
You’re working in the wrong place if you’re working in an open office - walterclifford
https://medium.com/@ummerr/youre-working-in-the-wrong-place-e289036ee01c
======
js2
> At my most recent job, I did all of my best work at home. I would actively
> try to avoid the office for as long as possible. At home, I had two desks
> and complete control over my environment. Distractions and breaks were
> choices.

Indeed. I've worked from home since around 2007. It started when the
Sunnyvale-based startup I worked for acquired a company in NC. I had wanted to
relocate back to the east coast and they generously paid for the move. I
purchased a home a few miles from our NC office, to which I commuted daily.

But most of the folks I was actually working on projects with were still in
CA, so I was effectively working remotely from our NC office. My NC coworkers
were primarily an impediment to my productivity. Sociable though I am, when
I'm at work, I want to be working, not engaging in non-work related chit chat.

So I experimented with working from home one day a week. One day became two,
then three. My NC co-workers didn't seem to care and my CA co-workers didn't
know the difference. So I started working from home full time.

That company was eventually acquired by HP who shut down the NC location
within 2 years and forced everyone to either re-locate or lose their job (no
remote workers). I jumped ship to another startup in CA for which I worked
remotely till they were acquired by another CA company who at the time had a
CEO who'd made news for banning remote work. Turns out that wasn't 100% true.

So here I am a decade later still working remotely.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" So here I am a decade later still working remotely."_

Do you feel there's any discrepancy in how far you've progressed in your
company in those ten years compared to your colleagues who work in the office?

At some companies you're likely to be passed over for promotions if you work
remotely.

~~~
js2
At both the startup and my current employer my salary has increased and I've
been promoted. I'm happy where I am professionally and my income supports my
family. So I think I'm doing okay.

I've been good about finding high impact projects that I can either handle
mostly on my own or with a small team. I've also been fortunate to work for
good companies, and had mostly good managers and coworkers.

There are definitely some frustrations and downsides to working from home, but
overall for me I prefer it and I believe I've contributed more value to the
companies I've worked for than if I had been in the office every day.

I just spent a week out in CA for my current employer, who has recently
converted to a full open office plan and the environment seemed very chaotic
to me. I certainly didn't get as much done than when I am at home (part of
this is because I wasn't using my usual work-station).

When I last worked full time in an office, we had half-height cubicles with 4
employees to a "pod" which worked okay for me at the time. But I was doing
sysadmin/devops work then so I was used to constant interruptions. As a
programmer now, I can't imagine getting anything done outside a quiet office.

I can't even read a book anymore if I hear voices in the background. I wonder
if the ability to do so has atrophied?

~~~
joaomacp
You can definitely get better at it. I've been working for the last year at an
open office (before that I was in college), and it took me 2 or 3 months to be
able to 'turn off' the conversations around me for long periods of time.
Before that I would get distracted by nearby conversations and lose my focus.

And as a side effect, my ability to read books on the subway without losing
focus also improved gradually.

------
RandallBrown
I have never been more unhappy at a job than when I had my own office.

I hardly felt like a part of the team. I barely got to know anyone and
communication between developers was horrible. I found it _way_ easier to goof
around and not actually do work.

Sure, I get distracted more in an open office, but I always thought that was
the point. When I overhear my coworker going down a particular rabbit hole
that I've already been down, I can save them hours of work. I don't need to
wander down a hallway hoping the person is actually there. I can just look up.

I don't doubt that some people prefer their own office. I am not one of those
people.

~~~
superqd
> I found it way easier to goof around and not actually do work

Why do you need someone to watch you in order to actually do your job? I work
at a company where remote work is exceedingly common, almost half the company
is remote, and those in the HQ city don't come in to the office everyday. We
get amazing amounts of work done.

~~~
RandallBrown
Because everyone is different?

I don't need someone watching me to get work done. I just find it easier to
focus on work when I'm around other people doing the same thing.

~~~
valuearb
In a private office you are constantly around people doing the same thing. You
have stand ups and meetings with them every day, you pair program when
necessary. And you still have a door so you can focus when necessary without
your field of vision constantly full of motion.

If you have trouble getting things done in a private office environment either
you had bad management that would have been worse in an open floor plan, or
you are an edge case no work environment should be catered for.

------
temporallobe
For me, the perfect solution was a cubicle with high walls. It was open enough
to encourage collaboration when needed, but closed off enough to allow for
privacy when needed. It was perfect because I was able to get into deep
concentration modes and I learned and accomplished so much in those years.
Now, I work in an open office area and I am really getting fed up with the
distractions. Constant cross-talk and interruptions, especially by the
coworker sitting right next to me who just won't shut the fuck up. He's one of
those people that mumble any thought that comes to his head and expects you to
respond to or acknowledge him in some way. He also constantly wants me to see
something on his screen or has questions, requiring me to turn and face him to
talk, breaking my concentration. Other coworkers just mosy on up to my desk to
say hi or casually ask me for my input on various issues. Add to that several
useless standup and status meetings, and my productivity basically becomes 0%
until about 2 pm when everyone is finally quiet from food comas. The din
starts back up in an hour or so and dors not die down again until most
everyone leaves for the day. I stay until about 6pm and I get more done in
those 2 hours than I do in the other 6-7 hours of the day. Open offices are
not just a bad or failed idea, they're a fucking disaster.

