The Open-Office Trap (2014)(newyorker.com)
newyorker.com
The Open-Office Trap (2014)
https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap
61 comments
What amazes me about this phenomenon and so many others is just how long the executive class are willing to stick with a counterproductive trend. RTO, open offices, development methodologies that disempower the developers, devops without people who understand ops, databases without dbas, Business Intelligence in basically every flavor. The unoriginality and lack of independent thought are striking. It’s as if they would rather fail doing the conventional thing than risk failure by doing something different.
>What amazes me about this phenomenon and so many others is just how long the executive class are willing to stick with a counterproductive trend. RTO, open offices,
The issue is that executives and managers don't see it as counterproductive because there's no compelling business evidence out there to change their mind.
Instead, here's what people actually see...
Microsoft of 1990s brags about their programmers having real offices with a door. But the later Google startup with "counterproductive" open offices beats them on a search engine and mobile phone. Microsoft's newer campuses are now open office.
Fog Creek Trello had blogs with photographs of their offices for the developers explaining all the great benefits... but they also stumble and eventually get acquired by the open-office Atlassian.
Where are all the business cases of the closed-office-with-doors beating out the unproductive-distraction-chaos-open-offices?!? Can't think of one? There lies your problem.
The person who wrote this thread's article, Maria Konnikova -- is a journalist and book author -- and not a tech CEO who bet her company's productivity on a running a dev shop with private offices. That is why executives don't listen to her and are not swayed by articles like this.
If we want to get rid of open offices, it has to be done with real businesses and not magazine articles.
The issue is that executives and managers don't see it as counterproductive because there's no compelling business evidence out there to change their mind.
Instead, here's what people actually see...
Microsoft of 1990s brags about their programmers having real offices with a door. But the later Google startup with "counterproductive" open offices beats them on a search engine and mobile phone. Microsoft's newer campuses are now open office.
Fog Creek Trello had blogs with photographs of their offices for the developers explaining all the great benefits... but they also stumble and eventually get acquired by the open-office Atlassian.
Where are all the business cases of the closed-office-with-doors beating out the unproductive-distraction-chaos-open-offices?!? Can't think of one? There lies your problem.
The person who wrote this thread's article, Maria Konnikova -- is a journalist and book author -- and not a tech CEO who bet her company's productivity on a running a dev shop with private offices. That is why executives don't listen to her and are not swayed by articles like this.
If we want to get rid of open offices, it has to be done with real businesses and not magazine articles.
Microsoft was tearing apart competitors (many of whom used cubicles for the lack of open landscape trend then) for good first couple decades. Reason they were sidelined by GOOG is being oblivious to the Web. Which is honestly more a leadership problem than office space problem.
This just reinforces that most business leaders follow what the lucky top end does and don't actually have anything else to contribute. It sounds like ample evidence to get rid of most of them, or at least move their pay/bonuses lower.
Google fooled everyone. We all thought the bean bag chairs and foosball tables and 5-gallon pails of M&Ms caused massive surges in creativity and productivity. In reality, it was a firehose of advertising money that paid for it all.
> But the later Google startup with "counterproductive" open offices
Following your own logic Google execs would have surely read "compelling business evidence" available at that time, and implemented real offices
Following your own logic Google execs would have surely read "compelling business evidence" available at that time, and implemented real offices
GP isn't saying that there is evidence that open offices work. GP is saying that execs want such evidence. Way back when Google was young its execs thought outside the box, so it's no surprise that they didn't copy what MSFT was doing.
Wait, so now there are thinking-outside-the-box-execs who don’t need any evidence, and regular-gimme-evidence-execs who do?
Yes, but only in young startups. Once the companies earnings go beyond a certain point they get MBAs for executives.
Management performance measurement depends on KPIs. KPIs that don't look vague depend on measurability and/or visibility. Code isn't measurable. Functionality sort of is but it's too vague. Visibility often amounts to having a room full of people that you can see working. As a technical product manager, who uses a set of tools that make my work measurable, I don't have much incentive to make the team visible by putting them in a room with tables and no dividers. Managers who were never coders, and who therefore are flying blind when they say progress is being made are the ones that need a KPI dashboard and an open office.
