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Comment by shalmanese | Hacker News Reader

Facebook's open plan set up didn't come cheap. A Facebook insider once gave me a ballpark figure of how much their giant aircraft hanger cost and I recall it being 3x the price per square foot of private office space which means about 1 - 1.5x the price per employee.

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I'm not saying these buildings are "cheap". Just objectively, it's much cheaper to transform a "giant aircraft hangar" (which sounds awful, BTW) into open floor working spaces, than to use the same space to build and design individual offices for everyone. I'm not a civil engineer, but the windows, walls, ventilation, cabling, cooling/heating, etc., is surely much more expensive for individual offices than what open spaces in a "hangar" would require. The cost of interior design would be substantially lower as well. How could this be 3x the price per square foot of private office space? Was this some expensive military property?

I visited one of these open office spaces recently. It is ridiculous. They have white noise generators in the ceiling. In order to be heard when talking with someone adjacent, one has to speak loud enough to disturb others. Almost everyone wears headphones and does not collaborate in person. They should just be working from home.

I recommend that all those who might compete with me adopt these situations and give up on the difficulties of managing office space.

> How could this be 3x the price per square foot of private office space?

It was designed by Frank Gehry and built by Gensler for a client that had an open pocket book. You'd be surprised at how much a pane of glass can cost when it's glass that has to go into a Frank Gehry building.

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