
Open-plan offices reduce face-to-face interactions (2018) - matrix
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/07/05/open-plan-offices-drive-down-face-to-face-interactions-and-increase-use-of-email/
======
sctb
Previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17572141](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17572141)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17448187](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17448187)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17513843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17513843)

~~~
commandlinefan
Wasn't discussed here very long this time - it's disappeared completely from
HN.

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lqet
I am not surprised. I was working in an open-plan office for a few years, and
I also preferred talking to colleagues sitting only a few meters away via
mail. It's incredibly stressful to talk to a person face-to-face knowing that
_everyone_ on the team listens to the conversation. Not only do you have to
constantly weight and evaluate your sentences, you also have the constant
feeling that you are disturbing other team members just by talking. On the
other hand, you also don't want to drag a person into another room for privacy
if you just want some quick update on something. Some team members might use
noise-cancelling headphones to keep out the typing noise and occasional
conversation, but these headphones are an additional barrier for face-to-face
talk. You don't want to snap them out of a musical experience, and getting a
person with noise-cancelling headphones to notice you are standing behind
him/her might get very awkward.

If you are convinced that stuffing people into a room with little to no
privacy leads to increased social interaction, you should start riding public
transit during rush hour.

~~~
matz1
>It's incredibly stressful to talk to a person face-to-face knowing that
everyone on the team listens to the conversation. Not only do you have to
constantly weight and evaluate your sentences, you also have the constant
feeling that you are disturbing other team members just by talking

Fortunately I don't have this physiological barrier. I don't care if everyone
on the team listens to the conversation.

~~~
DoreenMichele
You are probably also oblivious to the very real consequences of other people
knowing various things or having partial information, etc.

It's stressful because it has consequences. If you don't find it stressful,
you probably are failing to connect the dots and see that x outcome is related
to y behavior.

~~~
matz1
Of course there is consequences for everything, I just embrace it. Having to
be stressful because of this is in itself stressfull.

------
docker_up
I'm probably an outlier, but I love open-office. I've worked in all the
different environments over the last 25 years, single office, shared office,
cubicle, remote and open office. Open office was weird at first, but I find it
much more social. I don't get distracted by noise or movement so that could be
a big factor, so I can code without any problems.

The least social for me was the single office. I would stay in there all day
long and I would have privacy but I would literally not see anyone. The worst
was a cubicle where it had none of the privacy (couldn't eat fish or fart or
have private conversations) but you still have the lack of social interaction.

~~~
hliyan
You truly are an outlier. I immediately started assuming that you might be in
a more right-brain role, but realized my mistake when I saw your comment about
coding. You're clearly better than I am at focusing...

~~~
commandlinefan
I can _code_ while surrounded by interruptions and distractions (I can put on
headphones and face the least busy part of the office so I'm not _too_
distracted most of the time), but I can't _learn_ without some semblance of
focus. I suspect that the open-office cheerleaders are mostly people who do
the sort of work that you or I might be able to do on autopilot and never try
to tackle any sort of real challenge.

------
formalsystem
I found open offices to be an incredibly alienating experience, felt about as
personal as a a cubicle since everyone is pretty much using headphones and
"deep working" and you can't really make much noise since you're disturbing an
entire org if you are.

My favorite experience was working on a team where the open office was
essentially a large office for about 6 people only. That felt great since
there was a more communal vibe and I had sufficient personal space. We had a
couch, a table with a chessboard and some people brought snacks over.

~~~
alexgmcm
The latter one you describe is basically what I had in grad school and it
worked really well.

The former is what I have in industry and if I forget my noise cancelling
headphones I might as well go home.

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cs702
Not surprising in hindsight. See lqet's and kylia's comments elsewhere on this
thread for first-hand accounts.[a]

In my view, Steve Jobs had the right idea when he helped design Pixar's
headquarters: plenty of private and semi-private working areas interconnected
by multiple larger, more central, common areas through which everyone would
have to travel throughout the day, increasing the odds of spontaneous
interaction and collaboration with colleagues from different areas:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-designing-
pixar-o...](https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-designing-pixar-
office-2015-3)

[https://bcj.com/projects/pixar-animation-studios-
emeryville](https://bcj.com/projects/pixar-animation-studios-emeryville)

Think of it as "privacy when you need it, sprinkled with spontaneous
interaction throughout the day, when you take breaks from private work."

\--

[a]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683405](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683405)
/
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683419](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683419)

------
kylia
Honestly this article comes as no surprise.

I work for a company that not only has an open plan office, but no assigned
seating either. It's honestly the worst, mostly because I like to have my own
environment at work. I can't bring in my keyboard or any of my other stuff,
and as corny as it is i can't even bring in photos to keep at my desk since
there's no assigned seating!

As much as i like open spaces, i miss at /least/ having my own desk.

~~~
philpem
One of my previous employers had an open-plan office, and after a management
change introduced mandatory hotdesking. You had to move desks every day --
management checked every morning and wrote people up if they sat at the same
desk for two consecutive days.

Then they introduced a mandatory uniform and a complete ban on personal items
-- all the Wallace and Gromit coffee mugs, the photos of family disappeared
overnight.

