
The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea - ingve
https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-open-plan-office-is-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-idea-42bd9cd294e3
======
tombert
The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of
negated when people have the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant
cheering, which is my current situation.

Even when soccer is over, you have to contend with people playing grab-ass all
over the office, or jerks (like me) with annoyingly loud keyboards. The
modicum of utility of me "jumping into a conversation" really goes out the
window when I'm forced to wear headphones all day.

I really don't have a good way of measuring or fully quantifying how much less
productive I am _personally_ , but haven't there been a ton of studies that
indicate anywhere between 1-1.5 hours a day is wasted per employee due to the
open office? I assume that labor is the most expensive part of any big-ish
company, so it feels like the "offices are cheaper" argument shouldn't work.

~~~
0x445442
Yeah and what kills me is how ubiquitous tellocomms are for multi-site corps.
I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in where everyone was at their
desk, headphones on and each was playing the mute/unmute game in order to not
blast everyone else on the meeting with the surrounding noise.

Then, given all that, you get the coworker two seats down Slacking you. If
you're Slacking folks within 10 seconds walking distance then what's the point
of being in the office at all.

I think the ideal would be commuting to the office one day a week to take care
of meetings which are more productive in person such as sprint planning,
grooming etc.

~~~
BoysenberryPi
I slack and email co-workers who are within spitting distance of me. More
often than not they are busy and I don't want to interrupt their flow with
something that does not require immediate attention. So I'll shoot a Slack or
email their way and let them get to it when they get to it.

~~~
jamaicahest
That's a nice sentiment, however a lot of people have notifications turned on
in both their email client and in Slack, so you end up interrupting them
anyway.

There was a study done on the interruption effect of e-mail
[https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/1328726018000...](https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/13287260180000760)

~~~
thirdsun
While true, there's a significant difference: It's very easy to ignore a
notification - the same can't be said about a verbal/face to face
interruption.

------
mcherm
> And for what? Because a minority of people kinda like that configuration?
> Because it’ll look good in a few photos? Because it’ll impress strangers who
> visit the office?

Somehow the author missed the primary reason for the open office
configuration: "Because it cuts the costs of office space by a HUGE amount
(certainly more than half)."

I suppose "Because it makes it easier for managers to keep an eye on their
employees and see when they are slacking off." figures in also. Although it's
probably a sign of poor management.

~~~
tomtheelder
Yeah this is one of HN's favorite topics to bash on while completely ignoring
the primary reason why the open office exists and persists.

It's not about collaboration, it's not about socializing, it's about money.
Just like all other business related decisions.

~~~
Androider
It's a penny wise, pound foolish decision though, considering engineering
salaries. It's hard to quantify, and often an externalized cost to the
facilities management and decision makers, but my own experience suggests open
offices are incredibly expensive as a negative multiplier on the engineering
output. The "actual work" starts getting done in the evenings, on planes, and
on weekends, while the business hours are a circus of meetings and "grab-ass"
as the top comment in this thread so eloquently put it.

I'm building my own company now, fully remote, and from an engineering output
point of view I've never seen such productivity. No ass-in-seat supervision,
no assigned hours, just straight throughput of engineering tasks being closed
and features being shipped every day.

~~~
mwcampbell
> I'm building my own company now, fully remote

How do you counter the common argument that face-to-face communication is the
most high-bandwidth and one shouldn't throw away that competitive advantage
unnecessarily? I'm not a proponent of that position; on the contrary, I don't
want to accept it. But a lot of people think that way.

~~~
groby_b
Face-to-face _is_ more effective than video conferencing, but not in the way
that you'd trivially expect.

Most designated meetings, you can have just fine over a video conferencing
system. Where f2f excels is in the conversations after you leave the meeting
room - just a casual question to some other person from the meeting, which
evolves into an impromptu 5-minute chat. (That is usually more valuable than
the entire meeting :)

Spontaneous conversation is incredibly valuable. (Which, ironically, is also
cited for open offices). I believe that if you _start_ with a fully remote
setup, you are growing a culture that will move these conversations to IM or
other channels, by necessity. You'll likely be fine.

But you cannot move a company that has grown up with a culture of f2f meetings
to a culture of IM conversations - it's too deeply ingrained.

IOW, you're not "throwing away" something if you build a remote culture from
the start. Both models can work, but switching models is hard.

~~~
mwcampbell
It does seem plausible that requiring an in-person team to switch to IM and
other electronic communication would be more difficult than starting out
remote.

I work on accessibility for people with disabilities, and I'm blind myself
(well, legally blind), so I think a lot about including people with
disabilities. It seems to me that working with people with some kinds of
disabilities, e.g. deafness or a severe speech impediment, would be akin to
forcing an in-person team to switch to IM. (I have no direct experience
working with people with those disabilities, so I'm happy to be educated.) So
I speculate that starting out remote would also make the team more inclusive
in this area.

------
RandallBrown
To throw some more anecdotes in with the rest of the comments, I love open
offices.

I've had my own office and found it lonely and boring. I never got less work
done than at that job. Everything took longer because I had to stand up and
walk to talk to my team. Instant messaging sort of worked, but if they didn't
respond immediately, you didn't know if it was because they missed the message
or they weren't actually in their office.

Because I hardly ever talked to my team members I never felt any real
friendship or camaraderie with them. That made it harder to get help when I
needed it and made my day a lot less enjoyable.

I find that I thrive in open offices. I don't even need headphones to
concentrate. Everyone is different I guess.

~~~
nojvek
I thrive in hybrid environment. I go to office for half the day, while other
half the day I either work from home, or in a coffee place or somewhere else
where I can be in the zone for hours.

But the downside is I’m a workaholic. I spend too many hours working.

~~~
jehlakj
Can’t do this. The moment I introduce work at home, I have a much harder time
not thinking about work.

~~~
nojvek
The thing about work at home, you need a separate room in the house with a
closed door that feels like an office. I’m fortunate enough (thank you
Seattle) to afford something in the outskirts that lets me have a room
dedicated to work.

When I’m in the “work room” I work, otherwise I don’t. I think the brain
associates different spaces with different modes of thinking.

I can’t get jack shit done at the office other than lots of meetings. To do
real coding work, I have to remove people from my surrounding.

------
mikelevins
The best office environment I was ever in, in 30 years of working in software
development, was on Apple's Newton team in the Bubb Road building in
Cupertino.

