less aesthetically pleasing in office photographs, but overall a much better work environment than any open plan I've experienced.
Here's a good example:
https://www.officemuseum.com/1935_Auditor_of_Overcharge_Clai...
More pictures:
[0] There's probably a better term for this...
I've been living in cities and I think that is a big factor. Real estate is expensive. But make no mistake, open workspaces are miserable places. Cubicles still suck, but they're a massive step up from open floor plans.
I forget where I saw this but there was a company that had set up what were basically "team offices" so teams that worked closely together each had their own closed room where they worked, so they could collaborate in their own manner.
Quiet when they needed it, loud when they needed it, and on their own schedule.
That seems like a good middle.
If you're reading this and you have this setup - don't take the bait to move to the newly remodeled building - it's a trap!
In big companies, there usually isn't a problem with communicating within a team - the problems occur when teams aren't communicating with people in other teams. These team rooms ruin any informal inter-team collaboration and communication.
It's not a good middle, it's the best possible way to work.
In my pre 2010 job, the walls of the cube I had were quite tall and gave reasonable privacy. In my 2016 job, they were quite short for "enhanced collaboration". I didn't really feel "safe" in my short cube, for lack of a better word.
If you feel "safe" in that manner, it increases your focus, and thus productivity.
The cubes we had at Lockheed were great because they were super big.
I've hated every "open office" layout I have ever had.
I especially liked having a shared office though, sitting back-to-back in a single office, with a door - What I liked about it was that my office mate and I both liked to work with the light off, and just let the natural light from the window through (floor to ceiling window)
When you have some sense of self-privacy, and ability to block people out, your productivity is higher.
The reason why the "open office" concept was pushed, is all about cost.
Its cheaper to give people a slot at the trough, as opposed to building them an office or cube.
(Source: Former Designer and implementation builder at some of the largest open-office-concept companies you have all heard of)
cubicles were a step down from individual offices, and was the manifestation of commoditization of the software engineering. The transition from cubicles to open offices was the part of that process going even further. Basically blue collar workers of 196x on a large factory floor.
One would think that we've reached the peak of bad offices ... Well, i think some form of vertically stacked option is coming in the mid-term. In the short-term i think the next thing is the "cloud" style approach where no office desk is assigned permanently and coming into office you'd have to [find and]schedule a desk for yourself. That would allow to cut office space even more.
In ~2017 I did a contract with Ericsson, in their offices they had no assigned desks. Some days you'd show up in the morning and find another team had moved into your space, claiming that some other team had taken theirs. In those days we became desk refugees, wandering halls to find/take a space large enough for the team.
The next stage, that we reached around 2016/2017, is "we're running out of seats; everyone should work from home one day a week to alleviate the problem". Good when you're at home, but the rest of the week becomes even more chaotic because you can't predict what the available seats will be like day-to-day.
I'm fine with this. I'm surprised that airline seat manufacturers don't make versions for office use -- business class seats are much nicer than any open plan desk I've ever sat at. You are fully surrounded on all sides, your chair can turn into a bed, and inside an office you can probably stack them. Getting a couple of 30" monitors in there that are infinitely adjustable would be a challenge, and cleaning it sounds like a pain in the ass... but I'm sure these issues could be resolved if there is money in doing it.
I think people like open-plan offices because they're easy. You move into the space, have IKEA deliver a bunch of tables, and you're set up. It's cheap and it's easy.
After a while you get to know that this spot - letter "E" and "Backspace" doesn't work, that spot - mouse right click doesn't work, third spot - second monitor flashes every 10min...
And then there is this constant "I don't belong here" feeling. Sure it is more "efficient" from the space and hardware utilization perspective. For call centers - I don't mind the setup, but good luck to you if you are planning to build software in such environment.
Bunk-bed desks.
I don't think most tech workers have really had a proper office.
Cubicles with a door would be great. The ceiling can be open and have sun light coming in. Maybe the walls should be white and there should be a lamp of my own (for notes).
At home I wake up and log on at 8am. In the office, my 1.5 hour commute puts me in the office at 10am on a decent day. Because I have a kid and a pregnant wife, I cut out of the office around 4 every day because that's the only reasonable way I can get home and eat dinner with my family before my kid goes to bed... but when I'm WFH, I'm often staying online past 5 and sometimes 6. To me, the difference is literally more time spent working and more time spent seeing my child vs. spending 3-4 hours commuting daily and going day-long stretches without my one year old seeing me with her own two eyes.
