[fatlasp]

I always thought open offices became popular because it was literally the cheapest set up for facilities. For startups it worked because all you had to buy was desks. Somehow that got spun in to 'open offices are so sexy!'

Open offices are horrible for productivity imo. Moved to a job with an office and it is so. much. better.

[Declanomous]

I worked for a "start-up" (if you can call a 15-year old company that was bought by a VC company a start-up) where the CEO was CONVINCED that open offices were the best thing ever. He made our content people write articles about how great they were and how much better they made our company than other companies in our field. One of our content people was like "this is the worst assignment ever, because it is literally impossible to find research that says open offices make you more productive."

To top that off, he used to talk to people across the office using a megaphone. I was over 100 feet away from him, and people I was on the phone with would ask me what was going on, "Is everything all right over there? Is somebody swearing?"

"Yeah, uh, that's just our CEO."

I don't work there anymore.

My productivity fell off a cliff at my new job when I got promoted and moved to a "nicer" desk. The desk probably has three times as much area as my old desk, but my old desk was in the back corner of an office that was split in half with a partition. I could work for hours without being interrupted. Now I'm in a cubicle right by a door, and I'm interrupted several times per hour. I think open offices just feel more productive -- more than one coworker has mentioned how great it is that they can drop by now without feeling like they are interrupting me.

[jowiar]

The efficiency gain with open offices is that, for high-growth companies -- or ones that are uncertain about their long-term size, it's pretty easy to shuffle furniture around to squeeze in more people. When walls and doors get involved, you're committing to "each person gets X sq. ft", for a company that may grow from x to 2x employees.

That said, they're a disaster for productivity.

[Retric]

Often teams that go from X to 2X end up getting less stuff done. There is an argument that startups should grow as fast as possible to pre-pay that debt, but getting less stuff done while burning 2+x the money is only seen as a good idea in SV.

[st3v3r]

And that possibility is worth more than letting people get work done? I mean, if people don't get enough work done, you're never going to get to the point where you need to shuffle things around.

[TeMPOraL]

They'll get the work done, at the expense of their sanity.

Also, market inefficiency works here too, I think - it can take years before a company tanks. So productivity drop can go unnoticed forever (even when a company fails, there will be enough other factors to blame). Not to mention that marketing can successfully paper over all kinds of crap; mediocre is the standard in our industry.

[serge2k]

> each person gets X sq. ft

Which is how it should be, even with open offices.

[byebyetech]

We need a job site that lists companies that provide your own office. I would only apply there.

[harryjo]

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html #8

joel used to (still does?) host a job board that used Joel Test as a factor. Maybe it died when StackOverflow launched.

[j4_james]

The Joel Test is sort of incorporated into Stack Overflow Jobs (previously Careers) in that a company has the option to include the results of their Joel Test when posting an ad on the site. However, there's no obvious way (at least that I could see) for a candidate to search for jobs that meet specific criteria in the test.

Also, the exact wording for the office part of the test is "Do programmers have quiet working conditions?" This usually means that working conditions might possibly be quiet if nobody else happened to be in the office at the same time as you. While many claim quiet working conditions, I've never seen one that actually provided private offices.

This is anecdotal of course, and just based on looking at photographs they've included on their website or Stack Overflow page, but every job I've viewed recently appears to have an open plan office. In some of the photos you even see people standing around having impromptu meetings in the middle of a group of desks where others are trying to work.

Remember this is just the companies that are actually claiming to provide programmers with quiet working conditions. I can't imagine what the noisy ones are like.

[V-2]

Even so, the Joel Test was incorporated in Stack Careers if I recall

[TylerH]

Yes, Stack Overflow Jobs does have the opportunity for employers to include their Joel Test score (including line items, not just the overall number) at the bottom of their postings.

[Jemmeh]

Time to start YourOwnDamnOffice.com cracks knuckles

[resolaibohp]

I agree with you here. I also believe that a lot of the current design trends in new spaces these days has this same origin. Light bulbs hanging by a cord, reclaimed wood walls and ceilings, keeping raw pipes, wires exposed etc. It does look kind of cool, but the genesis was small businesses and spaces just trying to save money.

[Cthulhu_]

I've worked in an office like that; they had the audacity to make us work in an office with a broken concrete floor (with electrical guide pipes showing), open ceiling with the aircon dripping on my desk, and plywood walls, and call it "industrial design". At least be honest and say it's a temporary design because the whole floor will be repurposed within two years.

As a counterpoint though, another office also went for industrial design, but they did it stylishly - just one visible aircon pipe, and instead of raw concrete, they sprayed it with a kind of foam or fiber that absorbs a lot of sound, in a somewhat dark color. That office has a beer tap, too.

[irrational]

When my company moved to open offices we were straight out told that we were doing this so that more people could be squeezed in.

[prewett]

At least your company was honest with you.

[sangnoir]

> Open offices are horrible for productivity imo.

Individual productivity or team productivity? If you are optimizing for individual productivity - you could be hitting a local maxima...

I do say the above in half-jest: I would love to see any research done in this area. When I was a new joiner, it was convenient to swivel around/walk across the room and talk to someone. Sure, it sucks now that I'm an old hand and noobs keep taking me out of the zone. In addition, it is sometimes beneficial to listen in on ambient conversations (while waiting for compilation or taking a break), sometimes I even chip in when I have a contribution (roughly once a month). I'd like to think this saves my colleagues time. However, I work in a medium sized room (which houses 18 desks), so YMMV.

