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Comment by dualboot | Hacker News Reader

The other side of this is that a very large percentage of folks in our industry seem to have social anxiety-spectrum issues.

Folks without those don't seem to understand how much energy is being burned through just being out in the open and on display for all of your coworkers. It's not something I, personally, have control over.

The time I've spent in "open concept" work places, I finish every day frustrated with my ability to accomplish tasks and physically and emotionally drained.

That takes a very serious toll over time.

I've moved on from jobs due to this type of work environment.

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I've had the opposite experience. I had a job where half the floor plan was cubicals and half was open plan where you had groups of 2-3 people in a sort of cove.

I started in the cubicle section. And I hated my job. Every day felt draining to the soul. I felt invisible and isolated and I hated it. I was making no progress in the organization. I'd constantly find excuses to leave my desk just to see another human face. My desk was a cluttered mess and I just hated my life. We got some new hires, so I got to shuffle over to one of the coves.

It was like getting a totally different job where all of a sudden I loved coming into work. I loved seeing people. We communicated efficiently, I organized my space effectively because it was so visible to everyone. I could catch errors others were making as they were going and pretty soon they'd come line up to get help on stuff. We were so much more efficient than letting people fail for longer, run up the client bill, and then have to redo everything. The lines of communication were opened up with me acting as a hub of sorts and so we came up with a lot of innovations in that time that made our processes more efficient.

And when we had to do overtime, it was a communal activity. The feeling was that of a team.

Open concept is my jam.

The second sounds like hub-and-spoke, where you have pods of 2-4 people clustered around common area. (I enjoy that as well.)

Open concept is usually more like 20-40 in a giant pen without any sort of separation or soundproofing between.

Studies suggest hub-and-spoke is good; open concept is high density feedlots applied to white collar work.

I am curious as what type of work did you do at that job. "I could catch errors others were making as they were going" sounds as something I would not be able to do as a developer.

Another anecdata: I'm in an open office right now, and the area that I'm in could ostensibly be considered to be a "cove", with about 6 people. I hate it. I'm not on the same calls, so people being in calls messes with my flow. They're not on my same calls, so I either have to move to a hot and sticky phone booth, or leave the building entirely (I've taken a few calls in my car) since I work on projects that aren't ready for the office rumor mill.

I really miss my cubicle. I could stand up and have a conversation, or sit down and be in relative peace. The sound and visual isolation offered by those fabric walls can't be overstated.

One of my offices, after vocal complaints about the open office plan, did a quick survey.

Roughly 50% were fine with the open office plan. (this office was mainly devs, HR, recruiting, and data scientists) As someone that is drained by social interactions (I _like_ them, but afterwards I'm drained, not energized), that is easily distracted by movement, and who can't hear conversations in the background without instinctively trying to focus on what is being said, open offices are hell for me.

I was utterly mystified by the "other" 50%. How do you just "choose" what to focus on? That's like controlling a reflex. I knew there were extraverts, but SO MANY?!

Trying to tune out the background conversations is especially hard when most of them are in a language you speak usefully, but not fluently.

Works the same in the reverse case: I'm a native speaker in the office language, but many of my coworkers are not. One of them is impossible for me to tune out, only because of a difficult accent (his grammar etc are actually better than the ones that I can tune out). It feels as if a mental background process for flagging keywords or something like that keeps bailing out with an exception, "sorry consciousness, you take over". I discovered that I can limit the effect with positive framing as a naturally occurring experiment that grants an interesting window into the inner workings of the mind. At least this way, the distraction does not get compounded by annoyance (which also would be quite unfair). I can only imagine how bad it must be when everyone around you causes that kind of escalation to consciousness.

Can't find it anymore, but I could swear there was a study that recently hit the HN front page that found that everyone's productivity objectively takes a hit in a distracting environment. But, subjectively, extraverts perceive themselves as being more productive, while introverts don't.

Yup it’s been proven that libraries are good places to get work done not cafeterias.

