
Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices? - gmtx725
This topic seems to come up time and time again on here. As someone young and new to the industry I have only ever experienced open plan offices, so I don&#x27;t really know what the alternative is like. However I&#x27;m inclined to say I don&#x27;t think I would enjoy cubicles or private offices. I feel like you&#x27;d miss out on so much collaborative effort and serendipitous &amp; spontaneous conversations with colleagues that solve problems out of the blue. I also think it&#x27;s just plain isolating being on your own in a room all day. What&#x27;s wrong with just putting some headphones on if you want to put your head down and do some deep, quiet work?<p>Having said all that as I admit I haven&#x27;t experienced the alternative so I&#x27;m open to being convinced I&#x27;m wrong.
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jlengrand
I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. I'm against open
plan offices at large corp level.

I have 300 people on my floor, the group closest to us is from business and
spends 2/4 hours a day on the phone. It saddens me because the largest openly
claimed benefit of Open Plan offices is "increase collaboration". What I
literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide
in rooms to get some silence. I mean, people literally have to walk around
teams to go to the toilet or get a coffee.

I'd like team size cubicles. That would sound to me like a good compromise
between collaboration, and deep work. I'm sure people would open up more. In
fact, it is how it was setup at Bell Labs back in the time [1], not the pale
copy we see everywhere today.

A bit like Agile has become Scrum I'm guessing :).

[1] [https://aquicore.com/blog/bell-labs-office-
design/](https://aquicore.com/blog/bell-labs-office-design/)

~~~
opo
>I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level.

Having now worked in one of these at a large company, we found those sorts of
"team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor
plans. Unless the company is relativley small, the random conversations
between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting
problems solved early without having having to have formal meetings and
delays. A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple
question (or to just see what they are working on) becomes a big deal because
you are now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people.
Unless you really know the other person well, we found people just are very
hesitant to do it.

In big companies, there usually isn't a problem with communicating within a
team - the problems occur when teams aren't communicating with people in other
teams. These team rooms ruin informal inter-team collaboration and
communication.

With the pandemic it isn't hard to see that a small enclosed team room with
people packed in it is also a pretty good way to guarantee a virus will be
spread to others.

~~~
arantius
> A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple question
> (or to just see what they are working on) becomes a big deal because you are
> now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people.

Which is better than interrupting the hundred plus people in the giant open-
office space?

~~~
opo
Unless they feel the need to yell, they are probably interrupting a small
number of people and not hundred plus people. The difference in the open floor
plan is that at least they aren't entering the private space of another team.
What we saw is that when each team is in their own little silo, people are
reluctant to go invade another team's private space unless they knew the
person very well. Inter-team knowledge sharing and collaboration really
dropped.

While team silos create additional problems, obviously the hundred plus style
open floor plans are still pretty horrible. The best approach I have seen is
individual offices with shared collaboration areas nearby. People can do deep
work by closing their office door. People can pair-program, have someone look
over their code, have a private conversation etc. by going to another's office
without disturbing everyone else. A shared collaboration area allows for quick
easy group discussion when helpful.

------
mFixman
Working from home for the past 3 months taught me that a lot of my constant
tiredness and apathy came from the constant noise you get in an open office.

Some people can't handle being productive in a extremely loud, and extremely
bright environment. It doesn't matter how much I destroyed my hearing by
putting loud music over noise-cancelling headphones, I always felt tired after
~2 hours of work.

Open offices seem to start in companies with 10 people, and eventually turn
out in floors with hundred of other workers screaming loudly so they can be
heard over the existing noise. Ideally, an open office should have noise
detectors over the office to remind people to keep their noise down.

As a positive, if I were 20 years older I'd probably have started working in
cubicles, which have all the negatives of an open office but without any
natural sunlight.

~~~
dillonmckay
In our elementary school cafeteria, we had a large traffic light that was
sound activated.

Reasonable noise levels were green, but if we got too loud it would turn
yellow to warn us to quiet down, but if it turned red, it would make a loud
buzzing alert, and we were not allowed to speak during the red light.

If you did speak during a red light, you were written a ‘ticket’, and would
not be going to recess that afternoon.

It would turn back to green after a specified time.

~~~
1_player
That sounds incredibly dystopian. I hate it.

~~~
snazz
Does it? I much prefer an objective measure of volume instead of a school
staff member just writing individual kids up for being subjectively too loud
---the machine should have much less bias.

~~~
randomchars
Why do they need to be quiet? This is in a cafeteria, not in a classroom.

~~~
snazz
I remember the elementary and middle school cafeterias being host to an
occasional screaming match, so I can see why they would want to keep it at a
reasonable volume. It might be a little over the top to have the traffic light
thing, but it's better than the subjective alternative.

------
rootsofallevil
> I feel like you'd miss out on so much collaborative effort and serendipitous
> & spontaneous conversations with colleagues that solve problems out of the
> blue

This happens for sure

In my experience the ratio of beneficial to detrimental serendipitous and/or
spontaneous conversations that result in any benefit is extremely low, so low
in fact as to not being worth it. The problem is that people tend to remember
the useful one conversation and forget the other 100.

