
Workplaces need more walls, not fewer (2014) - beedogs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/30/google-got-it-wrong-the-open-office-trend-is-destroying-the-workplace
======
pjc50
Even a little attention to acoustics could make the open or quasi-open office
much better for workers. At the moment, you're expected to deal with this
yourself by putting on headphones and overwriting the noise with music.

The "modern" open-plan office in which I work is particularly bad at
acoustics. The dining area has a _dome_ , which looks nice but sounds like an
echoing railway station. I avoid it because I can't make out conversations in
that kind of environment. Said dining area is isolated from the rest of the
office by a partial wall that does not go all the way up.

All walls and ceiling surfaces are smooth and flat to maximise acoustic
reflection. When we first moved in, the glass-fronted meeting rooms were
echoing little boxes that were also impossible to hold conversations in, so we
had to fit fabric acoustic suppressing wall hangings.

Offices could do well to learn from the "modern bar vs. traditional pub"
layout approach. The bar is open and loud; conversation requires either out-
louding people or leaning into someone's ear. The traditional pub "snug" has
wooden half-partitions into booths, lots of fabric on the seating, maybe a few
wing chairs, and a twisty internal layout. The ambient volume is much quieter.

An office laid out like a snug would still technically be "open" but would
stop noise travelling across the office. Even just an acoustic suppressant
ceiling would make a big difference.

~~~
Chris2048
You are also at the mercy of where you are seated, not just wrt acoustics, but
also how loud the people nearby are.

~~~
pjc50
Yes, but most adults tune themselves somewhat to the ambient level. So having
a loud incoherent "murmur" from the rest of the office also makes your
neighbours louder.

~~~
JBReefer
The sale guys seem to compete to be the loudest, not revert to the mean.

~~~
WorldMaker
There are similarly competitive people in engineering disciplines, even. I
think many of us know that person that when trying to argue why their problem
solution is the best problem solution tend to try to be the loudest person in
the room. (Some of us work to reform in college; others might be that way
their entire lives.)

~~~
pjc50
Back at university I went to dinner with one of those people who liked to talk
loudly over other people, and another person who was normally soft-spoken but
had been an officer in the Navy and therefore professionally trained in
loudness.

The ensuing loudness war almost got us thrown out of the restaurant.

------
jasode
As a remote worker that despises open offices, I don't believe that nodding in
agreement with opinion pieces such as those by Lindsey Kaufman is helpful to
the discussion about it.

The 2 common cited reasons of _" saves real estate costs"_ and _" employee
distrust"_ have become thought-stopping memes that prevents the analysis of
executives who _prefer_ working in open offices and became successful with it.
I previously posted an example of Mark Zuckerberg's thinking:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13374848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13374848)

Look at those old photos and then listen to him speak about his new 2015 open
desk in the video. Contemplate whether he built the new open office to spy on
everyone or... was it to recreate and extend the "open office" kitchen table
at Harvard that let the team quickly iterate on software and get to $100
billion IPO?

Would Lindsey's complaints sway him? She says:

 _> A 2013 study found that many workers in open offices are frustrated by
distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Nearly half of the surveyed
workers in open offices said the lack of sound privacy was a significant
problem for them and more than 30 percent complained about the lack of visual
privacy._

Why would Mark Z care about these surveys? Of those respondents that were
dissatisfied, what did _those workers who require private offices_ build that
was great? He built a multi-billion dollar company with a cramped elbow-to-
elbow open office.

Opinion pieces about this topic are not convincing. Concrete business
performance _superior to everyone else_ based on private offices would be
convincing.

~~~
coldtea
> _Look at those old photos and then listen to him speak about his new 2015
> open desk in the video. Contemplate whether he built the new open office to
> spy on everyone or... was it to recreate and extend the "open office"
> kitchen table at Harvard that let the team quickly iterate on software and
> get to $100 billion IPO?_

People have gotten to multi billion IPOs without open spaces.

It's just a random historical accident on Facebook's story, and it that sense
it would be like considering PHP essential to Facebook's IPO, as if if they
used Python or Ruby or anything similar, they wouldln't have made it.

> _Why would Mark Z care about these surveys? Of those respondents that were
> dissatisfied, what did those workers who require private offices build that
> was great? He built a multi-billion dollar company with a cramped elbow-to-
> elbow open office._

People have built "multi-billion dollar companies" with all other kind of
traits, including private offices (Microsoft, Apple) but also sexism, treating
employees badly, death marches, poisonous work culture, etc.

