Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction

- A a decent cultural protocol around it. One place I worked had the very strong rule that you start all non-emergency communication asynchronously (usually text chat), even if the person is right next to you. Another place I worked at strongly respected headphones as the "don't bother me" signal. - A reasonable number of walled-off rooms for anyone to use. Need to take a phone call? Have a quick 1-on-1? Debate something loudly with 3-5 people? You need to have rooms, of varying sizes, to handle these use cases near at hand. - Minimal noise that's not related to collaboration. Eg, no loud ringing phones. No phone-based customer support department in the same room as the devs. No kitchen (full of dishwashers, coffee grinders, etc) area facing the open workspace.

Open offices can work, but only if you go out of your way to make them work. Just throwing a few dozen devs in a warehouse is a recipe for dissatisfaction. I think that that happens more often than not, resulting in things like this study.

(Also, the nondevelopers are in constant verbal communication.)

All that said, I'm not dissatisfied. Our office is always very quiet and cool. The kitchen is stocked. The chairs are comfortable. It's not a bad set up at all and I don't find that it really hinders my productivity too much. But it does feel unnecessary, and I personally know I'd be more productive telecommuting 3-4 days a week. Dressing up and behaving professionally for 8-9 hours straight does take a toll on my ability to output good code, albeit a minor one, and the location of the office in the city certainly takes a huge toll on my bank account (housing is 2-3x more expensive in this area, but the commutes are horrible from far out).

Instead, everyone's too busy maintaining social facades for the entirety of their day, day after day, rather than focusing on their work.

gasp! collaboration!

gasp! accountability!

gasp! blah blah

Now years later it's obvious why they took over the world, CEOs everywhere saw the bright open office spaces, with just desks and

gasp! cost savings!

Open office plans are a way for a company to be cheap and that's about it. No investment in offices needed, no investment in fussy cubicles, no interior decorators needed (just expose the brick!). Rent a warehouse, buy desks at IKEA , assemble and voila instant office.

These days management even tries to get strategic about open plans. I'll put this department next to this one and this one so they can talk to each other more freely and voila synergy!

Absolutely the worst environment for thinking jobs possible (the contrapositive is, if it's a good environment for your job it's probably not a thinking job).

Here's what I think they did right:

- High partitions around team cluster, low partitions within cluster. Means you don't see just anybody who's standing, but can easily get eye contact with the people you actually need to communicate with.

- White noise generators. All ambient noise is suppressed--I can't hear the people in the next cube if they're talking quietly. Only the shrillest beeps or sneezes disrupt my concentration.

- Lots of natural light. If you're going to do open concept, at least take advantage of the #1 benefit.

- Lots of small meeting rooms with whiteboards.

Even then, I noticed a massive difference in how much I enjoyed the open plan when I transitioned from working on a project that was very collaborative (pairing being the norm) to a project that required a lot of solo effort. I'm very conscious of distractions now, and end up working later hours to take advantage of the quiet when everyone's gone home.

So I think there's a lot to be said about the dynamic of your team. And in that regard, my current employer again does well by giving QA, support, and other "solo acts" individual high partitions.

Do you need quiet time where you're thinking for 5 hours a day and coding for 1? You need your own office.

Graphic designers, phone support, this kind of stuff seems to work great in an open office. Crazy team trying to crank out something fast? Also works great.

But they just add to burnout and aren't a good fit for writers or programmers. If this is the case, give everyone a small, modest office with drywall and a drop ceiling, and then have LOTS of common areas or meeting rooms so people can get together to chat or bang stuff out.

My most productive and cherished hours were those after the close, when I could snap in headphones and burn through theoretically intense if P&L-vague projects. Incidentally, it was those projects which made the bank's quarter for every quarter I worked there.

There is a personality that thrives on open office plans. I, sometimes, am one of them. But open layouts encourages rapid, myopic collaboration over deep thinking. The ideal solution might be an open office layout with a "library" retreat.

  - higher skilled workers are in closed offices more often
    * and satisfaction varies by skill level

  - p(open office) varies by industry 
    * and satisfaction varies by industry

  - people feel more comfortable doing non-work items behind a door 
    * and they like getting personal tasks done

My most productive moments were when I could close the door and turn my music up on my high end speakers and blast through the work.

My office was also cozy with an old chair that people came in and sat down for impromptu meetings. No need to schedule conference rooms and we all had our own white boards.

Jumping to startups that tout open spaces and the engineers I've met since who've praised them, I wonder if it's because these engineers haven't worked at companies who have actual real offices for everyone.

