
The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies - olauzon
http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-floor-plans-in-tech-companies.html
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was_hellbanned
_The most common justification I hear about the open floor plan is that it
"encourages collaboration"._

In my experience, the sort of people who talk about open floor plans for
"collaboration" tend to be incompetent managers. Instead of managing, leading,
and making decisions, they believe that by manipulating some imaginary rate of
collaboration, workers will "collaborate" their way to generating value and
wealth. It's a managerial form of cargo cult behavior.

Personally, my best years have been in a shared office with someone whose
presence I genuinely enjoyed. It was less about collaboration and more about
keeping the mood up throughout the inevitable daily slog through painful work
that, truthfully, nobody wants to do.

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CoffeeDregs
I hesitate to say this, but I'm a big fan of cubicles... But not the cubicles
you're probably thinking of...

I'm a fan of 4-8 person teams attacking problems together and I've found
_flexible_ cubicle arrangements to be very effective. At one company, we could
change around our cubes (albeit not terribly frequently) and it was great to
be able to create a multi-person office with a conference table for your team
(e.g. PM, designer, developers). We had tight collaboration and our own
private space without being distracted by the larger company. Of course, this
style of organization also affect project management, etc, but it was quite
effective.

~~~
mtrimpe
I'm reading PeopleWare right now which deals with this issue at length and
their conclusion is quite similar to yours.

In retrospect it's as simple as it's obvious: people should be allowed to
setup their offices in a way that works for them.

Interestingly enough this all comes from the _original_ patterns book, the one
which concerned itself with actual architecture.

It essentially states that people should create their own space and that
structure and order should only be imposed through adherence to shared general
principles.

Many of these principles seem so simple and obvious yet are so often forgotten
in practice, such as that the wall should be far away enough to give your eyes
a chance to relax.

Another one was that the sounds you heard had to be _similar to that of your
own,_ which seems strikingly true in my own experience.

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brianbreslin
I personally dislike open office spaces, mainly because people always come up
to me, even with headphones on, asking me stuff or just wanting my attention.
My productivity soars when I'm isolated in an office or room with a door.

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trhway
offices are for professionals and academia, cubicles are for technical staff
and open [factory] floor is for blue collars and low level clerical (i.e.
easily replaceable commodity). That basically reflects the evolution of status
of programmers in the society during the last 60 years.

~~~
Executor
Then why are developers paid so well?

~~~
trhway
compare to what? Typical blue collar worker at the heights of their respective
industry was able to afford house, car, and may be, after some careful saving,
send children to college. Do developers can afford more than that?

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pbreit
So does anyone have the answer? Low cubes? High cubes? Share cubes? Shared
offices? Individual offices? Why so little experimentation and innovation in
the tech world on what is perhaps the most important aspect of the company?

Does Fog Creek still give developers individual offices? Microsoft? Joel
Spolsky wrote about an office design where the walls were slanted and interior
windows were present so each office had windows on 3 sides (but you couldn't
really see each other).
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html)

I'm also a fan of flexible furniture that can be moved around easily but have
never really seen it used effectively. And I'd like to see better
incorporation of stand-up positioning (I'm convinced sales people are more
effective when standing; feels more powerful).

Surely the open plan is not the answer but who's searching these days? Do any
YC (or equivalent) startups have individual offices?

~~~
brandonbloom
Fog Creek: Yes

Microsoft: Depends on the team, but mostly no.

~~~
quotemstr
Back when I was in Windows and Windows Phone, almost everyone got an
individual office. A few people had to double up, but there were no massive
cubicle farms or open-cacophony areas. Even the smallest, darkest interior
office had a door.

~~~
marssaxman
"Everyone gets their own office!" the recruiter said. Then I spent my entire
Microsoft career sharing a series of offices with random people I never talked
to who were working on completely unrelated projects. Worst of both worlds,
really.

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brown9-2
_Another thing that people like about the open floor plan is that it "looks
good" and has the "startup feel"._

I think this is the simplest explanation for the "inexplicable" trend.
Companies see other young, hip, growing companies/startups do it, so they feel
that they should do the same thing if they want to be a young, hip, growing
startup.

