by romain_g on 4/1/14, 11:13 AM with 253 comments
by abalone on 4/1/14, 12:06 PM
Cornell did a study of open plan awhile back that you should all read. I posted it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507404
The misunderstanding here is that it's just about serendipitously "overhearing" other conversations.
1. Open plan makes it easier to ask questions. Those are "disruptions", yes, but what the Cornell study found is that in open plan it's actually easier to "read" a person and see if it's an ok time to ask a question, and to quickly reply or say ask me later, and so forth, to efficiently manage those disruptions. Compare that to offices where you are much less likely to ask questions, knock on a door, etc., and where when it does happen it may turn into a much longer disruption.
2. They found it also gives us more courage to ask potentially "silly" questions. Which can be the genesis of good ideas and help us get unstuck, contributing to team creativity and productivity.
3. They noted that developer reactions to office plans are often biased towards maximizing personal productivity in order to maximize (short-term) personal benefit, whereas the company benefits from a balance of personal and team productivity. That's a fancy way of saying we'd rather spend our time coding than helping others, so we may not instinctively appreciate the benefits of open plan as much. Which I think is the case here.
by patio11 on 4/1/14, 11:48 AM
For what it's worth: assuming white-collar employees, the multiplier is typically 50% to 100% depending on your location and how generous you are with perks, rather than 20%. If you only have $120k available in the budget to hire someone, don't offer a salary higher than $80k, or you're going to have a very unfun meeting with your accountant saying "OK, would you prefer I took the money from somewhere else in the business, or do you want to go to prison for not paying our portion of the payroll taxes?"
There exist many folks who have more experience with San Francisco hiring than I have, but the word on the street for e.g. funded startups trying to pay market salaries is that you should be budgeting $15k~$20k a month to increase your team size by one.
by duncans on 4/1/14, 1:10 PM
> Not every programmer in the world wants to work in a private office. In fact quite a few would tell you unequivocally that they prefer the camaradarie and easy information sharing of an open space.
> Don't fall for it. They also want M&Ms for breakfast and a pony. Open space is fun but not productive.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/07/30.html
See also: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDeveloper...
by robinhouston on 4/1/14, 12:39 PM
– Richard Hamming, “You and Your Research” http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
by georgebarnett on 4/1/14, 12:06 PM
Email clients, chat clients, Social media, rapid fire short form articles, distraction wherever you look; these all contribute to a reduced attention span.
I do think it's possible to change the habit, but that requires mindfulness to engage in less context switching activities. That's really, really hard.
by bjourne on 4/1/14, 1:13 PM
But when you have a system crash and need to dive through 100mb of log files to try and figure out what went wrong. Good luck doing that in a standard open office! You just have to schedule a few hours after everyone else has gone home so you can have some peace and quiet to do your log diving.
I honestly think the traits that make you able to hack the Linux kernel, optimize the linear algebra required for the internals of a 3d engine, write Haskell etc are incompatible with preferring open floor plans.
Edit: Btw, if you are able to do these "high level advanced" programming tasks while in a noisy open floor plan I would be very amazed. For me it's like trying to play chess against a highly rated opponent and that is impossible to do competently if you have to endure constant interruptions.
by mmcconnell1618 on 4/1/14, 11:45 AM
by jodrellblank on 4/1/14, 1:09 PM
Does an environment with a high chance of interruption lead to languages where you have to write a lot to do a small task, because you can write simple code between interruptions, and over time get enough code to do the task - and if you get interrupted well you only lose one minute's thinking.
Contrast with a powerful language where you need half an hour of thinking to build an intricate machine in your head, then you write it down in a little code, and need to hold its workings in mind while you test it. With no long spans of concentration you won't go slower or write half an intricate mechanism, you will write nothing.
Or to put it another way, is the problem of working in an open plan office: you aren't choosing the right tools and work pattern for your environment?
Or to put it another way: are enterprise languages 'blub' languages because they come from big offices and academic languages 'powerful and terse' because they come from people with time and quiet for deep thought.
Or another way: could we redesign our languages, tools and their UI to make us as effective, and feel as good, in open plan offices, like f.lux changes a screen for night use instead of complaining that it's not daytime.
by travisl12 on 4/1/14, 3:39 PM
Even the use of headphones, can in a sense, be a distraction. Music being played too loud creates stress in the body, and if you are trying to listen to music to drown out a busy office then chances are you are not increasing concentration by much (if any).
