Chicago Police Dept. Plagued by Systemic Racism, Task Force Finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/us/chicago-police-dept-plagued-by-systemic-racism-task-force-finds.html <comment><USER3> It's sad to see people trying to rationalize denial or obstruction of this issue, for example by throwing up endless questions using words like "correlation". You can always ask more questions but that really doesn't contribute, it only obstructs. I've never seen a serious assessment that doubts the general idea, that there is racism in law enforcement.

<comment><USER4> _I 've never seen a serious assessment that doubts the general idea, that there is racism in law enforcement._

This is likely the result of what is known as the "filter bubble."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble)

Police are in fact less likely to kill blacks than whites. Perhaps in absolute terms, but definitely when you factor in the varying behavior patterns of the two groups.

 _But also adjusted to take into account the racial breakdown in violent crime, the data actually show that police are less likely to kill black suspects than white ones.

"If one adjusts for the racial disparity in the homicide rate or the rate at which police are feloniously killed, whites are actually more likely to be killed by police than blacks," wrote Moskos. "Adjusted for the homicide rate, whites are 1.7 times more likely than blacks (to) die at the hands of police. Adjusted for the racial disparity at which police are feloniously killed, whites are 1.3 times more likely than blacks to die at the hands of police."_

[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/09/10/black_l...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/09/10/black_lives_matter_getting_blacks_killed_128039.html)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piwaBO6U43U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piwaBO6U43U)

<comment><USER3> > This is likely the result of what is known as the "filter bubble."

Probably it's not useful to say things you have no idea about, such as to speculate on the experiences of people you don't know at all, such as me.

The details of course will be complex, but one study on one statistic (by an associate professor at CUNY reported on a partisan political site) doesn't challenge the phenomenon of racial discrimination by law enforcement and in our justice system, both of which are very well documeented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why now and why in Chicago are political institutions saying these things? Most people have known about theses problems all over the country and for decades. I watched a the history of the issue and the same issues were being examined one commission after another going back, IIRC, to the 1920s. The report says the problems have gone on for decades.

My guess is that it is due to political pressure. IMHO most corruption and injustice happens because there is no pressure on political leaders to fix it, while they face a lot of pressure from vested interests (the police, prosecutors, etc.). On most issues, the public pays no attention and if they do, it's only for a short time. As they say, 'all that is needed for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing'.

But still, why now and why in Chicago would this kind of political pressure finally arise?

(And it remains to be seen if anything changes, which I would guess depends on whether the pressure can be sustained.)

<comment><USER5> It's not just in Chicago; in fact, the pressure on Chicago comes in part from the Federal investigations recently elsewhere in the country.

<comment><USER3> What other governmental institutions have released reports like this one?

<comment><USER5> Externally, there have been several federal investigations of.local agencies (notably, Ferguson, which also came with an enforcement effort resulting in a consent decree); that's actually probably a big part of the reason for Chicago to do, and be seen doing, it's own internal effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Major edit: I was wrong. I've read parts of the report quoted around other places on the internet and now see that it does in fact give large substantiation to arguments of police being racists. Primarily the statistics having to do with situations that do not involve an arrest because of no wrongdoing found are really irritating.

<comment><USER3> > the "report" does not give validation to this

Are you talking about the report (have you read it?) or just the newspaper article?

<comment><USER6> I haven't read the report. But what can the report possibly say that will survive the "black people commit disproportionately more crime" argument? This is the argument we need to figure out how to combat. No cop is ever going to admit he did something because he's a racist, and that's really the only way to find out if one is racist or not; isn't it?

<comment><USER3> > what can the report possibly say that proves there is racism?

Systematic racism isn't a novel idea that has been impossible to substantiate, but a widespread, well-documented phenomenon in many different circumstances. Was there systematic racism when blacks weren't allowed in many restaurants and hotels? What if all black prisoners are treated one way and whites another?

EDIT: I think my response addresses your updated comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is racism iff in fact blacks in Chicago don't disproportionally commit the type of crimes/infractions that they are arrested for.

<comment><USER8> _" Black people were targeted in 72 percent of thousands of investigative street stops that did not lead to arrests during a recent summer."_

If that's not racial profiling, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER4> What is the percentage breakdown by race in the _arrests_ that these sweeps produced?

What is the breakdown by race of the perpetrators of the crimes that these sweeps are aimed at?

If blacks are the arrestees in greater than 72% of these sweeps that result in arrests, would you say that blacks are being under-profiled?

<comment><USER3> Lots of hypotheticals, but how about something real? What if the sun doesn't rise tomorrow?

<comment><USER4> What are you talking about 'hypotheticals'?

I'm asking that data be consulted to test whether the assumptions and assertions being made are accurate.

As to the rest of your comment, they're words, grammatically correct. But they make zero sense, both in context of this discussion, and in the sequence you've presented them.

The "sun rising" isn't real, it's an artifact of the rotation of the earth.

And the 'what if' of it not occurring isn't 'real' because all historical evidence shows that your hypothetical of the sun 'not rising' on April 14, 2016 has virtually zero chance of occurring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The validity of anything headed by rahm Emmanuel in Chicago should really be questioned. The same mayor who covered up the murder of an unarmed black male during his reelection, is now leading a team to prove systemic racism in Chicago. Where is the accountability for this guy. No one should be able to champion both sides.

</comment><comment><USER10> >> "Coincidentally, it was released as city leaders were installing a new, permanent superintendent for the Chicago Police Department."

^^ Sounds like a stretch to believe that was coincidental.

</comment><comment><USER4> _tysonjennings,_

Your past 6 comments, going back 1167 days ago, are all marked [dead]

</comment><comment><USER11> Have we ruled out the possibility that African-Americans disproportionately engage in the actions we consider an acceptable reason for deadly force (aiming a gun at, charging towards, etc. police officers)?

</comment><comment><USER12> Yet another claim of racism with the assumption that races and cultures behave the same way. BLACKS commit MORE crime per capita than whites or asians. And that's not just the United States. Check the prison populations in other countries. And the criminals make it hard for the innocent to get the presumption of innocence for even the most mundane situations. Many many many examples come to mind.

What people want to call systemic racism are patterns revealing the best truths that policeman can go by, which is experience of reality in their domain. Yes there are bad cops, however there's one more thing you MUST account for when you try to understand why blacks might be treated differently than whites in neighborhods. Different cultures, different types of people will respond differently to deterrents. So police may find that the harder they are during encounters with some types of people means they keep the peace better. And with others, a different approach is what makes more sense.

A big problem is people read this, they're gonna want citations or they'll just say I'm being racist. Thing is, I don't take any kind of pleasure in these facts. I find it pretty depressing. If you want citations, here's a thought, go on about 3 or 4 ride-alongs with cops in areas of varied populations. It will open your eyes. That's the way to know reality. Be there in it.

</comment><comment><USER13> And in other shocking news, the sun will rise in the East and set in the West today.

</comment><comment><USER14> Promises of ambiguous reform are simply the system placating and preserving the status quo.

The fundamental problem isn't racism - it is the lack of justice in every individual case. If police officers were actually held accountable for their improper actions (civil and criminal liability for false imprisonment, battery, lost time, etc), the racist thoughts of individual cops would not matter as much.

<comment><USER3> > Racism isn't the fundamental problem - it is the lack of justice in each > individual case. If police officers were actually held accountable for their > improper actions (civil and criminal liability for false imprisonment, > battery, lost time, etc), the racism of individual cops would hardly matter > as much.

This is not realistic; we can't monitor and hold accountable all police actions. We can't even do it when there is widespread evidence of abuse.

Racism is the fundemetal cause of many of these problems; until that's dealt with, they will just keep coming back.

<comment><USER14> Your argument is similar to saying "We can't monitor and hold accountable all people's actions."

Enforcement of _all_ crime is based on post-facto complaints. We just need to stop giving cops a free pass to break the law, and stop the justice system exporting its externalities onto innocent people in a weird reverse-lottery.

<comment><USER3> > Your argument is similar to saying "We can't monitor and hold accountable > all people's actions."

Do you disagree with that? Think of it like quality in engineering: We can't do it effectively by detecting problems post-facto and fixing them (and in engineering our ability to detect them is far greater than in human behavior); quality must be built in.

We couldn't arrest our way out of the drug problem, we couldn't kill/capture our way out of terrorism - these aren't solutions, but partial remediation of failed policies. We need to address the root of problems.

<comment><USER14> So, instead of arresting people for murder we should attempt to audit their thoughts preemptively? That's the general problem they're pretending to tackle.

I mean at some level, how can a cop be disqualified by having private racist thoughts? They're even likely to pick up such thoughts from the job itself.

But then how do you determine whether those thoughts influenced a specific action or not? This is the ultimate problem with _all_ attempts to police thoughtcrime - you're effectively past the demarc point, with ambiguous enforcement that just ends up eroding respect for the rule of law ("haha Joe the idiot got written up by the racism inquisitor again").