The collaboration is definitely different for sure, in open spaces you can share in the tension and keep pace with everyone. Yet I find I need a day or two a week to work from home to get in those purely productive days.

I'd love it if engineering culture went back to demanding offices as a perk, but I fear those days are gone now that we demand living and working in expensive cities.

...because it makes upper management feel good to keep the peons in a bullpen.

We're an open office plan and I love it. I couldn't imagine working in an office where everyone is quietly tucked away in their offices. Worth mentioning, is that we're a pair programming shop and everyone on the team is a big fan of pairing all the time.

But it is loud as shit in the team room. We have a Spotify playlist constantly going in the background. When a BA passes a story for completion, this is signified by the ringing of a cowbell, at which point everyone will pound on their desk and play with noise makers to celebrate. That happens a few times a day. When a build breaks, a siren goes off and noises play from the build computer to let everyone know.

I think part of it might be the pair programming. Before I started pairing, I was a headphones kind of guy, too. I liked it quiet and I was easily distracted. But when you're talking through a problem with your pair and you have someone to help keep you on task, it's really easy to avoid being distracted.

I guess the point is, in the right culture and with the right personalities, open office can work really well. No one complains about it being hard to focus on my team and it's rarely quiet. We also get shit done and everyone is pretty happy.

In a couple weeks, I'm moving on to another pair programming shop in an open office, but really only because I felt like it was time for me to see some different challenges. When I'm ready to move on from there, I'll probably be seeking a similar atmosphere.

p.s. I'm a pretty extreme introvert.

* High school: desk in bedroom. Unaware there are worse options: Productivity: 9.

* College, year 1: dorm with roommate, cop-style desks facing each other. Shut up! Productivity: 4.

* College, years 2-4: two roommates, desk under bed. Vaguely cramped, but not bad. Productivity: 6.

* First ship: Flight of the Intruder style aluminum desk/dresser/bookcase measuring 24" wide, aligned athwartships, so every roll of that frigate dumped my work all over until I hacked some retaining straps in. (http://www.maritime.org/tour/img/fbc/fbc-captain.jpg, except our bunks were 3 high). Productivity: 3.

* Second ship: Double-wide version of same but it's a carrier, no rolling. Productivity: NA because I also an actual office, with a door, and it was right next to wardroom. Downside: back wall of office was next to the trap wires. Had to wear double hearing protection during flight ops. Office productivity: 6-9.

* Staff at the Naval Academy, Annapolis: more desk acreage than I could use, huge vaulted window, rich blue carpet, could hide out all day. Productivity: 0-8. Home office: got an Ethan Allen desk on clearance. Productivity: 6.

* Med school, year 1: Katrina. 5' folding table next to the foldout couch two very kind University of Houston students let me sleep on all year. Still have that folding table. Not bad. Productivity: 6-8.

* Med school, years 2-4, New Orleans: Ethan Allen desk tried in every room of the house, but little kids make it impossible. Productivity at home: 0. Starbucks: 7.

* Internship. Same as above, but also had a cubicle in the 180 desk "resident storage facility". Had no desire to be there and rare could be. Productivity at cubicle: -1.

* First job as a doc: moved to San Diego, converted falling-apart cubicle desk in our office (incidentally the server closet, possibly the only reason it had an air conditioner) into a standing desk. Joy. Could work all day. Had a 34" stool that helped on occasion. 3 officemates: productivity: 5. A Navy clinic, "doctor's office" set up during the weekdays I took clinic, productivity: 4 (they seemed to feel doctors were cheaper than medical assistants). Starbucks: 7.

* Oh, during that job, worked at an urgent care on the weekends: sterile "doctor's office" with a desk and computer. 4 exam rooms. Highly routinized workflow seeing 30+ patients in 12 hours. Productivity: 11.

* Currently: professionally designed cubicle set up in an office with one office mate. We face opposite directions, neither face away from the door. Most productive ever. Productivity: 8-9. Starbucks 7. But also moved my Ethan Allen desk into my bedroom and installed a door lock. Home productivity: 4-8.

N=1

I have now had 15 years of experience with different plans, 6 of those with my own 60 people agency and a lot of time spent trying to figure out the optimal space.

Its really simple. Size vs. number of people is the defining factor.

Maybe this is just NZ. Is having your entire development team each having their own private office something that actually happens in America (bar the amazing fantasy land that Spolsky's office sounds like).

Also, it's worth mentioning that this is just a survey, and just addresses how people "feel", not efficiency or anything like that. My ideal "work" environment (i.e. a beach) doesn't necessarily line up with my most productive.

