Comment by blowski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blowski | Hacker News Reader

Can't see the article - site is down. So what I write here is based solely on the premise of the headline and existing comments on HN.

I work for a co-working space in London, which is like an open plan office taken to the extreme. Before that I worked in a variety of environments (I'm in my 30s), including public sector 'one-office-per-person' through to agency '3-people-per-desk' type situations, and working from home as a freelancer.

Criticisms about working space often come down to 'the garden on the other side of the fence would be easier to work in'. If you work from home, you miss having people to have coffee with at lunch. If you work in a crowded office, you miss having 2 hours of unbroken flow. So the best offices try to combine a bit of everything - quiet space, play space, etc.

Some people talk about the 'email-only' office like the Holy Grail of Offices. But it's not - it's cold, impersonal and unfriendly. It often results in unnecessary arguments resulting from people misinterpreting something. So a culture of "speak, don't write" is definitely a good thing, as long as there are some rules about when it's OK to talk to someone.

The problem is whether people respect the rules. We try to follow the headphone rule - if I'm wearing headphones, don't interrupt me unless the building is about to burn down. The corollary - if I'm not wearing headphones, feel free to walk up and talk to me.

So it's as much about culture as it is architecture, and that's something that often gets overlooked.

I don't really see how that headphone rule could work in practice. Wouldn't everybody just be wearing headphones all the time, except when they stand up to have a break and socialize? Or do people consciously segment their time into slots where they actually want to be disturbed while sitting by their computer?

Personally I don't even like to wear headphones in the office, because then people will sneak up from behind and scare you. Like someone said here, there's a lot of emotional and social factors that are disturbing your flow, not just the obvious audible and visible distractions.

IMHO, the optimal office should make it harder to socialize, by giving each person a real sense of privacy and immunity while working. But when you want to socialize, the office should make that easy by providing the related facilities and relative proximity of people.

Agreed.

My managers think you are lazy if you don't go up to the colleague on the other side of the room and have a face2face, even if they are wearing headphones

> Criticisms about working space often come down to 'the garden on the other side of the fence would be easier to work in'.

Yep.

There are 150 people on our floor, all open plan. The partitions are only 1m high. It's not a problem. Some people cope fine without even needing headphones. I probably wear headphones 50% of the time. It's relatively quiet but I've learnt to zone out of the background noises.

Likewise I've worked from home, worked in cramped "5 people to 2 desks" conditions, in vast cube farms in the US (with 8ft high cube walls) with 400 people per area. All have their pros and cons. Distractions come in all forms, IM software, street noise, email notifications, people having conversations right next to your desk, other 'phones ringing, etc.

You just learn to adapt to what you've got and cope with it.

I think you can try to improve it. However, too often people do use the environment as an excuse - "I couldn't hit the deadline because Geoff was typing too loudly".

There's also an element of the cultural perceptions of offices. "Important people have their own offices. I want to be perceived as important. Therefore, I must have my own office."

People ineed use it as an excuse, but sometimes it's a valid point that's disregarded because others, especially when it's a consensus, don't agree that the environment causes a problem. You end up with people being labelled as "anti-social misfit loners".

> There's also an element of the cultural perceptions of offices. "Important people have their own offices. I want to be perceived as important. Therefore, I must have my own office."

Unfortunately, there is also the corollary: "You can't have your own room because you aren't important enough." Even though several rooms were completely empty. Glad I quit that job.

I dont think it is that open plan offices have to be bad. I have worked in environments where they worked reasonably well. Typically there were a couple things that helped including team (a small area dedicated to a team that worked closely together to solve problems), and an environment or workload that did not include multitasking (call centers are good for this most of the time despite the auditory distractions).

The problem though is that in chaotic environments, open plan offices are disasters waiting to happen, or maybe they are disasters constantly happening. You have no insulation from anything else and so no ability to be productive and take real control.

On the whole the fact is that distractions come in different forms and all forms of distractions have pros and cons. A fully isolated environment is productivity-killing. We need some socialization to be productive. On the other hand, open plan offices very often are too social.

On the whole I prefer working from home. Sure there are distractions, but on the whole, my productivity is best there. I can insulate myself often from the distractions and break time with family members is a wonderful perk.

You're assuming everyone is like you. I have worked in every type of office environment and open plan with 50 people was the worst. I couldn't get used to it. It was distracting and anxiety inducing every day. I worked at the company for five years and quit six months after they switched us to open plan.

I find the combination of open plan offices and headphones to be slightly anxiety inducing. This is because in an open plan office your back tends to be exposed to an open area and with headphones on you block out noise.

It's quite startling to turn your chair around a few degrees and suddenly find there's 3 people standing an inch away from your staring over your shoulder.

It's not a perfect solution, but what do you think of the rear view mirrors? A few people I work with have them:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/2940/?rkgid=275668648&c...

I'd rather have less sources of information in front of me than more. This just seems like yet another distraction.

I pretty much concluded at the end of the article that offices should accomodate both collaborative open-planning and leave-me-to-concentrate cubicles.

You're right that shutting yourself away is impersonal, and I would certainly never want that.

Just read the article now.

Yeah, I think the key to understand is that it's 'open-plan ONLY' offices that are the nightmare.

Even in workplaces where everyone has a separate office, if the culture doesn't have a way of saying "this person is busy, don't talk to them" then it doesn't really help.

I worked with a bunch of about 8 other developers in the basement, and it was fine. Some suggested rules:

* Turn off ALL notification sounds. This includes vibrate functions on phones, which still makes a sound when it rattles on the desk.

* No phone calls or conversations at the desk. Take it to the kitchen.

* No talking, screaming, or muttering to yourself. Nobody cares about your problems, they're trying to solve their own.

* If someone has headphones own, they're trying to concentrate. Send them an email saying you want to talk to them.

One thing I wonder is whether the idea of super-large offices with one team per office might be a good compromise. You get the team cohesion and collaboration but also some isolation, and the team can figure out how to be productive.

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