Open plan is fine, even for large offices, so long as everyone knows that quiet is the rule. I've worked in huge rooms with 70+ engineers and it was next to silent. Those that wanted noise put headphones on.
I'm not sure what's up with the anxiety - are you constantly trying to hide that you're on the web all the time and getting nervous as a result?
> Open plan is fine, even for large offices, so long as everyone knows that quiet is the rule.
I don't agree with this.
Bullpens/developer rooms are designed for collaboration and they have been for the last fifteen years. They are for developers to whiteboard or bounce ideas off of each other. If you are in a bullpen the expectation shouldn't be quiet.
With that said you cannot (or should not) have bullpens without open offices that developers can choose to walk in and shut the door. Offices should be some distance away from the bullpen and be unlabeled-first-come-first-serve (they should be designed for quiet focus). You should also be able to work from home whenever it best suits you.
Also, after reading some of the other comments, a bullpen is not a way to stuff the developers, call center team, and the sales team into one cheap room! If any company does this it's a sign of poor management.
I'm a headphones-focus person and I can't stand people talking around me when I focus. However, unless it is excessive (someone doing a conference call on speaker every day) then it's just how offices have been since... well forever. However, in every place that I've worked there has been offices that you can use to focus (or a liberal work from home policy). I typically spend most of my time in a closed door office getting all of the hard think-work done and then the remainder in the bullpen doing CRUD work.
A company that has a bullpen and enforces a quiet rule feels like a company that simply does not know how to build a proper development environment (Oh, developers are supposed to be in, like, big rooms or something, but our developers don't like noise... okay how about we make it a 'quiet only' big room... or something)
I've never heard of a bullpen before, it sounds like a pretty horrific work environment.
A civilised, open plan engineering office should indeed be quiet. Not silent, but fairly quiet.
We did exactly the opposite to your method by the sounds of things - meeting rooms for 4 to 5 people, and one or two much larger rooms, were available around the edges of the floor to go and bounce ideas around or discuss things. The rest of the floor was quiet space but informal conversation was fine. It worked very well for us.
I have the desire to avoid people hanging out immediately behind me, too, in the sense that it can keep me from losing myself in my work. In my case (and maybe in GP's case), the issue is not that they can see what I'm doing, but that it increases the expectation that I'm about to be interrupted, which destroys my ability to get into flow. A camera behind me connected to the intranet site wouldn't bother me in the same way.
I'm not sure what's up with the anxiety - are you constantly trying to hide that you're on the web all the time and getting nervous as a result?
I am somewhat of a misanthrope. I don't trust most people. I don't expect them to trust me. They shouldn't trust me if they don't know me, especially if the stakes are high. Much of the answer to the ubiquitous question, "Why Does Work Suck?" is that the stakes are just too high to trust anyone. The activity of work isn't so bad. The social bullshit and paranoia are intolerable.
I wouldn't let 20+ strangers in my house, 5 days per week. I resent that I have to let so many people-- even though there's nothing wrong with them as people, it's more that I don't know them and I have no choice-- into my career. It's not a problem with the people as people. The people themselves are fine. (They're in the same miserable, cramped boat that I am in.) I just resent being visible and the constant second-by-second impression management makes it hard to get anything done. I spend 90% of my emotional energy on appearing productive and that leaves little for actually being productive, and it sucks.
you use that word. I don't think it means what you think it means - or that it has the implications that you think it has; I am a misanthrope, but that does not influence my reaction to the floor plan of the office I work in. actually, I'd most likely go insane in a cubicle farm. there are ways around to signal that you don't want to be disturbed in an open space.
given that you write:
> I don't trust most people. I don't expect them to trust me.
followed by:
> The social bullshit and paranoia are intolerable.
I do assume that you're referring to your own paranoia, here...
> [snip the rest of the workplace description]
... which leads me to think your problem is not the office planning, or your social issues (with or without medications): I think it's your current job. my entirely serious suggestion is to either change it, or ask to work remotely, if you still think that you'd enjoy it more (and if they don't allow remote work, I'd seriously consider changing jobs anyway).
That said, open-plan signals to me that the company doesn't actually value productivity so much as image and availability. This is something that I have learned with age not to take personally, but I still dislike it.
That's just what it signals to you. To others it signals a healthy environment. If you have a problem with it I seriously suggest you take it up with your management, but I very much doubt that their thought process was anywhere close to the one you describe. If it was they'd be shooting themselves in the foot deliberately.
Meds help, and I'm exaggerating my anger because I rather like the anarchist web presence that I've developed, but I shouldn't have to put medication, that I otherwise wouldn't need, into my body to overcome your failure to design a decent office environment.
I realize that 99% of white-collar work for the most talented is compensating for other peoples' fuckups, but I don't have to like it.
I think it's unfair to say it's an inability to design a decent office environment.
It may not be your perfect office environment, but that doesn't mean that other people (me) don't work much better when in an open space with some casual (quiet) impromptu collaboration possible. I would find being stuck away in individual or small offices quite isolating and stifling.
You ought to talk to your employer about making other working arrangements if you feel so strongly about it, assuming you haven't already and I'm not just being patronising here.
I don't actually have panic attacks in open plan offices anymore. I used to, but I'm pretty well stabilized and I don't need medication most days. But a lot of people have this problem a lot worse than I ever did and they shouldn't be marginalized just because they can't handle horrible office environments.
I don't let it get to me. It's not personal, and I know cognitively that no one's really watching me. (I spend more "web time" in open-plan offices because I can't get into flow.) It's just creepy. It probably reduces productivity by 80%, but surprisingly that doesn't seem to matter, because modern work environments seem to cripple everyone about equally.
What open plan says to me is that my employer cares more about my personal availability than productivity. Which is not worth taking personally, but it is a depressing statement.
>I think it's unfair to say it's an inability to design a decent office environment.
No, it is perfectly fair and accurate. You can still collaborate just fine without an open office. Read peopleware, noisy open offices are detrimental to productivity, even for the people who claim to like them and "need" them.
Again, it isn't a question of like, it is a question of productivity. Open offices lower productivity, even for those people who like them. When I mention "read peopleware" I mean "read peopleware", not "repeat the same statement that was already addressed".
I'm not sure what's up with the anxiety - are you constantly trying to hide that you're on the web all the time and getting nervous as a result?