Hacker News Reader

Comment by baggachipz | Hacker News Reader

The last bullet is the biggest tripping point:

> 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.

View on HN

Very good points.

The original article seems to group all open office plans into a single category, as if they were all alike.

I've worked in two notable different open office plans. One was at around 400 square feet per person. In this one, the only people with an office were those that dealt with sensitive documents that had to be in a filing cabinet (in this case that was one person, the accountant, who did payroll).

I've also worked in an open office where the "senior" staff had offices with windows looking into the cubicle area. The open area was around 150 square feet per person. While sitting at my desk, the back of my chair was about 4 feet from the person behind me.

These two experiences were drastically different in productivity and focus. To say open offices don't work, because most of them don't work is like saying startups don't work because most of them fail.

The problem isn't with the idea, it's with the execution.

> 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.

exactly this. I'm 10 times more productive in my pajamas in bed than any office I've ever worked in!

I've worked in a giant purpose built open plan office where each team had a 'island' of desks and the managers were all along side us, it was good in that noone could sneak off for lunch without inviting you but thats where the good parts ended.

We moved desks regularly so everyone had a chance to have their screens overlooked but I found the whole idea very stressful. Not only sitting but walking around open plan offices and feeling like I'm being watched or someone monitoring how long I was away from my desk for. It really affected my productivity.

No amount of headphone listening helps. Plus they hurt your ears after a while and I find them very disorienting.

Also, do you want to wear headphones for 8+ hours? Doesn't that make you feel compressed also disconnected in a room full of noisy people?

It sucks, I had to do that for a long time. My train of thought derails when I hear music with words, so I had the same classical/ambient tracks playing on a loop all day. It was very annoying, and even the most comfortable earphones don't feel great after a whole day. Dead silence would have been much better for me, and "noise-canceling" headphones give me a headache.

A room full of noisy people is actually less of a problem than an overly quiet office, where a single phone ringing will set everyone doing meerkat impressions...

Not disagreeing with the headphones bit, I couldn't wear them for 8hrs.

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

I like the people I work with, but they're adults who still think that shooting nerf guns at each other is amusing. Every day. This is a problem.

I agree. I worked in an open plan office in my last company with 20 other developers. I liked it a lot better than here where there are 5 other developers and 4 non developers in this room.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com