
U.S. workers hate ‘open’ office spaces - Corrado
https://www.prdaily.com/report-u-s-workers-hate-open-office-spaces/
======
Rooster61
The implication that open offices are fine as long as you are using noise-
cancelling headphones irks the hell out of me. If a working environment is
noisy/distracting to the point that you can't be productive without having to
rely on headphones, then there is a fundamental problem with your environment.

People should not HAVE to do buy/use something just to be productive. It's
downright disrespectful to expect your workers to just "deal with the noise in
a professional manner".

~~~
rhcom2
And how jarring it is to have someone walk up behind you and tap on your desk,
or your shoulder, to get your attention while wearing headphones.

~~~
chrisBob
After a coworker screamed twice from this I made them a pretty RGB-LED display
that flashes a rainbow when you press the button at the entrance to their
cube. I am surprised I haven't seen any good products in this space. I feel
like you could make good money selling programmers something that is
essentially a button, battery LED and 6' of wire.

~~~
kurtisc
My mum has something that does this. She calls it a 'doorbell'. Doesn't even
need the wire.

~~~
wccrawford
I just bought a new wireless doorbell. You can configure the sound and lights
separately, so it would definitely work in this instance.

~~~
effingwewt
I had just replied to the comment above yours that doorbells do indeed have
wires. Forgot completely about the new wireless ones. That makes much more
sense.

------
meddlepal
Recently got a tour from some former coworkers of the new PTC HQ in Boston,
open office AND hotel style seating (no assigned location... stuff goes in a
cubby at the end of the day).

So not only can you hate all the noise and distraction around you, but
tomorrow it can be entirely new set of people that piss you off. Also nothing
says "you don't matter" like not even giving someone 4x6 feet of space for a
desk and chair they can call their own..

~~~
mc32
It’s astonishing to me that new staff as well as new managers became such
eager consumers and proponents of open offices just because a few big-IPO
companies made it _seem_ avant-garde.

At no time did they consider the effect on personal space and
depersonification of this new “paradigm”.

People were hoodwinked into believing this was more social, more cooperative
and more egalitarian. No it wasn’t. It was cheaper to seat people and it took
freedom away from workers. You now had a multiplicity of eyes upon you. So now
even if you don’t have anything productive to do till tomorrow, you have to at
least pretend you have something to do now. So instead of thinking about what
and how you’ll do things to morrow you waste your time pretending along with
everyone else in the corral.

I saw this happen at places which say they “care about workers” and offer a
good “work-life balance”. It was such horseshit. If you have to propagandize
your beliefs you don’t actually believe them.

~~~
acdha
> It’s astonishing to me that new staff as well as new managers became such
> eager consumers and proponents of open offices just because a few big-IPO
> companies made it _seem_ avant-garde.

In my experience, it was rare that anyone was a proponent of it except as a
cost-savings measure. In almost every case, everyone knew what it meant that
the staff had open-plan but the people responsible for it had offices with
doors.

~~~
ergothus
...or conference rooms that are de-facto dedicated for their use. The modern
thing is to brag that execs have open office desks among everyone
else...ignoring the fact that they don't really spend any time at their desks.

~~~
WorldMaker
Or even at the office at all. Not at all surprising how many execs decide to
carve out policy exceptions to "no remote work" policies that apply only for
themselves in such environments.

------
bshipp
Our office just converted to an open space design with fancy desks that
elevate for standing or drop to sit. Although it's a small office, one of my
coworkers already left (and refuses to communicate with any of the management
except through his lawyer) and three others are in conversations with labour
lawyers on constructive dismissal cases, while the remaining three are
shopping their resumes and attending interviews. That means we could lose
seven out of ten staff. It's definitely not all due to the open office space,
but it was pretty much the last straw for most of them.

I was one of the few who got to keep their office during the demolition, I
think mostly because it was written in my contract when I accepted this job.
So although I, personally, don't think they look very efficient, I can relate
that the staff in my company dispise the lack of privacy and general noise
that results from working in an open office space.

~~~
systemtest
Perhaps it's some sort of the Stockholm syndrome but I am now at the point
where the open office noise has become white noise. And it is making me
perform better. The constant chatter, ringtones, speakerphones, toilets
flushing, coffee beans grinding, printers buzzing. There is a rhythm to it.
It's a living organism of sound.

Who am I kidding, anyone need a Java/Kotlin back-end developer?

~~~
grigjd3
You can hear toilets flushing? Yuck.

~~~
systemtest
The worst part is hearing a toilet flush and watching a co-worker walk out
seconds later.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Everyone poops. There's even a book about it, though most people read it as a
toddler.

