room. Open within,
closed to noise from other teams. Depending on how well you get along with
your teammates, you can turn on some music, decorate however you like, etc. Of
course it won't work for everyone, or for every type of job, but as a
developer it is the arrangement that I enjoyed the most. And anecdotally, my
coworkers also seemed to prefer it to either open space or cubicles.

~~~
bityard
This is the arrangement at the place I've been working at for the last 9 years
and I have to say, I prefer it to everything else. Our team is all in the same
room so useful impromptu conversations happen semi-regularly. We don't have to
reserve a conference room for daily stand-up. Asking questions (e.g. useful
interruptions) is encouraged. If you want to be in the Zone for a few hours
with no interruptions, there are places in the building where no one will
bother you, or you can work from home that day.

Certainly, it's not for every kind of personality. But that's why companies
evaluate for cultural fit as well. If you can't stand being interrupted ever
for any reason, you're probably better off with a remote gig working from
home. It doesn't work for extroverts who are compelled to strike up
conversations regularly or who can't think without also talking because these
things interrupt the whole team.

------
duxup
I have a visceral response to that photo in the article. I do not need folks
right on top of me like that.

My solution is that I often wear Shooting Earmuffs (you guys who listen to
music all the time, i don't get it, i can't do that) to lower my awareness of
all the chatter... even when I do have an office.

Fortunately folks around me are understanding.

~~~
soneca
I just recently discovered I have a super power: easily zoom out from a lot of
chatter in a crowded small room.

The secret is that I am a non-native English speaker working in the US. I can
understand and speak very well... when I am focused on it. If I am not
consciously making an effort to understand the chat in the room, it is almost
like white noise.

~~~
saiya-jin
Same for me and all the french/swiss french colleagues around me, I don't
think its that special of a skill. I can easily block them talking right
through me and they don't interrupt my thought process.

English is a bit harder since I am much better at it and subconsciousness
catches up. Never worked in open space in my native language so no clue,
probably the hardest.

------
madenine
The best office I ever worked in was an open office... with an open remote
work policy. On any given day, only 15-30% of the office would be in; meaning
while the office was "open", it was also usually empty and quiet.

People came in when they had in-person meetings, and teams generally fell into
a loose schedule to come in on the same days 1-2 times per week.

I thought it provided a good balance; the company need to have a huge space to
give people private offices etc, and it was quiet even if someone nearby was
on a call.

------
sytse
I think offices are a dead end.

With 4G, Slack, Zoom, and Google Docs we're able to work from anywhere. No
need to commute anymore. And no need to constrain your team to the city you
have an office in.

The only thing is that remote should not be an afterthought but you should
organize for it [https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-
remote/](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/) just like you
invest time to run an office.

~~~
TheMerovingian
I agree to an extent. I think remote work is a swing in the opposite direction
of open offices, but it can go too far. Remote work does not allow developers
to collaborate easily; sometimes getting several people at a white board is
necessary and efficient. Offices or very small cube farms (of 4-6 people in an
enclosed area) seem an ideal middle ground where people working on the same
thing can talk while not being bothered by others that have nothing to do with
their current team/task.

~~~
trentnix
Remote situations are also difficult to manage. I'm in management role at a
new (to me) company and despite having a virtual meeting with one of my
reports virtually every day, I've got a better understanding of the psychology
of people that I see around the office casually even though they are in a
completely different and unrelated department. Those interactions are
unscheduled, have no agenda, and have no goals. And I'm realizing those
interactions are _invaluable_ at understanding what makes people tick.

And that's not even opening the can of worms regarding remote productivity. To
be Captain Obvious for a moment, it seems much easier for remote employees to
hide a lack of productivity, especially in roles where productivity is hard to
quantify (like software development). Sure, people like Nilay Patel (who was
mentioned in the story) work from home with great success because it allows
them to control their environment. But people like Nilay Patel are extremely
unique in their motivation, commitment, and aptitude. Companies should be
extremely cautious to extrapolate success stories like his onto their own
resources.

We moved to open workspaces because of success stories and consultant pitches
and hip office trends despite its obvious flaws. The move to everyone being
remote has the ingredients of a fad, too.

~~~
msbarnett
> To be Captain Obvious for a moment, it seems much easier for remote
> employees to hide a lack of productivity, especially in roles where
> productivity is hard to quantify (like software development).

If you can't trust your workers to get work done without surveilling them, you
should fire them, and focus on hiring employees you feel capable of truly
trusting, not lament your inability to surveil them.

An under-discussed benefit I've found in years of remote work is that it tends
to come with a much higher percentage of supervisors who are actually capable
of _trusting their employees to be professionals and get work done_ , rather
than managers who pay lip-service to ideas of trust but then use butts-in-
seats-I-can-see as a security blanket to assuage their fears that employees
are somehow "getting one over" on them. I find the latter sort of manager
infantilizing and insulting.

