The Open-Office Trap

If open plan offices actually worked, all academic facilities would install dozens of TVs each showing a different cable TV channel and volume turned up to distracting level in each study tank. Oh wait, places where people have to actually think are pin-drop silent? Really? You mean most calculus homework isn't done at frat keggers?

The root of the problem is a management primate dominance fad; the mere grunt laborers beneath me don't think; I'm of a superior social class who can think; therefore who cares if the losers can't think. If they were the cool kids like us, they'd have offices with doors where they can think, like me. Besides I don't want my underlings thinking, then one of them might end up outmaneuvering me and taking over. Gotta keep them down.

I have seen, that despite the fact, that open offices are criticized for I think at least 20 years (somebody mentioned the book Peopleware that is a real classic) the idea is keeping coming up in big companies. First time it was presented to me, it was as big "new invention" that has proven to better communications .... that was already at least 10 years after Peopleware ... (so much about new "invention"). Then, some years later, it was brought to us as big break-threw for "teams of ten" better for scrum and the like ... how wonderful, old wine in even older bottles! Of course they sweard that would get enough extra spaces for retreat, so that people could go there to have silence .... then it was only talked about one spare room, may be for two big team offices (meaning, for 20 people ... so much about retreat possibilities!). Later also this was canceled, since facility management was unable to prepare enough extra space ... What was left: Everybody got notebooks instead of regular PCs and many where happy with this "generous gift".

And so the story goes: The same foolish idea keeps on popping up and popping up, I guess because every now and then a business magazine for managers writes how wonderful the idea is ....

And so the tailor keeps on sewing The Emperor's New Cloth!

Most open offices I have worked in have been quite noisy. Most people end up wearing headphones of some type. I'm not sure how that contributes to information flow and collaboration.

I have worked in some open offices that are designed quite well with noise baffling and spaces broken up such that there wasn't an additive effect of every noise in the larger office being heard.

I prefer some mix.

This isn't really new, we known about issues regarding open office plan since the 1980s. I think it's mentioned in Peopleware at least.

So why is it that companies keep building open office spaces? Are people really so focused on short term savings that they do not care that it will cost more in the long run?

On a personal level, the "Trap" in the title immediately spoke to me.

The increased stress and decreased effectiveness can turn into a downward spiral.

You owe it to yourself to get out, before the damage accumulates and accelerates.

Find somewhere better. Make and leave to your competition the "open office". Turn a better workspace into a competitive advantage. "Open space" proponents deserve to suffer the consequences of said promotion.

And if an "open space" proponent seeks to joint your organization, mount a critical opposition. If they are taken on nonetheless or are already present, and they demonstrate significant influence on this topic, it may well be time to start looking to moving on. [1]

This all may sound terribly prescriptive and perhaps an over-reaction. But, again personally, I observed first-hand a large development shop within a corporation moved from offices to a horrible version of open space. Effectiveness and job satisfaction suffered significantly while stress levels rose in similar degree.

Attitudes went from "I'm lucky to work here" to "I'm looking for an exit." (In daydreams, certainly; actual action varied, but several top-flight people were gone within a year or two, and many long-term, heavily invested employees seemed to convey an increasing sense of feeling trapped).

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[1] I hold this attitude also towards erstwhile proponents. Some people push whatever is the current trend in management. I'm decreasingly willing to forgive them for the damage they cause along the way, especially when it is done without any critical thinking and real care and attention on their part.

I work in an open office and I tend to agree that:

Noise causes distractions which lead to a decrease in efficiency.

Also, having absolutely no privacy makes me feel vulnerable especially having directors and managers as the closest people within ear shot.

If open offices are so great why don't managers use them? They don't because open offices suck. Get rid of them yesterday.

Being in my late 20s and having only worked in open-office environments, the thought of having my own office seems archaic and counter-intuitive to productivity and communication. If I have my headphones in, I'm busy. If I don't, I can answer questions or talk to my colleagues about something. Projecting how I would feel in a "closed office" environment, I can honestly say I'd feel trapped and isolated.

