
The Open Plan Office and the Extrovert Ideal - strangetimes
http://www.mattblodgett.com/2015/02/the-open-plan-office-and-extrovert-ideal.html
======
gklitt
Every time this debate pops up on HN, I find this quote from Bell Labs
scientist Richard Hamming interesting to consider:

 _I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or
the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you
get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most.
But 10 years later somehow you don 't know quite know what problems are worth
working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He
who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also
occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important.
Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, 'The
closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.' I don't know. But I can say there
is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and
those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors
closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong
thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame._

Source:
[http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html)

~~~
jccc
This is quite obviously a metaphor. He's talking about lone wolves without the
habit of seeking collaboration. From the same source further down, regarding
brainstorming:

 _There were a group of other people I used to talk with. For example there
was Ed Gilbert; I used to go down to his office regularly and ask him
questions and listen and come back stimulated. [...] Yes, I find it necessary
to talk to people. I think people with closed doors fail to do this so they
fail to get their ideas sharpened, such as ``Did you ever notice something
over here? '' I never knew anything about it - I can go over and look.
Somebody points the way. On my visit here, I have already found several books
that I must read when I get home. I talk to people and ask questions when I
think they can answer me and give me clues that I do not know about. I go out
and look!_

And he's speaking from a time before ubiquitous email and online chat.

Do you really imagine that the solitude-seekers' problem is that they want to
avoid collaboration? Do you imagine that forcing them into the mind-blender
type of office eight hours every day of the week is necessary because we need
to make them collaborate more, to make sure they know the right things to work
on?

------
bitwarrior
As someone with the authority to make the necessary changes to our office
environment, it frustrates me to read these kind of blog posts. I have read a
couple dozen similar posts which merely complain about open offices, but offer
absolutely nothing in the way of practical solutions.

We don't have the opportunity or space to give everyone their own dedicated
office, and cubicles I'm sure would be a living hell. I've looking into
draping fabric from the ceiling, but you'd be surprised how challenging the
logistics of setting something like that is (there are very few products in
the market to support fabric like this, and we can't drape them from the drop
ceiling due to weight). I've looked into free standing walls, but they tend
not to have the sound absorption that is typically desired.

I'd like, for once, to read an article about practical solutions to this
problem rather than just another person complaining about open office spaces
thinking they've stumbled upon some undiscovered idea.

~~~
hapless
The practical solution is to _spend more money_.

That means high-wall cubicles (6'-8') or private offices. Those have been the
known solutions for forty years. I doubt other solutions exist.

Yes, this will cost more. No, there isn't a shortcut.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_The practical solution is to spend more money._

This is immensely frustrating because it is clear the OP doesn't have the
money. So how do you do this if you don't have money for anything but Lucite
tables and chairs?

~~~
imgabe
You don't. You set up your open plan office, and you take what employees are
left over after the ones who are skilled enough to have their choice of
working environment. This is still quite a lot of very skilled employees.
Leverage them as best you can to make enough money to give them offices.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Our solution is to keep everyone remote till we can build good spaces, however
that is not possible for everyone. It seems ridiculous that people think there
are only binary options here.

------
hapless
We don't need pages of workplace psychology to explain the open plan office.

Open plan just has lower visible costs. Twice as many workers per square foot
is very compelling math.

The cost of lost productivity is hidden. The reduced cost of your office lease
is very visible.

~~~
kabdib
We had a presentation on the new "Studio" buildings at Microsoft. A snappy
team from the folks responsible for designing them told us about color schemes
and that each building had a theme, in stone and wood and so forth. They waxed
eloquent about carpet and the cafeteria and I was thinking, _what are they
hiding?_

Then they got to the places where we were going to work. "We call these six-
packs." Pods of six people crammed into a small area with low partitions, very
little space for personal items, and little regard to our actual work (e.g.,
whiteboard space, or room for equipment, or even sufficient power).

They tried to retract the word six-pack. "Oops, we weren't supposed to say
that. We're supposed to call them 'Villas'".

Villas.

I called them "moo towns".

If you were lucky you were in a six-pack with people working on the same thing
as you, and then the conversations around you probably had something to do
with work. If you were randomly assigned a six-pack the chances were that you
were being continually interrupted by stuff that you didn't care about.

And _of course_ we ran out of space, and even the walls in the six-packs were
removed, and all the book-cases, and now there were eight people in a space
designed as a tight fit for six, and places in the building started to _smell_
bad (I wish this was hyperbole). Let's not even talk about security, as in
having to lock stuff up at night . . . um, where, exactly?

