[bobbark]

Unfortunately, a large (if not the largest) reason for open office plans that rarely comes up is space efficiency, ie packing more people into the same space. Sure, there are might be some folks who also think about creativity, but in my experience, a large portion of open space layouts have been driven by real estate cost considerations.

[OpenDrapery]

The decision maker always spins open office as some kind of collaborative, productivity enhancer. But we all know the real reason is cost.

[mattmanser]

I've always got the feeling more often the reason is trust, they don't trust their employees to work without someone looking at them all the time.

[croon]

Through many experiences I think you're right. However that is an issue that could be solved by being better at measuring productivity.

If I can produce better results while playing games for 4 hours and working for 4 hours in a closed office than I could while "working diligently" for 8 hours in an open office, then it's hard to argue for the value of visually supervising someone.

[majewsky]

It may be hard to argue rationally, but the protestant work ethic is a strong influence on our culture.

[Florin_Andrei]

> open space layouts have been driven by real estate cost considerations

Quantity #1: The price differential between the open space layout, and a good working environment for the rank and file.

Quantity #2: Total funds available for executive compensation.

Let's compare the two amounts and draw some lessons.

[amyjess]

This is one reason I prefer to work in suburban office parks rather than urban mixed-use areas. Real estate is cheaper in the burbs, and I like my cube farms.

[tgb]

Sorry, I'm confused. If you like cube farms and cube farms are more likely in higher cost real estate and urban real estate is more expensive, wouldn't you prefer urban offices?

[amyjess]

I want to avoid open offices where people sit on long benches shoulder to shoulder or just have a bunch of desks jammed together. A guy I know who works at Dell recently got moved from a cube to one of those, he's posted pictures of his workspace, and just looking at those pictures set off my claustrophobia badly.

The cubes at my company are huge. If company policy here didn't forbid photography, I'd show you. I'd guess they're about 6 feet by 6 feet. I have plenty of space to stretch out and more desk than I really need. The cubes are even designed to be able to support a visitor sitting on a bench without crowding out the occupant (it's nice for having design discussions with my coworkers... we can both have a conversation in one cube without being nose-to-nose).

[empthought]

>The cubes at my company are huge. ... I'd guess they're about 6 feet by 6 feet.

Is this seriously huge nowadays? 75 square feet should be minimum. Or do you mean 6 feet by 6 feet of open floor with the remaining area covered by desks/cabinets/etc. ?

[tgb]

I see, so cube farms are not open offices; my mistake.

[learc83]

>people sit on long benches shoulder to shoulder

How do you sit on a bench for 8 hours a day?

[brokenmachine]

I doubt OP meant literal benches but more long tables with individual chairs. That's how I read it anyway.

[amyjess]

Yeah, that's what I meant. Somehow the word "bench" just pops into my head when I think of those long tables. I'm not sure why.

[Someone1234]

Isn't that was cubicles are designed to solve? You take a large inexpensive space, pack in staff densely, than rely on cubicle walls to isolate everyone.

[nilkn]

This is a good point. The psychology of office design is surprisingly nuanced and complex.

Practically speaking, cubicles solve a lot of the problems with open office floorplans. On the other hand, they introduce new issues. A big, silent cube farm can feel incredibly dehumanizing. Somehow a large open space feels more lively and human-friendly even if it's actually a way less efficient design for productivity.

Whenever I've worked in cubicles, I've always felt slightly resentful of the "office lords" who looked over the cube peons. It just felt like such a dehumanizing declaration of power and authority to have some people in fancy offices and the rest shoved into cubicles.

This directly leads to lots of office politics, as now promotions are not just promotions but also opportunities to get out of the cube farm. This realization might change every single aspect of your behavior at work. For instance, at one job, there was a manager track and a technical track for developers. They were supposed to be equivalent. But guess which one led to an office at the end and which one did not? They weren't equivalent at all in practice.

Getting rid of the offices and cubicles and putting everyone in a big open space can eliminate those feelings of resentment and anger and perhaps eliminate a lot of politics as well. But now we're back to where we started with open offices being horrible for productivity.

[amyjess]

> But guess which one led to an office at the end and which one did not? They weren't equivalent at all in practice.

At my company, the technical track includes Architect as a director-level position, and they get their own offices just like actual Directors. I think that's even weirder. We have one architect in my department, and he has this giant office. It's one of the bigger offices in the area, even (about twice as big as the Director of Product Management's office next door). He doesn't manage people, and he spends most of his time designing software and writing code just like the rest of us. Going into his office is a really weird feeling, and it's outright surreal seeing my boss (who also has a cube, because he's a Sr. Manager and not a Director) go into his office to have a design discussion.

[dasmoth]

A fair few "open office" shops still have private offices for executives. Not all, admittedly -- and it may be a little easier to stomach if everyone gets the same deal -- but the "office lords" thing is still common.

[bogomipz]

Indeed and I agree with you but that might also be false economy in the mid to longer term. The savings in real estate can come at the expense of productivity and workers sense of well being as that open space starts to feel like a train car during rush hour.

The other option of dealing with real estate constraints is to embrace a distributed work force in addition to an office in places where office space is a premium.