Ask HN: Why are you against open plan offices? - <AUTHOR> This topic seems to come up time and time again on here. As someone young and new to the industry I have only ever experienced open plan offices, so I don't really know what the alternative is like. However I'm inclined to say I don't think I would enjoy cubicles or private offices. I feel like you'd miss out on so much collaborative effort and serendipitous & spontaneous conversations with colleagues that solve problems out of the blue. I also think it's just plain isolating being on your own in a room all day. What's wrong with just putting some headphones on if you want to put your head down and do some deep, quiet work?<p>Having said all that as I admit I haven't experienced the alternative so I'm open to being convinced I'm wrong. <comment><USER2> I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level. I'm against open plan offices at large corp level.

I have 300 people on my floor, the group closest to us is from business and spends 2/4 hours a day on the phone. It saddens me because the largest openly claimed benefit of Open Plan offices is "increase collaboration". What I literally see is people locking themselves with headphones and trying to hide in rooms to get some silence. I mean, people literally have to walk around teams to go to the toilet or get a coffee.

I'd like team size cubicles. That would sound to me like a good compromise between collaboration, and deep work. I'm sure people would open up more. In fact, it is how it was setup at Bell Labs back in the time [1], not the pale copy we see everywhere today.

A bit like Agile has become Scrum I'm guessing :).

[1] [https://aquicore.com/blog/bell-labs-office- design/](https://aquicore.com/blog/bell-labs-office-design/)

<comment><USER3> >I'm not actually against open plan offices....at team level.

Having now worked in one of these at a large company, we found those sorts of "team offices" hurt collaboration and innovation even more than open floor plans. Unless the company is relativley small, the random conversations between people from different teams is often the key to innovation and getting problems solved early without having having to have formal meetings and delays. A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple question (or to just see what they are working on) becomes a big deal because you are now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people. Unless you really know the other person well, we found people just are very hesitant to do it.

In big companies, there usually isn't a problem with communicating within a team - the problems occur when teams aren't communicating with people in other teams. These team rooms ruin informal inter-team collaboration and communication.

With the pandemic it isn't hard to see that a small enclosed team room with people packed in it is also a pretty good way to guarantee a virus will be spread to others.

<comment><USER4> > A team room means that to ask a co-worker on another team a simple question > (or to just see what they are working on) becomes a big deal because you are > now entering that other team's space and interrupting a dozen people.

Which is better than interrupting the hundred plus people in the giant open- office space?

<comment><USER3> Unless they feel the need to yell, they are probably interrupting a small number of people and not hundred plus people. The difference in the open floor plan is that at least they aren't entering the private space of another team. What we saw is that when each team is in their own little silo, people are reluctant to go invade another team's private space unless they knew the person very well. Inter-team knowledge sharing and collaboration really dropped.

While team silos create additional problems, obviously the hundred plus style open floor plans are still pretty horrible. The best approach I have seen is individual offices with shared collaboration areas nearby. People can do deep work by closing their office door. People can pair-program, have someone look over their code, have a private conversation etc. by going to another's office without disturbing everyone else. A shared collaboration area allows for quick easy group discussion when helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Working from home for the past 3 months taught me that a lot of my constant tiredness and apathy came from the constant noise you get in an open office.

Some people can't handle being productive in a extremely loud, and extremely bright environment. It doesn't matter how much I destroyed my hearing by putting loud music over noise-cancelling headphones, I always felt tired after ~2 hours of work.

Open offices seem to start in companies with 10 people, and eventually turn out in floors with hundred of other workers screaming loudly so they can be heard over the existing noise. Ideally, an open office should have noise detectors over the office to remind people to keep their noise down.

As a positive, if I were 20 years older I'd probably have started working in cubicles, which have all the negatives of an open office but without any natural sunlight.

<comment><USER6> In our elementary school cafeteria, we had a large traffic light that was sound activated.

Reasonable noise levels were green, but if we got too loud it would turn yellow to warn us to quiet down, but if it turned red, it would make a loud buzzing alert, and we were not allowed to speak during the red light.

If you did speak during a red light, you were written a 'ticket', and would not be going to recess that afternoon.

It would turn back to green after a specified time.

<comment><USER7> That sounds incredibly dystopian. I hate it.

<comment><USER8> Does it? I much prefer an objective measure of volume instead of a school staff member just writing individual kids up for being subjectively too loud ---the machine should have much less bias.

<comment><USER9> Why do they need to be quiet? This is in a cafeteria, not in a classroom.

<comment><USER8> I remember the elementary and middle school cafeterias being host to an occasional screaming match, so I can see why they would want to keep it at a reasonable volume. It might be a little over the top to have the traffic light thing, but it's better than the subjective alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > I feel like you'd miss out on so much collaborative effort and serendipitous > & spontaneous conversations with colleagues that solve problems out of the > blue

This happens for sure

In my experience the ratio of beneficial to detrimental serendipitous and/or spontaneous conversations that result in any benefit is extremely low, so low in fact as to not being worth it. The problem is that people tend to remember the useful one conversation and forget the other 100.

At my current job, never have I ever been involved in anything that has resulted in a solved problem from a casual conversation, yet I was regularly interrupted by other people before I started working from home.

<comment><USER11> I find the worst interrupters are not co-workers but impatient, micromanaging managers. Yup, the Dilbertian PHB's -- there just are too many of them out in the wild.

<comment><USER12> Coworkers can be a menace too. Two jobs before, I worked in a place where each team of ~8 people had their own room. On the floor, we had a bunch of "roamers" who would visit every room at random times to socialize. And then, within the team, we had the problem of everyone doing their own "break for cat memes" at a different time, and wanting to share the funny thing they saw immediately; we sort-of solved that by creating a dedicated IM chatroom for sharing off-topic posts, but then those would sometimes spill over into meatspace anyway, and suddenly you had half of the room discussing some stupid video while the other half tried to work. It was manageable at this level, though. An equilibrium.

(I have to admit that I did my own share of distracting my coworkers there; nobody was blameless in our room.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Open-plan offices came about because they are mainly cheap.

Or, then, you just don't trust your employees and want to watch over them all the time.

Neither of these reasons touch the actual reason why you are in the office - to create added value. Hence open plan office is an environment that the market has selected for all the other reasons, except to be a good place to work.

Some people like open offices, other don't.

The overall picture from literature and practice is that if the cadence of the work is "like in NASA flight control" then the easy communication aspect is an actual asset.

On the other hand, if you are mostly coding and doing other sort of deep work, then an open plan office is openly hostile to productivity.

For example, if noise level increases 10 dB it decreases productivity by 5% [0].

Personally, having worked in all sort of configs for two decades, my capability to concentrate, productivity, and happiness in an open plan settings plummets.

[0] Dean: Noise, Cognitive Function, and Worker Productivity "[https://joshuatdean.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/02/NoiseCogn...](https://joshuatdean.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/02/NoiseCognitiveFunctionandWorkerProductivity.pdf")

<comment><USER14> 5% per 10dB of added noise floor? That seems really low to me. Think about it... 30dB is the difference between a quieter window fan and a train going by next door.

<comment><USER13> Read the referred paper. It is fairly thorough :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can hear everything. Coughs and other sharp noises go straight through ANC headphones.

You're exposed to everything.

People will tap you on the shoulder.

While I'm the same as you, I don't particularly enjoy the feeling of having noise cancellation headphones on for the entire workday - it starts to feel a bit vertigo-ey.

Some people don't like making small talk.

<comment><USER16> > _don 't particularly enjoy the feeling of having noise cancellation > headphones on for the entire workday - it starts to feel a bit vertigo-ey._

Ay. It shouldn't be acceptable that those who prefer / need quiet are expected to block out the outside world with headphones and earplugs and Phil the motormouth is allowed to run his jaw all day.