Working from home, I can stay productive during meetings without bothering anyone -- I can mute myself, if it's one of those meetings, and keep working.
I think anyone who fails to be as productive, or more productive, from home is someone that doesn't like their job very much. I'm lucky that I enjoy the product I work on, and I enjoy dressing comfortably and eating lunch with my wife, and drinking my own coffee, and instantly joining/disconnecting from meetings, and physically distancing myself from "drive-bys" that my production is up.
Think of the most annoying co-worker you've dealt with constantly coming up to you and asking the least relevant question you could imagine. Multiply that by infinity and you might get close to having small kids at home.
Can this be dealt with, of course. But it takes time to get your kids to adjust to this. If you're kids are not used to you working from home, you can't just expect them to be okay with it.
We have a small house, which is fine because I work at the office, they're out at school, it's big enough for the times we need to be there ... oh wait.
Our upstairs is big enough for the beds, and a narrow space around each. Downstairs has no dividing walls/doors.
Now work expect equal output from me and I'm working in the kitchen with a just a gap between me and the room a toddler and 2 other children are occupying.
Perhaps if they weren't my kids, particularly my brain interrupts every time the toddler speaks, because that's how we're wired for young voices.
Now add in that the kids are used to running around screaming, literally screaming, to burn off energy .. it's not going well.
Meanwhile the bosses in their massive home offices, think everything is perfect and don't see why we shouldn't be _more_ productive than normal.
I'm waiting for when we go back wondering how their argument for why we're not allowed to home-work is going to go ...
Of course, people who were not already setup for working remotely may not have a door they can lock and partner who can reassure.
Kids have routines, and having work-from-home parents can become part of that routine. It's not a light switch though, so training has to be given time to take hold. Probably about the time the seclusion orders are lifted if not longer.
> I think you are greatly ignoring employees with children.
I think you missed something.
The grandparent is happy working from home with their 1-year old. However, they don't consider that other people's situation might be very different. For example, the 4 year old can actively try to find you.
Plus not all house layouts are the same. I've got a secluded space on a higher floor, however there are no doors and the floors/walls are paper thin, so I still hear everything that happens in the house unless I permanently use noise-cancelling headphones+music (which doesn't work that well for me).
When it's a forced situation it's not something people love.
Random anecdote: I was involved with an office move once where we (a relatively small org) were choosing how to layout the new office. One individual was a fervent advocate that we needed a hip, cool open office for all that wonderful synergy, etc. So in the new space we made a hip, open space, and then classic cubicles, and everyone put in private requests where they wanted to be.
100% of the people chose cubicles. The person I mentioned chose probably the farthest away, most private cubicle.
It's not a particularly unique situation, but it's just another example that people are often full of shit. When we're imposing on other people some ideas can sound better, especially if they're trendy.
As to productivity, the majority of jobs are bullshit jobs. Reddit, HN, Slashdot in the old days have their heyday during the "work" day in the respective zones. If people achieved 5% productivity they would be more productive than they normally are in many cases.
It's basically taboo to say anything positive about open office spaces online. There are many, many legitimately terrible open office workspaces in the world. Suggesting that open offices aren't always bad feels like an attack on those who are miserable in their open office. So it's safer to just never bring it up.
In the real world, a lot of people do enjoy open office style environments. They're probably the same people who went to their University's library to study in college or joined a study group so they could sit with others who were working on the same topic. Many (not all, obvious) college students choose these open, social study environments organically during college. It's reasonable to expect that they'd carry their preferences into the working world.
I have a theory that the more someone prefers isolation and being alone, the more likely they are to participate in internet comment sections and online forums. As a result, the deeper you go into internet comment sections, the more unanimously people rail against open office floor plans.
In a perfect world, we'd have a mix of companies offering both working styles and people could choose their preferred style up front. Anecdotally, I worked for a company that advertised private offices as a perk, but nearly zero of our candidates seemed to care. People tend to choose whichever company pays the best, regardless of the working conditions. I can understand why companies choose to save money on open office floorplans.
A “library rules” open office would be just fine. That’s not what happens, though. The point of an open office is that everyone is talking all the time. If you don’t want to hear every conversation everyone in your company is having, it’s your own responsibility to jam those signals, or leave.
This is not universally true. I've done a lot of working in university libraries recently, and many of them have switched to allowing collaboration in the main spaces.
> A “library rules” open office would be just fine.