I also can't really say that I find it difficult to judge the productivity of
remote software developers, having been in position to evaluate it for remote
reports over a number of years. It's actually, in my experience, more or less
identical to judging the productivity of local developers? I don't really
understand what work output you'd be not seeing from a remote developer that
you would see from an in-person developer, that would impact your ability to
assess their productivity? Are you just attempting to count butt-in-seat hours
and call that productivity, or something? Do you not have rough estimates of
how long work items should take? Estimates in software miss constantly, of
course, because consistently and correctly evaluating the complexity of a task
_a priori_ is well-understood to be very hard, but when a task misses
estimates due to unexpected complexity, the extra complexity of the task will
generally be obvious in the code you see in the eventual PR. Is the end work
you see in PRs from your remote team consistent in terms of
size/complexity/quality with the time that daily standup updates indicated was
devoted to it?

If the former seems "consistently inconsistent" with the latter team-wide,
have you looked at how your project management processes might be causing a
loss of productivity that you're misinterpreting as being related to butts-
not-being-located-in-the-magical-seats-you-can-see? If it's "consistently
inconsistent" with only one or a small subset of your team, have you devoted
time to jumping into regular pairing sessions with those team members, to
evaluate whether it's a skill-gap situation, or them perhaps struggling with a
lack of detail (or too much detail) in the tasks they've been assigned, or if
it's truly just a lack of effort situation (in which case, again, _fire them_
, don't imagine that somehow a magical seat-in-your-sight will fix their
fundamental lack of professionalism. Open offices are not even remotely immune
to the presence of freeloader developers).

Even apart from evaluating the effort, quality, and complexity of output
you're seeing in PRs, or tickets they're writing, or solutions to problems
they're proposing, in my experience daily standup updates are pretty
qualitatively different between people who are doing the work versus people
who aren't and are just spinning bullshit, and that's no less true on a remote
standup than an in-person one. It also becomes _instantaneously_ obvious the
second you say "hey lets jump on a hangout after standup and you can walk me
through the problems you've run into and we can brainstorm some work arounds".

~~~
trentnix
Perhaps I don't have the skills to make such remote discernment as you seem to
be able to do. Perhaps I've only had the wrong resources. Or perhaps the
projects you're managing have a different sort of complexity and domain
knowledge required than the projects I manage. After all, some projects might
lend themselves to remote teams than others. Who knows?

There are some scenarios (domain knowledge, budget constraints, lack of office
space, etc.) that justify people working remotely, so don't take my original
comment as a statement that remote teams never work. Clearly they have, and
clearly they do. But even if you're just some sort of management Jedi that I'm
not, I think there are inherent flaws in remote teams that aren't solved by
just having the _right people_.

~~~
msbarnett
> Perhaps I don't have the skills to make such remote discernment as you seem
> to be able to do.

If you're a non-software developer managing software developers, that's (in my
experience) a profound organizational issue that simply does not work in any
situation, open office or remote. If you lack the skills to actually evaluate
the work output by your reports, then you're left with piss-poor proxies that
are more noise than signal and frequently have no correlation to what
productivity actually looks like in the field.

~~~
sfink
I'm not sure things are as universally true as you're saying. I've been
managed by developers, non- developers, and people who haven't written a line
of code in 20 years but were once developers. I can't say I've really noticed
any quality/effectiveness differences correlated highly with their ability to
develop software. And I've been both on-site and full-time remote.

Evaluating ability, progress, and effort can be done as more of a human
problem than a technical one. Heck, current or former developers are more
prone to overconfidence in their assessments, especially when they're not
personally neck-deep in the exact area.

A good people manager can smell a slacker based on a wealth of signals from
1-1 meetings and the overall flow of work. But the strongest signals come from
what the manager picks up from your coworkers, who are almost certainly going
to be more qualified to evaluate your progress than the manager could be.

People can still slack off and put up a bullshit screen that'll fool their
coworkers for a while, because they're not watching for it. That's not their
job anyway, that's the manager's job, and they don't need to be able to hand-
code an encrypted distributed hashtable to smell a rat.

That said, it depends on who you have. Some developers need oversight from a
knowledgeable manager, especially when remote. Some don't. The purpose of
management extends well beyond evaluation, which is more of a cure that you'll
need inversely proportionately to how well you do prevention (team dynamics
etc.)

------
umvi
Unpopular opinion, but I actually think open offices make me more productive.
When I'm in a private office, the temptation to watch YouTube, or otherwise
read/do unrelated work stuff is _much_ higher.

However, I do like having a private office to eat lunch.