Everyone in the building I was in had a private office with floor-to-ceiling
exterior windows and a door that closed.

Groups of offices shared a larger open common room with sofas and comfy chairs
and coffee tables conveniently arranged for sitting around talking. There were
white boards in the offices and on several walls of the common areas.

You need to concentrate? Go in your office and close the door. Feeling
amenable to visits from colleagues? Open the door. Feel the need for free-form
conversation with one or more colleagues? Plop onto the couch and talk things
over.

NeXT was laid out somewhat similarly, but with less convenient common areas.

At various times I've experienced wall-to-wall private offices, giant open
rooms with everyone side-by-side on long tables, and everything in between.
For my money, the Newton office was the best. Privacy and camaraderie were
available to us at all times in whatever measure suited each of us.

~~~
hitekker
Hate to be that guy, but didn’t the newton product fail?

Or at least fail in the direct sense of the word, and not “inspired something
actually successful”.

~~~
Mistredo
It did, but it does not make his argument less valid.

------
pnw_hazor
Companies treat programmers as costs that should be minimized. They manage
programmers like children (toys and treats) or stenographers(typing pools)
because it is cheap.

Whereas, lawyers in law firms are considered revenue generators and they are
treated that way.

When I switched from programming to lawyering, one of the biggest differences
I noticed was how the law firm staff and office manager were always trying to
make it easier for me to generate billable hours. Years later it still feels
weird having "staff" that take of care you and work hard to remove obstacles
that may interfere with your work. I can't even make my own copies w/o a staff
person offering to do that for me. Staff that catch me refilling the coffee
pot will offer to do it for me.

And, the million dollar view from my high-rise office still takes my breath
away.

Now instead of feeling like a tool/plebe I feel like a milk cow. The law
firm's entire setup is to keep me working efficiently (not that its perfect
but they try).

~~~
bshoemaker
Ah yes, Google & Facebook et. al. really seem to be minimizing their costs by
spending hundreds of thousands per developer on salary and millions upon
millions in toys and perks.

What world are you living in?

~~~
Tharkun
Most of us don't work for Google or FB. Most of us aren't even in the US. I
can definitely see laywer or banker types getting all the perks the parent
mentioned, while devs are treated like overpaid secretaries.

------
geebee
Here's what I posted three years ago on the topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9760414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9760414)

 _Is it time to get depressed yet? This has been a topic for such a long time.
It was in peopleware in 1987. I thought I discovered the topic when Joel (On
Sofware) wrote about it in 2000. While a few people seem to enjoy open
offices, the overwhelming majority of developers I know, or who chime in on
HN, value a quiet place to work and dislike open offices.

And yet, not only has nothing changed, it seems to be getting worse. It
couldn't be more clear to me that developers, at least on this issue, simply
have no clout as a profession. There may be a few individuals who can make
demands, but on the balance, these are decisions imposed on us, as a group,
and we are apparently unable to do anything about it.

The really sad thing is, this isn't a situation where we're asking to fly
first class, or for more vacation. We're talking about asking for something
that will make us more productive and increase the value we largely hand over
to our employers, simply because it's depressing to not be able to do a good
job due to distractions. So yeah, I'm depressed about it.

There was a time when I read these essays and felt a bit more charged up, like
people were starting to understand something important and that things would
change. Well, now we have open offices.

I'll finish with another variant on my broken record: the industry talks
constant about the critical shortage of software engineers, but it won't give
them a quiet place to work. Actually, that last sentence is too optimistic -
it won't allow them a quiet place to work. Those places exist, but companies
often demand that their programmers spend 8 hours a day in places that are too
noisy for focus._

~~~
sotojuan
Reminds me of Dan Luu's take:

> This book seemed convincing when I read it in college. It even had all sorts
> of studies backing up what they said. No deadlines is better than having
> deadlines. Offices are better than cubicles. Basically all devs I talk to
> agree with this stuff.

> But virtually every successful company is run the opposite way. Even
> Microsoft is remodeling buildings from individual offices to open plan
> layouts. Could it be that all of this stuff just doesn't matter that much?
> If it really is that important, how come companies that are true believers,
> like Fog Creek, aren't running roughshod over their competitors?

~~~
geebee
That's a great point. The top companies are succeeding in spite of a practice
developers say they despise. So isn't that evidence they're right, and the
devs are wrong?

Here's the thing - how many industries rely so deeply on controlling their
workforce's right to live and work in the United States? How many industries
lobby congress so ferociously and constantly about a shortage of highly
skilled workers?

Well, yeah, if an industry has the right to decide who is and isn't allowed to
live in the United States, in a system where non-family based immigration is
difficult and spots are hard to come by, then sure, they can be very
successful imposing work conditions that people with personal and economic
freedom of mobility would reject in favor of another profession. But if you
really want to live in the US and Facebook controls whether you get and keep a
work visa, then sure, you'll put up with an open office. And because of the
way we allocate green cards (requiring a corporate sponsor, and greatly
restricting how many are issued every year, with a long queue), you may have
to put up with it for quite a while.

So another way to look at it is this: companies say they are in a desperate
competition for key workers in critical shortage, and they can't recruit
domestically no matter how good an offer they make. They also require working
conditions that most developers say they despise. Uh, how about working
conditions that most developers don't despise, have you tried that?

------
massenburger
I'm sure this is just anecdotal, but we all kind of like our open office
layout. We're not just at desks sitting shoulder to shoulder. They're more of
these horseshoe-esque things, and you have plenty of room between you and the
next person. We have an open ceiling, so the A/C provides some good, loud
background noise to drown out conversations. And lastly, we're pretty strict
about having people IM you before they come to your desk, so interruptions
aren't as intrusive.

I really think open office layouts can be implemented correctly, it's just
that managers don't take the time to really tailor them for their development
teams. We all wanted the lights off to work in? Lights are off. We wanted
standing desks? We got standing desks. We wanted 2 monitors? We got 2 monitors
that have adjustable heights. I think the problem with open offices is that
managers are just using them as a way to save money on office space. If you
really want a good office area for your developers, I think you can accomplish
that with an open office layout if you really try.

~~~
linuxftw
So, you have to sit there more or less quietly to not disturb others? In an
nice cube farm, you can walk over to someone else cube and have a quiet
discussion and not disturb the entire office.

If you're a relatively small office, I suppose no cubicles could work. Wait
until you have offices in other parts of the country/world that you need to
collaborate with remotely. Everyone is on a call for 25% of the day, and it's
terrible. It's terrible to listen to 2/5 people next to you on a conference
call, and it's terrible to listen to people that are in those environments on
your conference call because they are trying to talk like they're in a
library.

------
collinf
My biggest issue with my open floor office is that it seems like everyone just
takes calls at their seats. We have private spaces and enclaves for that, but
I am just bombarded with 4 people within 10 feet of my workspace on their
phone. To counteract I throw on some Ambient music on my headphones, which
sort of works but I still find I prefer to work in silence.

Does it not seem like open-office etiquette to take a phone call in a private
space when other people are trying to work?

