Ask HN: What are some tech companies that do not use an open floor plan?
It seems every tech company has fallen for the open floor plan. I'd love to find a company that respects the desk as a workspace that facilitates concentration and deep-thought. It seems the answer to this problem has become headphones.
How is this acceptable?
355 comments
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So everyone at the table has to have identical ergonomics?
If I had to sit on bench seating all day I'd probably quit after a week.
Nobody is spending their work day on benches; that’s a fact.
I’d quit too if I had to work from a bench all day!
Apparentlhy not, if you've ever used their new keyboards and touch bars on the premium laptops, or their awful, awful magic mouse.
Yes there is a big glass/sliding door but from what I have seen when closing the door it is quite soundproof (unlike some small conference room). And they provide inside each section different zone with huge whiteboard and sofa/chairs to help facilitate brainstorming/discussion, even each area has its own Apple TV to project on a huge screen through AirPlay.
So overall it is quite good from what I was able to see for the few hours I was there. Folks working there like it.
https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/apple-employees-hate-appl...
http://calnewport.com/blog/2017/09/01/apples-new-open-office...
But it's not for everybody.
It involves:
- being able to motivate yourself;
- being disciplined;
- being autonomous;
- being capable to communicate efficiently asynchronously, with time and space constrains on limiting medium;
- accepting less social time;
- juggling private and pro time/space. Which includes your friends and family. My GF still hasn't get used to the fact that when I'm home working, she should consider I'm not home. It makes things harder.
Honestly, you should never, on hiring, accept remote work right away. First, assess the person on site on all those points for a few months, then make a short test of remote, then decide. And don't be afraid to say no.
I know more devs that are not fit for remote that devs that are, despite most of them stating the contrary. Particularly, a lot of my colleagues can quickly work on a non priority topic if left unchecked, just because they don't have the client as a priority, but the tech. You can loose a lot of time to this.
But I believe the real cause is not some personal defficiency but the shitty corporte/factory type of work where politics is a huge part of day to day job, where nobody really wants others to do meaningful, deep work, nobody wants to commit and give clear answers and offer personal responsibility.
That's why devs need to communicate(read interrupt) so much in person with each others; add in "agile" which in 99% of the cases means nobody really knows or is imaginative enough to know how things should progress, what the requirements are, what resources should be available before the project starts.
But the reality is it's not.
We have a lot of shitty things to do, and bosses are part of the machine to make you do those things. Remote bosses have less grip on you.
And I'm lucky enough to like my job. I feel like I have 10x more interesting things to do in my day to day activity that the average Joe. But a lot - a lot of a lot - of people don't.
You're both dead on with your points. Going remote removed a large part of the nonsense from the job. Also agree that it's best for both employer and employee to always start in the office. I like that personal connection, even if I'm socially awkward.
Your employer will pay for office space, but when you're working remotely, you're providing the office space.
Since our living space is normally underutilized when we're at work, it's a fairly low cost to you, but as your remarks indicate, it's not 0 either.
> being capable to communicate efficiently asynchronously
Have you mentored anyone remotely?
And I'm curious how you think it affects your opportunities for promotion.
[1] https://medium.com/make-better-software/beyond-open-offices-...
Also, I doubt that Basecamp (formerly named 37signals) has open floor plans.
> How is this acceptable?
Because it's totally fine. If you can't work with another human nearby you might want to get over yourself and think about what you're doing with your life.
Easier communication is certainly a benefit but I'm not sure if it outweighs the loss in productivity, especially for people that don't constantly have to talk to others to do their job.
It's a recent Sony top-model, which from reviews seems to be on the top together with Bose regarding NC technology at the moment.
They're great for airplanes, trains, and low-frequency background noise, but for a crowded office where people are having chats and telcos, I'd rather use Shure in-ear monitors.
When they are on, but not playing music, I can still hear loud voices but it’s significantly dampened (like in the room next door).
With music playing, at a relatively low volume, I can’t hear anyone - unless someone is shouting right next to me.
A constant background noise is unpleasant but not so distracting - and it gets filtered out.