~~~
tombert
Even if you're an outlier, the overwhelming evidence suggests that the
_overall_ output of an open office is substantially less for virtually
everybody. People get sick more frequently, and lots of time is lost in non-
work-related conversations. This has been measured, and I don't know that it's
really up for debate.

~~~
kerkeslager
I think it is very much up for debate.

Let's hypothesize that 60% of people work better in private offices, and 40%
work better in open offices. You force everyone to work in a private office,
and they perform slightly better than if you force everyone to work in an open
office--that perfectly explains the results of the studies.

But obviously if this hypothesis is true, then the best solution would be to
let the 40% who work better in open offices work in open offices, and let the
60% who work better in private offices work in private offices.

Sure, if you're going to force everyone into one style of office, the evidence
probably says we should force them into private offices. But why are we
forcing everyone into one style of office?

~~~
unionpivo
If you google around, you will find lots of studies on that subject have
already been done, and most of them find, that open offices are for the most
part are less productive.

The only way to find out if you are right is to test it. Until that is done,
it makes most sense to go with, majority of studies.

That said, you suggestion (about having both types) might work in ideal world.
In real world you wouldn't really have a choice most of the time, because if
your team mostly works in open office, you will miss* out on a lot if working
in closed office. And if majority of people work in closed offices, then you
loose all the benefits that open offices bring anyway.

So you would end up in whatever team lead decided that its best.

* And likely be considered antisocial.

~~~
kerkeslager
> If you google around, you will find lots of studies on that subject have
> already been done, and most of them find, that open offices are for the most
> part are less productive.

If you Google around, you will find lots of studies that tested which office
style you should force everyone into, without considering the possibility that
forcing everyone into the same office style might be a bad idea. That doesn't
address my point at all.

> The only way to find out if you are right is to test it.

My entire career has been a test showing that I can't get much done in
isolation. Open offices work great for me, and at this point, I will not take
a job that requires me to work in isolation.

Again I'm going to ask: why are we forcing everyone into one style of office?

~~~
unionpivo
> Again I'm going to ask: why are we forcing everyone into one style of
> office?

I addressed that in my reply: "That said, you suggestion (about having both
types) might work in ideal world. In real world you wouldn't really have a
choice most of the time, because if your team mostly works in open office, you
will miss* out on a lot if working in closed office. And if majority of people
work in closed offices, then you loose all the benefits that open offices
bring anyway.

So you would end up in whatever team lead decided that its best.

* And likely be considered antisocial. "

> My entire career has been a test showing that I can't get much done in
> isolation. Open offices work great for me, and at this point, I will not
> take a job that requires me to work in isolation.

Well if the rest of the team, is in their own offices and you are alone or
with people from other groups/teams how exactly will that work for you, you
might as well be in coffee shop across the street.

I am not trying to say that you should like individual offices, but you can't
really mix both of them together, unless your teams are huge (which I
personally dislike).

Edit: Not sure if I explained myself correctly (I am not trying to say that
some people don't work better in open offices), and I come of across as a bit
of a jerk, which was unintentional.

Edit2: and its a moot point mostly anyway, because open offices are cheaper,
so there will always be plenty of companies with open offices, whatever
studies show.

~~~
kerkeslager
> So you would end up in whatever team lead decided that its best.

That's poor leadership on their part.

> Well if the rest of the team, is in their own offices and you are alone or
> with people from other groups/teams how exactly will that work for you, you
> might as well be in coffee shop across the street.

If the rest of the team is in their own offices, sure. That hasn't been the
case for most teams I've worked on, however (which may be self-selection on my
part--but it's never been hard for me to find a team I work well with).

> I am not trying to say that you should like individual offices, but you
> can't really mix both of them together, unless your teams are huge (which I
> personally dislike).

1\. What's huge to you? The only team I've worked with which had a really
mixed open/private space ranged from 6-10 people while I was there. There were
2-3 people who worked consistently together (let's call these extroverts,
which includes me), 3-5 who worked consistently on their own (let's call these
introverts) and 1-2 who floated back and forth (let's call these ambiverts).
The shared space was mixed with other teams--it's also worth noting that even
if the people around you aren't on your team, there still needs to be some
collaboration between teams, so even if you're the only extrovert on your
team, working in a shared space that still isn't the same as working in a
coffee shop across the street. A team of 10 is starting to get a bit bigger
than I like personally, but 6-8 feels pretty ideal to me.

Now I work for myself and I'm not seated with my client's team at all. But I
tend to work in coworking spaces[1] frequented by other people working in my
field, with people who frequently bounce designs and coding questions off of
each other. This is a lot like your coffee shop idea, so that has some
validity. But it isn't super ideal for me--if I continue getting consistent
business, I may hire some people just to have some more direct collaboration
in my life.

2\. There also doesn't need to be this kind of diversity in the same team. You
can have a team that's all introverts, or a team that's all extroverts, and in
those cases, picking a completely private layout or a completely open layout,
respectively, is fine. The point is to assess the needs of your team and build
your workspace around their needs instead of looking for a one-size-fits all
solution for some "normal" team that doesn't exist.

I'll note that it's harder to integrate one extrovert into a team with a lot
of introverts than the opposite. I don't really have a good solution for that
problem.

[1] Not WeWork. They're so expensive and overcrowded! Just because I am an
extrovert doesn't mean I want to be sitting on top of my neighbor.

------
cdeonier
I'm not a fan of open office spaces, but I don't think the article fully
captures the problem that the open office space is addressing. Our company has
a team dedicated to the design of our office space, and they're trying to
balance against multiple stakeholders' needs, from different functions
(engineering vs legal), to work environment needs (1:1 vs meeting room vs
quiet place), all shoved into a fixed and (relatively) small space. The result
is you have to do trade-offs, just like normal engineering problems.

From my understanding, it's easier to scale environments that are open-office.
For a startup that's always have to contend with finding space for their ever-
growing teams, I can see why executives may reach for an understood solution
to that problem, even knowing the downsides.

My guess is there's a necessary iteration to work environments in the future,
since I don't think open offices truly optimize for knowledge workers.
Presumably knowledge-based companies (e.g., tech) will eventually start
thinking about how to optimize their internal efficiency as a lever to growth
in addition to their product development.

