Headphones are the new walls for people in open-plan offices | Hacker News Reader

Headphones are the new walls for people in open-plan offices

zdnet.com

60 pointswyclif66 comments

The fact that I HAVE to listen to something to be able to isolate myself from my surroundings is pretty depressing to me, specially because I don't like listening to music for long periods of time.

Try http://asoftmurmur.com/ - it's meaningless ambient noise that I find quite effective as audio wallpaper.

I also recommend noisli.com, I use it everyday, saw it here in HN a couple months ago. It's great for concentration IMO, instead of music, which I just ignore or some times distracts me.

As an introvert 3 hours in a private office or even cubicle is probably equivalent to working 6 hours working in an open office space in terms of productivity.

Perhaps it makes economic sense to have you working less efficiently while saving a large amount on rent.

Perhaps if giving an office to an introvert developer they'd have to also give an office* to a large amount of other workers that work better with open offices such as extroverts and people whose jobs require a lot of communication and collaborative work* * .

* Because it is a status symbol.

* * Which actually covers developers, I sometimes wonder how much of the feedback here is wishful thinking "I'd be so productive if left alone" rather than actual data.

> Perhaps it makes economic sense to have you working less efficiently while saving a large amount on rent.

Open office vs. private office is about $4,000 a year for an employee. Doesn't take much lost productivity to break that barrier.

Perhaps if you're in an office park with arbitrary amounts of office space where costs simply scales linearly office size. Otherwise it tends to be far more than that.

Define "far more". I was basing that off of the numbers "110" and "160", which are square feet per employee for open offices and executive offices, respectively, and the yearly price of $100 per square foot. All of these figures are on the high side of the range for those figures- you can easily find office space for $20-$60 per square foot outside of SF and NY.

Now it's true that if you're dedicated to taking care of your employees, you might have to split the office earlier than you would with open floor plans, but to be frank you were looking at the need to do that anyways, just at a slightly higher employee count.

You're missing the most important part, which is there is far less square feet / person in open plan than with individual offices.

The cost per person is much cheaper open plan than with offices.

EDIT: Mis-read your comment. Far less square footage is true, but the "far less" is not that much less. In the best case, it's a few scant square feet. In the worst (250 for a president-sized office, 60 for an exceptionally cramped open office footprint), it's still only about 190 square feet - which comes to around $19k a year. Still a pittance compared to the other costs of the employee.

ORIGINAL: The cost per person scales directly with the cost per square footage - that's the only practical difference between an employee in an open office and in an individual office (well, discounting potential increase production and fewer sick days).

There's going to be some additional up-front construction costs when you first take over a space, but when amortized over the fifteen years (which is how the accountants will book those costs), it's going to end up being pretty small.

What other costs do you feel that I'm missing?

It's not so much the case that I am more productive when working in a private space as it is I am less productive working in an busy open space...if that makes sense.

As long as people keep tolerating open offices, it might make economic sense for the employer. But for the employee, if it actually affects his personal productivity and overall happiness, it makes sense for him to consider a distracting environment as a cost. (ie require more money)

True but unfortunately it is not always easy to tell how distracting an environment will be until you are actually working in it.

One of the worst environments I've worked in was when I had a private office but there were 3 very extroverted and juvenile employees stationed right outside my door.

(I moved into a "private" fishbowl office after I raised a fuss about this)

I've worked in an open floorplan with 3,15 and 20 people. Each one brings its own set of challenges. Team 3-person was easy. We were all introverts, didn't talk to each other (Yay Hipchat). Team 20 was easy. There were actually several different subgroups in there, so we didn't really talk past our small (2-3 in my case) team, and it was a large enough space that conversations carried, but weren't annoying (Most days).

It wasn't until I worked with the 15 that I legitimately wanted a private office. What changed? The new place plays music in the entire office. Even with the door closed, and my laptop playing some extremely loud white noise (I can't stand headphones for more than 2-3 hours), I can still hear the music that is playing outside my door. Also, phones. Desk phones. Everyone has one. Constantly ringing. So annoying.

In my experience of 3 companies, the types of companies that are going to go and have an open floorplan without talking to their team about it first, are the kind that will play music and distract everyone.

Edit: Added desk phones + commentary on the other 2 companies.

Things I've been reprimanded for in this environment include...