The default should be either Phil takes his chit chat to a private room (offices for everyone) or he shuts the fuck up unless it's a dedicated discussion time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In one line: It affects the ability to work deeply.

I'm not against the idea of the open office. I'm against the scale at which it is implemented. Open office for a team is okay (even good, when you're in the idea-bouncing among teammates phase). Open office on a large scale wherein often the entire floor can hear each other is terrible.

The core reason: the inability to work deeply for long intervals of time. Especially when you have grabbed a good idea and are trying to implement it before the flow gets broken.

At any office there will be people who by their nature will cause disturbances. On a larger scale, the probability that someone will break my flow is greatly increased.

</comment><comment><USER18> Because being forced to don headphones I'd rather not wear is lame.

Because being people have meetings in the space right behind my desk.

Because I feel like cattle, which could explain why I have this beef XD

</comment><comment><USER19> >What's wrong with just putting some headphones on if you want to put your head down and do some deep, quiet work?

I can't do focused work with headphones and music. I get headaches because I have to put extra effort to focus and think. I've tried headphones, earphones, IEMs, and earbuds. That includes regular, audiophile, and noise cancelling. I just can't do it. I need quiet to think. Even noise cancelling headphones need music playing to block out noise an in office when you are next to people (e.g. sales, HR) who are in meetings all day.

Let me flip this another way. Imagine if a business decided that they were going to lower the temperature to 50F/10C to save money. Somebody then said "Well if you are cold just wear a thick jacket, gloves, etc. I do it and it's fine" A lot of people would be miserable and would have some parts of their bodies freezing and hurting (hands, feet) and other parts of their body (e.g. underarms) would be sweating and uncomfortable. How much focused work could you do in that situation?

Does the above situation sound ridiculous? Well that's exactly how I feel about the expectation that everybody can just put on headphones and focus.

I've been in private small cubicle offices in multiple jobs and done just fine. But the noise and visual distraction in open offices is just too much.

<comment><USER20> Your analogy with the thermostat is BRILLIANT. Thank you for that.

But if they actually did that, they would say the reason was to "improve collaboration" not that it was to save money -- just like open-plan!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Firstly it's that you seem available for interruption, either by managers or coworkers equally. Most people don't understand how harmful that is. Managers vs makers schedule explains this.

Secondly, however, is the inability to control my own environment. Some days I'd like it to be dark, some light. Sometimes I'm cold, sometimes I'm hot. Or I want loud music or silence. Etc. You might think these are all minor things and generally they are but if all of them slightly negatively impact you, you might end up being cranky and unproductive the entire day.

Cubicles are slightly worse because they suffer from the exact same issues but are much uglier.

<comment><USER22> > Managers vs makers schedule explains this.

It's like Donald Knuth's argument for not using e-mail. "Most people need to stay on top of things, but I need to get to the bottom of things." The open office works great for staying on top of things, but is not a good environment for getting to the bottom of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Individual offices != "being on your own in a room all day"

The negatives are pretty well known. I've seen information like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan#Evaluation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan#Evaluation)

> A systematic survey of research upon the effects of open-plan offices found > frequent negative effects in some traditional workplaces: high levels of > noise, stress, conflict, high blood pressure and a high staff > turnover.[16][17]

> The noise level in open-plan offices greatly reduces productivity, which > drops to one third relative to what it would be in quiet rooms.

since reading the chapter about it in Steve McConnell's "Rapid Development" in the 1990s.

Ahh, see chapter 30, "Productivity Environments", [https://archive.org/details/rapiddevelopment00mcco/page/504/...](https://archive.org/details/rapiddevelopment00mcco/page/504/mode/2up/search/office) . You'll need an archive.org account. It doesn't really cover open plan offices - that era was more about cubicles.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't feel I have some kind of mental safety in open office. Bell labs are best kinds of office where you have offices with hub common area for your team where you can go out and discuss stuff.

<comment><USER11> My preference is to go to the pub to brainstorm over burgers and beer. I did work for a small biz where the owner would take us all out on Friday for that purpose. Most productive place I ever worked at. Eventually got bought out by a much bigger biz and it all went south.

<comment><USER25> Same! We had a small office round the corner from a pub, and we'd go there for lunch every friday. If we ever had to discuss that in front of clients, we referred to it as "meeting room P".

<comment><USER26> The COBRA meetings Her Majesty's cabinet sounds important, secretive, and just a bit ominous.

Its actually just meetings held in "Cabinet Office Briefing Room A".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Finally! Bring back some sanity to the office!

Get rid of the open office! And all it took was a little virus that can decimate the human civilization.

If companies want to cram their employees together, and make them sit shoulder to shoulder on a little table, then just let us work from home. We don't need to be smashed together like sardines in a can.

By keeping us so close to one another, without physical distancing, and walls that block airflow and people's germs, then I believe we have gotten sicker over time. Every season, I would always get sick, and I attribute it to the open office. The past 2 months of working from home, has been great, because I avoided getting the flu.

Their principle complaint, was that open offices save money. Well, here's finally a way for them to save even more money! Remote telecommuting!

<comment><USER11> What? and deprive the managers of being able to lord over their domain? They get the fits if they don't see hundreds bent over in servitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't want to be on my own all day.

The best set-up I've ever had was when I had an office with just my team (and only the other engineers) so just the people who I was actually working with.

This meant discussions could actually be useful as we were working on very similar stuff, if not the same - and as they were other engineers we were all capable of offering solutions and not just being a distraction.

In my current open office the vast majority of the people have no idea what I even do and have such entirely different skillsets it's not like we can have productive work discussions. Therefore, it's just noise and distraction.

</comment><comment><USER29> Because working is a collaborative activity, not a social activity.

By nature, social activities need your brain to be focused on things happening around you.

Work activities need your brain to focus on that task at hand, and not on your surroundings. Hence your brain needs to overcome all the distraction to focus on work, if you're in an open (social) environment. No wonder people feel exhausted at the end of the day.

That said, I think having a completely closed office is equally bad. I think a good office is one that combines the best aspect of both.

<comment><USER30> > I think a good office is one that combines the best aspect of both.

Couldn't agree more. My last job was in a large organization, cubicles everywhere and almost quiet all the time. The current one is an open office, noise all the time. Overall, I dislike both of them, and just like you said, could use a combination of best aspects of both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the term "open plan office" is too generic. The example @jlengrand provides is the form of torture that drives people who need to think and concentrate to distraction.

The most productive environments I have known are a modest sized room used as an open plan office where every person there was working on the same project. The managers had their own private offices on another floor. Under those sort of conditions collaboration and intelligent conversations can arise. So long as you manage to exclude the blabbermouths who are constantly asking stupid questions or making unnecessary commentary.

I think I have achieved the best compromise, work from home, turn off emails and all forms of social apps. Then once or twice a week go to the office specifically to have meetings, etc. That way I get the peace and quite to immerse into deep work (Cal Newport) and get the benefits of collaboration and brainstorming. I only check my emails after I have finished the day's deep work. My promise is that I answer all emails addressed to me within 36 hours. Nothing faster. If it's that important people have to text message which I will typically check 2-3 times a day max.

BTW I charge for specified units of work completed according to schedules and budgets that I agree to. Charging on the basis of hours worked just doesn't cut it for me.

</comment><comment><USER16> Because it makes it too easy people to ask questions that they could have answered on their own if they'd has to stand up from their desk, walk down the hall to my office, knock on the door and obviously disrupt whatever I'm doing.