~~~
scarface74
_From my understanding, it 's easier to scale environments that are open-
office. For a startup that's always have to contend with finding space for
their ever-growing teams, _

I’m sure there is plenty of space if they let everyone work from home or come
in on an ad gov basis.

------
osrec
All you need is some guy to talk loudly on the phone next to you all day and
you'll soon come to abhor open offices. Not to mention the scrutiny of others
- keeping an eye on how you work, how much you work, when you arrive, when you
leave, what you eat etc. It can really be quite horrible at times, especially
if your office is quite politically charged.

I run a small company in London, and we advertise our jobs with "closed"
offices/remote as being a unique selling point! I think people prefer to work
without being watched, and can really take ownership of their task without
feeling conscious - they can get into that coveted state of "flow".

As a manager, I also don't want to watch over my staff all day. I'm not their
owner, I'm just their manager. My aim is to let them do what they're good at,
and being comfortable enough to let them get on with things is the best way to
keep them productive.

And if someone isn't productive, it's obvious from their results. No open
office/constant scrutiny required.

~~~
stillworks
Possible to reveal the name of the company please ?

------
save_ferris
I used to think that noise was the worst distraction to deal with in an open
office until I took a job where a coworker in our open office decided not to
practice basic hygiene. The smell is just horrible. It’s far and away the most
distracting thing I’ve ever experienced in my career.

They dress up and put in effort to look nice in the office, but everyone
instantly knows when they walk into a room.

Honestly, I’m hesitant to go to HR about it in case it’s a religious/cultural
thing, but I will never, ever complain about noise again in my career after
this. Woof.

~~~
asdf21
>Honestly, I’m hesitant to go to HR about it in case it’s a religious/cultural
thing

Oy vey.. do you know how absurd that sounds?

~~~
teddyh
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patchouli#Perfume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patchouli#Perfume)

------
kerkeslager
The best office layout is the office layout that fits the needs of the people
working in it.

Open offices aren't a dead end. I work really well in open offices.

I can barely get any work done in a private office by myself. Yet there are
many people who work well in private offices, and would be as non-productive
in an open office as I am in a private office.

It's _obvious_ that people have different work styles. The problem here isn't
open offices OR private offices, it's people who look only at their own work
style and then extrapolate that out to the entire rest of humanity.

The solution is to let people self-select the office situation that works for
them. Ideally companies have a mix of open and private spaces that allow
people to work in a way that's best for them, including the option to work
remotely, but that's not always possible. Sometimes that means that someone
isn't a good fit for a team, and should be self-aware enough to self-select to
not work on that team.

~~~
AgloeDreams
This is hilariously accurate and reasonable from my experiences. Being
surrounded by hard working people tends to help some work better.

------
sct202
In the four years at my current company we went full cubes -> half cubes (you
get like 2-3 regular walls and one baby wall) -> open office -> open office no
assigned desks. I can't wait to see the next iteration on this.

~~~
eli
Cubes are worse than open office IMHO. You get roughly the same noise and
distraction but it's also harder to actually talk to or collaborate with your
neighbors.

