It depends on what you do.

Some activities like teaching are open by nature. Interruptions are ok and even desirable. Design, politics, sales, could have a great amount of work done in the open.

Now, in activities like programming, writing, science, you are suiciding yourself in the open, constant interruptions and the theater.

I have done programming in the open but choosing my partners, one, two or three people that I admired, but it was almost an intimate relationship, far from what people consider OO.

In Soviet Union it was more important what other perceived you were doing that really what you accomplished, so everybody created the farce of working a lot, but the productivity levels were terrible compared with the West. Their work was simulating they were working, and like good actors, some even believed their role.

In big buroucracies managers find very hard to identify what other people really contribute to the work so they start using external cues, like how much(time) this person works, how busy he looks, the sense of security and so on.

"what's the alternative? Everyone get a 4-walled office?"

I work from home. So do the people that work for my company.

I created my company programming, so I could identify the value of the people that work with me. I could trust them, they could manage them selves, and also they are more productive when they don't have anyone breathing over their shoulders.

Of course, it is no lala land. It takes experience, knowledge and work to be able to implement something like this.

If Rands in Repose didn't have such cryptic titles, I could link you to a blog post from http://randsinrepose.com/ which argued that yes, individual offices would be ideal, while also having common areas for brainstorming.

The first job I worked had each office shared by two developers; this seemed to provide a good balance between 'quiet time' and having someone close by you could bug (assuming they didn't look busy) to discuss something.

In my 20-year career, I've only worked in an open office once for 6 months, and it was a significant factor in me quitting. I sat immediately adjacent to a managerial-type guy, and he had people dropping in all the time to discuss something; I'm talking 10 people per hour, on average. I would defy anyone getting any complex programming work done under those circumstances.

You'd never think you'd hear this, but IMO full height cubicles are a step up from the open office plan without running the bill of true offices.

I was transitioned from a full-height cubicle (in a corner, no less) to a half-height cubicle. I can see from the neck up of the person in the next cube while seated. This was done to "increase collaboration", however myself and my team are placed by a group of people from HR, so it's constantly our recruiters on the phone pre-screening candidates. We never need to interact with them. And I know they are annoyed with us as well when we're talking technical jargon. We both get on each other's nerves and constantly distract each other.

Even if you subscribe to the "open = more collaborative" idea, it only works when you're near people that you interact with daily.

I miss my full-height cubicle, in an area with only people from my department.

> I was transitioned from a full-height cubicle (in a corner, no less) to a half-height cubicle. I can see from the neck up of the person in the next cube while seated.

Wow, that's absurd.

Our company transitioned from 6 foot cube walls to 4.5ish foot cube walls, such that you can see over the cube walls if you're standing up, but not when sitting down. It works very nicely for being able to see across most of the floor, to easily find someone you're meeting with (and who is thus also standing looking around), or to collaborate with your team over cube walls. But if you're sitting down, you have walls all around you, both to muffle noise and to provide a comfortable feeling of privacy.

There are also a large number of drop-in conference rooms ("collaboration rooms"), and some one-person phone-booth rooms for fully private phonecalls.

Perhaps a way to mitigate the bad effects of open offices is to allow people to work from home when they need to focus. I spent a year and a half working in an open floor plan, and about 90% of my coding got done at home. I'd remain well-connected to everyone over Skype, and I'd only show up to socialize and/or attend necessary meetings.

Perhaps this isn't optimal for every employee/company, but it's how I made the best of the situation for myself at this company...

I have children that are not yet school aged at home. Working from home only happens after bedtime (and that's if I decide not to spend any time with my wife after the kid's bedtime).

I also work in an "open" plan (recently transitioned to it). The most productive I ever am is when I'm travelling for work. It's the only time I get privacy.

As a side anecdote: I was listening to NPR about a prisoner that was talking about how he turned his life around in prison and read an incredible amount of books. I was feeling jealous of him for a few minutes until I realized how screwed up it was. I was jealous of the free time and relative privacy that a prisoner had. I never get privacy unless I'm travelling for work. Never.

Cubicles for 4 persons are fine. Or any other way of zoning with small walls - in rows or bigger "cubicles" for more people 6-8, maybe 10.

PS: and while my team is a distraction for others in my office (relatively, not absolutely) I dislike open-spaces. They aren't mentally comfortable, not because of noise (for me) but because of no "feeling" of privacy. It is all subjective of course.

Can put max 3 people per office. People can move together to an office if they share a common task. Then switch around as tasks change.

But it is important to keep distractions out especially for creative positions.

Also everyone is different so maybe some people prefer the open floor and they should be allowed to work there too. But forcing everyone to do it, I think is misguided.

Yes.

That's probably not affordable for a majority of companies.

For tech companies and engineers in the Bay Area:

1) $100-200k/yr salary 2) $200-300k/yr fully loaded cost 3) $500k-$5mm/yr value created per employee (rev or market cap or whatever) -- this is actually more like -$huge to +$huge)

Offices cost $7/ft2/mo in Palo Alto, or $2-4/ft2/mo in SF.

A private office is probably 50-100 ft2 more than open plan.

So, we're talking about $100 to $700/mo difference.