You're essentially saying "we can't arrest our way out of the murder problem". The Scandinavian approach of rehabilitation does make a lot of sense - <USER2> sheer majority of murders are prevented via _societal values_. But the ultimate check is still that criminals are arrested and punished. This feedback loop has been _broken_ for police themselves, which has allowed their culture to degrade into absolute shit.

<comment><USER15> I like hackuser's analogy of "Building quality into the process" vs. playing whack-a-bug.

I don't have any idea how to fix the process but here's some stories that we can throw in the backlog:

       - As a homeless individual, I'd like stable shelter
       - As a low income individual, I'd like higher quality housing opportunities
       - As a mentally ill individual, I'd like support and treatment to manage my illness
       - As an unemployed individual, I'd like a job where I can earn enough income to support myself and family
       - As a member of a victimized population, I'd like my peers to refrain from perpetuating a cycle of violence among ourselves
       - As a parent with limited means, I'd like my child to attend a high quality school
       - As a working parent with limited means, I'd like quality child care
       - As an hourly wage-earner, I'd like consistent full time hours so I can better plan my schedule, finances, and future
       - As a working individual, I'd like affordable, reliable, and timely transportation options to travel between my home, work, and school

<comment><USER14> It's a good analogy, but the general push for engineering quality comes from larger feedback cycles (say root cause analysis, or even economics itself). The "omg racists" take on this topic is hoping that checking the schematics more will guarantee a good outcome.

FWIW user stories inherently passivize the user. The thinking that makes sense for a singularly-designed product most likely does _not_ work for decentrally- emergent society.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Google Recession-proof? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2008/01/google_recession

<comment><USER2> They survived the last burst, they should be fine in this one as long as they focus on innovation and better products.

Usually people say they are immune also because of overseas operations, but it seems that this recession may be a global economic downturn.

Hopefully Google has some things going on in emerging markets.

</comment><comment><USER3> Um... I think the fact that they are comparing Google to direct mail.

I think a look at how Goto/Overture did during the last downturn (was it around) would be more telling.

<comment><USER4> Goto/Overture IPO'd in 1999 and was thriving on pay-per-click ads when Google was still using CPM for AdWords (2001).

An interview with Overture's CEO after their blowout 4Q2001:

Newsmaker: Who says the dot-com era's over? (February 19, 2002) [http://www.news.com/Who-says-the-dot-com-eras- over/2008-1082...](http://www.news.com/Who-says-the-dot-com-eras- over/2008-1082_3-839855.html?tag=item)

The next month, Google wisely began its shift to PPC:

Google Takes on Overture With Pay-Per-Click AdWords (March 4, 2002) <http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2164631>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google's money is in advertising. Advertising is not recession proof. Thus Google is not recession-proof. Seems simple to me.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how much they were making off of sub-prime alone.</comment>


Show HN: Blurity, my project for making blurry photos sharp - <AUTHOR>

http://www.blurity.com/
Hi everybody,
Wanted to show you all what I've been working on for the past (many) months.  It's an online tool to remove the blur from motion-blurred photos.
First, let me set some expectations: this only works on certain types of blur.  Severe focus blur, blur that is inconsistent within the photo, "blur" because the image is very small, blur due to compression artifacts, and other non-motion blurs don't usually work too well (there are occasional exceptions).  Early users (and paying customers, woo!) have shown a remarkable breadth of interpretations about what constitutes a "blurry" photo; I'm still trying to figure out on which segment to focus.
I'd love to get some feedback, especially about how to better educate users on what the tool does and how to improve the user experience.
If you're wondering how this works, the short answer is that it builds a model of the blur and then removes it from the image using deconvolution.  The technique ("blind deconvolution") has been around for a while, and there are a few mostly academic tools out there that work in a similar manner, but Blurity attempts to bring the blur removal technology to the consumer market.
This falls into the category of a project that has been "almost ready" for about a year and a half, spending most of that time in a quiet beta.  In any case, I'm finally ready to give it some exposure.
Comments and questions appreciated.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> I don't see the price point working. While I'm sorely tempted to shell out $300 for Adobe Lightroom, I am unwilling to use a service that charges me by the image. A subscription model might be more palatable to users.

Some cursory searching turned up FocusMagic, which operates as a Photoshop plugin or stand-alone and is billed at $45.

Edit: Sorry, I forgot to say that some of your examples are really impressive. Especially the goalie shot.

Edit Again:

Before: <http://www.blurity.com/view/unprocessed/3EE424BE32D5DF95.jpg>

After: <http://www.blurity.com/view/preview/3EE424BE32D5DF95.jpg>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input. Figuring out what to charge, and on what terms, has been a struggle.

To follow up, in your opinion would it need to be a stand-alone tool and/or Photoshop plugin, like FocusMagic, or is a web-based solution viable?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Which algorithms do you use? Blind deconvolution is kind of a hard job to do properly, but there has been lots of advancements recently. I had the same idea to sell it as an app and I did some investigation on the subject a while ago.

I think it's OK to charge per photo. Most people have that one very important photo they want to fix and that's when they search for a solution and are willing to pay. On top of that you could sell a subscription or plugin for photographers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://www.blurity.com/></comment>


ShowHN: Weekend project analyzes gendered language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cllns/demasc

<comment><AUTHOR> Moved this to a more accurate name (genderstat) <https://github.com/cllns/genderstat>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is what I worked on this afternoon. Let me know if you have any suggestions or comments!

</comment><comment><USER2> i'm not sure if there is something similar for ruby but have you checked out nltk? <http://nltk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/book/ch06.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really cool! Definitely a lot more sophisticated than my approach. Maybe at some point I'll do something like that. For now I plan to add functionality to crawl websites first.</comment></comment>


Started up a service for Azure, guess what? Nobody uses it Is that the reality? - <AUTHOR> http://www.trypour.com <comment><AUTHOR> Being an Azure user for a while, I felt the pain with diagnostics. It is obvious from StackOverflow questions too. Diagnostics is a mess and you don't have a really easy, hands-on way to log something and read it right away. Plus, I really wanted to make something useful for developers, give it back basically.

First, I wrote a nuget library and pushed it out. What I found is, there are barely people who care about such library/service and its possible value to their services/applications. I thought an npm module could make a difference, but still no luck. I started to worry about the size of my target people and market. Is Azure market that small or the community still hasn't evolved that much?

<comment><USER2> Who is using it?

Why?

How?

What do they like?

What don't they like?

What do they wish it had?

The _Field of Dreams_ line is not "if you build it, they will come." It's "he will come." If you're lucky, there is one customer who loves your product. Go have a catch with that one. Eventually, there might be a full nine.

...also, this might make a good "Show HN".

Good luck.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to "sandbox" work and non-work stuff on the same PC? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a freelancer that does a lot of work from home on my Macbook Air but I also use the same Mac for a lot of non-work, time wasting stuff (FB, twitter, surfing, etc).
My problem is that I'm not disciplined to stay in a "work" mode for too long.  For instance while I'm working in XCode I might inadvertently open a new techcrunch or nytimes page and start reading while XCode is compiling.  These brain context-switches are killing my productivity.
Is there some software solution that can create two virtual work environments for me?  Something that can "sandbox" my work stuff and do the same for my non-work stuff?
OSX Spaces comes close, but doesn't do true segragation for my brain to "context-switch" into work/non-work mode.  With Spaces the dock stays the same so I can easily click on some twitter client and start reading tweets.  Also if I open new window on an app (Chrome) that's already open in a "non-work" space than it'll go back to that non-work space.
I feel something will work if it will require effort for me to open that time-wasting page.  For instance if I use another computer strictly for non-work stuff then getting up and using that computer instead would do a "context-switch" in my brain to go into non-work mode.  Otherwise it's just too easy to open a time-wasting app.
Short of getting another laptop (or an iPad) for non-work stuff, does anyone have any hints/tips/ideas on a software solution on how to really separate work from non-work stuff so that switching to non-work mode requires some kind of effort? <comment><USER2> Ultimately, it will come down to your level of discipline and self control. Since you are "master" of your Macbook, you will have the power to get around any controls you put in place, so those controls are only illusory.

If you are truly intent on fixing the issue, you will fix it without any "add on" controls, and if you are not truly intent on fixing the issue, no amount of "add on" controls will ultimately help in the end. They may serve as "reminders" for a short while, but eventually the reminder impression will fade and you will be back where you are now.</comment>


IPhones frozen by hackers demanding ransom - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/10857715/iPhones-frozen-by-hackers-demanding-ransom.html

<comment><USER2> I'm shocked that this hasn't received more upvotes.</comment>


This is hands down the best use of root benefits in an Android security app - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidpolice.com/2010/11/29/theft-aware-2-0-the-most-ingenious-android-security-solution-with-the-best-root-integration-weve-seen-to-date-really-hands-on-review

<comment><USER2> "The app is completely invisible not just in the app launcher (any app can do that already), but also in the app manager"

"You can make the phone secretly dial you and spy on the thief by listening in on the surroundings."

Sounds more like a possible security vulnerability that can be used against the phone owner.</comment>


Cursive Clojure: A Clojure IntelliJ plugin - <AUTHOR> http://cursiveclojure.com/ <comment><USER2> Developer here - I'm happy to answer any questions folk might have!