It doesn't mean that companies should imitate all these to get to the "multi-
billion dollar" part, any more than they should imitate open offices.

~~~
jasode
_> It doesn't mean that companies should imitate all these to get to the
"multi-billion dollar" part, any more than they should imitate open offices._

I'm not claiming open offices are superior nor am I recommending that people
copy Facebook's practices.

Instead, I'm asking people to suspend the common Dilbert-PointyHairedBoss
disadvantages about open offices and instead, _really try to get inside the
head of people like Mark Zuckerberg._

To exercise the notion of entertaining thoughts we don't agree with, let's
write out a very uncomfortable sentence that might be uttered by Mark Z: _" I
don't want to build private offices because that would be a competitive
disadvantage and handicap Facebook's ability to innovate."_

Did that sentence make your eyeballs hurt? Good. If the programming community
can't honestly engage with people executives who feel the truth of the above
statement in their heart, the discussion on the topic will go nowhere. Showing
news articles such as the one by Lindsey won't convince them.

 _> There are countless researches on the importance of focus and the impact
of distractions._

Yes, of course uninterrupted focus and shielding from distractions is
important. However, that factor will take a back seat if collaboration
outweighs it. Unless that research shows that a _group_ of programmers in
private offices _outperform_ programmers in open offices, it means nothing to
people like Zuckerberg.

If you watch the Mark Zuckerberg video, it is clear he _prioritizes
collaboration_ over disruptions. He's not stupid and knows that there will be
inevitable distractions. He's optimized for collaboration because it matches
his experience for success.

The way to counteract that thinking is to create a company with private
offices that crushes Facebook (or one of Facebook's business units.) You need
some type of _business evidence_ that frightens him into building private
offices.

~~~
coldtea
> _To exercise the notion of entertaining thoughts we don 't agree with, let's
> write out a very uncomfortable sentence that might be uttered by Mark Z: "I
> don't want to build private offices because that would be a competitive
> disadvantage and handicap Facebook's ability to innovate."

Did that sentence make your eyeballs hurt? Good. If the programming community
can't honestly engage with people executives who feel the truth of the above
statement in their heart, the discussion on the topic will go nowhere. Showing
news articles such as the one by Lindsey won't convince them._

An executive, including Mark, can be an arsehole and hold any kind of BS
opinion (e.g. "I can't hire women and/or pay them the same, because they are
not as good as men").

If they can't see why something is bad for their employees, fuck them. It's
not like they run the only game in town.

And "it's good for the bottom line" is not an excuse. All kinds of shit can be
good for the bottom line, including illegal practices (e.g. blackmailing
foreign employees that you'll have them deported).

------
jeremysmyth
"Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams" makes a _very_ compelling argument
on why open-plan workspaces give terrible results for knowledge workers.

If you work as a team leader, manager, or senior programmer, it's absolutely a
must-read. I can't recommend it more highly than that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Project...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Projects_and_Teams)

[https://blog.codinghorror.com/peopleware-
revisited/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/peopleware-revisited/)

[http://new.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html](http://new.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html)

------
cs02rm0
I think the open office trend might be accelerating remote working
opportunities, which has to be a good thing.

I don't mind going to an open office occasionally if 90% of my week is working
from my own office with walls, a chair setup for me and some IT equipment
that's actually had some investment.

~~~
jon-wood
+1 to that. I work remotely, with a visit to the office once every two weeks,
mostly spent in meetings and catching up with what the rest of the company are
doing. For that sort of thing an open office is fine, just don't expect me to
get any quality code written while I'm there.

~~~
sshagent
This rings so true, i had to check i hadn't written this last night. Whilst
onsite on that once a fortnight visit, i can't do anything that involves real
concentration. I detest open offices, but working from home has just made it
worse.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Have been doing DevOps from home for almost three years now; its spoiled me.
I'd never work in a traditional office setting again, open office or
otherwise.

------
kartan
> As an excessive water drinker, I feared my co-workers were tallying my
> frequent bathroom trips. At day’s end, I bid adieu to the 12 pairs of eyes I
> felt judging my 5:04 p.m. departure time.

That's your problem then! If people is judging you for going to the bathroom
or browsing Hacker News instead of your results, then what the
company/employees value is the problem.