Open plans are horrible.

~~~
strangetimes
This is the kind of shit that makes me angry. Microsoft should know better.
Slick presentations about bullpens being the future of work, like it's self-
evident. A generation of software engineers are going to come up with the
belief that these sorts of working environments are standard, and then
wondering why they're so stressed out and tense all the time.

------
iamdave
Anecdote: Working IT in an open cubicle environment is absolute pure fucking
_hell_. Nevermind that the last guy left me with cable management that would
make a three year old sick to their stomachs, not having an area that I can
cordon off and close when I absolutely _MUST_ shut out the world and focus on
a task has been a mental and motivational drain. (This is compounded by being
1 IT staff in a company approaching 120, but that's a different affair)

I agree with everyone who says "Sure you may be saving leasing costs but
you're sacrificing so much more". A perfect example of this is my sales
center: an open office plan with desks lined up and about 60 people in a room
the size of a large 1br condo, all talking at once, not to mention this
obsession with having music played over speakers during business hours and
loud annoying gongs going off whenever someone makes a big sale-I may as well
be working on a trading floor (first the dashboard TV makes a big gong, people
applaud, and then the person who made the big sell goes and bangs a _physical_
gong, more applause. If I were a sales person trying to work through all that
I'd quit immediately. I wonder if an exit interview survey of the sales people
we've lost in the last month alone would testify to "productivity" related
causes for their departures, and in high numbers). Customers can rarely hear
agents, agents can rarely hear customers; I looked at my last inventory
purchase and we blew $2000 in a month on replacement headsets because people
kept slamming theirs down in frustration, ultimately damaging them because of
the inability to hear sales calls. If my Android sound meter app is accurate
at all, fully staffed the sales wing reaches 92dB in ambient/background sound.

And a litany of other problems that would be solved could I get senior
management to take conditions as seriously as I do, and express a willingness
to invest in the worker beyond a "Here's your paycheck, get back to work".

Open _spaces_ are good. A commons area lightly equipped, maybe with a phone
and a tv for quick 'huddles', I'm all about. 100% open office however I can't
wait to go away forever. Thankfully we're moving offices soon. Regrettably,
it's just a larger "open" design.

~~~
dublinben
If your measurement is correct, then your office environment violates OSHA
regulations.

[https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_tab...](https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=standards&p_id=9735)

~~~
iamdave
That's quite valuable information to me; given I'm sick of troubleshooting
that damn wireless music box and have been trying to get rid of it for months.

This is ammunition much needed.

------
normloman
Stop making this an introvert / extrovert thing. I don't care who you are. You
can't concentrate when someone's talking on the phone.

[http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/14/why-overheard-cell-
pho...](http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/14/why-overheard-cell-phone-
conversations-are-so-annoying/)

------
methodover
Someone at Dropbox made a great suggestion to me the other day. What about
having something like the Quiet Car? ([http://www.amtrak.com/onboard-the-
train-quiet-car](http://www.amtrak.com/onboard-the-train-quiet-car))

Basically, you'd have a part of the office where you could take your laptop
and go work in complete quiet. No conversations louder than a whisper, no
music playing, no bringing food back to your desk. If you need to do any of
those things, you go elsewhere.

~~~
weirdkid
I've seen this before. Capital Factory in Austin had a quiet room just like
you describe. It was full of people when I was there.

------
VLM
A basically excellent post. With one minor nitpick:

"A building filled with individual privates offices and no common areas would
go all the way to the introvert end."

I've been there, and the reality is people in extroverted moods crowd into one
office, or schedule endless meetings in a conference room, or just hang out
together.

Also, its mood in addition to personality. I'm probably 90% introverted and
10% extroverted in feeling. I don't mind a quality meatspace discussion, just
keep it to a reasonable fraction of my day, not all the time or when I'm
trying to concentrate or when I'm trying to do actual productive work.

I'm a bit miffed at the author for missing the obvious on-call analogy that if
open plan offices are so great, then every time I get an "emergency" call at
home or jump on a conference call when I'm out of the office, then I should
run to the nearest playground or daycare and sit in the center of the loudest
most disruptive room. After all, that noise is supposed to make me productive.
I can only imagine in horror one the result of those architects redesigning
the study areas or labs back at uni.

When I'm doing my own work at home in an environment designed for me to be
ideal, when I'm concentrating as hard as possible, it probably shocks some
open office stockholm syndrome victims that my near perfect home conditions
don't involve 25-50 televisions blasting reality TV at full volume,
simultaneously, while I work.

