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Comment by RandallBrown | Hacker News Reader

To throw some more anecdotes in with the rest of the comments, I love open offices.

I've had my own office and found it lonely and boring. I never got less work done than at that job. Everything took longer because I had to stand up and walk to talk to my team. Instant messaging sort of worked, but if they didn't respond immediately, you didn't know if it was because they missed the message or they weren't actually in their office.

Because I hardly ever talked to my team members I never felt any real friendship or camaraderie with them. That made it harder to get help when I needed it and made my day a lot less enjoyable.

I find that I thrive in open offices. I don't even need headphones to concentrate. Everyone is different I guess.

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I prefer team rooms with 2-4 people. You can chat from time to time and build friendships but you don't have the permanent noise of a big office and also some level of privacy.

But the general point is: don't force people into an environment they hate and can't work in. I probably am several times more effective when I work from home in quiet. For others an open office is good.

All my favorite working arrangements have involved sitting in small teams, either in a room or in individual cubicles (such that you're only in really close proximity to a few other people). I've had my own office before; it's seriously lonely.

I'm skeptical of people who say that being in an open office doesn't affect their productivity at all. Really? How can you be sure?

A very casual observation by me is that open office favors shallow work. Things that can get figured out quickly. Same for decisions made in large meetings. It doesn't work well for problems you have to work on for weeks and where there is not a clear path.

Just my personal observation how open office or a cube farm with loud neighbors affects me.

Exactly. I have no problem debugging or creating a small-ish feature in an open office. When it's a bigger feature that touches a lot of places in the code, or when refactoring, it's a major struggle. If it's a big enough change, it's impossible, and I have to work on it at night at home.

For me, the part of coding that is art simply does not happen in an open office.

"And, as with anything, there’s a small subset of workers who legitimately DO enjoy the open office. But unless your company consists solely of such people (very unlikely), it’s hardly worth pleasing a few people to inflect a torment of interruption on the rest." -- @DHH

That is why it should be a mix. I get zero coding done in an open office. Networking, sales etc yes, but programming nope. None. So a courtyard office works best for me.

What's a courtyard office?

I assume the office space of whoever manage to GTFO of the messy main office environment.

I worked at a place where everyone had a small office but they were all along the outer walls of a small open square, like 20x30 feet. So your team is right there if you need to chat, but your office is right there if you need enclosure.

Ah, I always heard it being called that, but indeed cannot find the term on Google. I mean an open office surrounded by private offices. So you gather in the ‘courtyard’ and then people who want to can sit in their own closed offices surrounding it. I was in a company a while ago that had multiple of those and it was a pleasure.

For me it's the large volumes of space. Our office is split up into multiple large open areas, and my current one (12 people) is next to a giant window and is generously laid out. I find the whole situatioun much more relaxing than being cooped up in a small room, I can think clearer likely because of my better mood.

I do have noise cancelling headphones, but I always have music when working - even when I'm working from home.

What we also have, which helps a ton, is an abundance of meeting rooms - some with a tiny table and four chairs. We'll still have a two minute discussion at our desks, but instinctively head to a room for longer discussions. I'm not sure if this was an intentional solution to the cons of open offices - but it seems extremely effective.

I thrive in hybrid environment. I go to office for half the day, while other half the day I either work from home, or in a coffee place or somewhere else where I can be in the zone for hours.

But the downside is I’m a workaholic. I spend too many hours working.

Yep this is perfect setup for me too.

I would LOVE this. Unfortunately, commute.

Can’t do this. The moment I introduce work at home, I have a much harder time not thinking about work.

The thing about work at home, you need a separate room in the house with a closed door that feels like an office. I’m fortunate enough (thank you Seattle) to afford something in the outskirts that lets me have a room dedicated to work.

When I’m in the “work room” I work, otherwise I don’t. I think the brain associates different spaces with different modes of thinking.

I can’t get jack shit done at the office other than lots of meetings. To do real coding work, I have to remove people from my surrounding.

Thanks, this point of view always seems to get lost when these open office threads pop up. I had a job with an office (with a door) shared with one other person. The loneliest, most depressing time at that job was when the guy left for a different company and I was by myself there. It was horrible. I basically moved my workspace to the break room so I could regularly encounter people and left the office empty.

First sentence of TFA: "Not because there aren’t people who actually enjoy working in an open office, there are."

Everyone is different, but studies continually show that the net overall effect of open offices across people is hugely negative: productivity goes down, stress goes up, disease transmission goes up…

I personally like open offices because of their casual nature. I used to work at a cubicle like setting, and I was suffocating from the upright and stricter mood they bring.

I don't love a _fully_ open office, but I do enjoy some middle ground.

I think my best working experience was when I worked at a startup where there was a big "bullpen," but it was mostly for customer service; all other teams had massive conference rooms where you would have 3-5 people _max_ in that room, with the potential to shut the door if that team wanted privacy or more silence than other teams.

Completely agree with all of this. I believe the people describing their problems with open offices, but I'm just not at all one of them. I'd love if the conversation was less about open space offices being objectively bad for everyone, and more about finding a balance for both people who hate them and people who prefer them.

Thanks for posting this. I also find single offices lonely and isolating. It is much easier to both help people and get help in an open office environment versus the friction and isolation of single person offices.

insteresting point of view that kinda explains it.

now I imagine dilbert's boss being sad in an office, looking at all the workers in cublicles and thinking of ways to make friends :D

for the sake of adding data points, I prefer not being alone in an office as well

I kind of think being in a group of 4-6 cubicles is pretty ideal

I also love open offices but I do find it heavily depends on who you sit around with. I'm pretty fortunate because everyone prefers deep work and if they do want to chat we just do it over Slack even if we're right next to each other and if we needed something more urgent we'd just give them a look haha.

Thanks for sharing this!

I am a IC and I love open offices.

Also agree that privat offices feel lonely and are a hassle.

I think like with many things there is just a vocal minority that bitching about open offices...we need more people speak up about all the benefits of open offices (besides the economic ones for the company that get cynically cited every time).

Same here ... it's ideal for me, though I can definitely agree that even better is the "hybrid" concept mentioned by a few others, where I have some time spent amongst the team, and some time spent in isolation.

'minority'? doesn't the parent blog post cite studies that claim the direct opposite, that people that prefer open offices are in fact the minority?

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