~~~
52-6F-62
I have a similar situation. While it provides me plenty of space to
concentrate, I don't find I mix very often, or run into people very often. I
still don't know most of the people in my relevant departments. Most of my
communiques occur via Slack, HipChat, Skype, email, and JIRA. I rarely meet
face-to-face with people anymore.

I'll have the odd chat with some of my coworkers, but we tend to work outward
from our group rather than together so the calls to discuss work are limited.

I still prefer the semi-private or private workstation but would love if there
were more thought put into mixing or socializing employees without going
overboard. However, much of that is probably more due to the structure of some
departments in my office than the space itself.

------
RickS
I asked[1] awhile back if HN readers could recommend tech companies without
open offices, and got no replies.

From the traction this article is getting, it sounds like there's interest, so
I'm going to plead one more time for leads on companies that respect their
employees right to work in peace.

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15503008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15503008)

~~~
derefr
Cynical hypothesis: if your company has an open office, your productivity as
an employee isn't actually a factor in the company's predicted bottom line.
The company exists as a talent pool to be acquihired, and the work exists as
an ongoing advertisement for that talent pool.

If bootstrapped companies had a lower rate of open-office architecture than
venture-backed companies, I'd take this as pretty good supporting evidence.

~~~
throwaway287391
Google, Amazon, Facebook -- all still waiting for that one sweet acquihire
offer to come along so they can finally cash out.

------
ulkesh
Honestly, the only reason open offices exist can be described in a single
word: control. It simply allows managers to hold sway over their employees by
forcing them to look busy and be in their chair as much as possible, and
causing undue stress.

It also has the horrible downside of mashing together personalities that will
conflict at some point without any guidance of how to resolve the conflicts as
they arise. People are dicks no matter how hard they try not to be. Sure, we
can try to act like adults, but people tend to defend themselves and their
actions in front of an audience instead of talking things through like adults
should — which is much more easily accomplished in a private office.

~~~
carlivar
I agree it is one word but I think it is a different word: money.

Open offices are cheaper.

~~~
ulkesh
Maybe it's both :)

------
lancebeet
For those who are interested, Joel Spolsky wrote about this a long time ago.

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/07/30/private-offices-
re...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/07/30/private-offices-redux/)

------
marsrover
After working in a cubicle I'd be reluctant to ever go back to an open office
(I guess remote is the next step in this progression). Which is shitty because
there are companies I'd like to work for but they have open offices.

Even just looking at images of open offices and imagining having to work with
my back turned against the entire floor gives me anxiety.

~~~
mesozoic
I remember my first job was in a cubicle and I thought of it as cubicle hell.
Now I pine for the days of the cubicle.

~~~
calt
I personally feel that cubicles are the worst of both worlds. You get none of
the privacy and sound isolation of a private space, but you don't get the
frictionless collaboration and socialization of an open office. I felt like I
was socially isolated and living in the hell of hearing the conversation of
the "that guy" through the wall without being able to give him any subtle
social cues.

------
hb3b
Peopleware debunked the myth that open office plans raise employee
productivity. It should be required reading for all startup office managers.
If there is a common struggle amongst employees with noise, demand a quiet
room/area and a headphones subsidy.

~~~
RandallBrown
I thought the point of open offices was to increase _team_ productivity, not
employee productivity.

~~~
throwanem
Increase the productivity of a team by reducing that of its members? How do
you see that working?

~~~
cstrahan
Chemotherapeutic agents are poisonous, and yet they’re administered to cancer
patients.

What is deletarious at a granular level is not necessarily deletarious for the
system as a whole.

A worker might be occasionally distracted in an open office (-1 to efficiency,
say), but at the same time might benefit e.g. from more direct communication
channels (+2 to efficiency). That’s a net win of +1 efficiency.

Whether that’s how it actually works out, well... I have no horse I’m that
race.