~~~
pokstad
While I agree cubes are worse, they aren't worse for noise and distraction.
The felt walls absorb quite a bit of sound and reduce the audible range of a
conversation. WeWork offices, on the other hand, are the complete opposite
with their reverberating glass/hard-floor designs.

------
tombert
These kinds of articles surface every couple of months, and when they do I
always leave a comment about how much I hate the open office design.

I have trouble focusing with people talking around me (like most people), and
I have trouble focusing on coding when I'm listening to music. I don't have an
office, so how am I supposed to get stuff done exactly? I could work from my
basement office at home, and I do sometimes, but at that point, wouldn't it be
better to have just given me a proper office (or at least cubicle) so that I'm
actually in the building if people need me?

------
rom1v
What about libre offices?

~~~
xythian
This was the perfect comment to read with my coffee this morning. Thank you.

------
big_chungus
I never see this mentioned, but one of the things I hate most about open
offices is having people always looking at my screen. To be clear, I don't
waste much time. Does this bother any one else as much as it gets to me?
Regardless of what I'm doing, I'm not comfortable being constantly observed
doing it. I previously worked in an open office where the manager would
basically creep up on people, walking quietly throughout the office and
looking to see who was doing what. Creepy as all get-out.

------
andreygrehov
I hate open offices. What software companies offer at least cubicles?

~~~
undefined3840
If you’re going to choose a company based on whether they offer cubicles
you’re going to be very disappointed.

~~~
andreygrehov
That is why I ask first.

------
stevesearer
In some ways open office designs are a symptom of company cultures that do not
value deep work more than the perceived value open plans offer such as cost
savings or "collaboration".

From my vantage, there are quite a few more companies installing places for
deep work in offices.

But even if companies install these spaces, if the company does not value deep
work away from your primary desk, employees will feel discouraged about using
those facilities.

It was probably the same culture disconnect for companies who would put a
ping-pong table in the office even though deep down they would not actually
want staff spending time utilizing them during the day as opposed to sitting
at their desk working.

------
acd
There is a Harvard study which says "Your Open-Plan Office Is Making Your Team
Less Collaborative". Open office plans lead to more email less collaboration.

So it is better to have traditional office setup with collaboration areas than
open office spaces.

link to study:
[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239)

------
ssimpson
everyone wants to have offices in all the trendy downtown areas. a lot of the
cost of the office goes to rent, so even if a desire for cubes or offices was
there (which generally management doesn't because they are expensive) the
budget won't be.

------
djhaskin987
At my first job space was at a sort of premium, and we all worked at a bench
with computers on it. But, there were walls that separated about 6-8 workers.
I think this is a very nice happy medium. I can openly collaborate with my
"pizza-sized" team, but there's enough separation from other teams that I have
a modicum of privacy. That said, I quite appreciate my 6'x7' cube my current
company has me in.

------
Rainymood
I don't have an issue with open offices per se but the person in front of me
is from another culture and is literally 24/7 in skype calls which distracts
me to no end, and the worst part is the he/she is literally /burping and
farting/ without any shame. And I don't mean once a day, no, constantly
burping and farting, it's honestly disgusting.

/rant

~~~
orev
So, in other words, you do have a problem with open offices.

The fact that everyone has a different idea of what’s acceptable behavior in a
group setting is pretty much the whole issue with open offices.

------
JohnFen
I've worked at three places that embraced the open office scheme.

What I've learned from those experiences is that I do not operate well in
those environments. So much so that I now know that if a company uses it,
there's no point in exploring employment with them as right off the bat I know
it's a poor fit for me.

------
gregmac
There's a lot of hate for open offices, yet they're everywhere. There's high
demand for developers, and accordingly, the salaries are high. Open offices
mainly exist due to cost savings (lower sqft per employee), yet for most
businesses salary costs will completely dwarf the cost of office space.
Something doesn't add up.

Do places with open offices have a harder time finding people? I was trying to
find some comparisons of average salary at places with open offices vs private
spaces, but I can't come up with anything. Intuitively, I'd think the salaries
would on average be higher at places with open offices, but perhaps that's not
a consideration of most people.

How much more money would you need to be paid to make working in an open
office worth it? Conversely, would you accept 5% less to get a private space?
10%?

~~~
new2628
The term that may answer your dilemma is "investor story-time" \-- open
offices tell a story to investors, acquirers, etc. of a docile team that
collaborates in a creative way, without too much annoying individualism. This
story is in fact quite accurate. Possible cost savings are just extra.

------
marsrover
For some reason everywhere I’ve ever worked the POs get offices and devs
don’t. Why are we treated like sweat shop workers? Why don’t devs get their
own offices? We are paid so much money but have to sit in open offices or
cubes like call center workers.

------
utf985
I get a bit bewildered every time I see someone complaining about open offices
as it always begs the question - what kind of alternative do they demand
exactly? I have addressed this on many threads and comments but somehow I
never gen an answer.

Only thing I can think of are cubicles but to me they seem a lot worse than
the open office and they're definitely not a thing here in Europe. Out of all
the companies and interviews I've been to and people in the industry that I
know, I have yet to see a cubicle outside of a hollywood movie.

The other thing I suppose is where literally every employee gets their own
office. But is that really a thing? Because I've never heard of something like
that.