It's the most sterile, depersonalising, demotivating work environment I've
ever encountered.

Incidentally, BPS covered this in another article... "Why it’s important that
employers let staff personalise their workspaces" \--
[https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/03/27/why-its-important-
that-...](https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/03/27/why-its-important-that-
employers-let-staff-personalise-their-workspaces/) . It's well worth a read.

~~~
pwinnski
Did you work in a Terry Gilliam movie? Was this in the USA? It sounds
dystopic.

~~~
philpem
UK actually. A FTSE-listed company.

I've mentioned some of the other stuff they did in my other comments so I
won't dig it up here. I left at the end of last year and at that point I was
doing the job of four engineers (who'd all left).

These days, I sleep through the night (first time in about five years), I've
massively cut down my coffee intake (from four cups of espresso-strength to a
couple of lattes), and I'm working on my own projects in the evenings again. I
still have about a stone in weight (put on through comfort-eating) to burn
off, but I'm working on that.

------
glhaynes
Benefits Of Open Office Not Extended To CEO -
[https://local.theonion.com/benefits-of-open-office-not-
exten...](https://local.theonion.com/benefits-of-open-office-not-extended-to-
ceo-1834005155)

------
exelius
I agree that open-plan offices drive the opposite behavior than they are
touted to. They make it impossible to have impromptu discussions that have any
sensitive aspect to them. I have a lot of those conversations.

I work from home or a coffee shop down the street from my office as a result
and almost never even see my coworkers faces.

But the main driver of open-plan offices is usually density / cost. I suspect
many of the cost savings of the most recent wave of office design are coming
from employees who no longer come into the office because the conditions
aren’t conducive to working.

~~~
rightbyte
We use MS Teams to chat with people at the next desk. Especially since some
uses headphones and you would have to scream.

How much space does a indoor wall take in comparation to the space between the
desk there are anyway in open offices.

You have to put cabinets on the floor since shelves can't hang on walls.

Whiteboards are on feet in the "hallway".

I have never been in an open office and though "Jeez look at all the space
they save by not having walls" if you would compare to 6 or 4 person offices.

~~~
exelius
So imagine a single 6x12 table. You can comfortably seat 8 people at a table
that size. Even if you packed those people into 4 person offices, 2 offices
take more space than a big table in the middle of a floor that shares walking
space with the other stuff around it.

They’re awful for productivity, but they definitely are cheaper.

------
cr0sh
My favorite work environment I was initially skeptical about.

I had done in the past cubicles, private office, shared office, etc - but this
one was somewhat unique because the company that I was hired on with didn't
have any other place to put me and the rest of the "new guys".

So they stuck us in their small conference room. Which had terrible air flow
(aka - none).

We had this long table-like desk; there were four of us, two on each side. We
all had a dual-monitor setup with regular PCs - nothing fancy there.

It was crazy hot in there - we called it "the oven".

But we made it ours while we had it. Our team lead played a crazy mix of music
from spotify. We could easily collaborate as needed. We could keep the lights
off and not be bothered with that.

Eventually we got a portable AC unit to help with the comfort of the room.

We got a lot of great work done in that room. About a year later, we moved
offices, and the owners decided to go "open floorplan" (we later learned this
was all a scheme towards selling the company). Things changed greatly. While
our entire team could be together (we had a couple other members of the team
who were outside of the oven at the old office) at one "desk" \- the open
office didn't facilitate talking amongst ourselves as much or collaboration,
because sales was nearby, etc.

Most of the time, we listened to music or whatnot on headphones, and just used
Hipchat and email to communicate.

------
closeparen
I _wish_ this happened in my office. Instead there are face-to-face
conversations at desks all the time, and those looking to do quiet focused
work are basically out of luck.

------
scottlu2
Why are open plans (among software engineers) so common in the industry? Is it
really that most software engineers like them?

~~~
plutonorm
People feel more stress when they feel watched. Stress increases productivity
in the short term, before you burn out. But who cares about that right?

~~~
matz1
The trick is to just don't care, they want to watch go ahead watch. For
example, I browse youtube/fb whenever I want, of course not something extreme
like browsing porn. Whats the worse that could happen ? Some coworker complain
that I'm not doing my job ?

------
breakpointalpha
I'm considering an offer that would introduce a 30+ minute commute and an open
office plan back into my life.

I've been working 100% from home for the last 8 months and rather enjoy it.

Should I just hold out for another remote job? I have about 10 months of burn
left in my bank account...

------
ghostbrainalpha
The biggest downside of an open office for is that I type really fast and loud
on a mechanical keyboard some of my colleges are bothered by. But other people
find the noise relaxing, so maybe I need to just have all the loud clackers
get together in a single room.

------
Sutanreyu
It's because you see so many people that you want to retract a bit and _not_
have to directly deal with them...

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SonicSoul
this "study" is riddled with issues. only 2 companies studied. i can't imagine
how different every place is depending on its culture. how comfortable are
employees ? are the teams next to people they don't know? was this measurement
amortized over project volumes after the move? are these companies designed
with some private areas easily accessible on every floor for teams to discuss
/ have daily stand ups if needed?

seems one could easily come up with 2 new companies example where the opposite
is true given a different design / team layout / project types and so on

