Why Open Offices Are Terrible
washingtonian.com
washingtonian.com
In the afternoons, we'd have our "coding sessions" where we could close the door and just sink into whatever project/problem we were working on. The result (without constant distractions of people walking by/around us) was extremely productive.
This was back in Ohio years ago. Since then, I've moved to the bay area where I've unfortunately been forced to work in open offices. I find them depersonalizing and my ADD kicks in with people constantly walking by/around me. I isolate myself with good noise canceling headphones, but I find myself longing for the days when I shared an office with some really cool dudes. Or, maybe I still haven't found a team I like.
Anyway, I find it odd that companies in the bay area, with how innovative everything is out here, think open offices are good and/or work. You pay people 6 figures to use their mind and then make them sit in a room all day with constant distractions. It makes no sense.
Wanna split the three commas?
Everyone in the company was setup this way, even the CEO shared an office with 3 others (only one other exec). It was a great atmosphere.
I always just through it was the growing company that lead to the change, but now that you mentioned your experience and I reflect on mine, I think that little 3 man shared off might have been the key to all of the awesomeness and fond memories of my time with that company.
I don't know if I have ADD(never been tested for it), but that's pretty much how I feel with open offices. Extremely irritating... So I left a cool startup for big enterprise, atleast where I can get my own cube.
Some people thrive in an open office, while others can't function due to distraction, interruption, and an expectation of constant interaction. Some people thrive with private offices and doors, while others go stir-crazy and feel like they can't collaborate. And cubicles with proper separation end up as a satisficing solution that doesn't make anyone completely happy but doesn't drive people completely crazy.
Ideally some kind of hybrid could work, with doors available for people who want them, and common work areas available for people who want them. But perceptions matter too, and "private office" rightfully looks like a perk; many who might function better in a common area might resent not getting an office.
I don't have a cite here, and there's a lot of contradictory evidence anyway, but I can easily see how some kids of important inter-team communication might diminish, even if the overall amount of chatter greatly increases.
This is why I tend to agree with people that open offices are more about the appearance of productivity than actual productivity (appearance of communication rather than real communication, illusion of cost savings rather than real cost savings).
It just comes back to -- if you want to prove a point there will be data out there to help you justify it. This article is trying to pretend to be objective, but really is just citing a slew of studies that, presumably, had really small sample sizes. /rant
There is no one answer. IMO an ideal office would have both options.
To me, the real problem is noise, not the lack of an office. I work very well in libraries, which are generally very quiet. I don't work at all well in open offices where people are constantly having phone conversations[1]. The "quiet room" that was provided at Sun Micro that I described in a post below also worked very well for me. Interestingly, I also work well in coffee shops, provided that there are no audible cell phone conversations (again, person to person conversations just aren't that distracting to me).
Overall, while I agree with you that it's not a one-size-fits-all situation, I think it's fair to say that loud noisy offices where developers are put next to a manager or marketing worker who is on the phone all day are generally harmful to a developer's productivity.
[1] These seem to be a worse distraction than person-to-person conversations. I've read that this is a common reaction, probably because people try to "fill in" the unspoken words, causing a greater cognitive impairment.
That's the article I'd love to read, though the issues go very deep. PG was certainly right in an essay from years ago where he concludes that private offices are really used to denote rank in a company, rather than to provide people with a quiet space for productive work.
My own experience at Sun Microsystems a long time back was a good one. They had drop in centers with quiet rooms and loud rooms. Loud rooms had phones, quiet rooms didn't. None of it wouldn't have mattered without enforcement - every now and then, someone who did a lot of work on the phone (never a developer, they always took phone calls outside) would try to use the cell at a desk, figuring it was "ok" as long as they kept it short and used mildly hushed tones. Nope. The office manager, who didn't care who they were or if they liked her, enforced the rules.
That could work, while preserving the rank/status qualities to offices that are important to other elements of an organization.
However, in the land of externalized costs, that could be the reason. It's easier to point to the cost savings for cubicles or open offices and say "hey we saved that" than it is to point to the amount of software not written (or even harder to prove, written but lower in quality) and say "hey, we lost that".
with a "1" above it.. Is that 1 person? 1 rank (out of how many ranks)? Rank #1? 1% happiness?
I vastly prefer sharing an office with one other person where both of us have our backs to the wall over any of the others. Having my own office is too isolating for my tastes, but I don't like wide open spaces, and I don't like people being able to sneak up behind me.
This doesn't get discussed enough, compared to noise.