~~~
reroute1
Cubicles, working remote, conference rooms. You ask for alternatives but
automatically rule out the largest alternative (cubicles)? Feels like your
expectations are the odd ones

~~~
utf985
As I said, they're basically non-existent here, so they're definitely not an
alternative for me.

------
than0s
More distractions have been introduced since open spaces had been “invented”.
Simple as that.

------
socrates1998
In my city, mid-sized city in a larger metropolitan area with a few million
people, I tried to work at one of the We-Work type places and found it
completely overpriced.

If I can work from anywhere, then I don't see the advantage to renting an
office for the day. The real appeal for an office is that you can leave stuff
there and use it for a multitude of things. We-Work type places seem to be
good for one thing, giving a desk to remote workers that don't like working at
coffee shops or libraries?

Do sales people like them?

What exactly are the type of professionals that like We-Work type offices?

------
diablerouge
As someone who started out working in an open office and now works someplace
with half-cubes, I honestly prefer the open office.

The ability for an open office to foster pair-programming and intense
collaboration was a real benefit, though it certainly doesn't suit everyone.

On the other hand, the half-cubes have all the same problems with regard to
distractions, but are also major hindrances to working together in my
experience. Developers are farther away, the space feels a little
claustrophobic, and there are comparatively few good pairing stations.

~~~
SomeOldThrow
> The ability for an open office to foster pair-programming and intense
> collaboration was a real benefit, though it certainly doesn't suit everyone.

How much of your day do you spend in intense collaboration?

~~~
kerkeslager
I've been at companies where I spent perhaps 7 out of 8 hour in a day pair
programming, and it was the most productive I've ever been.

As the parent comment said, it's not for everyone. _Nothing_ is for everyone--
there are many different work styles.

~~~
martinpw
That sounds like a great argument against open offices. I could not handle
sitting near two people pair programming the whole day. If they went to a
private office to do it that would seem ideal.

~~~
kerkeslager
> That sounds like a great argument against open offices. I could not handle
> sitting near two people pair programming the whole day. If they went to a
> private office to do it that would seem ideal.

I don't understand. You can't handle working in an open office, so your
solution is to force people who work well in an open office to work in a
private office?

Why can't you go work in a private office if that works well for you, and let
people who work well in open offices work in open offices?

~~~
no_wave
Expecting your neighbor to be ok with two people talking to each other for 7
hours straight is just plain rude regardless of your office preference.

~~~
kerkeslager
Please read the post you are responding to.

~~~
martinpw
no_wave's reply is exactly on point.

You don't need the open office to pair program, you just need to be with one
other person. So go to an office, because otherwise you are disturbing
everyone else in the room with your pair programming if you are going to be
talking 7 hours straight. In an open office that is plain rude and selfish.

And by the way I would love to work in a private office, but that is not an
option. So everyone needs to compromise, and that includes not pair
programming and talking all day out of respect for your co-workers.

~~~
kerkeslager
Again, please read the posts you are responding to. You're _not_ reading my
posts. I'm not your enemy here. You're just taking your anger at other people
out on me.

If you would read my posts, you would see that what I'm proposing is a mixed
office space with open areas for those who work best that way (like me), and
private areas for people who work best that way (like you).

1\. I'm definitely _for_ you having your own, private office if that's how you
work best.

2\. An open office with enforced silence is the worst of both worlds. The
extroverts can't work effectively because they can't collaborate, and it's
really never quite quiet enough for the introverts. This kind of "compromise"
means nobody is happy.

3\. Being in the open office isn't just about talking with your pair, it's
about being able to collaborate with people outside your pair too.

~~~
martinpw
I think I am reading your posts - we are just focusing on different aspects.