The quest for measurability is also driving fake agile. The real measurement of agile is right in the manifesto, but if you can't read the code, you can't measure.
The quest for measurability is also driving fake agile. The real measurement of agile is right in the manifesto, but if you can't read the code, you can't measure.
This. It's not (at least mostly) a power trip. It's mostly about control. They don't know how to control what they can't measure, and they don't want to have to trust people who can see what the manager cannot.
Agile... I've seen a good agile environment ruined in exactly that way. There is an "impedance mismatch" with upper management, because upper management wants their usual progress reports and burn-down charts, and wants them in the normal terms, and agile doesn't produce those... unless there's someone who has that as a part of their job on the agile team.
Agile... I've seen a good agile environment ruined in exactly that way. There is an "impedance mismatch" with upper management, because upper management wants their usual progress reports and burn-down charts, and wants them in the normal terms, and agile doesn't produce those... unless there's someone who has that as a part of their job on the agile team.
Devs are expensive. Of course management wants to measure what they produce. It's a hard problem. There are no magic solutions yet.
Many of those executives believe in the trend because they would like the noisy office environment. You can tell those executives because they are never in their office except for private meetings - if they are not in a private meeting they are wandering the halls looking for someone to talk to. These people don't need an office, they need a private meeting room that can be booked on demand.
There are also executives who hate open offices. You will find them in their office with the door closed, and they don't want you to knock on the door if it isn't urgent.
It is about personality. However few people are willing to admit that others are different and that it is okay.
There are also executives who hate open offices. You will find them in their office with the door closed, and they don't want you to knock on the door if it isn't urgent.
It is about personality. However few people are willing to admit that others are different and that it is okay.
I've never seen anyone who is a line manager or higher with enough free time to "wander the halls looking for someone to talk to". They talk to people they pass in the hallway because building social connections is good. But their calendars are usually so fully booked they have little time to wandering.
That observation is not in conflict with anything I wrote...
You misunderstand their purpose. They would rather be in power in a failed company than see a company succeed without them having power.
This reminds me something. Ah yes, Congress. They'd rather be in power in a failed country.
[deleted]
“ It’s as if they would rather fail doing the conventional thing than risk failure by doing something different.”
There is the old saying “nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft/IBM”. Most people, including executives, are just following the accepted wisdom with some slight variations.
There is the old saying “nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft/IBM”. Most people, including executives, are just following the accepted wisdom with some slight variations.
> It’s as if they would rather fail doing the conventional thing
Doing conventional thing is often expensive, requires skill, or requires organisational power to change the way things work.
Many of these counter-productive trends are the ways executives "deliver visible results" and maintain good optics after committing to something they have no means, in terms of resources, power or skill, to deliver by the book.
For example RTO is used as a short-term downsizing strategy as organisations often lack ways to monitor actual long-term impact from squeezing workers like that. BI bandaids are often applied to create visibility around certain issues (the easy part), and by extension build perception these issues are manageable, without actually solving any of them (which is the hard part).
Doing conventional thing is often expensive, requires skill, or requires organisational power to change the way things work.
Many of these counter-productive trends are the ways executives "deliver visible results" and maintain good optics after committing to something they have no means, in terms of resources, power or skill, to deliver by the book.
For example RTO is used as a short-term downsizing strategy as organisations often lack ways to monitor actual long-term impact from squeezing workers like that. BI bandaids are often applied to create visibility around certain issues (the easy part), and by extension build perception these issues are manageable, without actually solving any of them (which is the hard part).
Consider that the executive class' goals might be different from ours. They might even be in opposition to our goals.
It’s an interesting thought, and it would explain a lot, if middle management and individual contributors were much better aligned with corporate success than the executives. If whatever game they’re playing isn’t won by driving the company to success, but they’re keeping score some other way, that would explain a lot of dysfunction.
