Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace (2014)

At the first company, it started as sharing a corner with five other people. This was tolerable, but then we shuffled around I had an office shared with one other person. This was fantastic. Then, it went to High Density which was over 10. There were no sales people, but getting interrupted was frequent. Furthermore, there were many pauses in the day because I had to ping people or I was blocked by various things and what-not.

At the second company, it very much so open office, and it has been wonderful. I rarely, if ever, get interrupted. Also, I rarely, if ever, get unblocked. My biggest problem now is not watching the clock and missing the right moment to leave before I make the wife unhappy.

My conclusion is that the open office versus closed office depends a ton on culture more than the actual office. If you have respectful colleagues, then an open office isn't bad. If you reach flow, then an open office isn't bad.

Unfortunately, I don't think many companies can achieve both a respectful environment and have engaging work.

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.

My previous open office plan was a fully booked, over crowded space with too little meeting rooms. This means that 1. There are more people in the same amount of space and 2. meetings happen at desks because there is no place to go to talk privately.

If you use an open office to create more communication in the office whilst at the same time putting the workers comfort first it is an amazing tool. But it's misused to put more people in smaller spaces.

I get that giving an individual office to everybody perhaps isn't feasible, and I also get that a more open plan office can in fact facilitate communication. But there are degrees .. I've had hard and soft-wall cubicles, open plan with dividers, open plan without dividers, facing a wall, facing a colleague but thankfully I have never had to deal with the author's scenario of a shared single long desk though I have seen some of my colleagues endure this, nor hot-desking either.

So in summary, I think an open plan office is fine in principle, and I believe there are some issues with private or shared offices it does address. But it does introduce some distractions and other problems that should be mitigated, and ultimately should never be at the expensive of having a bit of personal space.

You can't reasonnably assume that 10 people in a room will be in sync all the time.

It's something you largely get used to, and in some ways is beneficial. Assuming you're working on the same things, it's far easier to pop your head up and discuss a quick question than to wander into someone's cubicle.

If you're randomly hotdesking with strangers though, it's far less good except as a general social thing.

Been there, done that. It was very counter productive, and led to me shifting my office hours gradually so I came in late and stayed late, as well as worked from coffee shops whenever possible (writing a presentation, writing documentation, catching up on emails, pushing odd bits of code to GitHub, etc).