I interviewed with a company and during the "cultural fit" interview with the VP of Engineering, I asked why they used an open-plan office. I mentioned that there seemed to be a lot of concern in the literature and online about developer productivity in such offices. He said he "wasn't familiar" with the discussion, but he didn't think it was a problem.<p>I was offered a contract-to-hire situation, instead of the employment I was seeking, and was explicitly told that the reason was because I seemed to be concerned about the open office. So be careful about bringing up "science" with people who aren't interested in it.
On the other hand, studies also show that "radical collocation" can increase software development productivity. This study from the University of Michigan claims that productivity was doubled when developers worked together in specially designed "war rooms" that allowed for both spontaneous meetings and moments of solitude:
<a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/220879336_How_does_radical_collocation_help_a_team_succeed/file/72e7e5242450ed5e28.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.researchgate.net/publication/220879336_How_does_r...</a><p>This quote summarizes the results well:<p>"Although the teammates were not looking forward to working in close quarters, over time they realized the benefits of having people at hand, both for coordination, problem solving and learning. They adapted to the distractions of radical collocation, both by removing themselves to nearby hotelling areas when they needed privacy, and by zoning out, made possible because of the distance between people in the larger rooms."<p>It feels productive to enter a flow-like state for several hours debugging a problem, but it's probably more productive if a teammate notices and provides the solution in minutes. Nevertheless, stretches of uninterrupted focus are often essential.
I was really sympathetic to the distractions caused by an open plan office. I saw the statistics that people get sick more often. I knew it would be annoying to have it potentially be really loud (or have everyone need to be quiet to keep it not loud). My company's new office is going to be open plan, though. Why? Because an office costs about $15k to build. We're already spending six figures on construction (ha ha biotech) and there was just no economically reasonable way around an open plan office.<p>I think the real reason many offices are open plan now is simply that it's much, much cheaper. The rest are kind of just-so stories, for or against. Interior designers will come up with these justifications when prompted but really I think it's that the people who actually get to make the decisions look at the general contractor estimates and say, "okay open plan it is."
Maybe we need to re-brand the "open plan" to something else. "Open" is something many tech businesses want to be, especially <i>internally</i>. So an "open" layout helps people be "open" in other desirable ways, right?<p>Well, not really. It's an unfortunate decision-scrambling word-collision.<p>It deserve a name that's still descriptive, but of a loud, crowded place where it's hard to get work done. "Stadium plan"? "Nursery plan"? "Transit hall plan"?
I work in an open office environment and I spend a lot of my day positioning myself so that I'm not in direct line of sight with anyone else's eyes. I hate that I can't ponder to myself without risk of accidentally making eye contact with someone.<p>What makes it worse is that if I sit in an upright (comfortable and ergonomic) position I am staring directly at someone. I hate it.<p>As a result my posture and productivity noticeably decline as the day goes on.
Here's another quote: "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."<p>My experience, anecdotal as it is, is that an open space per team is the most effective. This being science, when has the truth ever been precisely one end of the spectrum or the other? I'm naturally skeptical of pundits, advocating science, who point out that developers with their own office perform better than developer who share an open space with the call center and then claim that this demonstrates that private offices are the best solution.<p>The key quote from the article is "quieter and more private".<p>Maybe in the days when The Architect wrote a design doc and The Engineers went into their offices for six months, then a private office was a great way to get to the "Oh fuck this thing will never work" moment faster.<p>In contrast most teams I work with collaborate at the feature level: engineers work on the same feature, implementing different pieces together, before moving on to the next feature. We have other teams where individual developers take a feature and go off and work on it for a few days. The "individuals" are "faster" claiming work is complete, but the "teams" are faster at producing work that is accepted.<p>I should also add that while the team environment works for most engineers, we have some that absolutely require a private space, and we try to accommodate them. Individuals work differently and when we find someone good we try to make the environment work for them.<p>YMMV.
I suppose open plan has some advantages, like it is more hip (makes for great "we are a family" pictures), and the "team building" might make people less likely to leave their jobs. Just guessing - in any case there might be effects that offset the lower productivity.<p>Otoh I was floored to read today that Amazon apparently has lots of dogs in their offices because it is supposedly good for the atmosphere, lower stress levels and whatnot. I heard Google has lots of office dogs, too. I hope this is not a case of pseudoscientific superstition, because for me office dogs would be an absolute deal breaker. If most offices start adding dogs because of some shaky research results I'll be in trouble :-(
I prefer open spaces.<p>I like to talk to my team about all things tech and all things not (we have the World Cup on all day on one of our large HDTVs while we work). I also like to know who around me is available to help if I have any issues with "Blame" code. I love paired programming and reflecting my ideas off others to get a good sense of what the correct course of action should be.<p>When I feel like I know what to do and just need time and focus to complete something important without interruptions, I telecommute.<p>In other words, the best way to work is to have the ability to have it both ways.
><i>"Of course, scientists once thought that humans had 48 chromosomes. That partially hydrogenated vegetable oil was healthy. That egg yolks were bad for you."</i><p>Scientists still do think egg yolks are bad for you.<p><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021915012005047" rel="nofollow">http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021915012...</a><p><a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=egg+yolk+consumption" rel="nofollow">http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=egg+yolk+consumpti...</a>
Recently i've been interested in buying a noise cancelling headphones. There's the new bose quietcomfort 20i, which are claimed at least by some reviewers to almost cancel talking sound.<p>Assuming they work well, since they are controlled using software, it might open the way to a more "programmable" noise environment. For example you could set them to hear only the team members you want at any given time, thus giving you the best of both worlds.
You get used to it - plus unavoidable in some cases (travelling staff plus office with "hotchair" open office seating for those not travelling at the moment). I find that as long as I'm allowed to use earphones I can block things out sufficiently.
OP is a generally good post. Two minor comments.<p><i>Open plan has the advantages of being familiar, allowing more people to fit into the same space, and being more egalitarian. I.e., since offices are viewed as status symbols, providing them to developers and not to other groups could have a significant negative impact on morale among non-developers.</i><p>Open-plan <i>seems</i> egalitarian, but it's not. It's the opposite. If you're a manager and your boss is on another floor, you don't have to worry about what's on your screen, how often you go to the bathroom, and people coming up behind you (only interns will do that) when you're obviously not receptive. It's subordinates who end up feeling like caged animals.<p>When you work in an open-plan office, power relationships are shoved in your face 8 hours per day. If you're the rare sadistic middle manager who enjoys watching people squirm, you can do "the Boss Walk" all day and enjoy it. Everyone else (even decent managers) is miserable. If I were a manager, I wouldn't want this: I <i>don't want</i> people to feel threatened and anxious (or a need to change what's on their screen) every time I walk by their desk on the way to take a piss.<p><i>That the engineers at your company are more productive, or more in tune with the needs of the business because of the constant natural interaction with their coworkers.</i><p>I worked for an R&D think-tank during a summer internship. Everyone had an office, but at 3:00 there was "tea" and people got together for snacks and board games for an hour. They naturally ended up having this kind of conversation.<p>There are better ways to achieve this. Open-plan offices may populate the social graph, but they flood it with antagonistic edges. What the fuck good is that? None.
2014 is the year of the war on open plan offices.<p>Some people enjoy working in them, you know. Not everyone is interested in saying "how high" every time some grad student's study says "jump".