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Comment by ivl | Hacker News Reader

I think I'd have a less negative reaction to open offices if it weren't for the attempt to sell it as a productivity booster.

The article even mentions how they're "sold to workers as a boon to collaboration — liberated from barriers, stuffed in like sardines, people would chat more and, supposedly, come up with lots of brilliant new ideas". Thankfully the author also quickly refuted that. Yet the insanity remains, and people (often times the Agile evangelist types companies hire) continue to try to convince developers that open offices are good.

I could buy into it if the rational is it's far cheaper to fit more employees in less space. That's a fine reason. It sucks to work in, but I can at least hear that without rolling my eyes and dismissing everything else that person says as incredulous.

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I think I'd have a less negative reaction if people actually had a decent amount of personal space in these floorplans. In the photo at the top of the article, two people could scarcely yawn and stretch at the same time without making physical contact. If you're towards the end and you want to just take a bathroom break, you'd have to physically weave around people and chairs to get out. My home office that I use for playing video games is nearly as large as that space that houses presumably four working professionals. How is this reasonable? How does anyone think this is a good way of investing in your expensive staff? If this is all the space you can afford, I absolutely sympathize, but maybe at that point it's time to let people work from home.

> If this is all the space you can afford

I think, I saw in an earlier article, and after repeating the calculation myself, that just a 1 or 2% increase in productivity would save you so much salary it’s criminal not to invest in a decent working space.

That's the kicker for me - when I talk to people who are complaining about open floor plans, they typically work in a place similar to the one pictured in the article. Now, that's not to say that more space necessarily makes it better for productivity, but it will certainly make some difference (at least, to me). Where I work, we have an open floor plan, and we have a good amount of space around our desks. I personally like it, but I can see how its not for everyone. If I were crammed in a tiny space, I would definitely be clamoring for an office.

Agreed, same with my current workplace. Big open office with enough space and its amazing. I wouldn't trade this to go sit in a grey cubicle for anything. But that picture from the article looks like a nightmare, so I get why people complain about that situation.

Open offices have a ton of variation and they can be nice, but can also suck. It's all about the implementation.

Same for me, I currently sit in an open floor with a lot of space and people are considerate of others (i.e. not chatting much/loud).

And I actually like it a lot. I don't want to sit in a separate room all day, I enjoy being around people and to interact from time to time.

I think part of the problem is that (in my experience) open offices actually do boost productivity somewhat, but only when the office is a small 2-5 person pod. I lose productivity when I get dropped in a huge floor of people chatting and talking about things not related to what I'm working on.

A pod is a lot different than an open office from my experience. Since the only background noise is your team and your problems, while distracting it at least it's focused on things you care about. Open offices you get bled over from everything. Made worse by the modern industrial design that hates noise insulation.

I wouldn't call that an open office though, just a team room.

A shared space is fine with <5 people, can become problematic at 5-10 people and the frequently 20+ large floor spaces are just unworkable without noise cancelling headphones.

Agreed, it's just a small room with people in it. BTDT.

I worked in london in an open plan office maybe 40ft wide and getting on 200 ft long. That's open plan.

It's fine except for the noise. It's always the noise as the problem, all else is ok.

(edit: not a single company, a collection of small and medium businesses)

> It's fine except for the noise.

And the utter lack of privacy. Want to tell your colleague that Alex is a dick? Better do it in another building, or the entire office will hear it.

It's probably best not to use such language at work or one may be labelled a dick oneself. Keep it polite and any complaints formal.

Don’t worry. Alex knows everyone thinks he’s a dick.

I work in an open office with about 30 people in it and find it unbarable on times. I have some good noise cancelling headphones that help sometimes but I can't wear them for too long a period before they start getting uncomfortable.

Noise cancelling headphones do absolutely nothing when you put a loud talker next to one. They can't absorb speech.

The other problem is people trying to do Skype or other conferencing calls while wearing closed-can headphones. Their own speech level rises two notches when they can't hear their own voice. Try it for yourself and see.

Honestly skype et al should probably detect if you're using headphones and turn on direct feedback if you are. It makes not only a stark difference for how loud you speak, but also for how annoying and derailing echo on the connection is.

2-5 person offices are great. Even if you don’t work directly together you can have meaningful relaxed conversation where you can actually learn something about each other.

Open office seems to be designed for people who like to yell at each other or who isolate themselves completely via headphones. I have almost never seen any meaningful collaboration in large open office. It always happens in smaller more intimate spaces.

Also depends on the team.

And the type of job. Some jobs require a lot of immediate/high-bandwidth cross-communication between team members. Not all do.

Well, the fair comparison is to an wall separated space using the same area.

If you compare an open space office with a walled office that 3x the size, of course the bigger office will win out. An open office 3x the size would also be a big improvement.

> I could buy into it if the rational is it's far cheaper to fit more employees in less space. That's a fine reason. It sucks to work in, but I can at least hear that without rolling my eyes and dismissing everything else that person says as incredulous.

Raytheon, for all its other faults, was at least largely honest about why they were shrinking cube sizes and experimenting with open floor plans. There was some half-hearted mentions of increased collaboration, but they pretty much said it was a space issue.

I think it's an important distinction to say that is isn't a space issue, it's a money issue.

Yes and no. Ultimately, any space issue can be solved with enough money, so yes. But space usually isn't easily expanded. My company has the 7th floor of a 10-floor building. When we hire people as we've been doing, we can either fit them into the existing space somehow, or... move the entire office? Rent space on the floor above or below? It isn't as easy as just "spend a bit more money, get a bit more space," so no.

Ultimately, when they moved into this building, they spent quite a bit more than they needed to for the entire floor, knowing they expected to grow. Now they're cramming people in too closely and will probably have to move to a larger building in the future. In the meantime, however...