~~~
fblp
ask for some Zenbooths and create rule that calls must be taken in them. It
makes the open office workable. www.zenbooth.net (I'm a founder there)

~~~
jpindar
From one of the testimonials on that site: "I have some people who will
literally spend all day in them."

~~~
GordonS
Hah, I have some colleagues I _wish_ would spend all day in one of these
things!

------
athenot
I think what's a terrible idea is pegging people to specific locations. That
used to be necessary to find someone in the office but nowadays we have other
tools to discover each other's locations.

Instead of binding people to locations, I'd much rather bind activities/moods
to locations, e.g.

\- the studious space: hushed atmosphere like a library, NO TALKING, for
people actively working on brain problems

\- the collaboration space: when you need to huddle with a few other people
and solve a problem out loud

\- the audio privacy space: small rooms for remote conferences where you're
the only participant

\- etc.

What's important is to have extra monitors in all these spaces, so a decent
work setup can be had anywhere.

As a compromise, what's been working in our own office is that the open plan
is—with rare exceptions—the "Library": very quiet talking, if any. For the
super quiet, that's the Home Office. And for all the rest, we have conference
rooms which are all equiped with very large screen telepresence equipment and
which supports wireless screen sharing. So anytime we need to make noise, we
have what we need. And for those who need some momentary privacy on their own,
we have Audio Privacy Rooms with are set up with 1 armchair, small table and
video phone. (Disclaimer: I work for the Collaboration group at Cisco so we're
eating our own dog food and have easy access to it; I do realize these things
do have a cost.)

~~~
mlthoughts2018
What if a worker needs personalized space, like certain lighting, ergonomic
chair & keyboard, works on a special desktop station not with a portable
laptop, etc.?

Also, in every job I’ve had, the tasks I am asked to complete always require
absolute quiet, private concentration time, for most hours on almost all days.
The same has been true for most colleagues in each of these businesses, across
all different software teams.

Given this, why not make the default be dedicated private offices per person,
and then have separate areas for collaboration, interview rooms, etc.?

A “Library” open plan area would simply not be good enough as a default, since
it lacks dedicated privacy and lacks customizability per each individual for
sound, lighting, equipment, etc.

I think the main thing is that any solution proposing to put a lot of
programmers into the same shared, open room is just wrong-headed and
unworkable. That’s the defining property that makes these workspaces bad.

~~~
RandallBrown
> What if a worker needs personalized space, like certain lighting, ergonomic
> chair & keyboard, works on a special desktop station not with a portable
> laptop, etc.?

They would set their stuff up in the space that best fit their needs or even
work from home.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
What do you mean? The nature of needing to customize your space is
fundamentally incompatible with sitting in a large open plan space. How could
you “set [your] stuff up” in an open plan area?

For example, suppose there is harsh overhead fluorescent lighting above your
desk. But you require soft lighting from a desk lamp for eye comfort. In a
private office, you can bring in a lamp. If you bring in a lamp to your open-
plan desk, it’s futile, because the harsh communal lighting is enforced on
you, not customizable.

~~~
RandallBrown
Lighting is certainly trickier, but if it's that big of a deal, work with the
people around you and/or your manager to move to a darker part of the office
where you can set up your own lighting.

I have worked in multiple open offices where people didn't want harsh
fluorescent light and they worked with the team/facilities/whoever to get the
lights dimmed/removed/changed to be more compatible with what people wanted.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
> “I have worked in multiple open offices where people didn't want harsh
> fluorescent light and they worked with the team/facilities/whoever to get
> the lights dimmed/removed/changed to be more compatible with what people
> wanted.”

I’ve never seen an open-plan office where this would be possible, do you have
any links?

In the open plan offices I’ve worked in, the overhead lighting could not be
dimmed, and it would not be possible to only dim lights for part of the floor
and not others, because there was no barrier, wall, corner, etc., separating
one group of people from another. If you dim the lights directly overhead,
it’s still way too harshly bright from the lights 3 or 4 rows over from you
anyway.

~~~
RandallBrown
I don't have any links, but most office buildings I've encountered let you
turn off sections of lights. For more granular control we've simply removed
the lightbulbs. (Sometimes to the chagrin of the facilities people)

If lights from far away are a problem I don't have a very good solution beyond
hanging a flag or something from the ceiling to try and block the light.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Removing individual lightbulbs or hanging flags as light barriers ... I hope
you are seeing that your original suggestion is deeply unrealistic.

------
binarymax
Open plan offices have been known to be bad since at least 1987, when the
first edition of Peopleware was published. A good portion of the book
discusses issues with employee distraction and its inverse relationship to
productivity. They use evidence from the field to discuss office layout, and
also other issues like office wide paging systems (that used to be a thing!),
phone calls, and email.

------
Joeri
I’ve built software for the facilities industry so could see the move to open
offices from the inside.

The single most important motivation for open offices is cost. The facilities
department inside almost every company is viewed as a cost, and managers of
departments viewed as a cost have only one way to make a bonus: cut costs.
Most of the facilities costs are a multiple of the square meters (rent,
cleaning, heating, ...), so to cut costs you cut square meters. How do you do
this most easily? Get rid of walls first (open office), get rid of fixed desks
second (flexdesk / hot desk), then keep reducing the ratio of desks to staff
and push people to work from starbucks. Of course, it’s always packaged up as
an enabling story, creating better workplaces, but in almost all cases that I
saw the core driver was cost.

To get back to private offices the facilities department needs to be seen as
an investment, with higher productivity as ROI. The trick is proving that with
numbers. Reducing square meters is so much easier.

~~~
eikenberry
If this is the case it would indicate an eventual move toward mostly remote
positions. With remote work the company gets the productivity advantages of
private offices while having near 0 cost for facilities.