At my current job, never have I ever been involved in anything that has
resulted in a solved problem from a casual conversation, yet I was regularly
interrupted by other people before I started working from home.

~~~
CyberFonic
I find the worst interrupters are not co-workers but impatient, micromanaging
managers. Yup, the Dilbertian PHB's -- there just are too many of them out in
the wild.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Coworkers can be a menace too. Two jobs before, I worked in a place where each
team of ~8 people had their own room. On the floor, we had a bunch of
"roamers" who would visit every room at random times to socialize. And then,
within the team, we had the problem of everyone doing their own "break for cat
memes" at a different time, and wanting to share the funny thing they saw
immediately; we sort-of solved that by creating a dedicated IM chatroom for
sharing off-topic posts, but then those would sometimes spill over into
meatspace anyway, and suddenly you had half of the room discussing some stupid
video while the other half tried to work. It was manageable at this level,
though. An equilibrium.

(I have to admit that I did my own share of distracting my coworkers there;
nobody was blameless in our room.)

------
fsloth
Open-plan offices came about because they are mainly cheap.

Or, then, you just don't trust your employees and want to watch over them all
the time.

Neither of these reasons touch the actual reason why you are in the office -
to create added value. Hence open plan office is an environment that the
market has selected for all the other reasons, except to be a good place to
work.

Some people like open offices, other don't.

The overall picture from literature and practice is that if the cadence of the
work is "like in NASA flight control" then the easy communication aspect is an
actual asset.

On the other hand, if you are mostly coding and doing other sort of deep work,
then an open plan office is openly hostile to productivity.

For example, if noise level increases 10 dB it decreases productivity by 5%
[0].

Personally, having worked in all sort of configs for two decades, my
capability to concentrate, productivity, and happiness in an open plan
settings plummets.

[0] Dean: Noise, Cognitive Function, and Worker Productivity
"[https://joshuatdean.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/02/NoiseCogn...](https://joshuatdean.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/02/NoiseCognitiveFunctionandWorkerProductivity.pdf")

~~~
peteforde
5% per 10dB of added noise floor? That seems really low to me. Think about
it... 30dB is the difference between a quieter window fan and a train going by
next door.

~~~
fsloth
Read the referred paper. It is fairly thorough :)

------
dylz
You can hear everything. Coughs and other sharp noises go straight through ANC
headphones.

You're exposed to everything.

People will tap you on the shoulder.

While I'm the same as you, I don't particularly enjoy the feeling of having
noise cancellation headphones on for the entire workday - it starts to feel a
bit vertigo-ey.

Some people don't like making small talk.

~~~
huffmsa
> _don 't particularly enjoy the feeling of having noise cancellation
> headphones on for the entire workday - it starts to feel a bit vertigo-ey._

Ay. It shouldn't be acceptable that those who prefer / need quiet are expected
to block out the outside world with headphones and earplugs and Phil the
motormouth is allowed to run his jaw all day.

The default should be either Phil takes his chit chat to a private room
(offices for everyone) or he shuts the fuck up unless it's a dedicated
discussion time.

------
pecantree
In one line: It affects the ability to work deeply.

I'm not against the idea of the open office. I'm against the scale at which it
is implemented. Open office for a team is okay (even good, when you're in the
idea-bouncing among teammates phase). Open office on a large scale wherein
often the entire floor can hear each other is terrible.

The core reason: the inability to work deeply for long intervals of time.
Especially when you have grabbed a good idea and are trying to implement it
before the flow gets broken.

At any office there will be people who by their nature will cause
disturbances. On a larger scale, the probability that someone will break my
flow is greatly increased.

------
PopeDotNinja
Because being forced to don headphones I'd rather not wear is lame.

Because being people have meetings in the space right behind my desk.

Because I feel like cattle, which could explain why I have this beef XD

------
apohn
>What's wrong with just putting some headphones on if you want to put your
head down and do some deep, quiet work?

I can't do focused work with headphones and music. I get headaches because I
have to put extra effort to focus and think. I've tried headphones, earphones,
IEMs, and earbuds. That includes regular, audiophile, and noise cancelling. I
just can't do it. I need quiet to think. Even noise cancelling headphones need
music playing to block out noise an in office when you are next to people
(e.g. sales, HR) who are in meetings all day.

Let me flip this another way. Imagine if a business decided that they were
going to lower the temperature to 50F/10C to save money. Somebody then said
"Well if you are cold just wear a thick jacket, gloves, etc. I do it and it's
fine" A lot of people would be miserable and would have some parts of their
bodies freezing and hurting (hands, feet) and other parts of their body (e.g.
underarms) would be sweating and uncomfortable. How much focused work could
you do in that situation?

Does the above situation sound ridiculous? Well that's exactly how I feel
about the expectation that everybody can just put on headphones and focus.

I've been in private small cubicle offices in multiple jobs and done just
fine. But the noise and visual distraction in open offices is just too much.

~~~
tanseydavid
Your analogy with the thermostat is BRILLIANT. Thank you for that.

But if they actually did that, they would say the reason was to "improve
collaboration" not that it was to save money -- just like open-plan!

------
rognjen
Firstly it's that you seem available for interruption, either by managers or
coworkers equally. Most people don't understand how harmful that is. Managers
vs makers schedule explains this.

Secondly, however, is the inability to control my own environment. Some days
I'd like it to be dark, some light. Sometimes I'm cold, sometimes I'm hot. Or
I want loud music or silence. Etc. You might think these are all minor things
and generally they are but if all of them slightly negatively impact you, you
might end up being cranky and unproductive the entire day.

Cubicles are slightly worse because they suffer from the exact same issues but
are much uglier.