They really should have collaborative AND personal spaces. Not a forced airport-like office setup.

What were they smoking when they designed those?

For me, a little noise is the worst. A busy cafe with a constant level of noise is easy for me to tune out. If everyone is silent but like every 30s something happens: Someone coughs, a bag of snacks is rustled, a cardboard strap is opened. That's the worst.

Agreed.

I'm fine when the general level of noise is way up, because there's less for the brain to latch onto and get distracted by. I've churned out serious lines of code in a noisy cafe, but always churn out more when I'm at home: my noises, no distractions.

It's the human interaction though that drags me away from the work-from-home/work-in-a-cubicle lifestyle.

I find even quiet conversations in an open environment to be the worst of all distractions. The clacking of pens and the slurping of drinks in a library set my teeth on edge, forcing me to wear headphones, which means I may as well be outside with the rabble.

This makes me wonder if the core of the problem is the lack of control over your own environment somehow

Sure but a cube farm isn't going to save you from this.

This is driven with money-saving in mind -- at least short term. Consider it is easier to lease space as a landlord if it is open space floorplan, and it is easier to deal with a 1-2 year temporary space as a startup, than actually pay to modify it.

This. Extroverts are likelier to choose the survey response that reinforces their identity. If you’re a social person, then “I love open office plans, they totally make me more productive” is the pro-social answer.

I would rephrase 'reinforces their identity' to 'helps maintain their sanity and happiness'.

I am not even saying they don't take a hit to their productivity. Just that that's not the important metric to those folks, they just would dread a job where they're isolated.

A lot of this depends on people on the maker's schedule vs. the manager's schedule.

Or put another way, some people like the office environment because it matches how they communicate and get things done. The office environment is built around the idea of real-time conversations, which can be helpful for collaboration if it's not overused.

With that being said, the office (especially open-offices) take this idea way too far. I just finished a post about it a couple minutes ago: https://www.friday.app/office-vs-remote-distance-communicati...

Surveys like that don't work very well. The same people would probably also have been "fine" with their own office. Many people just want to get along, and enduring this and that is something that we learn all the way from childhood.

Extroverts: I feel invisible and isolated and I hate it.

Introverts: I feel invisible and isolated and I love it.

More like:

Introvert: Anyone could (and has in the past) interrupted my thoughts in similar situations, I need to be ready.

Introvert: What are they saying? Does that involve me or an area I should be concerned about?

Introvert: There's someone within speaking voice 'ear-shot' and/or eye-contact range, lets work on that task together.

im not sure what any of this has to do with introversion

No one is 100% polarized introvert or extrovert though. I’m willing to be t silent environments are more conducive to productivity.

Whomever designs those open spaces watches way too much Fixer Upper. That or not enough — the open spaces are communal but there are ALSO spaces for people to retreat into their space.

>I’m willing to be t silent environments are more conducive to productivity.

It's always worked for libraries, I think. Why not offices?

Aren’t libraries usually open spaces? But they enforce strict silence.

So you can go tap on anyone’s shoulder but if you want to have a conversation you need to head to a non working area.

That sounds like the best idea to me. Open office plan, but no loud conversations are allowed. You need to maintain strict library like silences. However, you also provide enough breakout rooms or non quiet areas where people can head over to to have a discussion.

Which of course can never work in an office environment. Leave your desk for every Zoom/WebEx conference call? Whisper with the colleague who needs to talk to you for a minute about something? You're not going to decamp to a meeting area for all the daily grind stuff- so the open area is always going to be interruptingly loud.

We have unofficial office rules that work just like that. We do not have a sea of 50 people in the same space however, instead we have sort of isolated spaces that contain about 15-20 people each. All phone calls, chats longer than a minute or two ('I need to whiteboard this with you') and such are always done in small dedicated phone / meeting rooms on the sides of the open space. There is an adjacent coffee and food eating space shared by 3 such shared spaces, so about 40 people. It works well enough, almost everyone is mindful of sticking to the rules, since it benefits everybody to keep it that way.