~~~
Mistredo
There will be explanation for that. Something like that managers are afraid
people would slack, or they feel they would be redundant, because people
wouldn't need their supervising.

------
eqdw
At a previous office we did a survey regarding our open office space.

The answers were extremely polarized, with about half the office loving them
and half the office hating them.

The separation was pretty clean: people whose jobs involved focusing for
extended periods of time hated it. People whose jobs were
mundane/mindless/entry level, people whose jobs involved multitasking across a
lot of things, and people whose jobs involved constant interruptions, loved
it.

This is broadly consistent with the thesis "open plan offices are very bad for
focus and concentration"

~~~
dgreensp
> People whose jobs were mundane/mindless/entry level, people whose jobs
> involved multitasking across a lot of things, and people whose jobs involved
> constant interruptions

This is a great description of being a software engineer at certain companies.
The pay is good, though.

------
dalbasal
\--> Few managers have a schedule that allows, or even requires, long hours of
uninterrupted time dedicated to a single creative pursuit.

As a manager in an open plan office, I will say this is categorically untrue.
I have twelve people interupting me constantly, and I need to stay late or
start early regularly so that I can get some uninterrupted work time. It also
tends to work against self sufficiency. Rather than learn how to do something
(or find out how to find out), it's too easy to ask someone (like me).

I do have a lot of meetings, but I also have work. I need to read specs, for
example, and understand all the implications. I need to plan projects with
complicated circular dependencies. These are "load lots of stuff into memory"
jobs. It's impossible to do in 20 minutes stretches.

I'm also a sprint-and-rest type of personality. I get a lot done I. My most
productive stretch of the week. Knocking me out of a productive roll can be
real costly in time.

It also makes me a worse/lazier manager. Rather than make sure people are
working on a nice big chunk of something, and have everything they need to get
the job done, I can trickle information in as we go. That's invariably worse,
but less work upfront.

There are definitely upsides too. You get a lot of cohesion for free,
especially at a company in the 50-250 people range.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
_I need to stay late or start early regularly so that I can get some
uninterrupted work time_

Why? Your employers dysfunctional work environment isn't your problem to fix.

~~~
nucleardog
This is where I draw the line, and I've made it clear to those in charge here.

If you need me to work overtime because we're unexpectedly busy, then I'll
work overtime. I'm not subsidizing your choice to cheap out on the office
environment with my personal time.

Not that anything's changed, but since they're unwilling to try and address
the issue I also have no guilt and receive no reprimand for the wasted hours.

(But my frustration with my inability to be productive here was definitely a
huge driving factor in my decision to leave.)

------
tribune
I wish everyone would give up on the "increases collaboration" thing and just
admit that open-plan offices are about shoving as many people as possible into
a given space

~~~
Marazan
I like open plan offices.

The increased collaboration is a plain and albviius benefit for me as a
developer.

A site crushing issue was solved in 30 seconds due to me overhearing a
conversation in ouropen plan office. Without that it would have been at least
3 hours of pass the parcel to work out what incredibly obscure thing with
timezones had happened.

~~~
delecti
How many such situations don't happen despite an open office, because the
person who could have solved it was wearing noise blocking headphones? _Most_
discussions near me don't require my attention, so _none_ of them get my
attention.

~~~
nucleardog
Either I listen to none of the discussions and remove any apparent benefit of
collaboration in an open office, or I listen to all of the discussions, and I
accomplish nothing personally.

You can pay me to focus, or you can pay me to listen to conversations and look
for opportunities to help. You can't have me do both.

------
antfarm
> Few managers have a schedule that allows, or even requires, long hours of
> uninterrupted time dedicated to a single creative pursuit.

More on that in Paul Graham's Essay:
[http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html](http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)

~~~
jonbarker
Knowledge workers, aka the creative class, are required to be on both
schedules. They are both makers and managers. So if they are doing it 'right'
they basically have two jobs.

------
byebyetech
It is very interesting indeed that tech companies who proud themselves in
making decisions that are purely "Data Driven" completely ignores data in this
case. Majority of developers hate Open Office and study after study shows that
its bad. Yet they can't make decision to have offices. Very strange.

~~~
pnw_hazor
They have made their decision based on data, devs are commodity items that are
fungible so associated costs should be minimized.

They may not admit that, but look at their actions. If you don't like their
unhealthy office space they are okay with you taking a hike.

------
vfc1
I used to stay later and use the hours from 17h onwards where there was more
peace to get productive work done, as it was impossible during the day with
all the interruptions and standups (plus headphones all day non-stop).

Only 1.5h hours lost hours a day? Try 3h or so at least LOL

Working from home, it feels like time is elastic at least the first few times,
then you get used to it. You start working, get what it feels like half a day
of work done and look at the clock: it's still 11 AM.

------
iamdave
Anyone else find themselves assessing office space when on interviews? Not
things like looking for the pool table or seeing what craft beer they have on
tap, or how fancy the giant wallboard behind reception is. I'm talking about
going into an interview, taking a look at the space and asking yourself "Could
I really stand working in this configuration for more than a month?".

I ask, having gone into interview after interview in the last few years and
just seeing ikea tables lined up with an equally absurd line of monitors and
tiny 4x4 foot spaces, desperately decorated so workers can come in and quickly
spot their little section of the subdivision, and ultimately deciding "No. I'm
not gonna work like this".

Just wondering.

~~~
loco5niner
Assessing the office space will be high on my list next time I interview.
Especially if they have a pool table. Am I going to have to listen to that all
day???

~~~
iamdave
Admittedly a pool table is probably on the extreme end of examples I could
have given; been fortunate enough that in both places that actually did have a
billiards table-they had dedicated game rooms so the clatter of a cue-ball
breaking and scattering balls against each other was well contained.

~~~
loco5niner
At my open office, the CEO announced in a company-wide meeting that they would
be putting a ping-pong table in the breakroom (very open, could be heard
everywhere). Instant "No's" coming from everywhere. Just one example of the
kind of and amount of thinking that went into designing this place. Well, the
real problem is that this office was a last-minute rush-job :-( They ended up
getting one that could go outside, but that was just to save face.

------
imgabe
I mention this every time open offices come up, but it bears repeating. The
"collaboration" excuse is nonsense. Companies choose open offices because
they're cheaper. You can fit more people in less square feet which means
cheaper rent.

I'm pretty damn sure that if private offices were somehow cheaper they would
do that instead and figure out some other way to handle collaboration.