~~~
majewsky
> Managers vs makers schedule explains this.

It's like Donald Knuth's argument for not using e-mail. "Most people need to
stay on top of things, but I need to get to the bottom of things." The open
office works great for staying on top of things, but is not a good environment
for getting to the bottom of things.

------
eesmith
Individual offices != "being on your own in a room all day"

The negatives are pretty well known. I've seen information like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan#Evaluation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan#Evaluation)

> A systematic survey of research upon the effects of open-plan offices found
> frequent negative effects in some traditional workplaces: high levels of
> noise, stress, conflict, high blood pressure and a high staff
> turnover.[16][17]

> The noise level in open-plan offices greatly reduces productivity, which
> drops to one third relative to what it would be in quiet rooms.

since reading the chapter about it in Steve McConnell's "Rapid Development" in
the 1990s.

Ahh, see chapter 30, "Productivity Environments",
[https://archive.org/details/rapiddevelopment00mcco/page/504/...](https://archive.org/details/rapiddevelopment00mcco/page/504/mode/2up/search/office)
. You'll need an archive.org account. It doesn't really cover open plan
offices - that era was more about cubicles.

------
perlpimp
I don't feel I have some kind of mental safety in open office. Bell labs are
best kinds of office where you have offices with hub common area for your team
where you can go out and discuss stuff.

~~~
CyberFonic
My preference is to go to the pub to brainstorm over burgers and beer. I did
work for a small biz where the owner would take us all out on Friday for that
purpose. Most productive place I ever worked at. Eventually got bought out by
a much bigger biz and it all went south.

~~~
twic
Same! We had a small office round the corner from a pub, and we'd go there for
lunch every friday. If we ever had to discuss that in front of clients, we
referred to it as "meeting room P".

~~~
pinkfoot
The COBRA meetings Her Majesty's cabinet sounds important, secretive, and just
a bit ominous.

Its actually just meetings held in "Cabinet Office Briefing Room A".

------
blackrock
Finally! Bring back some sanity to the office!

Get rid of the open office! And all it took was a little virus that can
decimate the human civilization.

If companies want to cram their employees together, and make them sit shoulder
to shoulder on a little table, then just let us work from home. We don’t need
to be smashed together like sardines in a can.

By keeping us so close to one another, without physical distancing, and walls
that block airflow and people’s germs, then I believe we have gotten sicker
over time. Every season, I would always get sick, and I attribute it to the
open office. The past 2 months of working from home, has been great, because I
avoided getting the flu.

Their principle complaint, was that open offices save money. Well, here’s
finally a way for them to save even more money! Remote telecommuting!

~~~
CyberFonic
What? and deprive the managers of being able to lord over their domain? They
get the fits if they don't see hundreds bent over in servitude.

------
alexgmcm
I don't want to be on my own all day.

The best set-up I've ever had was when I had an office with just my team (and
only the other engineers) so just the people who I was actually working with.

This meant discussions could actually be useful as we were working on very
similar stuff, if not the same - and as they were other engineers we were all
capable of offering solutions and not just being a distraction.

In my current open office the vast majority of the people have no idea what I
even do and have such entirely different skillsets it's not like we can have
productive work discussions. Therefore, it's just noise and distraction.

------
rofws
Because working is a collaborative activity, not a social activity.

By nature, social activities need your brain to be focused on things happening
around you.

Work activities need your brain to focus on that task at hand, and not on your
surroundings. Hence your brain needs to overcome all the distraction to focus
on work, if you're in an open (social) environment. No wonder people feel
exhausted at the end of the day.

That said, I think having a completely closed office is equally bad. I think a
good office is one that combines the best aspect of both.

~~~
DedlySnek
> I think a good office is one that combines the best aspect of both.

Couldn't agree more. My last job was in a large organization, cubicles
everywhere and almost quiet all the time. The current one is an open office,
noise all the time. Overall, I dislike both of them, and just like you said,
could use a combination of best aspects of both.

------
CyberFonic
I think the term "open plan office" is too generic. The example @jlengrand
provides is the form of torture that drives people who need to think and
concentrate to distraction.

The most productive environments I have known are a modest sized room used as
an open plan office where every person there was working on the same project.
The managers had their own private offices on another floor. Under those sort
of conditions collaboration and intelligent conversations can arise. So long
as you manage to exclude the blabbermouths who are constantly asking stupid
questions or making unnecessary commentary.

I think I have achieved the best compromise, work from home, turn off emails
and all forms of social apps. Then once or twice a week go to the office
specifically to have meetings, etc. That way I get the peace and quite to
immerse into deep work (Cal Newport) and get the benefits of collaboration and
brainstorming. I only check my emails after I have finished the day's deep
work. My promise is that I answer all emails addressed to me within 36 hours.
Nothing faster. If it's that important people have to text message which I
will typically check 2-3 times a day max.

BTW I charge for specified units of work completed according to schedules and
budgets that I agree to. Charging on the basis of hours worked just doesn't
cut it for me.

------
huffmsa
Because it makes it too easy people to ask questions that they could have
answered on their own if they'd has to stand up from their desk, walk down the
hall to my office, knock on the door and obviously disrupt whatever I'm doing.

In an open office all they have to do is vaguely wave their hand in the corner
of my vision with "hey just a quick question" that inevitably turns into a 15
minute product revision meeting.

