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Your advice is on the same level as "eat healthy" and "exercise more". It's nice, we should all do it, however for some people it never happens.

And here's the problem - some people just cannot be respectful of other people's time or flow and also you can find a lot of variation between communication styles (e.g. synchronous vs asynchronous) or noise tolerance of people.

For example, some people only want to work from home, whereas I cannot work from home, but on the other hand I need a very distractions free environment. I have really good and respectful colleagues and yet I find myself saying no to requests and interruptions several times per day even, actively declining attempts at synchronous communications between us, just so I could get anything done. This happens to the point of becoming nauseating, not only because "Alex, can you talk?" is distracting enough, but also because I have to say NO a lot. And I'm probably labeled as being a jerk, yet I cannot help being one, because contrary to other people, I really, really need to be left alone when focusing on something.

On your experience, I'm not arguing that the open office in question wasn't productive for you or for your close peers, but have you asked the others about it?

I'm bothered by people who prioritize synchronous communication over asynchronous. On a recent project, I worked with someone who was remote. Every time I sent an e-mail, he picked up the telephone. Then he took a long time to get to the point, and couldn't ever seem to disengage cleanly.

Open floor plans would probably work great for people like that. I prefer to not be pre-empted from my current task, and to have a written record of the things you wanted to tell me, so I can refer to it later. Face-to-face conversations are fine if I'm not already doing something else, but don't force me into one just because you're doing your "manager walk" or can't be arsed to have a specific agenda for the conversation.

If I have a door, I can hang a "do not disturb" sign on it, and lo, I am not disturbed. Otherwise, it may just be closed because the compressor from the fridge in the break area bothers me. I don't mind interruptions, provided they are more important than what I am currently doing, but it seems like open plans lower the threshold for interruption. Some people see that as also lowering the threshold for collaboration. But there are ways to design a space to encourage one without also encouraging the other.

The synchronous vs asynchronous communication argument is on par with a “best programming language” debate. The style of communication is just a tool that should fit the need and the tasks at hand. If you are working on a largely engineering driven project with a thorough spec where "heads down" development can be most effective than email/messages between team members probably will probably be effective. However, when developing on a small-sprint, iterative agile team that style of communication would be a death knell to effective communication.

Not to wave my banner in the holy war, but that's just, like, your opinion, man.

The thing I like most about async is that there must necessarily be a record of everything that was said. When appropriate, the record may be retransmitted.

Things like internal wiki entries, message boards, e-mail chains, instant message groups, and issue-tracker tickets are all asynchronous. If you conduct most of your business with ephemeral synchronous conversations, you're going to end up repeating yourself a lot, and there's going to be a larger "hit by a bus" risk. I consider it to be irresponsible business practice.

There's good reason why human development was very slow during oral tradition, and experienced exponential growth after writing.

Some use of synchronous is always appropriate. But using it instead of asynchronous rather than in addition to it is, in my opinion, pure folly. At best, the synchronous communication is what you use to make your asynchronous communication more efficient.

Another huge benefit: non-native speakers. If all your office processes rely on verbal conversation, it's really critical that everyone speaks perfect English. If the communication is async, that constraint can be relaxed slightly, which can give you a great pool of talent other companies are missing out on.

> I'm bothered by people who prioritize synchronous communication over asynchronous.

Amen. My voicemail greeting for my work phone is "Hi, you've reached the voicemail box of Jack Maney. Instead of leaving me a voicemail, please leave me an email. Thank you."

I don't get it. They're both async.

He's just funnelling people into his preferred method of communicating. They can still leave him a voicemail if they prefer.

Voicemails require an onerous synchronous process to access -- you have to go through your access menus, entering your PIN and some arcane set of numbers before you get to the message you want, and then you have to listen to it at the speed it was left, and press another set of numbers to keep it for future reference or delete it if you don't need to refer to it later (which may not be immediately obvious). If you save the voicemail, it takes longer to access other saved voicemails when you need to refer to them.

It's faster and easier to get an email, click it, and read/skim it, and let it sit in your inbox until you're ready to decide what to do with it.

What voicemail system allows you to "skim" through voicemails (roughly the equivalent of fast-forward and 2x speed playback capabilities) and is as convenient to use as email? Honest question. Because if you can name such a voicemail service, I'm sold!

FYI: Google voice will transcribe your voicemails.

Great. Now please talk the IT people at the Enterprise company at which I work to either a) ditch their voicemail system and go with Google Voice or b) integrate Google Voice into their existing voicemail system.

I have ongoing carpal tunnel problems. I avoid typed communication like the plague (dictating this, which I can't do in my open office).

From what I've read about Google, they optimized for flexibility in their space. We tried to do the same, although it became difficult when the company grew faster than the office space (at least until we moved again). Not sure this would be any different in a private offices scenario, though. We had a few people who were less than enthusiastic about the open layout, and we tried to give them the space to break out when needed.

We also communicated our preferences directly. If someone was interrupting us, we would let them know that it was better to send an email or grab us before or after a known distraction (arriving at work, lunch, coffee break, end of day). We tried to schedule meetings on Mondays and Fridays to give us largely uninterrupted time during the week. People respected our preferences and tried to accommodate the "Maker's Schedule."

