[ChuckMcM]

We're open plan at Blekko and it has its plusses and minuses. Rich (our CEO) had the experience of taking an open plan group to a mix of offices and open plan that went very badly as communication dried up. At Google quad cubes were the norm, doubles were the minimum (even for VPs who in theory would need to be talking at times about material things).

The benefit is it is easier to communicate, and the downside is that it is harder to get away. We give everyone a pair of noise cancelling headphones as a way of shutting out the office noise. Its not as solid as an office but its better than nothing, and culturally if you're typing away with your headphones on its very similar to working with your door closed.

That said I don't think it is the ultimate answer, there is still stuff to be done. Maybe rolling desks around so you can move them into an office when you need to concentrate? Or perhaps some partitions for groups but not cubicals explicitly.

Definitely a work in progress.

[keithpeter]

"We give everyone a pair of noise cancelling headphones as a way of shutting out the office noise."

Can't you just rent a 1950s vintage office building somewhere cheap and give your people the option? C.F. Claude Shannon (who stayed in a city centre building when his employer moved to the suburbs)[1].

I agree with others that the OA is confusing several issues (office layout and corporate goofiness).

[1] http://around.com/where-are-they-now-bell-labs/

[malandrew]

Options are key. I love headphones. I've spent more money on headphones than most[0], but a lot of the time when I'm working on some types of problems, I don't want to listen to anything and I don't want distractions or anything sitting on my head. Not everyone works well with headphones, so it is reasonable that there should be places you can get away to. Lacking a space like that, you oftentimes seek out a third place like a coffeeshop that may not be quiet but at least doesn't have chatter of immediate relevance to you.

I really wonder if we've lost something by not having more spaces in our life like libraries where the cultural norm is to be silent and to enforce silence in the space so it may remain a sanctuary from noise.

[0] ironically, I've also made more as the models I bought appreciated in value significantly, so yay!

[rubyrescue]

can you elaborate on the types of headphones that appreciate in value?

[malandrew]

Discontinued headphones that had great sonic characteristics, coupled with a lot of growth in the high-end headphone market.

The two that I owned were:

-- Joe Grado HP-1000 HP-1 (bought@ $700 , sold@ $1700)

-- AKG K-1000 (bought@ $750, sold@ $1250)

Both were amazing headphones. I especially loved the experience with the K-1000, but I never used them enough to justify them because I amped them with a pair of monoblock power amps which were normally connected to floorstanding speakers. The effort to change the cables coupled with the risk of burning out components if you wired something up loosely and one power amp was driven with no load lead me to rarely switch the floorstanders for the K-1000s.

Now I use a Denon D7000, which surprisingly works great unamped, but I'll be getting an amp in a few months probably.

[jfb]

The kind that are stapled to bearer bonds?

[andrewflnr]

Can you describe in more detail what went wrong with the mix of offices and open-plan? That always seemed to me like the obvious compromise: an office for when you want to get away, and shared open space when you want to work together. Were the problems fixable without going fully open-plan?

For me, headphones would help but wouldn't be enough. I hate having people moving around behind me. I could have my back to a wall, but there's still a potential problem of visual distraction. I haven't had the chance to try that, but next time I'm in an open plan I'll ask for a back-to-the-wall seat.

[ChuckMcM]

I wasn't there so I'm not comfortable relating the specifics, his comments about it indicated that people who had offices sort of disconnected from the rest of the population.

Can you say more about the challenges of people moving behind you? I felt similarly but it had more to do with whether or not people would correctly interpret what I was doing / not doing. So for example I'll read something from a different subject to pull my brain out of an endless loop when I am not making progress on a problem. Is that goofing off? Sure it might look that way if you didn't ask but if you did ask you would get the full story. So can people own up to asking? Or do they run with their assumptions?

As a manager I like to know that folks are making progress against the things they are responsible for. Sometimes they have milestones, sometimes not, so I spend some time trying to understand that progress. If there is little progress and a lot of web surfing, that is a useful conversation to have (trying to be more productive). But if someone is spending their days checking in excellent code and leaves TMZ up on their monitor I'm totally fine with that too. It reminds me of an anecdote.