Now, if you frequently hear a flush _without_ hearing the running water from
the sink, that's a problem.

~~~
wccrawford
I think you missed the "seconds later" part. Even if they run water after
flushing, they haven't done it more than a second or 2, and thus have barely
gotten their hands wet. They haven't even come close to cleaning anything.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Shit, good point. Me no read good yesterday.

------
iheartpotatoes
When I got my tech job out of college in the 80's I was embarrassed because
most of my friends in non-tech (especially finance) had offices with doors
that closed. Sometimes nice wooden doors.

It took a lot of getting used to: constant chatter, loud talkers, ice chewers,
mouth noises, farting, personal phone calls that were too personal... But I
acclimated.

I continued to work in a 9'x9'x (x5' high) cube for 25+ years and the last
company I worked for switched to an open floorplan for my last 3 years there.

IT WAS HELL. At least in my small cube I had some sense of privacy, but now
everyone could see my screen, or see me having to deal with various biological
discomforts, it just sucked. I'm glad I became a contractor 5 years ago
because it is great to be out of that mess. Hopefully I'll never have to
return.

~~~
layoutIfNeeded
>ice chewers

Were they literally chewing ice or is this some idiom?

~~~
iheartpotatoes
Literally would crunch ice from a big metal cup ALL DAY LONG (walk to the soda
fountain in the break room and refill with ice every hour).

I encountered two people like this in my life. It would make me physically
ill, like an allergy, but no one else around us complained so I tried to get
over it and ended up just working in a lab.

I'm old enough now were it to happen again I'd flood every channel with
complaints until we arrived at a compromise, but I was younger then.

~~~
wool_gather
> It would make me physically ill

This is a classic instance of misophonia. Certain sounds, especially sounds
related to eating, generate disproportionate and irrational reactions, often
(internally) physical. Anything from fear to disgust to anger, with the
accompanying bodily state.

------
meddlepal
I don't like pure open office setups, but I do enjoy bullpen style
arrangements with a team of say 5 to 7 in the same shared space. It is a hard
setup to get right though.

High wall cubes are fine too... Obviously a real office with a door would be
ideal, but I think that door has closed at this point in time.

~~~
rdtsc
> but I do enjoy bullpen style arrangements with a team of say 5 to 7 in the
> same shared space.

Worked in an office like that and agree, it worked pretty well. It's not
always feasible to assign individual offices to people but 1-5 people works.
I'd say 5 is even high, ideally it would be 2-3.

> but I think that door has closed at this point in time.

Well, I'd say working from home is like that? :-) Hopefully that's an option
for more people. I am doing that now and it's pretty good, but the idea is
that the whole team has to be remote, otherwise you don't want to be the odd
one out.

~~~
bobthepanda
I currently work in a bullpen with about 10-12 people. It works because we all
work on the same thing, so collaborating or shooting the shit together is a
good thing :)

If you organize bullpens around clumps of people who work together constantly,
it makes more sense than doing it to an entire department or company. Though
you should also have a quiet space per bullpen and meeting rooms for anything
requiring cross-team collaboration or secretive stuff.

~~~
nilkn
To be honest, 10-12 just sounds more like a small open office to me rather
than a shared team space. When I think of a shared office, I think of maybe
2-4 people in a spacious private office. Even at 5 people you'd start to lose
the benefits of the office rapidly.

Even if all 12 folks are on the same team, I'm sure it's possible to split
them up into subspecialties or working groups. An unstructured blob of 12
people on a team doesn't sound that ideal either way, regardless of seating
arrangements.

------
hellisothers
Surely an unpopular opinion but my previous job of many years had individual
offices and my current job of 2 years is an open office for a couple thousand
employees and it’s really not that bad. I was really worried when I started
after hearing all the angst online but after a month I didn’t notice, I put in
headphones if I need focus and it’s all good. I’m a software engineer at a
level where my role involves a lot of collaboration so maybe that’s why I
don’t mind? I notice others on my team do work away from their desks 90% of
the time and I imagine it’s so they can hide and focus and the company
provides locations for that. We would need 3x size of location(s) without open
offices so I get it, also I’m it helps that the office has embraced “open” and
tries to provide alternative space within the office, also grouping sales far
away from engineering :)

~~~
shereadsthenews
The problem for some people is the open layout inhibits collaboration. Nobody
wants to start talking because it disturbs others. Whereas if you could just
walk into someone's office and close the door you'd feel free to yak away.

~~~
snarkyturtle
I'd say it encourages collaboration moreso. It's way easier to get somone's
attention and get a quick clarification, although in this day and age I'd
probably even Slack someone sitting next to me rather than talk.

For long discussions that's when you book a meeting room.

~~~
AlexandrB
> I'd say it encourages collaboration moreso.

There's not a ton of research on this. But what's out there[1] suggests that
open office spaces actually decrease collaboration.

[1]
[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239)

------
__ralston3
I always found it interesting that "hating open office spaces" is one of those
sort of biased-HN things, similar to general dislike/distrust of popular
social media platforms. Virtually every parent comment on the thread is along
the lines of "I don't like open offices", which is obviously fine, seeing as
how _to each their own._ However, I for one _LOVE_ open offices. The fact that
I can see what's going on, feel the _vibe_ of the office, distract myself for
a bit should I so choose to do so. Or even if I want to put my headphones in
and turn the music all the way up, I have the option and I really enjoy it. To
me, the open style makes the office feel like more of a community, as opposed
to "an office" (similar to cubicles, offices, and mini-cubicles) and I
absolutely enjoy that.