~~~
matsemann
Sounds like that discussion was needed, to me..

~~~
huffmsa
Yeah, except it happens every other day and all you do is "revise the product"
and never build or ship the product.

It's a one way express train to feature creep. It often doesn't involve all of
the stakeholders, so then you're having multiple 15 minute meetings to get
everyone in sync.

Meetings are for meeting, not meetings are for shutting up and doing your
assigned work.

~~~
matsemann
> _not meetings are for shutting up and doing your assigned work_

Like a mindless drone? Or are you advocating for _more_ meetings?

~~~
huffmsa
I'm saying timebox discussion like anything else. Have discussions regularly,
but in a scheduled manner.

Meetings suck because people aren't prepared / the meeting isn't scoped or
well defined. They don't suck "just because".

Treat your meetings just like any other assignments. Clearly define it and
expect people to have their shit together. Then you don't have to have
discussions all the time and you can actually execute on what's been discussed
and planned.

------
dillonmckay
Headphones don’t make things quiet. You are just replacing noises.

Think of a library.

I have not even brought up the visual or olfactory distractions, either.

~~~
gmtx725
Does it need to be completely quiet? I find I work best with low-level
relaxing ambient background noise. Find it much easier to work in e.g. a
coffee shop than a library

~~~
tanseydavid
Personally, I would choose the library environment every single time for
software design and dev -- if the option were available to me.

I know that my productivity is much, much closer to optimum when I work under
these conditions. Sadly they are almost impossible to find or arrange.

------
mehrdadn
As far as audio goes, either you need to play something in your headphones
(which itself can be distracting) or sounds will go through (actually many
will probably go through either way), and sometimes that's perfect for what
you're working on, but sometimes it very much isn't. Also they're not an
option when you're trying to talk to someone without both of you getting
distracted or distracting others.

Headphones don't filter out every distraction either, though, so there's that
too. People constantly walking around or eating food you can smell or
shuffling stuff on their desks or doing whatever else they are doing can be
incredibly distracting when you need to concentrate.

Also distractions are one thing, but I know lots of people want some privacy
in the workplace too, even if it's not the first (or last) reason they'll
list. It's kind of the elephant in the room. If you're the kind of
person/robot who thinks privacy in the workplace is a fundamental oxymoron and
who goes 4 or 9 hours straight without taking a bit of a break once in a while
(whether it's just to check your personal email or social media, or to lay
your head down for some time and rest a bit, or to make/receive a phone call,
or whatever) then maybe you won't sympathize with this. But not feeling like
people are continually observing you is something a lot of people value.

Also my ears can eventually sweat when I have headphones on for hours on end,
and my headphones end up getting dirty, and their existence isn't exactly
indistinguishable from their non-existence either, so there's that. Maybe this
is too obvious? But an open-plan office where the solution is "wear a
headphone" is practically a job that mandates that you wear a headphone.

I'm sure there's other stuff I'm not thinking of at the moment. And of course
there are lots of benefits too; I just didn't list them since you seemed to
already be aware of them.

------
therufa
There's a reason why noise cancelling headphones gained so much popularity.

If you enter an open plan office and see a bunch of people sitting with
headphones on, it should be immediately clear to you that most of them are
suffering from noise pollution. The headphones are usually a coping mechanism
to keep out the noise, not primarily to enjoy some music.

The problem with open plan offices is usually the fact, that it gets
incredibly noisy. increased noise levels lead to being distracted, which leads
to exhaustion, which leads to lower productivity, which in some cases causes
mental problems like burnout syndrome etc...

this might be not the case for every type of person, but i had the "pleasure"
of experiencing the upper situation personally and a few times in other ex-
coworkers who just couldn't cope with the constant noise.

------
sumfoni
Never really had 'collaborative effort and serendipitous & spontaneous
conversations with colleagues that solve problems out of the blue'.

Most of the time, i have someone next to me or close to me, who is on phone
with someone else.

I had a 4 people office once and it was great. Close the door, noise is
outside.

------
clarry
The commute to my office is a few meters, and I _really_ like that. It also
has perks like private bathroom & fridge & coffee maker & oven, etc. I
wouldn't want some company to have their open office so close to my bedroom.

~~~
dillonmckay
I know your comment is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but, the most recent company I
worked for (I work from home), build a really nice open office w a glass
conference room off of the main area, a kitchenette, and a separate smaller
office, connected to the main area.

However, there is a single toilet with shower for the entire space.

It is only accessible via the smaller office.

I would occasionally visit, but even w a few people, it was horrific.

At one point, they had two desks and folks working in the smaller room, but it
became unbearable, after being able to experience your coworkers bathroom
habits from less than 10 feet away.

When building the office, did I stress the need for a cohesive bathroom
strategy? Yes.

I have many other work related stories like this, from all sorts of places.

------
beagle3
Most people can share their own experience; some people feel they are equally
effective in an open space (compared to private / pair / small team office)
but most feel they are not.

I have never heard a worker who requires concentration say they are MORE
effective in an open space - only equal or less.

(I _have_ heard sales people say that, and they mostly extol the virtues of
being able to ask anyone around any question mid-sale-call and get an
immediate answer; I suspect their co workers might have a different
perspective)

I highly recommend reading “Peopleware”, which —- among many other subjects —
has anecdotes and some real data about open spaces vs private vs small team
offices.

