Open plan offices are a nightmare
Software EngineeringWorking in an open plan office is a nightmare. I cannot stand it. Agilists, on the other hand, advocate it as an environment that improves collaboration. Even outside of software development someone is trumping open plan offices:
As Professor Sull points out, open-plan offices bring many benefits. They allow for informal interactions in real time, as opposed to staged and ritualised episodic encounters in scheduled meetings and conference calls. They also allow serendipity to happen: chance encounters in common spaces, the bouncing back and forth of ideas, odd connections that can lead to breakthroughs in thinking.
There are 17 people in our office, which is divided into two main groups, separated by a walkway. There are no partitions between workstations, so a conversation between two is a conversation between all. To make matters worse, there isn’t one but two radios playing, one on each side, each tuned to a different radio station. Moreover, we develop software for embedded devices, which have a habit of beeping to indicate success, failure, or termination. Even when it is quiet, the sound of 17 people typing on a keyboard is anything but relaxing.
There is a lot of evidence supporting my feeling that open plan offices are a nightmare. A research paper entitled “The influence of workplace environment on workers’ welfare, performance, and productivity” by Emmanuel Majekodunmi Ajala reported the following:
Noise is one of the leading causes of employees’ distraction, leading to reduced productivity, serious inaccuracies, and increased job-related stress. According to Bruce (2008), study showed that workplace distractions cut employee productivity by as much as 40%, and increase errors by 27%.
The following TED talk entitled “The 4 ways sound affects us” by Julian Treasure puts the productivity loss as high as 66%:
Some will argue that it’s something you will get used to; however, this study found no evidence of employees becoming accustomed to the distraction:
Out of the sample, 99% reported that their concentration was impaired by various components of office noise, especially telephones left ringing at vacant desks and people talking in the background. No evidence for habituation to these sounds was found.
Please don’t get me wrong. I understand the importance of good communication in the workplace. I don’t believe developers should be shut away from their peers; software development is a collaborative process. That being said, our work is plain difficult. Peace and quiet is required so we can concentrate on the intricacies of the complex systems we’re trying to build.
I think it’s about time office space was designed to facilitate both collaborative team-based work and please-let-me-concentrate cubicles.
11 comments
I feel your pain. I have worked in open plan offices in the past and I will never do it again unless I absolutely have no other choice. The company where I work now recognizes that developers need a quiet place to do their work and each developer here has a private office with a door on it.
Replying to my own post to add a further remark. Turnover at this company is extremely low and productivity is very high.
I’m assuming by turnover you mean employee-turnover. I hope the company itself is making a healthy profit :)
I’ve never worked in such an environment. How does the one-office-per-developer affect collaboration?
Yes, I meant employee turnover.
There are three developers, our doors all open into a common area. There is a sysadmin and a CTO and they have offices too but their doors do not open into that common area. I would say that we collaborate freely and well.
I don’t think cubicles does it, offices with doors are needed.
You may be right. At this point I’d be happy just with a cubicle, though.
Ugh…I lost my office a year ago and was pushed into a cubicle hell that might as well be open since I have ZERO privacy. Now I see the new plans for the office we’re moving to…all open.
What bothers me most is I see open plan office spaces as partially trying to drive older workers (30+) out. The younger 20somethings seem to accept and have little issue, or even proclaim how they love to be able to laugh and joke with one another all day…but the rest of us simply loathe the fact of how much we would love to yell “SHUT UP!” to all of them and fight for some peace and quiet.
What’s worse are the managers who clearly listen to too many “gurus” that haven’t managed anything in years, but get paid big money to make speeches. So they tell us how we need to collaborate more, groupthink, communication, socialize, etc. when things were fine beforehand. Sorry if I’m the “bad guy” in my introversion where I like to come in, work, and go home to my own private life. Sorry I don’t want to go to 5PM beers or office parties. Sorry that I believe in SCHEDULED MEETINGS when it’s time to collaborate/brainstorm.
OK, I’m done venting. I think in the long run, I just wish managers would stop BSing on the myths that open plan offices “foster creativity”, and just say “yeah, we’re saving millions of office space by doing this”. Even I would say “ok”.
I hope down the road, this “forced socialization” and push for “constant groupthink” dies down and the open plan office gets rethought to make it quiet and more private/secure for workers.
That’s a great point. It does seem to be the younger crowd that excite in open plan spaces. These younger workers, however, don’t have much responsibility compared to the experienced employees. In essense: their work is much easier, so distractions aren’t a problem. In fact, they need people around to foster growth. Eventually, they end up with much more difficult work and the open plan space becomes a hinderance. What strikes me as odd is how management appear to listen more to the inexperienced than the experienced, ironically, often from the comfort of their own office.
I currently work in an office that has cubicle style layout. I absolutely hate it. I would prefer if everyone had there own little office with a door. I hate listening to other’s talking crap or talking crap on a telephone. It drives me mad to the point where i have to walk out and walk around the building to take a break. Pure madness open plan is and i am only 24
This made me smile. I sometimes have to take a walk to get away from the noise. I’m less bothered when the noise is work related, but what gets to me is when people shout random crap across the room.