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Comment by fecak | Hacker News Reader

As the moderator of a Reddit sub focused on comp sci careers, I don't think the open office is an issue for junior level developers. The worship of what we in that sub call the big 4 (some combo of Google, Facebook, Apple (or Microsoft), Amazon) is pretty much what you hear from every college senior, and I've never heard anyone even mention this as a negative.

Of course these are mostly people who haven't had much experience working in office environments except possibly an internship or part-time work. Facebook might face some challenges recruiting experienced devs who know what kind of environment suits them, but anecdotally I don't see it at the junior level.

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> Of course these are mostly people who haven't had much experience working in office environments except possibly an internship or part-time work.

Exactly. I didn't think an open floor plan was such a bad idea until I started working full-time in one. I can't stand it.

I think some of it may also come with the amount of guidance and mentoring those people require.

Early in your career, the best thing for you to do is to acquire knowledge -- not raw output. The open office allows for knowledge sharing and eavesdropping in ways closed offices do not. However, as you progress you require less 1:1 time with people and can work independently given a set of goals and general architecture. This requires less face time and more coding time.

Frankly, when it comes to those big 4 companies, I think the perceived value of having that name on the resume will probably overshadow any perceived shortcomings in any of the environments.

I don't get your point?

Like you say, a bunch of people who have never worked in an open plan office obviously won't complain about it, nor will they realize it's something they should filter by.

They haven't experienced the problem yet.

Take renting a flat. I now know to avoid everywhere with storage heaters, just like I avoid places with single glazing and I also now know I should check the shower water pressure.

I didn't magically know these things before.

My point was that if the open office plan is scaring anyone away, it hasn't yet (in my experience) impacted junior developers who are still quite enthusiastic about Facebook. Facebook doesn't only hire experienced developers, and even their experienced hires may not have a formed opinion on open office environments.

There are plenty of people who are biased about things (like an open office environment) they haven't personally experienced, yet hold their bias based on hearing about the experiences of others.

I've never been in an airplane crash, and I'm pretty sure I never want to be in an airplane crash. I don't need to personally have that experience to have a bias against it.

If you didn't know about storage heaters or single glazing before renting a flat, there are probably a number of ways you could have discovered those things without having to experience them directly. It certainly wouldn't require "magic" as you say.

If a bias against open offices is happening, it doesn't seem to be impacting our newest industry entrants yet.

I'm under the impression that Microsoft was The One Company of the big five that still gives its employees offices with doors.

Traditionally that was the case with Microsoft but they've rebuilt at least the Azure buildings into no-private-space hellholes (IHMO). It was a major reason why I didn't pursue a position there - yuck.

My friends at Apple all have their own offices with doors.

Not for long, once the spaceship is done.

This is changing. They believe that open offices are the Future of the New Collaborative Workforce or some similar nonsense.

When I applied there and was given a tour of several areas it seems to be small team rooms that could fit, at most, 10 people. But this was also in just two parts of two buildings in their headquarters so who knows if that's the norm across the entire company.

Microsoft's buildings are converting one after the other ones into open office. About 8 to 12 people per office.

That seems more team-space than open office (lots of people see that as a sort of a "happy medium" between real open office and everyone-has-a-private-office that allows team to collaborate more effectively than the latter but provides less extraneous distraction than the latter; not sure I share this assessment, but I definitely see it as a distinct thing from either alternative.)

http://news.microsoft.com/stories/b16/

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