My experience is of course, purely anecdotal and non-scientific, but I can't help feeling that younger people such as myself lean more toward an open-office configuration due to how differently we approach and accomplish tasks. It's neither better or worse, just different.

I've written here quite a bit about my basic hatred for open offices. My personal opinion is that open offices are masked in lots of terms about "information flow" and "collaboration" when the reality is that it's about companies being cheap.

I also went to a high school built originally on a completely open plan. At some point they realized teachers shouting over each other didn't work, or the teacher next door giving a lecture while the next set of desks over were taking an exam or whatever, and they put up paper-thin walls to divide the spaces, but still left the doors open. So at least you didn't have to see the classroom next door even if you had to hear them. Absolute, obvious idiocy.

For some reason people have forgotten how to do basic reasoning about work environments and just subscribe to whatever cargo-cult office-space fad of the time without regard to the nature of the work environment. I've even seen spaces with rows of inside sales guys on phones cold calling two desks over from very frustrated developers. Or the worst are the "fish bowl" conference rooms in the middle of the open floor so you can't even have a proper meeting without feeling like you're on stage.

I can echo every single point in the article and the net effect of open offices is that the environments are either library-like tombs where nobody talks to one another for fear of disturbing the peace or they're full of people with headphones on, hiding behind monitors trying to scratch out an ounce of privacy and isolation. It's obvious to anybody who actually works in an open office that they don't succeed in their basic stated task of helping communication.

At one place I worked, people did lots of overseas travel and there were 3 large open-office areas. The number of people out sick at any one time was astronomical. At one point I went 6 solid months of perpetual minor illnesses before I finally decided to just look for a new job. It took me almost two years to really feel recovered physically from the constant assault on my immune system. My fitness levels also took a nose-dive during that time, either from being constantly ill or from stress loads so high that I'd simply come home and lock myself in my home office and not come out till I went to bed.

I think single (or 2 or 3 person) offices do inhibit communication.

The absolute best office configurations I've ever seen are the ones with team rooms that surround a central conference room. Each room sits 6-12 people, has a conference room and the ability to set their own office rules. Sales guys get piled into one bullpen and can make all the calls they want, customer support in another, scrum team 1 in a different one etc. Team leads must work in the team rooms to keep things from degenerating to antics. Teams can collaborate with each other in the central conference room as needed.

These aren't terribly expensive to build out and seem to provide the best possible productivity and combination of semi-privacy, local information sharing and cross-team information sharing. In the long-run the operating costs for facilities end up as a small fraction of salaries anyway. You should do everything possible to maximize your investment in salaries, even if your office space costs are a few percent higher...it'll pay off.

I find it interesting that in all these articles and studies about open plan offices, the distraction from noise levels is always so prominent, but the other side of that issue rarely gets mentioned. In my experience of open offices, everyone is so aware of potentially disrupting their colleagues by striking up a conversation that nobody does it. So instead of fostering an atmosphere of collaboration, the open office can actually actively prevent it. Is that as common as I think it is?

Why does it have to be either/or? Is it really that hard for an employer to offer both?

If each team (of 7-10 people) has a scrum room/war room, plus some number of cubes (4-5) available on an as-needed basis, wouldn't that meet the needs of employee happiness, collaboration, etc?

Need to make a call? Go to a cube. Deadline to meet? Go to a cube. Mid-project, lots of design/analysis occurring? Stay in the open room.

Seems like a no-brainer?

I occasionally thank God that my office is a cubicle-free (but walled) environment. My workplace is in a former mansion converted into office space, and I have 2 other programmers in the room with me; likewise with the designers. We may or may not be all working on the same thing. Sometimes discussion/clarification on some topic helps everyone, otherwise we keep quiet, have a door, thermostat, and light switch.

At my first job, I remember setting an ultimatum on waiting for 3 conversations (DBAs, team lead, QA) around me to end so I would have some silence. The line was crossed, so I asked my manager and thankfully, he let me work from home for the rest of the day, and I got all assignments done that day.

Is it possible there's any difference in productivity in open-office environments between introverts and extroverts? I've always wondered that.