I'd personally be willing to pay $500/mo pre-tax to have a private office, vs. a desk in an shared office. Productivity benefits to company are on the order of $10-50k/mo.

Next time I do a startup, I'm doing 3-4 person sized offices for each person (i.e. you have a guest desk, workspace, etc., normally empty), and project areas shared per team, after there are more than just founders.

Have your developers work from home then. I work for a fully funded startup where the entire team is remote. I would never go back to an office (I have insane levels of productivity compared to my last gig that had an open office plan, not to mention 0 commute time).

Bravo! My productivity (and motivation) is orders of magnitude higher when I can work in my house in the South of France or at my mother in law's house on the Mexican Riviera.) I will give you 10 hours a day of full productivity if you can save me from my old Jersey City-NYC commute. I don't need to play ping pong with you to build great software for you.

Thank you! Part of my motivation for taking the job was my wife wanted the ability for us to live in Nice, France for a bit. I've noticed you mention in your HN posts that you live in the South of France; congrats on the ability to do that!

There are very few companies that enjoy outsized success with such a setup. So I think the retort to your final sentence is likely "Yes, you do".

Perhaps those companies should learn how to manage better?

How many have actually tried it?

Developer salaries are probably not affordable for a majority of companies either. But they pay them, otherwise they couldn't get people to come to work for them.

So at some level of developer pay, N companies are profitable. At N+P, fewer companies are profitable, and at N-P, more. All else being equal.

If we cared as much about our desks as we do about our pay, we'd have more offices, and companies would either make less profit, or there would be fewer companies.

But we don't have offices, because we don't insist on it.

Next time you interview, make that as important as salary.

At least some open plans, are ultra low walled cubicles. Simply install taller cubicle walls.

The cost is approximately zero compared to the costs of sick days and ruined productivity.

Fire extinguishers are expensive. However, they're pretty cheap compared to getting cited by the fire dept/OSHA for not having a fire extinguisher. And they're really cheap compared to the result of a fire that can't be put out.

A tiny office with a door is cheaper than two days of the typical programmers salary.

I had my own office when I was an undergrad sysadmin.

It is almost certainly affordable for the vast majority of them. And as the article points out, evidence suggests that they are losing money by not investing in proper office space. Walls are a hell of a lot cheaper than lost employee productivity.

4 walled offices for everyone is a nice ideal but its just not affordable in a lot of places. I work in New York City. There just isn't enough space for that. Its totally cost prohibitive to provides offices like that for everyone.

Yes, of course.

High-walled cubicles is a common compromise

I truly don't understand some peoples hatred of cubicles. Sure I'd rather my own office with a door (I guess), but high-wall cubicles provide just enough privacy for me to keep outside distractions from being a problem (unless a cube-mate starts whistling or something).

I had a shared office with one other programmer working on the same stuff as me for my first job. After that I took a job where I was in a cube. After having an office cubes are almost unbearable. Cubes also tend to come with a lot of bad practices like not actually having a door, facilities setting up your desk so that you have to sit with your back to the "doorway", getting shuffled from one cube to the next with regularity, and ever-decreasing work-space.

One place I worked for started me in an 8x10 cube, moved me to a different floor and into an 8x8 cube, then across to another floor into an 8x8 cube which had a supporting pillar through it, making it more like a 6x4 cube, and finally into a conference room with 6 other people, all within the space of a year. I miss my office.

Don't get me wrong, I'll make do wherever. But compared to having an office cubes and open plan are worthless.

In my experience, the hatred of cubes is a hold-over from when the alternative was real offices. Compared to open plan, cubes are a step up.

There are more alternatives than that: low wall cubes, high wall cubes and bull-pens, for starters.

Yes. Real offices for everyone, and some open space (e.g. meeting and lunch tables) for people who want it. People should be in contact some of the time, but not exposed to every inane conversation.

Also, open-back visibility (that is, being visible from behind) does more damage than the noise itself, and there are no noise-canceling headphones for that.

Office space isn't that expensive, compared to the productivity loss of having everyone work in a crappy space. (Compared to a traditional office, open-plan saves about $300-450/month per employee in San Francisco, Class A commercial real estate. It's less if you're in Oakland, Brooklyn, or the Midwest) Open-plan is just another case of crappy HR (the norm in tech, sadly) "cutting" costs in a way that actually externalizes them; there are marginal savings on office space, but productivity plummets.

Just to clarify on "open-back visibility", it means that people can see you from behind (ie your back is facing the door/ open space rather than a wall, and by extension it means that they can see your screen), right?

If that's the case, I agree with you, but I'd like to see more details on how/why it is the case. Do you by any chance have any more evidences?

I don't have papers on it. Just years of painful experience, but something I've noticed is that (a) people with walls at their back are generally more productive, and (b) successful or powerful people usually choose seating arrangements that give them a barrier. Visibility from behind suggests low social status and makes people feel "watched".

I can confirm that with a couple dozen n=1 anecdotes. I used to have a mirror on my monitor so I could see people coming up behind me. That calmed the lizard brain down a bit, but I was still distracted every time somebody walked behind me. I've known dozens of programmers who also hate having their back exposed because it's a distraction.

eg. cubicle, meaning, there is no physical door to shut that when it is shut it means Do Not Disturb.