
Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace - ghosh
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/30/google-got-it-wrong-the-open-office-trend-is-destroying-the-workplace/?postshare=1051429409402997
======
Ironlink
Previous discussion, 4 months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065)

------
dillon
I think this has been a discussion going on for a long time now. What I
believe to be true is it really depends on the person. If you're someone who
is self-conscious then yes you'll feel like everyone is judging you all the
time. If you have the ability to stay focused on your work without being
around colleagues then you should be allowed to work from home.

I've worked in open offices, offices with high partitions and from home. When
I work from home what's stopping me from opening up news or playing video
games? When I work in a partition and I need to talk to another engineer face-
to-face I can't just glance over to see if they are available. Open offices
lets me be around my colleagues and inspires me to focus on my work and get
access to help promptly when I need it. I don't give a damn if they see me in
a snuggie or sleeping under my desk.

I believe the real problem is the lack of choices. You should be able to
choose the kind of environment you want to work in and not feel like you're
forced in a situation you don't like. I think it's wrong to say "open offices
are destroying the workplace".

~~~
gnaritas
> When I work from home what's stopping me from opening up news or playing
> video games?

Being an adult. Really, do you require a baby sitter to keep you busy?

~~~
magicalist
Given the popularity of site-blocking apps like SelfControl, Freedom etc, yes,
many people do need help with this. I don't use them, but I go through quite
wide swings between ignoring many distractions to get work done to having
trouble getting work done because of all the distractions (just plotting my HN
comments alone would probably yield a nice sinusoidal wave).

And I absolutely use a choice of work space to help mediate this. When I used
to freelance I had to get out of my apartment and work at a coffee shop to
really start my day. Now I often have days where it's fine to work from home,
but when I find myself completely distracted from work while at home I go into
the office because it's just slightly less acceptable to be goofing off all
the time there, and that's just the nudge I need to get into my work for the
day.

~~~
gnaritas
If the work can't keep your attention, perhaps you should find better work.

~~~
Apocryphon
This is an age-old problem.

* In a survey of more than 3,200 people conducted by Salary.com, 64% say they visit websites unrelated to work daily.

Source: [http://business.time.com/2012/03/13/youre-wasting-time-at-
wo...](http://business.time.com/2012/03/13/youre-wasting-time-at-work-right-
now-arent-you/)

~~~
rhino369
And the other 36% are liars?

~~~
icebraining
Or they don't use computers at work - they just waste time in other ways :)

------
krschultz
The ultimate irony of open plan offices is that if you are considerate of your
neighbors, you can't actually collaborate in the open part of the office.
Every single time I want to talk to someone for an in depth period of time, we
almost immediately move to a conference room so we don't disturb the people
around us.

If everyone had offices, I would walk into their office and we would not need
to move after starting our discussion because we wouldn't be bothering anyone.

I don't see any advantages to an open plan office with more than 1 team in it
(i.e. max 10 people) other than cost and startup-chic aesthetics.

~~~
mwfunk
People characterize DRM as something that doesn't deter criminals but punishes
honest consumers. I've often thought of open office plans in the same way.
Unless someone's a jerk, they're not going to want to talk to anyone about
anything in the actual open office area, which is the whole point of
"increasing collaboration". They're going to whisper (which impedes
communication) or grab whoever they want to talk to and go someplace where
they're not disturbing other people.

On the other hand, the jerks are not going to think twice about it, and
they'll just walk over to someone's desk and start talking at them, and not
always with an indoor voice, much less actually trying to keep it down. Jerks
1, non-jerks 0.

Another very, very, VERY common thing I see on places like HN is people
talking about how much they love being able to walk over and ask their
coworkers questions all the time with open offices. Meaningfully, I don't see
them complaining about other people asking them questions all the time due
their increased visibility. This always makes it sounds like it just enables
people who always ask someone else before trying to figure things out on their
own. Jerks 2, non-jerks 0.

On the other hand, open offices are really good at making engineers deeply
unhappy and unproductive, while allowing some director or VP to look like a
hero for saving a bunch of money while "increasing collaboration". Jerks 3,
non-jerks 0.

------
eosrei
Open offices are an immense waste. Guess much work I get done when the five
people near me have visitors resulting in three separate concurrent
discussions? I already have Bose noise cancelling headphones. They are
amazing, but cannot be expected to stop that level of interruption.

I have a strong work ethic. The productivity loss actually makes me sad. It's
a waste of my employer's money, the customer's money, and everyone's time.
Just let me be productive. Please.

------
manigandham
Absolutely agree, especially for think-intensive things like software
development where "flow" is so important. Closed offices are marginally more
expensive but the productivity improvements massively outweigh the investment.

The lack of privacy is just uncomfortable. It always feels like you're being
watched, even if you're not.