I'm not sure every company could or should work this way, but I worry that backlash around poor implementations of the open layout will cause us to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's up to each company to evaluate the compromises necessary to create a productive workspace, open or otherwise. I worked with great people and the open office concept worked for us.

> We had a few people who were less than enthusiastic about the open layout, and we tried to give them the space to break out when needed.

OK, so I believe that this is a good strategy - the ones that prefer more privacy, should get it, the ones that prefer the open space should get an open space.

>And I'm probably labeled as being a jerk, yet I cannot help being one, because contrary to other people, I really, really need to be left alone when focusing on something.

My unsolicited advice on this is to just let yourself be distracted. As much as we may not like it, it's much more important to be liked among your peers than to have high raw productivity. Employment is a popularity contest (at least for popularity among the powerful segment of the corporate structure) and there's really no way around that. If we accept that, our future as employees becomes brighter.

> And here's the problem - some people just cannot be respectful of other people's time or flow and also you can find a lot of variation between communication styles (e.g. synchronous vs asynchronous) or noise tolerance of people.

Could it be that a solution or mitigation here is to directly address this problem? I think the idea that people are only capable of communicating in a certain way is probably too strict. Maybe it's just my experience but it seems to me that most people (with exceptions of course) don't give or get direct feedback about what type of communication works best for them, more typically they use some passive-aggressive move like brightly colored headphones or just acting annoyed and expect people to get the hint. This probably works to some degree but in a large open space it seems like you need everyone on the same page.

This needs to be said more. I absolutely love being in an open office layout because it allows for easy collaboration as well as the occasional spontaneous fun interruption. People seem to get hung up on the interruptions as if they lose tons and tons of productivity. I just haven't experienced issues like that personally. I find that the interruptions are a welcome break to the monotony of staring at code for 8 hours a day.

The privacy issue also needs to be addressed on a cultural level as well. My first job was open layout but I had one of those nosey managers that wants to know what you're doing every 15 minutes. I got talked to for being on Facebook during my lunch break. In order to really have a successful open office layout you need to have everyone on board and prepared to "let go" a little. Yeah people goof off during the day. We aren't robots that can sit down at 8:30 and constantly type for the next 8 to 9 hours. At my current job no one really cares if they walk up to you to ask a question and you happen to be taking a couple minutes to clear your head and look at cat gifs. I think that's the way it should be.

"occasional spontaneous fun interruptions"

I would prefer to choose when to have my interruptions.

Then it's not spontaneous. Hell, if you choose it it's not even an interruption.

I'm probably a borderline ADD. My mind interrupts me constantly with spontaneus and needy impulses.

"A factory pattern, you say? Well.. Oh, look, a squirrel!"

Or, at least not have to listen to the guys one pod over "spontaneously" discussing last night's sports statistics for a half hour block on the daily. Perhaps they're "doing it wrong" but they have their right to "spontaneous fun" things too. We're all adults and only have so much say, even one's manager. All it takes is one conflict and the concept eats itself alive.

Staring at code 8 hours a day.. Maybe that's the problem.

As someone who's had to run programming groups and do the programming work, I will say open floor plans are the worst idea ever.

If you need/want to get into the zone on a project and actually make progress, the open floor plan will keep you from doing that as much as possible. For breaks, the last thing I would be doing is going on facebook or checking email or doing other useless crap like that.

Your job sounds horrible if people can just walk up any time for any reason. And if you're spending time looking at cat gif's then I think you or your manager needs to revisit how you're spending your time. Doesn't sound like work to me. Sorry...

You sound like a really angry person. What do you do on your breaks? And you really think checking emails is useless? Honestly, if the OP is checking his emails on his breaks, he actually sounds like he's being productive. OP also clearly said he looked at cat gifs to clear his head. If you cannot understand the need for a programmer to clear their head from time to time, then you are not a programmer and if you did manage programmers, you were awful at it.

The points you are attempting to make can probably be made in a more mature and respectful manner. Just because someone's opinion differs than yours doesn't mean they are an "angry person" or "awful" at what they do.

>Your job sounds horrible if people can just walk up any time for any reason.

I think this speaks more to what you think about your coworkers than actually weighing in on open floor plans.

I adore my coworkers, I agree with the post you're replying to. An environment that encourages random "walk up" interruptions is a terrible environment in many ways. With an office with a door it's easy enough to shut the door to indicate "I need to be left alone now" and open the door when you're in an "it's OK to interrupt me" frame.

They did not say "encourages random walkups" - the tone and context makes it seem pretty clear that they do not want to be approachable to their coworkers.

Whoever down-voted your comment should have that privilege revoked. trose's comment was completely on topic and well thought out. Down-voting is not to be used when you simply disagree.

Downvoting is for however the user wants to use it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

> pg 2455 days ago | link | parent | flag

> I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

> It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that.

This is a pretty big tangent, but I fairly strongly disagree with pg on this.

