
Open plan offices don’t live up to the hype, finds Harvard Business School study - rmason
https://www.fastcompany.com/90204593/heres-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-open-plan-offices
======
sctb
Previous discussions:

[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)

~~~
beefman
And the original source for this particular article:

[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)

------
athenot
I've been in open plan offices that worked great and others that were
terrible. But I take issue with this part of the article:

> _Open plan offices have taken off because of a desire to increase
> interaction and collaboration among workers._

This is the reason invoked after the fact. The real motivation is a financial
one. You have X sqft of office space, Y people you'd like to fit in. Open plan
offices are seen as the most efficicent way to cram a lot of people into a
smaller space. Then more loftly reasons are invoked so that the company
doesn't look cheap.

~~~
gutnor
> The real motivation is a financial one.

And the absolute hatred people on HN have for it is most likely due to the
downgrade from personal office to shared space.

In Europe, where personal offices never really happened outside management,
Open Office are not working better, but they are the norm that people accept,
not a anger inducing topic.

~~~
mieseratte
I've never had a private office, accept for the time I tried holing up in an
unused server closet, but I have had a semi-private cube and compared to it
open offices are absolute shit.

In terms of space, cubicles aren't much different than open-office but there
is a cost reduction (cheap Ikea desks vs. desk and walls). I wonder how much
is cost, how much is space, and how much is being able to directly see all
your peons when managers make these decisions.

Personally, If I weren't about to go remote I'd probably come in one weekend
and setup a semi-permanent deer stand as my desk...

------
nimbius
as someone who works a blue-collar job, we tried this in one of our larger
auto repair shops and it was a hillarious disaster.

The layout is simple, the back of the shop handles repairs, maintenance,
customer orders and such for things like oil changes, and the 'front office'
handles your paperwork and such. our owner decided (after a TED talk and one
too many martinis at the motel wet bar) we needed to be more open. We tore
down dividers and pushed all the desks together and after six months, we'd
made nearly everyone insane. invoice printers (impact style) drowned out most
of our sales calls. accounts and finance often took their laptops into the
garage bays for peace and quiet, which meant laptops littered all over our
workbenches during their lunch break. Insurance cited us for having them in
the work shop. Some customers...well most...mistook us frequently for a bank,
or an adjacent business. our dock/shipping delivery clerk was now hammer-
stamping bills of lading right next to one of our senior managers and had to
hike back to the docks every 20 minutes (his fitbit tracked 10k steps in 4
hours one day.) The whole thing fell apart when a parts manager accidentally
kicked over a waste urea tank fluid container and sent two gallons of rancid
liquid into the waiting room carpet.

~~~
HillaryBriss
thank you for this entertaining and educational story!

the spilled urea tank is a particularly interesting element. it seriously
seems like this kind of disaster could be used to get other offices to move
away from the open plan.

hmmm. what might be the "spilled urea tank" moment in a software startup's
office? maybe something related to the CEO's personal information being
leaked.

~~~
iamdave
_what might be the "spilled urea tank" moment in a software startup's office?
maybe something related to the CEO's personal information being leaked._

Yeah probably this. The number of people who I observe walking away from their
machines without locking the desktop on a daily basis is terrifying from a
security standpoint.

------
drb91
The hype of open offices is how many people you can cram in a room. I’m tired
of pretending otherwise.

~~~
thomasmeeks
I think that is a large part of it, I strongly agree.

However, I think there are two other factors that come into play that are very
tough for people to vocalize when they are defending an open office.

1\. Open offices are more appealing visually to a wider swath of people. Of
course you can make either kind of office pretty, but there's something about
humans that just really loves the wide open spaces.

2\. Humans are social, we like to interact, even at the expense of
productivity.

Personally, I prefer an office-per-team approach, so sort of a middle ground
that allows for fast collaboration but doesn't require negotiating with 100
other people on the same floor about noise level, etc.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
> 2\. Humans are social, we like to interact, even at the expense of
> productivity.

Wrong. Extroverts like to interact. Not introverts. And the extroverts are
usually who are put into positions of power, and think that everyone is like
them.