In an open office all they have to do is vaguely wave their hand in the corner of my vision with "hey just a quick question" that inevitably turns into a 15 minute product revision meeting.

<comment><USER31> Sounds like that discussion was needed, to me..

<comment><USER16> Yeah, except it happens every other day and all you do is "revise the product" and never build or ship the product.

It's a one way express train to feature creep. It often doesn't involve all of the stakeholders, so then you're having multiple 15 minute meetings to get everyone in sync.

Meetings are for meeting, not meetings are for shutting up and doing your assigned work.

<comment><USER31> > _not meetings are for shutting up and doing your assigned work_

Like a mindless drone? Or are you advocating for _more_ meetings?

<comment><USER16> I'm saying timebox discussion like anything else. Have discussions regularly, but in a scheduled manner.

Meetings suck because people aren't prepared / the meeting isn't scoped or well defined. They don't suck "just because".

Treat your meetings just like any other assignments. Clearly define it and expect people to have their shit together. Then you don't have to have discussions all the time and you can actually execute on what's been discussed and planned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Headphones don't make things quiet. You are just replacing noises.

Think of a library.

I have not even brought up the visual or olfactory distractions, either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does it need to be completely quiet? I find I work best with low-level relaxing ambient background noise. Find it much easier to work in e.g. a coffee shop than a library

<comment><USER20> Personally, I would choose the library environment every single time for software design and dev -- if the option were available to me.

I know that my productivity is much, much closer to optimum when I work under these conditions. Sadly they are almost impossible to find or arrange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> As far as audio goes, either you need to play something in your headphones (which itself can be distracting) or sounds will go through (actually many will probably go through either way), and sometimes that's perfect for what you're working on, but sometimes it very much isn't. Also they're not an option when you're trying to talk to someone without both of you getting distracted or distracting others.

Headphones don't filter out every distraction either, though, so there's that too. People constantly walking around or eating food you can smell or shuffling stuff on their desks or doing whatever else they are doing can be incredibly distracting when you need to concentrate.

Also distractions are one thing, but I know lots of people want some privacy in the workplace too, even if it's not the first (or last) reason they'll list. It's kind of the elephant in the room. If you're the kind of person/robot who thinks privacy in the workplace is a fundamental oxymoron and who goes 4 or 9 hours straight without taking a bit of a break once in a while (whether it's just to check your personal email or social media, or to lay your head down for some time and rest a bit, or to make/receive a phone call, or whatever) then maybe you won't sympathize with this. But not feeling like people are continually observing you is something a lot of people value.

Also my ears can eventually sweat when I have headphones on for hours on end, and my headphones end up getting dirty, and their existence isn't exactly indistinguishable from their non-existence either, so there's that. Maybe this is too obvious? But an open-plan office where the solution is "wear a headphone" is practically a job that mandates that you wear a headphone.

I'm sure there's other stuff I'm not thinking of at the moment. And of course there are lots of benefits too; I just didn't list them since you seemed to already be aware of them.

</comment><comment><USER33> There's a reason why noise cancelling headphones gained so much popularity.

If you enter an open plan office and see a bunch of people sitting with headphones on, it should be immediately clear to you that most of them are suffering from noise pollution. The headphones are usually a coping mechanism to keep out the noise, not primarily to enjoy some music.

The problem with open plan offices is usually the fact, that it gets incredibly noisy. increased noise levels lead to being distracted, which leads to exhaustion, which leads to lower productivity, which in some cases causes mental problems like burnout syndrome etc...

this might be not the case for every type of person, but i had the "pleasure" of experiencing the upper situation personally and a few times in other ex- coworkers who just couldn't cope with the constant noise.

</comment><comment><USER34> Never really had 'collaborative effort and serendipitous & spontaneous conversations with colleagues that solve problems out of the blue'.

Most of the time, i have someone next to me or close to me, who is on phone with someone else.

I had a 4 people office once and it was great. Close the door, noise is outside.

</comment><comment><USER35> The commute to my office is a few meters, and I _really_ like that. It also has perks like private bathroom & fridge & coffee maker & oven, etc. I wouldn't want some company to have their open office so close to my bedroom.

<comment><USER6> I know your comment is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but, the most recent company I worked for (I work from home), build a really nice open office w a glass conference room off of the main area, a kitchenette, and a separate smaller office, connected to the main area.

However, there is a single toilet with shower for the entire space.

It is only accessible via the smaller office.

I would occasionally visit, but even w a few people, it was horrific.

At one point, they had two desks and folks working in the smaller room, but it became unbearable, after being able to experience your coworkers bathroom habits from less than 10 feet away.

When building the office, did I stress the need for a cohesive bathroom strategy? Yes.

I have many other work related stories like this, from all sorts of places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Most people can share their own experience; some people feel they are equally effective in an open space (compared to private / pair / small team office) but most feel they are not.

I have never heard a worker who requires concentration say they are MORE effective in an open space - only equal or less.

(I _have_ heard sales people say that, and they mostly extol the virtues of being able to ask anyone around any question mid-sale-call and get an immediate answer; I suspect their co workers might have a different perspective)

I highly recommend reading "Peopleware", which —- among many other subjects — has anecdotes and some real data about open spaces vs private vs small team offices.

</comment><comment><USER37> I am against it because I have worked in a closed office environment before: I worked in Germany academia (Leibniz institute) for 3.5 years. I shared an office with 1 other person and later had my own office. It was GREAT for productivity / thinking and had no impact whatsoever in my interaction with other people when I needed that

For the last 8 years I've been working for "silicon valley culture startups" all of which push open offices, and even though when you have 3 to 6 ppl it makes sense, once you are more than that it becomes hell for people that need to focus.

In reality they are used because closed office space is more expensive.

</comment><comment><USER38> Noise: In an open-office there's always going to be someone on a business or team call. Always some colleague having smalltalk with another. Always a phone ringing, a person yawning, someone's text notification buzzing on a table, someone typing very loudly. Not all the time, but at least every minute or few minutes. Many can't concentrate, and the notion to just put on headphones for 8 hours is not healthy.

Psychology: Many of us hate the idea that someone behind us might be looking at us, our screen, our work. That there may be someone walking behind us that we know. That the sound of footsteps behind you might be your boss, or a colleague you'd like to chat with. It might be anyone, and there's some desire to want to find out to get closure.

Open offices are okay if they're part of a range of choices. I enjoy working in open offices sometimes. Sometimes it drives me nuts and there's no escape. That's not okay. There must be balance and there must be options.

For example, semi-open is a great start, because it means sound doesn't bounce around in one big space of 60 people, but rather only in the space of 10, and gets limited in sound/light traveling due to e.g. plants, windows etc.

If there are meeting rooms to meet or organise calls, that means the high- impact activities can be separated. If there are team-rooms, it means you can collaborate without impacting people who you don't work with 9/10 times, while you can still seek them out in their team room or meeting rooms, or an open- space setting you happen to be in for part of the week, if you do want cross- team collaboration.

The idea that teamwork flows best by putting everyone in one giant cage without caring for sensitivity to sound and human psychology, is a joke that in any other field would be seen as a bruteforce idiotic idea. Besides, the economics of non-open offices aren't wildly different with the right approach. Sound-proofing to turn a giant area into a set of large areas by installing some glass has barely any impact on cost, but is already a semi-open improvement. There's lots of good ideas on the spectrum of every desk in a cubicles vs all desks on a giant football field, it's not one or the other and you need to provide balance and options.

</comment><comment><USER39> I worked in an open office for 7 or 8 years, and now have been working from my spare room for 2 years. I miss exactly what you are talking about: collaboration is much harder, there is a dramatic lack of spontaneous conversations, and I can no longer overhear or be overheard and get drawn into a conversation organically that leads to a far, far better outcome than would have happened otherwise.