So my daughters had this tendency to do their homework in front of the television. At first glance it looked like more "TV watching" than "studying" and the conversation we had was about results vs consequences. I didn't care one way or the other if they spent time watching television, as long as the priority was to get their work done. The consequences of not getting that work done occurred whether I approved or didn't approve. But I was also quite clear that it was their choice and so there aren't any excuses for poor work if it is done while watching TV, its just the indicator that you can't really do both and expect to do good work. Conversely if you do both and your work is fine, then that is totally fine.

If I can develop a level of trust with someone that they realize what I care about is that they get done what they say they will (and that getting done both a reasonable amount of work and at good quality levels) then they also understand I have no issue with them apparently "goofing off."

[andrewflnr]

My dislike of people moving behind me stems more from instincts related to physical security than fear of people seeing what's on my screen (though that's there too). Rationally, I know I'm as safe at work as anywhere, but then I try not to take security for granted anywhere else either. I'm not sure if I'm paranoid or everyone else is too optimistic. It's not a huge issue. At one internship my back was to a minor thoroughfare and I managed to be productive; it was just a minor discomfort.

If some people had offices and others didn't, I can totally see how that would cause issues. In my ideal scenario everyone has some hidey-hole, at least. Do you think that would work better, as long as there are other ways they are encouraged to communicate?

[RougeFemme]

But you don't need an open plan to know if people are making progress, right? Or the ability to know what's displaying on their monitor?

[bane]

Having worked in a variety layouts, I'd say the small team room setup is among the best. It's open layout within the team room, but the team gets their own room, sets their own culture etc. The lead for the team is the interface into the room. When the team is heads down on work it'll get quiet, and the room doubles as a conference room saving floor space. The only hard part is sizing the rooms and teams appropriately so you don't end up with stragglers sitting away from the team -- they'll never ever integrate into the team.

Open floor plans with offices are among the most caustic I've ever encountered as everybody jostles and resents those that get offices. Inevitably some criteria for office assignment will get set and then you'll run out of offices and some various persons who've worked long and hard to "earn" an office won't be able to get one and now you have a senior disgruntled bad apple in among your rank and file.

Open floor plans are terrible too, but a step down from open with offices. They often backfire in weird ways as well. In one place I worked the dev area was an open office with breakout conference rooms. The unwritten culture was that it had to be as quiet as a tomb. Which also meant there was no communication happening...so it was pointless as a communication mixer. People stopped checking their email and communication deadlocked.

[zhemao]

Wait, why did people stop checking email? I don't see how that relates to the open plan office. I've worked in open-plan offices and team rooms before, and people were generally pretty responsive on email and IM.

[bane]

Like I said, it can backfire in weird ways. I think it happened because the silence rule made people stop verbal communications, which is the most natural thing in an open office, and it never switched to using email because well...it seems weird to email somebody who's right there. So email clients stayed closed and the communications culture just generally shut down.

[andrewflnr]

Odd. Everywhere I've been with an open office, it's perfectly normal to use electronic chat with someone who's next to you. I guess you would want to make that part of the culture early on, to make it less awkward.

[hippee-lee]

> and culturally if you're typing away with your headphones on its very similar to working with your door closed.

True. But, as with all things that have pros and cons, if your culture doesn't respect that you have headphones on it's not at all like working with your door closed. There is no barrier to a tap on your desk or shoulder with 'a quick question.' This happens quite often where I work and I find myself guilty of doing it as often as it is done to me. Speaking for myself, a cultural barrier is much less inclined to stop my behavior than a real physical barrier be it a cube with walls or even better an office witha door.

I have worked in a variety of situations the past 10+ years some cubes, once I had an office to myself and open floor plans the past several years. I think my optimal preference would be the shared office approach, with 2 or three individuals in the office. In a small group, it's much easier to request and establish a smaller customized set of things related to mutual respect for differences in how we all work.