It is sheer hell to work in IT and yet another cattle-class open office.

~~~
drb91
I disagree; I am introverted and I enjoy interacting. It's my inability to
control when and for how long that poses an issue in an open office
environment.

------
smt88
I know companies that are switching to open offices this year. One is Fortune
500.

Open offices will continue to be used as (bad, short-sighted) cost-saving
measures while decision-makers continue to pretend they're fun and/or foster
collaboration.

~~~
iamdave
_decision-makers continue to pretend they 're fun and/or foster collaboration_

That's because 99 times out 100, those decision makers don't subject
themselves to the open office. They always get their own quiet nook of the
workspace with a door while the workforce gets the joy of learning how noise-
cancelling headphones work (or, on the flip side: learn that their favorite
brand of headphones aren't doing the job).

~~~
maxxxxx
Exactly. In my company the facilities department shrugs off any suggestions
that the current layout is too loud and hard to work in. Obviously they
themselves work in a nice quiet team office with 5 people and everybody has a
nice window seat with plenty of space. It should be required that whoever
makes these decisions should have to dogfood them.

~~~
iamdave
I don't disagree but

 _It should be required that whoever makes these decisions should have to
dogfood them._

By what mechanism would this occur? I've spent enough time in the military to
know human ego will never allow this to happen, it's like asking the fox to
put a lock on the hen house, and turn the keys over to the farmer. Outside of
exceptional leaders like the ones where lykr0n works-that actually want to be
and behave like leaders-very rarely will you see command subjecting themselves
to the shit endured by the commanded.

~~~
maxxxxx
In the case of the open office it should be required that the people who make
the decision also work in the same office layout. That's not difficult to do.
Don't overthink it.

Let's start with CEOs and VPs work elbow by elbow in an open layout and have
to buy headphones.

~~~
iamdave
_Don 't overthink it._

This isn't asking antagonistically, it's a legitimate ask, so I hope you'll
understand my tone isn't one of aggression:

How am I over thinking it? The proposed idea is to require leaders sit with
their constituents. Leaders are the ones choosing these horrible open office
layouts. How do you make them do something that in many cases, as many folks
are replying in this thread to the effect of-they do not want to do?

Do you appeal to the board of directors? What does that look like? When one
says "this should be required", my immediate thought is, okay how do you
implement it, and how do you actually enforce it?

And that's what I'm asking here. I don't think I'm overthinking it, but
thinking exactly the question that will need to be answered if that suggestion
is to take root anywhere. _How_ do you require the leaders of your company to
do something they might not want to do?

------
1_800_UNICORN
I just want to remind folks that there are, in fact, organizations for whom
the open plan actually works. I've spent the last few years practicing XP, on
a collaborative team that includes PM, UX, QA, and devs, and we work in an
open plan with no complaints. We find that it REALLY helps us minimize
meetings and email/Slack since we can quickly turn to the person we need, ask
our question, get an answer, and get back to work. As a developer it's hugely
refreshing to be able to easily ask for advice or input from the rest of the
dev team in a rapid way.

The reason I mention this anecdote is not to dispute any of the studies... I
understand the difference between anecdotal evidence and quantitative
evidence. Just a counter-point to the inevitable echo chamber of complaints
about open floor plans being inhumane, a money-grab, etc etc.

~~~
dvtrn
_We find that it REALLY helps us minimize meetings and email /Slack since we
can quickly turn to the person we need, ask our question, get an answer, and
get back to work._

Someone downvoted me in another thread about open-offices because I do this. A
coworker who sits three feet away often pings me multiple times a day with
questions that are much easier answered by turning around, wheeling over
pointing to a few things on their screen, explaining how they related and
wheeling back over.

They said "I was part of the problem".

Because it's quicker to turn around and have a human conversation with someone
sitting a yard away than type, take screenshots, and beam them over the
network?

~~~
watwut
Cause slack does not interrupt while I am focused while your question does
interrupt while I am focused. It takes effort and time to get back to focused
state. Frequent random interrupts kill productivity.