Side note: I'd be curious to see responses for office preference (open, or not
open) distributed by age.

~~~
tfehring
I'm 27. I'd love open office spaces if my job never required writing complex
code. But I find it all but literally impossible to do so in an open office,
which means that I can't both (1) do my work exclusively at my desk during
work hours and (2) actually get all of my work done.

In practice, I've adjusted my schedule to something like the "double schedule"
that PG describes in [0]. When I'm at the office, I spend my time on meetings,
planning, managerial stuff, spreadsheet/dashboard work, and simple coding.
Then I go home and do all of my complex coding remotely til 1am or so.
Obviously this isn't great for work-life balance, and it's terrible for my
sleep schedule when I need to be at 8am meetings. But I think a compressed
version of this setup (e.g., if I could reasonably only be physically present
in the office 4 hours a day) would be pretty much optimal for me, including
the open office space.

[0]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)

~~~
not_kurt_godel
Your schedule sounds like that of an indentured servant. Seriously, you
regularly start work at 8am and end at 1am? What kind of life is that? As
someone who's fallen into a rabbit hole where that sort of madness gets
normalized, let me remind you: it's not normal. Find somewhere else unless
you're making millions?

~~~
tfehring
If I'm making millions, I'm doing it very gradually. And I am looking for
other opportunities. But I should clarify that I don't work from 8am to 1am
every day - I probably have one 8am meeting a week on average, and the late
nights ebb and flow with the projects I'm working on. The rest of the time, I
work roughly 9:30 to 5. I still work more hours than I'd like, and the
occasional time-sensitive, coding-heavy projects are brutal, but it's not as
bleak as my last comment suggests.

I sincerely appreciate the reminder though - thank you.

------
grigjd3
Open offices aren't about worker happiness or efficiency. They're about
decreasing costs.

~~~
Someone1234
"Penny wise and pound foolish."

Which is to say if you're paying a developer $70K+/year (+taxes/benefits), and
you're skimping on a $2K one time cost cubicle, even if that loss results in
increased turnover ($$$), reduced morale ($$$), or reduced productively ($$$)
then that's an irrational decision.

Employers should consider a "1-2%" per-employee per year "morale fund." If
you're paying someone $70K/year the least you could manage is $700-1400 to
keep them sweet, it is just good business. Better equipment, software to make
them more productive, a nicer chair, whatever.

But I've come to realize that managers rarely make decisions for purely
rational reasons. The prestige and internal politics often play a larger role
than pure costing.

~~~
kyralis
They're not skimping $2k one time cost on a cubicle. They're skimping on the
recurring cost in rent and maintenance on a large facility in which to place
that cubicle, plus the cost of that cubicle. My wife was an office manager
that worked with a couple startups through expansions, and the costs of office
space and office equipment is actually quite a bit higher than you might
think.

That said, I _still_ think it's generally a foolish thing to do for many
companies and I personally despise open offices. I've recently transitioned to
being fully remote, and a hatred of the open office plan was a good part of
what pushed me in that direction.

~~~
satokema_work
I already have a designated desk area against the wall, we're talking about
adding a footprint for a couple of 5cm thick walls which is already my
personal space anyway, the only difference is actually enclosing it instead of
letting people wander into it because the office is already full.

------
sixdimensional
I would like to see the statistics on absenteeism and sick days after such a
change. My work just switched to open plan, and anecdotally this last flu
season was one of the worst I’ve seen in 3.5 years at this place, with nearly
every person in a room of approx. 120-150 (all open plan) getting ill at some
point. I think probably nobody stopped to think of that negative impact of
open seating, especially on people with special immune system needs.

~~~
w0utert
Not sure if you are thinking about sick leave because open-space office plans
are worse for spreading contagious diseases, or because people are simply less
motivated to come into the office if they feel a little weak or tired. I would
not be surprised at all if the latter actually has more impact.

~~~
mikestew
_people are simply less motivated to come into the office if they feel a
little weak or tired_

Au contraire, as the open office plan is usually paired with the "all-in-one-
bucket-PTO" plan. So if you take a sick day, it comes out of your
vacation/holiday time. Ergo, employees are even _more_ motivated to come in
while feeling a little puny. Otherwise the kids are going to be pissed when
you have to trim a day off that trip to Disney World.

~~~
ummonk
Wait, what? No place I've seen (and all have been open office) has taken sick
leave out of vacation PTO. That's crazy. Employees have to draw the line
somewhere.

~~~
mikestew
Did the company give you a bucket of days and say, "use it however you want!"?
Then they're taking sick days out of vacation days. I'm guessing that you're
either not in the U. S., or you've just never looked at it that way before.
The last two places I've worked full-time work that way.

~~~
ummonk
Currently at Facebook as an FTE I get a sizable number of vacation days which
is the “use it however you want” bucket. Off the top of my head, sick days,
jury duty, parental leave, and taking time off to care for a sick family
member all do not count towards that vacation bucket.

My last workplace (Asana) has untracked PTO. All the places I got offers from
(established companies) had either untracked PTO or seperate vacation and sick
leave.

------
greysonp
When I first started working after college, I was briefly in a cubicle-like
thing. I hated it. I felt isolated during a big transition point in my life.
But it wasn't long before we switched to an open office plan, and it was
fantastic. Loved it for the next couple years I was there, because it felt
like I was part of a team -- more ad-hoc conversations, and yes, people
talking about their weekends (that can be a good thing). We still got plenty
done.

Fast forward a few years, and now I'm working remotely and loving it. In fact,
when I do work in coffee shops or something, I hate it, because I struggle to
focus and get things done (unlike most, I straight-up can't listen to music
and code at the same time, so headphones are out).

So maybe it just depends on where you are in your career?