People can browse internet at work, and if at the end of the year they are
high performers I will give them an above average salary increase. If they are
extra hours at the office, never look at Facebook but they don't perform well
I will have a talk with them to see what's happening as that's not good.

~~~
amag
For me, one thing is the _feeling_ of being constantly watched (even when
you're not) that's detrimental to both health (stress) and productivity. So
even if I'm less likely to browse HN when in an open office (compiling!) my
productivity is much lower compared to a private office. Of course this is
also due to audio and visual disturbances.

Interestingly one of the pros often mentioned for open office space is that it
enables collaboration, I've never seen that work out in practice very well,
though. At least I'm much less prone to start a discussion with someone in an
open office because it will disturb everyone else who are not interested in
the topic. More often than not other people will hush you and so on.

So in the end an open office is detrimental to my health, happiness,
productivity _and_ (surprise) collaboration but hey I'm saving the company
some thousand $$ each year, or _am_ I?

------
joaodlf
I still think this is a dividing topic.

I personally enjoy working in an open office. I think I would have a hard time
working from home or in a singular office... I need people around me, I like
being able to get up and communicate with colleagues. Yes, it can get
annoying, but the pros outweigh the cons for me.

This isn't the trend in tech, I have a lot of developer colleagues that would
prefer to stay at home, or at the very least isolate the tech department from
the rest of the company.

A while ago my company moved developers into their own office. It didn't last
for a long time (for a number of reasons), I saw no benefits in it and was
very happy when the decision to move us back in was made.

~~~
taneq
Maybe - and I know, this is going to sound crazy - maybe companies could
provide a little variety and let their developers choose the working
environment works best for them?

~~~
erikbye
It should be obvious that a company should cater to individual needs, but they
rarely do. E.g. open offices are extremely tiring for most introverts, there
should be quiet zones/rooms where these people could go to focus/recharge.
Ideally they should be offered private space.

There should be strict rules on what is accepted behavior and volumes (of
talking) in an open office. Distracting behavior should be reported
immediately and corrected.

~~~
pjc50
People misunderstand diversity as a set of checkboxes, when "cater to
individual needs" is the real core of it.

------
padobson
I was thinking about this the other day, and I sat down and designed an office
space for a company built around paired programming.

The design is focused around four-office bullpens like so: Two programmers
share a 225 sqft office. Offices open into common spaces for collaboration and
reception. Some sort of gatekeeper sit at a desk in the reception area,
playing interference for anyone trying to interrupt programmers at work,
either in their office or in a collaborative session.

The offices themselves could have windows, and each bullpen would take up 1100
sqft or so. Here's a rough design of a bullpen:

+---------------+----------+---------------+

    
    
        office     collab       office
    

+---------------+----------+---------------+

    
    
        office    reception     office
    

+---------------+----------+---------------+

    
    
                   entrance
    

So, in a 2500 sqft space, you could provide a controlled work environment for
16 programmers.

~~~
logfromblammo
I'd rather work in something like this (each char is about 4 ft high by 2 ft
wide):

    
    
      ######@@@@####@@@@@@  # = 8'x12' office
      ######@@@@####@@@@@@  @ = 8'x12' office
      @@@@  @@@@####  ####  % = 30"x6' tables (4)
      @@@@   %""""%   ####  = = wall
      @@@@   %%%%%%   ####  * = gatekeeper's desk
      ####            @@@@  $ = 8'x14' kitchenette
      ####   ======   @@@@  & = 8'x14' equipment
      ####            @@@@  ^ = entry/egress
      &&&&&&&  **  $$$$$$$  " = projection screen
      &&&&&&&****  $$$$$$$
                 ^^
    

That's 40'x40', but it also gives you space for the local printer, the fridge,
sink, and microwave oven, and some local servers. The central area is about
16'x24', which is reasonable for 8 people, and cramped for 10. The accessible
path is compliant with ADA guidelines, I think.

I don't like shared offices.

Outside of the basic 40'x40' pod, it would make sense for the kitchenettes to
share a wet wall with bathrooms, and try to get at least one exterior window
to the offices closest to the entry, like this: (each char is 10 ft high by 5
ft wide)

    
    
      ########   ########  # = 40'x40' office pod
      ########   ########  M = men's restroom (2+1)
      ########   ########  W = women's restroom (3)
      ########MMM########  . = corridor
      ...................  
      ########WWW########
      ########   ########
      ########   ########
      ########   ########

------
bonjurkes
I am working for almost 6 years and all of my workplaces were (are) open
office. But I believe there is a big difference as privacy at open office and
private office.

There are open offices with privacy (covers around your table) and just 10s of
people sitting next to each other on a row with tiny tables.

Problem with no privacy is, people tends to talk next to each other compared
to open office with privacy (people use messengers more often then). This
creates a lot of noise in the office which causes needing of headphones. And
of course there is always some person that shouts from first to last row about
some joke.

If you are not giving constant smoking breaks your only breaks at work time is
visiting some non-work website (facebook or news site etc.) and when you visit
one of these sites, your colleagues just start eyeing up your monitor, or you
get eye contact with your boss (Murphy's law). Thanks to big screens nowadays,
someone can see your screen 3 rows behind you whenever you switch to not work
related website.

Having private office for everyone won't be possible on space wise and I
believe author and other people just needs open office with covers around.
Sitting at row of tables like at internet cafe is bad impact on your
performance for sure (and also privacy wise).

Last but not least, I should say that, because of productivity reasons (usage
of personal phones, social sites etc.) is a big bs. for having open offices.
As long as you do your duty on time with good quality, you should be allowed
to use your personal phone or facebook or whatever. Blocking usage of these
items or websites doesn't assure of better productivity.