"cove of 2-3 people" isn't really open plan. Working next to a couple people who you'll probably end up getting friendly with if they aren't jerks is very different from working in an ocean of 50 people.

This conversation is a great example of the differences in personalities, and why there is no single solution for everybody. As a rather misanthropic person, my preference is to see other human beings (that aren't loved ones) very rarely, ideally never. I don't want to see, hear, smell, etc people.

Until I'm fully remote, cubicles are the best scenario I've found. They let me feel "invisible and isolated" and I love it. If I could build out my cubicle to be a complete box with opaque walls and soundproofing, I'd do so in a heartbeat.

Hopefully decision-making people can become aware that there's a huge spectrum of preferences, and work to accommodate them rather than impose preferences on others.

As has been alluded to in previous incarnations of this article topic and subsequent HN commentary, for a typical IT/software job the ideal I think is to either have functional teams in their own closed open area or to have such an area along with a quiet cube or office (even if it's "hoteled") for work that requires long periods of uninterrupted focus.

An great alternative is just an open office where remote workers meet a few times a week to collaborate then go back home to get stuff done.

Somehow there has to be a mix because an open office space with all the yackety yak that comes with it is practically impossible to get any real individual work done. I end up making progress during quiet times at home after hours or when I take a day off/sick leave. Not ideal. Where is our 21st century Jetsons future, dammit. It's not supposed to be worse.

I feel invisible and isolated in my open plan office anyway, but also exposed in all the ways that spike my anxiety and keep me from getting work done. It's the worst of both worlds.

I think the former aspect probably has more to do with the job itself than the physical working environment ... it's hard to walk away from what I get paid, but one of these days I'll probably have to.

The small group - if they work at least on related things - can be valuable. Those huge areas of desk next to desk as in modern "startup" (in quotes since it includes Facebook etc.) open offices are a way different story, though.

i've lived with chronic depersonalization and the resultant anxiety which had kept me hamstrung in my one and only job

after a couple personal breakthroughs i finally gained the confidence to earn a promotion to my very modest dream role, only to find out a couple months in that we'd be transferring to open plan

after the move i almost immediately started experiencing esteem-crumbling health issues caused by the constant anxiety, i avoided growth opportunities because i couldn't muster the energy to even volunteer, i failed to cultivate proper relationships with any of my coworkers and before long my destructive fight-or-flight tendencies were back in full force

i tried being completely transparent about my problems in an attempt to save this job id wanted for so long, jumped through hoops like seeing a company appointed therapist, tried and failed to arrange more flexible working situations and so on

eventually i provided enough dirt on file for them to force me to resign, so i'm now unemployed in my 30s with no references i have any confidence in and enough shame and guilt to put me in the ground should my extreme mental fog ever clear again

knowing how deep mental issues can run i'm so sad knowing people are having their careers effectively curtailed by something as stupid as this in an industry that should understand these problems better than any other

> eventually i provided enough dirt on file for them to force me to resign, so i'm now unemployed in my 30s with no references i have any confidence in and enough shame and guilt to put me in the ground should my extreme mental fog ever clear again

Have you considered working for a remote-only company, such as GitLab, DuckDuckGo or Buffer? For someone with a chronic depersonalization / derealization disorder a formal work environment should be a non-starter. The constant self-reflection around other people consumes the entire energy and leaves one unable to perform.

i have no formal qualifications to speak of and i was in operations so my knowledge is already years out of date, all over the place and not at all relevant to any business operating that way

i've struggled learning anything since i left because as bad as people affect me the less time i spend around them the worse the mental fog gets, which makes my ability to focus on any one topic pretty much non-existent

attaining the delicate balance i require to feel functional is not happening in any formal environment, you are completely right about that and i've come to accept it over the past few years

apologies for not getting back to you before, got stuck in a mental loop just writing a response.. sounds like you know exactly what i'm talking about so i appreciate it

I know exactly how it feels. And that often nobody around can truly relate with this experience.