The fact that upvotes and downvotes are not treated symmetrically seems to imply that they really aren't suitable for merely conveying agreement or disagreement. Somebody's comment shouldn't literally be greyed out, sometimes to the point of being illegible, because a few people disagreed with it. This combination -- using downvotes freely to express disagreement, and hiding or fading out downvoted comments -- is a recipe for groupthink. It's very nearly a form of censoring comments that are maybe contentious but in no way inflammatory or off-topic or poorly written.

Meh. Maybe if you think Paul Graham is a god.

> I absolutely love being in an open office layout because it allows for easy collaboration

For collaboration nothing beats an open office layout. But collaborative periods make up a very small amount of our [developers] time.

If we spent most of our time collaborating then maybe open office layouts would make some sense (though maybe not, since there's still downsides to consider). It is illogical to choose an office layout based on what you spend a small fraction of your time doing.

I changed jobs fairly recently and the new office has "Busylights" on all PCs - which works brilliantly as its linked to IM/calendar/VoIP status.

I can look round and see exactly whether it's OK to approach people....

http://www.busylight.com/

[NB I wouldn't mind one on a hat I could wear at home!].

I would just put mine on all the time so nobody bothered me.

I'd like to add something about how the quality of your employees affects the outcome of the open office arrangement.

If you work with a bunch of thoughtful people, of course they are going to respect flow. And they're going to realize when their personal habits affect the people around them. Even gregarious extroverts will be quiet in a library like atmosphere, and move their conversations to a kitchen or break out room

The open office allows people to split into sub teams and to work together on projects more fluidly than an arrangement where people have strong physical barriers to moving.

But it's a sort of environment that comes together as the sum of its parts. Forcing an open environment into a shitty company with shitty employees will likely make it worse.

The measures that you mention seem like ways to mitigate the obvious effects of open offices by making them more like closed offices -- including increasing the amount of floor space per worker.

>>> Maybe the reason is because you're doing it wrong.

That can be said of any failed ideology.

That's probably true, but our goal wasn't to optimize floor space. And that's the problem with most open office layouts -- they're optimizing for the wrong thing. Open offices are not a magical panacea that makes workers happy and productive, but neither are they the reason your environment is unproductive. The way your team interacts is a bigger factor.

Viewing your office layout as an ideology is part of the problem. It's not about us-versus-them. It's about identifying your team's work styles and building a space to support them as best as you can.

I think you've nailed it.

Open offices can work well, but it requires a little bit of effort and adherence to the rules. We have plenty of breakout areas for impromptu meetings, ample numbers of meeting rooms for more extended ones. There's plenty of space to cloister oneself for a while if needed. Our development team is together, and a few desks away from more customer-facing staff, which keeps noise down.

Yeah, there are occasional distractions. But so long as everybody is respectful, there are benefits too. It's great for quick pairing sessions, which we do a lot; overhearing conversations and being able to chip in with relevant information is really often useful; even just being able to see who's physically in the office helps.

I suspect a lot of this is going to be dependent on size and culture. So maybe there's an argument that on the whole, open-plan is not worth it. But I'm unconvinced.

What positives are you gaining that you wouldn't get from being in team based offices or private offices?

Your entire post is about how you can minimise the negatives, but anyone who has been to a library before already knows you can make an open plan almost noise free.

The most productive office I've been at was also an open office layout, and I absolutely agree that the main reason open office layouts don't work is that people are doing it wrong.

I'll just give a +1 for small pods and breakout spaces, since those were a big part of what worked for us.

Here's what I would add to what you're saying:

1. Being respectful of flow has never worked for a team I was on. Instead, what we did is that at all times we had a pair (or the odd person out) whose job it was to field questions. If you needed to know something from a team, you went to the assigned person or pair. A corollary of this is that everyone on a given team was expected to be able to answer questions as a representative of the team. 2. Pair programming: I definitely am prone to distraction, but it's much easier to stay focused when you're working with someone on something. This also contributes to information sharing, which contributes to everyone on the team being able to answer questions.

Many people mention that introverts have a hard time working in an open office layout. But what I haven't seen mentioned on this thread is that extroverts might have an equally hard time working in isolation. I'm an extrovert and I've definitely been in situations where isolation hurt my productivity. And I think that points to the core of the problem: your office space needs to meet the needs of your team, not some romanticized ideal of an Agile™ team. It's unlikely that any processes or procedures are going to make an open office work for an office full of introverts. If an open office doesn't work for your team, that doesn't mean open offices don't work, it just means that your team needs something different.

This points back to the agile manifesto[1]: "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools." An office is just a tool. If you're still looking for a one-size-fits-all office layout, you're prioritizing that tool over the individuals who are using it. That's not agile.

[1] http://agilemanifesto.org/

Interesting. Curious, have you also had developers working on glossy Apple monitors and MacBook Pros with 8Gb of memory?

edit: a clarification. It is ridiculous to put backend/Linux developers on Macs with 8Gb of memory on which it is nearly impossible to run a virtual machine. And glossy monitors are very good for designers in light-controlled rooms, not so for developers, who can see every ceilings light in theirs.