I agree with your ideal - that indeed would be a nice place to be. My concern
is more around the reality for most people which is that everyone is in an
open office environment. How do you propose to handle that situation assuming
no offices are available? Would you still pair program and talk all day? Would
you at least first ask your neighbors if they are ok with that? And what would
you do if they said no?

~~~
kerkeslager
The emergent norm at coworking spaces seems to be that you keep the volume
down (just above a whisper) and don't talk _to_ people if they have headphones
in, as this signals that they're trying to concentrate.

Pair collaboration happens _all the time_ in this sort of setting. These days
I'm not the one pair programming, since my coworkers are a 5 hour drive away--
it's other people. And they typically don't ask first.

But the reality is that if people are paying to work in an open office
coworking space, they've chosen to be there and are at least somewhat
extroverted. So those norms aren't likely to fit the needs of people who don't
want to be in an open office.

The flipside of that coin is, I don't think introverts get to come into an
open office space and determine norms for an office space they don't want to
be in anyway. If a coworker communicated to me that they needed more quiet,
I'd try to come up with a way to meet that need. But it's a bit aggressive to
assume that I will meet your needs without you communicating them, and call me
"rude and selfish" when I don't.

In the short-term, if you asked, obviously I'd just quiet down so you'd be
able to get done what you needed to get done that day. But that's a short-term
solution, and I'm not going to give up _my_ productivity forever. The longer-
term solution would be to help you lobby management to get you the privacy you
need. Can we designate conference rooms as "quiet spaces" when not in use? Can
we schedule all the meetings for one day a week so the conference rooms are
not in use the rest of the time? Can we re-examine why we're not letting
people work from home? Whatever compromise arises is going to come from us
discussing what we both want and coming to an agreement. And if management
really isn't amenable to anything that works for you, I'd probably leave the
company--I don't particularly like working for authoritarians, even if the
open office mandate doesn't harm me directly.

------
CuriouslyC
I refuse to work in an open office unless you're paying me to bother, er,
"collaborate" with my coworkers. Want me to put my head down and focus? Give
me an office.

------
ping_pong
I've worked in every type of office in Silicon Valley: private office, shared
office, cubicle, cubicle with low walls, and open office. My favorite is open
office. It's a different way to work, but I do find it more social and more
collaborative. I don't get distracted that easily and I recover easily if
someone asks me a question so for me it works fine. I can understand if others
feel differently, but for me, open office is definitely my favorite.

------
abc_lisper
Much as I hate open offices, I think Farhad overshot the premise. Open office
culture didn't start with WeWork, neither will We's failure invalidate it.

------
inanutshellus
I disagree.

The headline photo looks claustrophobic -- we aren't sardines -- but I'm a fan
of the "team pod" setup.

The primary alternative--the high walled land of cubicles--is a depressing,
lonely world. Yes, I get pulled out of flow more often than I would if I had
an office or a cube, and I'm occasionally annoyed by chatter, but I'd rather
have some humans to coexist with and occasionally interrupted than depressed
and flowing.

------
samsolomon
Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I like open offices.

It's nice being able to turn around and have quick meetings without wasting
time looking for a room.

It's also nice being able to scoot a chair over to work with a team member on
a problem.

As a general rule people don't interrupt others if they have headphones on.

Maybe it's a problem for companies with product and engineering next to sales.
Other than that I'm not entirely sure where all the hate comes from.

~~~
shantly
There's a difference between open team rooms and the kind of office where
there's a whole floor of a building with nothing but structural obstructions
from window to window. The former can be very nice, the latter is awful.

------
sillyquiet
open offices are plain and simple about two things, neither of which is
related to worker health or productivity.

cost: open offices, once built out are cheap in terms of cog pers square foot.
marketing: airy, light, trendy open office make great photos.

I knew my present company had succumbed to the disease when a request for
whiteboard desk dividers was denied because, to paraphrase: 'they don't fit in
with the airy flow we were going for'

------
puranjay
Maybe there are fields of work where being in an open space helps, but most of
my work is best accomplished in complete isolation.

------
arminiusreturns
At one point in ~2009 I put together a business plan for a wework-esque office
space company that was centered around each worker having their own most self-
sustaining space, minus restrooms, but including sinks. I still like the idea,
because the more I have worked in unicorns the more I have hated their push
for open office spaces.

------
SkyPuncher
I know this is an odd opinion, but I actually like open offices. It's akin to
working in a coffee shop or public space.

I listen to music 90%+ time I'm working. I'm either using in-ear or closed-
back headphones, so background noise isn't an issue. Having people milling
around feels nice to me.

~~~
kerkeslager
That's not odd at all!

It's entirely predictable that people have different work styles--some will
thrive in an open office, and some will thrive in private spaces.

------
HashThis
COMPETITION: A company should have some of each. Workers pick which they want.

The problem is when open offices are crammed on workers.

They should make half open offices, and half closed offices. Some places have
rooms for 2 to 8 people to work in, which is a good alternative to open
offices. See which workers select.

------
GoToRO
Open office, very little productivity. Individual office,a lot of
productivity. The employer chooses what it wants. I see open office as a
request to slack off. I'm still using 100% of my mental energy, but not on
productive stuff.

------
rdlecler1
I think they’d be more productive if they just left a basket of earplugs at
the front. I use them and don’t have a problem in open office space—-and this
coming from someone with ADD.

------
tibbydudeza
And thank the maker for noise cancelling headphones. I dunno how I would
survive open plan office hell without it.

------
zwieback
We still have cube walls, seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

------
JaceLightning
I actually love open offices. Cubicles are too isolating.

------
adamnemecek
I wonder if remote work will become standard.