Some things that make the open office I experienced good: nearly the entire floor was developers with some managers, operations teams sat between developer teams, the ability to turn off overhead lighting and just let natural light in through large windows with two levels of shades on them, and there were conference rooms near by for louder conversations and white boarding. There were support folks who would need to take calls, but that was in a separate area. I never heard them. We also would have no problem saying, "hey, too loud" if a conversation good too loud or if something serious was going on. Another benefit was that when it was lunch time, just about everyone got lunch at the same time and ate together; 50-80 people in the kitchen talking shop or silly things, building rapport, hearing issues others are facing and offering help and solutions.

Sometimes, like at the end of the week, it might get too noisy with too many conversations. Then it was time for headphones for some. But we are talking like an hour or two a week.

</comment><comment><USER40> Personally, my productivity drops when I get external stimuli. Movement? Lots of color? I won't get into a deep concentration and flow.

Fortunately, I work from home most of the time. I've build the antithesis to an open plan office: I've built an even smaller office in my office where I've essentially put up black curtains all round my desk. Working with a VR headset might be an option as well, but from what I hear they're not quite production ready yet for long term office/programming work.

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

But it really depends on what your job/task is.

And how well designed the open plan area is: Break-out spaces, individual rooms for when someone needs to focus, have extensive telephone calls especially of a confidential nature, plenty of meeting rooms, cubicles (I hate cubicles, but that's me, some people like them). And plenty of natural light.

And if someone wants to work remotely, that's good. You're not me, and then I appreciate doing this sometimes. A lot of people prefer to not work remotely because of the work-life divide an office space benefits. And some enjoy the social environment.

I absolutely cannot work listening to music but am fine with osmosis of office chatter; make sure the printer's in a printer room, putting it on the floor is a special form of hell. And have a pantry for eating, I quite like the taste of aged fish but don't want to smell it.

In my experience hot-desking does not work. The benefit of people sitting together is there's a work-flow happening. People that need to talk to each other can. In hot-desking that all breaks down so what's the point at all other than when the whole office are individual contributors and office layout is irrelevant - many people have a relationship even with the plant that sits next to them.

Not everyone's the same. Provide options. It's a team effort. What works for the team as a whole? Measure what the team does, analyse it, reflect.

</comment><comment><USER42> When I work in an open office I am always been up to date with what is going on. We have been able to squash problems when they were small because we could overhear people having problems with the systems. Problems that would be too small to bother us with if we are working from home. Communication in the office is quicker, we can get to the root of something fast. People who might known something will overhear and chip in

Lots of small things get fixed and fail to grow into big things

When I work from home I get uninterrupted focus on the task at hand which is something that is almost impossible in the office but only get to hear about problems when they get big and urgent

I also feel that I am dropping out of the loop. There are too many messaging systems that I need to keep an eye on, email, chat, texts, whatsapp, slack to keep in touch. In office communications is basically email for clients or in person

If I have a solid piece of work to do the office is not the best place but only if you can do it by yourself. In the office I can see when I can or cannot interrupt someone. When working from home I have no idea if it is a good time to interrupt someone

But for me the open office is only 12-15 people. Large than that and communications become impossible and the noise to signal get worse. Also managers seem to do more 'managing' in bigger offices :(

<comment><USER43> > But for me the open office is only 12-15 people.

Yeah, that's called redefinition. And it muddles the conversation. Open office space is a whole floor converted into stripped down cubicles.

What you are describing is an office for a team. I worked in similar environment (bit smaller) and it is indeed great for collaboration and productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> >I feel like you'd miss out on so much collaborative effort and serendipitous & spontaneous conversations with colleagues that solve problems out of the blue.

It's easier to get more connected than less connected.

For example facilitate social discussions by adding shared spaces, as it relies on the estates department. Comparatively, noise and interruptions are a lot harder to hchange as it relies on behaviour.

Solving hard problems requires focus time. You constantly fight against focus time in an open office.

</comment><comment><USER45> As someone who has worked in private offices, cube farms and open offices, I have to say the private office space allowed me to think deeply about things in a deliciously uninterrupted way. But then again ... I once spent the whole day thinking about a class I was designing, making just a few marks on a white board. The modern approach, AFAICT is to whip up a test and start coding. I don't believe it's better, but it is the current fashion.

</comment><comment><USER46> The constant "threat" of interruption is exhausting. Even on quiet days, it's mentally very difficult to force myself to focus when I know that somebody can break my focus at any moment.

I'm lucky because I have an awesome home-office, so when I need to focus more, I can just work from home. But many people don't have that luxury, so open offices probably end up being quite harmful to overall productivity.

</comment><comment><USER47> Why?

Noise, everyone around me talking on different conference calls and trying to concentrate on my own. Constant distractions both audio and visual. People don't respect the "headphones so stop bothering me" rule.

Yeah the collaboration is a plus, but it's just hard when you really need to get some serious work done.

I started working in 2000 and even as an intern I had my own office. It was a lot more productive.

</comment><comment><USER48> Open office plans for software developers is like the worst thing ever, unless your culture is one where people are quiet and put their headphones in and get to work.

I had that experience at one company, but others were a total mess.

A software developer needs at least a good 3-4 hour block of uninterruption to produce something valuable. Context switching and distractions are a productivity killer when it comes to building software.

At one company, we would have upper management come into our shared office (5 desks) where we had 3 developers working, and they would have their personal and business calls right next to us. Total disregard for people's personal space, peace of mind, and work environment.

For shared open offices to work, you need a strong culture and understanding that unless you are to be quiet and work on your tasks, you need to get out of the shared office and go discuss group matters in a conference room.

</comment><comment><USER49> I sometimes think that the perfect office space would be a room for teams of around 10 with maybe 3-4 alcoves or smaller office rooms that people can retreat too when they have calls to make or when they want to have complete quite...

The idea is to keep the collaborative effort and spontaneous conversation while still having place to retreat for silence and while limiting the full amount of noise by limiting the total number of people.

My first experience working for a company was in a traditional Japanese house in Kyoto which approximates this a bit, there was a relatively big room where we often worked but I would sometimes retreat downstairs and gaze at the indoor garden while working in silence..

Obviously such a setup would cost a lot more to companies but I do think that the productivity gains would help...

</comment><comment><USER50> The open plan office was the norm until the cubicle was invented (by Herman Miller I believe) _as a tool of liberation_ in the 1960s. Just look at any film from the 50s (like The Apartment or Desk Set) to see.

Some research institutions, inspired by academia, had offices (IBM, PARC, IAS, Bell Labs..) and mingling areas it that was less common.

I saw open plan offices reappear around 2000 when the price of Palo Alto real estate started shooting up and frankly it shocked me. It's crazy to me that this is considered savings given how much it costs to recruit and pay a person. I can't concentrate with noise or visual clutter (people moving in my field of view).

Some jobs do do better with an open plan, like sales teams. It's a cultural issue.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm a team lead and every single person on my team has told me they feel much more productive and able to focus since lockdown and 100% remote work started. One of the people on my team would normally work in our office's "chill room" because he found it slightly easier to focus in there compared to his actual desk.

In my opinion an open plan office for developers (or anyone, really) would ideally be an option, but you would have to opt-in. There are situations where being able to shout over your laptop at your coworkers is going to be beneficial, but there are also situations where people should be able to zone out and concentrate (zone in?) for several hours at a time without having to blast white noise in their headphones.

</comment><comment><USER52> I personally like them a lot, and I know plenty of people who range from also liking them to being indifferent about them. It's just one of the topics HN shows a very strong groupthink about. Wrong opinions on open plan offices are downvoted very aggressively, and complaints about them are comically exaggerated.