~~~
zdragnar
There are certain advantages to being in an open office, under the right set
of conditions:

1- teams sit together

2- people who need to be on their phones (aka sales) are in a different office

3- buffer spaces between communal areas (kitchen, lounge) and desks

4- people respect each other

I've been in an open office that followed those rules, and it was actually
pretty great, because people helped each other a lot more; a bit like open-
ended pair programming if you wanted it.

I've also been in an open office that violated all of those rules, and
absolutely detested it. Especially that one person who played their radio out
loud for the team to "enjoy" and sprayed air freshener everywhere, and the
sales people ringing a bell whenever a sale landed, and the kitchen microwaves
constantly going off, and and and... it was a minor hell.

~~~
gota
> 2- people who need to be on their phones (aka sales) are in a different
> office

I'd like that

------
volkl48
I think the basic disconnect being expressed in the widly varying opinions
seen in this thread is:

You can design an open office to work well.

You can design an open office to be a sweatshop fitting in the maximum number
of employees at the lowest cost.

You cannot do both.

\------

I have worked in an open office I liked. It was the former. Plenty of huddle
rooms and other private spaces, different groups physically had a good amount
of open floor space between them and another group, and great design to
minimize visual distractions for people.

I do not believe it saved any significant amount of floorspace over a more
traditional cube setup. But it worked well and I didn't have major complaints.

However, I have seen far more "open offices" that are just purely out to fit
the most employees in the smallest space, and everyone is always miserable in
those.

------
cowmix
My company just moved from a almost completely open floor plan to an open
floor plan but plenty of private / huddle rooms. Also we have a very liberal
work-at-home options too.

So far, the change has been positive. People are able to, on the fly, pick the
type of physical work environment they want to experience at a given point in
time.

Also, our management invested in VERY nice noise canceling headsets for anyone
who requested one. That technology has done wonders for productivity and has
increase the quality of our video conferences.

~~~
awakeasleep
I see a lot of people giving thanks for 'nice noise canceling headsets' in
this thread, but from what I can tell, noise canceling does not work for about
50% of people.

In my office we've tested every single noise canceling headset, from Bose QC,
to Sennheiser PXC 550, to B&W PX, and everything in between.

The noise canceling is a weird hiss, increases feelings of ear pressure, and
the discomfort manifests as a headache or car sickness after a few hours- and
that isn't even taking into account the other pains people feel from prolonged
use of over ear headphones.

When you're talking about wearing something for 8 hours a day, there are some
real ergo needs that drive the shape and technology of the device. Think about
how light typical call center headsets are- that is a professional device.

Not to say it doesn't work for you individually, but noise canceling headsets
are NOT a solution that works for an office worth of people. Out of about 500
people in my office, only 20 or so stuck with noise canceling cans as their
daily headsets.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Using headphones works very well for me, but the downside is that my brain has
completely associated the sensation of headphones with productivity. Even if
I'm home alone, it's hard to concentrate unless I have them on.

------
rdl
I'm fine with open offices with tiny teams all working on exactly the same
task. Once that ceases to be the case, they become hell.

My ideal office is essentially private regular office space, and then big
conference rooms which can be taken over by teams for days/weeks/months. I've
gotten more work done in a shared conference room with people in it than
anywhere else, but it has to be during a specific task-focused time.

I kind of wonder if the ideal office would be essentially an apartment
building or hotels, with studio or 1br "apartments" per person, and then some
meeting rooms/work rooms for actual work. Having a private bathroom, quiet
office, "living room" office where you could have meetings, etc. would be
pretty awesome.

~~~
theshrike79
Exactly.

Shared team spaces as "open offices", where everyone there is contributing to
the same thing and understands the context of everything that needs to be
communicated out loud. Basically the people who attend a daily scrum should be
in the same room (with exceptions).

This paired with quiet working areas where all disturbances are forbidden (no
talking, no "can you just quickly look at this") is a good combo for
productivity.

------
code_chimp
I am in the process of leaving a very decently compensated position at one of
the better places to work in my market specifically because they have
converted us to "open office". Maybe it would have been different if they were
this way to start with, but going from a small cubicle to absolutely no
separation between myself and all of the devs surrounding me is getting
untenable for myself.

Having my headphones on constantly is annoying and I cannot seem to tune out
all of the ancillary motion around me. It also doesn't help that the monitors
are now so much closer to my face that I now find myself turning my head back
and forth more to see my monitors and by the end of the day my eyes are tired.

------
lordleft
Optional collaborative spaces? Awesome. Mandatory collaborative spaces? Tire
fire.

------
Insanity
I'd bet it's the same for other countries. I'm European and I'd rather be
working from home rather than an open office. Alas, the standard here is open
office.