- leaving my phone on do-not-disturb for days at a time, but still checking voicemail

- leaving my phone unplugged. Nobody noticed for a week. Then the CEO called it. Can't do that anymore.

- Wearing headphones.

- Duct taping headphones to my head in an attempt to tell people to leave me alone.

- commandeering the sound system to play white noise.

- having signs like this up behind my desk: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BH6waT2CAAIyS2H.jpg

most of my coworkers thought it was hilarious. Some others did not, and now I can't do these things. :(

Maybe the issue is with the tactfulness of the communication as opposed to the message itself?

This was after an extended discussion (about an hour) about why this environment sucked for programmers. Got told I was imagining things. Talking with my other technical coworkers, we decided that we would carry on with this. As of when I left, still hadn't changed.

It not only the audible noise you have to deal with it is also the visible noise of people walking past you making gesture to other in the room.

It is hoorible.

Yes this is super distracting, seeing people constantly walking by. It's hard to get any good chain of concentration.

Unfortunately headphones will not prevent people from tapping you on your shoulder and interrupting your flow.

I'm recently working remotely and I find that I'm a lot more productive in this environment than I was in open-plan offices. I do however miss the social aspect of easily being able to grab lunch with a couple of coworkers.

The thing it all hinges on is containing noise. Nobody complains about studying in a library. Because it's quiet. If you want an open workspace to work, you have to make it quiet. Provide "phone booths" for phone calls and conference rooms or team rooms for groups talking.

>>Nobody complains about studying in a library. Because it's quiet.

I actually always did. When I was at uni I would avoid the library like a plague. The problem with an ultra-quiet environment is that literally EVERYTHING is annoying. Someone coughing. Moving papers. Quiet laughter. Clicking pens. It was seriously million times more distracting than working in open space office is.

The problem is that people are different. I love working in the library; I can't get anything done in an open space office. A personal office is ok but not my first choice. Cubes are completely dependent on my neighbors.

Businesses are really bad at accommodating differences.

Yeah, I can't work very well in a dead quiet environment, because every little thing distracts me - even the sound of my own breathing, sometimes. Distraction is always a problem. Blotting everything out by listening to music helps a lot, particularly music free of vocals.

Studies indicate it is more than that. Control of your environment, visual distractions, even airborne illnesses all are a factor as well. I do agree the quiet is required; I'm not countering your point, just adding to it.

My biggest annoyance is having people behind me. I can't get rid of that prey feeling of being watched. Super annoying and distracting feeling.

That and motion in the periphery of the rods always serves to get noticed. Headphones also eventually mat down your hair and no matter how comfortable hurt your head after more than a few hours. If these are the "walls" of modern offices, we might as well go back to having a guy atop a chair reading to all us factory workers.

Ya, I mostly gave up on the headphones. I know correlation is not causation, but I've started to get ringing in my ears (the more likely causation is age). I don't do high volume, but these are my ears, no company gets to eff with them. If companies want low productivity and high dissatisfaction, why, they will get it. It's absurd, but its where we are.

I don't think ringing in the ears is a normal part of growing older. I would urge you to get that checked out by your doctor.

You're right that no company should eff with your ears indeed, but You may want to see an ENT doctor for your hearing. That's a little concerning and will only get worse(and not just because of age).

Until last week, I was sat next to someone who drummed his fingers on the desk, drummed his feet on the floor, and swung on his chair like it was a playground ride. My productivity has shot up since I've moved away from him.

Sure, you can have other distractions, too. Even libraries can be distracting if people forget to turn off their phone ringers, it's too crowded, etc. The office environments that I have seen that are successful have team rooms, sometimes on a separate floor, do the traffic in and out of them is also separated, and a "hot desk" area where only quiet individual work is permitted.

> The thing it all hinges on is containing noise.

I think it hinges on is containing distractions, and noise is just one of them. When people see you just a few feet away from them, they rarely consider "is my question worth interrupting them so I can get an answer immediately" before asking it. Just having a wall or a door blocking their view of you forces them to make a decision to walk to your desk before asking a question. This seems like a minor barrier, but it's often enough to prevent a lot of interruptions for questions that don't need immediate responses.

In addition to what others have said about distraction being more than just noise, this idea runs directly counter to the "official" reason for open plans: free flow of information and spontaneous communications. By necessity those make an open plan noisy.