~~~
valuearb
I can’t disagree with you, open offices are just like cancer to productivity.

------
ilaksh
They aren't using open office plans because they think it's cool. It's because
giving most people an office isn't practical unless they want to get 5 times
as much space which is not possible due to the high cost of space in the
locations they choose.

I think we will eventually see some workplaces offer micro-offices with high
tech ventilation, fiber optic lights, sound proofing, and virtual windows.

I also think that as self driving cars deploy people will realize they are
able to work in the car. Then they will realize they could have just as easily
stayed home to work.

~~~
flukus
> I think we will eventually see some workplaces offer micro-offices with high
> tech ventilation, fiber optic lights, sound proofing, and virtual windows.

We've had them for my entire working life and probably decades earlier:
cubicles. They don't have to be dilbert esque cubicle farms in 90,000 square
meter office floors.

~~~
ilaksh
Cubicles are better than open office and a lot simpler to implement than my
fantasy micro-offices but they definitely are not a substitute for an office.
That is why I would like to try to make really small offices tolerable like
the ventilation and other ideas I mentioned.

------
megaman22
For a stretch, I went to the office on Monday, and worked from home the rest
of the week. Never in my life have I been as happy with a work situation, or
gotten anywhere near as much done. The one day in the office was enough to
deal with staff meetings and do planning and other work that actually benefits
from being co-located with other people. The other four days I could grind
away and actually structure my day so that I could get the contiguous blocks
of time necessary to actually get things done. Sometimes that meant I was
awake at 4am and coded away madly until sunrise; other days I might take a nap
or work on some stuff around the house in those afternoon hours when
productivity is at a nadir. I probably ended up actually working somewhere
close to 40-50 hours a week, instead of just being at the office for 40.

These days, I've basically got that schedule flipped, except I'm working from
home on Fridays. On average, I probably get an hour or two of real work done;
there's just so much overhead and interruptions that make it damn near
impossible to actually concentrate and do anything. On Friday when I work from
home, I'm so burned out and used up that I can't get much accomplished then
either; besides trying to steal time to deal with all of the errands and other
business that it's my only opportunity to get done during business hours. It's
really not a great setup.

I've been thinking about trying to switch to working four tens instead of five
eights; working seven to five would essentially double the amount of time I
have to actually get work done, in those two hours before anybody else is in
the office.

Unfortunately bosses get itchy if they can't see that you're there in the
office and they can't walk over at any moment and poke you.

~~~
valuearb
I rarely work at home despite the open office because I want to be visibly
available for leadership reasons, today I was forced to work from home (sick
child). Oh my god! I couldn’t believe the difference in my productivity and
quality of my code. I actually had forgotten how it is to regally think
through a problem on depth.

------
hkmurakami
The writers cabin reminded me of longtime Bay Area resident and Pulitzer prize
winning novelist, Wallace Stegner's writing office (separate building from his
home).

[http://ww4.hdnux.com/photos/11/23/76/2441099/7/1024x1024.jpg](http://ww4.hdnux.com/photos/11/23/76/2441099/7/1024x1024.jpg)

~~~
js2
Michael Pollan (the author of Omnivore's Dilemma) also built his own writing
cabin and wrote an article (and eventually a book too) about out it:

[http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/building-a-room-
of...](http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/building-a-room-of-my-own/)

------
oliwarner
The irony is it's exactly this sort of all-or-nothing statement that leads
companies astray.

There are plenty of environments and team structures that _worship_ the
benefits they get from being able to work next to one another, from being able
to just ask something rather than get up, or write an email. Even just for the
comradely. Just as there are jobs and people and teams who need walls, either
to put stuff on or relax (perhaps the wrong word) within the separation they
provide.

And how much people need one or the other changes over time, depending on what
they're doing. There isn't one simple answer... Except that holding offices as
status symbols is pretty toxic when the person who really wants one is
actually better off without one. Perhaps a medium-term hot-desk/office
allocation based on what people want and need.

There are a couple of interesting models laid out here but seriously, before
you turn your office into a warren-line Eudamonia Machine, please step back
and talk to your employees.

And if you are pushing for something like that... fire escapes, fire escapes,
fire escapes.

------
m3kw9
There are team intangibles that you get with open offices. You get to be more
aware of what is happening, in a subconscious way. I’ve seen both open and
cubicles, both have plus and minus. This dude clearly has his own taste and
thinks he can speak for everyone

~~~
leggomylibro
True, but a lot of people simply cannot work in an environment full of so much
clutter, noise, and distractions. Not 'will not', 'cannot'. Their productivity
will drop like a stone.

Are your 'intangibles' worth disqualifying a significant portion of your
potential workforce? I guess if you're in a leadership role that might seem
like a loaded question, but...well, if that's the case then I sure wouldn't
work for you. It takes a diverse set of minds and opinions to get the most out
of a vision.

