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Comment by city41 | Hacker News Reader

I've worked at companies that had completely open spaces, individual offices for everyone, and cubicles. By far my favorite is cubicles.

I hate open offices and will actively avoid them. They are noisy, distracting, stressful, and not conducive to productivity. They are conducive to collaboration though.

Offices are stifling. They put too many barriers between talking to people, and I found everyone tended to rely on chat and email a lot more. Offices are fantastic when you really want to put your head down and focus.

Cubicles are a nice balance between the two extremes. Collaboration is possible and still happens, but privacy and space is still available too.

Susan Cain in her book "Quiet" advocates for a space that is basically an open office in the center, with private nooks around the edge, so people can consciously decide when they want to collaborate versus concentrate. I've never been in an environment like that, but it sounds nice.

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I like my office, and I don't feel that it adds any additional barriers over a cubicle, unless I want it to.

I like initiating communication with chat or email, with the option of an impromptu face-to-face meeting if necessary, or the option of being able to defer that meeting when I need to focus.

I keep my door open when I don't mind a visitor (like a cubicle), but I can close my door to indicate to people that I am in focus-mode and should not be disturbed. I didn't have that choice with a cubicle, because anyone could walk up at any time and cause me to shift that focus.

The office also makes for a good place for uninterrupted collaboration when the meeting requires it, which is something else you don't get with a cubicle.

>I didn't have that choice with a cubicle, because anyone could walk up at any time and cause me to shift that focus.

This isn't true of all cubicles. I used to work at a very large microprocessor manufacturer and before they "compressed" the cubicles, the cubicles were 9x9. Someone had to physically come into your cubicle to get your attention (or pop their head over the wall, but only 6-foot+ people could do that). To deal with disturbances, we actually had "DO NOT DISTURB" signs assigned to us which we could hang across the cubicle entrance to keep people from bothering us. These signs were frequently used, and to very good effect.

Personally, I wish I could go back to that environment. It was the best of both worlds when I had this nice-sized cube with privacy, but was also seated next to a coworker I frequently needed to collaborate with. It was great being able to pop my head over the wall when I needed to, but without worrying about being distracted or disturbed by other people for less-important stuff, and especially not by random passers-by the way I am in open environments.

This reminds me of Intel where I worked for sometime :)

The best setup I've ever had was where I shared an office with exactly one other person, and both our backs were to the wall.

We both had enough privacy without the isolating effects of having an entire office to ourselves.

I've worked in an environment almost exactly like that: a university library.

Now that you mention it, I got a lot of work done in that library...

I have seen very workable open office spaces. The key seems to be room size. I consulted to Gateway Computer Company back in the 90's and I would work in their Poway, CA offices which were open office format. It actually wasn't bad there because the space was essentially a large warehouse with very high ceilings (more than a couple of storeys high as I recall). The nearby sound and noise wasn't directly reflected back and there were enough people that the general din was closer to a white noise.

In smaller spaces, however, I agree. Not good.

I think personality has a lot to do with it. At the open office job I had, most people loved it.

My prior job had this setup, but with low walled cubicles for everyone. We kicked the executive team out of their offices and instantly had a ton of conference room space. It was great and prevented a lot of wasted time that normally went to scheduling spaces for meetings.

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