There's something very primal about wanting to defend our backs. At work, in a restaurant, at the library... I want to have my back against the wall. My lizard brain thinks it's protecting me from predators, but my modern brain really doesn't want a pair of eyes behind me when I'm on email, or reddit, or whatever. And I don't want people to make their inevitable comments whenever I bury my face in my hands to just THINK for a while.
Personally, I'm fine with some kind of mix. Some people have cubicles where I work, others have offices, others are a bit more open. As long as I'm listening to good music, it's never really bothered me.
Depends heavily on the work you're doing in that team. Sometimes you're all working on the same problem; sometimes you need to divide and conquer, or otherwise work on mostly unrelated matters.
I've read about Valve's "moveable desks" and how they improve collaboration, but that's still a big open-plan office. I wonder if some sensible structure could make it easy to sometimes work in a shared office and sometimes work in groups?
On the face of it, that seems illogical.
I don't think anyone disputes that a well-functioning team's whole (team productivity) is greater than the sum of its parts (individual productivity). What is hard to fathom, though, is the idea that reducing the sum of its parts increases the whole. I'm not saying it isn't possible, just not straightforward.
If you're so small this would make a difference, maybe you shouldn't have an office at all yet.
I wouldn't say, obviously best. I work in a cubical with a door and ceiling high walls. Not an "office", but it's pretty close. Everyone has them and it's set up kind of like a cubical farm.
It can be very secluding.
Sometimes I'll see people from other teams on the same floor I've never seen before and introduce myself, just to find out they've been working here for 6+ months.
I really like having my privacy when I'm working, but sometimes I can't help but feel the grass may be a little greener.
It absolutely has that choice. No one is forcing startups to put people in open plans. No one is forcing startups to pay exorbitant rent.
However, it isn't always an easy problem to solve for companies either, office space can be quite expensive and to give every developer (let alone every person) a private office is in most scenarios just not going to be financially viable.
Having said, it should be doable for most companies to have at least a "loud" and a "quiet" space, i.e. two open spaces in stead of one. This gives workers at least some choice in which environment they prefer to work and it should be feasible for most companies out there.
Sometimes, I just need quiet to get a lot of work done. For these days, I might work at home so people don't stop by my office. Even with an office, people stop by all the time to tell me little things. That can make concentrating on programming, design or other stuff really difficult. Each interruption can knock me out of focus for 15 minutes. There is also the non-stop ringing of my office phone.
On the other hand, when we are close to shipping something or in the earlier conceptual stages, it's nice to have a bunch of product people together without any walls. We might sit around a table with laptops and punch list and QA the rest of the product before we get ready to ship it.
I love it. You get to know people from different places and it's like we're all a small community caring for one another. Also I think from a psychological point of view it helps having a large space and looking at different people all day.
As humans we're definitely not wired to look at a computer all day. We've evolved to be in open spaces and not closed in caves.
The problem is that it's easy to fall into the trap of cutting costs as part of transitioning to an open plan. You really can't have it both ways -- either you increase productivity and pay more in square-footage, or you cram everyone into a much smaller space at the cost of productivity and happiness.
I think they eventually moved to floating offices with Sun-Rays everywhere, plug in your employee ID at any workstation and your desktop (and phone) magically appeared in that office.
Seemed like it would have been a good place to work at the time (mid 90's, just as they were starting to skyrocket along with the dotcom boom).
I'd just like to interview whichever genius thought it would help anyone to have your reps struggling to hear their own call over the sounds of everyone around them and their calls.
My current pattern is to WFH 1-2 days a week, good for days with kids appointments or if I have back-to-back calls (e.g. from 6AM-2PM).
some stuff to survive in open offices: https://www.quora.com/What-drugs-do-you-put-into-your-bug-ou...
it is mostly about sport supplements for mental performance and stress resilience. quite long to repost.
warning! the use is somehow violating original instructions, but it is working.
also applicable for software developers work and outdoor activities.
And yet, employment statistics show Americans are more productive than they've ever been. Something doesn't smell right with this data.
Besides: As the common job of IT is automation, e.g. reducing the need for labor, increased (everyday meaning) productivity of IT could actually result in lower (economic) productivity, as GDP gets smaller.
One time I took a drink of a glass of water on my desk and my coworker made a remark about how I made some strange movement when I took the drink. To me this is hell, to have every single moment potentially under observation. I mentioned how uncomfortable that dynamic makes me and he apologized for his remark, but the point remains.
It's not even about privacy, it's about please just fucking let me exist as an entity unto myself. People often think that when Sartre said "L'enfer c'est les autres", he was saying "other people suck and are annoying". But what he was saying is that hell is the constant presence of the Other.
I think the worst part was they said I used the bathroom too much. It was like being back in high school. I drink a lot of water. Geesh!