As an Acoustician I visited many tech open plan offices who wanted to hear suggestions on quieting down conversations, and phones ringing. And I always laughed to myself at this because the best suggestion is to build walls! Cubicles help, but generally only the kind with the 6-8ft walls.
As a developer these days, I honestly feel that working from home can be much more productive than the office because it is peace and quiet.
Quiet is good for me as a developer.
by fiatpandas on 4/1/14, 12:43 PM
1. For core teams, ditch the open floor plan and instead put teams into small (4-5 person max, with smaller options) private rooms that line the perimeter
2. Project rooms are not permanent. A team should expect to move around perhaps once every 3-4 months
3. Team leaders / managers would of course work in the same room as their team
4. In the center of the perimeter of team rooms could be a hacker workspace, shared areas, supplies, snacks, etc. With breakout meeting rooms around the space as well
5. executive leadership would work sitting with other specific staff (like finance, HR, office managers, etc) in an open floor plan-like area; most importantly, execs wouldn't have private offices because ideally they should be moving around meeting with the teams, jumping into conference rooms, jetting out of the office, etc.
6. this open area should be relatively quiet
7. people working in this open area should have ample access to private spaces for breakout meetings, private phone calls, reflection, relaxation, etc
Obviously these rules won't apply perfectly to every company and work type, but I'm just brainstorming
by nwatson on 4/1/14, 11:52 AM
I like to get out for several hours almost every day, though. I head to either Krankies Coffee or Camino Bakery in Winston Salem, and both venues have: a lot of people talking about family, studies, work, business, gossip; the espresso machine; music; and at Krankies the coffee-roasting machine. * Undifferentiated noise actually helps a lot! * I find the background din soothing and conducive to designing and coding. The one thing that's annoying is the occasional person who insists on carrying on their half of a conference call very loudly, but I don't see that much.
I've had pretty good experiences with open floor plans in companies too. They've never been the row-upon-row of adjacent tables depicted in the post, but close enough see/hear everything that's going on. In the open environment, a lot of the noise will probably be discussions about coding/design matters on other projects, or general office hijinx. There are downsides to that, but there's a lot of benefit too. You don't need to wait till the water cooler to see some matter needs discussion.
I can see how both the open floor plan and coffee shop environment will be distracting for some. I always hated libraries as a student, and always did my best work in non-quiet environments.
(I miss having coworkers just five steps over -- they're now 2700 and 8000 miles away.)
by chrisbennet on 4/1/14, 3:55 PM
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html
See #8 "Do programmers have quiet working conditions?"
"Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away 15 minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff and Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal-fattening farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he asks Jeff. Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to save Mutt 15 seconds)."
by Zigurd on 4/1/14, 1:13 PM
One of the most effective office setups I have seen had two kinds of work areas:
1) Reconfigurable "team rooms" where most of the team can work together. These have a door that is kept closed to reduce conversation noise leaking into other areas, and a glass wall so you can see who is in the team room. The other two interior walls can be moved to adjust the size of the team room.
2) On a different floor, there is an open quiet area equipped with large monitors for individual coding, writing, and CAD work.
There are other workspaces, such as lab rooms for fabricating things. Their larger locations have large shops with all kinds of fabrication equipment.
Everything is hot-desked. Many people spend part of the week working at home. The company with this workspace is a major design firm, and I'd wager they put a lot of thought and objective measurement into the design of their workspaces.
by hershel on 4/1/14, 1:18 PM
" Analysis of these data indicates that IM use has no influence on overall levels of work communication. However, people who utilize IM at work report being interrupted less frequently than non-users, and they engage in more frequent computer-mediated communication than non-users, including both work-related and personal communication. These results are consistent with claims that employees use IM in ways that help them to manage interruption, such as quickly obtaining task-relevant information and negotiating conversational availability."
[1]http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007....
by molbioguy on 4/1/14, 2:21 PM
I hear the same tired arguments about fostering communication and the serendipitous meetings that spark great ideas. However, every single day and for at least 50% of the day, everyone in my open office either grabs headphones or runs away to another spot in the building when they need to get work done individually.
