Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

I'm still not sure exactly what distinguishes an open floor plan from other floor plans. I prefer working directly with the rest of my team in the same room. I don't want a private room. But a room where people unrelated to the team are constantly walking around and making noise and disturbing people is bad.

View on HN

Open floor plans mean that there are no rooms, only one big one (with half-height barriers if you're especially lucky).

Meeting rooms and rooms for management are usually not part of this arrangement, because, you know, management has to work.

...unless your name is Elon Musk

Are there no rooms, or is there one big one? And how big? I'm currently in a room with about 20 desks, which works very well. But an adjoining building has rooms with probably less desks, but a main corridor going through the middle, and I can imagine that's not such a great idea, because everybody in the building is constantly walking past.

Even sharing a room with your team can be a problem. My colleagues prefer to have the radio on, which conflicts with my desire for an almost eerie silence.

I simply work better and more efficient if there's complete silence. I can work with a low level of background noice, but if certain songs / types of songs are playing on the radio I just stop until it's gone. My ears simply won't tune out some sounds, such as a high pitch female singers. Also some radio shows are just designed to have annoying sounds because it's "fun".

That just means that open floor need different rules regarding sound. We don't say that libraries are terrible places just because some people insist on having loud conversations there.

Many libraries also have private rooms where people can go for more private study or concentration than they can get in the 'open floor' part, even though the library is already typically quiet.

> My ears simply won't tune out some sounds, such as a high pitch female singers.

My first rule of music at work is: no human voice, unless you have autism. (And even then, you may not be able to tune out anything.)

All of my work music has vocalists. Most of what I listen to is rock w/female vocalist. But basically there's consistency and familiarity in what I'm listening to, as well as minimum interruption between songs so I'm able to tune it out. I think radio would be super jarring going between songs and commercials and morning shows, so I never listen to it unless I'm in the car.

Forcing your music on others in an office is simply not done. Your colleague can use headphones if they want to listen to music. I've usually had a co-worker who preferred to listen to music, which was never a problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com