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pixelmonkey
Spolsky said many years ago that programmers need private offices to
collaborate and be productive. When I started Parse.ly in 2009, we couldn't
afford them, but our team was already split geographically, so we just built a
fully distributed team, instead. Home offices can make for great private
offices, home Internet is fast, and commutes suck. I describe fully
distributed teams in this blog post: [http://bit.ly/distributed-
teams](http://bit.ly/distributed-teams)

Now, we have over 20 employees, 13 of them spread throughout the US and Canada
(all programmers). I actually just gave a presentation to new employees based
here, "Parse.ly's Distributed Team: Open Source meets Open Plan":
[http://pixelmonkey.org/pub/distributed-
teams](http://pixelmonkey.org/pub/distributed-teams) \-- it discusses some of
the pro's and con's of our setup.

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Stwerner
I think there's something more to the open floor plan beyond collaboration and
cost saving. It goes back to a post I saw here a few months ago about building
unity [1] with the team. I don't know the answer, but I think there is
something to be gained by fostering the feeling of "We're all in this
together".

I'm a software engineer who has only worked in open plan offices, so maybe I
don't know the joy of working in an office, but there is definitely a
different feel from the one office where the managers/partners had their own
offices and everyone else was open plan vs everyone in the same couple rows of
desks.

[1] [http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/03/how-winners-win-john-
boyd-...](http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/03/how-winners-win-john-boyd-and-the-
four-qualities-of-victorious-organizations/)

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ChuckMcM
This is an interesting rant on open offices. The 'inexplicable' part is
rationalized as a cost savings thing.

Open offices are _different._ They have been very common in Europe for years.
I remember being astonished visiting offices in Switzerland back in the 90's
with folks sitting at desks just out in the open. And while I found it
abhorrent (I had an office back at HQ, with a window no less), these people
did seem to get things done.

It is possible Tech companies in the US are "catching up" to the rest of the
world with regard to this stuff. I thought quad cubes at Google were a bit
much, (and being that close to three other people can be uncomfortable) but no
one was arguing that Google was unproductive or 'bad.'

Headphones are great for shutting out the noise if you want that.

~~~
pbreit
Headphones are a lousy answer considering that many/most people would prefer
not to work with them on or listen to music while working.

~~~
slowmover
For this very reason I made a pair of "stealth" earplugs. Take a standard
"memory foam" type earplug, cut it down so the outer edge is flush with your
ear hole, and color the outer surface of it black with a sharpie. I've worn
them all day before without anyone noticing. They cut down the distant noise,
but still let enough sound through to have a normal conversation with someone
nearby.

And yes, I invented these shortly after my work area was converted to an open
floor plan.

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AnimalMuppet
Well, as a developer I need to be able to do two things: I need to be able to
_think_ , and I need to be able to _get information_.

Unfortunately, those two are at war with each other. If I can easily and
quickly get information from a co-worker, then they can also get it from me.
But that easy interruption, which minimizes the disruption to my co-worker's
work, also breaks my train of thought.

The private office/cube/open office choice is a tradeoff, balancing
communication with deep concentration. What the proper answer is may depend on
your team, your project, and maybe even the phase of the moon. However, it
does _not_ depend on which book your manager read most recently.

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mgirdley
In the late 90s, my downtown SF software employer proposed cubicles for the
developers in the new office nearby. The team revolted, with good reason, and
offices were installed in the new space.

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donjigweed
Much easier to measure cost of floor space than developer productivity.

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cylinder
The problem is the absolute lack of natural light you encounter inside of
offices with high cubicle walls. And when you line the perimeter of the floor
with offices, those left inside without offices suffer in darkness. And while
programmers, who require more focus and may be more introverted, generally
like privacy and walls, other people absolutely despise them and their moods
can suffer greatly in these environments. I don't know what the solution is.

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ExpiredLink
> _Cost-effectiveness of open floor plans_

Office space is expensive, labor is cheap. That's the conclusion. It's the
economy, stupid.

~~~
normloman
Programmers are also expensive. If open offices are lowering their
productivity, every manager in tech is penny wise and pound foolish.

~~~
steverb
As a manager in tech, it's not my fault.

I've complained so much about the open office layout that I've been told point
blank to shut up about it.

~~~
tzakrajs
Good thing you love your job.

~~~
steverb
I love my people. I took the management gig because I was tired of seeing
other people do it poorly. I figured I could do it at least little better than
they were.

Results are currently mixed. :-)

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avelis
How about study area's in libraries? Big open spaces with maybe some nooks and
crannies but immense amount of focus and concentration. The difference is the
implied quiet culture. (i.e ssshhh this is a library.)

My suggestion: You can keep the open space but you need to enforce either a
quiet area for focus or carve out a specified area for loud and open
collaboration.