~~~
michaelochurch
If the purpose of open-plan offices is to intimidate people into working, they
backfire. I fuck around way more in an open-plan office than when I have
privacy.

There are many reasons for it. The first is that I have a fixed amount of
"goofing off" (which is just giving my mind some rest) that I'll do per day.
In a private office, it might take 20 minutes and I'm done and back to work.
In an open-plan office where I have to intersperse it with the appearance of
working and it takes longer (and the goofing off is less mentally restful, so
I do more). The second is that, contrary to what a lot of people say, I find
that 15- to 30-minute slivers of time (between other engagements) can be very
productive, but _not_ in an open-plan office. So the meeting multiplier is
more severe. If lunch is 12:00 then a meeting from 10 to 11 kills the rest of
the morning, whereas with private offices you'd still have 45-55 minutes of
useful time. The third is that I've always felt like if getting work done
efficiently were important, I'd have a legitimate working environment to get
it done in. Being visible from behind suggests low status, which suggests that
the work isn't that important. So if I'm intellectually engaged or the work is
helping my career, I'll do it very well... but if neither is true, the
surrounding physical environment supports me in not caring. Fourth, of course,
is the anxiety caused by the aggravating and unreliable work environment. It
would be bad to deal with a constantly noisy environment, but that would at
least be predictable. Open-offices add to the evil by failing you at
unpredictable times. Someone might tap you on the shoulder. Broken. Someone
might pair with the person sitting next to you. Broken. The person behind you
might get a phone call. Broken.

~~~
stevesearer
Is the purpose of open-plan offices ever to intimidate people into working? If
so, I'd love to read a case study on it.

From everything I've read they are mostly built because of the lower costs,
better flexibility, and associated collaboration benefits.

~~~
michaelochurch
So, part of it is certainly that they're the cheap 'n' shitty option. However,
when you weigh the money saved against the loss of productivity, they're not
worth it.

Open-plan offices aren't collaborative. Open-Plan Syndrome actually makes
people more selfish and misanthropic. When people don't feel in control of
their space (and what makes open-plan so bad isn't just the awfulness of the
environment, but how fucking unreliable it is) they tend to be more jealous
and territorial, not less.

They also aren't egalitarian. Let's say that you're two seats away from the
CEO, and between you and him is a junior who needs to pair a lot. Whose space
is going to be invaded when that happens? Not the CEO's. That's just human
nature. It's not even conscious, most of the time. Open-plan offices actually
reinforce status differences.

The main reason for the open-plan trend is that these offices photograph well.
The act of getting work done is abstract and hard to prove for the camera.
Open-plan offices look busy and energetic and (gahh) youthful. Unfortunately,
they're also awful places to work for 8-10 straight hours, in the same way as
one would not want to live in Times Square (as opposed to the Upper West Side
or Brooklyn Heights) even though it is visually impressive.

~~~
curun1r
There are different kinds of collaboration and you're taking a very narrow
view of it. Open offices might suck for explicit collaboration, like pairing,
but for the type of collaboration that happens somewhat randomly, they're
basically the only option. What I'm talking about mostly manifests itself in
overheard conversations where someone who wasn't initially part of the
conversation realizes they can add valuable context and joins in. It's really
hard to quantify the benefits of something like this but, especially in
software development, it can be very useful in leveraging past experiences of
the entire team to avoid going down too many wrong paths. It also means that
you don't have to put nearly as much effort into communicating context around
your organization because employees pick it up naturally from conversations
around them.

I'm generally in favor of a somewhat hybrid approach, where small teams have
their own cubicle or office and everything is open inside because I've seen
what happens when that sort of organic communication doesn't happen either
because people work in individual offices or because too many people work
remotely.

