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Comment by tribune | Hacker News Reader

I wish everyone would give up on the "increases collaboration" thing and just admit that open-plan offices are about shoving as many people as possible into a given space

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I suffer in an open office, but everybody on my team that I might collaborate with is actually in a different time zone, so there's absolutely no chance that the "open-ness" of the office will help me in any way.

I agree. It feels like a 'if you repeat a lie often enough' kind of statements. I'll never buy into it, there is no evidence that anyone can show me. Open offices are terrible.

I like open plan offices.

The increased collaboration is a plain and albviius benefit for me as a developer.

A site crushing issue was solved in 30 seconds due to me overhearing a conversation in ouropen plan office. Without that it would have been at least 3 hours of pass the parcel to work out what incredibly obscure thing with timezones had happened.

How many such situations don't happen despite an open office, because the person who could have solved it was wearing noise blocking headphones? Most discussions near me don't require my attention, so none of them get my attention.

Either I listen to none of the discussions and remove any apparent benefit of collaboration in an open office, or I listen to all of the discussions, and I accomplish nothing personally.

You can pay me to focus, or you can pay me to listen to conversations and look for opportunities to help. You can't have me do both.

... and the issue was probably initially caused by a programmer being distracted in their open office.

It really wasn't. It was a perfect storm intersection of seemingly disparate unrelated changes (and lack of changes).

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