I think most people who complain about them here haven't experienced the alternatives. The most likely alternative is cubicle farms, which are soul crushingly terrible, or a number of different solutions which all require use of much more floor space. The economics of a more-floor-space approach would reasonably make everybody about $20,000-$50,000/year more expensive to employ, and well you can guess where that money would come from...

</comment><comment><USER53> I have worked in private offices, team spaces, and open plan.

Having a private office was great, but a team space I shared a few years ago - rented just for that team, for around three months - was astonishingly productive for all of us, with almost none of the downsides of open plan.

As far as open plan goes: it is worse for mental health, productivity, and creativity. There is ample evidence to support those assertions ( [https://theconversation.com/a-new-study-should-be-the- final-...](https://theconversation.com/a-new-study-should-be-the-final-nail- for-open-plan-offices-99756)).

The only advantage open plan has is that it is cheaper, per person, than any alternative - if you only factor in the cost of office space.

</comment><comment><USER54> > This topic seems to come up time and time again on here. As someone young > and new to the industry I have only ever experienced open plan offices, so I > don't really know what the alternative is like.

I appreciate your open mind on the subject!

> However I'm inclined to say I don't think I would enjoy cubicles or private > offices. I feel like you'd miss out on so much collaborative effort and > serendipitous & spontaneous conversations with colleagues that solve > problems out of the blue.

This is very unsettling to hear: That's the exact kind of hand-wavy argument that managers make.

Truthfully, I can't help but think of Stockholm syndrome when I read that sentence.

Here's the clencher: If you can't collaborate effectively in a private office or from home, there's a systemic mechanism failure. If your team or company isn't setup for effective communication, you will find yourself trapped in an open office plan _and believing they 're the only way to work_.

However, the real problem is buried: Your team/company either cannot effectively collaborate outside of an artificial environment, or at least believes that to be the case. Assuming this is true: Why?

For background, I've worked remote for most of my career, but at the start, I had an open office job (and a two hour commute each way, consisting of an hour walk to the nearest bus stop and an hour bus ride to downtown Orlando, because the job didn't pay well enough to consider purchasing a car). In hindsight, it was a miserable experience, but at the time I just coped with it.

> I also think it's just plain isolating being on your own in a room all day.

Easy lifehack: Don't do that. Working remote doesn't require you do that. Working in a private office doesn't require you do that.

If you have a private office, you can also schedule 1:1 meetings _in your office_.

If you're working from home, take regular breaks to talk to your family/neighbors/etc. Pet your dogs. Dogs need love too!

> What's wrong with just putting some headphones on if you want to put your > head down and do some deep, quiet work?

What's wrong with putting your jams on the speakers, rather than headphones, in your home office and standing up to dance when a good song comes on your playlist to get your blood flowing?

Different strokes.

</comment><comment><USER55> As a developer, you really don't spend a lot of time in spontaneous conversations about work. The open office is a money saving scheme for management who views coders as typists.

That said I wish they were popular - for my competitors. :-)

</comment><comment><USER56> [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/07/30/private-offices- re...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/07/30/private-offices-redux/)

</comment><comment><USER57> I had a great office layout which was a large room with 10-25 developers and managers as the team grew. The key factors which made the office work well was: plenty of space per developer (L shaped desk about 8x8ft), generally courteous noise levels, and a a few other rooms for louder work or larger conversations (meeting room, lab, extra rooms).

Collaboration was great which was important for a new project. I think for an existing long running project less collaboration may be necessary and extra separation may be better for productivity.

</comment><comment><USER58> > I would enjoy cubicles or private offices. I feel like you'd miss out on so > much collaborative effort and serendipitous & spontaneous conversations with > colleagues that solve problems out of the blue.

Private office does not have to mean that single person is in the room. We have offices big enough to hold whole cooperating team, in general of 3-8 people, occasionally more.

So you get debate, but debates from other teams and you dont have to worry that you are disturbing other teams.

</comment><comment><USER59> The most objectionable part for me is noise level, followed by the fact that my seat faces the big windows, which are frequently too bright. They are also often too warm for my comfort, though too cold for others. I don't want to listen to music or have hot ears from headphones. I started working life in open plan but quieter than nowadays but best was working in a 4 person office. I'm currently happier working in my study at home.

</comment><comment><USER60> > As someone young and new to the industry

Here's how open offices came about.

The CFO made a spreadsheet, and the "open office" column was a nickel less than the alternatives.

<comment><USER11> It's far more than a nickel difference. Any useful private office is about 100 sq ft. In an open office you can do with about 20 sq ft per person. So you cram the workers into bull pens and the managers can have acres of offices with windows and still save money on mid-city rents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm an introvert and like to have a quiet place of my own. I work way better this way. I'm not alone in my office, though, we're 2 in the same room, and the door is always open, and everyone else in keeps his office's door open unless they need privacy. Best of both worlds.

I can't work with music/headphones. I tried, but it doesn't seem to work for me as I tend to focus on the music.

<comment><AUTHOR> > t doesn't seem to work for me as I tend to focus on the music

I get what you mean, I find you have to pick the right sort of music. For me minimal techno is perfect, because it's energetic so doesn't relax me too much like ambient music, but also monotonous/repetitive so I don't get too into it

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Pros: Situational awareness. It's cheaper.

Cons: Lack of focus. Dishonesty in how it's 'sold' to the workers; the cost is never openly acknowledged as the reason.

I don't hate it. But I do suspect that the net result makes it a false economy. While I do miss the cameraderie of being in an office while working from home I'm not missing the distractions of open-plan.

<comment><USER62> Now if you want me to really get my hackles up, ask me about hot-desking. There's a policy invented by someone who had never met any actual human beings! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Each interruption you get (colleagues asking you something, chat messages, impromptu meetings, even you catching with the corner of the eye two of your colleagues leaving their tables to grab a coffee) costs at least 15 minutes of your time to get back into a focused (i.e, productive) mental state.

> What's wrong with just putting some headphones on if you want to put your > head down and do some deep, quiet work?

I don't know you, so don't try to take it personally, but I'd venture that your always-on generation and the constant expectation of immediate feedback led to _most_ of the younger ones incapable of really deep focus. When 85% of the solutions to our problems is no more than 5 minutes of Googling around, it gets really hard to exercise that part of the brain where we set ourselves to dig through all the layers of abstraction and build a good mental map of the problem to be solved.

When you do get in such a deep state of focus, it is not a problem to be "plain isolating to be in a room all day" because you don't realize the time passing around you. Like reading a good book that you just can't drop until is finished, no one should feel bad for coming out of a 5-6 hour session of deep focus, productive work and "not having connected" during that time.

</comment><comment> yoz-y Just like working from home is a mixed bag, so are the open offices. I think the main issue is that ultimately we are dealing with people. Some like things that other's don't.

And usually it's only those who don't like a thing that talk about it.

</comment><comment><USER64> I see sound. Open offices have lots of it. I think visually. This doesn't mix well.

</comment><comment><USER65> It's great to see this many opinions. I suggest you take a look at the book Peopleware. Part II of the book goes over the office environment and cites several studies and makes a really good case against open plan offices.

</comment><comment><USER14> I collect links on topics that interest me, sometimes over long periods. I have a list called "Open plan offices are bad".