~~~
sheepmullet
"What I'm talking about mostly manifests itself in overheard conversations
where someone who wasn't initially part of the conversation realizes they can
add valuable context and joins in."

Which only works when staff are half listening to most conversations. Which
means they are distracted for pretty much the entire day.

------
father_of_two
I started my career working at a team room, which was exclusive for the
technical people and had no more than 7 people at its peak. Then progressively
went from open-office to open-office.

And man, how I hate those. I can't get focus, which forces me to bring the
deep-thinking work home, proceeding on a two-shift day, similar to what Paul
Graham describes on the "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" essay
([http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)).
Even simple things like sending a page-length email took more time than
needed, and were high frustrating.

Yet, recently I've been working on a company which only have team rooms. I'm
on a 3 persons' room, but the rooms vary from 1 to 6 persons. Furthermore they
have lots of perforated plates on ceilings and rooms are (mostly) sound
isolated from adjacent ones by a foam-like thing they stuff between the
division separations.

When I started here I just had that -wow- moment. I couldn't believe I was
actually doing software design, reading documentation and others immerse
thinking tasks during normal work time. No need to carry stuff home no more.

Did I mentioned already how I hate open-offices? :)

------
dgreensp
Open floorplans are worse than cubicles. Not worse than four people crammed
into a sweaty two-person cubicle, but worse than 1-2 people in a cubicle.
Significantly, obviously worse.

We've gone from half-walls to no walls.

~~~
a_c_s
Personally, I find cubicles to be the worst of both worlds: too spread out for
much collaboration with neighbors, but open enough go have nearly all the
noise and distraction of an open office.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I find working from home to be the best out of all three choices. I'd never go
back to working in an office, cubicles, open office space, whatever.

If your business structure is so terrible that you can't manage a remote team,
you're probably not that great at managing folks onsite either.

~~~
fsloth
I've learned that for the kind of stuff I do face to face communication next
to a whiteboard is the best place to discuss complex technical topics.

Also, co-location _does_ create serendipitous instances of sharing
information.

It's not a matter of management. It's about does the organization need the
maximum communication bandwidth between individuals possibly from separate
teams or not.

If we take for granted that silos are bad, then that leads to the notion that
cross-segment communications are good, and the easiest way to have those is
co-locate everyone.

There is something lost in organizational potential by not co-locating if the
culture is open and encourages individual initiative.

Working remote does have it's values as well, I grant that. I feel I'm much
able better to concentrate at home. But I recognize the value face to face
communication has as well.

------
nextos
Things are getting so insane that even some top universities have open-plan
offices. Am I supposed to prove theorems or to write Lisp in such an
environment? Seriously?

~~~
icebraining
Is that a new development? I thought open-plan study halls were common in
universities and libraries.

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/5914733818/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/proimos/5914733818/)

~~~
Symbiote
But in a library silence is expected; not conference calls, chat and
collaboration.

~~~
nextos
Exactly. A library doesn't count as open plan. Silence policies are very
strict. Open plan offices on the other hand...

------
j-c-m
Open offices are primarily designed to save money, and they save a ton of
money when compared with private offices combined with collaborative working
spaces (fancy word for conference rooms/areas). It is very easy to quantify
this cost difference, and this cost savings is immediate. It is much more
difficult to quantify productivity impact vs costs, and this would not be
realized clearly and immediately.

So 10/10 times now companies pick the option that costs 2x-3x less, be dammed
with trying to figure out its impact on productivity.

~~~
w4
Bingo. This is what these discussions so often miss: open office floorpans
translate to immediate savings on the company's balance sheets. They permit
companies to stuff more workers into fewer square feet, and those square feet
are how commercial real estate is priced. All of the stated benefits of open
office floor plans (culture, collaboration, communication, etc) are
subordinate to, or justification for, those savings.