------
trts
My open office of about 15 people per 350 square feet, row after row after
row, is silent and without interaction almost completely. It makes me crawl
out of my skin to wanting to leave. I can typically spend no more than about 5
hours there before I escape to home where I can actually get work done. I'd
love my job if I didn't have to go to that place.

------
hsnewman
I absolutely agree with this, I see such a loss in moral and productivity
where I work. What is funny though, is that the management has walled offices.
I wonder why.

~~~
cullenking
I'm management (and a dev). I have to manage health insurance, payroll,
accounting, and interface with our lawyer. My screen is shielded, and I wish I
had an office where I could take sensitive calls, and where I could have open
a notice of wage garnishment on my desk without worrying that someone will see
it, etc. Sorry, it's not because I want to look down on the plebs, I just have
things I have to do that require privacy.

That being said, I wish everyone could have their own. But, as the person who
writes the rent check and the salaries, I can't afford to go from $6k a month
to $15k a month, plus $100k outlay to build out an office where everyone gets
a private space. It's just incredibly expensive.

I'll do it if everyone would take a paycut though!

------
sytse
The OP point of an office being used to impress visitors is on point. Since
we're all remote we resorted to building a TV wall of 6 screens of 65 inch
each that features a team map of 300 people all around the world. Visitors
love it and I don't distract my fellow team members by showing it.

------
mpg33
Open office is "anti-focus" imo. It's crazy how it even became a thing.

Cubicles use up the same amount of space and at least you have some privacy.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Nice cubicles are pretty expensive.

Evidence would suggest that companies are willing to harm their employees,
reduce productivity, and pay more recruiter fees rather than pay for cubicles.

------
EADGBE
I don't know. I was in open offices thrice in 2.5 years before joining a
cubical cult for nearly three more years now.

I literally jumped at the opportunity to move my cube to share a window, and
an entrance.

Give me remote; or give me death at this point.

There's not much natural light and a set of nice headphones can't overshadow.

------
imroot
Ever time this gets brought up, everyone agrees with this, but, yet, no matter
what, damn near every -- and I mean _EVERY_ \-- employer I've worked at, and
even interviewed for since -- probably 2002 has gone to open plan offices.

I can look at the engineering area at any given day and see every member of
the engineering team with headphones/earbuds on. Slack/IRC/Skype for Business
gets ignored...why? It allows us to focus on the task at hand, without the
noise of the office around us.

One of the best startups that I've worked at -- culture wise -- had a policy
of two days a week, there would be no meetings, chatter around the office, or
loud noises in the afternoon, and they'd play something that was rather
chill/relaxing that everyone would agree on...and it really helped with
productivity: the number of commits went up on Tuesdays and Thursdays because
we were able to get things done without the hassle of anyone bothering us but
the tasks at hand.

If open plan offices were designed with sound masking/dampening, the correct
number of bathrooms per person (because, they were originally designed for
cubes, not open seating, there are never enough bathrooms, it seems), the
correct network planning (limiting your DevOps guys to one network drop always
sucks when we're the ones pushing around gb+ images), and parking (because
open plan seating usually implies that they're trying to stuff more people
into a smaller space, so, there's never usually enough parking for the area) I
would not really have an issue with open plan offices. I have a great pair of
noise cancelling headphones and they work well for me.

~~~
coldtea
> _Ever time this gets brought up, everyone agrees with this, but, yet, no
> matter what, damn near every -- and I mean EVERY -- employer I 've worked
> at, and even interviewed for since -- probably 2002 has gone to open plan
> offices._

That's because employers don't care and employees don't unite to fight them
back on such matters.

------
accnumnplus1
These articles keep being written, I guess as individuals each eventually
discover this for themselves -- is it having any positive effect as far as any
HNers can tell?

~~~
howard941
Every time I see it on the front page I forward the link to my direct
supervisor and my contact at the mother ship one hop away from the CEO and it
feels like I'm doing something, therefore it's having a positive effect on
_me_. Unfortunately corporate policy remains unchanged.

------
ThrustVectoring
Open offices would probably work a hell of a lot better if people paid any
attention whatsoever to acoustics. Put up thick carpeting over the floor,
noise reducing curtains over the windows, and tile the walls + ceiling with
acoustical panels. Basically you want the reflected noise of conversations to
be minimal - that way, people don't increase their speaking volume to be heard
over ambient noise, and the room ends up a hell of a lot quieter.

------
p3llin0r3
I am a full time remote worker, but I have survived the tyranny of an open
office in the past. I dislike the open office format.

A lot of the time companies don't "choose" an open office, it chooses them.

If you are working at a small or mid-sized company, building out rented office
space you will probably outgrow in a year or two is a crappy investment.

The alternative? Buy the desks, throw them into a room, expect people to be
quiet and respectful.

------
raz32dust
I am going to be the contrarian here. I think open office plan does work well.
But given these caveats:

\- Give enough desk space: i.e, 2 monitor, laptop, enough space for a few
books and papers, and 2 feet of space to move my chair in each direction.

\- No people making calls. Have sound-insulated single person, non-bookable,
meeting rooms/call booths for calls. Also anyone playing anything on their
computer without headphones must be prohibited. Basically no one should be
hearing any one-way conversations.

\- Strict rules on two-way conversations. Anything that's taking more than 5
mins to discuss and does not involve the whole area should go to a meeting
room.

With this arrangement, open office has worked for me. I am able to provide
solutions when I hear something about which I know something, other people are
able to provide me solutions, I get to hear about stuff that effects me sooner
(e.g, hey the commits aren't going through due to test failures). I have found
that the number of noises that bother me is actually very few in reality, and
I have my trusty insulated headphones for that.

------
s3r3nity
Every time I read these threads against the open-plan office, I think back to
two arguments that an old boss put forth for them that I haven't been able to
find a good answer for:

1) If it works for some of the most successful tech companies on the planet
(Google / Facebook / Amazon,) why can't it work for us?

2) Prove to me that the loss in productivity is higher than the cost /
investment necessary to build everyone an office (or a semi-isolated cube) +
value gained from collaboration.

I hear lots of hearsay and opinions, but if folks have good research or
articles to point to, I'd love to have them in my back pocket for the next
time I have this argument.

~~~
mattnewport
The obvious answer to 1) is "you're not Google, Facebook or Amazon". How does
he propose to distinguish between it "working" for them vs. them being able to
function despite the productivity hit because of their other strengths? Given
that all the research shows almost entirely negative impacts of open plan
offices on multiple dimensions it seems more likely that those exceptions
succeed despite not because of the disadvantages.

