The widespread application of headphones to "solve" this problem is silly. It does nothing to screen out the visual distraction of working with 40 other people in your sightline, and it cuts you off from meaningful discussions with your direct peers.
I've been happiest in spaces where workgroups of 6-8 people were in large-ish shared offices that broke up sightlines and isolated noise. Doors that close, folks (partially frosted glass or not).
Actually any co-location scheme allows this, walls or no walls. It's a matter of culture, not of vertical dividers.
But I concur, it's a bit over the top to say that "everyone" hates open offices since clearly some people don't. Personally, to me it feels like a quarter suffers, of which there is a vocal minority, half don't give a damn and quarter thinks it's ok.
Personally I think open office is the worst to happen to the modern workplace. I like being around my team but I don't enjoy being consciously aware of the doings of the four other teams who share the space I'm in.
Team rooms. Those are golden. Better yet, rooms of 2-3 persons.
One of the offices I like to show as an example is Ubiquiti Networks, particularly images 3 and 4 (pardon the link to my own website): http://officesnapshots.com/2014/03/12/ubiquiti-networks-san-...
Another thing I wonder: are office plants totally out of the picture nowadays?
The choice of materials and colors (metal, stone, glass and black) feels more suited to a parking garage than an office.
Also glass walls do not help with visual distractions. They can in fact make them worse due to reflections.
One important thing ton consider is not wasting $$$ on coating the walls above about 7' or below 3' as it is basically unusable without those funny library ladders.
Other people have no choice whatsoever about where they work, but still enjoy their coworker interaction to the point they get bored and demotivated when the office is quiet. They might not be the most popular people in the office with programmers who also have no choice where they work, but from their point of view the open plan office is much better than sitting in a dreary box wondering if the question that's on their mind is actually worth getting out of their seat to go to ask a colleague about, whether marketing are in today and whether anyone else has made a sale yet.
I think that sounds more like a team room and not an open office. Team rooms are awesome.
I value spontaneous human interaction very much. I just don't value being aware of the spontaneous human interaction between 40 different people around me.
The key to understanding why open offices suck is that the amount of disturbance - statistically - is relative to the number of conversations that can spontaneously happen.
If we take n people then the number of spontaneous interactions is (back of the envelope) k * n * (n - 1) where k is some scaling factor.
It looks like this: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
The point is, the more people there are, the more disturbances there are - exponentially. It's totally different to work in a space with 10 people than with 20 people - in the latter there is a 4 times more likelihood there is a disturbance than with 10 people. If we compare a room with 4 people with 40 people then the room with 40 people have relatively 130 times more disturbing events despite there are only 10 times as people around.
This is of course a ridiculously simple model but I think it essentially captures the fact that very large rooms have different dynamics than just large rooms.
And I want that people communicate and ask things spontaneously! But I don't appreciate the fact that without walls people like me need to suffer from noises coming from four different teams. And I don't mean suffer in an aesthetic sense, but in a very gut wrenching, unhealthy, "I cannot concentrate on this algorithm and it pisses me off like no other thing in this earth" way.
"...they get bored and demotivated when the office is quiet."
Do you mean you get bored and demotivated or are you describing how someone else feels specifically about their job?
Could it be rather that their job is just not that meaningful to them? If that is the case then I would hold that as a point against open offices - give people tiny meaningless jobs and remove all the walls so they are peer pressured to perform. I'm obviously exaggerating here to make a point.
That explains why I don't recognize the horrors of open offices I read about.
I work for a small company with only 10 people spread over 2 rooms.
Being an adult. Really, do you require a baby sitter to keep you busy?
And I absolutely use a choice of work space to help mediate this. When I used to freelance I had to get out of my apartment and work at a coffee shop to really start my day. Now I often have days where it's fine to work from home, but when I find myself completely distracted from work while at home I go into the office because it's just slightly less acceptable to be goofing off all the time there, and that's just the nudge I need to get into my work for the day.
The great thing about a computer is I am the master of it. That means if I have trouble focusing I can easily use these tools you mentioned in order to focus.
I can't do anything about my coworker eating a big bag of chips really loudly; or the sales staff laughing and joking around on the phone with clients all day long.
* In a survey of more than 3,200 people conducted by Salary.com, 64% say they visit websites unrelated to work daily.
Source: http://business.time.com/2012/03/13/youre-wasting-time-at-wo...
Presumably nothing so long as your performance levels are maintained within the expected parameters. To my mind that's better, goal focussed rather than time focussed.
On the flip side there's probably nothing stopping you from waking up at 2am and doing some productive work for your employer then either.
Busy-work isn't unproductive work- at least, not to the organization. Busy-work is work that the organization needs to have done, but the individual does not find interesting or satisfying to do. Any company is going to require busy-work.
That's exactly what it is.
> Busy-work is work that the organization needs to have done, but the individual does not find interesting or satisfying to do.
That is not what the term means. Busy work: work that keeps a person busy but has little value in itself. What you're describing is simply boring work. If the work is useful, it is by definition not busy work.
Not-busy != not-productive
Please don't be personally rude on HN.
No, most of us can't fully control ourselves on everything, which is why we set up systems that help us. A shared office is one such a system.
Sometimes though, the impossible happens. Maybe a race condition or something. In those cases i find myself questioning my mental model, which is good. It leads me compare what i think is happening to what is actually happening. If i don't find that mismatch, my mind sort of tenses up.
Those terrible problems lead me to question my understanding of reality and my self worth. Some things are just hard. I really do just check out and play video games for a while. Something in my mind relaxes, my subconscious chews on the problem for a while. Sometimes i have to sleep before I feel like i can continue.
When i'm working near my limits, i get weird. I know other poeple who just grit their teeth and go on. I've tried that, but it feels like the road to burnout for me. I know others deal with that well.
Talking sometimes helps, but because my understanding is flawed, my explanation has the same flaws. Some people are good at helping identify the false belief, but usually I still have to let that realization tumble around in my mind for a while before i feel comfortable enough to continue.
Id estimate maybe 25% of open office workers are seriously negatively impacted by an open office.
To put that in perspective if 25% of workers at a company were subject to bullying or sexual harassment we would certainly label the work environment extremely toxic... Even if another 25% were happy and productive in it.
It sounds like the low grade anxiety and stress of an open office actually helps keep you on track. Frequent deadlines is a similar kind of pressure that some people excel with.
I'm the same when I get plenty of downtime at work. If I can take a long lunch break and follow it up by going to the gym and nobody at work minds because I am overall very productive then the low grade stress etc actually helps me focus.
I've worked in open offices, offices with high partitions and from home. When I work from home what's stopping me from opening up news or playing video games? When I work in a partition and I need to talk to another engineer face-to-face I can't just glance over to see if they are available. Open offices lets me be around my colleagues and inspires me to focus on my work and get access to help promptly when I need it. I don't give a damn if they see me in a snuggie or sleeping under my desk.
I believe the real problem is the lack of choices. You should be able to choose the kind of environment you want to work in and not feel like you're forced in a situation you don't like. I think it's wrong to say "open offices are destroying the workplace".