------
iMark
I've never worked in anything other than open plan offices. Some are
definitely better than others. The worst are offices without breakaway spaces,
which cause impromptu meetings to happen at desks, which can be immensely
distracting.

On the other hand, I have found that open plan offices can be a boon when
working in small teams. One arrangement I remember quite fondly had groups of
4 desks in an X configuration with L shaped desks. We were working 4 to a team
and it was a friendly and cooperative environment. The L shaped desks were
also significantly roomier than I've encountered elsewhere.

I should note that my experience is in London, where I suspect there's a
greater premium on floorspace than in many other places.

------
father_of_two
Another give-away against open-offices is that people who decides them usually
reserve a single office for thy selves.

A real story: a given company moved to new, but existing, installations. The
original facilities were organized in small rooms. The boss ordered a full
redesign of the interior into a single large open space, with one exception: a
closed office for himself.

This ancient philosophy of "what's good for others doesn't suit me" never
convinced me. :)

------
gfodor
counterpoint: [https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-
te...](https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-teams)

edit: In summary, the more pairwise interactions between people your team has,
the more likely they are to be a productive, successful team. Open office
plans lend themselves to more serendipitous interactions between people.

My 2c, is that open office vs closed office is simply a matter of tradeoffs.
It seems easier to 'opt-out' of distractions (by putting on headphones) than
'opt-in' to interaction (by say wandering the halls talking to random people
in their cubes.) People who complain about open offices probably are
complaining about a culture where an open office results in distraction, not
the office itself. If you have a culture where people can be sitting next to
you but can signal they shouldn't be interrupted, or there is ample quiet
space for private work to be done, you can have the best of both worlds.

~~~
pilgrim689
I'm a big proponent of ~3 people offices as opposed to an open floor plan.
There are many ways to "opt-in" to interactions:

\- lunch/dinner is done in a dining area

\- I invite people out for a coffee break

\- I can go hangout in a common area

\- I can just walk in to someone's office just like I would walk to someone's
desk in an open floor plan

\- I bump into people while walking down the hall, grabbing a snack from the
kitchen, etc.

There's just so many ways I interact with people at the office, that making
sure I'm surrounded by people I can't look away from or mute all the time is
completely unnecessary.

And I don't want to have to blast music into my ears all day and wear horse
blinkers just to get some continuous hours of distraction-free creative
thinking done.

------
steven2012
I'm in my 40's and I thought going from cubes to open office was going to be
hard. I couldn't have been more wrong: I love it. I guess I don't need
headphones to be productive, and I don't care if someone sees what I'm doing
on my screen, because I'm already at the office > 10 hrs a day, plus at home,
so they can judge all they want if I have Facebook up in one window.

I do understand that some people need solitude to do there work, which means
that if a company goes open-office, they need to also have some spaces
allocated for private rooms.

My wife is in finance, and I stopped by her work place the other day, and you
could hear a pin drop. It was like a library filled with people, I couldn't
believe I used to work in an environment like this.

The only drawback that I agree with the author is the vulnerability to
disease. We have suffered throught his as well, and I'm not sure what to do
about it besides wearing masks all the time. If a more dangerous disease did
flare up in our area, I would probably work from home, and I think the
employer should offer this as an alternative, especially if there is something
particularly dangerous going around.

------
ffn
This seriously depends on the person. I personally hate having to commute to
an office and would much prefer to work remotely from home, but I know plenty
of folks who enjoy the social interaction at an open (or closed) work space.
Besides, open, close, or remote work place is much more of a personal
preference (like preference for different IDEs) than some inherently right or
wrong decision a company can make (like decreeing no employee is allowed to
become pregnant). So the smart company should leave the choice of whether to
work at the open office, in a closed cubicle, or remotely at home up to the
employee so that the details of how an employee maximizes his productivity is
left to him, instead of handed down from up-top based upon statistical
studies. After all, if you as an employer is going to trust your employees to
be able to properly optimize your dataflows, innovate new databases
techniques, not "drop table users", etc., why not also trust your employees to
know what work environment works best for him?

------
stevesearer
The pendulum seems to swing on this issue every 20-25 years on this issue so
it makes a lot of sense we are seeing so many articles about how the open plan
is terrible now.

Wait 20 years and there will have been a big transformation in the workplace
with more people working privately - likely with the addition of more work-
from-home/remote arrangements. But there will be a push again at that point
with new articles written about how people are typing away without any
personal contact and how 'insert early adopter' is the devil and how they are
crushing the souls of their workers.

Smart workplace design appropriately accommodates the needs of workers for the
types of work they do as well as the needs of the worker as a human.

Total cop-out answer, but it really comes down to balance between
communication and privacy.

I think workplace design needs to keep in mind a variety of factors, and they
cannot always be optimized totally for the company itself or totally for the
individual employees... which would be an impossible notion anyway.

We rave about how fast companies can scale up from small startups to have
hundreds or thousands of employees, but I'd love to see that work in the Bay
Area with all staff getting private offices. Quickly build more highrises? Not
likely.

Not all employees want - or need - private offices in the first place. And
even if there would be a benefit to providing them, maybe the company doesn't
feel like optimizing individual productivity is the most important thing in
the business.

All that said, there is likely a decent overlap in the Hacker News Venn
Diagram of people who loathe open plans and people who start companies. I've
wondered why we don't hear about more new companies who have adopted a
privacy-first office strategy. Surely it would give them an edge in hiring
those staff who desire such workplaces.