> executive class are willing to stick with a counterproductive trend. RTO, open offices,
What makes you think they actually care about productivity? It's pure narcissistic traits, they want to be able to easily waltz in and watch their wage slaves.
> development methodologies that disempower the developers, devops without people who understand ops, databases without dbas, Business Intelligence in basically every flavor.
Again, it's control. Us, with our MBAs will make far more than you, even though we contribute less than an LLM
You, with your decades of learning that we've demanded, are expendable and honestly we don't need anyone with skill doing your job.
> It’s as if they would rather fail doing the conventional thing than risk failure by doing something different.
The business just wasn't ready for their radical idea. See Adam Neumann. The difference between you and them, is that you are looking at this as work. A way to make money.
For most of these folks, they already have money. This is a game, a gamble, a way to pass the time, and to gain influence. If the company fails it's not good, but it's not the end of the world. They don't have to work and when they are bored then they can always start a new business.
What makes you think they actually care about productivity? It's pure narcissistic traits, they want to be able to easily waltz in and watch their wage slaves.
> development methodologies that disempower the developers, devops without people who understand ops, databases without dbas, Business Intelligence in basically every flavor.
Again, it's control. Us, with our MBAs will make far more than you, even though we contribute less than an LLM
You, with your decades of learning that we've demanded, are expendable and honestly we don't need anyone with skill doing your job.
> It’s as if they would rather fail doing the conventional thing than risk failure by doing something different.
The business just wasn't ready for their radical idea. See Adam Neumann. The difference between you and them, is that you are looking at this as work. A way to make money.
For most of these folks, they already have money. This is a game, a gamble, a way to pass the time, and to gain influence. If the company fails it's not good, but it's not the end of the world. They don't have to work and when they are bored then they can always start a new business.
> What makes you think they actually care about productivity?
I've seen at least a few economists suggest we've been living in the "post-productivity" world for a while now. Some companies are too divorced and abstracted from actual, specific products to care about marginal productivity or track it. Other companies have scaled to absurd sizes that productivity is enough guaranteed that marginal productivity boosts/detriments rarely are noticeable anywhere close to the bottom line. Employee happiness from closed door offices is a productivity rain drop against the ocean of too-easy productivity from modern software and tools and processes and abstractions and shareholder-oriented quarterly reports cultures.
I've seen at least a few economists suggest we've been living in the "post-productivity" world for a while now. Some companies are too divorced and abstracted from actual, specific products to care about marginal productivity or track it. Other companies have scaled to absurd sizes that productivity is enough guaranteed that marginal productivity boosts/detriments rarely are noticeable anywhere close to the bottom line. Employee happiness from closed door offices is a productivity rain drop against the ocean of too-easy productivity from modern software and tools and processes and abstractions and shareholder-oriented quarterly reports cultures.
> wage slaves
In the knowledge worker space, the wages are pretty nice. It's a stretch to call out "wage slaves".
In the knowledge worker space, the wages are pretty nice. It's a stretch to call out "wage slaves".
If you can't quit your job because you have to pay your mortgage, then you are.
There is no middleclass. Wage slave is the correct description.
I wonder what mal-incentives drive the behavior? Any system follows its reward function. Somehow, executives and managers are personally incentivized to that behavior, despite it being apparently illogical from a strategic perspective.
> ...Business Intelligence in basically every flavor.
Ouch! That's precisely[1] what I've been working with for a quarter-century now. And for the most part, my colleagues and I have been suffering from the exact same ills. It's not as if we are the ones coming up with all this shit and inflicting it on everyone.
(For a few fleeting moments -- maybe months, at most -- I've worked in one/two/three-person offices, or in actually Agile ways, or with eager and responsive ops people or competent and cooperative DBAs... Almost never all at once, though.)
___
[1]: Well, almost precisely. Mostly DW and ETL, really, but I'm guessing to most people it's all one and the same.
