The best environment I've ever worked in was a combination open office, private space hybrid. You had your desk, whether you wanted a sitting desk or standing desk, you could choose from either, and you were by default in the open office area. However, surrounding this large room were a dozen or so closed offices where you could pop in and have a meeting or do some coding in private.<p>However, one of the organize-all-the-things guys on the internal operations team once caught me in a coding marathon in one of those offices and sent an email to the entire company "reminding" everyone that those offices were for <i>God-knows-what-he-thought-they-were-for</i>, not for work. So I returned to my ergonomic island and toiled away, surrounded by the noise of a hundred private conversations.<p>I've always thought since then that if that had panned out, that you could choose at any moment if you wanted to be in the open room or in a private room in the perimeter, that would have been the ideal layout.
Perhaps the worst aspect of all this, is the purposeful, or even casual, ideologue. An arrangement works for them, or they think it does -- or, BEST PRACTICES dictate that it should... and viola, a dictate.<p>I am one who needs some control over his environment. In the majority of cases, these means peace and quiet particularly/mostly from human noise, as well as a lack of visual distraction. (Although there are times when I work well -- best even -- in a frenetic environment; however, these are limited in both type and frequency.)<p>I'm a bit older, and I fell into a generation that was subscribing to and prescribing whole-heartedly the "open", "collaborative" environment.<p>It did not work for me. Yet I received <i>unrelenting</i> pressure, including from medical professionals, that <i>I</i> was the one who... "simply" needed to learn to adapt.<p>Well... now we know a bit better. (Although I don't trust society to have truly "learned" this in any permanent fashion.) But the chronic stress of this situation has caused for me major adjustments in career and, eventually, rather run me down.<p>To put the bottom line at the bottom, here: If a situation is not working for you, IT IS NOT WORKING FOR YOU. TRUST THIS. TRUST YOURSELF!<p>"Professionals" of varying occupations and levels of training will all -- <i>ALL</i> -- tell you all kinds of crap. Even several years of medical school does not divorce most from their prejudices nor from cultural suasion.<p>Don't waste your time -- your life -- running yourself down trying to live up to someone else's idea of the "right way".
It's interesting to note most people don't know the history of the cubicle and why it was invented in the first place:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubicle" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubicle</a><p>"The office cubicle was created by designer Robert Propst for Herman Miller, and released in 1967 under the name "Action Office II". Although cubicles are often seen as being symbolic of work in a modern office setting due to their uniformity and blandness, they afford the employee a greater degree of privacy and personalization than in previous work environments, which often consisted of desks lined up in rows within an open room.[1][2<p>Image of an office circa 1937: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Photograph_of_the_Division_of_Classification_and_Cataloging,_1937.tif" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Photograph_of_the_Division...</a><p>I've never liked the open office layouts anyways. The two companies I worked for used it and it was tremendously noisy and so I usually did anything I could to avoid having to work in the office. Either by going to the cafeteria to work, or staying home. It made both of the teams I worked on very inefficient. The exact opposite goal it was meant to address.
My company gives all engineers their own office with a door. Recently four of us petitioned to be able to have an open office together. We collaborate better, feel generally happier, and knowledge sharing happens so much more fluidly.<p>I was going crazy the first 6 months here because I was holed up in a office by myself with little in-person communication. There was no benefit to being in the office versus working remotely. My first attempt was to get the company a HipChat account for engineers to stay more connected. I even pushed for a couple of monthly engineer events so I would have an opportunity to interact with other engineers.<p>Open office setups can go horribly wrong. Never allow anyone who spends time on the phone into the open office setup. That stifles all interaction due to the need for silence. Additionally, engineers are forced to listen to a single side of a conversation that likely has nothing directly to do with the engineers. Project and account managers have a valuable job, and engineers should not need to be distracted by work that is not related to what they need to accomplish.<p>Additionally, I believe an open office for engineers should be reasonably small (4-10 people), and there should be some common responsibilities or projects between the engineers.<p>Other steps can be taken to give people the appropriate space for the task at hand. I've used a stand-up desk for the past three years. I hardly ever spend a whole day standing. I alternate between sitting and standing as my body gives me signals. Similarly, having quiet space (alternatively headphones, if desired) to crank on certain work can be useful useful. That said, three of the four of us have not used solitary space in the past 2 months.<p>Basically all of this is to say the issue is not black and white. If you prefer to work in a private office, like more than half of the engineers at my company do, that's fine. If you prefer to work in the company of others, that is fine too. Not everyone wants to work at a startup, and not everyone hates working for big financial companies.