~~~
m3kw9
I was referring him making the article title sound like is gospel, i also
blame the need to have a click bait title to get people to read it

------
amorphid
For me personally, working in an open office is increasingly a non-issue, even
with the ol' ADHD. I spend so much time in an office working with people who
are remote, ~80% of my distractions come from my computer, not the physical
space around me.

------
jrochkind1
The only reason open offices are popular is because they are cheaper. The rest
is just bullshit to try to convince you they don't suck and aren't just chosen
because they are cheaper.

------
Karupan
I have been working more often from home in my last two jobs where there have
been open offices. I didn't initially realise why, but its been increasingly
clear that I just need the privacy to get work done. So typically I ended up
going into office twice a week, and work from home the remaining days.

I don't mind if the company has open office as long as they let me work from
home.

------
arwhatever
Is there no good way to collectively apply some reverse pressure back towards
the job market?

I often wonder as I see this, and even worse trends spreading.

~~~
RickS
I'm not sure exactly how big the per-employee pay cut would have to be in the
bay area (or elsewhere) to offset the increase in square footage costs, but I
expect that it's monumental.

Which is one of my pet peeves about open offices: how much it's phrased as
"about collaboration". If open offices and private/pair/hub&spoke had
identical costs, how many CEOs would choose to sit in the chaos? I expect the
number is not the 80% that it is today.

And to your point... 80% is a BIG number. Offices are slow moving things, and
today, there are contractors building offices for use in the coming decade
according to the whims of the day. Big lofty spaces with exposed ceilings and
no damn walls.

Much as I hate to say it, this is unlikely to improve on a time scale smaller
than 5 years.

~~~
abecedarius
Let's see, a search turns up "price per square foot for office space in San
Francisco reached $72.26 in the fourth quarter of 2015". (Per year, right?)
Say a small private office takes 200 ft.^2 more than your share of a cattle
pen would -- by my memory of Xerox PARC, many of the researchers' offices were
smaller than that in total. Extrapolate to $100/ft^2 in the future and it's
still $20k, a fraction of your salary. (If it's a monthly figure, than yeah,
you need to move out of SF.)

~~~
valuearb
A private office shouldn’t be bigger than 100 SF, for a typical Frisco
engineer that’s less than 5% of carrying cost. Being able to only need three
engineers instead of four because of the greater productivity of private
offices makes it a no brainer.

------
HumanDrivenDev
You might also be working in the wrong position. A programmer is a skilled IC,
but an IC none the less. If even facebook stuffs mere programmers into open
office, what makes you think other companies are likely to do better?

NOTE: I am an IC with my own office in a small company. Pure luck.

------
meritt
> Before, I continue, I would like to call out that I am part of the ‘problem’
> with open offices. I’m extroverted...

While I still prefer a private office, open offices don't bother me precisely
because I'm an introvert. Headphones plus some synthwave and you all
disappear.

~~~
deathanatos
I've tried this, but while I consider myself an introvert, I just can't do the
whole music thing all day. People still manage to interrupt, which makes the
headphones come off, and I just never remember to put them back in. And noise
still gets in, though I admit that I don't have those really nice sound-
cancelling headphones, but FFS, how much of my own money do I need to drop to
make up for the craptastic workplace the employer provides?

While the headphones can fix the noise/distraction stuff, it doesn't magically
make additional _space_ appear. You can see in the image on the Medium article
just how much _space_ the author has at home; compare that to the Facebook
office picture (I think I might actually have _less_ space.) With more space,
you might be able to do things like put up charts/diagrams, put a whiteboard
on a wall (if I only had a wall) / have space to have one of those rolly ones
like in the FB picture. (we lack the space for a WB…)

Then there's the increased incidence in disease.

~~~
meritt
> it doesn't magically make additional space appear.

Oh, that's an excellent point, I guess my experience with open offices still
provide a reasonable amount of space for each person so you weren't crammed on
top of eachother.

In 2011 I interviewed for a dev position at Kabam and the layout in their
Redwood Shores office appeared to be the sort of middle school cafeteria
tables -- the really long faux-wood tables with attached seats -- with people
crammed in side by side all along it and this jumble of wires in the middle
that is probably still tangled to this day. I grabbed a second free coffee and
walked out on that interview.

------
byebyetech
Every now and then i see article like this. It is common sense and majority of
the engineers are complaining about open offices. BUT i don't see any news or
changes happening in creating "focus friendly" work environment. When is it
going to start?