Ouch! That's precisely[1] what I've been working with for a quarter-century now. And for the most part, my colleagues and I have been suffering from the exact same ills. It's not as if we are the ones coming up with all this shit and inflicting it on everyone.
(For a few fleeting moments -- maybe months, at most -- I've worked in one/two/three-person offices, or in actually Agile ways, or with eager and responsive ops people or competent and cooperative DBAs... Almost never all at once, though.)
___
[1]: Well, almost precisely. Mostly DW and ETL, really, but I'm guessing to most people it's all one and the same.
Yep. It's the ancient "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" and "pick your battles" ideas. Everyone has always been amazed how powerful those can be.
Agreed, often enough these stupid "imperatives" are bad for profits, and even bad for the career of the top person who's kind of driving them.
Catch-22 is a good book to read, if you want to understand how large organizations work. You'd think it might be dated, but I'm not so sure. It's also funny.
Agreed, often enough these stupid "imperatives" are bad for profits, and even bad for the career of the top person who's kind of driving them.
Catch-22 is a good book to read, if you want to understand how large organizations work. You'd think it might be dated, but I'm not so sure. It's also funny.
[deleted]
anecdotal experience with the "open" office.
When i was apprenticing long ago on my way to master mechanic, I worked for a luxury dealership in the midwest. The manager was the owners son (as per tradition) and he had just graduated with a business degree. We had a good system of 3 closed office areas, one for sales, one for service, and one for management. In the managers wisdom, we should combine all 3 into an open office format.
this lasted nearly a year and was pretty similar to a nightmare-mode run in Doom. Customers eager to buy a vehicle would be immediately exposed to the masses of howling and screaming customers who couldnt fathom a $7500 suspension service as they barely made payments on their suburban assault tank. mechanics would routinely wander into the office to talk to the shop service lead, tracking all sorts of fluids onto sales floor carpets, and leaving greasy handprints on all the desks. the entire office usually smelled like burnt oil or gas (combined with the one peach air freshener the admin assistant bought.) finally management was becoming way too distracted with the heretical temptation to micromanage anything and everything. i was once pulled off the shop floor to clean carpets for 20 minutes, and another time i was tasked to restock and clean the customer lounge. 40 minutes of shop time (not cheap) to sit in the AC and munch on doritos while i watered plants and changed out the water cooler bottle.
all the while the 3 impact printers for invoices were wailing away in the center of the "open office" making casual conversation pretty challenging.
When i was apprenticing long ago on my way to master mechanic, I worked for a luxury dealership in the midwest. The manager was the owners son (as per tradition) and he had just graduated with a business degree. We had a good system of 3 closed office areas, one for sales, one for service, and one for management. In the managers wisdom, we should combine all 3 into an open office format.
this lasted nearly a year and was pretty similar to a nightmare-mode run in Doom. Customers eager to buy a vehicle would be immediately exposed to the masses of howling and screaming customers who couldnt fathom a $7500 suspension service as they barely made payments on their suburban assault tank. mechanics would routinely wander into the office to talk to the shop service lead, tracking all sorts of fluids onto sales floor carpets, and leaving greasy handprints on all the desks. the entire office usually smelled like burnt oil or gas (combined with the one peach air freshener the admin assistant bought.) finally management was becoming way too distracted with the heretical temptation to micromanage anything and everything. i was once pulled off the shop floor to clean carpets for 20 minutes, and another time i was tasked to restock and clean the customer lounge. 40 minutes of shop time (not cheap) to sit in the AC and munch on doritos while i watered plants and changed out the water cooler bottle.
all the while the 3 impact printers for invoices were wailing away in the center of the "open office" making casual conversation pretty challenging.
A lot of discussions around open offices is induced compliance/conformance.
Years back I was one of the decision makers for an office move for a mid-sized engineering company. I'm a big believer in private spaces such as offices, but where that isn't possible at least sound and visual distraction blocking cubicle designs.
I was treated like an obsolete relic that wasn't onboard with the whole mega teamwork, super-social open office trend. Was I anti-social? Don't I understand collaboration?