I find it hilarious that a bunch of people who work on internet technologies apparently need so much face-to-face communication.<p>If you want my attention, send me an e-mail. Also: get off my lawn.
Heh. Open layouts were a response to the cubicle system which isolated people and gave the impression that you are nothing but cattle on an assembly line. It also reinforced status (size of cubicle/office/location). Just watch any 80s or 90s movie. Now the pendulum is swinging the other way. Have the original problems with cubicles been solved?<p>The problem is that people look for ideological purity and look to absolutes because an unambiguous answer seems simple, whereas the reality is quite grey. The reality is that some people work better in cubicles, and some prefer open layouts. To complicate things even further, some situations call for one, others call for the other.<p>I see a similar debate going on between proponents of traditional schools (rows of desks, and teacher in front) and structure-less/self-pacing schools. Which is better? Well, some kids thrive in one, others thrive in the other. Worse, some kids get absolutely destroyed within the wrong king of system.<p>There are no simple answers.
My last company visited a company with open office and took pictures to prove to us how great it is. In the pictures the people are hunched down behind their screens, to avoid the distraction of the person facing them, and 90% have head phones on because of the noise distraction.<p>Basically, they were in mental cubes when they were lacking physical cubes.<p>P.S. The company I worked for went with the open office, productivity plummeted and the office is now closed. When I pointed out the above issues in the pictures I was told: "You don't like it? Maybe you need to work somewhere else". Well, now, they all work somewhere else.
In my open office, I currently code next to some project managers, who spend all day on the phone negotiating.<p>This is a bit bad, but I just wear PPE Ear Defenders all day, on top of in ear headphones. With both of these, I can't hear a thing.<p>The eerie quiet is great for short bursts of concentration, but it also means I can turn my music up to a normal level without worrying about escaping noise annoying my colleagues.<p>It looks very nerdy, and people need to email me or wave if they want something (which cuts down interruptions a lot). I take them off about half the time so as to be social, which I guess is like leaving an office door open.<p>Sort of sad it's necessary though. Hope this helps people with a similar situation.<p>Ear defenders, buy good ones -> <a href="http://goo.gl/NlgnPv" rel="nofollow">http://goo.gl/NlgnPv</a>
I work in an open office with no dividers. Unfortunately for me I don't have selective hearing, so 95% of the time I'm trying to drown out the buzz by wearing over-ear headphones (usually with no music playing). I also spend a <i>lot</i> of time fending off product managers and testers who just refuse to acknowledge the headphone rule and constantly bug me about trivial things that can be put in an email or an IRC message.<p>The other 5% of the time is great - as other people have already mentioned, it's really easy to listen in to conversations and get an idea of what everybody is up to.
Cornell did a study of open-plan offices for software engineering awhile back. It's well worth a read if you're interested in this subject.<p>It's definitely not anti-open. They basically found that closed offices benefit individual engineers the most while open plans benefit the team. Interestingly, while noting the need for concentration, they note a whole bunch of ulterior careerist motives for developers wanting to work in private.<p>They found that the nature of communication was markedly different in each environment. Open was not only more frequent and immediate, it raised the bar for what was considered a frequent amount of team interaction, suggesting greater knowledge-share. The conversations were also shorter and subject to "cues" about whether it was a good time to interrupt someone. And the stronger social bonds encouraged more people to ask for help and bounce crazy ideas around.<p>They do note that it comes at the cost of distractions, and in the end they call for a balance.<p><a href="http://iwsp.human.cornell.edu/file_uploads/office_ex2_1238259706.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://iwsp.human.cornell.edu/file_uploads/office_ex2_123825...</a>
I currently work in an open office and I really hate it. I've previously had jobs with cubicles and one job where everyone got their own full fledged office. Of the three, I actually think cubicles are the best.<p>Everyone having their own private office was detrimental in the opposite way. Everyone was closed off and really inaccessible. Knocking on someone's door felt invasive and wrong, so people would avoid doing it.<p>Cubicles give everyone privacy and space, but not so much that it stops collaboration dead. The impediment to interruptions seems to be at just the right level.<p>I'm also interested in offices that have open collaborative spaces combined with private offices. I've never had that and I think it could be a good compromise too.