------
xtracto
I am against it because I have worked in a closed office environment before: I
worked in Germany academia (Leibniz institute) for 3.5 years. I shared an
office with 1 other person and later had my own office. It was GREAT for
productivity / thinking and had no impact whatsoever in my interaction with
other people when I needed that

For the last 8 years I've been working for "silicon valley culture startups"
all of which push open offices, and even though when you have 3 to 6 ppl it
makes sense, once you are more than that it becomes hell for people that need
to focus.

In reality they are used because closed office space is more expensive.

------
IkmoIkmo
Noise: In an open-office there's always going to be someone on a business or
team call. Always some colleague having smalltalk with another. Always a phone
ringing, a person yawning, someone's text notification buzzing on a table,
someone typing very loudly. Not all the time, but at least every minute or few
minutes. Many can't concentrate, and the notion to just put on headphones for
8 hours is not healthy.

Psychology: Many of us hate the idea that someone behind us might be looking
at us, our screen, our work. That there may be someone walking behind us that
we know. That the sound of footsteps behind you might be your boss, or a
colleague you'd like to chat with. It might be anyone, and there's some desire
to want to find out to get closure.

Open offices are okay if they're part of a range of choices. I enjoy working
in open offices sometimes. Sometimes it drives me nuts and there's no escape.
That's not okay. There must be balance and there must be options.

For example, semi-open is a great start, because it means sound doesn't bounce
around in one big space of 60 people, but rather only in the space of 10, and
gets limited in sound/light traveling due to e.g. plants, windows etc.

If there are meeting rooms to meet or organise calls, that means the high-
impact activities can be separated. If there are team-rooms, it means you can
collaborate without impacting people who you don't work with 9/10 times, while
you can still seek them out in their team room or meeting rooms, or an open-
space setting you happen to be in for part of the week, if you do want cross-
team collaboration.

The idea that teamwork flows best by putting everyone in one giant cage
without caring for sensitivity to sound and human psychology, is a joke that
in any other field would be seen as a bruteforce idiotic idea. Besides, the
economics of non-open offices aren't wildly different with the right approach.
Sound-proofing to turn a giant area into a set of large areas by installing
some glass has barely any impact on cost, but is already a semi-open
improvement. There's lots of good ideas on the spectrum of every desk in a
cubicles vs all desks on a giant football field, it's not one or the other and
you need to provide balance and options.

------
sethammons
I worked in an open office for 7 or 8 years, and now have been working from my
spare room for 2 years. I miss exactly what you are talking about:
collaboration is much harder, there is a dramatic lack of spontaneous
conversations, and I can no longer overhear or be overheard and get drawn into
a conversation organically that leads to a far, far better outcome than would
have happened otherwise.

Some things that make the open office I experienced good: nearly the entire
floor was developers with some managers, operations teams sat between
developer teams, the ability to turn off overhead lighting and just let
natural light in through large windows with two levels of shades on them, and
there were conference rooms near by for louder conversations and white
boarding. There were support folks who would need to take calls, but that was
in a separate area. I never heard them. We also would have no problem saying,
"hey, too loud" if a conversation good too loud or if something serious was
going on. Another benefit was that when it was lunch time, just about everyone
got lunch at the same time and ate together; 50-80 people in the kitchen
talking shop or silly things, building rapport, hearing issues others are
facing and offering help and solutions.

Sometimes, like at the end of the week, it might get too noisy with too many
conversations. Then it was time for headphones for some. But we are talking
like an hour or two a week.

------
luckylion
Personally, my productivity drops when I get external stimuli. Movement? Lots
of color? I won't get into a deep concentration and flow.

Fortunately, I work from home most of the time. I've build the antithesis to
an open plan office: I've built an even smaller office in my office where I've
essentially put up black curtains all round my desk. Working with a VR headset
might be an option as well, but from what I hear they're not quite production
ready yet for long term office/programming work.

------
zhte415
I quite like open plan offices.

But it really depends on what your job/task is.

And how well designed the open plan area is: Break-out spaces, individual
rooms for when someone needs to focus, have extensive telephone calls
especially of a confidential nature, plenty of meeting rooms, cubicles (I hate
cubicles, but that's me, some people like them). And plenty of natural light.

And if someone wants to work remotely, that's good. You're not me, and then I
appreciate doing this sometimes. A lot of people prefer to not work remotely
because of the work-life divide an office space benefits. And some enjoy the
social environment.

I absolutely cannot work listening to music but am fine with osmosis of office
chatter; make sure the printer's in a printer room, putting it on the floor is
a special form of hell. And have a pantry for eating, I quite like the taste
of aged fish but don't want to smell it.

In my experience hot-desking does not work. The benefit of people sitting
together is there's a work-flow happening. People that need to talk to each
other can. In hot-desking that all breaks down so what's the point at all
other than when the whole office are individual contributors and office layout
is irrelevant - many people have a relationship even with the plant that sits
next to them.

Not everyone's the same. Provide options. It's a team effort. What works for
the team as a whole? Measure what the team does, analyse it, reflect.

