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Comment by peejaybee | Hacker News Reader

It's easy to understand. Open plan offices have the advantage of being cheaper, and the disadvantage of harming productivity. The cost savings are immediately apparent and easily attributed. Productivity hits (or gains) come later, are harder to assign a utility to, and are harder to attribute.

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My theory is that productivity hits are much smaller than we developers tend to think (as awful as it sounds). I elaborate more on that in http://www.mikhanov.com/2015/06/08/open-plan-offices-creativ...

Your theory is, to put it bluntly, wrong.

Maybe it applies to people slapping together node.js libraries, but otherwise developers need a working environment in which they can focus.

Creativity is not only about innovating at the bleeding edge, but also coming up with effective solutions, optimisation, designing software, organising code, etc. A lot of software development is creative work.

Besides, not being able to focus will also lead to increased stress levels, overlooking bugs and decreased productivity.

IMO, the fact that they're cheaper is only a justification. After all, most places are open-office rather than remote.

The big reason why management likes open office is, in my opinion, that those environments make them feel like they've got more oversight and control.

I agree it isn't the cost. It's mostly that you can see what everybody is doing. If you don't have management or processes you trust, and a lot of new employees, you worry that you will have some kind of bad behavior. Also that its easy to move people around, which you do a lot when you are growing.

I work at a startup with open offices (my second) and the absenteeism blows me away. I really believe it is because the office is an unpleasant place to work. But hey, we have ping pong tables!

I think these kinds of decisions, including recognized reduction of productivity, has to do with how desks and offices are taxed and depreciated, what has to be written into accounts, and the fact that death marches are free.

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