
Why Open Offices Are Terrible - money_money_
http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/work-education/why-open-offices-are-terrible/index.php
======
iamleppert
I found I was the most productive when I was in a small office with 2-3 other
developers, with a door we could close. Everyone was setup this way, and
people ended up decorating each of their rooms and every room had a "theme"
(ours was called the lounge). This degree of personalization brought me closer
to my co-workers whom I shared the office with, and as a result we worked
better together.

In the afternoons, we'd have our "coding sessions" where we could close the
door and just sink into whatever project/problem we were working on. The
result (without constant distractions of people walking by/around us) was
extremely productive.

This was back in Ohio years ago. Since then, I've moved to the bay area where
I've unfortunately been forced to work in open offices. I find them
depersonalizing and my ADD kicks in with people constantly walking by/around
me. I isolate myself with good noise canceling headphones, but I find myself
longing for the days when I shared an office with some really cool dudes. Or,
maybe I still haven't found a team I like.

Anyway, I find it odd that companies in the bay area, with how innovative
everything is out here, think open offices are good and/or work. You pay
people 6 figures to use their mind and then make them sit in a room all day
with constant distractions. It makes no sense.

~~~
kzhahou
Product idea: if you work at a startup of just 4-5 people and it's pretty
quiet in your little space, we'll rent out temporary fake co-workers, who will
talk loudly about their weekends next to you, shoot nerf guns, and get on the
phone with AT&T to dispute a charge. The premium plan will include a manager
who walks the floor and asks you how things are going. You can rent the co-
workers on a weekly basis, or even just for one day when an investor is
stopping by.

~~~
sitkack
Dude, your jonesing my idea.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9978487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9978487)

~~~
kzhahou
I've got second-mover advantage now!

Wanna split the three commas?

~~~
sitkack
I'l take new york, you can have SF.

------
JoshTriplett
Someone needs to write an article "why no one office plan will make everyone
happy". Discussions around office layouts always devolve into different groups
vehemently defending how everyone should love their preferred choice, and very
few people recognizing that _different people work differently_.

Some people thrive in an open office, while others can't function due to
distraction, interruption, and an expectation of constant interaction. Some
people thrive with private offices and doors, while others go stir-crazy and
feel like they can't collaborate. And cubicles with proper separation end up
as a satisficing solution that doesn't make anyone completely happy but
doesn't drive people completely crazy.

Ideally some kind of hybrid could work, with doors available for people who
want them, and common work areas available for people who want them. But
perceptions matter too, and "private office" rightfully looks like a perk;
many who might function better in a common area might resent not getting an
office.

~~~
emingo
Agreed. I personally work well in an open office. Half way through the
article, or really it was just citing other peoples research with no other
analysis, I got mad.

It just comes back to -- if you want to prove a point there will be data out
there to help you justify it. This article is trying to pretend to be
objective, but really is just citing a slew of studies that, presumably, had
really small sample sizes. /rant

There is no one answer. IMO an ideal office would have both options.

~~~
geebee
Is your open office very loud?

To me, the real problem is noise, not the lack of an office. I work very well
in libraries, which are generally very quiet. I don't work at all well in open
offices where people are constantly having phone conversations[1]. The "quiet
room" that was provided at Sun Micro that I described in a post below also
worked very well for me. Interestingly, I also work well in coffee shops,
provided that there are no audible cell phone conversations (again, person to
person conversations just aren't that distracting to me).

Overall, while I agree with you that it's not a one-size-fits-all situation, I
think it's fair to say that loud noisy offices where developers are put next
to a manager or marketing worker who is on the phone all day are generally
harmful to a developer's productivity.

[1] These seem to be a worse distraction than person-to-person conversations.
I've read that this is a common reaction, probably because people try to "fill
in" the unspoken words, causing a greater cognitive impairment.

------
dkonofalski
That really doesn't say anything about why they're terrible. They're just
posting a bunch of random factoids without any kind of explanation for why
those numbers might be. Seems like everything was cherry-picked pretty well.

~~~
nkrisc
Not only that, at least one fact, how much AT&T saved, seems to imply open
office spaces are not terrible. That is because the click-bait headline
doesn't specify for whom.

~~~
pivo
Well, if the other metrics are as bad as they sound then saving $3K USD per
employee might not be a net win for AT&T.

~~~
vonmoltke
Office space has a direct line item on somebody's balance sheet. Productivity
doesn't.

------
geebee
Every now and then, it's time to stop concluding that you're right, and start
to ask why nothing has changed. The data at this point seems overwhelming that
open offices are bad for health, stress, productivity, and personal happiness,
and they don't save a whole lot of money. So why are they still around, and
how can this be changed?

That's the article I'd love to read, though the issues go very deep. PG was
certainly right in an essay from years ago where he concludes that private
offices are really used to denote rank in a company, rather than to provide
people with a quiet space for productive work.

My own experience at Sun Microsystems a long time back was a good one. They
had drop in centers with quiet rooms and loud rooms. Loud rooms had phones,
quiet rooms didn't. None of it wouldn't have mattered without enforcement -
every now and then, someone who did a lot of work on the phone (never a
developer, they _always_ took phone calls outside) would try to use the cell
at a desk, figuring it was "ok" as long as they kept it short and used mildly
hushed tones. Nope. The office manager, who didn't care who they were or if
they liked her, enforced the rules.

That could work, while preserving the rank/status qualities to offices that
are important to other elements of an organization.