So yeah, it's a space issue first and foremost, and a money issue only secondarily.

Yes and yes is what I got out of your answer.

>When we hire people as we've been doing, we can either fit them into the existing space somehow, or... move the entire office?

Yes. Exactly.

My office did it with 0 days down time combining 3 separate locations spread out around a city downtown. We labeled our stuff on Friday, a company was contracted to make sure on Monday our stuff would be in a new office, and it was.

It's a money issue through and through, until the lost productivity is greater than the cost to move, more people get crammed in. Simple as that.

So for every new hire at your company, you pack up on a Friday and unpack on a Monday? Do you only hire on one day a year, or sign week-long leases, rather than year-long leases?

No, that's silly. You lease a building bigger than you need today, and then when you fill it up you either pause hiring or start cramming people in until your lease is up and you can move.

Or, I guess you can set money on fire and break lease after lease after lease, but I think there's no way around the fact that this is a space issue first and foremost, with money providing a way to mitigate/solve space issues.

In what way is this a valid response to what I said?

We moved into a building bigger than our current size yes... so?

You don't fill up overnight.

Do you hire people on a coin flip? Or make up open positions when it tickles someone's fancy?

We were hiring at an incredible rate, but never got to the point of being actively detrimental to our space because once that was barely in sight, we started to move.

But having money afforded that option.

Hence, it's always money, not space.

It's a valid response because you seem to be denying any factors other than money, which is ridiculous.

I've mentioned lease terms as one major counter-example. It is not enough to lease "larger than you need right now," but given 12-month standard lease terms, you must lease "larger than you will need one year from now," which isn't a factor of money alone.

We had that problem at a different company (lease start actually, being a little far out) and opened a temporary office for 2 months.

There is literally no situation where any moderately competent company is forced to cram people closer than normal except to save money. Even "normal" is defined by money.

Heck, even an incompetent company can pay a competent company figure it out for them.

Office/Commercial space is usually leased on much longer intervals than 1 year. It has to be or it would make no sense to complete the necessary renovations.

yes it's easy to move when everything is sorted, but it's not quick to get to that point - it's potentially months going from "we need more space" to moving day.

finding the space, contracts, fit outs - it's not a one-day task

The original question was is it space vs money. It's always money.

Unless there is literally no real estate within your location, it's always money.

> I think it's an important distinction to say that is isn't a space issue, it's a money issue.

It's not even a money issue in general, it's what money is untouchable, vs what money can be freely cut into.

Working conditions for regular employees? Sure, brand it as "increased collaboration" and cut that sucker down to the bone.

Number of yachts per CxO? Nope, can't touch that.

Great point. I feel the same. If employees are told that company can spend X dollars on office space and hence open office is only thing we can afford, it will be quite better than buzzword productivity bullshit. After all in my experience companies are reasonable straightforward in term of expenses they plan to have on office supplies, hardware/software etc.

> I think I'd have a less negative reaction to open offices if it weren't for the attempt to sell it as a productivity booster.

But isn't that how you sell anything politically? Take some real or alleged positive aspect, blow it up out of all proportion, be loud and keep the pressure up, ram the agenda down all throats as deeply as it goes.

Open offices are a productivity booster for some people (myself being one).

Of course, WeWork being a company with one product, they try to sell it to everyone, even the people who it doesn't work for. That's a valid criticism of WeWork, but not really a valid criticism of open offices.

So on a team with roughly half introverts and half extroverts, you'd expect it to be a wash - only it's not, because there's a low ceiling to how much productivity you can add, and the noise from the productive extroverts drives introverts' productivity into the floor. It's net negative.

It sounds like the very easy solution is to let the extroverts work together and let the introverts work in private.

Your post is a valid criticism of forcing introverts to work in open offices, but it isn't a valid criticism of letting extroverts work in open offices.

How do you measure your productivity?

What do you attribute to your increase in productivity in an open floor plan?

> How do you measure your productivity?

The same way everyone measures productivity: subjectively. With software development, measuring productivity objectively is very much an unsolved problem (which is one of the major problems with studies on productivity of different floor plans, incidentally).

> What do you attribute to your increase in productivity in an open floor plan?

1. Generally feeling happier, more energized, and more focused (I'm an extrovert). When I work alone I find myself getting restless, irritable, and distracted.

2. Collaboration. Catching mistakes, soliciting creative ideas, getting information when I don't know something. But really #1 is a much bigger factor for me.

What specific work do you do?

Software development.

How does an open space office improve vs working in a single office?

For me, it's mainly that I'm happier, more energized, and more focused. I can point to collaboration effects, but really that's less important for my personal productivity I think.

Just to be clear: I'm not saying an open office is right for everyone. If an open office isn't right for you, then you should be able to work in a private space. I'm just asking that you offer me the same courtesy. There's no reason we have to force everyone to work in the same style of office, when everyone has different working styles.

I dunno man, I (software engineer for 21 years) like the open office, at my last job we had real offices and my coworker and I cut a huge window sized hole in the drywall between our offices so we could easier communicate/chat. I can’t count how many times a random casual conversation saved the day or generated new ideas. If I need to focus I put on headphones.

Logistically it seems unlikely open offices will go away, software heavy business can’t just spread their workforce over 3x the space, especially in dense urban areas. Better to come up with novel solutions for deep work, like dedicated open area library/dark dungeon rooms.

There's a balance that needs to be struck. Team spaces probably make the most sense.

we had real offices and my coworker and I cut a huge window sized hole in the drywall

Yeah, that's not an open office.

A workspace shared between two people, or even three or four, is a little different from an open office. I've worked in rooms I shared with small groups and can definitely see the benefits. After a certain point, like maybe ten or twelve, I think it becomes too distracting.

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