[https://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt- interrupt...](https://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-a- programmer/)

[https://www.mattblodgett.com/2015/06/just-wear- headphones.ht...](https://www.mattblodgett.com/2015/06/just-wear- headphones.html)

[https://dandreamsofcoding.com/2014/06/17/science- superstitio...](https://dandreamsofcoding.com/2014/06/17/science-superstition- and-open-plan-offices/)

[http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open- flo...](http://nathanmarz.com/blog/the-inexplicable-rise-of-open-floor-plans- in-tech-companies.html)

[https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/09/10/developer-flow- state-a...](https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/09/10/developer-flow-state-and- its-impact-on-productivity/)

[https://hackernoon.com/what-happened-to-software- development...](https://hackernoon.com/what-happened-to-software- development-j92032w9)

[http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/10/09/is-facebooks- massive-o...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/10/09/is-facebooks-massive-open- office-scaring-away-developers/)

[https://www.prdaily.com/report-u-s-workers-hate-open- office-...](https://www.prdaily.com/report-u-s-workers-hate-open-office- spaces/)

[https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/08/the-case-for- rooms/56...](https://www.citylab.com/design/2018/08/the-case-for- rooms/563216/)

[https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191115-office- noise-a...](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191115-office-noise- acceptable-levels-personality-type)

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/07/30/private-offices- re...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/07/30/private-offices-redux/)

Just... could you click a little quieter, please?

</comment><comment><USER55> As an aside, when I'm working in a cubicle and people talk in the hallway right outside of my office I tell them:

"Hey guys, can move it down the hall, I'm trying to sleep here."

</comment><comment><USER66> _serendipitous & spontaneous conversations with colleagues that solve problems out of the blue_

In my experience those "solutions" are usually wrong in the sense that they only solve the immediate problem without giving due consideration to the wider project. If you leave out a lot of people involved most problems are easy to solve, because you're ignoring all the nuance and the things that make it hard. The solutions are also very rarely documented, so after the discussion people walk away with different ideas of what was discussed and different solutions in mind. In short, they might feel good, but they're often quite bad for the project.

</comment><comment><USER67> Sometimes when I am wearing headphones, I get dissociated with the outside world and forget that my farts make sounds. So I fart without muffling it, and my neighbor thinks I'm just a jerk that toots openly. Then whenever he farts he toots openly too, in a game of one-buttsmanship. As a result, nobody is particularly comfortable working and I have to take walks when otherwise I would have been blissfully ignorant.

</comment><comment><USER68> It's a nightmare for people with mental disorders such as ADHD.

</comment><comment><USER69> I had written a post on my page some time ago:

[https://www.franzoni.eu/productivity-the-office-and-an- open-...](https://www.franzoni.eu/productivity-the-office-and-an-open-floor- plan/)

TL;DR: the open office may not be a problem per se. Instead:

1) It's a problem if you get a very large open office with excessive employee density and/or with different kind of employees around. This usually results in a lot of noise and/or distractions from unrelated teams.

2) It's a problem if there're not other places where to go have video/phone calls, and/or if some people need to be constantly on their phone/meeting system.

Privacy, safety and a calm environment should be a must for an office. Otherwise, what's its purpose?

</comment><comment><USER70> Because interruptions. Lots of them. Of all kinds.</comment>


RealDonaldTrump account no longer active on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump does not resolve anymore
https://twitter.com/potus still in operation <comment><USER2> Donald J. Trump

Verified account

@realDonaldTrump

45th President of the United States of America 🇺🇸

Washington, DC

[https://t.co/OMxB0x7xC5](https://t.co/OMxB0x7xC5)

Joined March 2009

2,369 Photos and videos

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>---

President Trump

Verified account

@POTUS

45th President of the United States of America, @realDonaldTrump.

Tweets archived: [http://wh.gov/privacy](http://wh.gov/privacy)

Washington, D.C.

WhiteHouse.gov

Joined January 2017

190 Photos and videos

</comment><comment><USER3> It resolves for me

Edit: looks like it disappeared for 70 seconds, but it's definitely back online at the moment

<comment><USER4> [https://mobile.twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926238960594178...](https://mobile.twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926238960594178048)</comment></comment>


His mission: Meet 10k people, one at a time, for an hour at a time - <AUTHOR> https://www.inquirer.com/news/rob-lawless-robs10kfriends-20190731.html <comment><USER2> One way to consider this is in terms of attention, the ultimately nonfungible resource: you can pay attention to only one thing at a time, seach moment must be experienced, none can be called back.

If you live to 80 and devote your adult life from 20 onwards to meeting people, if you meet 10,000 people, you can devote about 50 hours to each of them -- a little over two days. That's sleeping or waking, working or resting.

The US House of Representatives has 435 members (add the hundred senators -- and 3 DC electors -- to get the famous 538 electoral college votes), each representing something like 720,000 citizens. Given a 2 year term, this means that each representative can devote a net total of ... just under 90 seconds per constituent.

If you wanted to dedicate your adult life to meeting everyone _currently_ alive on Earth, 7.3 billions, you can dedicate just over a quarter second to each.

At the same time, in every second, there are 215 years of human experience lived, 14,000 years per minute, 830,000 years per hour, and 20 million years per day. Rounding somewhat.

How much of that experience can be distinct and individual, how much is shared? What are the consequences of forced attention, as with advertising, or with forced isolation?

How much _can_ we know, and pass on, culturally? Is there a net effective intergenerational knowledge transfer bandwidth limit, and how close to that (or exceeding it) are we? How is that shared between culture, personal, technical, and poetic knowledge?

<comment><USER3> One thing that's commonly true in statistics: You don't need a very big sample size to get an accurate representation of a population. I'm willing to bet you could get away with meeting 1,000, well chosen people, and get an accurate sample of society.

If you think about it, people aren't all that unique. Most people share the same personality, same hobbies, same interests and problems in life. Most of the things in life we think apply to us (for example navigating romantic relationships) are just common patterns that are repeated over and over again with millions of people. In fact we're all a lot less special than we think we are.

<comment><USER4> I'm willing to bet there are more than 1000 configurations, and sampling a mere 0.00001% of the population isn't going to get you much. In other words, that's sampling 1 out of every 7.3 million people. An utterly useless exercise.

Statistics is fun, isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a lot of cynical takes here, but I like to think of this as the type of art project that can only take place on the internet, because there has to be some kind of funding involved.

It's easy to decry him for having sponsors, but that is a bizarre standard. Michelangelo had sponsors/patrons, but nobody disregards the Sistine Chapel because he was paid for it. Personally, I really want people to use the internet for weird, personal art projects that are shared with the world. Getting sponsored by WeWork instead of the Medicis doesn't change anything.

<comment><USER6> The difference is that when being sponsored by a company you have to wonder whether the content is influenced by the brands using it to advertise. If WeWork wanted him to show how great their spaces are or take down posts that denigrate them, we have no way of knowing. I suppose the Medici family could have done the same for Michaelangelo, but I doubt it

<comment><USER7> All content is designed to influence you. Just the brand association should be evil enough.

Subconsciously, you are being told whatever feeling you have about the content to associate with this brand or idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm doing my own version of this through my mentoring program for managers. I'm at 80 since February, and it's been a real joy (best part of my day). I've had a chance to talk to managers from over a dozen countries, some of whom call me at 2AM their time (dedication) and share with me their stories of managing people all around the world.

Sometimes the sessions are energizing. Sometimes they're sad. Sometimes they're deeply thought provoking... However, they are always worth the hour I put into them.

My calendar is booked up this month, but September is still mostly clear :) Hope some of you sign up for a session.

[https://freemanagermentor.com](https://freemanagermentor.com)

<comment><USER9> i've booked a slot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is the kind of thing that one may get shamed for calling garbage, but it seems like he is just trying to make a clone of Humans of New York and make money by hiding ads in what's supposed to be heartwarming human stories.

Yes, this post and his brand is full of "humble" values and what not. He may be genuine, but I don't think it's praiseworthy. It feels like a tool for virtue signaling.