The OP links to the recent study that the supposed communication benefits of
open plan offices also appear to be a myth which calls into question the
premise of 2)

------
neilwilson
My 30 year old copy of "Peopleware" by DeMarco and Lister has a chapter
entitled "Bring Back the Door".

And yet the battle still rages.

If you haven't read the book, I'd recommend it. If only to realise how little
we've learned.

------
frogger101
I think the open office is not suited for all personalities. We have some
people in our small, open office that enjoy it and others that don't. It's not
a one size fits all situation, neither are cubicles.

------
VohuMana
I agree with the article. My company transitioned to open office which I was
very much against, but once the move happened I bought some nice comfortable
headphones and adjusted to the environment, it was always loud, cramped, and
lacking privacy of any kind. It wasn't until I switched to a new team that had
offices that I realized just how much of an affect the open office had on me.
I had hours of uninterrupted time and managed to get the tasks that would
usually take me a day or 2 in open office, done in just a couple hours.

------
dboreham
It is very good, excellent, attractive idea if you are paying for the office
space (and even better if you are not also subject to the consequences of poor
employee productivity).

------
wafflesraccoon
Man, reading the comments makes me think I'm the only one who loves open
offices. After switching from a cube I never want to go back. I found being
locked in a cube all day was depressing and created a culture of working
zombies. With an open office in my experience people seem much happier.

~~~
Jaruzel
Cubes seem to be very much a US led thing. I've worked in and around London
(UK) for over 25 years now, and have worked in small offices (~10 people) up
to massive 2000+ people trading floors. Not once have I seen an office split
into the 'Office Space' or 'Dilbert' style of cube working.

Given the choice, and as a 100% remote worker now, I'm so glad I don't
actually have to choose, I think I'd take the cube over an open trading floor
environment any day.

------
nedwin
Are there any companies in the Bay Area that have private offices for the rank
and file?

I've heard of one older section of the Apple campus (pre alien spacecraft)
where you can have your own space with a door etc but that's about it...

------
georgeecollins
I think it is telling that proponents of open offices usually don't mention
what seem to be their biggest advantages: they are cheap, they let you pack
people in like sardines, they make it easy to move people around if they quit
or their is an reorganization. They make it easier to obscure hierarchies of
status in the workplace. I worked for a company in SV with open offices, where
the head of the department reserved a very nice conference room all day, four
days a week. But like us he did not have an office.

------
fit2rule
My headphones are my cubicle. These days the anti-social aspect of wearing
headphones in the workplace is alleviated by the fact that there are, at any
given time, about 10 different ways to get my attention through those
headphones without requiring you to leave your desk - Slack PM's, email
alerts, etc.

If I forget to charge them, however, my productivity goes out the roof. I
cannot sit in an open plan office for 8 hours and get even close to the same
amount of work done, as if I'd had headphones on the whole day.

------
ken
I've come to see the open-plan office like the Golden Path in the Dune novels,
even if accidental. Between large technology companies which have tried to
expand to do everything, and endless acquisitions and acqui-hires, we were at
risk of too much centralization in the tech world.

Open-plan offices are a pain point which serve to drive everyone with a bit of
entrepreneurial spirit to start their own company. They're _supposed_ to be
oppressive. We're due for a Scattering.

------
User23
One upside of open offices is that by reducing average productivity, they make
it easier for employees with an effective coping strategy to more easily
surpass their peers.

------
aestetix
"Facebook did it, and we want to be like Facebook..."

~~~
overcast
We did it before Facebook was even a twinkle in Zuckerberg's eye, and it's
still a stupid idea. All that happens is the level of conversation goes up,
and they suppress it with white noise generators. Dumb.

------
newnewpdro
I'll never again work someplace that can't even be bothered to provide private
cubicles for engineers. Open offices are a shit show.

------
Fellshard
It's quite simple - in a shared open space, sound levels and attention become
resources subject to normal tragedy of the commons rules.

------
JackFr
Honestly, the adversity with which we put up in this industry is epic.

We're all truly open plan heroes. Take the rest of the day off.

------
phyzome
The one benefit of open floor plans, in my experience, is that I get to look
out the window. Cubicles cut down on the amount of natural light that can
infiltrate the room.

...orrrrr I could work from home, which I do 2 days per week, and it's very
nice. No distractions, "private office", all the natural light I want, good
food.

------
hw
As much as I dislike the interruptions of an open office, I breathe better
walking into an open office instead of a cubicle farm, which are downright
depressing. Not to mention trying to find a co-worker - downright impossible
unless you peek into each cubicle or you know which one he/she's at
beforehand.

~~~
kqr
I feel like cubicles give you the solitude and quiet of an open office,
coupled with the social interaction and community of private offices.

------
frogperson
If open floor plans are as beneficial as managent says, then why do they
always get to keep their private offices?

~~~
Mistredo
They deal with confidential information.

~~~
loco5niner
Not all of them. And programmers deal with confidential information too.

------
johnvega
If working on complex code that requires Deep Work (Cal Newport) then having a
quiet private office/room is a must, otherwise, open office should be okay.
Having my own quiet private office, and depending on my current tasks, with
option to work on open office should be a great setup.

------
everdev
I know an Apple employee begging not to be moved to the new camps and it's
open floorplan.

I'm sure some people love it, but there should be options to work in an
environment that's best for you.

------
dreamcompiler
I wonder how much of this is introvert vs extrovert? All sales people are
extroverts and most managers are. Most programmers are introverts. Guess which
group likes open offices?

~~~
magduf
>All sales people are extroverts and most managers are. Most programmers are
introverts. Guess which group likes open offices?

This is not my experience at all. From what I see, most programmers these days
are definitely extroverts, if they're under the age of ~35.

~~~
Mistredo
What happened to introverts?

~~~
magduf
I'm guessing they're still there, but they're being crowded out by extroverts.
The programming field is a lot larger now than it was in the 80s.