How many more times is this "open plan is the best!" "open plan is terrible!" cycle going to continue to receive your clicks? This has been an ongoing topic literally <i>all year</i>! These sites are playing the community like a piano, and the comment threads all read exactly the same: anecdotes.<p>I'm guilty of participating, too, but no more. My assumption will now be that any article with a headline that presents an absolute for a subject that is a matter of preference is garbage. It's all part of growing up, I guess.
I sit in an office with desks with half-height dividers. I enjoy it. A while ago our company expanded into another floor, and my product's team was moved there (dev, QA, product, services, support). Previously the layout was arranged more by department than product.<p>Pretty much everyone on the team loves it, and has felt a major boost in productivity and team cohesion, as virtually anyone you might need is "right there" in the room with you, and you can tune in to some of the chatter for an organic understanding of what everyone's up to. I imagine if everyone were in offices it would feel dead and empty, and totally kill the team spirit.<p>I think the only thing we're missing is more ad-hoc space - more conference rooms for breakout groups and individuals seeking temporary escape from the floor.
It may not be for everyone, but for people like me it really boosts productivity. The last office I worked in was a massive open-office in a warehouse which sounds just miserable, but it was great. If I ever had a question, I could just lean over and ask the person I had a question for. No waiting for emails to bounce back and forth or for people to get back to their IMs. If I needed to make a private phone call, I'd just walk out of the office to do it. Plus, having people around me made it easier to focus on work instead of fucking off on Hacker News or Facebook.<p>Now, as a self-employed individual I rent a seat in a shared open office to maintain that focus. It's far too easy to turn on the TV or play a video game or linger on the phone with a friend when I'm working from home. In a different setting -- with people around: all focused on work -- it's much easier to maintain a focus on work and getting done what's important.
It's all about balance. Open offices work for certain occupations but not for others. When it comes to software development I think you need a combination of open office and cube farm. The best balance I've found is open office with all communication happening in a place it can be persisted (Campfire, HipChat, etc.) for others to see and benefit from. Occasionally the entire team can break into talking in the open office area but this should only be done if the entire team is participating. If the entire team isn't participating then communication should be handled in a chat (preferably) or in a conference room.<p>If you're trying to build software in an open office where people are constantly talking then I'm sorry, good work will not get done. Decisions to change your office layout should be in the interest of boosting communication, team cohesion and productivity. Cubicles are too restrictive, completely open is too distracting.
"That’s what work is: It is a vacillation between collaboration and solitary exploration."<p>It's weird that the author notes that, but then proposes that the solution to focusing on one half of the vacillation is to just focus on the other half instead. Surely the ideal is to support <i>both</i>.<p>If I could I would run an experiment like this:<p>1. Have a large number of small, quiet office-like spaces.
2. Have a big open plan area.
3. Have a fixed schedule during the day where for a certain number of hours, everyone is required to be in the open plan area.<p>You can still hack there if you want, but you're expected to be there, and you understand that during that time you're free to interrupt and be interrupted.<p>The reason for making the open space mandatory is so that people actually go there. If it's optional, then it looks like people only go to the open spaces to not do "real" work. Since no one wants to be seen slacking, the open space just ends up unused.
peopleware was written 27 years ago. why on earth is this still news?<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Projects_and_Teams" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Projects...</a>
On my first day on one job, my managers invited me to lunch. I thanked one for assigning me a desk next to a corner in their open office. The other supervisor could not resist chiming in that they could move people around at will. The other manager averted his eyes. I never expressed gratitude for my working conditions again.<p>Headphones would be too distracting for me--however I am developing tinnitus, which has become a blessing in disguise.