<comment><USER3> Just having a look at Cursive now, nice work! How do I enable and use the symbolic debugger?

TIA

<comment><USER2> I added some instructions for debugging REPL sessions to [http://cursiveclojure.com/quickstart.html](http://cursiveclojure.com/quickstart.html) \- it's clunky right now but I'll be fixing that soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd be interested in seeing some screen shots to get a feel for its integration and new features.

<comment><USER2> I'll be looking to get those up ASAP - the cat got out of the bag a little sooner than I expected!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I installed this, but I cant figure out how to create a new clojure project?

why isn't there a clojure option in the new project menu, like, groovy for example?

<comment><USER2> I added a (very) quick start guide here: [http://cursiveclojure.com/quickstart.html](http://cursiveclojure.com/quickstart.html). I'll get something prettier/better up ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do you have a mailing list or something so I can get development news? Cause I'm interested in hearing how this develops, the website is a little sparse still, and I absolutely will not remember to come back in a month, haha.

<comment><USER2> I'm definitely planning to get a mailing list set up, I was caught slightly on the hop by the unexpected public release! I'll set something up ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why not Eclipse? 65% of java developers use it. Only 9% uses IntelliJ. Just asking.

<comment><USER2> For a couple of reasons. One is that there's already a great Clojure environment for Eclipse - Counterclockwise. Secondly, I think that IntelliJ provides a better platform for building something like this - it's just a better IDE all round in my opinion, and it's a great infrastructure to build on.

I suspect that you'd probably find that the percentage of Java devs using IntelliJ has gone up a lot in recent years too, their market share and mindshare has increased massively recently. I'm not aware of any stats though (and I'm not sure how accurate they would be if there were). Google recently switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ for the official Android development environment, for whatever that's worth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> BTW someone mentioned below the lack of a mailing list - if anyone would like to be updated about new releases drop me a line on email@example.com and I'll keep you up to date.

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks great at first glance. Thanks for all your hard work!

</comment><comment><USER9> Will Cursive be providing a strict paredit mode?

<comment><USER2> Yes, that's already about 80% there. There are some of the paredit commands missing but it's very usable right now. The most obvious omissions are open- round-and-newline, wrap-round and kill-word. Most other commands are there, and it's strict in the sense of preserving braces with backspace/delete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> ugh, if someone will make plugin for haskell — it will be amazing. I'm so glad for clojure community.

</comment><comment><USER11> can it be integrated with vim?

<comment><USER12> I often hear good things about IdeaVim. I don't think that's want you meant, but I just wanted to throw it in there.

<comment><USER13> I use IdeaVim every day for java work. It's okay, but it's a pretty shallow emulation, and I frequently miss things from real vim.</comment></comment></comment>


22 musical pieces written with 140 characters of code - <AUTHOR> http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/sc140/

<comment><USER2> The musical pieces are fascinating from an algorithmic point of view, but to call them "music" is to use the word "music" very loosely.

<comment><USER3> You're sure you aren't experiencing the same thing as a pensioner describing rap music?

A lot of the music in movies shares similar characteristics. In fact I could imagine some of these tracks in a movie.

<comment><USER4> I could imagine some of these tracks in a movie, but for the most part they seem a more random than is typical for the dramatic requirements of a movie. Most of these pieces have a few ideas that stretch out over several minutes. Movie music tends to have specific cues. There are precise moments when the music changes to guide the scene in a particular direction. The attention to structure required by a typical movie does not seem evident in most of these selections.

Now, this music is full of _ideas_ that could be great in a movie. But the pieces themselves, for the most part, are not especially dramatic. They'd have to be re-worked into a movie, at which point they probably would no longer be 140 characters of code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've spent the day so far playing with sclang[1]. It's quite a nice language. Dynamic, OO, first class functions. Definitely worth a look, in my opinion.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperCollider#The_SuperCollider...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperCollider#The_SuperCollider_programming_language_.28sclang.29)

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of module music in demoscene.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module_file>

<comment><USER7> This is entirely unrelated.

Module music is composed out of series of commands-events: Looping constructs exist, however there are no conditionals or creation of new structures (patterns in a module are not first class)

These 140 chars pieces here are made using a (close-to) general purpose programming language, a variant of smalltalk called SuperCollider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fun, but what languages/libraries are being used? I don't understand why this information isn't in the post.

<comment><USER9> Some software called Supercollider.

Here's the article that links to that page.

<http://thewire.co.uk/articles/3177/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Argh my ears! Too loud! I'll stick with my analogue synths.</comment>


New Book: Swift Code Cookbook - <AUTHOR> http://iswift.org/cookbook <comment><USER2> I've collected 2000+ Swift urls and tagged many of them:

[http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html](http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html)

There's a little search engine built on top of the data so you can search for all 'functional' blog posts in the last 90 days, for example:

[http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html?age=90&q=functional](http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html?age=90&q=functional)

And this week I added a "Swift Today" view: [http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html?date=20151009](http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html?date=20151009)

Swift should be open sourced and on Linux at the end of this month. I expect its usage to surge.

By the way, the data is on Github:

[https://github.com/melling/SwiftResources](https://github.com/melling/SwiftResources)

<comment><USER3> Very nice. Really good job :-)</comment></comment>


Review my app: Launchset.com - <AUTHOR>

Hello Hacker News,
I have an early release of my app Launchset.com. The app aims to help early adopters discover up and coming startups and help those startups find early users for their site.
If you find it useful,I can add your site to the list and have you set up for the service.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I have not had a chance to actually dig in and use in depth. But on first glance, I think you have a very useful and important concept here. This has very large upside. The 2 key strengths I see:

1) Providing a needed service to startups - making it easier to acquire and track early adopters... hugely valuable.

2) Intriguing, focused portal to interesting new techs. Not just useful to curious web surfers, but also for market research and business-collaborative purposes.

The one constructive critique I would offer at this stage is just to continue to work on simplifying your text, both in terms of wordage and visual presentation. Less verbose, bigger text, clear, broken down steps.

Best of luck - great start.

<comment><AUTHOR> dpnewman,

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm actually trying to polish the message the site is trying to convey.

I just came up with the text on my BART ride to work. I figure I need to at least have a description of what the site does on the front page.

<comment><USER2> yeah...for sure. it's a very iterative process.

btw, i am in sf - and developing a conversation service which possibly could have some synergistic connection to (startups as vertical) to what you're doing. fire me an email if you'd be interested in connecting/chatting/hacking. dpnewman a t gmail.

<comment><AUTHOR> daniel,

not sure if you got my email. i sent you one.

thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> looks like a great idea - I just submitted excycle</comment>


The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-open-plan-office-is-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-idea-42bd9cd294e3 <comment><USER3> The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of negated when people have the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant cheering, which is my current situation.

Even when soccer is over, you have to contend with people playing grab-ass all over the office, or jerks (like me) with annoyingly loud keyboards. The modicum of utility of me "jumping into a conversation" really goes out the window when I'm forced to wear headphones all day.

I really don't have a good way of measuring or fully quantifying how much less productive I am _personally_ , but haven't there been a ton of studies that indicate anywhere between 1-1.5 hours a day is wasted per employee due to the open office? I assume that labor is the most expensive part of any big-ish company, so it feels like the "offices are cheaper" argument shouldn't work.

<comment><USER4> Yeah and what kills me is how ubiquitous tellocomms are for multi-site corps. I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in where everyone was at their desk, headphones on and each was playing the mute/unmute game in order to not blast everyone else on the meeting with the surrounding noise.

Then, given all that, you get the coworker two seats down Slacking you. If you're Slacking folks within 10 seconds walking distance then what's the point of being in the office at all.

I think the ideal would be commuting to the office one day a week to take care of meetings which are more productive in person such as sprint planning, grooming etc.

<comment><USER5> I slack and email co-workers who are within spitting distance of me. More often than not they are busy and I don't want to interrupt their flow with something that does not require immediate attention. So I'll shoot a Slack or email their way and let them get to it when they get to it.

<comment><USER6> That's a nice sentiment, however a lot of people have notifications turned on in both their email client and in Slack, so you end up interrupting them anyway.

There was a study done on the interruption effect of e-mail [https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/1328726018000...](https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/13287260180000760)

<comment><USER7> While true, there's a significant difference: It's very easy to ignore a notification - the same can't be said about a verbal/face to face interruption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > And for what? Because a minority of people kinda like that configuration? > Because it'll look good in a few photos? Because it'll impress strangers who > visit the office?

Somehow the author missed the primary reason for the open office configuration: "Because it cuts the costs of office space by a HUGE amount (certainly more than half)."

I suppose "Because it makes it easier for managers to keep an eye on their employees and see when they are slacking off." figures in also. Although it's probably a sign of poor management.

<comment><USER9> Yeah this is one of HN's favorite topics to bash on while completely ignoring the primary reason why the open office exists and persists.

It's not about collaboration, it's not about socializing, it's about money. Just like all other business related decisions.

