
Dear recruiter, “open floor space” is not a job benefit - ahjones
https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/03/20/open-floor-plan/
======
vinceguidry
Don't tip off the recruiters, if they do figure out that we're filtering on
"open office space" then they'll stop putting that in the job descriptions,
and we won't be able to easily tell anymore.

------
headcanon
I think it really depends on the company, and the interior architecture of the
office. We have what is considered an open floor space, but have rooms
available for private meetings and for heads-down working. Couple that with a
headphone-respecting and results-only culture (as in, nobody cares if they see
you on facebook, you're only judged on your overall output) and I don't really
have a problem with it.

Its also not really feasible with the size of our office for people to have
individual offices. We've set up privacy curtains and worked with the natural
partitions of the space to at least mitigate the potential issues with a
purely open plan. We also have our desks set up in functional pods where
you're working next to people on your team. I'm just saying it can be done
correctly, with the right interior planning.

I've also been in an office that went the opposite direction and had
individual offices for everyone, and I felt that to be too isolating and
depressing over time, although there were other factors that made me feel that
way too.

Take it with a grain of salt though - we're ~60 people, and I've seen some of
the bigger open-floor offices that seem more in line with the arguments
presented here. It really comes down to the individual company and their
needs.

~~~
thesmallestcat
I don't want to have to wear headphones.

~~~
sotojuan
> but have rooms available ... for heads-down working

Seems like you don't have to.

~~~
loco5niner
So, I can make one of those rooms my permanent office? Ok, I'm down with that.
Otherwise, it's not the same thing.

~~~
pushECX
I basically did this at my job. The open office chatter and sounds really
affects me, and I really don't feel like pumping more sound into my ears all
the time just to drown out the sound I don't want to listen to. So, I started
grabbing the same small private space in our office every day and worked there
all day long. Now everyone knows it as my "office", even though it's mostly
said as a joke.

------
sotojuan
I think the biggest problem with open floor spaces is that they include the
sales/marketing teams, most of whom (in my experience) speak on the phone or
with each other all day. Sometimes, believe it or not, on speaker.

I don't mind working with fellow engineers in the same table in a quiet room
every now and then. It's when you have no escape to work in quiet focus that
it becomes a problem.

~~~
headcanon
Yeah, we have sales and marketing on a different floor - A year ago we were
all on the same floor before we expanded upstairs, and it was pretty insane!

------
deathanatos
I feel like the article ascribes way too much to the "control" aspect. In my
experience, the truth seems closer to the "ignorance" than to "malice";
companies are _lazy_ : they see other companies touting their open floor plans
— big ones, like Facebook! — and think, if Facebook is doing it, it _must_ be
good! That, and/or it's just cheaper / easier to cram people into an open
floor plan than trying to figure out walls.

Mix into that that so often recruiters seem to be outsourced to a third-party
company composed of people who know next to _nothing_ about engineering, and
it shouldn't be surprising. They're parroting what they've seen other job
posts tout. Until a significant number of job postings start listing "closed
floor plan" or something along those lines, the cycle will continue.

And, it's not even just "control": it's also a loss of productivity through
noise and disease. The last time I was in an open floor plan and a mild cold
struck, it cost two engineer weeks. That's a couple thousand dollars; if a
better layout could have quarantined that even slightly (it went through four
people), the extra space required _might actually pay for itself_ after some
modest amount of time. But I don't know for sure, and someone would actually
need to do the math, but nobody can: things like illnesses, and illness
spreading are so untracked that it's a completely hidden cost that shows up on
no ledger.

~~~
M_Grey
Agreed, but if you're on the receiving end, how much will you care about
parsing the motives of the horrendous conditions you find yourself in? Mostly,
if you're wise, you'll just want to avoid those conditions.

------
notacoward
Open-plan offices are inherently age-ist. It's well known that older adults
have more trouble identifying the location of sounds, discriminating between
foreground and background sounds (dynamic range), etc. This means that someone
talking elsewhere in the office seems just like someone talking right in their
ear, requiring a _conscious effort_ to block it out or concentrate on the
person who is actually talking right in front of them. A noise level that
wouldn't bother young people at all can thus be quite harmful to older
people's productivity, putting them at a disadvantage and effectively
"filtering them out" of many workplaces. It's only a matter of time before
some of the people now singing the praises of open workspaces start filing
lawsuits regarding those very same workspaces, as each position suits their
personal interests.

------
markwaldron
If I see "open floor space", I better also see "a pair of headphones of your
choice"

~~~
toomuchtodo
That's actually generous of you. After working remote for almost 3 years, I
won't even consider a position that requires me to go into an office.

~~~
CuriouslyC
If only big corporations realized what a massive productivity boost working
naked is.

------
dep_b
My god I saw a picture of Facebook and it looked like hell to me.

------
chrisbennet
I really like this open office plan trend. Well, not for me, but for the
companies I compete against. ;-)

