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Comment by zaphirplane | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the open office is broadly disliked or hater by a very vocal minority on the internet I haven’t heard in person hating on it

Assuming people don’t mean some dystopian 30 rows

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The  HW org "open office" concept is just this. 5 linear feet of bench space; no dividers or any other sort of line-of-sight blocking.

The SW org packs people into tiny rooms with slightly more space (maybe 6'), but there is literally nowhere to go to get away from having someone breathing down your neck.

I have experience with them in two places, one good and one bad.

The bad experience had no separation between the engineers, kitchen or sales people. Sales tend to be extra noisy- high energy, always on the phone, etc. Kitchens are also loud for the obvious reason.

In my good experience, we had physical separation from anything not engineering. People moved and talked around you, but it wasn't obnoxious and frequently informative to overhear.

Of course, I wouldn't give up working from home for anything, so it has become a moot point.

Even at the 'good' example you state when engineering was separate from other departments, I would still find that there could be 4-6 different conversations being held within a few feet of me at various times in the day (every day) at a recent job I had. And usually there was at least 1 or 2 conversations within earshot for most of the day.

I had no choice but to where headphones in order to drown out the conversations to focus. A year and a half ago I developed a constant Tinnitus in my left ear, and I suspect that job contributed to it.

So that's fun, and something I get to deal with for the rest of my life. Thanks open office.

In my opinion if you go open office as a company everyone should work in the open office including the higher ups

This is a great concept, but higher ups are on the manager schedule, meetings all day long. They live in conference rooms. If they are at their desk, most people will think twice before interrupting them.

Individual contributors however live at their desks and no one hesitates to interrupt them.

So having your execs in the open seems egalitarian, but it is an empty gesture.

What's wrong with reaching out to managers? If they are in meetings all day long; there is no need for having their own office anyways ;)

Rackspace actually did this. They didn’t do well as a company but their culture was pretty great for a long time.

Same. I noticed younger colleagues (<30) tend to prefer open office where older crowds prefer more separation.

On the other hand, I've lost count on the number of Bose/Sony noise cancelling headsets I came across in the office.

Why is the presence of noise cancelling headsets considered a symptom of something being wrong?

Most often, I like to have a mix of time spent interacting with coworkers and time spent working “by myself”. I like to be accessible to coworkers and have coworkers accessible to me if I need their assistance, but I don’t necessarily want their full attention all the time, right?

I kinda expect the office to be a bustling place. Not loud and shouting all the time, but just a lot of activity of people discussing things.

I was fine with open office. The only time it was annoying was when people beside me were on calls all day.

Most people that I know get very lonely working from home.

I saw it in my developer group, where all single people would try to go to office during covid, because it's so lonely at home.

Colleagues with small kids are unable to get any work done when there is no babysitter.

I personally have no problem working from home, but I see that's a real exception. And even I don't mind going to the office once every week, just to get the social interactions and be away from home once in a while.

So I think you are right that people who don't want to go to work at all is a real exception.

> Colleagues with small kids are unable to get any work done when there is no babysitter.

Yeah, but if they’re small enough to need a babysitter you can’t leave them home alone and go to the office either.

True, but this example is a pure Covid situation. Sorry to mix those two.

My experience has been similar to yours, with the addition that married people without children never wanted to go to the office. It was basically the best of both worlds; you aren't lonely, plus your spouse (usually) understands that they shouldn't bother you while you're working, while kids don't.

>Colleagues with small kids are unable to get any work done when there is no babysitter.

Speak for yourself. Give credit where credit is due to the heroic efforts of employed parents who got work done and took care of the kids.

I am speaking for myself as a father of 4 kids, who has spent a lot of time raising them.

When you have a 1-3 year old, getting work done while babysitting is just not possible. Anyone who has done that knows.

And I don't judge my colleagues who are in the same situation: they tell this themselves.

I remember a production outage of some database, I can’t remember the db details, but it was when my then three year old hit the limit on her ability to enjoy Sound of Music alone. The last half hour or so of the call was done with a toddler sitting on my shoulders.

But did you die?

I’m very much inclined to agree with your wondering. I feel that there is a certain personality type that despises the open office, and that most others are fine with them.

Anecdotally, a group at the company I work (pre-Covid) had the opportunity to contribute to designing their own new working space, as part of an empty floor was being retrofitted for them. The standard at our company was either individual cubicles or quads, but these folks chose open plan of (as far as I know) their own free will.

For anybody wondering, this is two teams of about 12 or so developers each, mostly relatively young.

The issue with the open office is that any given time you can hear multiple conversations making it hard to concentrate on actual work.

It's a little awkward to criticize it in person. It's not like they will change the office on opinions of a few staff. It's a take it or leave the company kind of thing.

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