------
thx11389793
It occurs to me that we haven't quite done away with cubicles, we have instead
shrunk them down to the size of our heads, in the form of noise cancelling
headphones.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
The author completely misses the point using straw man argumentation. The
managers sign the leases not because the of nice-looking photos, "increased
collaboration" and other ridiculous arguments, but because of the bottom line.
Open-plan offices are cheaper and that's the sole reason. Whatever other
reasons are communicated to employees they're just typical corporate internal
PR. I haven't actually met anyone who really believed all this - everyone
knows these office are much worse than separate rooms, and it's also common
knowledge that they're unavoidable because of (much) lower cost.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Do you have evidence that open plan spaces are actually cheaper, even just in
plain real estate terms? I’ve always read that they end up being less than a
few percent cheaper per person after all is said and done. To boot, a lot of
companies spend millions on stupid, opulent office features like fountains,
coffee stations, roof decks, beer, etc. How do you explain that they are
willing to spend so much more on that stuff instead of spending that budget on
giving healthy workplace privacy?

I worked for a company once that already had a huge office in Columbus, Ohio,
with private offices for everyone. They had no engineering presence in that
office and no plans to increase headcount in that office. It was an HR office
primarily, and the workers there needed privacy everyday to be on the phone
about sensitive topics like legal issues or salary.

The CEO announced in a company meeting once that they would be totally
remodeling that office to change it into open plan seating (we found out later
it came at a cost of $14 million, purely to destroy good privacy and turn it
into open plan seats, in a building the company already owned, with no need to
accomodate more head count).

The CEO just said, “We are an innovation company and that makes each and every
one of you an innovator — and innovators love open spaces.”

So I think you’re wrong. Companies don’t care about open plan offices for
saving money (and they often lose money on it).

It’s all about bullshit optics.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
I guess we come from different backgrounds. Personally, I've never met a
person who liked the idea of open-plan offices - and this includes all
managers. Of course they choose the best places for themselves to keep the
maximum level of privacy possible.

As for the CEO - I can't imagine he could say "we're going to squeeze you all
against your will to improve the bottom line." He had to say the usual bs,
whether he believed it or not.

As for concrete data, check any online calculator. This one [1] shows
individual offices as taking 3 times as much space as open-plan offices. As
personnel costs are usually one of the highest fixed costs, going open plan
might be a good alternative to lowering the salary when a manager wants to
improve the bottom line - or, sometimes, to save the employees in troublesome
times.

[1] [http://officeprinciples.com/planning/space-
calculator/result...](http://officeprinciples.com/planning/space-
calculator/results/)

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Did you read my comment? How would the CEO be squeezing people for the bottom
line? The company already _owned_ the building, and even after the open plan
remodel, they put the same number of workers into the same square feet of
floor space.

I don’t understand your comment at all. What bottom line were they improving
by _paying $14MM_ to take down pre-existing privacy features, while not
increasing worker density per square foot at all?

Also “look at any online calculator” is a silly response that tells me you’ve
never actually looked into the data on this at all. Open plans don’t save 3x
space in a vacuum, because they introduce other costs. And it still doesn’t
address why a company would create gourmet coffee stations, roof decks,
alcohol-focused meeting spaces, opulent fountains, huge budgets for “sleek”
interior decorating, etc.

If they save 3x on space, but then use that extra space anyway for a dipshit
coffee station, then your point holds no credibility: they are _still paying_
for the huge space that could have housed all the employees with private
offices. They just fill it with dipshit perks and then cram people into the
remaining space.

Additionally, cubicles with high walls offer a lot if the privacy and noise
blocking that private offices could give, but without taking any additional
floor space when compared with open-plan offices.

So again, the answer to this behavior simply cannot be cost savings. That is
not consistent with the choices that upper management make regarding offices.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Yes, I fully understand your point. Also, I worked in top- and middle-level
management and one thing you can be sure is that the way you present things
happening in the company is of utmost importance. And I don't know any
reasonable manager who doesn't care about money. It's possible that the CEO in
question was an exception but in most companies remodeling the already owned
office to open plan was an excuse to squeeze in more people, introduce desk
sharing and other disruptive inventions.

I'm curious about the future of the company you mention. I bet that when hard
times come, the fountains and the rest will go away, while the open plan is
going to stay.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
> “but in most companies remodeling the already owned office to open plan was
> an excuse to squeeze in more people, introduce desk sharing and other
> disruptive inventions.”

It still seems like you didn’t fully read my comment. This has not been my
experience at all. Most companies choose open floor plans because they
superficially look trendy and because it is a cargo cult copy of what Facebook
& trendy start-ups do. They are even happy to spend _more_ money on this type
of floor plan.

You keep asserting that companies are very budget conscious when it comes to
real estate expenditures, but this doesn’t match reality, and you’re still not
addressing the bigger point of stupid corporate spending on fountains, roof
decks, parties, etc., which totally contradicts your point of view.

> “the fountains and the rest will go away, while the open plan is going to
> stay.”

This makes no sense. I’m not even sure you understand how real estate works.
You don’t make money by removing a fountain or a roof deck you previously paid
to install. You just lose more money if you want it removed or remodeled. If
you fall on hard times, you’re absolutely not spending money to pay
construction workers to remove physical features of the office. I can’t begin
to describe what a naive understanding of office real estate you project.

Also, any theories we might come up with about open plan office choices have
to be good theories when the company has lots of money, not just when it’s
having hard times, because tons of perfectly profitable companies that can
easily and trivially afford to pay for whatever office space they want are
still irrationally choosing open plan spaces (which destroy productivity and
make workers unhappy) even when any cost savings from doing so would be
entirely trivial compared with billions and billions of net income.

The idea that managers in those cases are simultaneously so unconcerned about
money that they will throw lavish parties, spend millions on unnecessary
office decor, roof decks, etc., and yet also act deeply concerned over a few
million of extra rent to get a large enough space for private offices ... it
obviously refutes what you’re saying.

The faux concern offer real estate cost _obviously_ is just for show, as a
pretext for the overtly _political_ reasons to choose open plan layouts.

You seem to think companies try to save money at all costs, and see open floor
plans as a necessary evil to cut costs.

Company spending behavior contradicts that claim. Companies clearly and
obviously do not see open floor plans as a necessary evil. Not at all.

------
dqpb
Disregarding cost, I think the best office plan is to have an open-plan as
your base, and enough solitary space for people to go when they need to
concentrate.

