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Comment by res0nat0r | Hacker News Reader

The large pharma I used to work for is still in the process of spending millions of dollars redoing all of their floors to open work space areas. Around the outside of the floors are "focus booths" which just have a small desk/phone/monitor setup for someone to work in for a few hours.

These booths are always full and occupied by folks for the entire day, since most people don't like the loud open area workspace and sit in these small offices so they can have phone calls and concentrate.

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Every time I've been involved in an open floor plan office I look at the conference rooms. They end up occupied by the most senior person that doesn't have an office.

At one company where I worked management got offices, so it was senior developers staking out the conference rooms... at another, no one had an office, so the owner got the nicest conference room and some of the leads fought over the lesser ones.

Open office plan here.

We have a little room tucked down a hallway that maybe 5-7 people know about, and no one uses. I've been in here for 3 weeks, and it's wonderful.

We used to have one of those. It was called the "Tree House" because one guy filled it with plants. It was great. Then we moved offices - open floor plan - and we no longer have the equivalent. :(

most people don't like the loud open area workspace and sit in these small offices so they can have phone calls and concentrate.

FWIW, good acoustical engineering can make a significant difference in how loud an open-space "feels." Putting sound-absorbing materials on all architectural features and hanging sound-diffusing baffles from the ceiling can change a loud room into a significantly quieter and less distracting room.

It isn't a panacea, but it isn't hard to do. You will need someone experienced in room acoustics to design it for you. I'd still prefer small offices over an open space, but if management is stuck on having an open-space then getting good sound control in there will make the best of a bad situation.

You can hear the reverse in a lot of trendy restaurants nowadays where, for some reason that I can't comprehend, it is fashionable to deliberately make the dining area as loud as possible.

http://www.grubstreet.com/2013/07/adam-platt-on-loud-restaur...

I could not agree more. Acoustic treatment can dramatically change a rooms ambiance in an almost imperceptible way. It's amazing how voice volume goes down, because the listener can clearly hear you, so you don't have to raise your voice over the other conversations to be heard. Once you experience a well treated room, you long to return to it.

I also have wondered why more restaurants don't use sound treatment. I have noticed that the high class restaurants always have sound treatment. Don't these other restaurants know that if you install adequate sound treatment that you can charge more? Obviously not...

I can't google for references now, but restaurants like loud dining areas because there is a linear relationship between the dB of background noise and the money customers spend on drinks.

I haven't seen the references you mentioned, but is it possible that the cause and effect here are swapped? It seems more likely that increased drinking leads to increased noise.

I believe the logic is that talking and drinking compete for the oral mutex, so limiting the ability to talk (by making it so loud that talking becomes pointless because nobody can ear you) increases drinking throughput. Or something like that.

I worked in a new office like that. The management were oh-so proud of how smart they were in selecting that design. Of course every one of them had his own office.

The problem with focus booths is that it's not "your" space. You don't come back to the same one every day, you can't have pictures of your family on the desk, etc.

Focus booths are a small courtesy to allow people to make phone calls and hold 1:1 or very small meetings, but that's about it.

It was an awful work environment, even though it looked very modern and stylish. It was one of the main reasons I quit that job.

I'm pretty sure I work in the same place. It's impossible to get a focus booth or enclave (is that what they call the small group rooms?) unless you get there early. Fortunately, they told me I would be mobile, then assigned me a desk in a lab space. Not being able to have food at my desk is a small price to pay for having a desk.

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