[deepGem]

I worked at Sun Microsystems for a while and their private office layout was really nice. I can't ballpark the exact size but the office could hold 3 gigantic CRT monitors, 2 desk phones, and had space for 2 visitors.

I feel that a 2 person private office is quite optimal, since we are talking about teams. It's easier to pair program or discuss and even maintain silence when required. Office designers will have to pay attention to acoustics and ensure that there is not much echoing or significant noise transmission across walls or glass panels.

[ericd]

How would you feel about larger offices that fit ~8, and housed your entire immediate team, but no one else? Your manager would go to another room for their meetings with other parts of the organization, and you all would be free to collaborate as needed, or shut up as needed?

[opo]

>How would you feel about larger offices that fit ~8, and housed your entire immediate team, but no one else?

I've experienced that kind of environment and it is slightly better than the sea of tables filling a floor but is still very bad. A few of the things I've noticed:

- Collaboration inside an individual team was never a problem with individual offices and so it isn't noticeably improved

- Unless the programming/debugging work is very simple, it will often require intense concentration. With distractions an engineer is less productive

- People waste a lot of time looking for an area to have a private conversation, talk to their Dr on the phone, etc.

- When we had offices, people would tend to decorate them with pictures of their kids, awards, etc. With an open floor plan, the place looks very sterile and it seems like overall morale and interest in the company is lower than it used to be.

- The big issue with any organization (with more than say 10 people) is communication BETWEEN teams, not inside the team. This design of isolating each individual team has led to a lot of inefficiency as the sort of ad-hoc conversations people would have with others on other teams basically stops.

[ericd]

Thanks for the feedback on the idea. My main complaint with open floor plan is the level of background noise is very high, and of a very distracting type. Within teams, though, we'd often gather around to discuss solutions to tough problems before we coded them up. This was all ad-hoc, so it did help that we were all in the same area. The main thing I could have done without was the cross chatter from other teams.

Small call rooms were available throughout to address the private call issue, so there was never any sort of hunt.

[Corrado]

I think one of my best working environments had two pods of 4 people each in one closed off room. One pod had developers and the other had non developers (project leaders, DBAs, etc.) It combined just the right amount of togetherness and separate space and worked wonderfully!

Another great environment was inside an old bank vault. Me and one other developer. No windows, two doors, lights down low, thumping techno music. Ah, bliss...

[ericd]

Nice, I like 4, that's the number we had at my last startup, and it worked well. I figured that the max reasonable team size was 8, but I think your solution (two rooms of 4) strikes a nice balance of noise and allowing the entire team to be very close to each other when they need to be.

[cr0sh]

One of the best spaces I ever worked in was at my employer prior to my current employer.

When I started work at the company, they had hired a couple of other guys as well, but they didn't have as much experience in software development for an employer (one had done mainly contract work alone, the other was fresh outta college but earned a compsci masters). They didn't have a cubical to put us each in (they were planning to move), so we three (plus one of their more experienced devs as a lead) stuck us in what we eventually termed "The Oven".

It used to be their "conference room" - maybe 10 feet or so on a side, one side glass with a door, the other three walls, no windows. In fact, it was where we each were interviewed. They set up a desk system, put two of us on one side, and two on the other. There wasn't a vent to the a/c system, unfortunately. Four computers blasting hot air, no air circulation save for some desk fans, and four guys in there hacking on code - well, you see where the name came from...

...but we did some amazing work inside that small room, and had a pretty damn good time doing it. We eventually got a portable A/C unit that we stuck in the corner and vented to the ceiling plenum. That helped immensely. Our lead had a weird spotify playlist - that became our music to listen to by day. The lights in the room were kept off, so we only had the glow of our monitors to light our way. In effect, it was a perfect development environment.

About a year passed, and the company moved to better digs. While the new location had certain amenities and such that made it more appealing, at the same time, it had horrible downsides:

Open office floor plan, concrete flooring, lights that were always one, west and south facing windows that guaranteed to pan the sun thru the blinds (which the managers and c-level guys always wanted to have open) and blind you. Massive echoing. Most of us took to using headphones all the time. While we got some good work done, nothing was ever the same, ultimately. The goofy thing is that half the office space was wasted; there was a good chunk that wasn't being used for anything, and we tried to make a case for moving the dev team over there, and spreading things out more so we could have a space to our own (and not have us bothering sales and customer support and vice-versa - who were also in the same space, of course). No dice, no moving on that.

