[crusso]

it focuses on individual productivity

This is one of those "beat the drum" issues on HN where we keep seeing article after article trying to drive the same one-sided point home. When I see this as the top article on HN, I just have to wonder if many of the people who come to HN are looking to disrupt the startup community.

I've worked in environments that run the gamut from individual offices, to cubes, to small working group rooms, to large open spaces. I've managed people in all of those environments as well, and I can tell you that openness leads to more synergy and more overall productivity. Maybe one or two in ten people have trouble working in that environment because they're too distracted. Sometimes you need to find hybrid arrangements to give people with trouble focusing a little more space -- but to just blanket claim that it's all about floorspace cost (as this article did) is akin to political advocacy.

[Goladus]

I've managed people in all of those environments as well, and I can tell you that openness leads to more synergy and more overall productivity.

In my experience, synergy and productivity is far more closely tied to clarity of goals and effective leadership than floor plan. Open floor plan advocacy, when it involves dragging people out of the offices they are quite happy with, is often a sign of leadership with misplaced priorities.

[mtkd]

> Maybe one or two in ten people have trouble working in that environment

In my experience they are the one or two that do all the heavy lifting.

[bigtunacan]

In my experience they were the lazy ones.

See what I just did there?

[bigtunacan]

To the anonymous down voter without a sense of humor...

I was trying to illustrate anecdotal evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

[mh_yam]

"Maybe one or two in ten people have trouble working in that environment because they're too distracted."

How do you know? Did you actually ask everyone "Do you have trouble working in this environment because of the distractions?" People are afraid of being seen as "anti-team" and "anti-open plan", and they won't tell you the truth. And others fake it, even if they really hate working in such an environment (I'm one of them) because it seems like a necessary evil these days. So the reality is, maybe that number is higher than you think.

[crusso]

Did you actually ask everyone

Yeah, I did communicate with people about the efficacy of the working environment. Plus, for the past 12 years or so, everyone I've worked with has had a laptop that they could always (and did at times) take to quiet places when they needed alone time. They self-identified as needing quiet. Most others self-identified as liking the more collaborative working spaces.

I'm one of them

If you're working in an environment that is unproductive for you (that you hate) and you're not able to say something, then you should consider departing from it or addressing your own inability to have frank conversations with the people for whom you work.

[nknighthb]

"Take your laptop to a quiet space" is insane unless that "quiet space" is setup with a decent desk, external monitor, keyboard, and mouse. In fact, it's a great invitation for a lawsuit. I think I'd file it myself the moment I heard that, just to scare the HR and legal department into explicitly banning such an absurd excuse from ever being used again.

[mh_yam]

Having the ability to retreat to a quiet area is critical. Many people don't have the option of going to a 'quiet room'. It's just one big, chaotic workspace.

Personally I have discussed this with coworkers/managers, but the environment is not going to change. Wherever I go next, I'll be on the lookout for quiet&privacy.

[collyw]

I like that idea, but I can see an immediate trade off between the large screen of my desktop and the lack of distractions of taking my laptop somewhere.

[calibraxis]

Maybe I'm misreading, but that sounds like a questionable response to someone critiquing managerial blindspots. Shows blindness to corporate power structure. Also perhaps lack of understanding why people really take jobs. (One of the things bosses accept is that their subordinates lie to them. For instance, this is a driving force behind bad estimates.)

(I don't have a firm opinion on open vs. private offices, except I'd prefer to choose depending on what's best for the day).

[sutterbomb]

In my experience, it's not accurate to say outright lying is a driving force behind bad estimates. Estimates are actually a difficult problem. "Padding" an estimate is not a lie, it's a tool to be more accurate in the aggregate, because it helps account for the 1 in X instances where a task is significantly more time-consuming than you ever could have reliably estimated.

[rimantas]

mmm, synergy. I also suspect that some think of "we talk a lot about our product" as a productivity.