------
peterhi
When I work in an open office I am always been up to date with what is going
on. We have been able to squash problems when they were small because we could
overhear people having problems with the systems. Problems that would be too
small to bother us with if we are working from home. Communication in the
office is quicker, we can get to the root of something fast. People who might
known something will overhear and chip in

Lots of small things get fixed and fail to grow into big things

When I work from home I get uninterrupted focus on the task at hand which is
something that is almost impossible in the office but only get to hear about
problems when they get big and urgent

I also feel that I am dropping out of the loop. There are too many messaging
systems that I need to keep an eye on, email, chat, texts, whatsapp, slack to
keep in touch. In office communications is basically email for clients or in
person

If I have a solid piece of work to do the office is not the best place but
only if you can do it by yourself. In the office I can see when I can or
cannot interrupt someone. When working from home I have no idea if it is a
good time to interrupt someone

But for me the open office is only 12-15 people. Large than that and
communications become impossible and the noise to signal get worse. Also
managers seem to do more 'managing' in bigger offices :(

~~~
me_me_me
> But for me the open office is only 12-15 people.

Yeah, that's called redefinition. And it muddles the conversation. Open office
space is a whole floor converted into stripped down cubicles.

What you are describing is an office for a team. I worked in similar
environment (bit smaller) and it is indeed great for collaboration and
productivity.

------
pacifika
>I feel like you'd miss out on so much collaborative effort and serendipitous
& spontaneous conversations with colleagues that solve problems out of the
blue.

It's easier to get more connected than less connected.

For example facilitate social discussions by adding shared spaces, as it
relies on the estates department. Comparatively, noise and interruptions are a
lot harder to hchange as it relies on behaviour.

Solving hard problems requires focus time. You constantly fight against focus
time in an open office.

------
lcuff
As someone who has worked in private offices, cube farms and open offices, I
have to say the private office space allowed me to think deeply about things
in a deliciously uninterrupted way. But then again ... I once spent the whole
day thinking about a class I was designing, making just a few marks on a white
board. The modern approach, AFAICT is to whip up a test and start coding. I
don't believe it's better, but it is the current fashion.

------
sunaurus
The constant "threat" of interruption is exhausting. Even on quiet days, it's
mentally very difficult to force myself to focus when I know that somebody can
break my focus at any moment.

I'm lucky because I have an awesome home-office, so when I need to focus more,
I can just work from home. But many people don't have that luxury, so open
offices probably end up being quite harmful to overall productivity.

------
GekkePrutser
Why?

Noise, everyone around me talking on different conference calls and trying to
concentrate on my own. Constant distractions both audio and visual. People
don't respect the "headphones so stop bothering me" rule.

Yeah the collaboration is a plus, but it's just hard when you really need to
get some serious work done.

I started working in 2000 and even as an intern I had my own office. It was a
lot more productive.

------
gt565k
Open office plans for software developers is like the worst thing ever, unless
your culture is one where people are quiet and put their headphones in and get
to work.

I had that experience at one company, but others were a total mess.

A software developer needs at least a good 3-4 hour block of uninterruption to
produce something valuable. Context switching and distractions are a
productivity killer when it comes to building software.

At one company, we would have upper management come into our shared office (5
desks) where we had 3 developers working, and they would have their personal
and business calls right next to us. Total disregard for people's personal
space, peace of mind, and work environment.

For shared open offices to work, you need a strong culture and understanding
that unless you are to be quiet and work on your tasks, you need to get out of
the shared office and go discuss group matters in a conference room.

------
sersi
I sometimes think that the perfect office space would be a room for teams of
around 10 with maybe 3-4 alcoves or smaller office rooms that people can
retreat too when they have calls to make or when they want to have complete
quite...

The idea is to keep the collaborative effort and spontaneous conversation
while still having place to retreat for silence and while limiting the full
amount of noise by limiting the total number of people.

My first experience working for a company was in a traditional Japanese house
in Kyoto which approximates this a bit, there was a relatively big room where
we often worked but I would sometimes retreat downstairs and gaze at the
indoor garden while working in silence..

Obviously such a setup would cost a lot more to companies but I do think that
the productivity gains would help...

------
gumby
The open plan office was the norm until the cubicle was invented (by Herman
Miller I believe) _as a tool of liberation_ in the 1960s. Just look at any
film from the 50s (like The Apartment or Desk Set) to see.

Some research institutions, inspired by academia, had offices (IBM, PARC, IAS,
Bell Labs..) and mingling areas it that was less common.

I saw open plan offices reappear around 2000 when the price of Palo Alto real
estate started shooting up and frankly it shocked me. It’s crazy to me that
this is considered savings given how much it costs to recruit and pay a
person. I can’t concentrate with noise or visual clutter (people moving in my
field of view).

Some jobs do do better with an open plan, like sales teams. It’s a cultural
issue.

------
lukey_q
I'm a team lead and every single person on my team has told me they feel much
more productive and able to focus since lockdown and 100% remote work started.
One of the people on my team would normally work in our office's "chill room"
because he found it slightly easier to focus in there compared to his actual