<comment><USER10> It's a penny wise, pound foolish decision though, considering engineering salaries. It's hard to quantify, and often an externalized cost to the facilities management and decision makers, but my own experience suggests open offices are incredibly expensive as a negative multiplier on the engineering output. The "actual work" starts getting done in the evenings, on planes, and on weekends, while the business hours are a circus of meetings and "grab-ass" as the top comment in this thread so eloquently put it.

I'm building my own company now, fully remote, and from an engineering output point of view I've never seen such productivity. No ass-in-seat supervision, no assigned hours, just straight throughput of engineering tasks being closed and features being shipped every day.

<comment><USER11> > I'm building my own company now, fully remote

How do you counter the common argument that face-to-face communication is the most high-bandwidth and one shouldn't throw away that competitive advantage unnecessarily? I'm not a proponent of that position; on the contrary, I don't want to accept it. But a lot of people think that way.

<comment><USER12> Face-to-face _is_ more effective than video conferencing, but not in the way that you'd trivially expect.

Most designated meetings, you can have just fine over a video conferencing system. Where f2f excels is in the conversations after you leave the meeting room - just a casual question to some other person from the meeting, which evolves into an impromptu 5-minute chat. (That is usually more valuable than the entire meeting :)

Spontaneous conversation is incredibly valuable. (Which, ironically, is also cited for open offices). I believe that if you _start_ with a fully remote setup, you are growing a culture that will move these conversations to IM or other channels, by necessity. You'll likely be fine.

But you cannot move a company that has grown up with a culture of f2f meetings to a culture of IM conversations - it's too deeply ingrained.

IOW, you're not "throwing away" something if you build a remote culture from the start. Both models can work, but switching models is hard.

<comment><USER11> It does seem plausible that requiring an in-person team to switch to IM and other electronic communication would be more difficult than starting out remote.

I work on accessibility for people with disabilities, and I'm blind myself (well, legally blind), so I think a lot about including people with disabilities. It seems to me that working with people with some kinds of disabilities, e.g. deafness or a severe speech impediment, would be akin to forcing an in-person team to switch to IM. (I have no direct experience working with people with those disabilities, so I'm happy to be educated.) So I speculate that starting out remote would also make the team more inclusive in this area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 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.

<comment><USER14> 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.

<comment><USER15> Can't do this. The moment I introduce work at home, I have a much harder time not thinking about work.

<comment><USER14> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The best office environment I was ever in, in 30 years of working in software development, was on Apple's Newton team in the Bubb Road building in Cupertino.

Everyone in the building I was in had a private office with floor-to-ceiling exterior windows and a door that closed.

Groups of offices shared a larger open common room with sofas and comfy chairs and coffee tables conveniently arranged for sitting around talking. There were white boards in the offices and on several walls of the common areas.

You need to concentrate? Go in your office and close the door. Feeling amenable to visits from colleagues? Open the door. Feel the need for free-form conversation with one or more colleagues? Plop onto the couch and talk things over.

NeXT was laid out somewhat similarly, but with less convenient common areas.

At various times I've experienced wall-to-wall private offices, giant open rooms with everyone side-by-side on long tables, and everything in between. For my money, the Newton office was the best. Privacy and camaraderie were available to us at all times in whatever measure suited each of us.

<comment><USER17> Hate to be that guy, but didn't the newton product fail?

Or at least fail in the direct sense of the word, and not "inspired something actually successful".

<comment><USER18> It did, but it does not make his argument less valid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Companies treat programmers as costs that should be minimized. They manage programmers like children (toys and treats) or stenographers(typing pools) because it is cheap.

Whereas, lawyers in law firms are considered revenue generators and they are treated that way.

When I switched from programming to lawyering, one of the biggest differences I noticed was how the law firm staff and office manager were always trying to make it easier for me to generate billable hours. Years later it still feels weird having "staff" that take of care you and work hard to remove obstacles that may interfere with your work. I can't even make my own copies w/o a staff person offering to do that for me. Staff that catch me refilling the coffee pot will offer to do it for me.

And, the million dollar view from my high-rise office still takes my breath away.

Now instead of feeling like a tool/plebe I feel like a milk cow. The law firm's entire setup is to keep me working efficiently (not that its perfect but they try).

<comment><USER20> Ah yes, Google & Facebook et. al. really seem to be minimizing their costs by spending hundreds of thousands per developer on salary and millions upon millions in toys and perks.

What world are you living in?

<comment><USER21> Most of us don't work for Google or FB. Most of us aren't even in the US. I can definitely see laywer or banker types getting all the perks the parent mentioned, while devs are treated like overpaid secretaries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here's what I posted three years ago on the topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9760414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9760414)

 _Is it time to get depressed yet? This has been a topic for such a long time. It was in peopleware in 1987. I thought I discovered the topic when Joel (On Sofware) wrote about it in 2000. While a few people seem to enjoy open offices, the overwhelming majority of developers I know, or who chime in on HN, value a quiet place to work and dislike open offices.

And yet, not only has nothing changed, it seems to be getting worse. It couldn't be more clear to me that developers, at least on this issue, simply have no clout as a profession. There may be a few individuals who can make demands, but on the balance, these are decisions imposed on us, as a group, and we are apparently unable to do anything about it.

The really sad thing is, this isn't a situation where we're asking to fly first class, or for more vacation. We're talking about asking for something that will make us more productive and increase the value we largely hand over to our employers, simply because it's depressing to not be able to do a good job due to distractions. So yeah, I'm depressed about it.

There was a time when I read these essays and felt a bit more charged up, like people were starting to understand something important and that things would change. Well, now we have open offices.

I'll finish with another variant on my broken record: the industry talks constant about the critical shortage of software engineers, but it won't give them a quiet place to work. Actually, that last sentence is too optimistic - it won't allow them a quiet place to work. Those places exist, but companies often demand that their programmers spend 8 hours a day in places that are too noisy for focus._

<comment><USER23> Reminds me of Dan Luu's take:

> This book seemed convincing when I read it in college. It even had all sorts > of studies backing up what they said. No deadlines is better than having > deadlines. Offices are better than cubicles. Basically all devs I talk to > agree with this stuff.

> But virtually every successful company is run the opposite way. Even > Microsoft is remodeling buildings from individual offices to open plan > layouts. Could it be that all of this stuff just doesn't matter that much? > If it really is that important, how come companies that are true believers, > like Fog Creek, aren't running roughshod over their competitors?

<comment><USER22> That's a great point. The top companies are succeeding in spite of a practice developers say they despise. So isn't that evidence they're right, and the devs are wrong?

Here's the thing - how many industries rely so deeply on controlling their workforce's right to live and work in the United States? How many industries lobby congress so ferociously and constantly about a shortage of highly skilled workers?

Well, yeah, if an industry has the right to decide who is and isn't allowed to live in the United States, in a system where non-family based immigration is difficult and spots are hard to come by, then sure, they can be very successful imposing work conditions that people with personal and economic freedom of mobility would reject in favor of another profession. But if you really want to live in the US and Facebook controls whether you get and keep a work visa, then sure, you'll put up with an open office. And because of the way we allocate green cards (requiring a corporate sponsor, and greatly restricting how many are issued every year, with a long queue), you may have to put up with it for quite a while.

So another way to look at it is this: companies say they are in a desperate competition for key workers in critical shortage, and they can't recruit domestically no matter how good an offer they make. They also require working conditions that most developers say they despise. Uh, how about working conditions that most developers don't despise, have you tried that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm sure this is just anecdotal, but we all kind of like our open office layout. We're not just at desks sitting shoulder to shoulder. They're more of these horseshoe-esque things, and you have plenty of room between you and the next person. We have an open ceiling, so the A/C provides some good, loud background noise to drown out conversations. And lastly, we're pretty strict about having people IM you before they come to your desk, so interruptions aren't as intrusive.

I really think open office layouts can be implemented correctly, it's just that managers don't take the time to really tailor them for their development teams. We all wanted the lights off to work in? Lights are off. We wanted standing desks? We got standing desks. We wanted 2 monitors? We got 2 monitors that have adjustable heights. I think the problem with open offices is that managers are just using them as a way to save money on office space. If you really want a good office area for your developers, I think you can accomplish that with an open office layout if you really try.

<comment><USER25> So, you have to sit there more or less quietly to not disturb others? In an nice cube farm, you can walk over to someone else cube and have a quiet discussion and not disturb the entire office.

If you're a relatively small office, I suppose no cubicles could work. Wait until you have offices in other parts of the country/world that you need to collaborate with remotely. Everyone is on a call for 25% of the day, and it's terrible. It's terrible to listen to 2/5 people next to you on a conference call, and it's terrible to listen to people that are in those environments on your conference call because they are trying to talk like they're in a library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My biggest issue with my open floor office is that it seems like everyone just takes calls at their seats. We have private spaces and enclaves for that, but I am just bombarded with 4 people within 10 feet of my workspace on their phone. To counteract I throw on some Ambient music on my headphones, which sort of works but I still find I prefer to work in silence.