~~~
mcv
To me it matters how open. I want to share a room with the members of my team,
I don't want to share it with noisy salespeople. I've worked at many companies
that get it right, but a few get very wrong.

~~~
nsnick
It also matters what sort of keyboards everyone is using. Horribly noisy
mechanical keyboards make it impossible to concentrate.

~~~
brightball
This is definitely one of those things that I can't understand. There seem to
be so many people that swear by using keyboards with the clicks...but I just
don't understand it.

Especially once you get out of your own house.

~~~
bshipp
I used to swear by mechanical keyboards; I wrote my entire thesis on one, much
to the chagrin of my graduate student officemate. She still brings it up when
I see her, twelve years later!

For me, the difference was similar to weighted vs unweighted piano keys. With
a mechanical keyboard I could get into a rhythm that I miss when working on a
bubble-type keyboard. I've since trained myself (mostly out of necessity due
to travel) to type almost as quickly and error-free on my laptop keyboard, but
I do still miss the feedback from mechanical springs.

If I did 'spring' for a new mech keyboard now, however, I'd find the quietest
one I could get, that still provided some sense of feedback. I don't need my
noisy clicks to provide a juvenile signal to my coworkers that, yes, I am
indeed working really hard on something really important right now.

~~~
alexeiz
I use mechanical keyboards in an open office environment. Even clicky ones.
Does it bother anyone? Nobody complained yet (in fact, barely anyone noticed I
bring my own keyboards to work). On the other hand, I can hear people typing
on butterfly and membrane keyboards. So in my experience, in an open space
which is already pretty noisy mechanical keyboards don't create noise which is
more significant than non-mechanical keyboards.

~~~
randcraw
Even the makers of mechanical keyboards recognize that some key switches make
considerably more noise than others. That's why Cherry MX added optional
damping -- so you can be considerate of others who are within earshot.

Like leaky headphones, loud keyboards reliably _do_ annoy neighbors, whether
they're willing to speak up or not.

------
legitster
I liked my cube. I could pop up and talk to a neighbor, or stay low for phone
calls or concentration.

Open office is just so much more exhausting. Especially if they do not have a
lunch area with a door. Either the entire floor becomes filled with loud
chatter, or the lunch area becomes a quiet, depressing wasteland.

I wish companies were more transparent that it is a way to save cost. I would
have happily put up with a smaller cube, or better benefits in exchange for
floor space.

------
Corrado
How many articles will it take to incite positive change? Not only does this
survey reveal that people don't like open office spaces it highlights that
they would rather work remotely. This is a shift that I haven't seen before,
at least in any survey. Interesting.

~~~
Kadin
Who cares what articles say, if a company can still recruit employees?

When good candidates start turning down positions because of the office
layout, that might create some pressure to change, though.

But I think one of the problems is that bad office layouts tend to exacerbate
problems. They may be the ultimate underlying cause of retention problems, but
they're typically not the proximate cause, and thus don't get the blame
they're due. Someone might leave because of interpersonal conflicts or just
"not fitting in" to their team, which might not seem like an office-layout
issue. But who knows if they might have gelled better with their team if they
weren't all sitting around with noise-cancelling headphones on, or glaring at
each other for turning the lights on/off, or taking too many phone calls, or
all the other annoyances of an open office.

------
peterwwillis
The new trend of "You don't even get an assigned desk, anyone can take yours
at any time" is beyond low. We're literally replaceable cogs now. Don't bother
doing anything silly like leaving a water bottle at your desk, or pictures of
your family, or god forbid, a plant: it's someone else's now.

------
docker_up
I've been in all different types of environments: single offices; shared
offices; cubicles; working entirely remote; open office. At first I thought it
was weird but after 25 years, my favorite is open office spaces. It's a lot
more social, and I don't care if people see that I'm surfing HN or reddit for
a few minutes every now and then. I'm not bothered by noise around me, so
overall I think it's works great for me. Others mileage may vary obviously and
I know some people hate it, but I personally love it.

------
nfriedly
Officially, I work from home. But when my family is around, that can be just
as bad as being in an open office environment, maybe worse. (I have a 4-year
old and a 3-month old.)

So, I started leasing an office in town about a year and a half ago. Totally
worth it. It's a quiet space to work where nobody interrupts me or touches
anything. And, the internet's about 5x faster than what I have at home. When
the weather is nice, I bike in.

It'd be great if my employer paid for it, but my base pay is sufficient.

------
ergothus
I hate open offices, and took it as a given that most others do too. But in my
last office, they held a poll (anonymous, but kinda in-person, we all voted
electronically while in an all-hands meeting) in an office that is mostly (but
not solely engineers)...and it came back slightly IN FAVOR of open offices.

I was stunned, but asking around there were enough people that didn't seem to
have a problem with the distractions to explain it, so I think it was actually
representative.