Although I find it difficult to listen to music now, I would rather listen to the ringing in my ears than office chatter.
Something not brought up often: smell.<p>I don't work in an open office, but I wonder what it <i>smells</i> like. When in closed meetings or an elevator I can keenly smell people, sometimes good (women's fragrance) but most of the time distracting (perfume, odor). I'd hate to be surrounded by distracting smells all the time.<p>This can be fixed with proper ventilation (and proper hygiene let's hope), but ventilation can be hard to come by in the non-summer months. (without freezing everyone out)
This is great - in theory. Let me bring up something which the article brings up right away but none of the comments seem to discuss.<p>Look at it from the startup's side of things: The ideal office that we'd all love to work in - that perfect 4-6 person bullpen with private offices surrounding (x number of 4-6 person teams), is _expensive_. Very few companies can afford a build-out like this until much much later in company-life.<p>If we're talking about an Apple or Google, fine - let's have the debate. But for a vast majority of early-stage startups, this simply isn't a viable discussion to have. Office space is very limited in many parts of the big tech hubs, and often it's a matter of just getting an affordable space in the first place, much less being able to build out the perfect working environment. And the fact of the matter is, most spaces are open and filled with $200 IKEA tables because that's all the company can afford.<p>So I'm not sure what the answer is. On the one hand, you can say "well, budget more for office space", but we all know it's not that easy. It's not a small expense -- big buildouts for private offices costs tens of thousands of dollars (or more), precious capital for a small business.
For people working in open plan offices or cubicles: Would small hoods help? (Especially if combined with headphones / earplugs?)<p>Here's an example. (Ignore the desk, which looks a bit fragile. I'm just asking about the hood.)
<a href="http://www.designboom.com/design/gamfratesi-the-rewrite-desk/" rel="nofollow">http://www.designboom.com/design/gamfratesi-the-rewrite-desk...</a>
It's a hard one to solve. In the company I work in I've sat in 3 different places as teams expanded. Given the density of employees you can achieve in an open plan office vs individual offices, it is hard to justify to an employer.<p>However one thing we do is, that it is perfectly within your right to work from home if you feel you have enough to get on with and people do this often.<p>As to headphones, we have golden rule, if they are on, the building better be on fire if you disturb somebody. Not quite a sackable offence but damn close. :)<p>I've also found that sites like www.coffitivity.com offer a 'break' from the music. They can kill any background conversation distraction. ANY. Investigate white noise.<p>As to socialising, jokey things still get passed around. We're encouraged to use IM, and we also go in groups to the coffee machine which is kept in a cafeteria area, away from workers where you can chat freely and loudly.<p>I personally hate open plan offices, but in my 20+ years of working, I've only worked in an office once and that still had 4 people in there because they could squeeze that number into it.
The real lesson is that there is no silver bullet. No matter what {office layout, technology} you choose, there's going to be upsides and downsides. There's no one-size-fits-all solution. We had a backlash against separate offices for a reason, and we're having the same sort of backlash now (and will likely have plenty more in the future.)<p>It's the price paid for what often seems like blind fad-following; rather than analyzing whether X really makes sense given the attributes of the organization (people/culture, type of work, department, etc.), it's adopted, used, and eventually, revolted against. A more thoughtful, situation-specific analysis might produce better results.
I dig working in an open office. I see my work as very collaborative, so I wouldn't want to be in an environment where I was siloed off. That being said, headphones are critical.
This is such a big, important topic that surely not all tech firms have settled on the "open plan" which intuitively and in my experience is awful.<p>I think the breakthrough will come when workplace interiors get much more modular and flexible. I'm envisioning different teams getting to choose (within reason) what types of setups they would like from enclosed offices to bullpens to cubes to open desks.<p>And I can even see planned re-arrangements every 6 months or so to eliminate the moss.