Not being able to go into someone's office and talk for an hour cuts down on one form of interpersonal bonding. On the flip side, having larger group conversations encourages another type of bonding.

Arranging dinner and lunch outings is 100x easier, we go out as a team quite often now.

Code reviews are fast and fluid. It is easy to get someone to walk on over and take a look at something. Junior programmers worrying about their designs can easily ask more senior members for help.

Productivity in some regards is down, noise level is higher for some things (yes even with headphones), and there are certainly some days where it is hard to think. On the other hand, really hard problems can get a lot of brain power thrown at them really quickly and solved in a matter of minutes. No more of that "well if I had known you were working on that, turns out I found a fix for it yesterday, I could have saved you 4 hours!"

Time spent chit chatting is probably the same. I have gotten to know some coworkers I didn't know before.

I'd say it has overall helped with code quality and team cohesion. Then again our areas are not that small, 8x10, so we are by no means cramped. I have two actual desks in my area so people on external teams can drop in with a laptop if they need to work with me.

It is a royal pain when trying to focus on solving a really hard problem however. Especially if doing pair programming on a super hard problem, when two people's thoughts are all that should be occupying a space.

I've found that it's extraordinarily difficult for me to do my best work in a cramped open space when there is activity surrounding me. From my own experience, it seems that some % of our minds are actively processing movement or sound, even if we're not consciously aware or distracted by it.

Unless I'm bootstrapping something, or working at an ~angel seeded company, I'll refuse to work in an open space unless there is a flexible policy about working from home, where I do have my own private office.

I'll agree with what others have said: Open spaces are about saving money, but they're also a big part of the dog & pony show that tech company executives put on when courting potential investors. This is possibly more important now that most software deployments are no longer happening on accessible data centers. Beyond that, open spaces provide an easier path to scaling engineering headcount, often in a Fred Brooks-ian sort of way.

To me, more than anything these decisions speak to the engineering or C level culture established within a business. If the talent feels the need to wear noise canceling headphones to function, then there is a problem that isn't being addressed.

If a company is FORCED to implement this because they have decided to base their operations in an urban area with outrageous rent, then give the talent the flexibility to work offsite. If the management doesn't trust their people enough with that degree of autonomy, well, I guess that's a different discussion altogether.

I think the holy grail of offices would be to let you choose at any time where you want to work...grabbing an isolated office some times and being in an open area at others.

Yet, why are startups trumpeting these as great places to work? Particularly as an engineer, having a door I can close is essential. (That's why I love working on Fridays, when nearly everyone else works from home.)

The biggest stressor for me in an open office is overhearing personal conversations. It's not the noise that bothers me, but the fact that I hear things I really just feel awkward hearing.

My ideal office is just lots and lots of rooms. Maybe you could do an open office if complete silence were enforced on the floor and all meetings were held in adjourning rooms, but that'll never get buy-in.

Not saying that this can work for everyone at every organization. But I for one was pleasantly surprised. Fwiw I'm a pretty introverted guy who deeply values his privacy.

"...The productivity benefits of teams working together have been used to sell the open plan office for decades. Yet, if you do these evaluations and actually talk to occupants of open plan offices, very few people think that they are productive spaces..."

Note the moving the goalposts here. The survey shows people don't like the noise and interruptions caused by open plan offices. Okay fine, I get that. But the article promises that the benefits are far outweighed by the disadvantages, and then by way of disadvantage tells us that people don't like them that much. There is no data whatsoever on the benefits or drawbacks overall, just opinions from people working in open plan offices.

Is it not possible that open plan offices annoy people and are also more productive? We don't know. This entire article just tells us most people would rather have their own space to work and not be annoyed so much, which most of us should know already, right?

"Things that achieve a goal" and "Things we like doing" are overlapping sets. They are not identical.

You get a good balance of people sitting together to work on things while not being distracted by dozens of others in the same office.

On my floor (much lower down the building) there are about 100-120 people crammed into tiny little desks with hardly any natural light. It's so noisy with everyone in close proximity you can hardly hear yourself think, let alone getting on with coding.

1. People who LOATH open spaces, can't handle distractions, work alone.

2. People who like open spaces, feed off the energy and "action", who aren't easily distracted (or can refocus quickly), can tune out noise.

3. People who are ambivalent.

Your success, level of complaints, productivity will depend entirely on mix of these three groups.

It was probably the most productive I ever was - you were able to get up and just go talk to someone, but you couldn't talk to them from your desk without disrupting everyone else.