------
WhompingWindows
My team at my last biological sciences company was on an island - literally a
cluster of desks around which the rest of the company had to walk to get to
the kitchen. We were subjected to by far the most "openness" of any team in
that we were not anchored to windows or walls. Furthermore, we were right next
to two very talkative departments.

What was most distracting was when the CEO or anyone in the company can walk 2
feet behind or 5 feet in front of you while you're working. That was one of
the biggest factors, other than low salary, that pushed out SO many of my team
(50% turnover in the single year I was there) and lead to numerous poachings.
Management did not care, however, because they simply hired new people from
the pool of underemployed biological scientists.

Compare that to my current post, I'm in a cubicle room with 3-5 other people,
depending on their remote schedule, and its super quiet and very focused. I
get a lot more hard things done now, and learn a LOT more, though my social
life at work definitely took a hit.

------
c2h5oh
Aside from being horrible and costing you employees open spaces make no
economical sense at all.

Open space requires 60-110 ft^2 (5.5-10 m^2) per person [1]

Let's assume that with offices you'd need 150 ft^2 (14^m) - that's including
extra corridor space etc - a whooping 90 ft^2 (8.4 m^2) extra.

Let's assume that open space costs you just 10% of productivity (studies show
that it's more than that [2], [3]).

I bet that just 10% of the salary alone is more than rent on 90 ft^2 for
majority of employees..

[1]
[https://www.officefinder.com/how.html](https://www.officefinder.com/how.html)

[2]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02724...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494413000340)

[3] [https://www.steelcase.com/research/articles/privacy-
crisis/](https://www.steelcase.com/research/articles/privacy-crisis/)

------
beart
Most open office layouts have to pump some sort of white noise into the
environment to dampen voices echoing across huge rooms. I really don't
understand why there is such an aversion to doing an open-ish office,
segmenting groups of desks into smaller closed off (floor to ceiling frosted
glass) areas instead of having the entire room open.

~~~
Kadin
> I really don't understand why there is such an aversion to doing an open-ish
> office, segmenting groups of desks into smaller closed off (floor to ceiling
> frosted glass) areas

Because that costs money, and open offices are a cost-savings measure. It's a
way to be cheap while looking hip/stylish/whatever.

In some cases I think there's also a barely-concealed dick measuring thing
going on, where companies put in open office space so that they can elevate
some employees by giving them cubicles (and executives, obviously, will always
get outer-ring offices with windows!). So you take away with one hand, give it
back with the other, and suddenly what was formerly standard for everyone
becomes an incentive you can hand out discretionarily.

~~~
randcraw
It would add trivial cost to hang heavy sound-absorbing curtains as room
partitions to break up an open space. These would reduce noise significantly
from all sources and make the roomlets colorful and cozy. And they could be
moved around over time to accommodate changes in team size, and just to add
visual variety.

No decent restaurant uses stadium seating as their decor. There's good reason.
Patrons don't want to dine in a gymnasium.

------
jrumbut
I currently work where most people have offices with doors that close (though
some share them with 1-2 others, the shared ones are large though), and I've
noticed that the turnover is almost non-existent. Basically retirement?

My prior open plan (even with remote) offices had an average tenure of 2-3
years maybe?

------
davesque
I've generally felt that open office plans are just a cost cutting move that
has been heavily disguised as some kind of ingenious workplace innovation.

Times are tight. Companies don't have as much money lying around as they did
in the nineties -- that or they're just not willing to admit that they do.

------
matthewfelgate
Personally I hate open offices, I wish I had my own office. I could actually
get some work done.

~~~
HenryKissinger
Preach, brother.

------
yRR9vQKQ
To people saying things like "I know they bother some people, but I actually
really like open offices!" \- that's great for you, but the point of a
workspace should be to target a "lowest common denominator" of productivity.

You _enjoy_ open offices, but does a basic cubicle (as an option - you can
always have meetings/other open spaces) really _hinder_ your productivity, in
the same way open offices _hinder_ the productivity of many?

If not, then the right thing to do (for a professional work environment - a
place intended for productivity first, and subjective enjoyment at best
second) is to respect the needs of others in this situation. Any commons
involves compromise.

------
dsfyu404ed
Meanwhile in the defense industry you're all but assured a cube, often a tall
one, maybe even an office if you happen to work in a building spec'd out that
way. Can't have unauthorized eyes looking at what other people are working on.

~~~
Kadin
Honestly I think this has more to do with the profit margins in the defense
industry, not because of any IA/OPSEC concerns.