Regardless, I made my case and have a lot of pull, so we compromised and made two separate classes of work spaces. An open concept "bullpen" type design, and then a cloistered section of high-walled cubicles (all areas had loads of light, windows, and all other amenities, awesome desks and shelving, etc). Everyone got to choose which area they wanted to work in.
100% of those not given private offices chose the private cubicles. Not 99%, but to a woman it was the universal choice, including among the moralizing, very outspoken "team work" open office advocates.
Because they didn't believe a word of what they were saying. It was just patter to convey their great team bonafides.
Years back I was one of the decision makers for an office move for a mid-sized engineering company. I'm a big believer in private spaces such as offices, but where that isn't possible at least sound and visual distraction blocking cubicle designs.
I was treated like an obsolete relic that wasn't onboard with the whole mega teamwork, super-social open office trend. Was I anti-social? Don't I understand collaboration?
Regardless, I made my case and have a lot of pull, so we compromised and made two separate classes of work spaces. An open concept "bullpen" type design, and then a cloistered section of high-walled cubicles (all areas had loads of light, windows, and all other amenities, awesome desks and shelving, etc). Everyone got to choose which area they wanted to work in.
100% of those not given private offices chose the private cubicles. Not 99%, but to a woman it was the universal choice, including among the moralizing, very outspoken "team work" open office advocates.
Because they didn't believe a word of what they were saying. It was just patter to convey their great team bonafides.
Does the "standard office" even exist? I have never seen one in my working years. I don't even know what to imagine. The closest I got was a shared office in grad school in the late 90s, but after that it's been cubes at best, long slabs of desk in an open room at worst.
I worked in one in 2008-09. Reception area and then a bunch of hallways with 20-30 individual offices and conference rooms. It was nice.
In my very first job as a software developer, in 1989 at the tender age of 19, I had my own office, with a door, which I could and would close when I needed to concentrate. It was beautiful. I had a side chair, and other devs would drop in and discuss designs and code. I also had an office at my next job, in 1993. It wasn't until I took a contract job in 1994 that I experienced cubicle life, but the walls were high and I could do some midnight construction to add a bit of privacy. I even had an office at a Seattle startup in 2001. It was afterward that things started to slide toward the open-office morass. Fortunately, I've worked only out of my home office since 2022, and it's been beautiful.
I still miss the old days: We had offices, we actually did design before we started implementing, we didn't do stand-ups but everyone still knew what was going on. I think I'll go yell at a cloud now.
I still miss the old days: We had offices, we actually did design before we started implementing, we didn't do stand-ups but everyone still knew what was going on. I think I'll go yell at a cloud now.
I find myself yelling at AWS pretty often, does that make me old?
The old men yell at physical (bare metal even) clouds, not AWS :)
Anecdotes:
I had what seemed to me a standard office, door but no window, in 2008 at my first job out of school at IBM in Austin. Some folks in that same hallway were doubled up but I was lucky to have one to myself while there.
A few jobs later in 2011 I also had one with a door, wall was a half-frosted window onto the hallway, was doubled up with another new hire eventually, this in SoCal, Ventura County.
Then in grad school from 2012 in NYC, also had a closet-scale office I shared with one of a rotating cast of officemates, that had an exterior window, nice view of 1 WTC as it was going up.
Since then (2016 on) it's been open offices, but at least with individual (if joined) desks, then WFH.
I had what seemed to me a standard office, door but no window, in 2008 at my first job out of school at IBM in Austin. Some folks in that same hallway were doubled up but I was lucky to have one to myself while there.
A few jobs later in 2011 I also had one with a door, wall was a half-frosted window onto the hallway, was doubled up with another new hire eventually, this in SoCal, Ventura County.
Then in grad school from 2012 in NYC, also had a closet-scale office I shared with one of a rotating cast of officemates, that had an exterior window, nice view of 1 WTC as it was going up.
Since then (2016 on) it's been open offices, but at least with individual (if joined) desks, then WFH.