~~~
cameronbrown
Not gonna happen. Working in an office is cultural, and as long as the
majority of jobs require presence (read: almost every non knowledge-worker
job) it won't change.

Personally I don't like the idea of remote work anyway - I think we're missing
_a lot_ of valuable bandwidth. We're social creatures and no amount of
technology will change that. That being said, I think the option should be
there for those who disagree with me.

A good middle ground would be a mix of remote and in-person work.

~~~
smt88
> _Working in an office is cultural_

Culture changes, and there's a such thing as subculture. Many individual
companies have created remote-only subcultures, and they'll become more
influential over time.

(Wearing suits to the office used to be cultural and "never going to change".)

> _we 're missing a lot of valuable bandwidth_

But you're also missing lots of destructive bandwidth (interruptions, gossip,
etc.)

Remote work allows you to create time/space for the good connections without
also formalizing the bad ones. Socializing becomes opt-in instead of opt-out.

> _We 're social creatures and no amount of technology will change that._

People socialize outside of offices all the time. There's nothing stopping
remote coworkers from meeting in the same place every day, going out to lunch,
etc.

> _A good middle ground would be a mix of remote and in-person work._

This is a difficult line to toe. It works better if the company is 100%
remote, or if going to the office is opt-in (like a free perk for those who
want it).

If you start with onsite-by-default and try to transition to remote, the
people who stay onsite become resentful of the remote workers, and everyone
assumes the remote workers are lazier, distracted, etc.

~~~
cameronbrown
> But you're also missing lots of destructive bandwidth (interruptions,
> gossip, etc.)

These things are a component of being around others though. Gossip never goes
away, it just migrates.

> People socialize outside of offices all the time. There's nothing stopping
> remote coworkers from meeting in the same place every day, going out to
> lunch, etc.

True that, but arguably the best benefit of remote work is to.. well.. live
remotely. If you're all states or countries apart (as remote teams tend to be)
then this is obviously not an option.

> If you start with onsite-by-default and try to transition to remote, the
> people who stay onsite become resentful of the remote workers, and everyone
> assumes the remote workers are lazier, distracted, etc.

If it's optional and actually sponsored by top execs into the company culture,
why would this resentment exist?

Obviously this is just my opinion, but I'd really hate to live and work in the
same place. It's the same for me with side projects: if you get burned out of
uncomfortable in your space, that doesn't go away when work's over. You risk
disliking your own place.

Personally I just prefer a strict division between work/life and remote
heavily fragments that relationship.

~~~
smt88
> _True that, but arguably the best benefit of remote work is to.. well.. live
> remotely._

This is actually one of the biggest reasons for an employer to choose remote-
only. It's very difficult to find everyone you need in a single city at a
salary you can afford.

I should've also mentioned that some of my closest relationships are with
people I almost never meet in person. The US is full of people who are close
to their families, but only see them a few times a year.

Coworkers can maintain a good working relationship without being in the same
city more than once a year. All the companies I've worked for have had at
least one remote worker, and they didn't feel like less a part of the team.

> _If it 's optional and actually sponsored by top execs into the company
> culture, why would this resentment exist?_

Because some people feel like going into the office is more productive. That's
it. They pat themselves on the back for it and look down on people who don't.

> _I 'd really hate to live and work in the same place_

This is orthogonal to the issue of a remote-only employer. No one would be
forcing you to stay at home. You could go to a library, coffee shop, co-
working space, local college, friend's house, public park, or wherever else
you choose to work from. You could be at a hotel in Tokyo, if you wanted.

~~~
cameronbrown
> I should've also mentioned that some of my closest relationships are with
> people I almost never meet in person. The US is full of people who are close
> to their families, but only see them a few times a year.

I don't know man - there's something uncomfortable about the majority of our
time being spent stuck to a computer. Even as a programmer being around and
talking to others is a break from that.

Video calls will never be good enough.

------
Ascetik
I got hit in the eye with a nerf dart once in an open office environment.
Thank God I work remotely now. Open-offices are horrid.

------
alanfranz
Editorialized title: should be

Open Offices Are a Capitalist Dead End

------
RocketSyntax
you're a dead end

------
not_a_cop75
This sounds like a condemnation of startup culture. I've seen some great
startups thrive with open offices.