Though I have noticed a very unwelcome trend where some newer defense
companies are building open-plan offices because they think it's "cool". Fine
example of the worst sort of cargo-culting.

~~~
randcraw
When I worked in military contracting for a decade, I found the same work
environs: at three different DoD employers I shared an office (with window)
with only one other person.

Now that I work at a big pharmaceutical (where profit margins are famously
big), we recently transitioned to an open space. It's ugly, tight, offers no
storage space, has a low ceiling, little daylight, and you can't sit in the
same space from day to day. The space is even broken up across three floors so
you're guaranteed not to be able to find your friends.

Management seems hell bent on driving out talent. Pretty much all our best and
brightest have left. Their replacements have all been 22 year-olds, who've
never worked anywhere else and don't know that it doesn't have to be like
this.

------
Corrado
A counterpoint to the noise that an open office creates can be the silence it
enforces. In a past life we had an open office with 20 people situated in
"pods" of 2-3 desks. We were all developers and the problem wasn't that it was
too noisy but was too quiet. I was afraid to say anything to anyone because
the whole room could hear it and it would disturb everyone. Even just moving
in your chair could cause a cacophony of squeaks and groans (or at least it
felt that way). It felt like working in a library where everyone was afraid to
breath too loudly.

------
samgranieri
In the past few years I've worked from home, worked in places that had a
cubicle, a room of 6 devs where everyone had their back to a wall, and now an
open office floor plan.

Right now I'm sitting in a corner near a wall with the open office floor plan.
I have some desks partially behind me, with a conference room that's not used
much. I've gotten used to it.

I liked the six devs in a room thing, but my company outgrew that office two
years ago.

I also invested in some noise cancelling headphones, and it's absolutely
essential.

Right now I have two coworkers talking 5 feat from me, and I can't hear them.

------
amanaplanacanal
When they remodeled a building I used to work in, they converted it all to
open office space (minus the manager's fully enclosed offices, of course).
What we were told was that every person had to have a view of a window.
Something to do with the LEED certification? Maybe they were saving
electricity by allowing the light to reach all the spaces.

Then our team lead decided we needed to have a morning stand-up meeting every
day in the middle of this space, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact
that we were bothering all the other teams in the same shared space.

------
tschwimmer
People think open offices are some sort of hidden conspiracy that's been set
up to make their lives hell. There's no conspiracy; open office floorpans
require less floor space per employee and are thus cheaper. Think about all
the additional space required to have walls, a hallway connecting offices,
etc.

Firms are not stupid. I am not doubting that there is a productivity hit due
to distracting noise and motion, but it's probably not outweighed by the
reduction in real estate cost.

~~~
Not_a_pizza
It's not a conspiracy - removing privacy looks nice on the surface, until you
realize that every conversation you have at work is now in public corp space.
Any jokes you might have told, any friendship type things are now scrutinized
at the highest levels by managers who are only "cells" away - in the same big
room.

Open offices feel like a real dick move by any company that uses it to corral
employees as close together as possible.

Maybe if they have reasonable break rooms it's not so bad, but how many
companies give you more than the bare minimum space you need to work?

------
robben1234
It was meant for to make already needed frequent communication easier between
sales (editoral, etc) stuff. When open space is implemented in an office meant
for engineers it's killing people. You need silence to be able efficiently
focus on your work and now employer makes you work in a place where silence is
impossible by design.

------
jdlyga
I switched jobs from an open, small desk, "collaborative" environment to one
that has bigger more private desks. It's much nicer. I have more space, more
time to research and watch programming conference videos, less interruptions
since most interactions are on our chat program. And the environment has about
the same level of collaboration.

------
JustSomeNobody
My last employer transitioned from cubicles to open office "pods". Basically
desks arranged where about 5 devs could work in close proximity. I disliked
it. I work remote now, but if I ever have to work like that again, I'll bring
in a large cardboard box and duct tape it to my desk around me, my monitor and
keyboard.

------
DoofusOfDeath
In the various discussions I've seen about open offices on Hacker News and
elsewhere, I don't recall ever seeing a post from management explaining why
they've implemented open offices despite these complaints.

I'm I just mistaken about their collective silence? Or if not, does their
silence imply some kind of ulterior motive?

~~~
maxxxxx
In my company the managers I have talked to about this (they have private
offices with windows) seemed to be thinking that the people who complain are
just whiners. In addition these decisions get made pretty far up in the
hierarchy so most likely the people who make the decision never have to work
in that environment.

For example in my company facilities makes the decisions but they have a nice
team room with windows for everyone.

So in short I believe that decisions about workspaces almost never that made
by the prople who have to work there. And when you get to the level of people
who can shape their workspace like CEO and VP you rarely see open office as
the choice but usually private office with window.

~~~
madcaptenor
One way I like hearing it put is that the people making the decisions probably
make sure their kids have a quiet place to do their homework.

~~~
maxxxxx
And fast food execs don't allow their kids to eat fast food :-)

------
drbojingle
Canadian here: Also hate open offices. It's a classic case of straight line
fallacy IMO, and just general ignorance of diminished returns. Yes being
around people CAN lead to collaboration which can lead to creativity, better
relationships, and greater success, but too much of a good thing IS a bad
thing.

------
Rudism
I wonder what these numbers would look like if you just focused on software
engineers instead of a "diverse cross-section" of workers. I really dislike my
open office floor plan, but I think I'm the only one on my team of around 6
other software engineers who feels that way.

------
ddacunha
Short video on the history of open space and how today's version is a copy of-
a-copy of-a-copy of-a-copy
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p6WWRarjNs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p6WWRarjNs)

------
wwarner
I love 'em, starting as a student when I switched from the ultra-quiet Butler
library to always dully roaring Watson library to study. I cannot work with
music in my ears, but loosley relevant background noise is just perfect when I
have to think.

------
ajhurliman
People complained about cubicles before, now they're complaining about lack of
barriers. The highly negative responses people seem to have about their
working conditions doesn't seem to be a particularly interesting line of
questions.

------
theshrike79
None of this crap is new.

Can't we make it a law that anyone who designs office spaces for software
companies MUST read Peopleware first? They described these exact same problems
THIRTY YEARS AGO.

The solutions are there too, just read the damn book.

