> I think less than 5% of comments on open-office design, that I have ever seen, were positive.

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.

University libraries are silent. Focus is the first-class activity; groups that want to work together must book a conference room or go to a dedicated collaboration floor. You might go with your friends for company, but you’re only going to speak on e.g. trips down from the workspace to the attached coffee shop.

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.

Ha. University library silence seems to be in serious decline these days. Not long ago I was in one I'd describe as a cocktail party atmosphere. My theory is that universities have become more desperate to ply their students with various perks and services, they're more reluctant to crack the whip on anything that smacks of discipline.

It was the other students who would take your head off, at my school anyway. Given that there were abundant collaboration-allowed spaces, talking on a quiet floor was seen as horribly rude.

> University libraries are silent.

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.)

Well that’s horrifying. I quite liked mine. Although only one two floors were officially collaboration, there was an informal agreement that higher floors were more strictly silent. And then there were single desks scattered throughout the stacks. You had a lot of control over the noise level based on where you choose to sit. Never needed headphones there.

This is accurate. My university has silent floors, "quiet floors" (rarely enforced), and a few well used open collaboration areas with movable furniture.

This comment is spot on. The few times I brought up open offices (which I don't like) with my coworkers, most of them favored them. They liked being able to easily have a brief chat with someone, and generally having a more social feel to the office. They worried that in an environment with private offices, it would be harder to interrupt someone with a question, and that collaboration would suffer as a result. I feel like I almost never read this perspective on Hacker News, but it's very common in the real world.

I actually enjoy open office plans despite not liking group work/study.

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.

If I gave up on those I would find another career. They are the whole point. Flow is 100% of what I like about software engineering.

Flow is good, and fun conversations are good. Either way, I'm having a good day and getting paid well.

I like the idea of a non-judgmental, studious open space like libraries. The idea that no one cares what I work on makes it easy to take a couple quick breaks throughout the day, and those breaks help maintain focus during the other periods. I dislike the idea that someone can "catch" me on HN in an open office.

huh, that's an interesting theory.

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.

Here's an anecdote for you.

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.

I don't hate open offices exactly, as long as management agrees that I'm going to be 25% less productive that way. It's kind of working on a VT-100 instead of a 28" monitor. Unfortunately, in my experience, that's a condition that's lost on most managers.

> If you need something, you can ask.

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.

Sadly I feel this is very true. IT was the last refuge of the introverts and social awkwards/outcasts. Now that the extroverts have taken over and tend to be the ones making the rules, IT is becoming more and more unbearable. Couldn't just let us have this one thing?

Managers and executives.

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.

As a former pm I can't think of a single colleague who loved open plan. We at best tolerated but I think every one of us would have been a happy recipient of an office!

Also cheaper because cubicle scaffolding costs $$$.

Open offices are great if you don't optimize for people per square meter. I did my onboarding in Boston. The company just moved to this office so there was a ton of space. Teams were far apart so it wasn't noisy. And this open space just felt great. I never worked in an open office so I was sold

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.

I think it is people who control purse strings. One big problem is that majority of today's management is indulged in a bad faith argument of collaboration and innovation as benefit of open office. Management can own up and say its gonna save them money and it will continue with open office policy.

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.

I loved the open office I worked in (as an IC).

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. ;)

That wasn't really an open office. The usual open office is one open space for 50+ and sometimes hundreds of people. It's an awful place to work. There is usually a lot of distracting noise.

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.

You can't build an open office with 5 people. That's a single-team office, what is a very different thing.

I said something about how bad open offices are recently IRL to my girlfriend and was a little surprised when she said she likes them, given how hated they are on HN. But I think the key factor is that her work typically involves coordinating and collaborating with a bunch of different people throughout the day, pretty much the opposite of what I do as a remote software dev.

I think that open offices are bad for most of the jobs people on HN have, but are probably fine for certain others.