I think the reason this persists is because everyone is doing it. Thus your open-plan, inefficient office is only competing with other equally open-plan, inefficient offices. We are all in a less-productive equilibrium together.<p>This of course gives those willing to make offices for everyone (like, say, Fog Creek) a competitive advantage. But your average corporate manager doesn't care about that. They still get their office and get paid.
Open office schemes has been around awhile. The earliest research that, I know about, into them is by Allen & Gerstberger from 1973 [0]<p>In essence they found that performance was roughly the same as before but the employees preferred the new arrangement and that communication was improved.<p>Here is part of a summary of the article, made when revising for an exam:<p>> "The most important and most obvious conclusion that this paper found is that the non-territorial idea works. It not only reduces facilities costs by eliminating the need for rearranging walls, air ducts, etc. every time an area is re-organized, but it also allows for the allocation of space based upon an expected population density at any point in time. More important than the cost savings, however, is the fact that people find it comfortable to work in."<p>The open plan arrangement is not only to benefit the employees, which it may or may not do, but to reduce costs. Office space isn't exactly cheap in many locations.<p>[0] <a href="http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/1866/SWP-0653-45078245.pdf?sequence=1" rel="nofollow">http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/1866/SWP-0653-...</a>
Open office layouts are bad for some employees and some people's productivity.<p>Having a private office is bad for some employees and some people's productivity.<p>I went from an open office that I loved to having my own office, which I hate.<p>I could write this same article saying the opposite things and it would be no less correct.<p>I hate my office. In the almost 2 years I've been at my current company I feel like less of a team member than I did in 2 months at my last job.
I cannot stand the selfish arrogant thoughtless behavior shown by the few that destroy the productivity of an open office. Your constant sniffing and playing drums with your fingers is not respectful or mindful of others trying to work.<p>Has anyone thought about doing a study on the effects of people wearing headphones all day to drown out these distractions? I mean ear infections and hearing loss must surely be long term side effects.<p>End rant.
My company does the open-office thing really well. The building we're in used to basically be all offices so everyone has an "office", but most of us share a room with someone else. This leads to "just enough" exposure, for me, to other people while still leaving me time to get work done. Rarely are people coming into my office to talk about things that don't pertain to me. When that does happen, I happily put on headphones. There's also a large common area with couches and bean bag chairs you can sit on, if you want a larger place to work, and we have a whole wall of ideapaint if we need to do a big meeting of some kind.<p>This is in sharp contrast to my last job, a fully open office where it was pretty much one gigantic room and everyone was LOUDLY talking over one another. Pretty much had to have the headphones on the whole day just so people wouldn't bother me. I'd even have them on without playing music just to signal to people not to come around...that's how annoying it was. It was truly interruption-driven development at that place.
We have offices for every developer, if they want one. We also have an open space. I used to have an office (still do, it's just empty now). I work in the open space, but it's not typical. There's only two of us that work in this open area, so it's very quiet as we're both developers. I think it's an unusual setup, but being more extraverted, I feel less lonely as I can see when people are going to the lunch room, I can participate in conversations around the pool table, etc. If there were more than 3 people in this area, I'd head back to my office, but for now, it's a great environment. I also have to mention that our open area isn't very large, and the desks are tripods (three workstations to a pod); again, my pod is just me. I'm also surrounded by windows and sunlight, where as my office only had one window.<p>Not complaining, just sharing a different situation.
I like working in the same room as the rest of my team. It means I can ask them questions, they can ask me, we can quickly discuss little things without getting out of our chair.<p>I can imagine private office might be preferable if you really work on your own. But I work in a team, and I prefer working in the same room as them.<p>Though the stories about noise suggest that some people are sharing a room with a hundred people, and that's just ridiculous. 6, 12, or even 20 programmers in a room don't make a lot of noise. The occasional question or discussion really isn't that distracting (though nerf-gun battles certainly are).<p>Just keep it sane. Put people in a room with the people they need to be in a room with. Don't make them hide from their team. Don't put them in a crowd of noisy strangers.<p>There's good and bad ways to do this.