And there's also the denigration factor, not mentioned in the article. You
mere proles don't really think, so you don't need conditions to think. Us
managers are paid to do all the thinking so we have offices. You proles belong
in your sweatshop, you losers. Its a very intense, negative message.
Architecture has meaning, and designing a daily kick in the nuts into your
office is just inhumane. I'm sure its very funny for our superiors to watch us
suffer a la Mr Burns style (oh how cute, they think we care about how badly
we're treating them, ha ha as he strokes his villain cat). Mixed offices of
management in offices and proles in the inhumane open area results in feelings
similar to having "regular" and "colored" water fountains back in the old
days. "We know is sucks, but it keeps you lower animals in place."

Its not just that open office advocates are wrong, its that they're so wrong
that a thoughtful discussion will inevitably appear to be parody.

~~~
bryanlarsen
"I'm probably 90% introverted and 10% extroverted in feeling."

IOW, you're a fairly normal introvert, then. Most introverts like people,
enjoy conversations and parties, et cetera. But such activities take energy,
so after a while you need some time alone to recharge. (If you're lucky, your
SO is similar, so time spent with them also lets you recharge).

Extroverts are similar -- they can enjoy time spent alone, but it saps their
energy, so after a while they have to go talk to somebody to recharge. That's
why they're so annoying in a software development shop -- their job is "alone"
with a computer, so every once in a while they need to interrupt somebody to
play ping pong or have a conversation, et cetera.

------
mark-r
The counterpoint he tries to consider at the end of the article is missing the
point. No matter how those successful companies operate today, how did they
operate when they first became successful? If it _was_ an open plan, how many
people were in the room, and how many different things were they doing?

------
mgkimsal
"If getting a desired product of work requires collaboration, then people will
collaborate."

This is one of the main points of contention between the various parties, and
defining whether or not something _needs_ collaboration is often ignored.

The entire project might need degrees of input from multiple parties, but
often what's needed is for one person to actually _get something done_ , the
invite collaboration/feedback/input. Forcing people to work together at every
single step to get "collaboration" is simply wrong, but it's one of the
justifications for "everyone in the same room."

------
Marcus316
There are a few comments here and directly at the article which mention the
concept of a balanced work area, with open spaces as well as private spaces.
So far, nobody has given an example of this.

I happen to work in a balanced office. Our desks are all located in a former
warehouse. We're all mostly developers in my area here. There's a culture of
ambient noise and conversations, frequent interruptions for collaboration, etc
... all WITHIN the warehouse area.

HOWEVER, we also have dozens of small phone booth (one person) rooms where
people can go to take calls or work independently PLUS dozens of 4-6 person
collaboration rooms PLUS adequate meeting rooms for larger groups PLUS a
couple quiet rooms where anything louder than typing is heavily frowned upon
PLUS a reasonable work-from-home policy when employees require it.

Yes, this is Enterprise (so not that exciting, but they can afford to provide
such a location). Yes, there are tradeoffs (you are still expected to be in
the office a reasonable amount of time, dependent on your individual manager
and management chain; sometimes the warehouse noise is pretty distracting;
etc). Given all that COULD go wrong here, I have been pleasantly surprised by
how RIGHT this company has gotten it. A good chunk of this has been the work
culture allowing employees to adapt the available space to what is needed for
each individual team.

I'm sorry so many of you have experienced the horrible implementations of open
office. I've been there previously. I only hope that more companies see wisdom
in mixed and balanced work environments in the future.

------
mpdehaan2
This is a GREAT article, not so much for the extrovert angle (I don't know,
I'm extroverted _sometimes_ \-- I just can't concentrate over people yelling),
but because of the headphone parts at the bottom. So many times does "just use
headphones" get thrown at people who protest the open office reduction, but
they don't realize that wearing headphones all day is uncomfortable (and
probably dangerous), even if we love music - and it's also distracting.

When we have things like IRC/Hipchat/Slack, email, and video chat, having a
door is no more a problem, because we can get a hold of anyone asynchronously.

Therefore, if anything, it should be EASIER to have doors now.

Sadly, the best office environment I've seen was at AT&T in 2000-ish.
Employees had HUGE cubes, with quite a lot of office space for managers. Cube
size reduced significantly over the last decade and a half until now cubes are
viewed as somehow decadent. We laughed at cubes relative to offices then, we
would LOVE to have them back now.

I'm looking for the work-from-home revolution to take over or companies to at
least realize what they are doing with the open plan stuff for development.
Technology makes doors not exist - so we should at least be able to have
quiet.

------
sibelius7th
You know what I really liked about my time at University? There was a wealth
of options to suit your study style. Imagine your University only had open
floor plan libraries, where the only place they gave you to study was a loud,
visually distracting environment. Or, you could go the other way where the
only place to go to study was the quiet floor of the library. Universities are
great places to study because they cater to many different personal styles of
study. Your goal is to learn and they provide different styles of learning
environments in which to study. It baffles my mind that employers, most of
whom, one would assume, went to University, then create a single style of work
environment, and think their jobs done. Providing many different styles of
office spaces for the many different types of people in your employ would seem
to be a prudent decision. Allow your employees to find the style that works
best for them instead of forcing a one size fits all solution.

------
SimeVidas
Multiple comments are mentioning wearing headphones with loud music. But what
about __earplugs __(the disposable foam type)? I’ve worn them during physical
work (with loud machines) and, at least for me, they were very effective. I
felt I had more energy and focus. Has someone tried them for office work?