~~~
seanp2k2
Office space in the Bay Area is expensive, so is construction (even indoors).
When you can put employees into 6x6 plots in an open space, everything else
looks egregiously expensive.

------
Osiris
When I worked at an office with cubicles, it wasn't any less noisy than the
open office I work in. You could hear everyone talking and it was impossible
to tell who was in the office and who wasn't.

It seems to me that a better compromise would be to have small private rooms
in addition to open collaborative spaces. Cubicles are the worst of both.

------
vegabook
I can't help thinking this whole trend started with the industry which
epitomises the values that our working society holds, that is finance, and the
trading floor. I worked on one of these for 15 years - it was fantastic for
getting deals done and increasing teamwork when sales, trading, and research
all need to work together. Indeed it was when research was moved _off_ the
trading floor in around 2005 that I decided to leave, because in that
industry, not being "in the thick of it" a huge disadvantage. I think a lot of
the open plan idea comes from a misguided view that if trading floors can make
so many millions, then they must be extended everywhere.

Now that I have gone back to my coding roots, but still work on a "trading
floor" (open plan tech office), I have found myself having to enforce my will
to my partners to _inform_ them that I will be working only half day in the
office, because my productivity skyrockets as soon as I get home in front of
my computer, with nothing to distract me. Luckily, I have the luxury of being
able to do this. I believe my productivity in the open plan office is easily
less than 50% of what it is at home.

I do not believe that coding is a collaborative activity beyond periodic
(twice a week max?) discussions to ensure teamwork. It's an intensely private
activity, as is all work which demands high concentration, including writing.

------
Ironlink
I currently work in an office made of small-ish rooms, each with 5 to 10
persons in an open floor plan. The people sharing a room are in the same team.
I don't think I could go from this to having a private office, the cold and
quiet loneliness would be depressing. I love the banter that comes up while
waiting for a test suite to complete, and the ability to quickly do some pair
programming or have an impromptu team meeting. At any time, we can simply turn
around to face each other instead of the desk.

------
dba7dba
I have said it before here, but the best office layout I saw was at Autodesk
HQ in mid 1990's.

EVERY single engineer (or was it every employee) got an enclosed small office.
One office per employee. Full height glass wall between the hallway and the
office. Big enough for a desk, chair, 2 chairs for visitors.