In fact, it creates a horrible contradiction: you are supposed to be able to simultaneously block out all this shit, but still pay attention for those moments of serendipity wherein you can interject something useful. The vast majority of knowledge workers can't work like that.

> Provide "phone booths" for phone calls and conference rooms or team rooms for groups talking.

My last job had these in the open office environment, it helped, but it wasn't nearly enough. See others' comments about shoulder-tapping distractions and visual pollution.

Why do companies choose to have an open office plan when it clearly hurts the productivity of some significant percentage of employees? I think there has to be some benefit that offsets the disadvantages. Noting that it doesn't have to be true benefit for the company, only a perceived benefit for the people making the decisions on office plans, what could this be? I don't know, but here are some ideas that seem at least plausible.

Perhaps the harm to the noise sensitive individuals is offset by the improvement to others. Is it better to have one individual at 100% and the other browsing the web all day, or to have both individuals at 60%? It depends on the work being done. Is it better to prevent 1 employee out of 100 from embezzling a hundred million dollars? Yes, but I'd suspect the risk isn't actually that high.

I'd guess that many managers (correctly or not) find it easier to supervise (micromanage) workers when they can see them constantly. If they are being judged (and promoted) by how "in control" they appear rather than the actual productivity of their department, I can see they'd push for large "panopticon" work spaces. It also seems likely that a manager would feel more secure in their position if they can monitor those who might seek to take it from them.

Maybe it's a combination of social status and cost? Such that providing tiny private offices for the lower level workers would be affordable, but the "obligation" to provide larger and more luxurious offices all the way up the chain would be prohibitive? It's possible that the possibility of being promoted to have an office is an significant incentive for some.

What else?

The main benefit that companies, pushing for open office plans, espouse is that it makes it easier for people to communicate face to face.

I'm pretty sure a big factor in the rationale for an open office is that it's even cheaper than having cubicles and (initially) the idea is sexier. For the companies in this mindset, they're probably ignoring the costs associated with decreased productivity.

There probably wasn't enough research on it at the time the open office started to become fashionable.

I find it much more difficult to communicate face to face in an open office. I don't want to bother everyone else so I communicate in a whisper and I don't really like that.

The pro-open-plan side is armed with hard numbers; cost-per-employee for one buildout vs. another is easy to measure up front. The anti-open-plan side has no way of generating the equivalent numbers for lost productivity and even their best attempts at estimating them (relying on studies, etc.) are vulnerable to being dismissed as "just guessing". Hard numbers win over soft numbers.

I could never work at a dump like these places again.

My day would consist of:

Alright lets get some work done. Oh, crap, Kevin is here and he is getting his coffee. Yep, slurp slurp slurp burp slurp slurp. Thank god that is over. Oh wait, he is eating one of those huge carrots again. Where the hell does he buy those? I doubt a horse could bite through one. EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! Even noise cancelling headphones can't dampen this noise. EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH! EARTH SHATTERING CRUNCH!

Finally, he is done. Oh, wait, another cup of coffee. SLuuuuuuuuURP! And now he is on the phone talking to his cousin about sportsball again at loud levels and laughing every 10 seconds.

Well, I now have a massive headache, no way I will be able to concentrate hard enough to do anything.

Incoming ban on office headphones to improve "communication" ...

I worked in a place that did that, it was terrible. When I started, it was part of the culture to have small conversations throughout the day and the team that I worked on had 3 people. The people that talked throughout the day left and eventually the team grew to 8 or 9 with most people wearing headphones. The manager decided that productivity had gone down because of headphones and decided that nobody would be allowed wear them anymore.

No! How could anyone have such a colossal lack of common sense?!

What happened then?

What measure of productivity was in use?

At a three month review back in 2005, I was criticised for "sitting there all day with headphones and not synergising with the team". Never mind there was no door to the office and a recruitment agency with 15 telephones and two radios 15ft away.

Didn't even make it to the end of the review before quitting.

Then we rebel, "Atlas Shrugged" style.

I'm sure I'd love to have a private office but just how feasible is that? My current company has 18 full-time "knowledge workers", where in the world is a startup going to find them all private offices?

I'd really love to know what the alternative is that we're all missing out on? I've worked in cubical farms, bullpens and open-plan offices and none of them are ideal but headphones, IM and established boundaries mean I can work in peace when I want to.

> where in the world is a startup going to find them all private offices?