desk.

In my opinion an open plan office for developers (or anyone, really) would
ideally be an option, but you would have to opt-in. There are situations where
being able to shout over your laptop at your coworkers is going to be
beneficial, but there are also situations where people should be able to zone
out and concentrate (zone in?) for several hours at a time without having to
blast white noise in their headphones.

------
AmericanChopper
I personally like them a lot, and I know plenty of people who range from also
liking them to being indifferent about them. It’s just one of the topics HN
shows a very strong groupthink about. Wrong opinions on open plan offices are
downvoted very aggressively, and complaints about them are comically
exaggerated.

I think most people who complain about them here haven’t experienced the
alternatives. The most likely alternative is cubicle farms, which are soul
crushingly terrible, or a number of different solutions which all require use
of much more floor space. The economics of a more-floor-space approach would
reasonably make everybody about $20,000-$50,000/year more expensive to employ,
and well you can guess where that money would come from...

------
duncan_bayne
I have worked in private offices, team spaces, and open plan.

Having a private office was great, but a team space I shared a few years ago -
rented just for that team, for around three months - was astonishingly
productive for all of us, with almost none of the downsides of open plan.

As far as open plan goes: it is worse for mental health, productivity, and
creativity. There is ample evidence to support those assertions (
[https://theconversation.com/a-new-study-should-be-the-
final-...](https://theconversation.com/a-new-study-should-be-the-final-nail-
for-open-plan-offices-99756)).

The only advantage open plan has is that it is cheaper, per person, than any
alternative - if you only factor in the cost of office space.

------
some_furry
> This topic seems to come up time and time again on here. As someone young
> and new to the industry I have only ever experienced open plan offices, so I
> don't really know what the alternative is like.

I appreciate your open mind on the subject!

> However I'm inclined to say I don't think I would enjoy cubicles or private
> offices. I feel like you'd miss out on so much collaborative effort and
> serendipitous & spontaneous conversations with colleagues that solve
> problems out of the blue.

This is very unsettling to hear: That's the exact kind of hand-wavy argument
that managers make.

Truthfully, I can't help but think of Stockholm syndrome when I read that
sentence.

Here's the clencher: If you can't collaborate effectively in a private office
or from home, there's a systemic mechanism failure. If your team or company
isn't setup for effective communication, you will find yourself trapped in an
open office plan _and believing they 're the only way to work_.

However, the real problem is buried: Your team/company either cannot
effectively collaborate outside of an artificial environment, or at least
believes that to be the case. Assuming this is true: Why?

For background, I've worked remote for most of my career, but at the start, I
had an open office job (and a two hour commute each way, consisting of an hour
walk to the nearest bus stop and an hour bus ride to downtown Orlando, because
the job didn't pay well enough to consider purchasing a car). In hindsight, it
was a miserable experience, but at the time I just coped with it.

> I also think it's just plain isolating being on your own in a room all day.

Easy lifehack: Don't do that. Working remote doesn't require you do that.
Working in a private office doesn't require you do that.

If you have a private office, you can also schedule 1:1 meetings _in your
office_.

If you're working from home, take regular breaks to talk to your
family/neighbors/etc. Pet your dogs. Dogs need love too!

> What's wrong with just putting some headphones on if you want to put your
> head down and do some deep, quiet work?

What's wrong with putting your jams on the speakers, rather than headphones,
in your home office and standing up to dance when a good song comes on your
playlist to get your blood flowing?

Different strokes.

------
chrisbennet
As a developer, you really don't spend a lot of time in spontaneous
conversations about work. The open office is a money saving scheme for
management who views coders as typists.

That said I wish they were popular - for my competitors. :-)

------
benwerner01
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/07/30/private-offices-
re...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/07/30/private-offices-redux/)

------
roland35
I had a great office layout which was a large room with 10-25 developers and
managers as the team grew. The key factors which made the office work well
was: plenty of space per developer (L shaped desk about 8x8ft), generally
courteous noise levels, and a a few other rooms for louder work or larger
conversations (meeting room, lab, extra rooms).

Collaboration was great which was important for a new project. I think for an
existing long running project less collaboration may be necessary and extra
separation may be better for productivity.

------
watwut
> I would enjoy cubicles or private offices. I feel like you'd miss out on so
> much collaborative effort and serendipitous & spontaneous conversations with
> colleagues that solve problems out of the blue.

Private office does not have to mean that single person is in the room. We
have offices big enough to hold whole cooperating team, in general of 3-8
people, occasionally more.

So you get debate, but debates from other teams and you dont have to worry
that you are disturbing other teams.

------
joe202
The most objectionable part for me is noise level, followed by the fact that
my seat faces the big windows, which are frequently too bright. They are also
often too warm for my comfort, though too cold for others. I don't want to
listen to music or have hot ears from headphones. I started working life in
open plan but quieter than nowadays but best was working in a 4 person office.
I'm currently happier working in my study at home.

------
redis_mlc
> As someone young and new to the industry

Here's how open offices came about.

The CFO made a spreadsheet, and the "open office" column was a nickel less
than the alternatives.