This still wouldn't work for me personally. I listen to music pretty much all the time while working, and get really sick of wearing headphones all the time. The only option is a private office. (I've gotten this by becoming a remote worker.)
I prefer being alone. I don't really see people other than my wife outside of work. Work is my only chance to socialize, which makes an open office plan ideal for me. It's very easy to start conversations with the people near me and have them turn into fun group discussions.
Once you give up on the idea of having long unbroken periods of productivity, the open office plan can be a lot of fun.
I like working on stuff at tech meetups. I always bring my laptop, mostly because the speakers can be boring and being in a room like that helps me focus on personal projects. I use to go to writing meetups too.
That being said, I absolutely hate open layouts. I would much rather prefer a cubical.
I'm not sure if this generalization would hold out if you surveyed people, but it might. I'd be curious.
I LOVE open offices. If you need something, you can ask. If you want to pair program with someone, they can just turn around or scoot over. You can tell if the person you need to get help from is busy without leaving your chair. Hell, even the distractions are nice. I've never felt closer to coworkers than when I've worked in an open office. I like the occasional nerf dart whizzing past my head. Work is 8 hours of your day, it should be enjoyed.
I've had my own office and it was miserable. It was lonely and I felt like I never got to know my coworkers. If I needed face to face time with someone I'd have to physically walk down the hall and hope they were in their office. It also put a larger barrier to asking for help, which slows things down.
I'm well aware that not everyone is like me and some people don't like open offices. That's fine, but it doesn't mean that open offices are inherently bad.
That's almost like having Skype...
> You can tell if the person you need to get help from is busy without leaving your chair.
...with a status icon.
Well, people are different. I guess we introverts need to find some other job, because we are obviously no longer welcome in IT.
1. Cheaper rent because you need less space 2. Easier to look over shoulders and on to computer monitors
Managers (especially product managers) delude themselves into thinking this spurs collaboration and creativity and productivity.
A year later when I visited there were twice as many people. It was still okay to work there but noisier.
The last time when I visited was really bad. Desks everywhere, people 1 meter apart. I couldn't really work there in a productive way.
We should start to build offices for "free range" engineers.
At that point employees may not like it but it would make clear that they need to put money where their mouth is and demand a separate cube etc at work as part of job offer. Not getting it would be like so many other compromises that we make in life and has to be endured.
When I worked at reddit, we all sat in a single conference room in the corner of the Wired office. There were five of us doing engineering. A huge whiteboard on one wall (with a couch underneath for naps), windows on two walls, and the fourth wall was the door.
It was great. We all had headphones so we could work when we want. When some people needed to collaborate on the whiteboard, we just got up and did it. Usually everyone else ended up joining in, unless they were already deep in their work and didn't notice.
It was the perfect balance of collaboration and privacy.
But it probably worked so well because "the boss" was more like a peer, so you didn't feel watched. He was working on code right beside you.
And when we played games, it was great because you screen cheat off of Steve and he couldn't tell. ;)
What you described is something like I worked in. We had separate rooms for most teams(15 people or less). You could collaborate with fellow team members, which usually relevant for the whole team, but wasn't distracted by other teams. As you said it's the perfect balance of collaboration and privacy.
I think that open offices are bad for most of the jobs people on HN have, but are probably fine for certain others.
I also very much need that “work” space to switch my brain into focus mode. My place has never been setup for work-focus as I work at a place that encourages not taking your work home with you - though I am thankful that now we are fully enabled to WFH rather than lose that paycheck.
Stress levels are lower, my back feels better, and my home workouts are going great!
I am OK, but my productivity is toast.
It may be worth keeping in mind that this, too, will pass.
Entirely different to the mentoring, caring, parenting, intimate interactions with kids (and my wife).
(As for monitoring, yeah, stuff like that mentioned in the article would never fly here in Finland. We have very strict privacy laws, and the employer cannot do whatever they please.)
I'm able to complete tasks just as well here as at the office.
And those who were already working remote. I do, and I've actually found it easier at meetings, where I'm not the only one on the screen anymore.
Productivity is going to plunge no matter what, with the possible exception of singles who don’t have roommates. There is no way that during an ad hoc and unorganized push to work remote (though necessary in this circumstance) can result in good productivity, monitoring or not. Under the best of circumstances it would take months for a mass of people to adjust and be productive.
The apex for open office design was reached and we’ll go back to something more normal. It’s funny people derided “cubicle farms” but we’re more or less okay being in a “bullpen” like setting cuz it was sold as being counter cultural and cool.