~~~
ghaff
When I interviewed with Boeing many years ago, engineers worked in old
fashioned bullpen offices with dozens of desks in a completely open room with
managers in offices on the periphery. One of the reasons I didn't take the job
--along with a general vibe of engineers just being replaceable jobs. (I was
actually given an offer straight out of school on the basis of just a resume.
I had to request to come on-site and do some interviews.)

------
samtrack2019
I like better open office as I can have interaction with other people, I would
literally never interact with anyone (except my team members) if i had my own
office, I am an introvert and there is that,

------
smileypete
Ear defenders like Peltor Optime III are good for near sensory-deprivation
levels of quietness, it's almost a relief to take them _off_ after an hour and
hear some ambient noise...

~~~
LeifCarrotson
I can't stand working in an open office with passive hearing protection
(working in the shop is different, of course). They filter out all the high-
frequency white noise, but I can still hear all the speech, just with a small
added bit of straining to make out all the words.

There's a variety of devices that can be worn:

\- Over-the-ear passive earmuffs, ex Peltor Optime III: Visible to others,
reduce all ambient sounds, some people can wear headphones beneath them.
Comfortable, but somewhat heavy.

\- In-ear earplugs, ex 3M 90585-00000T: Not very visible to others, reduce all
ambient sounds, no headphones. Comfort varies, lightweight.

\- Over-ear Active Noise Cancelling [ANC] headphones, ex Bose QuietComfort:
Visible, reduce ambient noise __but not ambient speech. __Comfortable,
heaviest option, require batteries. Some new expensive in-ear options
available.

\- In-ear headphones playing music: Not very visible, reduce ambient sounds by
virtue of playing louder sounds over top and drowning out dynamic range of
ears. Comfortable, lightweight, requires cables or batteries. May cause
hearing damage at volume levels sufficient to drown out ambient speech.

\- Over-ear passive earmuffs over headphones: A bit clunky to take off, but
have the benefits of both.

My problem -- or rather, my employer's problem -- is that I'm an
indiscriminate eavesdropper. If someone's talking near me (or people are
talking on the radio or TV), I find it extremely difficult to ignore the
conversation. Active or passive noise cancelling does a much better job of
canceling out the background than speech, increasing the SNR of the open-
office chatter I want to drown out. I wish there was an option for ANC that
would actively reduce ambient speech.

------
Tepix
Here's what Dilbert thinks about open offices

[https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-12-08](https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-12-08)

------
commandlinefan
> U.S. workers hate

... which means that they're probably here to stay.

------
dawhizkid
I have no idea how anyone gets work done in a WeWork. I've been to a few and
the first thing I notice is how loud they are.

------
patrickg_zill
Having recently started working in such an office, the reason has (IMHO)
nothing to do with actual worker efficiency and everything to do with
management's perspective.

The cubicle walls are so short that I can see other's heads while sitting down
(and if the person is tall and/or they prefer to raise their chair high, I can
see their face) and conversations are often audible from 2 cubes away.

Upper level management wants to reduce costs but also, to remind everyone that
they are cogs in the machinery and that they want to basically turn every job
they can, into essentially a regimented call-center sort of job, with
quantitative stats being collected on all aspects of work performance.

Only the very decent pay and the prospects for promotion out of this part of
the company are keeping me around (it's the pay, really).

Loyalty to the company itself: approximately zero.

------
brightball
I always figured the solution to this issue would be in 2 parts:

1\. All open office layouts must include a stipend for high quality, noise
cancelling headphones that won't hurt your ears long term and are comfortable
enough to wear all day.

2\. People should have a little LED that sits on their desk, monitor, etc that
they can turn red when they don't want to be disturbed (like this).

[https://redlevelgroup.com/busylight-the-next-level-do-not-
di...](https://redlevelgroup.com/busylight-the-next-level-do-not-disturb-
sign/)

~~~
chimeracoder
> 1\. All open office layouts must include a stipend for high quality, noise
> cancelling headphones that won't hurt your ears long term and are
> comfortable enough to wear all day.

Noise-cancelling headphones are designed to cancel predictable background
noise, such as the white noise of an airplane's engines while flying. They are
not designed to cancel the noise of conversations happening around you.

Furthermore, noise-cancelling headphones cause dizziness and nausea after
extended use in many people. This is well-documented and also fairly
understood, given the relationship between the ears and the vestibular system.

Finally, auditory noise isn't the only problem people have with open office
layouts. Visual distractions and the "fishbowl effect" are also significant
factors.

