Defending our open-plan office

My longest experience with an open plan office fit all of your bullet points: we all wore headphones, we used IM before starting conversation (or in place of vocal conversation as often as not), we had a private meeting room we could grab just across the hall, and everyone got alone with each other really well. Still none of us liked the arrangement.

We all felt that we were less productive, more distracted, and that there was always someone looking over our shoulder. Management actually went out of their way to stay out of our room, but the feeling persisted. Management knew we didn't like it, but I don't know if they knew how much it hurt productivity. We didn't talk about it. Nothing was going to change. They decided long ago that we didn't have room for private offices. Why complain and get on bad terms with the boss when it won't change anything?

You conclude that because somebody likes something, in the absence of any study, (or in this case, contradictory to every study done!) that it is in fact better? No.

We fool ourselves all the time. The classic mouse study comes to mind. Most programmers prefer typing to the mouse - "it's faster" we say. Except, it's not. It's just that typing engages our brains in a way that the mouse doesn't, so we don't perceive the passage of time as much when tab typing out a directory, and we do perceive it while navigating the mouse. Mouse is faster (generally), we think typing is faster.

So, I don't take it for granted that just because somebody says they are more productive in an open office that they are. They might just perceive it that way because they are having so much fun hanging with the fellow brogrammers, or the constant interaction gives the illusion of progress, or....

I can't take continual noise - it drives me bonkers. And yes, to me headphones count as noise. So, I would not accept a job at that place, most likely, and thus they do not have the data point of someone going quietly mad in their midst. See, open plans are better!

"Ignore these scientific studies, my selection bias says it's fine" is usually a pretty poor path to the truth.

600 people? How many of them work from home every chance they get? How many would rather have a private office if it were available to them?

Have these questions even been asked of the workforce?

> You have to like the people you work with to like an open-plan office.

Most places adopt an "open" plan for two reasons: 1) it costs less, and 2) to keep an eye on the minions. Most "open" floors conveniently have large, closed offices for the execs. That's to establish dominance. They always have windows facing the open floor, so that everyone knows they're being watched. These are the kind of "open" offices that are way more common. It's tough to like everyone when somebody feels like they're under constant surveillance.

It's no coincidence that I get my best work done at home, when I am free to think clearly without interruption, or the paranoia of being observed.

That's probably supposed to be rhetorical, but it shouldn't be. Are they lying to you? Or maybe they're telling you a truth, but leaving off a "but" clause. ("... but sometimes I have difficulty focusing.")

You're the boss. You can't answer this question. If you really want to know, do an anonymous survey of your employees - and try to work with someone experienced with writing surveys to avoid leading questions.

Seriously.

If someone really wants to listen to music, cool, headphones. If someone wants to text their friends 80% of the day that is also cool (connections bring support and inspiration).

Headphones are an escape from discomfort.

Open plan offices are great. When they're split into discrete environments. Teams and individuals feel comfortable and where results happen. Have an open plan office, and have a whole load of 8 foot plants and wheel based whiteboards on order for no cost / requisition approval so people make their own space.

It is neither expensive nor rocket science, but misses the main point: have a structure where 1-1s are conducted daily between whatever people management scheme is in place.

This is my job, I should not have to fight for some peace and quiet in order to get some solid work done! Having to wear headphones is a pain in the ass. Often listening to music is a distraction in and of itself, so you haven't solved the problem of noise at all.

There's also a huge unaddressed problem of visual distraction. You can see people moving around, going to meetings, or having conversations even if you can't hear them! This is often more distracting than sound.

You defend and have an open office plan so you can make the claim that you're doing everything you can to increase "collaboration" on the product, but I think you've completely covered up for yourself, the extreme downsides to the open office plan, and don't realize that the open office is probably hugely slowing down the development of your company's mission.

Now I have my own office and I hate it. Everyone sits in their little office, works on their work, and only gets help when they really need it. Getting up, walking down the hall, knocking on someone's door, seeing if they're even in the office, and then talking to them is a pretty huge barrier to fast easy collaboration.

Discussions that would happen naturally and take 5 minutes end up happening in hour long meetings. Code reviews can take days because it's way easier to ignore someone you can't see.

Obviously every company is going to be different, but I just liked the open plan better. I felt like part of the team, not just a person working on similar stuff.

How can someone in charge of employees not understand this basic fact?

Edit: grammar

I'm sure there are lots of people that can thrive in this environment, but I'm not one of them. And I suspect I'm not alone.

Does everyone get along fabulously? Then sure, do open / shared space.

One of my teams started with five of us stuffed into a closet. We rocked. That bon homme didn't survive growing to 25 people and transplanting to an open office. Two bad apples ruined the vibe for everyone.

I currently work in the middle of a cube farm. My office nemesis is several cubes over. Dozens of voices, and that's the one that sticks out. Like a barbed ice pick in the ear. Because I despise 'em. Very, very disruptive.

600 people in an open office? They're kidding themselves. Just build a cafeteria and make the bench seating a free for all.

The best office environments I worked in was in a different industry, where I worked part of the time in a laboratory because we were dealing with hazardous chemicals and specialist machinery. However, even as a junior employee I also had an office, only because the building itself was relatively under-occupied.

Stints in the lab varied, sometimes I was in their part of the day and at other times we were in their for several weeks pretty much full-time.