<comment><USER11> Calling it virtue signaling is a cheap way to dismiss something.

Virtue signaling is when a person trumpets their moral stance without a willingness to make any significant investment in it. This guy investing 10,000 hours into the project disqualifies it from that moniker.

<comment><USER12> So people who buy a Prius are never virtue signalling?

<comment><USER13> Conversely, are people who buy a Prius always virtue signaling?

Perhaps the appellation is an empty way to dismiss someone without engaging them?

<comment><USER12> > are people who buy a Prius always virtue signaling?

Of course not.

I was simply responding to the idea that a significant investment is all it takes to counter the claim that some activity is virtue signaling.

<comment><USER14> "Significant" is a relative term.

Buying a Prius vs. buying a non-Prius is hardly a significant investment for people who make that choice.

I guess the more proper word here would be _sacrifice_ , something you never get back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had a buddy in business school who insisted on meeting every one of our classmates for a coffee chat (~400).

By the time he got to me, it was the middle of our second (and last year). I was skeptical since I thought it was kind of weird, plus most friend groups had formed by that point.

Turned out to be one of the most intriguing conversations I ever had. We became very close friends after that.

No short cut to friendship. Sometimes you just gotta get face to face and see how things go.

<comment><USER16> Just to satisfy my personal curiosity: how successful was he after schooling? I have to imagine this outgoing / network-driven personality makes one quite successful.

<comment><USER15> He's looking to buy a company / working in micro private equity. Well suited for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems like a strange mission. The fact that he's unemployed, lost his girlfriend, lives with his parents, and must monetize his efforts via 22k Instagram followers makes the exercise feel a bit sad to me. Perhaps he will learn and grow from this and it'll be worth it. I hope so.

<comment><USER18> Then again, few people are able to do this, and if his parents are willing to subsidize his project, he might gain valuable insight that he couldn't do at... say, 40 and a family.

This feels like a project I have planned with programmers the next time I'm in between jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I spent a couple hours the other night lying awake in bed dreaming of spending one year trying to help someone new every day. I was thinking it would be cool to dedicate each work day of the year to meeting someone new and offering my hours that day to help them in whatever way I could. The help could range from washing their car, running an errand, to picking up garbage on their street, to writing some code or spinning up a website for them.

I thought it would have a really nice dual effect of pushing me to get to know a bunch of people and also teach me something about serving and helping others.

Then I started thinking about how to leverage social media to pivot it into meeting more and more interesting/important people and monetizing it. Quickly realized that would undermine the original intent of the project and make it into something else entirely that I did not like.

I don't understand the appeal of meeting 10,000 different people as that sounds like too much quantity and not enough quality time but to each his own.

It is super interesting to see someone else living out a version of an idea that at 2am sounded like a pretty original concept.

</comment><comment><USER20> After 10,000 hours of meeting people, I would think one would have some well- honed skills required for managing people. Of course being a good manager requires more than just understanding people. But that level of empathy and instincts are valuable skills for anyone who wants to work with people.

<comment><USER7> Better for interviewing related jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Couldn't he just get a job where he gets to help out a lot of people? Sales? Anything customer facing. This would be a good way to 'monetise' the meeting thousands for an hour 'dream'.

You could use this approach to get into elected office, if you actually started now for an election four years hence then you could get in without party affiliation.

As it is there is something peculiar and narcissistic about this project, how can you build real friendships if you are spending all of your time doing these ten thousand one-off meetings.

<comment><USER22> He wants to spend an hour per-person with 10,000 people, rather than meeting 10,000 people in a single hour.

<comment><USER21> So he could do 10,000 eye tests, teach 10,000 people first aid, try to sell 10,000 cars or fleece 10,000 people out of their pensions, all on a one to one basis.

He is not rock star enough to meet 10,000 people in an hour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sounds like this man could make real impact working at a senior person's home.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was #2163 - I responded to an instagram post he made as he was passing through town, and we were able to make something work. I really enjoyed talking with him for an hour!

<comment><USER25> Pretty cool to have been part of the mission.

I actually scrolled through his IG to find your post - so cool!

Good on you for taking part.

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BpRwd9HnfGU/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BpRwd9HnfGU/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wish I remembered the person's name, but there is a guy in London who did a start up and made a fair amount of money. Since then he spends his time talking with different people to get ideas. He'll buy you a hamburger (at one of the upscale hamburger places no less) to talk to you for an hour. I never ended up chatting with him (I got busy), but a friend of mine did and said that it was quite a good experience.

I thought this article might have been about that guy. It's a bit different, though. The person I'm thinking about is independently wealthy and thinks this is a productive use of his time. I _think_ he's gathering data for a new startup, but unfortunately I didn't get a chance to talk to him about it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Startup vanity metrics transposed to real life interactions.

</comment><comment><USER28> I just asked 3 friends for fun to fly to the US to meet him. I'm half joking, half serious.

I think I want some variety in my life :P

</comment><comment><USER29> This is not particularly new concept, but the internet is a huge market so the cake is big enough I guess.

His project reminds me of Marina Abramovic "The artist is present" she held in MoMA ([https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/marina-abramovic- ma...](https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/marina-abramovic-marina- abramovic-the-artist-is-present-2010/)).</comment>


Reading the NSA's codebase: LemonGraph review - <AUTHOR> https://ayende.com/blog/184066-C/reading-the-nsas-codebase-lemongraph-review-part-i-storing-nodes <comment><USER2> Often you wrap a library api with your own to minimize impact of updating library versions to the rest of the codebase or to provide cross version support, not just to say swap it for Oracle. At a game studio I was at we shimmed all of the PS3 API. No system Apu was allowed to leak past one layer in our codebase. It helped us move to PS4 quicker. Or to windows (with everything nerfed) between the consoles.

<comment><USER3> I like to do that too. Having a thin layer over the actual API makes maintenance much easier and you can test your layer better. But it's hard to implement this in a bigger team. A lot of people don't see the point.

<comment><USER4> It really depends on the API. For stuff that is likely to change it makes sense to abstract away the API calls. eg either because the API provider likes to break stuff or because you need your code to be agnostic towards that particular library eg for portability reasons. But that isn't always a concern and if you're abstracting away an API just for the sake of it then you'll have to question whether you're adding unnecessary complexity and overhead just for the sake of perceived modularity.

Like everything in software development, it's about evaluating the right methodologies for the problems rather than hitting every screw with the same hammer.

<comment><USER5> Hitting screws with hammers, eh? Ever drive a nail with a drill?

<comment><USER6> It's a reasonable way to drill a few holes in wood if you're in a bind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "As an aside, I'm loving the fact that you can figure out the call graph for methods based on the number of underscores prefixed to the name. No underscore, public method. Single underscore, private method used internally. Two underscores, hidden method, used sparingly. At three underscores, I could tell you what it means, but given that this is NSA's codebase, I'll have to kill you afterward."

</comment><comment><USER8> To be fair, the way malloc is used is actually the preferred way. If you change the type of the pointer variable, the malloc is still valid.

<comment><USER9> I'm mildly surprised to see the NSA using malloc instead of calloc, especially for allocating what seems to be a partially initialized struct.

<comment><USER10> Really depends on whether they know that all fields will be written before return or not.

This way hey are calling malloc() is very common in professional code bases and a safety measure; I'm surprised the author was surprised.

<comment><USER11> The way I read it, the author is surprised that struct node_t is typedef'd to node_t* and not simply node_t

I am not used to that style so it seems odd to me, but I suppose if it was common in a codebase one would get used to it.