If you actually mean where in the world, office space is usually pretty reasonable in most places that are not SF or NY.

There's always a way if you want it bad enough.

Maybe there's a good alternative that's a cross between a real private office and a traditional cubical?

I know at Pixar a lot of employees have their own huts. https://thedreamofpixar.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/who-ever-sa... When you take a weekend or two to build it yourself, it's not that expensive.

I believe Joel Spoelsky (I think) had something different too, where it wasn't a real private office with a huge space and thick walls but something with thinner walls that let light in but were opaque

I'm sure you can probably also work with a local university that has an industrial design program. Maybe some of their students can design cheap portable structures that are easy to assemble, cheap to build, aesthetically pleasing, and yet offers a decent amount of both auditory and visual privacy?

The cynic in me thinks that, in most places, it would be like the Better Off Ted episode where the bosses decided it was too risky to let people "just do whatever the hell they wanted", but they could express their individuality through one of four preselected and inoffensive themes: Green Bay Packers, cats, space, and race cars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnWJ0NQuicE

I think people who have the problem of open work spaces wouldn't mind something as uniform and boring as a cubicle or a near equivalent since it's seen as a lesser evil.

Going from an open office plan to individual offices increases the square footage per employee by about 40. This is only about $4,000 a year per employee (in a really expensive office space market), and makes a huge difference in that employee's productivity.

Consider it part of their compensation. After all, you'd not hesitate buying them a $4,000 computer setup to do their work, why is there so much hesitation on offices?

Square footage based on maximum open office estimate vs. maximum executive office from here: http://www.officefinder.com/how.html#sthash.Yfmem34j.dpbs

Split them into 3 separate offices with 6 people a piece.

I don't think the argument is that every worker needs their own personal office but clumping an entire company's worth of staff into one big room isn't an effective place to do work.

This, definitely. The team I'm on needs a shared lab space where we have a guaranteed area to set equipment up and collaborate during integration. Instead we're spread across the whole office, and there's never enough space in the shared lab so some of us have to do noisy things in cubicles.

My first software developer job was working in a converted house where each large room had about 10 people in it. Each room was usually split up so that you had about 2 or 3 people grouped together, depending on the project.

Overall it was a very good layout. Out of all the places I've worked at, it comes in second to working at home (which I now do exclusively). It seems to be a good compromise between open-plan and giving each person their own office.

The alternative is to have small rooms for teams, or just let people work from home.

Tough thing about headphones is I find they're only comfortable for so long. That, and there are times where I can't really work with music and just need quiet.

I'm the same, I can't wear any kind of "on ear" headphones for more than an hour or two before my ears hurt. Instead, I got some studio monitor style over ear headphones (Sennheiser HD380P to be specific) that are super comfy and have a huge noise reduction to boot. I can wear them all day no problem.

As for noise, I don't work in an office (mostly at home), but if I need to cut out the noise but don't want music I still will put on my headphones. If I really need to cut out the world, some white noise will do the trick.

I also listen to noise instead of music to block outside sound. I use sox on mac/linux/windows to generate brown noise which I find less tiresome than white noise.

Sox is well documented but here is the command I use for 90 minutes of brown noise (I try to get up and walk for a minute each time it finishes).

play -n synth 90:00 brownnoise brownnoise

I often use mynoise.net, but after a while my ears just need a rest -- both physically and aurally. BTW, I have two different pairs: big Audio Technica studio monitor phones, and a pair of Beats studio monitor phones that were given to me as a gift.

Just a suggestion -- I don't like most headphones, but I have a set of Sennheiser HD-202's that I bought years ago that are really comfortable for long times. It's especially odd, because they only go partially over my ear, not fully over like the really big headphones, but they are still comfortable and work well to cut down on noise.

"Blocking noise" with more sound will make you deaf.

I think since the ideal solution is to have both open and closed type areas available and let the employees pick. You probably get more productivity by letting the employee choose their optimal working space.

Someone please make an HN poll asking what type of office we all work in - open, cubicle, small office, other...

I lack the karma

Not exactly what you're wanting but there was a poll a little while ago asking what people prefer:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815512

Impossible to pair up with someone, unless you both put on headsets and share a channel like a tank crew.

To the people recommending white noise, be careful. I developed tinnitus from listening to white noise. Now whenever I hear white noise, including fans, etc., there is a high-pitched ringing in my left ear. Not fun.

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