So, while it is making you faster, it is killing focus and productivity of the
person you are asking to. Which is fine as long as the other person does not
have deadline or other need to produce more.

~~~
dvtrn
_it is killing focus and productivity of the person you are asking to._

At the expense of mine by asking me a question, and asking me for help.

Seems rather one-sided, no? A colleague has asked for my help. Their
concentration is _already_ broken because there is a problem they need help
solving, and probably their work progress is halted because they're unsure
what to do about a given problem, and think I am someone who can help them.

I genuinely do not understand the objection to whipping around and offering to
help that person solve a problem that prevents them from accomplishing a task,
project, assignment or obligation.

I ask for help understanding the conceit here, that the person who turns
around and helps their colleague is at fault of 'breaking someone's
concentration' when _they were asked to provide help to a coworker_.

~~~
watwut
> I ask for help understanding the conceit here, that the person who turns
> around and helps their colleague is at fault of 'breaking someone's
> concentration' when they were asked to provide help to a coworker.

How on earth did you came to that interpretation?

The person who asks question is interrupting the other one. Asking via slack
is less intrusive as it gives the colleague the chance to finish whatever the
colleague is doing before answering.

~~~
dvtrn
_How on earth did you came to that interpretation?_

Because SO many of the replies to my original inquiry seem-by verbiage-to have
taken what I said as an indicator that I was the one _causing_ the
interruption, not the one responding to it.

Or, maybe I misunderstood their replies wholesale, and are in fact suggesting
that responding to someone who asks for help electronically with ad hoc
assistance contributes to the spiraling decline of office productivity by
turning to the person sitting 36" away and offering the requested assistance.

~~~
watwut
Ah, I did actually misunderstood your original comment. I apologise.

------
legitster
From data I have collected for our organization:

\- Random small interruptions were the biggest killers of productivity.

\- In a cube environment, productivity is already very high. If people need
something, they have no problem taking a few steps and asking about it.

\- The bigger complaint was the lack of adequate meeting spaces. Managers
never perceived this because they had offices to meet in, so they only cared
about having a few, very big meeting spaces.

\- A space that doesn't have a shutting door is useless to collaborate/meet
in.

\- Very few people actually care about the size of their cubicles. A lot of
people care about the heights of their cubicles and the number of walls.

I wish more organizations were honest about their decisions to move to open-
office. If you actually work with and listen to your employees' needs you can
actually find more ideal compromises. But if you just start ripping out cubes
to save money and tell employees it's going to be great, it's incredibly
hostile.

------
pravint
It’s surprising to see how companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars
salary per annum to the employees but fail to provide work environment which
enables them to maximize their productivity.

~~~
toyg
I'm sure somebody would say that's precisely _because_ they pay people so
much, that they are constantly out to reduce costs elsewhere.

In reality, managers are simply on the constant lookout to squeeze costs down,
and worker salaries escape the cut only in some job markets because of very
specific circumstances (like a period of history when the need to build
software severely outstrips overall production capacity). There is no real
master plan to maximize productivity.

------
organsnyder
Today is my last day at a job with an open plan office. It's one of the main
reasons I'm leaving.

~~~
lsiunsuex
And dress code. At least we have cubes; but until last month, we had to dress
business casual. Now for $15 / month donation to a charity the company
chooses, we can wear jeans all month. No big deal in the summer when it's
60-90F but wearing dress pants to work when it's 5F and 3 feet of snow is
really crappy.

If it didn't change soon, I was considering leaving; it did last month, so no
real plans to move right now, lol... (I don't mind the $15 / month so long as
it goes to a good cause and the vast majority of the employees (400+) are
choosing to do it)

~~~
loa-in-backup
What? I would forgo the donation, and wear jeans anyway. For me it smells of
coercion to fund something.