~~~
coldtea
> _Having private office for everyone won 't be possible on space wise and I
> believe author and other people just needs open office with covers around._

We've regressed to worse than cubicles because it is not "possible space
wise"?

Considering the average salary of a programmer, it sounds totally possible
space wise.

Besides, how about they drop the ping pong room, the Nerf shooting range and
the like first?

~~~
bonjurkes
I never experienced cubicle environment (at least not like the ones at US
offices), private space means like 4 tables placed like a square (one desk on
each corner) and seperated with covers on desk. It's not ideal to work in
cubicles which is slightly bigger than coffins.

Ping pong room, Nerf shooting ranges are all "fancy" rooms they use to give
the modern, fun working environment message (or lie). If they need extra
space, I am sure most companies would demolish even bathrooms but don't touch
those "fun rooms". And I agree that it's bs.

------
erikbye
The biggest mistake of any open office is putting tech people in the same room
as sales, or in my case: tech people in the same room as support (phones). Way
to go management.

~~~
throwanem
I thought the same, but it could be worse. My team sits alongside one of the
organization's helpdesks, and they're a hell of a lot less noisy than the
open-plan web dev agency guys in the next suite over.

------
dirtyhenry
It's like languages in computer science, there's no "one fits all" in terms of
office space organization. Some prefer open-office setups, some prefer being
quiet in a private space. I actually like a mix of both. Or event of four
types of workplaces: from home (no commute, no money spent on food, my vinyl
record player), from an open-space (open connection with people you know),
from a coffeeshop (connection with people you don't know) or from a private
meeting room (private connection with people you know). We need a mix of all
of those, and managers need to trust people: they know best where to work to
be the most productive.

------
solatic
Part of the reason why this is controversial, I think, comes down to the
majority of the type of work that people are doing on a day-to-day basis.

If you get to work, have a ten-minute standup, then go and try to hammer out
code the vast majority of the rest of the day, then you need a default-private
environment. Visual and auditory privacy, in a closed office, with multiple
large monitors, correlates with success here.

But if you spend most of your time bouncing ideas off each other, then the
fluidity of verbal communication is much more efficient, for most people and
use cases, than putting everything in writing first. With such constant
change, keeping everyone in the loop is going to be at a higher priority than
pure development speed.

The balance is probably what kind of organization you have. Do you have a
small start-up where the entire company can fit into one room? An open space
(well, relative to its size) probably makes sense. Do you have a large
organization where somebody writes spec and passes it to a programmer for
implementation? Private offices for programmers are probably best. Do you have
small feature teams where management gives feature requests to the team as a
whole? Give the team its own private room, segregating them from other teams.

------
mindcrime
FWIW, one of the main reasons I started Fogbeam Labs is because I want to
build the company I always wanted to work at. So... if and when the day comes
that we are successful enough to start hiring employees, and have a
traditional office, one thing I absolutely intend to commit to is a "everyone
gets a private office, with a door" policy.

Now, that said... I'm starting to question the need for traditional offices in
general, as technology improves our ability to work remotely. I don't know if
I'd want to go for a 100% "work from home or wherever you want" policy or not,
but it's not something I would unilaterally rule-out right now either.

Sadly we're probably still a ways off from reaching the point where any of
this will come into play. But we'll keep grinding, exactly because the world
needs more companies that treat employees as people not fucking "resources".
(Don't even get me started on how pissed off I get when I hear somebody refer
to a person as a "resource").

------
garrettrayj
The biggest mistake I see in implementations of open office plans is work
areas that are too small. The open office works best when it feels spacious
and customizable, not cramped and fixed. Desks and whiteboards on wheels,
choice of standing/sitting, and room for teams to self organize is fun and
productive. The shoulder-to-shoulder seating at rows of fixed workstations
common in off-the-shelf open plans is what's oppressive. In short, if a
company is moving to an open floor plan to save on real estate, then they're
doing it wrong.