~~~
CyberFonic
It's far more than a nickel difference. Any useful private office is about 100
sq ft. In an open office you can do with about 20 sq ft per person. So you
cram the workers into bull pens and the managers can have acres of offices
with windows and still save money on mid-city rents.

------
sacado2
I'm an introvert and like to have a quiet place of my own. I work way better
this way. I'm not alone in my office, though, we're 2 in the same room, and
the door is always open, and everyone else in keeps his office's door open
unless they need privacy. Best of both worlds.

I can't work with music/headphones. I tried, but it doesn't seem to work for
me as I tend to focus on the music.

~~~
gmtx725
> t doesn't seem to work for me as I tend to focus on the music

I get what you mean, I find you have to pick the right sort of music. For me
minimal techno is perfect, because it's energetic so doesn't relax me too much
like ambient music, but also monotonous/repetitive so I don't get too into it

------
dcminter
Pros: Situational awareness. It's cheaper.

Cons: Lack of focus. Dishonesty in how it's 'sold' to the workers; the cost is
never openly acknowledged as the reason.

I don't hate it. But I do suspect that the net result makes it a false
economy. While I do miss the cameraderie of being in an office while working
from home I'm not missing the distractions of open-plan.

~~~
dcminter
Now if you want me to really get my hackles up, ask me about hot-desking.
There's a policy invented by someone who had never met any actual human
beings! :)

------
rglullis
Each interruption you get (colleagues asking you something, chat messages,
impromptu meetings, even you catching with the corner of the eye two of your
colleagues leaving their tables to grab a coffee) costs at least 15 minutes of
your time to get back into a focused (i.e, productive) mental state.

> What's wrong with just putting some headphones on if you want to put your
> head down and do some deep, quiet work?

I don't know you, so don't try to take it personally, but I'd venture that
your always-on generation and the constant expectation of immediate feedback
led to _most_ of the younger ones incapable of really deep focus. When 85% of
the solutions to our problems is no more than 5 minutes of Googling around, it
gets really hard to exercise that part of the brain where we set ourselves to
dig through all the layers of abstraction and build a good mental map of the
problem to be solved.

When you do get in such a deep state of focus, it is not a problem to be
"plain isolating to be in a room all day" because you don't realize the time
passing around you. Like reading a good book that you just can't drop until is
finished, no one should feel bad for coming out of a 5-6 hour session of deep
focus, productive work and "not having connected" during that time.

------
yoz-y
Just like working from home is a mixed bag, so are the open offices. I think
the main issue is that ultimately we are dealing with people. Some like things
that other's don't.

And usually it's only those who don't like a thing that talk about it.

------
xena
I see sound. Open offices have lots of it. I think visually. This doesn't mix
well.

------
acarrera94
It’s great to see this many opinions. I suggest you take a look at the book
Peopleware. Part II of the book goes over the office environment and cites
several studies and makes a really good case against open plan offices.

------
peteforde
I collect links on topics that interest me, sometimes over long periods. I
have a list called "Open plan offices are bad".

[https://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-
interrupt...](https://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-a-
programmer/)

[https://www.mattblodgett.com/2015/06/just-wear-
headphones.ht...](https://www.mattblodgett.com/2015/06/just-wear-
headphones.html)

[https://dandreamsofcoding.com/2014/06/17/science-
superstitio...](https://dandreamsofcoding.com/2014/06/17/science-superstition-
and-open-plan-offices/)

[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)

[https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/09/10/developer-flow-
state-a...](https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/09/10/developer-flow-state-and-
its-impact-on-productivity/)

[https://hackernoon.com/what-happened-to-software-
development...](https://hackernoon.com/what-happened-to-software-
development-j92032w9)

[http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/10/09/is-facebooks-
massive-o...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/10/09/is-facebooks-massive-open-
office-scaring-away-developers/)

[https://www.prdaily.com/report-u-s-workers-hate-open-
office-...](https://www.prdaily.com/report-u-s-workers-hate-open-office-
spaces/)

[https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/08/the-case-for-
rooms/56...](https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/08/the-case-for-
rooms/563216/)

[https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191115-office-
noise-a...](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191115-office-noise-
acceptable-levels-personality-type)

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

Just... could you click a little quieter, please?

------
chrisbennet
As an aside, when I'm working in a cubicle and people talk in the hallway
right outside of my office I tell them:

"Hey guys, can move it down the hall, I'm trying to sleep here."

------
onion2k
_serendipitous & spontaneous conversations with colleagues that solve problems
out of the blue_

In my experience those "solutions" are usually wrong in the sense that they
only solve the immediate problem without giving due consideration to the wider
project. If you leave out a lot of people involved most problems are easy to
solve, because you're ignoring all the nuance and the things that make it
hard. The solutions are also very rarely documented, so after the discussion
people walk away with different ideas of what was discussed and different
solutions in mind. In short, they might feel good, but they're often quite bad
for the project.

------
nicholas73
Sometimes when I am wearing headphones, I get dissociated with the outside
world and forget that my farts make sounds. So I fart without muffling it, and
my neighbor thinks I'm just a jerk that toots openly. Then whenever he farts
he toots openly too, in a game of one-buttsmanship. As a result, nobody is
particularly comfortable working and I have to take walks when otherwise I
would have been blissfully ignorant.

------
hackerman123469
It's a nightmare for people with mental disorders such as ADHD.

------
alanfranz
I had written a post on my page some time ago:

[https://www.franzoni.eu/productivity-the-office-and-an-
open-...](https://www.franzoni.eu/productivity-the-office-and-an-open-floor-
plan/)

TL;DR: the open office may not be a problem per se. Instead:

1) It's a problem if you get a very large open office with excessive employee
density and/or with different kind of employees around. This usually results
in a lot of noise and/or distractions from unrelated teams.

2) It's a problem if there're not other places where to go have video/phone
calls, and/or if some people need to be constantly on their phone/meeting
system.

Privacy, safety and a calm environment should be a must for an office.
Otherwise, what's its purpose?

------
guggle
Because interruptions. Lots of them. Of all kinds.