~~~
lsiunsuex
It's usually cancer institutes; pet rescues, shelters, etc... The employees
submit suggestions where to donate every month and the business chooses 1
every month. Not like it's going to a shell company or some other ridiculous
movie story plot, lol...

~~~
snoman
You're probably right, but are you getting the tax deduction for donating, or
is your employer?

400 * 15 * 12 = 72,000 / yr that your employer may be deducting from wages on
the backs of their employees... voluntary or not.

Then they get to advertise their generosity and optional dress code.

I hate thinking pessimistically like this, but you get conned enough times...
and it's not like they actually need a dress code, if they're comfortable with
taking money for people not abiding by it.

------
nine_k
I have two screens before me; they take ~90% of my field of view, the rest
occupied by the desk. I look at the large windows sometimes, when I need to
contemplate and refocus my eyes.

I have good ear-on headphones that isolate me from the sounds of the office
most of the day.

I have a comfortable chair, and a large enough desk to never touch my
colleagues who sit next to me. I have a pretty minimal amount of personal
stuff on the desk: a mug, a phone charging stand; my backpack is under the
desk.

I'm pretty much insulated from the rest of the open office I'm sitting in, and
have no idea what's happening around unless I choose to take a look. If you
want to collaborate, well, come closer and wave your hand so that I noticed
you and removed the headphones. Good thing you can notice if I'm sitting at my
desk (or went for a coffee) from the other end of the open space.

I did work in smaller, _near_ personal offices. They used to have a somehow
poorer window views, and did not offer a lot in the quietness department,
because people talking next to you make the same noise in a small office and a
large (open-space) office. Only a truly personal office helps here. OTOH a
properly sound-insulated personal office would either feel claustrophobic to
many people, or have to be rather large. With large, low-density personal
offices, walking to someone becomes a lengthier process.

Instead I think that an open(ish) office, a culture of keeping reasonably
quiet, and a good set of meeting rooms and phone rooms gives you the best of
both worlds: a private space when you need to talk at length, and close
proximity when you don't.

~~~
npongratz
> If you want to collaborate, well, come closer and wave your hand so that I
> noticed you and removed the headphones.

Sure would be nice if people would merely wave their hand in front of me.
Nope, instead, everyone [0] does one (or both) of two things: come up behind
me and tap my shoulder, or come up behind me and shout.

I don't blame them for wanting my attention, but the end result is the same: I
physically jump, sometimes yelp, and it takes me many minutes to get back to
the same level of productivity I was before the ambush.

Is "ambush" too strong a word? Nope. To my reptile brain, it's exactly what
happened: so now it's time to fight or flee.

For me, open offices are evil. It's the place I go to get ambushed.

[0] Even coworkers who know how I will respond. They've said so, apologize,
and still do it.

~~~
nine_k
Yelling in an open office is a no-no (unless you've assembled to sing a "happy
birthday to you" anyway). Don't people _around_ you feel distracted by someone
shouting, and protest?

I've seen people putting small rear-view mirrors on desks or screen corners to
notice people coming from behind. But here, I think, it would mostly take some
talking (repeatedly) to your colleagues, and explaining why tapping or
shouting _does not work_ for you, and waving would be a better way.

Next time somebody shouts at you from behind, turn, say quietly "I don't react
to shouting; please come and wave your hand quietly to get my attention", then
turn back and continue to work.

~~~
npongratz
Thanks for the advice. As I alluded in my footnote, I haven't been effective
in convincing anyone to change. Apparently it's just not something that's top
of mind for a person who feels they need to get my immediate attention (and
maybe one tenth of the time the "immediate" aspect is actually warranted).

And to be fair, my characterization of "shouting" is probably an exaggeration,
but in the moment it's how my brain interprets the hailing.

------
motohagiography
This topic seems to appear quarterly here. I've commented on it before.

If they are as bad as we think they are, there must be a "closed office,"
arbitrage play where you can beat other startups with more adult interior
design.

~~~
toyg
Fog Creek did it, and it seems to have paid off for them.

The problem is that, for most businesses, cash is king. Hard-to-measure
productivity improvements will invariably lose to immediate financial rewards.

~~~
anildash
Yeah, we've had a lot of success with this at Fog Creek, but the overall
diagnosis is correct: most companies make false optimizations for short-term
gain over long-term. Sometimes it's understandable because resources are
constrained, but other times it's truly inexplicable.