As a counterpoint, I work on my own now, having worked in open plan offices for years, and I find it hard to concentrate because I feel lonely. My ideal office size would be somewhere between 5 and 10 people in a room all working on the same project. You just need a rule that you must leave the room to make phone calls that last longer than a couple of minutes, especially if you have an annoying voice or telephone manner or there is some emotional content to the call. With this setup there should not be to much background noise and you can ask a colleague a question when it suits you as long as you are respectful and don't disturb them if they are 'in the zone'. There is research that supports the 5-10 people sharing a office theory, I think done in the Netherlands in the 70's but I can't find it now. I can't help but think that there is a good reason related to camaraderie and teamwork that around 8 people just so happens to be the smallest organisational unit in the army, a principal the Romans discovered 2000 years ago.

Meh. YMMV - I work in a smallish office (20 people) which is entirely open and it works out pretty well.

I suspect the real problem is that if you take a dysfunctional office culture and change it from one-person-to-an-office to an open plan it's (shocker) still a dysfunctional office culture. See also "hey, if we just buy $SOFTWARE_METHODOLOGY_X our code will suddenly not suck anymore!"

Some factors that may help open-plan work in our case:

* we pair pretty much all the time, so that may be acting as cultural filter selecting against people who don't work well with a certain level of noise / distraction.

* the main office is open, but there are plenty of smaller conference rooms for times when the lab is too noisy / too distracting / etc.

* although we share an environment, we're still in control of it. The current layout was arrived at after a bunch of collaborative tweaking and furniture shuffling. I suspect having a layout imposed from on-high wouldn't work as well.

I have worked in both, and I really like open office layouts more. It works well for me and the open spacious environment really helps my mood especially in the winter. I'm pretty good a tuning out surroundings though, so I understand that can be frustrating for some when trying to concentrate.

The property department is responsible for acquiring and managing office spaces and all that other stuff like toilet paper. If they can save money by cramming the people into a smaller space, then they will look real good on their year end review, get a raise, and next year move on to a property management job at another company where they can do it again.

Cubes are not cheap. Price them some time. The last time I saw figures, the were considerably more expensive than offices made of sheetrock and steel 2X4s plus modest desks.

They do increase potential density of employees.

First thought: the obvious answer is to fork it as a Libre-plan office.

I feel like the problems with the open office plan are, and always have been, pretty evident.

Why they continue is also obvious... You just have to ask yourself who is benefiting.

So we've seen a lot of "open offices are bad" articles but they rarely are accompanied by any solutions.

Anyone have any better ideas?

I am a student who is not in the workforce.

The biggest benefit for me when it comes to having a private room to study is that I can do light physical activity while I'm taking a break, which most often invigorates me. This is much more convenient, and a supplement to, "properly" working out by donning clothes to sweat in, perhaps going to the gym and the like. I can't really take these breaks when I'm around other people because I'm too shy, and doing pushups while in such a context makes me feel that people think I'm trying to show off (and no one would be impressed anyway).

Sure, less noise and less visual distractions of other people walking by is great, but I most often listen to music anyway. The article claims that this is suboptimal, but it is what I prefer, and I sometimes listen to music without vocals if the music is too distracting.

Thankfully there are a fair amount of places I can study at my university, most places with other people and sometimes places where I can be alone (if I feel like being alone).

On a slightly other note: I wonder how much of the hatred of cubicles (which I have the impression of not being thought of as truly 'open' office) is disliked because of the noise and such around them, and how much it has to do with perceived status and feeling like a 'corporate drone' without the privilege of having one's own door?

In an open office, anyone at any time has the right and ability to interrupt what you're doing.

People seem to love the idea of openness, but what it really means is that you the individual are wide open to the demands of any other individual.

Offices were probably invented in the first place with a twofold purpose: first, to separate the worker from the herd and interruptions when work was being done; second, to visually separate them to aid in concentration.

What broke that down was the telephone. You could call right into the office... so why not just walk in?

At some point, smart agents are going to serve the same role secretaries did back in the day: filtering access to workers.