Oh and one more thing. Maybe because I work in IT but what is it with
installing AC related machinery ABOVE/NEAR the server room (like ceiling)? The
machinery makes SO much noise in the office.

~~~
WalterGR
That was bog standard at the Microsoft campus in Redmond as of when I left in
2006.

Microsoft is/was well-known for giving employees their own office.

------
jkire
It all depends on the culture and dynamics of the workplace I think. If
everyone keeps their voices low (I don't mean whispering, just not booming),
and are concious that when people have their headphones and have a look of
deep concentration they shouldn't be disturbed, then it really is not that
bad. Then again, I'm the sort of person that prefers to work with a bit of
background noise rather than in deathly silence where each tiny sounds causes
me to jump.

It also sounds like the writer works in a place that doesn't really need much
inter-person communication on an hour by hour basis. As a software develop I
find being able to quickly ask those 5 second questions invaluable, questions
I wouldn't necessarily have bothered to ask if I had get up or send an email.

> Each day, my associates and I are seated at a table staring at each other,
> having an ongoing 12-person conversation from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

It takes a certain amount of self control to avoid this; just as it takes self
control not to spend your entire day browsing HN...

------
dilap
I've worked in closed-off private offices, and I'm working in an open office
right, and there are definitely plusses and minuses to both, IMO. Especially
if you're all working on the same product, there is something really nice
feeling about being physically around everybody; it creates a sense
togetherness.

The noise sucks though, especially for tasks that require full concentration.
Headphones and/or earplugs can help a bit, but it's no substitute for a truly
tranquil environment. Working from home can help there, but then that's the
other extreme of connectedness.

I've pondered a bit if you could have a "no loud conversations" policy (think:
like a library), with a bunch of rooms off to the side that could be used for
conversations.

Seems like it might give a bit of best of both worlds.

Edit: Also, the open office is made worse by the current stylistic trend of no
carpet and shiny hard surfaces everywhere. It looks cool, but it amplifies
noise like crazy.

------
simonsarris
I imagine when google interviews candidates they don't do it in the open
office, they probably go into a (quiet) conference room.

That's at least a little telling, isn't it?

Suggestion: Request to be interviewed in the actual seat/location that you're
going to be working in and see what they say.

~~~
lrem
They'll probably tell you there are security considerations against that. The
next time you interview with Google, if you get a building tour, pay attention
to the "no photography past these point" and similar notices...

------
freshyill
I got a lot more done than I expected when I worked in an open office. Not as
much as I would have liked, but it wasn't a complete wash.

That said, for productivity, nothing beats being able to close my door _and_
put on headphones in my current office.

------
yason
Give me a dark cave where I can munch my thoughts in private without seeing or
listening to anybody else unless I choose to do so, and you've got yourself a
winner employee here.

Office layout is certainly an area where one size does _not fit_ all.

------
mariojv
I totally agree with this piece. Some may prefer an open office space, and
that's fine for them - but they can probably still work well in a private
office. For those who are noise-sensitive, though, it can be a huge
distraction. I've started working from home a lot more just because of how
loud it is in the office. A lot of our developers and admins have voices that
... carry, to say the least.

It's lucky that I can work from home and not be too distracted, but for some
people with kids/stay-at-home partner, it may be difficult. It would be great
if employers at least gave people the option to have an office.

------
ryan90
The biggest bias in the discussion that occurs on HN, is that most people
commenting are engineers. Programming is inherently heads down, whereas a
large number of professional jobs are not.

If you want to run a sales team, open office is almost mandatory. The energy
you hear from others closing deals causes you to become energized, creating a
compounding effect. An ops/customer success team needs to be open office so
that agents can quickly exchange off the cuff conversations with each other in
real time.

The point is, there are different office layouts that work for different types
of people & workers.

------
PennyWhistle
Here is a "revolutionary" idea:

Ask your employees what kind of setup they like and accommodate! Some people
like private offices and some people don't - I don't understand why companies
look at this in absolute terms.

------
cthalupa
I love open offices, but then, everyone on my floor is part of the same team.
Yes, I get a lot more walk up traffic from other team members than I did when
I had a private office, but I don't see that as a bad thing. If people are
looking for my help, they probably need it, and I'm happy to give it.