[whateveracct]

> Individual productivity or team productivity? If you are optimizing for individual productivity - you could be hitting a local maxima...

Forum discussions like this one seem to be all about individual productivity. In my experience, open offices are really great for ad hoc collaboration and conversation. To combat interruptions, individual developers can easily take steps to not be interrupted when they are doing something that can't be interrupted. But tbh I don't spend 8 hours a day in such a way that I should never be interrupted as a rule. If anything, I like that my teammates feel comfortable to walk over to my desk (or, more commonly, IM me "are you free?" and then walk over) and talk as a default. A lot is gained when people are quick to ask others when they are stuck since that's often the quickest solution to getting unblocked.

[mamon]

All that "collaboration and conversation" lets your team combined productivity asymptoticaly approach the productivity of single developer in a quiet, private office :)

[vonmoltke]

> If anything, I like that my teammates feel comfortable to walk over to my desk (or, more commonly, IM me "are you free?" and then walk over) and talk as a default.

This is orthogonal to the office layout, though.

[mc32]

They remind me of new York offices, like law offices with rows of paralegal looking through documents spread on endless tables.

It's something that was a financial necessity in expensive real estate, like Manhattan, FinDi in SF, etc. and someone got the idea to transplant that into suburban offices.

To add, I think it makes sense for a lean startup or a company going through a rough reorg, but once you're mature or overcome financial difficulties, it's not necessarily a good permanent layout.

[bogomipz]

I tend to agree. I think the whole part about "the absence of cubicles will foster creativity and productivity" was just spin used after the fact to justify this choice.

The other reason I think they are used is that they are cheap to reconfigure, you can usually shove more desks in to accommodate more head count and move groups around in order to try to reclaim the ever-shrinking space.

I have worked at startup where my group was moved every few months for some reason. Often times the layout seems to lack any alignment with job requirements.

For instances developers being place right next to marketing folks who spend a lot of time talking on the phone because that's what their job entails.

[throwaway2016a]

That's why we have them... we literally can't afford to give everyone (or anyone for that matter) a private office.

[jnbiche]

> That's why we have them... we literally can't afford to give everyone (or anyone for that matter) a private office.

You know, if a prospective employer was straight up with me about that, I'd give it serious consideration. I can understand that not every company can afford an endless supply of private offices in urban areas (although obviously this is not the case with companies like FB).

What bugs me the most about the open office fetish is how it causes productivity to plummet for most developers, at the same time the leadership is spouting off on how great it is for productivity. I mean, as that goofy reality judge said, don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining.

[jrs235]

It's tempting to ask "leadership" "If it's so great for productivity, why doesn't leadership/management forego their private offices and sit in the middle of the open office floor plan?"

[Domenic_S]

They often do have cube desks. But they spend most of their time traveling or in meeting rooms anyway.

[falcolas]

The amortized cost of building and furnishing a private office, when compared to the salary you are paying that programmer, is miniscule.

A measly additional 60 square feet of floor space, 10-20 grand in construction costs, and the same desk/chairs, amortized over 5 or so years.

Even building separate rooms for groups of programmers would provide for great gains at low costs.

[Declanomous]

Epic Systems has a private office for each of their 9,000+ employees. Their campus is outside Madison, WI, so it's cheaper to do that there then it would be elsewhere. Private offices don't have to be large. I'm sure the money for private offices would appear if companies were sufficiently motivated to provide them.

[npongratz]

I don't know if Epic is a private office nirvana for each of their employees, but to be fair, it does sound like the majority do have a private office. I only live in the area and hear stuff second- and third-hand, but I gather an increasing number of Epic employees are assigned to shared offices. The Boston Globe's glowing commentary on the campus concurs:

"Most employees have a private office; some share one with a colleague."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/07/28/epic-systems...

[Declanomous]

I've heard the same thing. From what I understand, the issue is that Epic is growing faster than buildings can be built. Regardless, while a shared office is worse than a private office, it's way better than almost any other option. I've worked in a shared office with a partition, a cubicle farm, and an open office, and the shared office was the best work environment by a huge margin.

[amyjess]

Sharing an office is great if both of your backs are to the wall. If not, it turns into hell.

[Declanomous]

Without a partition I'd totally agree. We faced each other with a partition in between. The partition basically made it two separate offices.

[pconner]

I was there for a bit in 2014. From what I saw, most offices had two people.

[st3v3r]

I don't buy that for a second. With what gets spent on salaries, the cost of offices is a drop in the bucket.

[greenyoda]

Also, if people in private offices are more productive, you can hire fewer people to do the same work, saving lots of money.

[andrewflnr]

Real estate is also really expensive. I can easily believe that if a company really went for it and tried to give private offices to several hundred engineers, the cost would start rivaling that of salaries.

[amyjess]

That's what cubicles are for.

[tomc1985]

You'd be surprised at how many pragmatic decisions get spun as "sexy" for the world of business halfwits

[LeoBerthold]

This makes sense in context of the article. The article states Facebook pays 40-50% more. They've converted (some of) the savings from open office planning to higher salaries for their hires, making the company more attractive for job seekers.