Does it not seem like open-office etiquette to take a phone call in a private space when other people are trying to work?

<comment><USER27> ask for some Zenbooths and create rule that calls must be taken in them. It makes the open office workable. www.zenbooth.net (I'm a founder there)

<comment><USER28> From one of the testimonials on that site: "I have some people who will literally spend all day in them."

<comment><USER29> Hah, I have some colleagues I _wish_ would spend all day in one of these things!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think what's a terrible idea is pegging people to specific locations. That used to be necessary to find someone in the office but nowadays we have other tools to discover each other's locations.

Instead of binding people to locations, I'd much rather bind activities/moods to locations, e.g.

\- the studious space: hushed atmosphere like a library, NO TALKING, for people actively working on brain problems

\- the collaboration space: when you need to huddle with a few other people and solve a problem out loud

\- the audio privacy space: small rooms for remote conferences where you're the only participant

\- etc.

What's important is to have extra monitors in all these spaces, so a decent work setup can be had anywhere.

As a compromise, what's been working in our own office is that the open plan is—with rare exceptions—the "Library": very quiet talking, if any. For the super quiet, that's the Home Office. And for all the rest, we have conference rooms which are all equiped with very large screen telepresence equipment and which supports wireless screen sharing. So anytime we need to make noise, we have what we need. And for those who need some momentary privacy on their own, we have Audio Privacy Rooms with are set up with 1 armchair, small table and video phone. (Disclaimer: I work for the Collaboration group at Cisco so we're eating our own dog food and have easy access to it; I do realize these things do have a cost.)

<comment><USER31> What if a worker needs personalized space, like certain lighting, ergonomic chair & keyboard, works on a special desktop station not with a portable laptop, etc.?

Also, in every job I've had, the tasks I am asked to complete always require absolute quiet, private concentration time, for most hours on almost all days. The same has been true for most colleagues in each of these businesses, across all different software teams.

Given this, why not make the default be dedicated private offices per person, and then have separate areas for collaboration, interview rooms, etc.?

A "Library" open plan area would simply not be good enough as a default, since it lacks dedicated privacy and lacks customizability per each individual for sound, lighting, equipment, etc.

I think the main thing is that any solution proposing to put a lot of programmers into the same shared, open room is just wrong-headed and unworkable. That's the defining property that makes these workspaces bad.

<comment><USER13> > What if a worker needs personalized space, like certain lighting, ergonomic > chair & keyboard, works on a special desktop station not with a portable > laptop, etc.?

They would set their stuff up in the space that best fit their needs or even work from home.

<comment><USER31> What do you mean? The nature of needing to customize your space is fundamentally incompatible with sitting in a large open plan space. How could you "set [your] stuff up" in an open plan area?

For example, suppose there is harsh overhead fluorescent lighting above your desk. But you require soft lighting from a desk lamp for eye comfort. In a private office, you can bring in a lamp. If you bring in a lamp to your open- plan desk, it's futile, because the harsh communal lighting is enforced on you, not customizable.

<comment><USER13> Lighting is certainly trickier, but if it's that big of a deal, work with the people around you and/or your manager to move to a darker part of the office where you can set up your own lighting.

I have worked in multiple open offices where people didn't want harsh fluorescent light and they worked with the team/facilities/whoever to get the lights dimmed/removed/changed to be more compatible with what people wanted.

<comment><USER31> > "I have worked in multiple open offices where people didn't want harsh > fluorescent light and they worked with the team/facilities/whoever to get > the lights dimmed/removed/changed to be more compatible with what people > wanted."

I've never seen an open-plan office where this would be possible, do you have any links?

In the open plan offices I've worked in, the overhead lighting could not be dimmed, and it would not be possible to only dim lights for part of the floor and not others, because there was no barrier, wall, corner, etc., separating one group of people from another. If you dim the lights directly overhead, it's still way too harshly bright from the lights 3 or 4 rows over from you anyway.

<comment><USER13> I don't have any links, but most office buildings I've encountered let you turn off sections of lights. For more granular control we've simply removed the lightbulbs. (Sometimes to the chagrin of the facilities people)

If lights from far away are a problem I don't have a very good solution beyond hanging a flag or something from the ceiling to try and block the light.

<comment><USER31> Removing individual lightbulbs or hanging flags as light barriers ... I hope you are seeing that your original suggestion is deeply unrealistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Open plan offices have been known to be bad since at least 1987, when the first edition of Peopleware was published. A good portion of the book discusses issues with employee distraction and its inverse relationship to productivity. They use evidence from the field to discuss office layout, and also other issues like office wide paging systems (that used to be a thing!), phone calls, and email.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've built software for the facilities industry so could see the move to open offices from the inside.

The single most important motivation for open offices is cost. The facilities department inside almost every company is viewed as a cost, and managers of departments viewed as a cost have only one way to make a bonus: cut costs. Most of the facilities costs are a multiple of the square meters (rent, cleaning, heating, ...), so to cut costs you cut square meters. How do you do this most easily? Get rid of walls first (open office), get rid of fixed desks second (flexdesk / hot desk), then keep reducing the ratio of desks to staff and push people to work from starbucks. Of course, it's always packaged up as an enabling story, creating better workplaces, but in almost all cases that I saw the core driver was cost.

To get back to private offices the facilities department needs to be seen as an investment, with higher productivity as ROI. The trick is proving that with numbers. Reducing square meters is so much easier.

<comment><USER34> If this is the case it would indicate an eventual move toward mostly remote positions. With remote work the company gets the productivity advantages of private offices while having near 0 cost for facilities.

<comment><USER18> There will be explanation for that. Something like that managers are afraid people would slack, or they feel they would be redundant, because people wouldn't need their supervising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> At a previous office we did a survey regarding our open office space.

The answers were extremely polarized, with about half the office loving them and half the office hating them.

The separation was pretty clean: people whose jobs involved focusing for extended periods of time hated it. People whose jobs were mundane/mindless/entry level, people whose jobs involved multitasking across a lot of things, and people whose jobs involved constant interruptions, loved it.

This is broadly consistent with the thesis "open plan offices are very bad for focus and concentration"

<comment><USER36> > People whose jobs were mundane/mindless/entry level, people whose jobs > involved multitasking across a lot of things, and people whose jobs involved > constant interruptions

This is a great description of being a software engineer at certain companies. The pay is good, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> \--> Few managers have a schedule that allows, or even requires, long hours of uninterrupted time dedicated to a single creative pursuit.

As a manager in an open plan office, I will say this is categorically untrue. I have twelve people interupting me constantly, and I need to stay late or start early regularly so that I can get some uninterrupted work time. It also tends to work against self sufficiency. Rather than learn how to do something (or find out how to find out), it's too easy to ask someone (like me).

I do have a lot of meetings, but I also have work. I need to read specs, for example, and understand all the implications. I need to plan projects with complicated circular dependencies. These are "load lots of stuff into memory" jobs. It's impossible to do in 20 minutes stretches.

I'm also a sprint-and-rest type of personality. I get a lot done I. My most productive stretch of the week. Knocking me out of a productive roll can be real costly in time.

It also makes me a worse/lazier manager. Rather than make sure people are working on a nice big chunk of something, and have everything they need to get the job done, I can trickle information in as we go. That's invariably worse, but less work upfront.

There are definitely upsides too. You get a lot of cohesion for free, especially at a company in the 50-250 people range.

<comment><USER38> _I need to stay late or start early regularly so that I can get some uninterrupted work time_

Why? Your employers dysfunctional work environment isn't your problem to fix.

<comment><USER39> This is where I draw the line, and I've made it clear to those in charge here.

If you need me to work overtime because we're unexpectedly busy, then I'll work overtime. I'm not subsidizing your choice to cheap out on the office environment with my personal time.

Not that anything's changed, but since they're unwilling to try and address the issue I also have no guilt and receive no reprimand for the wasted hours.

(But my frustration with my inability to be productive here was definitely a huge driving factor in my decision to leave.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wish everyone would give up on the "increases collaboration" thing and just admit that open-plan offices are about shoving as many people as possible into a given space

<comment><USER41> I like open plan offices.

The increased collaboration is a plain and albviius benefit for me as a developer.

A site crushing issue was solved in 30 seconds due to me overhearing a conversation in ouropen plan office. Without that it would have been at least 3 hours of pass the parcel to work out what incredibly obscure thing with timezones had happened.

<comment><USER42> How many such situations don't happen despite an open office, because the person who could have solved it was wearing noise blocking headphones? _Most_ discussions near me don't require my attention, so _none_ of them get my attention.

<comment><USER39> Either I listen to none of the discussions and remove any apparent benefit of collaboration in an open office, or I listen to all of the discussions, and I accomplish nothing personally.

You can pay me to focus, or you can pay me to listen to conversations and look for opportunities to help. You can't have me do both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > Few managers have a schedule that allows, or even requires, long hours of > uninterrupted time dedicated to a single creative pursuit.