------
tfandango
I wonder if cubicles are considered open plan or not? I used to work in those
and found them more private than the open plan I work in now. I imagine most
companies are trying to avoid the corporate cube farm appearance in favor of
the cool open plan startup vibe. Personally I try to work from home once in a
while so I can concentrate.

~~~
toyg
_> I wonder if cubicles are considered open plan or not? _

Not.

------
kabdib
I work in a largely open space environment, and it's fine. The thing that
makes it fine is that our desks are on wheels, and we are free to relocate to
any part of the company that we like, no permission needed. (Well, the other
big components are (1) a fair amount of uncommitted or otherwise fluid space
to move around in, and (2) a large degree of freedom and self-determination).

Want to make a team? Find a room, move your desks in there and ->poof<\- you
have a team. Need to sit nearer the two people you're working closely with
this week? Just move your desks together for a while, while staying in the
same room as the project. Need your own office for a month or two? You can
probably find one, or at least find an out-of-the-way corner that is quiet.

I've worked in open-plan spaces where you had assigned seating, and it was
fucking miserable. An open plan combined with autonomy and trust works pretty
well.

~~~
loco5niner
> Want to make a team? Find a room, move your desks in there and ->poof<\- you
> have a team. Need to sit nearer the two people you're working closely with
> this week? Just move your desks together for a while, while staying in the
> same room as the project. Need your own office for a month or two? You can
> probably find one, or at least find an out-of-the-way corner that is quiet.

Wow, sounds great.

------
tonygrue
afaict, this study looked at only _two_ instances of _fortune 500 companies_
who _moved_ some people to open office plans and compared them to those who
were not moved.

Additionally, they measured 'interactions', which was a self defined metric
that afaict has no grounding in anything.

I'm not sure if one of two Fortune 500 companies, used to working in an
office, generalizes to me. So, I'm not sure how much I personally weight the
outcome of this study.

I've worked in both offices and open office plans, and there were things I did
and didn't like about both. Offices required more formal mind-melding but I
had more concentration time during peak business hours. Pit allowed me to feel
more camaraderie, but required me to work off hours to get concentrated work
done. If it were up to be I'd do 3 days in an office and 2 days in a open pit.

------
outime
I’ve learned to appreciate open offices after a while - I really like having
quick access to colleagues (after quickly asking through chat or when they’re
obviously available).

I believe that a good culture and library-like rules can make it work and
provide some benefits. It also has some obvious drawbacks (more visual
distractions, flu spreading, etc), but I believe the main culprit often is
companies having open offices with no “rules” e.g. random people screaming or
laughing histerically. People is then forced to isolate themselves with NC-
headphones which obviously kills the benefits this layout has.

------
scarejunba
The actual study points out that on most of the measures, full open plan beat
cubicles (high and low walled) and only barely lose to shared offices.

I suppose a more interesting question is how much a seating plan contributes
to revenue, operating margin, and growth.

It is indeed interesting that people report higher ease of collaboration in
full private offices. Perhaps the ability to have a conversation in an office
means that you don't have to go somewhere to talk and so it works out.

Anyway, given the measures in the study, full open plan with no restrictions
come out looking pretty good.

------
bazooka_penguin
Why not a compromise. Sit small teams together in separate cubes or offices?
Once I was stuck with half my team in a conference room because of renovations
in the office and while I can't speak for productivity it was a good
environment for my sanity. Everyone was quiet enough and we were a tight knit
group of young developers so it went smoothly enough. The other half of the
team fared a little worse because of a few contentious individuals though

~~~
ken
The higher costs of a build out, combined with the increased noise of open
floor plan, and no comment on productivity. This sounds like the worst kind of
compromise: cut the baby in half.

------
youdontknowtho
I hope whoever keeps submitting these stories finally gets their boss to
notice and gets the cubicle walls that they want so much.

Full disclaimer: I have some and they are awesome.

------
pixelpp
I think this depends on personalities. I worked in an open office where there
were people going crazy because there were a bunch of loud extroverts. I am
extroverted and cubicles make me develop bad habits like watching YouTube all
day, and such. I need constant interaction with people. Ideating with other
designers gives me life, and expands my creativity.

------
hashkb
Is there any research that shows open plan has any benefits other than cost?
Why do we keep acting like this is surprising news?