When I bring up objections, I'm told that I can work remotely or wear headphones. I don't see how forcing people to seek all sorts of ways to find privacy is any great recommendation for a purely open plan. If you spend the majority of your day talking and listening to others, I don't see how you can actually get programming done.
Edit: At this moment I can overhear conversations about opening day in baseball, April Fools day, SAP, reporting about inventories in Epicor, the weather, CNN, 3 people scheduling meetings and having phone conversations and one person trying to talk to our network provider. Not to forget, there are 2 people in the hallway complaining about personal issues and getting coffee. And an elevator that keeps beeping every few seconds. I can't wait to see what great idea all this is going to generate in my head.
by ben336 on 4/1/14, 1:44 PM
The primary role of a programmer is to solve the technical problems an organization is facing. This often involves writing code. It also involves understanding problems and planning solutions that scale across an organization.
by mattzito on 4/1/14, 12:13 PM
The trick is to provide enough separation and space that people don't feel claustrophobic, and manage a culture that encourages people to take group conversations into a room if they're going to be loud/passionate.
by DanielBMarkham on 4/1/14, 1:06 PM
Instead of point-by-point, I'm just going to offer one critique.
"...Programming is a very brain-intensive task..."
Sure thing, buddy. But guess what? You're not a machine for cranking out little bits and bytes. Instead, you're part of a team that's trying to provide value to a user. That means that most of your job, whether you like this or not, is human in nature. The computer part should just be a "gimme".
The physical space around a team should represent the mental space of the team. One hundred guys in a big cafeteria? Not so much. 40 guys in clusters of 3-6 with rolling whiteboards and allowances for breakout discussions? Much different.
There are things I would love in software development. I would love to sit on the beach fanning myself coding while money is deposited in my account. (Actually, I've done that.) I would love to work alone in my office in the wee hours of the morning in an awesome state of flow (did that many times too.)
But at some point you have to separate "things I want to do" from "things that optimize the value I provide". They aren't the same thing.
I'm all for private offices if it works for you and optimizes value. Same goes for distributed teams. Right now nobody has all the answers. On average, though, it looks like these things are counter-productive for projects that require creative new ways of thinking of things. I wish it weren't so, but it is.
by zecg on 4/1/14, 1:53 PM
by taybin on 4/1/14, 2:25 PM
by InclinedPlane on 4/1/14, 2:34 PM
by srimech on 4/1/14, 12:09 PM
I'm now in an open-floor office in which people talk a lot and interrupt me when it's necessary, and I'm a lot happier and more productive.
"Now maybe you're different than me" is probably the most important phrase in there.
by jemfinch on 4/1/14, 2:31 PM
As someone who works in an open floor plan (and basically hates it) this proposal only works when your workforce is younger. No matter how unproductive the office gets for me, it's going to be more productive than staying home with three munchkins running around.
by dkhenry on 4/1/14, 12:39 PM
by mathattack on 4/1/14, 1:18 PM
The goal: Sacrifice a little bit of individual productivity to increase communication and team productivity.
The reality: A couple people are very loud, so the rest put on headsets. 80-90% of the office now only communicates online via instant messages and email. Internal communication suffers a little. Customer communication suffers a lot.
by furyg3 on 4/1/14, 2:52 PM
1. Working efficiently in a library mode: A silent room, for people who want to work in quiet with no distractions. No talking, no phones, if you need to talk to someone in the library you need to IM or email them. Good monitors and mice / keyboards.
2. Working in a ‘normal’ mode: Standard open floor plan, good monitors/mice/keyboards, you can take a call if you want to or talk to someone next to you.
3. Teamwork mode: Tables in the open space with nothing on them, for teams working together or semi-independently. Usually a whiteboard nearby.
4. Small and/or impromptu meetings not requiring privacy: We have quite some semi-closed booths which are un-reservable. Very nice if you want to work on something intensely with 1-4 people.
5. Private phone calls or small meetings requiring privacy: fully closed booths which can seat 1-4 people.
6. Presentations, large meetings, meetings with externals, or meetings requiring a formal setting, or lockdown mode: bookable conference rooms.
