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Comment by gook | Hacker News Reader

Has this guy even worked in any of these environments? I've worked at Facebook and it is surprisingly quiet. If people want to have meetings or talk, there are plenty of conference rooms to take advantage of. Worst case, the free Sennheisers in the tech vending machines takes care of any other noises that you might not like.

I personally work better in an open office environment. I work off the energy of others and it allows me to focus more than being alone in an office.

While I understand if people legitimately don't like an open office environment, this type of article seems like it is just trying to put down these companies with little knowledge about how loud it really is in these offices.

And if you don't like the environment at Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc, just move to another company. Let's not pretend that it is hard to get another job with one of those companies on your resume.

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That's the problem with large open plan offices. The only way for it to be workable for everyone is if everyone shuts up. I find it incredibly stifling.

My ideal environment is the team I'm working on in one big room, the music going, everyone jamming on the project together. Getting shit done. That's probably what Zuckerberg et al remember from when they started the company, and that's why they want to recreate it for 3,000 people.

Unfortunately, once you have more than 1 team in the room, it breaks down. You just shipped something awesome and want to shout about it? The other team gives you dirty looks and want you to just STFU because they're 3 days from shipping and in total crunch mode. Some people just like quiet all the time, they'll give you a dirty look when you get noisy.

Thus the big rooms of people end up being completely silent, it's the only way to make it work. They are terrible for collaboration. The only conversations happen in conference rooms, otherwise you disturb 100+ people.

In my mind small rooms, holding 4-10 people, are ideal. Each team gets a room. If the team likes it quiet, it will be quiet. If you want to bounce ideas around, you can do it without feeling like you are disturbing other teams. If you want to play music, you can play music. I think it's the feeling that the open plan offices are going for, but people haven't connected the productivity of open plan office with the actual size of the open room yet.

Facebook has 'War Rooms' for teams who are shipping a large release soon. They are smaller rooms that can fit 12-18 people. Most of the time they have separate desks but sometimes teams just commandeer a conference room.

This sounds a bit like your idea, though a few more people.

I think I would quit in about ten minutes if I had to put up with someone else's music choices. I don't even like putting up with my own when I'm working but I'm forced to to drown out everyone else.

Sounds good. Might be interesting to build your own ideal environment. Large open plan offices are probably someone else's ideal environment. :-)

Don't you feel self-conscious that everybody can see your every movement, for the entire day?

To me it reminds me of one of those victorian prisons where every inch can be viewed from the central platform. Now that I think about it, even prisoners get a lot more privacy than this.

I would only feel self-conscious if people judged what I was doing all day. I didn't feel like I was being judged.

I always passed this one guy who had a separate monitor to watch some kind of anime. Another seemed to always have Netflix on. During the World Cup this summer, so many people had a window/monitor watching the games.

The culture was very much this: get your work done? cool. do whatever you need to continue getting your work done.

I believe what you're describing is a panopticon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

The noise isn't the only consideration (though it is a big one). Visual distractions, lack of privacy, the feeling of being watched, people approaching from behind you, etc. The human animal is stressed by these things.

I agree completely. I prefer the open office layout a hundred times over, compared to a private room or a cubicle. Maybe it depends on your coworkers, you have to trust them not to be too loud or bothersome, and you have to be fine with being in the same room as these people for 8+ hours a day for a long time.

At my office, the "Dev Room" has 10 engineers in the same room, as well as open desks for anyone else to join us. The rest of the office has rooms with 1-3 people working in them, but we requested to take this large room. Whenever anyone from the rest of the office walks into the dev room, they always have to remark "Wow, it's so silent in here." And it's true, it's a different world once you walk in here. We even have our own conference room only accessible through this room.

But because everyone here are friends, it's easy for us to ask questions, have fun, play around. Right now as I type this, two developers are drawing Chinese characters and playing with the new Google Translate app. The rest of us have headphones on. It's on you to ignore distractions and get your work done, but everyone does, and everyone helps each other and laughs while doing it.

I know you're getting downvoted, but I agree with you. There is no way whatsoever I could go back to working in a private / cubicle partitioned office. I'm open-plan for life. The energy and intelligent conversations I overhear completely eclipse any negative aspects imho. I guess it's important that you like hearing what your coworkers have to say. If I _truly_ need to concentrate, the headphones and some www.polskastacja.pl and I'm all set.

I personally work better in an open office environment. I work off the energy of others and it allows me to focus more than being alone in an office.

I have stints like this, particularly when working on a hard problem. One person typing with others brain storming is a great way to push through hard problems.

For a lot of us coding is a very solitary endeavor, but it doesn't have to be.

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