Never mind the inherent dangers of open lines-of-sight: <a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/open-floor-plan-increases-office-shooters-producti,34597/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theonion.com/articles/open-floor-plan-increases-o...</a>
There is no one size fits all solution...for me personally, I require a mix of social and private time to maximize my productivity. Working from home half the time, and working in the other half tends to be best...For those who want to talk/meet, knowing I'm only there at certain makes them more likely to think twice about prioritizing meeting time. Also, the quiet of home and lack of distractions (no giggling coworkers or visitors to the office) leads to the best writing/thinking.<p>You just have to know how you work best, and hope your company can support it. If you're a startup, be flexible about optimizing workers' time...
I so agree with the author.<p>Autodesk used to give glassed off individual OFFICE to EVERY single employee, no matter how junior. This was in 1996 or 1997. I remember being very envious.<p>Do they still do that?<p>One commenter on the article on fastcompany.com left a condescending remark how the writer of the article does not need to collaborate (for simply writing an article) with others while the commenter (the almighty coder) needs to collaborate with other coders, hence open layout is good.<p>Well in office when 2 or 3 coders are 'collaborating' in middle of open office, everyone ELSE (including other coders) in the space not working on the specific task is being interrupted.<p>Open space layout is not good.
It's been one year since I joined my current employer, and we work in a big open floor. There are around 30 people in this big room, and its very distracting and we have no privacy. It is weird as someone who is setting next to me or walking by can just peep and see what I am doing and read my IMs.
Since this is my first big office, it has been terribly distracting and has really crashed my productivity.
But then again, this is a big company, and office space is pricey. I don't expect them to give us all more personal space of our own.
During my career, I went from office to cubes, to office and now open layout. I thought I would hate the open layout, but actually I like it a lot. I'm not easily distracted, so it's convenient being able to ask questions directly without having to walk around or knock on a door.<p>The other thing I enjoy that I didn't expect was the social aspect, where I can chat with everyone in the room before work starts in earnest in the morning, or after 6-ish when we're all ready to leave for home anyway.
One trick I've recently adopted: I use this site:<p><a href="http://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php" rel="nofollow">http://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php</a><p>In particular, the "babble" generator. The babble blends with actual conversations so you can no longer distinguish spoken words and reduces what would otherwise be attention grabbing conversations a to coffee shop level din.
Team sized offices for the win. Team office doesn't have to have a door, but it should have small room with door very close for phone calls and longer (or involving more than two people) face to face chats. Short two person chats are initiated by one person getting of his ass, comming to the other persons computer and talking quietly.
Well, I write this from a quiet corner I escaped to from my open office area so I could have a sustained focus time.<p>I've worked in open office, half-cube, full cube, shared office, and sole office. Of all of those, sole office was best for concentration and shared office was best for collaboration.
Part 1 certainly is very strawperson in not addressing the real issue, cost.<p>Everyone knows open offices are worse but they are also far cheaper, if productivity is down 15% but TCO of the office space saves more then that's ok.<p>Labour is a commodity, it has value but so do many other factors.<p>Part 2 perhaps will talk on this issue.
In open offices, these are the things that are problematic (when it happens from the person who is sitting next to me):<p>- cell phones
- chats
- social networking
- random web surfing<p>(when my neighbor does it)<p>Maybe I'm not just concentrating enough at work. But perhaps there is a way to solve these problems?
I think it all comes down to the employees and the culture. Some people thrive in these open environments and some down. For large companies a mix probably works but if you are a small shop might as well do what works for you.
At my office I always have someone looking over my shoulder, and to be honest, it keeps me on task. At my last job I had my own space and there were days when I just decided, "welp, not gonna do any work today."
I share a small office with 1 other dev. This is the absolute max I can handle while coding. I am in meetings a good chunk of the day. I really don't need to be sitting next to 20 coworkers the rest of the time.