More on that in Paul Graham's Essay: [http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html](http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)

<comment><USER44> Knowledge workers, aka the creative class, are required to be on both schedules. They are both makers and managers. So if they are doing it 'right' they basically have two jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It is very interesting indeed that tech companies who proud themselves in making decisions that are purely "Data Driven" completely ignores data in this case. Majority of developers hate Open Office and study after study shows that its bad. Yet they can't make decision to have offices. Very strange.

<comment><USER19> They have made their decision based on data, devs are commodity items that are fungible so associated costs should be minimized.

They may not admit that, but look at their actions. If you don't like their unhealthy office space they are okay with you taking a hike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I used to stay later and use the hours from 17h onwards where there was more peace to get productive work done, as it was impossible during the day with all the interruptions and standups (plus headphones all day non-stop).

Only 1.5h hours lost hours a day? Try 3h or so at least LOL

Working from home, it feels like time is elastic at least the first few times, then you get used to it. You start working, get what it feels like half a day of work done and look at the clock: it's still 11 AM.

</comment><comment><USER47> Anyone else find themselves assessing office space when on interviews? Not things like looking for the pool table or seeing what craft beer they have on tap, or how fancy the giant wallboard behind reception is. I'm talking about going into an interview, taking a look at the space and asking yourself "Could I really stand working in this configuration for more than a month?".

I ask, having gone into interview after interview in the last few years and just seeing ikea tables lined up with an equally absurd line of monitors and tiny 4x4 foot spaces, desperately decorated so workers can come in and quickly spot their little section of the subdivision, and ultimately deciding "No. I'm not gonna work like this".

Just wondering.

<comment><USER48> Assessing the office space will be high on my list next time I interview. Especially if they have a pool table. Am I going to have to listen to that all day???

<comment><USER47> Admittedly a pool table is probably on the extreme end of examples I could have given; been fortunate enough that in both places that actually did have a billiards table-they had dedicated game rooms so the clatter of a cue-ball breaking and scattering balls against each other was well contained.

<comment><USER48> At my open office, the CEO announced in a company-wide meeting that they would be putting a ping-pong table in the breakroom (very open, could be heard everywhere). Instant "No's" coming from everywhere. Just one example of the kind of and amount of thinking that went into designing this place. Well, the real problem is that this office was a last-minute rush-job :-( They ended up getting one that could go outside, but that was just to save face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I mention this every time open offices come up, but it bears repeating. The "collaboration" excuse is nonsense. Companies choose open offices because they're cheaper. You can fit more people in less square feet which means cheaper rent.

I'm pretty damn sure that if private offices were somehow cheaper they would do that instead and figure out some other way to handle collaboration.

</comment><comment><USER50> My open office of about 15 people per 350 square feet, row after row after row, is silent and without interaction almost completely. It makes me crawl out of my skin to wanting to leave. I can typically spend no more than about 5 hours there before I escape to home where I can actually get work done. I'd love my job if I didn't have to go to that place.

</comment><comment><USER51> I absolutely agree with this, I see such a loss in moral and productivity where I work. What is funny though, is that the management has walled offices. I wonder why.

<comment><USER52> I'm management (and a dev). I have to manage health insurance, payroll, accounting, and interface with our lawyer. My screen is shielded, and I wish I had an office where I could take sensitive calls, and where I could have open a notice of wage garnishment on my desk without worrying that someone will see it, etc. Sorry, it's not because I want to look down on the plebs, I just have things I have to do that require privacy.

That being said, I wish everyone could have their own. But, as the person who writes the rent check and the salaries, I can't afford to go from $6k a month to $15k a month, plus $100k outlay to build out an office where everyone gets a private space. It's just incredibly expensive.

I'll do it if everyone would take a paycut though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The OP point of an office being used to impress visitors is on point. Since we're all remote we resorted to building a TV wall of 6 screens of 65 inch each that features a team map of 300 people all around the world. Visitors love it and I don't distract my fellow team members by showing it.

</comment><comment><USER54> Open office is "anti-focus" imo. It's crazy how it even became a thing.

Cubicles use up the same amount of space and at least you have some privacy.

<comment><USER19> Nice cubicles are pretty expensive.

Evidence would suggest that companies are willing to harm their employees, reduce productivity, and pay more recruiter fees rather than pay for cubicles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I don't know. I was in open offices thrice in 2.5 years before joining a cubical cult for nearly three more years now.

I literally jumped at the opportunity to move my cube to share a window, and an entrance.

Give me remote; or give me death at this point.

There's not much natural light and a set of nice headphones can't overshadow.

</comment><comment><USER56> Ever time this gets brought up, everyone agrees with this, but, yet, no matter what, damn near every -- and I mean _EVERY_ \-- employer I've worked at, and even interviewed for since -- probably 2002 has gone to open plan offices.

I can look at the engineering area at any given day and see every member of the engineering team with headphones/earbuds on. Slack/IRC/Skype for Business gets ignored...why? It allows us to focus on the task at hand, without the noise of the office around us.

One of the best startups that I've worked at -- culture wise -- had a policy of two days a week, there would be no meetings, chatter around the office, or loud noises in the afternoon, and they'd play something that was rather chill/relaxing that everyone would agree on...and it really helped with productivity: the number of commits went up on Tuesdays and Thursdays because we were able to get things done without the hassle of anyone bothering us but the tasks at hand.

If open plan offices were designed with sound masking/dampening, the correct number of bathrooms per person (because, they were originally designed for cubes, not open seating, there are never enough bathrooms, it seems), the correct network planning (limiting your DevOps guys to one network drop always sucks when we're the ones pushing around gb+ images), and parking (because open plan seating usually implies that they're trying to stuff more people into a smaller space, so, there's never usually enough parking for the area) I would not really have an issue with open plan offices. I have a great pair of noise cancelling headphones and they work well for me.

<comment><USER57> > _Ever time this gets brought up, everyone agrees with this, but, yet, no > matter what, damn near every -- and I mean EVERY -- employer I 've worked > at, and even interviewed for since -- probably 2002 has gone to open plan > offices._

That's because employers don't care and employees don't unite to fight them back on such matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> These articles keep being written, I guess as individuals each eventually discover this for themselves -- is it having any positive effect as far as any HNers can tell?

<comment><USER59> Every time I see it on the front page I forward the link to my direct supervisor and my contact at the mother ship one hop away from the CEO and it feels like I'm doing something, therefore it's having a positive effect on _me_. Unfortunately corporate policy remains unchanged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Open offices would probably work a hell of a lot better if people paid any attention whatsoever to acoustics. Put up thick carpeting over the floor, noise reducing curtains over the windows, and tile the walls + ceiling with acoustical panels. Basically you want the reflected noise of conversations to be minimal - that way, people don't increase their speaking volume to be heard over ambient noise, and the room ends up a hell of a lot quieter.

</comment><comment><USER61> I am a full time remote worker, but I have survived the tyranny of an open office in the past. I dislike the open office format.

A lot of the time companies don't "choose" an open office, it chooses them.

If you are working at a small or mid-sized company, building out rented office space you will probably outgrow in a year or two is a crappy investment.

The alternative? Buy the desks, throw them into a room, expect people to be quiet and respectful.

</comment><comment><USER62> I am going to be the contrarian here. I think open office plan does work well. But given these caveats:

\- Give enough desk space: i.e, 2 monitor, laptop, enough space for a few books and papers, and 2 feet of space to move my chair in each direction.

\- No people making calls. Have sound-insulated single person, non-bookable, meeting rooms/call booths for calls. Also anyone playing anything on their computer without headphones must be prohibited. Basically no one should be hearing any one-way conversations.

\- Strict rules on two-way conversations. Anything that's taking more than 5 mins to discuss and does not involve the whole area should go to a meeting room.

With this arrangement, open office has worked for me. I am able to provide solutions when I hear something about which I know something, other people are able to provide me solutions, I get to hear about stuff that effects me sooner (e.g, hey the commits aren't going through due to test failures). I have found that the number of noises that bother me is actually very few in reality, and I have my trusty insulated headphones for that.

</comment><comment><USER63> Every time I read these threads against the open-plan office, I think back to two arguments that an old boss put forth for them that I haven't been able to find a good answer for:

1) If it works for some of the most successful tech companies on the planet (Google / Facebook / Amazon,) why can't it work for us?

2) Prove to me that the loss in productivity is higher than the cost / investment necessary to build everyone an office (or a semi-isolated cube) + value gained from collaboration.

I hear lots of hearsay and opinions, but if folks have good research or articles to point to, I'd love to have them in my back pocket for the next time I have this argument.

<comment><USER64> The obvious answer to 1) is "you're not Google, Facebook or Amazon". How does he propose to distinguish between it "working" for them vs. them being able to function despite the productivity hit because of their other strengths? Given that all the research shows almost entirely negative impacts of open plan offices on multiple dimensions it seems more likely that those exceptions succeed despite not because of the disadvantages.

The OP links to the recent study that the supposed communication benefits of open plan offices also appear to be a myth which calls into question the premise of 2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> My 30 year old copy of "Peopleware" by DeMarco and Lister has a chapter entitled "Bring Back the Door".

And yet the battle still rages.