~~~
iamdave
The only thing surprising that with so much evidence of how it hurts workers,
the people making those decisions _do not_ seem to care. And by that I mean
not surprising at all.

You know that one quote from Upton Sinclair? "It is difficult to get someone
to understand something whose salary depends on them not understanding it"?

Fits this issue like a glove.

------
tombert
I had a comment on this about a week ago where I was complaining about the
world cup noise on a TV right behind me, and I stand by that.

People yelling during a sporting event, or just generally horseplaying, ends
up being very distracting to me. I'm aware headphones exist, but I typically
work better in near-silence, which is borderline impossible with an open
office plan.

This is in combination with the fact that I'm pretty sure I've gotten at least
one illness from a coworker in the past when he sneezed. It's possible I would
have gotten it anyway, but I think it's a non-controversial thing to say that
close contact to people can make disease spread more easily.

I think these open offices are here to stay, since the rest of my coworkers
(and indeed, a large percentage of the hacker workforce) seem to feel like
they work better with them. Still, a guy can dream...or look for a remote job.

------
gdulli
Wasn't the "hype" a lightweight misdirection from the fact that putting
employees in the smallest/cheapest amount of square footage was always the
goal?

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Many companies already spend inefficiently (from a productivity point of view)
on stupid lavish office features like gourmet coffee stations, video game
rooms, roof decks, or things like booze-focused parties.

I don’t get why anyone believes open-plan offices are chosen to save money.
Maybe in the most spartan of bootstrapped startups, sure, but most of the time
it’s for optics and status signalling, part of turning the office into a
shrine to the executives.

Companies have been studying, measuring and carefully quantifying knowledge
worker productivity for a hundred years. The idea that “productivity lost to
open spaces is hard to measure, but short term savings is an obvious win on
paper” is silly. Companies are not that stupid.

No, open plan offices are deliberately chosen for status and optics, and to
some extent to make the environment routinize your fealty as a worker and
ingrain into your mind the obvious fact that your productivity isn’t valued;
that your economic worth in most of these companies is higher if you function
like a decorative piece of furniture.

~~~
ghaff
I expect most companies who do it genuinely believe it's what the cool kids
are doing for all sorts of good reasons. But it doesn't hurt that it saves
money into the bargain. If it _increased_ facilities costs significantly, I
expect there would be less enthusiasm.

It's like eco initiatives at hotels. Looking green with respect to
housekeeping would be less interesting if it cost them money rather than saved
them.

I don't really disagree with your status and optics argument though.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
I worked for a large education technology company that drastically increased
its facilities costs to convert a huge office building, that the company
_owned already_ , from private offices into open-plan shared desks.

Worse, this office (in Columbus, Ohio), housed almost entirely corporate HR
and regional sales staff, almost no engineering presence and no plans to
significant change the headcount there.

Someone asked about it over the company’s quarterly web cast town hall
meeting, and the CEO replied that they were transforming into an innovation
company, that each and every one of us watching was an innovator and that
innovators love open spaces.

The staff in Columbus routinely had to handle sensitive calls about HR issues,
payroll, medical leave, terminations, etc., and needed private phone call
facilities almost all day every day.

So the company _paid money_ (pure loss here since they aren’t renting), to
destroy privacy features that were actively needed, solely for optics.

------
crack-the-code
I'm curious to know I'll f there is a study that these open office plans to
actually work.

------
Pica_soO
Dear god, imagine if they gunned down the open office space as a a concept.

The efficiency dreams they will develop next and their slogans: "Working in a
sleep (al)coffin, to always be well rested. Work like a borg, rest like a
swede."

"Working in several layers of hammock, to get the hang off it."

"Working cuddled together in a transparent ballpit room, to grow as a social
being."

"Working from your own car, from the parking space. Cause the best office, is
where you feel the drive."

There is always a level of dystopia beneath the dystopia of today.

The open office is driving the home office movement. The only thing preventing
the home office from triumphing, is the failure to create external meetups -
either at home or at another temporary location.