Sudden voices are way more distracting and they don't get filtered out. On the contrary, they stand out even more once machine noises are filtered out.
This was only slightly paraphrased from written policy at a former workplace.
You have to show some political savvy; wearing headphones in a open office is exactly like being noticed playing games on your phone or sleeping while the CEO speaks at gathering, or making a big production of refusing to answer phone calls or questions from certain coworkers.
There's a critical distinction of scale; if "they" don't want you working and prefer talking and distraction to the level that they bake it into the physical architecture of the office, that's really bad for the company on a large scale, but on a small scale trying civil disobedience by wearing headphones will just get you fired. Personally on the downside you're better off crashing the company than getting fired and on the upside the people responsible for the large scale operation of the company probably have quiet private offices anyway and aren't going to reward you for fixing the company anyway even if by some miracle you did it.
Open offices are literally in the most straightforward sense a declaration the company has no idea what its doing so talking about it is a good first step. Cutting yourself off from that with headphones means they may as well not pay you.
Civil disobedience in this case has no positive outcome; ditch the headphones.
The most disturbing frequency band (on cognitive tasks) is probably the middle frequency, especially when the noise has "information" (language, tones, signals); but on a physiological level (directly affecting health (CNS function), performance and well-being it is the LOW frequencies that, albeit not cognitively disturbing at first, will have the greatest effect on a long-term perspective.
Headphones/noise cancelling headphones are good a fixing problems in the mid/mid-high range but perform poorly in the low frequency range.
My suggestion is this: your health comes first, no matter what. If you develop a noise-related disorder, you will under-perform and eventually get fired. I would do two things: use an app like SPLnFFT to document the noise level. Use a spectral analyzer to find out where the noise peaks are. ... then get proper in-ear hearing protection from an audiologist (comes in skin-colored, looks like an hearing aid). No-one can blame you for investing in your health to maintain your ability to perform, right?
Literature: http://www.noiseandhealth.org/text.asp?2001/4/13/33/31803 (K.P. Waye. Low frequency noise pollution interferes with performance)
Do you have a good recommendation for a recording dB meter and recording app suitable for graphing noise levels over a daylong period? Such a thing would be useful in proving the noise load of a busy open office and allow it to be compared to OSHA standards.
Besides that part, there's plenty of roles where you can negotiate time to work from elsewhere on the odd occasion. At that point it becomes a time management excercise that's mostly not too difficult to solve.
Oh, and take these types of situations into account when discussing your KPIs, if they affect them. Always have KPIs because they're not just there to help your employer - they're also your leverage in negotiations. You did better than your initial goal because of [X], but you can also be worse than your goal because of [Y]. This means [Y] needs to be adjusted. Or your KPIs.
People who suggest noise cancelling headphones to fix this are childish and immature. The employee has no moral obligation whatsoever to adapt to a working space that is not suited to the work at hand.
Putting expensive software engineers into an open office is wasting a resource that has huge running costs to save on a resource with less running costs. Although, I understand some places the cost of office space actually is quite high, and I realize in these cases the tradeoff has merits.
The problem with this is that management in other locations start to ape this inane concept even though their office space costs are considerably lower.
So, sure, if it costs an arm and a leg to have office space then just maybe an open office has merit financially.
I have nothing against shared rooms that are actually separated with walls as long as they are not used for hotdesking. Those don't have the same disturbance dynamics as an actual open office and I enjoy them the most of all the combination of work spaces I've been in 12 years as a software engineer.
"oh there's bob, does bob want to say hi or is he busy? he looks stressed probably dont want to interrupt him, should i say hi? nah well he's talking to fred now so i'll go back to fixing this unit test i guess...now where was i? oh look there's gary, i probably should say hi, (he's also a manager), does he want to talk about issue X if i interrupt him", nah it will probably piss him off without a meeting and a heads up, plus i'll look like a noob,
ok back to the code again..."
x 200 times per day.
everyday.
On the thinking about what they are doing with their life comment, not necessary and what they seem to be doing with their life is finding a better place to work. Seems pretty productive to me.