~~~
draw_down
The reason is simple, it's cheaper than giving people offices.

~~~
geebee
You may be right, though I'd say more in perception than actuality. I'm not
sure it actually is cheaper, since the amount saved is minimal and the lost
productivity may be very high.

However, in the land of externalized costs, that could be the reason. It's
easier to point to the cost savings for cubicles or open offices and say "hey
we saved that" than it is to point to the amount of software not written (or
even harder to prove, written but lower in quality) and say "hey, we lost
that".

------
traverseda
That infographic is really bad. 100% of what? A 100% increase? Then why is it
a pie chart?

~~~
legohead
> Happiness rank of private-office occupants, according to research at the
> University of Sydney on work environments.

with a "1" above it.. Is that 1 person? 1 rank (out of how many ranks)? Rank
#1? 1% happiness?

------
amyjess
I've worked in a cube. I've shared an office with one other person with a
variety of different desk arrangements. I've had my own office. I currently
share an office with three other people (almost an open office).

I vastly prefer sharing an office with one other person where both of us have
our backs to the wall over any of the others. Having my own office is too
isolating for my tastes, but I don't like wide open spaces, and I don't like
people being able to sneak up behind me.

~~~
kzhahou
> I don't like people being able to sneak up behind me

This doesn't get discussed enough, compared to noise.

There's something very primal about wanting to defend our backs. At work, in a
restaurant, at the library... I want to have my back against the wall. My
lizard brain thinks it's protecting me from predators, but my modern brain
really doesn't want a pair of eyes behind me when I'm on email, or reddit, or
whatever. And I don't want people to make their inevitable comments whenever I
bury my face in my hands to just THINK for a while.

------
colund
Here are some other HN posts about the open office problem "Google got it
wrong"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065)
and "Headphones are the new walls"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9797606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9797606)

~~~
noarchy
Anecdotally, I think I see a new post about this topic every week or two on
HN. When it comes to software culture, this has to rank pretty highly in terms
of how much discussion gets generated.

------
rm_-rf_slash
There seems to be little discussion of the benefits to open offices. I would
like to know how much money is saved to startups without significant funding.
A big company like AT&T has no excuse but "shareholder value" for lowering the
quality of work life - because let's be honest, private offices are obviously
best - but a startup doesn't really have that choice.

Personally, I'm fine with some kind of mix. Some people have cubicles where I
work, others have offices, others are a bit more open. As long as I'm
listening to good music, it's never really bothered me.

~~~
ckluis
I’ve always thought that much of the bitching is about individual productivity
without taking into the considerations of group productivity. Teams of 4-8
being in a single room probably gain more in collaboration in sum total by
being together than the loss in personal productivity; however open spaces in
the hundreds now introduct distractions for non-group associated work.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Teams of 4-8 being in a single room probably gain more in collaboration in
> sum total by being together than the loss in personal productivity; however
> open spaces in the hundreds now introduct distractions for non-group
> associated work.

Depends heavily on the work you're doing in that team. Sometimes you're all
working on the same problem; sometimes you need to divide and conquer, or
otherwise work on mostly unrelated matters.

I've read about Valve's "moveable desks" and how they improve collaboration,
but that's still a big open-plan office. I wonder if some sensible structure
could make it easy to sometimes work in a shared office and sometimes work in
groups?

------
pan69
I can relate to the open office space fiasco. I have spend many years working
in them.

However, it isn't always an easy problem to solve for companies either, office
space can be quite expensive and to give every developer (let alone every
person) a private office is in most scenarios just not going to be financially
viable.

Having said, it should be doable for most companies to have at least a "loud"
and a "quiet" space, i.e. two open spaces in stead of one. This gives workers
at least some choice in which environment they prefer to work and it should be
feasible for most companies out there.

------
pwthornton
I think this really depends on the type of work you do, what kind of
personality you have and how exactly your open office is set up.

Sometimes, I just need quiet to get a lot of work done. For these days, I
might work at home so people don't stop by my office. Even with an office,
people stop by all the time to tell me little things. That can make
concentrating on programming, design or other stuff really difficult. Each
interruption can knock me out of focus for 15 minutes. There is also the non-
stop ringing of my office phone.

On the other hand, when we are close to shipping something or in the earlier
conceptual stages, it's nice to have a bunch of product people together
without any walls. We might sit around a table with laptops and punch list and
QA the rest of the product before we get ready to ship it.

------
sktrdie
I've worked all over the place: home, office, small offices, and now I just
started working at this startup factory which is essentially a huge open space
with dozen of startups sharing the same space:
[http://luissenlabs.com/](http://luissenlabs.com/)

I love it. You get to know people from different places and it's like we're
all a small community caring for one another. Also I think from a
psychological point of view it helps having a large space and looking at
different people all day.

As humans we're definitely not wired to look at a computer all day. We've
evolved to be in open spaces and not closed in caves.