7. Total autonomy: Work from home or somewhere else.
The results is that (surprise!) most people choose to work in the open-plan mode, not the silent mode. If a particular employee is not working most efficiently in the mode he chooses or not, I can't really tell you...
by arca_vorago on 4/1/14, 3:11 PM
One issue is that some people simply don't do well with noise and other people around, for them they need solitary workstations to be fully productive, but that is easy to provide and should be provided. People should work in a comfortable way. Overall, I have been getting used to it and love just being able to ask a few questions of a programmer while I am doing other work.
I do not think I could deal with a single large open space though. Luckily, I also don't field stupid questions as much as some people might in an open plan, as I am one of the only people in the company without a PHD. (it still happens occasionally though)
by dredmorbius on 4/2/14, 6:21 AM
[There's] a very long and well-established literature in psychology that getting groups of people together is no way to come up with ideas. Creativity is not a team sport. What you're looking for is somebody's individual, intellectual trunk to make new connections and come up with something new.
What's necessary for devising new thoughts is liberating the brain from workaday tasks and letting them operate offline. When people have ideas is when they're not thinking about them -- because the 90% of the brain that you're not aware of is what's key for creativity. This is way daydreaming, afternoon naps, and sleep are key for good ideas.
In the modern world, we often find ourselves doing too much -- too much ordinary stuff. There's a great history of people and institutions giving themselves downtime -- time to do nothing and explore new things, which is when you get great ideas. The workaholic doesn't come up with great ideas.
Open-plan offices (with their constant interruptions -- not just from colleagues but visitors, delivery men, salespersons) and interrupt-driven tools (phones, IM, even email) disrupt that creativity.
Creating a time and a place for collaboration is helpful. Making that all the time is not. I despise open-plan (though there's some use for a small-group, shared-task, common space).
http://fixyt.com/watch?v=QfMvqkrQkYQ
More: http://redd.it/21qgiv
by balls187 on 4/1/14, 2:46 PM
Writing software is a very mental intensive task, and interruptions and distractions cause major fracks in productivity. I take this is FACT.
Offices allow you to deal with some of these issues by closing the door. That isn't a guarantee that you won't be interrupted, but generally speaking a closed door is a universal sign to say "not right now, I'm busy."
Also office walls tend to be sound proof, so they can be much quieter, unless you share a wall with a team of sales staff :(
Offices solve two problems: a way to universally say "I'm busy" and keep things quiet.
I believe you can replicate those things in an open floor plan, but it's much harder to do without buyin from the team and good leadership/management to ensure that people are allowed to work without distractions and interruptions.
by BenSS on 4/1/14, 2:14 PM
by brudgers on 4/1/14, 2:05 PM
Good open floor plan designs are driven by acoustics and sitelines - management of audible and visual distractions. Yeah, staining the concrete slab and exposing the brick wall and using the metal pan and joists of the floor above as the ceiling and hauling in oak library tables as desks, just echos "lookie here, we're rebellious and unconventional." Then again everything echos. That's the pysics of sound meeting hard surfaces and since the echo reaches everyone, everyone will be tempted to look.
Architecture is sometimes said to be the world's second oldest profession - or the oldest when architects talk cynically amongst themselves about the nature of actual practice and dealing with the clients who pay them for their special talent...but anyway, good open floor plan design is a solved problem, all except for the fact that it hasn't photographed well since Gordon Bunshaft and SOM designed Lever House and CIGNA in the 50's and 60's.
Which is to say is that the problem with good open office design is that it doesn't look like photographs of office spaces in recent issues of magazines (aka "archiporn"). Instead it looks a lot like class "A" office space in a suburban office park - carpet, gypsum wall board, acoustic ceiling tile, and fabric covered modular office walls (aka "cubicles"). All these reduce sound transmission and reflection and impact noise - and if cubicle height is thoughtfully selected provide reasonable balance between visual communication and visual isolation and hopefully shared natural light. And if the holy grail of being able to select HVAC systems exists, then good white noise acoustic masking can be provided and that is even better than chasing sound attenuation.
Sharing the natural light means putting the private offices on the core and the serf farm by the windows. This of course means overcoming the sina qua non of hipsterism - status consciousness. But then again at the point where a leadership team has bought functional design over archiporn, this is just the last hurdle.
The problem of course is that corporate grade solutions require corporate grade budgets. Good systems furniture is more expensive than cheap doors, drywall and paint - as is good open plan office space versus lower quality space. On the flip side, acoustic ceiling tile and carpet are less than painted ductwork and stained concrete.