At least they are eating their own dogfood. I have had several occasions where I was belittled when I complained about noise and lack of daylight by our managers who have private offices with windows.
Something like: We don't care about the message it sends that "concentration workers" are prevented from working by the very architecture of the office yet we support "distraction workers". I guess "concentration workers" are a lower caste at that company and they find it amusing to enforce that value judgement.
It is exactly like making certain races sit in the back of the bus. No matter how many times you claim it doesn't matter or everyone does it and its really trendy, the people subjected to it none the less understand exactly what message it is sending and are insulted. The point of open offices is literally insulting knowledge workers and not caring that they know their noses are being rubbed in it. Sort of an adult version of revenge of the nerds pranks and bullying.
The first time I got moved from an office to an open plan it felt like exactly what it was: a severe demotion. I was being told that I didn't rate an office or even a cube and the ability to concentrate without being interrupted like a low level clerical worker.
When space got tight, they removed most of the interior partitioning and furniture in the six-packs and crammed more people in. The most I ever saw was ten people stuffed into a six-pack in the building's interior (no windows, ugh), and let's just say that the ventilation was not up to the task of servicing ten bodies and many computers and game consoles. Towards the end of a crunch-time it got pretty ripe.
Facilities never budgets enough power. I think the planners assume "Excel" workers with a desktop computer and a phone, and ("yeah, yeah, okay") grudgingly double that number for engineers, while the actual engineers have a black market going in sufficient power strips to run all the hardware they need. Facilities ran additional power several times while I was working there, and this was just a software group . . .
Some teams make use of the space better than others, of course, but for my group it's been a huge boon to our collaborative culture. The offices are well-insulated, so you don't need headphones to achieve quiet, but if you want to, you can leave your door open and hear what your teammates are discussing at any time.
Over time we're upgrading our older facilities to the same model, but in general there are few open-plan offices or cube farms in the company, and I highly doubt we're going to build more. Many years ago, our founders made it a company priority to give folks a door they can close, to get away from "it all" and focus.
I was thinking it would make sense to have roller doors or some other way to open the entire side of the office (on both sides -- "neighborhood" and "hallway" if the occupant wanted.)
Everyone walking past and around would cause the light streaming in through the gaps to randomly flicker
That would be endlessly distracting for me, personally at least
The door provided effective sound isolation, and years later I realized the window was a psychological link to what was going on in the inner "courtyard", after spending time in a completely closed office at Microsoft. The message at Apple seemed to be "Okay, we know you need to concentrate on work, but remember that you're part of a community" while the office of the particular group I was in at Microsoft seemed to say "Please just sit there and write code and do email -- we will feed you under the door".
Architecture matters in the weirdest ways, and sometimes tiny tweaks make a big difference.
Sounds like heaven
For those of us with non-ridiculous units, that's 5-6 m².
Boss was happy for me to work somewhere quiet and the only space we had was an unused meeting room that takes up up half the second floor of our second building.
It's glorious.
Small spaces _can_ be amazing :)
You know it was considered.
give people both options of isolated, private space, and shared space, and let them move between them as they wish.
It seems like an exceedingly good answer for teams where "water cooler" collaboration is genuinely important, but so is silent work time.
https://medium.com/@jsmathison/i-cant-stop-dreaming-of-eudai...
http://sca-sd.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/2c-viasat-offic... http://sca-sd.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/2d-viasat-offic...
Architecture firm's site: http://sca-sd.com/portfolio/viasat-2/
Looks very spacious, not sure if it's feasible in high cost (/ sq ft) offices?
Now I wish my work wouldn't suck so I could actually use all the focus I get this way :)
The headphones muffle outside noise to some degree and add music to drown out what they can't muffle. The earplugs create an end result of just muffled music, which is basically white noise if you pick the right type of songs.
The only downside is that earplugs can get uncomfortable after a long period of wearing them.
I use some Sennheiser PXC450 over-the-ear NC headphones; they work pretty well for noise cancelling and provide decent noise isolation too.