~~~
robkix
Those aren't really designed for long term daily use, can lead to accumulation
of wax and serious infections if used repeatedly and continually.

Also in my case they put too much pressure on the canal which eventually gets
quite painful. When I was a mechanic it was more of a hassle but much better
for my ears to wear proper ear muffs instead of disposable ear plugs.

------
benihana
> _Introversion—along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and
> shyness—is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a
> disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal
> are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to
> the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing
> personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which
> most of us feel we must conform._

I say this as a highly introverted person who spends most of his free time
alone with this thoughts: Jesus. Are we just looking for ways that the world
has been unfair to us? Is that what open offices are now? A way for the
uncaring society to oppress us special snowflake introverts? That quote is so
insulting to me as an introvert because it takes such a solipsistic and ego-
stroking view of the world: that people who are successful are successful
because they fit into the world better, not because they are comfortable and
adapted to living in a world that isn't perfectly suited to them. I enjoy my
quiet and find working in an open office discomforting. But I can't imagine
the person who's so fragile that they have to invent ways the extroverts are
oppressing them to deal with that discomfort.

> _Is this a true story? I don’t know. Is it a bit overly dramatic to compare
> an open plan office to a sweatshop? Perhaps. But I think there’s a valid
> point in there: quality of life matters._

If you want people not to take our profession seriously, keep comparing what
we do to working in a sweatshop. Software engineering by and large is one of
the cushiest jobs around. Sitting in a chair (or realizing that sitting all
day is too dangerous, so choosing to stand (on a padded mat)) in a climate
controlled office with access to bathrooms, running water and in a lot of
cases, food on demand is about the farthest away you can get from sweatshop.
Our quality of life is so good, we're focusing on the last 1% of the problem;
the fact that we're complaining that the _layout of the office isn 't ideal
for our psyche_ should clue us in to that. Let's keep some perspective here.

~~~
bambax
The word "sweatshop" is improper, you're right about that. But is it really
unfair to compare modern software factories to, well, factories?

Most factories today are very clean, and safe. But they're not organized to
help foster original thought, which is what software (should be) made of.

------
michaelochurch
There's one place where an open-plan office makes sense: a trading floor. This
applies even to many species of algorithmic trading. That's because you have
cases where a message (such as "our quotefeed is giving us stale data") needs
to get out quickly.

The trading day is also, I'll note, only 6.5 hours long. And people who don't
get 25% raises (or more) per year leave. It's a stressful job and unless
you're making $750k+ after 6-8 years in, it's not worth it to deal with the
negatives of being on a trading floor.

Open-plan began to go into vogue as a backdoor mechanism for age
discrimination, due to studies showing that older people were quick to
associate them (and visibility from behind) with low status and therefore
leave. Two decades later, I doubt the intention behind tech companies using
these plans (and almost all do) is so negative as that. I don't think there's
any negative intent anymore; it's just something that's done because (a) it's
cheaper, (b) it's more tolerant of rapid growth, and (c) it's how things have
"always" been done.

As long as people _can_ step away without stigma or punishment, I don't think
that open-plan offices are inherently evil. The problem is that few offices
have enough quiet space to allow for that.

As for "the extrovert ideal", I don't know what to do about that. It seems to
be human nature. People with families, non-drinkers, introverts, women except
through the immense effort needed to be socially available but not seen as
available in other ways... are never going to be "the cool kids". What I've
learned, though, is that while "cool kids" get a quick start, they don't hold
it and "cool" doesn't last. It's not useful to envy them because, while they
may appear to be moving fast at one time, the 5-year picture is not especially
desirable.

~~~
strangetimes
> Open-plan began to go into vogue as a backdoor mechanism for age
> discrimination, due to studies showing that older people were quick to
> associate them (and visibility from behind) with low status and therefore
> leave.

Do you remember where you read this? The bit about visibility from behind
being associated with low status is especially interesting.