It's like being thrown into a dark hole and being left there all by yourself, 24/7, for years.

If you haven't seen it, Numb (2007) has captured this state pretty well:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Aa60FdWbdYY

Also, it seems, there was a related thread here a year ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19018914

That's just a reminder, that you are not alone.

i did see numb long before i was conscious of the problem, i will give it a rewatch

giving that thread a read as well

if i leave nothing else behind i hope i'm at some point able to impart some knowledge on how to navigate this, with how we're living our lives i'm worried it will be commonplace before long

thank you again

100% this, you've described perfectly how I feel. It's not something I have control over either. Even in high school, I've had to close the doors to my room to be able to focus on learning. I can work in a team on a common task requiring constant interaction (e.g. brainstorming, negotiating, designing), but if a task requires individual focus (like programming), I have to expend significant emotional energy on managing my anxiety if my work area is in the open.

I know I'm not alone in this; the last time I worked in an office, we were technically in a semi-open space (8 people in a room), but the desks and monitors got subtly but quickly rearranged to block everyone's line-of-sight to everyone else.

> I've moved on from jobs due to this type of work environment.

Me too. The last job I had was with a top tier company whose products nearly everyone reading this owns and uses. The open office workspace is why I quit. It was an intolerable hell.

Fruit company?

No, but I'm not going to identify the company.

It absolutely sucked for me whenever I used to try and code, if I was deep in thought and looking away and someone passed by, they would nod in my direction or get my attention some other way ( sorry am thinking, not in a mood to socialize)! Thankfully when I needed to get work done, the company allowed remote work. Working remote for the last 2.5 years, it's going to be hard when I have to go back to a real office.

> The other side of this is that a very large percentage of folks in our industry seem to have social anxiety-spectrum issues.

I've tried to search for studies in the past but failed at google (after hearing numerous managers repeat many times that "loads of people in IT are on the spectrum"). If many (non medical) managers have said it, there must be easily accessible studies, surely.

>a very large percentage of folks in our industry seem to have social anxiety-spectrum issues.

It seems like it, I wouldn't like a cubicle. I think open offices aren't ideal. I'd prefer a team room, but between solitude and open I pick open.

Totally agree. Open concept at my place is beyond ridiculous. I'm not a zoo animal.

Zero privacy, bathrooms are disgusting, kitchen is disgusting. I just give up. I work at home as much as possible.

The concept of "Social anxiety" really doesn't explain it fully IMHO. The concept may even sound like a label of being wimpy, retarded or scared, which is probably not true at all - or can be made true/untrue depending on circumstances!

It's more about what kind of loads your brain are optimized for (when feeling "drained" after social exposure for a full day), being exceedingly more sensitive than most, maybe even exposing more shenanigans at earliest opportunity.

What helps is being encouraged to decide yourself, taking matters in your own hands. Making decision yourself to go into an unfamiliar environment, while having opportunity to withdraw etc. would be empowering and allow for adjustments by the individual herself. This requires a platform in the environment though, which takes time for everybody to adjust to. However such general empowerment in the environment benefits all in the end.

These are not an unfounded view or wishful thoughts in my experience, though people will have different experiences.

That's a very narrow view of the world, friend.

It's dangerous to presume that you have such a deep and wide perspective that you can instantly diagnose something so thoroughly.

Sorry for thinking and sharing my experience.

Just go back to being socially anxious then!

Nevermind other explanation models or opportunities.

I've updated my comment to attempt to clarify the meaning better, in case that was miscommunicated.

The older I get, the more I realize that we really haven't figured out anything at all.

We just make up or prescribe to a set of rules that help us cope with that as best as possible.

That's intentionally or unintentionally very insightful. We are the product of our environment, which is infinitely more powerful than us, so we have to adapt it wisely or perish.

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