My brain can't handle feeling sound pressure on my ears from the ANC, but not hearing the noise because the ANC canceled it out. It gives me a really wicked headache.
I have to have something playing all the time I'm wearing the headphones, which is a problem because that can be a distraction in and of itself.
Link to the DT 770 Pro: https://north-america.beyerdynamic.com/catalog/product/view/...
Link to the DT 770 M: https://latin-america.beyerdynamic.com/dt-770-m.html
These are headphones for drummers, sound engineers and studios, so they sound good / great and are very comfortable.
Maybe they work better for you.
I had a pair of QC25s and while they were nice, they did the worst at blocking out the noise I most wanted to block out.
At the same time open floor offices cause a lot of trouble to people in non-exception situations.
But you can't factor that in a spreadsheet, right?
So many companies are full of upper management who think as engineering output the way one would run a chair manufacturing firm. Too many people think everything there is in a chair has been made, and the only scope left now is a little innovation here and there. All they have to do is get people to saw, hammer and glue as quickly as they can.
2) Open offices look way better in photos/concepts -- so they'll get chosen over a boring all-offices layout
3) Much easier to reconfigure -- this is why a lot of startups or those in high-growth periods end up in them, even if they'd prefer offices. Even cubicles require some professional reconfiguring, but anything requiring permitted construction is a big deal.
You can have an appealing environment to work in for 5-15 and within the same space scale that up all the way to an 80 person battery farm office without spending any more money.
Three guys in a 6x6 cubicle is much quieter and more productive than an open office, but it arguably takes up less space than all but the most extreme density open offices. Another analogy is if you insist on packing people in like crowded picnic tables or middle school lunchroom tables, merely spending an inch to put up walls isn't going to impact seating arrangements.
I don't think founders think the geeks wellbeing is ever a criteria to choose a floor plan. Money, space and ability to check on your team mates are the first points.
The idiot that interviewed me was proud of the environment. Fortunately they didn't accept me so I didn't need to make excuses to the recruiter.
At our startup, Delibr, we try to combine these conditions with personal preferences. We are 6 people and 3 of us have our own rooms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p6WWRarjNs
Open-plan offices are absolutely maddening, I get pulled out of my thoughts constantly, and there's no effective way to shut it out. Earplugs aren't enough, and with headphones I would have to play music so loudly it would be annoying my colleagues, just in order to cut out the constant noise. We have so-called "focus rooms", but 1) there are far too few of them, and 2) they're supposed to only be used for short phone meetings and such.
I raise this with my manager every time we have a "pit talk", as they're now called. But there is seemingly nothing he can do.
They are very ineffective against voices! Passive insulating headphones are much better.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Bose-headphones-have-bee...
I think the awful smells I can't escape are worse than the noise at this point.
I've also tried earphones with music, but I can't work like that for long, I just start listening to the music instead. I need peace and quiet.
And of course there's the issue of visual noise as well.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bio-Ears-Silicone-EarPlugs-Protecti...
I split one in two and use them that way, I've gotten to work with them in before without noticing, maybe worth a shot.
I bought a box of 100 pairs of Bilsom 303 plugs a couple of years ago, for motorcycling. The whole box was $40.
Furthermore, administrative controls (headphones) for what is actually a safety and health problem (excess noise) are the solution of last resort from a health and safety perspective. A good health and safety person would advise structural mitigation, not forcing everyone to put on personal protective equipment (headphones.)
When open plan offices can regularly burst up to 95 dB (yes, I took in a meter and measured the last one I was in) and are often 65 dB when they are "quiet", noise is absolutely a health and safety issue. Constant noise, even if not immediately damaging to hearing, can cause increased stress and other physiological issues.
I legitimately don't know how it is.
The standard room is 3 people in 6x6m space, which is actually way too much for just our desks, but we have collaboration tables in the middle of each room where we can put laptops or paperwork when discussing things - plus tons of whiteboard space.
I always wonder why people don't split the difference, chop up the big company office into 5-10 person mini open plan offices.