If you haven't read the book, I'd recommend it. If only to realise how little we've learned.

</comment><comment><USER66> I think the open office is not suited for all personalities. We have some people in our small, open office that enjoy it and others that don't. It's not a one size fits all situation, neither are cubicles.

</comment><comment><USER67> I agree with the article. My company transitioned to open office which I was very much against, but once the move happened I bought some nice comfortable headphones and adjusted to the environment, it was always loud, cramped, and lacking privacy of any kind. It wasn't until I switched to a new team that had offices that I realized just how much of an affect the open office had on me. I had hours of uninterrupted time and managed to get the tasks that would usually take me a day or 2 in open office, done in just a couple hours.

</comment><comment><USER68> It is very good, excellent, attractive idea if you are paying for the office space (and even better if you are not also subject to the consequences of poor employee productivity).

</comment><comment><USER69> Man, reading the comments makes me think I'm the only one who loves open offices. After switching from a cube I never want to go back. I found being locked in a cube all day was depressing and created a culture of working zombies. With an open office in my experience people seem much happier.

<comment><USER70> Cubes seem to be very much a US led thing. I've worked in and around London (UK) for over 25 years now, and have worked in small offices (~10 people) up to massive 2000+ people trading floors. Not once have I seen an office split into the 'Office Space' or 'Dilbert' style of cube working.

Given the choice, and as a 100% remote worker now, I'm so glad I don't actually have to choose, I think I'd take the cube over an open trading floor environment any day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Are there any companies in the Bay Area that have private offices for the rank and file?

I've heard of one older section of the Apple campus (pre alien spacecraft) where you can have your own space with a door etc but that's about it...

</comment><comment><USER72> I think it is telling that proponents of open offices usually don't mention what seem to be their biggest advantages: they are cheap, they let you pack people in like sardines, they make it easy to move people around if they quit or their is an reorganization. They make it easier to obscure hierarchies of status in the workplace. I worked for a company in SV with open offices, where the head of the department reserved a very nice conference room all day, four days a week. But like us he did not have an office.

</comment><comment><USER73> My headphones are my cubicle. These days the anti-social aspect of wearing headphones in the workplace is alleviated by the fact that there are, at any given time, about 10 different ways to get my attention through those headphones without requiring you to leave your desk - Slack PM's, email alerts, etc.

If I forget to charge them, however, my productivity goes out the roof. I cannot sit in an open plan office for 8 hours and get even close to the same amount of work done, as if I'd had headphones on the whole day.

</comment><comment><USER74> I've come to see the open-plan office like the Golden Path in the Dune novels, even if accidental. Between large technology companies which have tried to expand to do everything, and endless acquisitions and acqui-hires, we were at risk of too much centralization in the tech world.

Open-plan offices are a pain point which serve to drive everyone with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit to start their own company. They're _supposed_ to be oppressive. We're due for a Scattering.

</comment><comment><USER75> One upside of open offices is that by reducing average productivity, they make it easier for employees with an effective coping strategy to more easily surpass their peers.

</comment><comment><USER76> "Facebook did it, and we want to be like Facebook..."

<comment><USER77> We did it before Facebook was even a twinkle in Zuckerberg's eye, and it's still a stupid idea. All that happens is the level of conversation goes up, and they suppress it with white noise generators. Dumb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> I'll never again work someplace that can't even be bothered to provide private cubicles for engineers. Open offices are a shit show.

</comment><comment><USER79> It's quite simple - in a shared open space, sound levels and attention become resources subject to normal tragedy of the commons rules.

</comment><comment><USER80> Honestly, the adversity with which we put up in this industry is epic.

We're all truly open plan heroes. Take the rest of the day off.

</comment><comment><USER81> The one benefit of open floor plans, in my experience, is that I get to look out the window. Cubicles cut down on the amount of natural light that can infiltrate the room.

...orrrrr I could work from home, which I do 2 days per week, and it's very nice. No distractions, "private office", all the natural light I want, good food.

</comment><comment><USER82> As much as I dislike the interruptions of an open office, I breathe better walking into an open office instead of a cubicle farm, which are downright depressing. Not to mention trying to find a co-worker - downright impossible unless you peek into each cubicle or you know which one he/she's at beforehand.

<comment><USER83> I feel like cubicles give you the solitude and quiet of an open office, coupled with the social interaction and community of private offices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> If open floor plans are as beneficial as managent says, then why do they always get to keep their private offices?

<comment><USER18> They deal with confidential information.

<comment><USER48> Not all of them. And programmers deal with confidential information too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> If working on complex code that requires Deep Work (Cal Newport) then having a quiet private office/room is a must, otherwise, open office should be okay. Having my own quiet private office, and depending on my current tasks, with option to work on open office should be a great setup.

</comment><comment><USER86> I know an Apple employee begging not to be moved to the new camps and it's open floorplan.

I'm sure some people love it, but there should be options to work in an environment that's best for you.

</comment><comment><USER87> I wonder how much of this is introvert vs extrovert? All sales people are extroverts and most managers are. Most programmers are introverts. Guess which group likes open offices?

<comment><USER88> >All sales people are extroverts and most managers are. Most programmers are introverts. Guess which group likes open offices?

This is not my experience at all. From what I see, most programmers these days are definitely extroverts, if they're under the age of ~35.

<comment><USER18> What happened to introverts?

<comment><USER88> I'm guessing they're still there, but they're being crowded out by extroverts. The programming field is a lot larger now than it was in the 80s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> It occurs to me that we haven't quite done away with cubicles, we have instead shrunk them down to the size of our heads, in the form of noise cancelling headphones.

</comment><comment><USER90> The author completely misses the point using straw man argumentation. The managers sign the leases not because the of nice-looking photos, "increased collaboration" and other ridiculous arguments, but because of the bottom line. Open-plan offices are cheaper and that's the sole reason. Whatever other reasons are communicated to employees they're just typical corporate internal PR. I haven't actually met anyone who really believed all this - <USER2> knows these office are much worse than separate rooms, and it's also common knowledge that they're unavoidable because of (much) lower cost.

<comment><USER31> Do you have evidence that open plan spaces are actually cheaper, even just in plain real estate terms? I've always read that they end up being less than a few percent cheaper per person after all is said and done. To boot, a lot of companies spend millions on stupid, opulent office features like fountains, coffee stations, roof decks, beer, etc. How do you explain that they are willing to spend so much more on that stuff instead of spending that budget on giving healthy workplace privacy?

I worked for a company once that already had a huge office in Columbus, Ohio, with private offices for everyone. They had no engineering presence in that office and no plans to increase headcount in that office. It was an HR office primarily, and the workers there needed privacy everyday to be on the phone about sensitive topics like legal issues or salary.

The CEO announced in a company meeting once that they would be totally remodeling that office to change it into open plan seating (we found out later it came at a cost of $14 million, purely to destroy good privacy and turn it into open plan seats, in a building the company already owned, with no need to accomodate more head count).

The CEO just said, "We are an innovation company and that makes each and every one of you an innovator — and innovators love open spaces."

So I think you're wrong. Companies don't care about open plan offices for saving money (and they often lose money on it).

It's all about bullshit optics.

<comment><USER90> I guess we come from different backgrounds. Personally, I've never met a person who liked the idea of open-plan offices - and this includes all managers. Of course they choose the best places for themselves to keep the maximum level of privacy possible.

As for the CEO - I can't imagine he could say "we're going to squeeze you all against your will to improve the bottom line." He had to say the usual bs, whether he believed it or not.

As for concrete data, check any online calculator. This one [1] shows individual offices as taking 3 times as much space as open-plan offices. As personnel costs are usually one of the highest fixed costs, going open plan might be a good alternative to lowering the salary when a manager wants to improve the bottom line - or, sometimes, to save the employees in troublesome times.

[1] [http://officeprinciples.com/planning/space- calculator/result...](http://officeprinciples.com/planning/space- calculator/results/)

<comment><USER31> Did you read my comment? How would the CEO be squeezing people for the bottom line? The company already _owned_ the building, and even after the open plan remodel, they put the same number of workers into the same square feet of floor space.

I don't understand your comment at all. What bottom line were they improving by _paying $14MM_ to take down pre-existing privacy features, while not increasing worker density per square foot at all?

Also "look at any online calculator" is a silly response that tells me you've never actually looked into the data on this at all. Open plans don't save 3x space in a vacuum, because they introduce other costs. And it still doesn't address why a company would create gourmet coffee stations, roof decks, alcohol-focused meeting spaces, opulent fountains, huge budgets for "sleek" interior decorating, etc.

If they save 3x on space, but then use that extra space anyway for a dipshit coffee station, then your point holds no credibility: they are _still paying_ for the huge space that could have housed all the employees with private offices. They just fill it with dipshit perks and then cram people into the remaining space.

Additionally, cubicles with high walls offer a lot if the privacy and noise blocking that private offices could give, but without taking any additional floor space when compared with open-plan offices.

So again, the answer to this behavior simply cannot be cost savings. That is not consistent with the choices that upper management make regarding offices.