------
karmacoda
I've given up on my dev dept. I'm sitting in the finance dept.

------
chiefalchemist
To say that one size fits all is, at best, silly. A given (company) culture is
the aggregation of: people hired, the environment they work in, how they are
treated, etc. One person's "I'd never work there" is another's "I'd kill to
work that."

p.s. That said, perhaps the Washington Post is correct. The workplace should
be either robots, or pseudo-enslaved humans. But Jeff isn't going to
appreciate an article with that slant.

------
chiefalchemist
So it's official, 2017 is the year of wall building :)

------
xbmcuser
Most of the open office complains and articles are anecdotal. From what I know
Google is fanatical about data gathering for efficiency they probably have the
data to support open work spaces otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.

~~~
frostmatthew
> Most of the open office complains and articles are anecdotal.

Anecdotal? There's a great New Yorker article[1] that references a number of
studies. This blog post[2] links to a couple others and addresses
costs/alternatives. A "study of over 40,000 survey responses collected over a
decade has found that the benefits for workers are quickly outweighed by the
disadvantages"[3]. Here's a Washington Post piece[4] on office furniture
designers realizing (citing multiple studies) "open-plan spaces are actually
lousy for workers." A TIME article[5] highlighted decades of research that
associated open layouts with "greater employee stress, poorer co-worker
relations and reduced satisfaction with the physical environment."

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/currency-tag/the-open-office-
trap](http://www.newyorker.com/currency-tag/the-open-office-trap)

[2] [http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-
flo...](http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-floor-plans-
in-tech-companies.html)

[3] [http://theconversation.com/open-plan-offices-attract-
highest...](http://theconversation.com/open-plan-offices-attract-highest-
levels-of-worker-dissatisfaction-study-18246)

[4] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-
leadership/wp/2015/04...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-
leadership/wp/2015/04/22/office-designers-find-open-plan-spaces-are-actually-
lousy-for-workers/)

[5] [http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/15/why-the-open-office-is-a-
ho...](http://ideas.time.com/2012/08/15/why-the-open-office-is-a-hotbed-of-
stress/)

------
JotForm
It's hardly possible to say that one is better than the other. Companies may
opt to have both of these office types and transact the employees within
according to their preferences on this matter.

------
MichaelBurge
It seems difficult to evaluate these articles. Employees want private offices,
so they'll tend to view and upvote articles praising private offices. Besides
biasing the likelihood of the article to occupy your attention, it could be an
incentive for lower-quality news to publish them.

I remember reading in Trump's Art of the Deal book that showing up on-site to
regularly inspect the ongoing construction helped get the building done faster
and under-budget. That doesn't mean the contractors liked having the client
show up on-site every day, even if it worked.

Ask yourself: If the science pointed towards sitting next to the loud sales
guy, would you be as likely to upvote an article saying so? This is on the
front page because people want it, not because they care about productivity.

Same thing applies to remote working: Most people can't work remotely, even if
they say they want to.

~~~
pmlnr
> Employees want private offices

Employees want a little privacy and most of the want a quiet are. It's not the
same as a want of private offices.

> If the science pointed towards sitting next to the loud sales guy

"If". Show me the data ;)

> Most people can't work remotely, even if they say they want to.

That depends on the equipment you need to use. If it's a phone, a laptop, and
an internet connection, you can, end of story.

If you need specialized equipment it gets problematic indeed.

EDIT: typo.

~~~
MichaelBurge
> That depends on the equipment you need to use. If it's a phone, a laptop,
> and an internet connection, you can, and of story.

Have you tried to hire anyone to do remote work, even freelance work? Most
people fail miserably if you don't give them structure(and being on-site is a
type of structure).

You can work around it by selecting for the small percentage of people who can
work independently, but most people aren't in that small percentage. So
success by being vigilant in selection would reinforce that it doesn't work on
average.

If this site was "Manager News" and everybody here was a manager, I'd be more
likely to believe discussion praising allowing remote workers. As it is, I'm
skeptical that people aren't believing what they want to hear.

Personally, I find it quite plausible that the loud sales guy is hurting
everyone's productivity. But lots of things are plausible, and it seems
undisciplined to believe all the resulting discussion.

~~~
croon
> Have you tried to hire anyone to do remote work, even freelance work? Most
> people fail miserably if you don't give them structure(and being on-site is
> a type of structure).

Have you tried to hire anyone at all? Recruitment is hard. Period.

Failure to track production/results is completely unrelated to where your
employee works, as well as failure to produce is only related to the employee.
If he/she does not know where he/she best produces, the recruitment is bad to
begin with.