In my experience in the tech industry I've worked occasionally in full time lab conditions too for a stretch of a few weeks. Generally I've found these periods enjoyable as well, but after a long stint in "the lab" I've been glad to go back to a more isolated environment.

Given this experience I find weaknesses in all the arguments about whether dedicated offices or cubes or open-planned work environment are the best. Personal offices are obviously the least worse, cubes are a ghastly compromise in my opinion, and open plan has obvious problems.

If we're talking about ideal working environments, it would be one that allows focussed rather than forced collaboration. Labs allow for this but are rarely thought about because of the phyical constraints of most office spaces. *Oh, and it requires imagination and effort from management too.

Sometimes it's about the ability to see if you're at your sewing machine making garments, but the motives are nearly always financial.

The most productive places I have ever worked have been at single-team-size, open-plan startups. But that worked for us because we were very disciplined about noise. When you heard somebody talking, it was something relevant to the work. Non-relevant stuff happened elsewhere, or during breaks where we were all not trying to focus. That was awesome, because the ambient information kept us all in sync.

But right now I'm visiting somebody else's open-plan space, and it's infuriating. Noise levels often get up to the "busy street" marker on my decibel meter. All of the developers I've talked to feel their productivity is significantly impacted by the noise. Ad-hoc collaboration is low, because everybody's in their own little headphone bubble.

The model I'm most intrigued by now is Spotify's. There, each team has a shared team space that's closed off from other team spaces. Plus they have lounge space directly outside, so that the team room is really for working. That seems to be to get the benefits of open-plan spaces (easy collaboration) in a way that supports productivity (minimum noise and distraction).

No, probably not. But I think you're asking the wrong questions. While these things may be true, it doesn't in any way mean your employees are more productive or happier. And it certainly doesn't mean that, given the choice, they would take a distracting, collaborative, communal, noisy atmosphere over their own private quiet office.

I've had an office and in my opinion, for focused work there is just no comparison. Being able to close the door means no corner of the eye people walking by distractions. People can talk about headphones all they want but if you can't put 4 walls around you then there are just too many distractions for me to get "into the zone".

On the other hand I currently work at a hedge fund with an open office and it probably needs to be open. Every one needs to know what the others are doing but design. The number of good ideas that come out of open discussion is just amazing.

The other up side to an open office that some people may not be aware of is the inclusiveness of it. with doors its easy for 3 people to have an impromptu meeting and not realize there are excluding others. With an open office everyone hears the conversation and can know if they want to participate or not.

or put another way, shy people are more likely to listen in and participate in meetings in open offices than they are to enter a closed door office to participate in the same meeting.

Many companies try to combat this by using irc. google hangouts, style chats which I feel really helps.

- hotelling rooms for phone calls, thinking time, etc.

- team rooms - closed spaces for groups of people that often work together

- conference rooms for larger get togethers

I think individual offices are too limiting for those that don't have frequent private conversations. And I think purely open plan is insane, you're just staring at your coworkers all day. Grouping people into "pods" or "team rooms" lets each group come to their own system of working. Everyone in one team like music playing out loud? great, they rotate responsibility for what plays. Likes quiet time? Headphones and breakout rooms for conversations.

But if you give people some options as to how they can structure their own work environment, they'll generally come to a consensus on what works for them.

What companies need to embrace is the ability to adapt and adjust their office plan to their current situation they find themselves in.

From what I can tell, Hubspot has tried to modify their open plan office by adding private spaces, conference rooms, and trying to use technology to mitigate unnecessary distraction. That's a far cry from what most people decry, which is a big room where desks are crammed in like sardines with nowhere to hide.

Also, I run Office Snapshots and we've shown Hubspot's offices in the past - http://officesnapshots.com/companies/hubspot

Their designers and engineers can also work at home part of each week. This combination seems to work well and their employees have a lot of say in how the workspace works.

The variation among open offices is greater than among conventional walled-off offices. In part I believe that's because it is more difficult to make an open office work well for a mix of employees. It can work well for coders, but I think it's safer to put coders in offices, and almost certainly not the same open space as business development

The most recent example I have seen of a failure in providing a good engineering environment went beyond the banal cubicle veal farm and included an insecure manager who needed to see all his engineers even though he wasn't hands-on enough to evaluate their output closely. If you find clashing parts of your engineering environment the furniture is probably just one factor among many.

In China, crowded open office spaces are common, and use of headphones by coders is rare, at least in my unscientific sample space. After-lunch naps at one's desk are normal, and are sometimes accommodated by turning down the lighting. I point that out mainly because napping in an open office in the US would be horrifying to most people. So keep an open mind about what can help.

I seldom have to deal with adverse workspaces for very long, and I'm aware that I'm paid to adapt to my clients' work-style. For Hubspot, making headphones acceptable "work-wear" is probably important to making all offices in the open for everyone work. I use IEMs if a workspace is very loud because some people might look askance at a consultant wearing big Sennheiser closed cans.

I try to wear them as little as possible, as if all the years of motorcycles and loud bands in small bars isn't going to make me deaf on their own.

Do you have evidence for this? Because Spolsky gives evidence for his claims.

>It's a good idea to begin an interaction over chat ("have a few minutes?"), before walking over to someones desk.

So then what is the open layout giving you? This sounds like just like my experience with cubes but without the privacy.

- come in and greet the team

- go over some of the big tasks to do today

- find a private spot in a cafe or booked room to get work done