I think the amount of time spent talking about this topic is bad for employees, bosses and productivity. Its been beaten to death and the truth is everyone is different so there is no ONE solution.
I've worked in all kinds of set ups, and I've never worked anywhere where everyone liked it. One problem with designing an office is having a diverse bunch of people like the same space.
I miss having an office.<p>I also miss having 2 30" monitors in my office.<p>Who would have ever thought that working conditions for engineers would be more comfortable in florida than the bay area? Not me, and boy was I wrong.
I think people should have a choice. Can't stand a quiet office and much prefer it if other people have music playing. Other people can't work with noise. Everyone's different.
Many good points, but this doesn't touch of the issues of sickdays, lost productivity and how illness burns though open and traditional offices at very different rates.
Open office layouts always remind me of factories and conveyors. I don't like these short dividers as well, they aren't conductive for productivity at all.
I used to work in an open office and it was super annoying. People would throw stuff around the office and you could hear everything that was going on...
An alternate story in favour of open-office layouts. Here in Aus, the Department of Human Services (DoHS, has had many previous names) is responsible for welfare. The old offices were an arrangement with a counter - staff on one side, clients on the other. Aggressive incidents rose and the counters ended up having old-school bank bulletproof windows installed.<p>Some bright spark changed that - got rid of the counters, and made the offices all open-office plan. You wait off to the side, and when it's your turn for whatever, someone comes and fetches you to their desk in the open-office plan with some space between desks. Instead of shouting your personal issues across a counter, you could discuss it in a normal tone, and if it was private, you could be quieter or more subtle about the topic. Aggressive incidents dropped off a cliff - and there was much less of an 'us-versus-the-gummint' mentality seeded by the demarcation line of a [fortified] counter.<p>So in this particular use-case, an open-office layout was clearly superior for employees, bosses, productivity, and clients.
The best tradeoff I've found is
1. Open-office layout two (specified) days a week; perfect for collaboration and meetings.
2. People work from home three days a week; perfect for those coding marathons.<p>Obviously you can still code in an open-office and you can still collaborate working from home, but it's sub-optimal. With the setup above, you're in the right environment for the right type of work most of the time, and employees love it.<p>Lots more about this here:
<a href="http://www.archonsystems.com/devblog/2013/09/19/open-offices-private-offices-heres-a-third-option/" rel="nofollow">http://www.archonsystems.com/devblog/2013/09/19/open-offices...</a>
This is also not very interesting question. It was recognized ages ago that mechanical, manual labor, such as assembly line or McDonald's , should be organized in an open-space, while thinkers must have their private comfort zones (which is very expensive) and occasionally meet in a small groups to share ideas.<p>The balance is quite subtle, as usual. So-called brain-storming sessions (which in the language of normal people is called a discussion group) could be very effective (only if participants have something to be stormed) while meeting of committees of idiots is always a disaster. The first activity is centered around subjects and goals, while the second is dedicated to the action itself and a sense of self-importance.<p>In other words, for those who think of software development as an assembly line (which is very wrong) mass-production best practices are quite appropriate, while others, who think of it as a process of writing poetry, the best practices appropriate for a writers and thinkers should be considered.<p>Unfortunately, idiots dominate the world.
He is missing the point of Open office plans. Frankly, the blog post comes off as a little entitled when he says "we all deserve office of our own" (paraphrasing). Really ? How about a bed to nap while we are at it (well ok google has the nap pods). The point of open office plan is to <i>try</i> and encourage a culture of equality (in my opinion). I love open office plan because I could be sitting next to a college graduate and an executive director at the same time. Imagine the level of access you have if you have the balls to actually utilize it. With closed doors, even if the person inside is welcoming, it just creates a senseless fear of rejection.<p>All this point about not being able to focus and getting disturbed all the time is hardly an issue. Most co-workers are respectful of your time whether they are in open office or closed office. The ones that are not respectful will bother you regardless of where you sit. Behind closed door ? No problem, I will give this guy an annoying phone call.<p>Now is there a binary answer to this ? Of course not. But claiming that Open office plans are completely useless is stretching it a little too far.