<comment><USER90> Yes, I fully understand your point. Also, I worked in top- and middle-level management and one thing you can be sure is that the way you present things happening in the company is of utmost importance. And I don't know any reasonable manager who doesn't care about money. It's possible that the CEO in question was an exception but in most companies remodeling the already owned office to open plan was an excuse to squeeze in more people, introduce desk sharing and other disruptive inventions.

I'm curious about the future of the company you mention. I bet that when hard times come, the fountains and the rest will go away, while the open plan is going to stay.

<comment><USER31> > "but in most companies remodeling the already owned office to open plan was > an excuse to squeeze in more people, introduce desk sharing and other > disruptive inventions."

It still seems like you didn't fully read my comment. This has not been my experience at all. Most companies choose open floor plans because they superficially look trendy and because it is a cargo cult copy of what Facebook & trendy start-ups do. They are even happy to spend _more_ money on this type of floor plan.

You keep asserting that companies are very budget conscious when it comes to real estate expenditures, but this doesn't match reality, and you're still not addressing the bigger point of stupid corporate spending on fountains, roof decks, parties, etc., which totally contradicts your point of view.

> "the fountains and the rest will go away, while the open plan is going to > stay."

This makes no sense. I'm not even sure you understand how real estate works. You don't make money by removing a fountain or a roof deck you previously paid to install. You just lose more money if you want it removed or remodeled. If you fall on hard times, you're absolutely not spending money to pay construction workers to remove physical features of the office. I can't begin to describe what a naive understanding of office real estate you project.

Also, any theories we might come up with about open plan office choices have to be good theories when the company has lots of money, not just when it's having hard times, because tons of perfectly profitable companies that can easily and trivially afford to pay for whatever office space they want are still irrationally choosing open plan spaces (which destroy productivity and make workers unhappy) even when any cost savings from doing so would be entirely trivial compared with billions and billions of net income.

The idea that managers in those cases are simultaneously so unconcerned about money that they will throw lavish parties, spend millions on unnecessary office decor, roof decks, etc., and yet also act deeply concerned over a few million of extra rent to get a large enough space for private offices ... it obviously refutes what you're saying.

The faux concern offer real estate cost _obviously_ is just for show, as a pretext for the overtly _political_ reasons to choose open plan layouts.

You seem to think companies try to save money at all costs, and see open floor plans as a necessary evil to cut costs.

Company spending behavior contradicts that claim. Companies clearly and obviously do not see open floor plans as a necessary evil. Not at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> Disregarding cost, I think the best office plan is to have an open-plan as your base, and enough solitary space for people to go when they need to concentrate.

</comment><comment><USER92> If uncomfortable { And have talked to > 3 people { Take laptop to nearby college campus library. Find room and work. }

</comment><comment><USER93> We're moving to an open office soon. I think I'm going to request some VR googles so I can run a VR office app.

<comment> amiga-workbench I've seriously considered this, but the resolution and software isn't there yet. I've tried looking into simple video glasses without any head tracking and those are really poor too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> "Just wear headphones" is the "Just hit delete" of the new millennium.

</comment><comment><USER95> I like the name of the post, full of passion. From the first look, you can see how the writer "enjoys" open spaces and couldn't hide his feelings. What deals with open offices itself, I found it appealing, but that's just what people prefer, we all have different preferences.

</comment><comment><USER96> Please do a google image search for "medieval scriptorium". Then try a google image search for "victorian office engraving" or "victorian counting house engraving". Or check out this list of "Antique Office Illustrations 1770-1879" ([https://www.officemuseum.com/photo_gallery_1860s-1880s.htm](https://www.officemuseum.com/photo_gallery_1860s-1880s.htm)). What you'll see is different instances of the open office plan, over a timespan of a THOUSAND YEARS. It's a space plan which seems to emerge around collective knowledge work.

These types of workplaces are not a newly-hatched resource squeeze by our ruthless capitalist overlords. They are a physical work pattern which has been reinvented and retooled many times, and isn't going away. In most of history, "office"==="big room".

</comment><comment><USER97> Which YC companies do _not_ have open offices?

</comment><comment><USER98> another horrible concept pioneered by Mark Zuckerberg

Mark, the eighties called and they want their open-plan office back

</comment><comment><USER99> it's also cheap so..

</comment><comment><USER100> Is talking like Trump starting to become a thing now?

<comment><USER101> No. Probably got it from here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_and_the_Terrible,_Ho...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_and_the_Terrible,_Horrible,_No_Good,_Very_Bad_Day)

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> I'm old enough to remember when high-wall cubicles were standard fare, and they were mocked and derided as soul-crushing corporate cost-cutting measures. But they gave you a lot of privacy, relatively speaking. And you could still have spontaneous conversations with your neighbors.

And then when school-cafeteria-style open offices became de rigeur in the startup culture, people seemed hesitant to push back on the "but collaboration!" nonsense. It looks like the overton window for that is finally starting to shift.

</comment><comment><USER103> I hate open office plans, but I would be fine with them with three changes.

Do not allow eating meals in the general workspace. The main office should not be an "office-ateria". Right now, there's a ~3.5 hour block between 11am-2:30pm where there's a 50 percent chance people are eating and having a conversation about last night's episodes/games 5 feet behind my back.

Similarly, if you need to pull up a group of people for anything more than a quick conversation? Get together in a room. Do not do it amongst the rest of the team. Offices still need several private rooms to make this possible. Same thing with phone calls. Any sort of long term outlaid conversations should be relegated to private rooms, or to that cafeteria area. The more people involved the shorter it must be for it to happen acceptably amongst the general workspace.

Lastly, let people be remote when they need to, encourage it even. Don't make jokes about it, or discourage it for any reason other than important dates/meetings. Give them everything they need to succeed remotely. Open office plans make everyone aware of who is there and who is not, and currently, "not being there" is frowned upon. So even people with a valid reason, like they're on the second week of a bad cold, feel pressured to return earlier than necessary.

With these three things, I could reasonably expect that my work space and general area is a suitable environment to focus, to have quick, productive discussions and general be a part of the group.

Without them, I'm an irritable bastard with headphones on all day who loathes everyone around me.

</comment><comment><USER104> So.... what's new this time around from when we had this same discussion a week or two ago? I agree these are bad, but what are we actually gonna do about them?

</comment><comment><USER105> Paraphrasing a self-made billionaire: Give people a cubicle or an office with a door and make sure no one bothers them, including you.

</comment><comment><USER106> open offices can work if people kept quiet and minded their own business.

also listened to their own headphones and not a common radio (as that one same playlist can drive someone crazy)

</comment><comment><USER107> >None of this is new. There's been an endless stream of studies showing that the open-plan office is a source of stress, conflict, and turnover. And yet it's still the default in tech. An almost unquestioned default. That's a fucking travesty.

No, it's the other way round: you create conflict and turnover by introducing an open-plan office. That way, your codebase remains maintainable since handovers happen regularly.

Imagine the opposite: a productive coder from a silent office leaves after 30 years. There is a very high probability that it takes months until new recruits can make meaningful changes since nothing has been documented. If you enforce regular handovers you can be sure that some documentation has accumulated somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER92> You really can just put in the headphones and ignore distractions for a few hours. And then, leave. You don't have to sit there for 8+ hours. Go in in the morning, talk to a few people face to face, sit there with headphones for ~2 hours, and then maybe after lunch, go elsewhere and work from another location you like.

<comment><USER108> Maybe that works for you, but headphones do nothing for me for the stress caused by having my back exposed to people walking around.

<comment><USER109> All things considered you have a pretty amazing life if someone walking behind you constitutes "stress."

<comment><USER31> It's an automatic reaction in all humans. It triggers a fight vs flight reflex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> > We were already working from in open office, but at least I had a desk > facing the wall behind me, so there was a modicum of privacy and > psychological safety. Then management decided that it would "look better" if > we went to circular desks where several of us would be sitting with our > backs to the hallway, so everyone walking past would be looking at our > screen as they passed.

This seems dishonest to me. Can some body explain if I'm missing something?

I understand the argument that open-plan offices increase distractions in general, and the damage that loud people do in particular. But if you really intend on being super focused and productive, I don't understand why it would bother you that someone would look at your screen.

I have worked in an open-plan office and the only times when I was embarrassed that someone saw my screen was because I was wasting my time on reddit/HN, which I shouldn't because that's not what they're paying me for... Once I managed to force upon myself the discipline of just don't open reddit/HN, I was happy to accept one of the desks with the back to the center of the room, because I no longer cared that someone was looking at my screen.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER111> I can only speak for myself but it makes me unconformable because it makes me feel like I must be super productive for 8 hours straight lest the big boss happen to walk by for the 3 minutes I'm taking a mental break to read something interesting and completely unrelated to work.

<comment><USER110> If the big boss happens to walk by for the 3 minutes you're taking a mental break and that is a problem, I would say the problem is the boss/culture, not the space.

Think about it. You just said that someone "catching you" taking a break is an issue and that in your mind that is a justification for keeping your screen hidden.</comment></comment></comment>