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Comment by gamble | Hacker News Reader

One thing I've noticed in open-plan offices is that mid/upper management almost always has private offices, with desks that face the door. Funny how that works, isn't it?

It's always struck me as a little strange and off-putting that some people can be enthusiastic about open plan. Companies only do it because it's cheap. Most of them don't make the slightest effort to minimize disruption. Open plan is only a step above Dickensian rows of writing desks. It's something to put up with, perhaps, but to applaud?

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Managers often have to sit in a configuration that keeps their monitor away from prying eyes. Just scanning my inbox headers when I was managing would have shown things that were sensitive (HR, like disciplinary action or re-orgs, and legal, mainly related to acquisitions), and just forget about during review season when I had to fill in feedback, raise, and bonus numbers.

Just group all the related managers in a single shared office. This is what my husband's company does - he shares a large private office with the two other leads on his project. Confidential info has not been an problem. If shared space is really advantageous, this should be the best of both worlds.

I think this varies dramatically depending on your role. At my company, when we were evaluating office space, the consulting people came up with this "hotel" scheme where everything was an open floor plan and you didn't even have a regular desk, and they all loved the idea.

Meanwhile, I thought that sounded like the worst possible scenario imaginable.

One of the things we did here was insure that managers stayed "in the middle" since at a small company its important to be accessible. That being said, sometimes as a manager one has to look at data which is private (say one of your direct report's current compensation plan) and for that we have private offices where folks can take their laptop and work privately for a while. Its a reasonable mix.

Its interesting to see some of the changes that have impacted offices, and phones and IRC are a good example. It used to be that a company phone meant a unit on a desk somewhere, these days it can easily be a cell phone. With that restriction lifted.

I find the tools (workstations, laptops) vs file cabinets, notebooks, and reference books, makes it easer to be 'present' where you have your laptop and your phone. And while 'open plan' is less expensive (certainly from a build out perspective) the communications you miss can be a bigger cost over all.

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