~~~
jawilson2
I agree. I moved from having an office for 8 years to an open office in March,
and for the most part I love it. I'm pretty introverted, and I thought it
would be difficult, but it actually helps with team interaction because before
it wouldn't be unusual for weeks to pass without talking with anyone. The open
plan "forces" interaction, and it has been a good thing for me.

------
hire_charts
The trick to making an open office plan work is to use the lack of walls to
_increase_ the square footage per employee. On top of that, it really helps to
have "break-out" spaces or quiet rooms, where you can go to get some work done
away from the bustle.

The problem is that it's easy to fall into the trap of cutting costs as part
of transitioning to an open plan. You really can't have it both ways -- either
you increase productivity and pay _more_ in square-footage, or you cram
everyone into a much smaller space at the cost of productivity and happiness.

------
Johnny555
I toured Sun Microsytems a long time ago, and at the time, they said they gave
all employees private offices. They had copious open areas for team
collaboration, but everyone appeared to have their own (small) private office.

I think they eventually moved to floating offices with Sun-Rays everywhere,
plug in your employee ID at any workstation and your desktop (and phone)
magically appeared in that office.

Seemed like it would have been a good place to work at the time (mid 90's,
just as they were starting to skyrocket along with the dotcom boom).

------
AdmiralAsshat
If anyone would like a brief tour through Hell, I suggest visiting an open
office call center.

I'd just like to interview whichever genius thought it would help _anyone_ to
have your reps struggling to hear their own call over the sounds of everyone
around them and their calls.

------
intrasight
Here's an idea for a hybrid. Have a robotic X Y conveyor in the ceiling that
will drop a soundproof box on top of a cubicle when the occupant needs
silence, privacy, etc. The box will seal off air, so you only get about 10
minutes of the virtual private office.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
And when you want to allow two people to have a conversation without
disturbing the people around them, you use this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Silence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_of_Silence)

------
joeax
Nothing beats a home office. Or a Starbucks office, or working wherever you
want.

~~~
r00fus
I don't like permanently working in my home office. I need other folks around
me most times to really keep me productive.

My current pattern is to WFH 1-2 days a week, good for days with kids
appointments or if I have back-to-back calls (e.g. from 6AM-2PM).

------
Dmitry_Bryliuk
it is terrible

some stuff to survive in open offices: [https://www.quora.com/What-drugs-do-
you-put-into-your-bug-ou...](https://www.quora.com/What-drugs-do-you-put-into-
your-bug-out-bag/answer/Dmitry-Bryliuk)

it is mostly about sport supplements for mental performance and stress
resilience. quite long to repost.

warning! the use is somehow violating original instructions, but it is
working.

also applicable for software developers work and outdoor activities.

------
Overtonwindow
Working in an open office is horrible. I would rather try to work in a noisy,
overpriced, obnoxious, coffee chain, than spend another minute in an open
office plan...

------
barce
I guess if I used Google the way this author did, I could write an article
called, "Why Open Offices Are Great."

------
dclowd9901
> 100 Percent increase in loss of productivity due to noise distraction in
> open-plan offices compared with private offices, as cited in a 2013 paper
> published by the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

And yet, employment statistics show Americans are more productive than they've
ever been. Something doesn't smell right with this data.

[http://www.bls.gov/lpc/](http://www.bls.gov/lpc/)

~~~
bildung
In economic terms _productivity_ usually means GDP per capita or per work
hour. The article implies the everyday meaning of the word.

Besides: As the common job of IT is _automation_ , e.g. reducing the need for
labor, increased (everyday meaning) productivity of IT could actually result
in lower (economic) productivity, as GDP gets smaller.

------
sagivo
the more i work in an open-space office, the more i want to work remotely.

------
draw_down
I hate the fishbowl environment, every movement and facial expression is
subject to the scrutiny and interpretation of others. My stomach makes funny
noises sometimes, I can't control it. And so forth.

One time I took a drink of a glass of water on my desk and my coworker made a
remark about how I made some strange movement when I took the drink. To me
this is hell, to have every single moment potentially under observation. I
mentioned how uncomfortable that dynamic makes me and he apologized for his
remark, but the point remains.

It's not even about privacy, it's about please just fucking let me exist as an
entity unto myself. People often think that when Sartre said "L'enfer c'est
les autres", he was saying "other people suck and are annoying". But what he
was saying is that hell is the constant presence of the Other.

~~~
Jemmeh
This! I used to have a coworker that said I scratched my back too much. I
wanted to tell her she breathed too much.

I think the worst part was they said I used the bathroom too much. It was like
being back in high school. I drink a lot of water. Geesh!