Anyway, the important change to architectural design over the past century is not an evolution of visual style. It's the increasingly sophisticated material options and the need to integrate an ever growing number of building service systems. The problem as always remains convincing lay people that living in a house isn't a good basis of experience for designing a workplace for others. The optimization problems are radically different.
Truly useful innovations in architectural design occur far less frequently than useful innovations in algorithms.
by alistairSH on 4/1/14, 1:43 PM
I ask because in my current role, I'm the product architect for a large web application. In addition to the usual design and development tasks, part of this role is bringing new development teams up to speed on technologies they have not used before. I find it much easier to be in a team room with those teams, they get immediate feedback, can ask questions, etc. If I was in an office or cube, I'd have a constant stream of emails from individuals to answer.
by csmatt on 4/1/14, 1:09 PM
I've had my own office for the last 3 years and enjoy the privacy, but occasionally miss the instant answers and social aspects of that open plan.
by FollowSteph3 on 4/1/14, 12:59 PM
by cab_codespring on 4/1/14, 4:14 PM
by amaks on 4/1/14, 5:22 PM
I think this is a good indication that a team is getting too large, needs to be split into smaller teams. There is a notion of "two pizza teams" described by Werner Vogels (http://derivadow.com/2007/02/20/two-pizza-teams/) to keep things efficient and organized. For teams this small, open floor is very productive and efficient for collaboration, including software development.
by jusben1369 on 4/1/14, 12:38 PM
by moron4hire on 4/1/14, 1:21 PM
by Shivetya on 4/1/14, 1:34 PM
Too many times I see these floor plan discussions and just wonder if its an excuse for poor management or worse, developers.
by cjf4 on 4/1/14, 12:17 PM
by brlewis on 4/1/14, 5:58 PM
The Boston Fitbit office has 12 engineers now. I'll pay attention to how things progress as we grow past the 15 mark. Open plan seating seems to work well for us so far.
by jowiar on 4/1/14, 2:19 PM
by ilovecookies on 4/1/14, 2:37 PM
http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/shop_online/headphones/n...
by joeldidit on 4/1/14, 1:55 PM
People forget that this "keep it lively" (versus not negative, though they try to claim that's all it is), "smile and say hi when we cross paths," "approach me and kiss my ass to make me feel good," "always be open and approachable and available" (read: always be there when I need something, then when I ask do it blindly and with everything in you so I get what I want, then nod your head acceptingly when I make up some BS excuse when asked to do something as though it was ever about anything other than me ensuring I get everything I want while ensuring you get nothing), and anything else that will avoid insulting me or hurting my feelings nonsense is something out of a Dilbert cartoon and should've been ancient history by now, not promoted as some sort of superior/modern/good approach.
I hate open plan offices. The collaboration argument is BS, because I can collaborate just as well when sitting in a cubicle as I would when in an open plan environment. And, as a matter of fact, the cubicle (or some other) setup would probably be better because we could huddle around someone's desk as necessary to discuss anything that needs to be discussed, then go our separate ways to work on what needs to get done. All without the constant tension, anxiety, and noise of an open office environment that completely stalls out any ability to think clearly. The only things that really affect collaboration are proximity, and how well the group can collaborate (can they work well together, do they like each other, have they minimized the effect of any idiot managers and divisive employees, etc).
I hate cubicles as well, but I love silence, privacy, and the ability to uninterruptedly do my work. And the cubicle set up allows that more than open plan environments. Also, most open plan environments are setup such that everyone can see what you are doing (as in they can stand over your shoulder and blatantly watch for no reason, or can end up doing so unintentionally), and in a way that would leave everyone in a state of paranoia thinking you're watching them. Anytime I see something encouraged that heightens fear/anxiety levels like this I start to smell BS. I start thinking that maybe this is exactly what they are up to.