At a former job, for quite some time, there were separated offices with about 3 devs per room. It wasn't quite "one room per dev", but much, much better than the regular open office setups.
I'm in one right now :)
10'x10' office with a door and window out to the hall, and a light switch.
There's probably about 30 other offices like mine, a cube area with another 8-10 cubes, and a few conference rooms, but most of the building is a shop floor.
But I don't work near a major city, and I'm not a software engineer, just a regular one.
10'x10' office with a door and window out to the hall, and a light switch.
There's probably about 30 other offices like mine, a cube area with another 8-10 cubes, and a few conference rooms, but most of the building is a shop floor.
But I don't work near a major city, and I'm not a software engineer, just a regular one.
I've seen them, but they were rare already by late 1990s when I started work. I recall my dad having on in the 1970s, and I remember when I started they were tearing some out to put in cubes. Back then they told me offices were cheaper than cube (cube walls need to be stronger than regular walls because they cannot tie into the ceiling for support thus increasing costs), but they believed in the cube plan and so were willing to pay that price.
Cube walls are one off expense, while office square footage is a monthly expense, so if you can fit more people in the same size office by putting up some cubes it makes sense (so long as you ignore the lost productivity).
An office or a cube takes up similar amounts of floor space - you have a lot of options for both. My current building is an open office plan which gives everybody more square footage than any cube or office walls plan I've seen. Building walls are a one-off expense just like installing cubes.
One place I worked, till 1992 at least, had offices with doors for all the engineers. I loved it but, if I kept my door closed for too long, I often felt others thought I was hiding or goofing off.
If I kept my door open, I would still get distracted by people walking by. Even if they didn't say anything, they'd look in which would catch my eye.
If I kept my door open, I would still get distracted by people walking by. Even if they didn't say anything, they'd look in which would catch my eye.
Visiting my dad's work in the 1980's, what I distinctly remember is not only office doors, but that everyone had a busy light outside that they could toggle from a switch on their desk. Presumably so they could close the door but still let others know they were fine with interruptions. The lights probably did not ONLY exist for visiting kids to have something to play with.
Zoomer here, I too have never seen a "standard office" outside of TV in the 4+ companies I have worked. All had open offices.
I have worked in so many open office environments. 100% of the time the senior executives will have designated open office seats to make it look like they are one of the gang but will actually be fortified up in a fancy office like they are marines in Baghdad.
Note that this is the architectural style, not the integrated application software suite.
(The last release of which was in 2023. The Apache Open Office fiasco truly has no end.)
It's ironic how cannily it applies to OpenOffice too. Current OpenOffice IS a trap; you almost definitely wanted to install LibreOffice instead, but most people don't know the difference. I can't count the number of people I've seen using ancient OO instead of LO only because they didn't know that LibreOffice was the better version
And that's barely a "release". Essentially stagnant since 2014, and many commits which just fiddle with spaces and spelling of comments. Plus, there are apparently known, and unremedied, security vulnerabilities:
https://externer-datenschutzbeauftragter-dresden.de/en/data-...
https://externer-datenschutzbeauftragter-dresden.de/en/data-...
"Open" office space is very often an excuse for reducing the area size per employee in a company's offices. They can't get away with squeezing people into offices of 1.8 x 1.5, which is a not-atypical personal cubicle space area for a single employee, or even 2x2 - it is too oppressive. Even with two-person offices - more space is needed that 2 cubicle seats.
So, cost saving => ideology which extolls the merits of this choice, in spite of any evidence to the contrary.
So, cost saving => ideology which extolls the merits of this choice, in spite of any evidence to the contrary.
Many of the executives I've been around are extroverts with ADD. They love open offices.
[deleted]
Exactly this. Modern capitalism is under the control of a minority of extroverts, psychopaths and control freaks, who are also constantly proposed as role models. They all love open offices, to the detriment of everyone else.
[2014] but it's evergreen
[deleted]
[deleted]
Ah nice. This whole debate died with Covid but I guess there’s enough RTO happening to re ignite it.