from Hacker News

Open-plan offices reduce face-to-face interactions (2018)

by matrix on 4/17/19, 2:59 PM with 73 comments

  • by sctb on 4/17/19, 4:10 PM

  • by lqet on 4/17/19, 3:27 PM

    I am not surprised. I was working in an open-plan office for a few years, and I also preferred talking to colleagues sitting only a few meters away via mail. It's incredibly stressful to talk to a person face-to-face knowing that everyone on the team listens to the conversation. Not only do you have to constantly weight and evaluate your sentences, you also have the constant feeling that you are disturbing other team members just by talking. On the other hand, you also don't want to drag a person into another room for privacy if you just want some quick update on something. Some team members might use noise-cancelling headphones to keep out the typing noise and occasional conversation, but these headphones are an additional barrier for face-to-face talk. You don't want to snap them out of a musical experience, and getting a person with noise-cancelling headphones to notice you are standing behind him/her might get very awkward.

    If you are convinced that stuffing people into a room with little to no privacy leads to increased social interaction, you should start riding public transit during rush hour.

  • by docker_up on 4/17/19, 3:34 PM

    I'm probably an outlier, but I love open-office. I've worked in all the different environments over the last 25 years, single office, shared office, cubicle, remote and open office. Open office was weird at first, but I find it much more social. I don't get distracted by noise or movement so that could be a big factor, so I can code without any problems.

    The least social for me was the single office. I would stay in there all day long and I would have privacy but I would literally not see anyone. The worst was a cubicle where it had none of the privacy (couldn't eat fish or fart or have private conversations) but you still have the lack of social interaction.

  • by formalsystem on 4/17/19, 3:42 PM

    I found open offices to be an incredibly alienating experience, felt about as personal as a a cubicle since everyone is pretty much using headphones and "deep working" and you can't really make much noise since you're disturbing an entire org if you are.

    My favorite experience was working on a team where the open office was essentially a large office for about 6 people only. That felt great since there was a more communal vibe and I had sufficient personal space. We had a couch, a table with a chessboard and some people brought snacks over.

  • by cs702 on 4/17/19, 3:42 PM

    Not surprising in hindsight. See lqet's and kylia's comments elsewhere on this thread for first-hand accounts.[a]

    In my view, Steve Jobs had the right idea when he helped design Pixar's headquarters: plenty of private and semi-private working areas interconnected by multiple larger, more central, common areas through which everyone would have to travel throughout the day, increasing the odds of spontaneous interaction and collaboration with colleagues from different areas:

    https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-designing-pixar-o...

    https://bcj.com/projects/pixar-animation-studios-emeryville

    Think of it as "privacy when you need it, sprinkled with spontaneous interaction throughout the day, when you take breaks from private work."

    --

    [a] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683405 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19683419

  • by kylia on 4/17/19, 3:28 PM

    Honestly this article comes as no surprise.

    I work for a company that not only has an open plan office, but no assigned seating either. It's honestly the worst, mostly because I like to have my own environment at work. I can't bring in my keyboard or any of my other stuff, and as corny as it is i can't even bring in photos to keep at my desk since there's no assigned seating!

    As much as i like open spaces, i miss at /least/ having my own desk.

  • by glhaynes on 4/17/19, 3:55 PM

    Benefits Of Open Office Not Extended To CEO - https://local.theonion.com/benefits-of-open-office-not-exten...

  • by exelius on 4/17/19, 3:45 PM

    I agree that open-plan offices drive the opposite behavior than they are touted to. They make it impossible to have impromptu discussions that have any sensitive aspect to them. I have a lot of those conversations.

    I work from home or a coffee shop down the street from my office as a result and almost never even see my coworkers faces.

    But the main driver of open-plan offices is usually density / cost. I suspect many of the cost savings of the most recent wave of office design are coming from employees who no longer come into the office because the conditions aren’t conducive to working.

  • by cr0sh on 4/17/19, 5:23 PM

    My favorite work environment I was initially skeptical about.

    I had done in the past cubicles, private office, shared office, etc - but this one was somewhat unique because the company that I was hired on with didn't have any other place to put me and the rest of the "new guys".

    So they stuck us in their small conference room. Which had terrible air flow (aka - none).

    We had this long table-like desk; there were four of us, two on each side. We all had a dual-monitor setup with regular PCs - nothing fancy there.

    It was crazy hot in there - we called it "the oven".

    But we made it ours while we had it. Our team lead played a crazy mix of music from spotify. We could easily collaborate as needed. We could keep the lights off and not be bothered with that.

    Eventually we got a portable AC unit to help with the comfort of the room.

    We got a lot of great work done in that room. About a year later, we moved offices, and the owners decided to go "open floorplan" (we later learned this was all a scheme towards selling the company). Things changed greatly. While our entire team could be together (we had a couple other members of the team who were outside of the oven at the old office) at one "desk" - the open office didn't facilitate talking amongst ourselves as much or collaboration, because sales was nearby, etc.

    Most of the time, we listened to music or whatnot on headphones, and just used Hipchat and email to communicate.

  • by closeparen on 4/17/19, 4:03 PM

    I wish this happened in my office. Instead there are face-to-face conversations at desks all the time, and those looking to do quiet focused work are basically out of luck.

  • by scottlu2 on 4/17/19, 4:02 PM

    Why are open plans (among software engineers) so common in the industry? Is it really that most software engineers like them?

  • by breakpointalpha on 4/17/19, 8:44 PM

    I'm considering an offer that would introduce a 30+ minute commute and an open office plan back into my life.

    I've been working 100% from home for the last 8 months and rather enjoy it.

    Should I just hold out for another remote job? I have about 10 months of burn left in my bank account...

  • by ghostbrainalpha on 4/17/19, 5:50 PM

    The biggest downside of an open office for is that I type really fast and loud on a mechanical keyboard some of my colleges are bothered by. But other people find the noise relaxing, so maybe I need to just have all the loud clackers get together in a single room.

  • by Sutanreyu on 4/17/19, 5:33 PM

    It's because you see so many people that you want to retract a bit and not have to directly deal with them...

  • by SonicSoul on 4/17/19, 4:01 PM

    this "study" is riddled with issues. only 2 companies studied. i can't imagine how different every place is depending on its culture. how comfortable are employees ? are the teams next to people they don't know? was this measurement amortized over project volumes after the move? are these companies designed with some private areas easily accessible on every floor for teams to discuss / have daily stand ups if needed?

    seems one could easily come up with 2 new companies example where the opposite is true given a different design / team layout / project types and so on