Some people are just naturally louder, and yeah, it can be a little
distracting. It's not without trade offs. But for every time I have to ask
someone to quiet down, there's four or five situations where everyone being
easily accessible has been a good thing for getting my job done.

------
copsarebastards
The Washington Post got it wrong. One-size-fits-all rules applied to teams
containing a variety of people are destroying the workplace.

------
fillskills
Probably what's more important than the open office plan is the underlying
idea : collaboration. Collaboration between various siloed parts of the
organization. You can achieve that without creating open offices . When you
force an open office where u actually were trying to encourage collaboration
it may not always have the effect you were going for

------
ianstallings
It's about noise and distractions. Programming takes concentration and in an
open office layout all you see is people trying their best to not be
distracted. Why not let good architecture solve that problem instead? Let the
experts, architects, do their job and stop second-guessing them.

------
lotsofmangos
Both is probably the answer here. There is a range of characteristics in
people and ideally you need to accommodate them, so if you want to get the
best out of your employees you need a range of work environments. The ideal
office building would probably be fairly fractal.

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jkot
I was big promoter ofs smaller offices, but it is also wrong. Way forward is
location independence and remote teams.

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LoSboccacc
google is also aiming at recreating the frat environment for their
20-something workforce. apples and oranges.

I'd lean more on private space for every team working on a single deliverable,
but that's just my preference.

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rewqfdsa
"Deliverable" is one of words that provokes a "nope" reaction from me. I am
not a resource that produces deliverables. I am a human being.

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LoSboccacc
you're right, but at some point one needs to describe what a team do - I'm not
a native English speaker, and I use what I learned. I accept alternatives,
especially if they don't involve a ten word paraphrase of that.

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rewqfdsa
How about "work on the same project"?

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LoSboccacc
you can have multiple smaller teams working on different aspect of the same
project, I've seen project with 50+ devs and I wouldn't put the full project
on a single room. but I see your point, it works for small projects, I'll
figure out something on those lines.

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sgt101
Yeah, but it's cheap.

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ryan90
<insert beating dead horse gif here>

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michaelochurch
Open plan offices are another bad idea dishonestly sold to tech workers. They
aren't more "collaborative". The low-level anxiety and misanthropy that they
foster is being informally called "open plan syndrome" by psychiatrists in the
Bay Area. People collaborate less in open-plan offices and, while some think
their purpose is to intimidate people into working, people actually fuck
around way more.

I actually don't think the purpose of open-plan offices is intimidation, nor
that they are cheap. It's marketing. "Startup" is now a brand. At high levels,
it's an excuse for bad behavior. ("We can't afford the severance cost or
publicity of a layoff, so we'll fire 10 percent for phony 'performance'
reasons. They knew this was a risk when they joined a _startup_.") For the
rest, it's a useful ruse that allows companies that are even more cutthroat
(just as young gangsters are typically more violent than older criminals who
recognize that bloodshed is bad for business) to somehow present themselves as
Not Corporate. And let's be honest: open-plan offices _look_ sleek, busy, and
vibrant. They're photogenic. They're also awful places to work, just as Times
Square is (to New Yorkers, anyway) an undesirable place to live.

Open-plan offices also raise interesting questions about legality and
discrimination. There's a solid argument that they discriminate unfairly
against older workers, people with disabilities, and women. I certainly
wouldn't go into anywhere typical tech office if I were pregnant; I can handle
the open-plan stress with enough meds, but can the baby? The nagging but
chronic stress of being visible from behind can't be good for the fetus. So
what _should_ the legal status of open-plan offices be? Obviously, they
shouldn't be banned outright. Trading floors need them, and companies under 20
people should be allowed to use whatever office space makes sense for them.
Ultimately, though, while I think open-plan work environments should be legal,
I think the burden of proof out to lie with the employer, and "we're a tech
company" is not sufficient. I also think that companies using open-plan
offices should be taxed to pay for a public disability fund in order to
compensate for the health costs that companies can currently get away with
externalizing.