------
andrewfromx
If uncomfortable { And have talked to > 3 people { Take laptop to nearby
college campus library. Find room and work. }

------
snarfy
We're moving to an open office soon. I think I'm going to request some VR
googles so I can run a VR office app.

~~~
amiga-workbench
I've seriously considered this, but the resolution and software isn't there
yet. I've tried looking into simple video glasses without any head tracking
and those are really poor too.

------
mfringel
"Just wear headphones" is the "Just hit delete" of the new millennium.

------
Techpanda74
I like the name of the post, full of passion. From the first look, you can see
how the writer "enjoys" open spaces and couldn't hide his feelings. What deals
with open offices itself, I found it appealing, but that's just what people
prefer, we all have different preferences.

------
sandover
Please do a google image search for "medieval scriptorium". Then try a google
image search for "victorian office engraving" or "victorian counting house
engraving". Or check out this list of "Antique Office Illustrations 1770-1879"
([https://www.officemuseum.com/photo_gallery_1860s-1880s.htm](https://www.officemuseum.com/photo_gallery_1860s-1880s.htm)).
What you'll see is different instances of the open office plan, over a
timespan of a THOUSAND YEARS. It's a space plan which seems to emerge around
collective knowledge work.

These types of workplaces are not a newly-hatched resource squeeze by our
ruthless capitalist overlords. They are a physical work pattern which has been
reinvented and retooled many times, and isn't going away. In most of history,
"office"==="big room".

------
Animats
Which YC companies do _not_ have open offices?

------
bedros
another horrible concept pioneered by Mark Zuckerberg

Mark, the eighties called and they want their open-plan office back

------
iliasku
it's also cheap so..

------
tw1010
Is talking like Trump starting to become a thing now?

~~~
tert45ty54wy
No. Probably got it from here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_and_the_Terrible,_Ho...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_and_the_Terrible,_Horrible,_No_Good,_Very_Bad_Day)

------
rhapsodic
I'm old enough to remember when high-wall cubicles were standard fare, and
they were mocked and derided as soul-crushing corporate cost-cutting measures.
But they gave you a lot of privacy, relatively speaking. And you could still
have spontaneous conversations with your neighbors.

And then when school-cafeteria-style open offices became de rigeur in the
startup culture, people seemed hesitant to push back on the "but
collaboration!" nonsense. It looks like the overton window for that is finally
starting to shift.

------
nascar_is_bad
I hate open office plans, but I would be fine with them with three changes.

Do not allow eating meals in the general workspace. The main office should not
be an "office-ateria". Right now, there's a ~3.5 hour block between
11am-2:30pm where there's a 50 percent chance people are eating and having a
conversation about last night's episodes/games 5 feet behind my back.

Similarly, if you need to pull up a group of people for anything more than a
quick conversation? Get together in a room. Do not do it amongst the rest of
the team. Offices still need several private rooms to make this possible. Same
thing with phone calls. Any sort of long term outlaid conversations should be
relegated to private rooms, or to that cafeteria area. The more people
involved the shorter it must be for it to happen acceptably amongst the
general workspace.

Lastly, let people be remote when they need to, encourage it even. Don't make
jokes about it, or discourage it for any reason other than important
dates/meetings. Give them everything they need to succeed remotely. Open
office plans make everyone aware of who is there and who is not, and
currently, "not being there" is frowned upon. So even people with a valid
reason, like they're on the second week of a bad cold, feel pressured to
return earlier than necessary.

With these three things, I could reasonably expect that my work space and
general area is a suitable environment to focus, to have quick, productive
discussions and general be a part of the group.

Without them, I'm an irritable bastard with headphones on all day who loathes
everyone around me.

------
s73v3r_
So.... what's new this time around from when we had this same discussion a
week or two ago? I agree these are bad, but what are we actually gonna do
about them?

------
king_nothing
Paraphrasing a self-made billionaire: Give people a cubicle or an office with
a door and make sure no one bothers them, including you.

------
jlebrech
open offices can work if people kept quiet and minded their own business.

also listened to their own headphones and not a common radio (as that one same
playlist can drive someone crazy)

------
southerndrift
>None of this is new. There’s been an endless stream of studies showing that
the open-plan office is a source of stress, conflict, and turnover. And yet
it’s still the default in tech. An almost unquestioned default. That’s a
fucking travesty.

No, it's the other way round: you create conflict and turnover by introducing
an open-plan office. That way, your codebase remains maintainable since
handovers happen regularly.

Imagine the opposite: a productive coder from a silent office leaves after 30
years. There is a very high probability that it takes months until new
recruits can make meaningful changes since nothing has been documented. If you
enforce regular handovers you can be sure that some documentation has
accumulated somewhere.

------
andrewfromx
You really can just put in the headphones and ignore distractions for a few
hours. And then, leave. You don’t have to sit there for 8+ hours. Go in in the
morning, talk to a few people face to face, sit there with headphones for ~2
hours, and then maybe after lunch, go elsewhere and work from another location
you like.

~~~
flax
Maybe that works for you, but headphones do nothing for me for the stress
caused by having my back exposed to people walking around.

~~~
pc86
All things considered you have a pretty amazing life if someone walking behind
you constitutes "stress."

~~~
mlthoughts2018
It’s an automatic reaction in all humans. It triggers a fight vs flight
reflex.

------
RasputinsBro
> We were already working from in open office, but at least I had a desk
> facing the wall behind me, so there was a modicum of privacy and
> psychological safety. Then management decided that it would “look better” if
> we went to circular desks where several of us would be sitting with our
> backs to the hallway, so everyone walking past would be looking at our
> screen as they passed.

This seems dishonest to me. Can some body explain if I'm missing something?

I understand the argument that open-plan offices increase distractions in
general, and the damage that loud people do in particular. But if you really
intend on being super focused and productive, I don't understand why it would
bother you that someone would look at your screen.

I have worked in an open-plan office and the only times when I was embarrassed
that someone saw my screen was because I was wasting my time on reddit/HN,
which I shouldn't because that's not what they're paying me for... Once I
managed to force upon myself the discipline of just don't open reddit/HN, I
was happy to accept one of the desks with the back to the center of the room,
because I no longer cared that someone was looking at my screen.

Am I missing something?

~~~
nkrisc
I can only speak for myself but it makes me unconformable because it makes me
feel like I must be super productive for 8 hours straight lest the big boss
happen to walk by for the 3 minutes I'm taking a mental break to read
something interesting and completely unrelated to work.

~~~
RasputinsBro
If the big boss happens to walk by for the 3 minutes you're taking a mental
break and that is a problem, I would say the problem is the boss/culture, not
the space.

Think about it. You just said that someone "catching you" taking a break is an
issue and that in your mind that is a justification for keeping your screen
hidden.