~~~
maxxxxx
Don't forget that modern work can only get done by at minimum 5 people
collaborating while staring at the same screen. They also need headphones on.

That changes once you are VP. Then you need an office with window to do work.

~~~
ajmurmann
"That changes once you are VP. Then you need an office with window to do
work."

While it seems convenient to some there are very real issues that require a
private space for many management tasks. I prefer sitting in the open and do
so whenever I can. I feel out of touch if i don't. However, for a substantial
amount of my work I need to go into a more private space and I'm not at the VP
level.

------
zeveb
That Eudæmonia Machine sounds completely brilliant. Why aren't more offices
built like that? Heck, there's even something there for the C-suite types: the
gallery and salon seem like just their element.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
That picture of the Facebook offices in the article looks terrible. If anyone
here works there is that the new office? Also is that how it's supposed to
look or is it unfinished?

~~~
calt
“It’s intended to be a symbol of what we believe at Facebook, which is that
our work is unfinished,” said Lori Goler, vice president of people.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2015/11/30...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2015/11/30/what-these-photos-of-facebooks-new-headquarters-say-
about-the-future-of-work)

~~~
kwillets
So do the engineers work on finishing the building too?

------
mschuster91
The problem is that company actions are usually dictated by the bean counters
in accounting/finance.

By forcing the company to an open-office layout, the CFO can claim an
immediate reduction in rent cost (KPIs: short term profits, office space per
worker) and the bonuses that go along with it.

When it inevitably ends up hurting the company because people leave, they can
shift the blame by saying "those who left (or who don't want to join the
company any more once they hear that it's open office) are not culturally
fitting to our new ultra-agile, ultra-communcation mantra any more, it was
neccessary".

And when shit really hits the fan (massive loss of staff/productivity), the
CFO can still quietly depart, after all he likely already has pocketed the
boni and stock options and whatnotelse. Or not depart at all by successfully
attributing the problems to entirely unrelated things (e.g. a payment rise
freeze, $new_attractive_startup opening up shop in the same city, rent risings
forcing people out of town, ...).

But by that point, it will be _so_ much more expensive to shift back into a
closed space layout... because the place that has been "won" might be rented
out to another company or filled with new hires (thus making a rescale == a
move of the entire office).

The only places where open space layouts can work are places that have a
strong remote culture by allowing those who suffer the most from open office
layouts to simply work (more) from home or those with a CxO team with great
managerial/psychological skills, where the leadership e.g. listens to the
workers and installs plants as sound catchers or visual/audio barriers, so
that the workers feel a subjective improvement in the kind of "meh, it sucks,
but it's not so bad any more since we have the new plants and it doesn't suck
enough to search for a new job".

tl;dr: wrong/toxic KPI focus in management is the problem, and there is no KPI
for "employee happiness/productivity" that can be scientifically measured
without a doubt, while everyone with a calculator can determine savings in
rent and office space per worker.

Another thing that people often forget when discussing open-office plants is
_smell_. Most focus on visual or audio distractions, but smell is an important
factor, too. In a closed-space layout you stick the dog people with their dogs
and those tolerant to dog smell into one office and be done, while the dog
smell in an open space environment goes _everywhere_. This also applies to
human odors and especially those of food - for example, I'm fine with nearly
anything except fish. As soon as someone eats fish and I can smell it, I
escape to somewhere where I cannot smell the fish any more. Other people react
to other smells, and that may be something as simple as the colleague having
jogged to the office and being sweaty.

~~~
valuearb
A good CFO looks not at what the numbers are, but what the numbers mean. Mine
did, and he quickly grasped that private offices are cheaper than open space.

Landlords hate them though, so we had to fight that battle too.

~~~
mschuster91
> A good CFO looks not at what the numbers are, but what the numbers mean.

You need a CFO who is not totally detached from the base employees. It scales
with the company size... when the CFO is in the same dungpit as the rest of
the crew, he/she will quickly see the downsides, but if he is on a separate
floor, or worse, different city or even country, good luck.

~~~
valuearb
It's helpful when leaders share the same conditions as their employees, but
not necessary. It's absolutely necessary that they are able to put themselves
in their employees shoes.

In this case I was able to walk him through how developers work, and the
importance of having long periods of unbroken concentration. I also talked
about the mythical man-month which he was familiar with, so he understood that
3 focused engineers can crush 5 distracted engineers, not just in individual
productivity but in reducing the chain of communications that slows everything
in a project down.