I don't thing I'd want to do an open-office situation ever again, even if the money was better. For me, it just doesn't work.

[s73ver]

So here's one of the reasons I dislike not having offices: I actually really like having the lights on. I want things to be nice and bright. I hate it when things are dark and dungeon like. If we had separate offices, we could each make our space as we wish. I could be lit, and you could be dark. No one would have to fight over the setup.

[ericd]

You might get exactly your way with environmental preferences, but you miss out on the collegial atmosphere of working in the same space with a few other people you really like. I love that aspect of small shared offices, and was one of the things I really enjoyed about working on a small startup.

[s73ver]

I don't think I would miss out that much. For one, that environment, especially with a place called "The Oven" sounds absolutely awful to me. Second, it's not like people would lock themselves in their offices and never see each other.

Third, and I may not like to admit this, but I'd complain quite a lot about the setup in a place nicknamed "The Oven". It might start grating on other people, and ruining the atmosphere.

[ericd]

Different strokes :-)

[ericd]

Haha that sounds awesome. Horribly sweaty, but a lot of fun, kind of like a little scrappy startup inside a bigger company. I'm guessing your guys' team spirit was off the charts. Thanks for sharing that.

I guess maybe the key to making this work is actually having teammates that like each other. A lot of devs seem to really hate working near other people, and are very particular about their setup, so I guess for them, individual offices are much better. But if you like your teammates, I'd much rather work in the same room with them than in a room all by myself.

[watwut]

We are exactly 8 in office and it is pretty awesome. Meetings are in room directly, but they are not often (once in two weeks maybe) and sometimes it is even good to listen as I am learning that way. I can tune it with normal headphones only anyway.

There is a bit of social chat also, but whenever someone complains, it is immediately stopped - local culture is that way. I find it better then own office, because I would end up isolated there and it is not happening here.

Most of the day there is a silence.

[pseudalopex]

Team rooms are better than open plan, but 8 is enough for irrelevant discussions, mechanical keyboards, and crunchy snacks to reach critical mass.

[ericd]

Fair, maybe 4-6 is a better max. You can also shame the mechanical keyboard user mercilessly for bothering everyone else.

[pseudalopex]

Only if the majority are on your side.

[Tempest1981]

The optimal number of engineers sharing an office is closer to 2 than 8.

You might be able to convince me that it's e 2.71828...

[deepGem]

I think that'll fly, if you can really manage the no meetings clause :).

[matchagaucho]

The irony is that we (FB) came in and demolished all those awesome Sun offices to create "open space".

No "Duke" mascots were harmed in the process, though :-)

[wdb]

But do you have an assigned desk? Every morning I am hoping there is a desk free for me and don't need to squeeze in between two colleagues. No fun.

[abritinthebay]

It's even worse in the new building I think.

Lovely park on the roof, great amenities, but cluttered open-plan hell at every desk area.

[hinkley]

Lesson we learned before the original dot-bomb, both on the trip up and the path down:

You want your cube to be just slightly smaller than could uncomfortably fit two people. Otherwise, someday it will be uncomfortably fitting two people.

[dasmoth]

While they're clearly better than open plan, I don't really get two-person offices. They're not that much more space-efficient than single offices, and seem like a none-too-subtle "we don't really trust these coder types on their own" message.

[thedarkginger]

Have never worked in a non-open office plan so I can't really conceptualize this but sounds interesting.

So if I envision a floor, do you just have rows of 2-person offices with hallways in between?

[JonathonW]

The best layouts I've seen have had 1- or 2-person offices around the perimeter of the space, with shared spaces (open spaces for collaboration when you actually need to collaborate and for big stuff, conference rooms, break rooms, etc.) on the interior, because people shouldn't always be in them so they don't need natural light as urgently.

Requires a decent amount of space to do correctly, though.