Open plan environments are good for those that like annoying or squeezing others, who constantly need attention, who like sitting close to others, and anyone else that needs to discuss every single thing with someone else before they do it (but it's really that they have an aversion to thinking, don't know what they are doing, and would rather get someone else to do the work (while BSing that they are just being more open and communicative) then take credit anyway). These environments are also great for management, an entity in most companies that's always looking for a way to underhandedly (something they can laugh about like they're so clever for doing it) squeeze more out of people while making it look like they are giving them what they want, and are so nice for doing it. That is, it amplifies so many negative aspects that any good that it brings is overshadowed, and it seems like nothing more than gimmicky, self-serving, overly hyped, faddish nonsense.
by conformal on 4/1/14, 1:37 PM
i have previously leased and built out a high-end office in a building in downtown chicago and the amount of time burned with the architect, waiting for permits, and construction is serious. after doing that once, i will never do an office build-out again unless i actually own the building. when you add in the fact that the building is "union only", the delays in construction become ridiculous.
after going through this part myself, i'm all for open-plan offices, despite their being less than ideal for developers. the majority of our developers work on remote anyhow.
by peterwwillis on 4/1/14, 3:58 PM
A. annoy your employees but increase communication
B. reduce employee stress but decrease communication
C. increase communication, let employees decide if they will work in open or closed spaces
1. Increasing communication: This is a huge, huge topic, and would be most effective with training sessions that work on the varying problems with communication. One size does not fit all, but general techniques exist to allow people to collaborate easier in a variety of ways. You figure out what works for your team and you maximize communication, which increases collaboration.
2. Movable partitions. Either people can work on an open desk layout, or surround their desk with a movable partition that partially or completely isolates them. These are cheap, flexible and allows the employee to dictate their preferred level of comfort in physical interaction.
by acinader1 on 4/1/14, 8:52 PM
by Infinitesimus on 4/1/14, 2:29 PM
Lost me there. The primary task of a (good) programmer is to solve problems with code, that may involve 70% planning and design and 30% for some.
by athenot on 4/1/14, 12:24 PM
by ianstallings on 4/1/14, 3:35 PM
by ironhide on 4/1/14, 3:41 PM
I worked a place that had full office cubes, 8 foot walls, and enclosed but the entrance. It was glorious. I felt good and I was extremely productive. It reduced my stress greatly.
by sireat on 4/1/14, 2:22 PM
by escape_goat on 4/1/14, 1:15 PM
by hokkos on 4/1/14, 3:54 PM
by pbiggar on 4/1/14, 5:15 PM
by hawkharris on 4/1/14, 11:44 AM
by michaelochurch on 4/1/14, 1:16 PM
Most organizations are so inept at choosing leaders (they can't tell who's good at the job and who's not) that their only recourse is to set up pointless contests that grind people down, and then determine the last person remaining to be the leader. (Those who left weren't dedicated; those who broke were "weak".)
Open-plan offices (and, especially, open-back visibility) are just another shitty mechanism used to wear people down and make the attrition/sorting process happen faster.
by teemo_cute on 4/1/14, 5:28 PM
Developers/Tech People: most likely introverts because they are the analytical type.
Management says, "What's good for us might be good for them. Right?" Developer says (silently), "No."
by fudisgud on 4/1/14, 2:48 PM
This is most definitely is not the case for most development positions.
Oh yes, there's plenty of code to write if your a developer. But there's communicating with management/qa/business dev/other developers/support as to what to work on, progress on tasks, clarification of requirements, bugs discovered, issues raised, tests to run, ways to program, etc. Open spaces will encourage these conversations to happen more organically instead of scheduled strictly around meetings.
At the end of the day, companies wants developers to crank out code as much as possible, but what they need is development to communicate effectively - among themselves and across teams. Hence, open floor plans, even if it reduces the quality of code.
by zemo on 4/1/14, 11:54 AM
by JetSetWilly on 4/1/14, 1:08 PM
We should be suspicious of such claims. Think of von Neumann:
At Princeton he received complaints for regularly playing extremely loud German marching music on his gramophone, which distracted those in neighbouring offices, including Einstein, from their work. Von Neumann did some of his best work blazingly fast in noisy, chaotic environments, and once admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. He never used it, preferring the couple's living room with its TV playing loudly.
It seems to me to be a personal preference only. Some people like noisy and some people don't, there's not necessarily any one correct answer. But folk like Joel and others (usually American where private offices are much more common) constantly push absolute silence and the myth of never being interrupted or distracted, seemingly without much to back it up.
I really prefer an active office close to others. If someone taps me on the shoulder I have no problem continuing my train of thought.