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Comment by peter_l_downs | Hacker News Reader

> The mere prospect of being interrupted is enough to prevent > hackers from working on hard problems. If you want to get > real work done in an office with cubicles, you have two options: > work at home, or come in early or late or on a weekend, when > no one else is there.

> They get new technology by buying the startups that created it > -- where presumably the hackers did have somewhere quiet to work.

It's funny -- all the startups I know have embraced open floor plans, and the culture of coming in late and on the weekends. My sample size is pretty small, though (n=2); what are your offices like?

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Open floor plans have been a common thread in my first- and second-hand startup experiences. However, I think this is more due to startups not spending money on office space than anything else. As a startup grows beyond a core group of hackers, the open floor plan stops being a nice thing and starts becoming a hindrance to productivity.

I like the idea of private offices that are shared among 2-3 people, as long as there is also ample lounging/social space. If the latter is not available, then open floor plan with headphones is preferable.

It seems to me that open floor plans aren't a bad thing when everyone at the company is a hacker; the cultural expectation is that it's very costly to bother someone who's hacking.

Small startups live or die as a group, and there's a certain trust that this creates, so the typical office paranoia (i.e. always-on image management that leads to more health problems than most illegal drugs) hasn't set in yet.

That changes around 10 employees. Once it becomes obvious that not everyone is going to be a real member of the team, people start spending more attention on their relative status within the company than the absolute success of it, and the hypervigilant bullshit that people typically associate with "work" begins.

Open office plans seem to be considered "hip" these days. The fact that it's cheaper probably also makes it easier for the founders to ignore the lessons from Peopleware.

Open office plans are "hip" because they show that you're in access to the anti-anxiety drugs you need in order to survive one.

libre office seems to be more hip :-p

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