<comment><USER12> Most compilers in the 80's and 90s had pretty restricted grammars based on K&R before C89 and newer standards fixed these sort of things. I've seen a bit of code like this from then... Off the top of my head, I'm thinking the Amiga toolkit and Xwindows. Old embedded code may still have some of this going on as well.

<comment><USER10> Sometimes limits are good. They lead to people playing it safe.

I've spent most of my life dealing with C code dating from 1986 and earlier to present day. Once you get used to the stylistic conventions one of the things that falls out is the simplicity even for huge, old legacy code bases. Often little more than grep or etags is sufficient to competently navigate and follow the flow of this kind of code. Simple things are simple: what callstacks can end up here? etc. The code often has the property that if you printed it you'd still be able to navigate it without issue. Given a random page and a line, getting to somewhere would be possible.

In comparison so many modern code bases are just completely incomprehensible without a tool in the form of an IDE (and often still quite challenging with them because even the IDE isn't sure, and so you must resort to runtime analysis). So many "tricks" used which require tools and require the tools to be bug free and robust.

The closest I have come to "pick it up and you can read and understand it without assistive technologies" is Go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's with the name??

There is already a well-known and popular library for graph analysis (in C++) named "Lemon Graph Library". It is 10 years old. As far as I can tell, this new library is not related in any way. (Am I mistaken?)

Did they not simply google for the words "lemon graph" before they published this code base? Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER14> Do you seriously think they care about re-using a name for a throw-away non- classified project? People have better things to do with their time.

<comment><USER15> The idea of the NSA googling `lemon graph` then saying "Welp, looks like someone else already has it. Back to the drawing board", is actually pretty hilarious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> On the topic of code reading, can anyone endorse any tools specific to reading a code base, rather than development?

I've been using vim and cscope forever, but I'm wondering if there's anything new and interesting out there.

...or even screencast recommendations of folks that are particularly proficient at this.</comment>


Google Goes Green - <AUTHOR> http://www.eco4planet.com/

<comment><USER2> What I understand from the FAQ and Por que usar pages is that this is only a frontend for Google Search which tries to reduce the amount of energy used because of its black background. This idea is not new, there have been previous sites with a black background google search, like Blackle (<http://www.blackle.com/>), and even CSS stiles using the Stylish extension for firefox (no need for the extension in Chrome). You can check this article:

[http://hubpages.com/hub/How-much-power-do-we-save-if- GOOGLE-...](http://hubpages.com/hub/How-much-power-do-we-save-if-GOOGLE- screen-turns-black-or-grey)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage client projects which need lots of copy and images - <AUTHOR>

For our current way of working, we share an Excel sheet which states what assets (i.e. images and copy) are needed and what's been delivered.  The client will drop the files into a Dropbox folder and update the Excel spreadsheet.  I'm finding this way of working inefficient because a good number of times, files are just dropped into folders with no organization, no context and no update of the Excel spreadsheet.  Tons of emails still need to be sent to know what's happening in the Dropbox folder.<p>Does anyone have a better way to manage the sharing of assets between client and vendor for projects. <comment><USER2> It isn't a perfect solution, but we often use unfuddle ( <http://unfuddle.com> ) for that. You can attach files to tickets, and set milestones to be dependant on tickets, so it's always easy to send a client a report showing which outstanding tickets allocated to them are holding up a particular milestone.

It introduces a lot of "project management" administrative work, which we're still struggling with deciding which projects benefit enough from it to account for the extra time spent in the project management tool, and which projects are small enough that letting one person "own" the project and deal with all that manually is worth the risk of dropping things on the floor occasionally.

There's a free level of account (2 users, 200mB storage) you can use to test drive it...

</comment><comment><USER3> Any ticketing system that supports attachments is OK.</comment>


Is Lua interesting, from a programming language design perspective? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2100902/is-lua-interesting-from-a-programming-language-design-perspective/2102399#2102399

<comment><USER2> Very good answer, but the question sounds like a a setup :-)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Dixer></comment>


Show HN: Makely – 3D Printing for Everyone - <AUTHOR> https://makely.me <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

I want to show you my solo project, Makely, which I have been working on for a little over a year.

Makely lets you find 3D printing enthusiasts and small businesses that will help you to 3D print your ideas.

I created Makely because I saw how, despite existing giants like 3DHubs or Shapeways, 3D printing is innaccessible to the everyday user. With current platforms, the minimum requirement is an existing 3D model - this is actually quite a high barrier - 3D modelling is hard, and modelling for printing has its own requirements.

Makely eliminates the need to have a 3D model ready and any knowledge of suitable materials. You just need to post a description of your project and the creators on the platform will send you a quote of how much it would cost.

If you own a 3D printer, you can start earning by taking on projects.

Happy to answer any questions!

\- Petar

<comment><USER2> Great concept!</comment></comment>


Kawkab Monospaced Arabic Font - <AUTHOR> http://makkuk.com/kawkab-mono/ <comment><USER3> The font's designer here- glad you guys like it!

I wasn't ready to put this up on HN because I didn't have an English page yet, but @specifictso has gone ahead and posted it.

The font is licensed under the SIL Open Font License as mentioned.

There's less than 10 Arabic monospaced typefaces out there and Kawkab Mono comes to fill a gap in this area. Might not be as highly demanded as Latin monospaced fonts, but still, it's great to have variety.

This is very much beta software as I haven't really tested the font outside of my personal setup. I've had no type design experience prior to this project. Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

<comment><USER4> It's been a long time since I tried to read right-to-left. The red isn't really more of a pink on my screen. Is that a choice? I always like how true red jumped out.

<comment><USER5> Red and blue on black make for pretty cool 3D effects. I noticed it when playing with colors in terminal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Beautiful! So much more readable than the other Arabic fonts I've seen in the past.

This is a little far fetched, but I think is a huge win for society. Better Arabic fonts = easier Arabic-only speakers to do work online = more opportunity for a huge portion of the world.

<comment><USER3> The Arabic type design community is already tiny, but there's a good number of really beautiful and well-designed Arabic fonts out there, and equally talented designers. My font here doesn't really even compare, it's an amateur's work.

Examples [http://www.sakkal.com/type/index.html](http://www.sakkal.com/type/index.html) [http://www.amirifont.org/](http://www.amirifont.org/) [http://www.29letters.com/](http://www.29letters.com/) [https://www.typotheque.com/fonts/arabic](https://www.typotheque.com/fonts/arabic) And also check out the Arabic fonts published by Monotype

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Out of curiosity, what text editors work well with Arabic these days? A few years back, when Textmate was still very popular, I had to sometimes do i18n work. I had a coworker for a different department who was a native Arabic speaker, who would help me out, but together we still struggled. We'd put the cursor where an edit needed to be made, and changes would appear elsewhere. It took lots of trial-and-error to get the work done. Are things better these days?

<comment><USER3> It's very hit and miss in terms of code editors. For example Sublime Text has no complex text shaping at all. It actually renders Arabic as disjointed letters.

The JetBrains series of IDEs have some Arabic support, in the sense that the text is rendered properly at least.

I made an Arabic Markdown editor for the Mac last year, so that personally helps me when I need to edit Arabic text [http://katibapp.com/](http://katibapp.com/)

There's a lot left to be done for Arabic. So much low-hanging fruit.

<comment><USER8> Emacs claims support for Arabic editing. How is this in practice?

<comment><USER9> It's perfect.

<comment><USER10> Can you go into more detail?

In particular, can Emacs deal with cases where the Unicode RTL algorithm gives nonsense, such as editing HTML in Arabic?

(Because HTML tags are made of punctuation, Roman letters, and attribute values that could be in any language, you can end up with LTR segments that may include half a tag and some adjacent text. At that point you can't even see visually what they include; you have to reason out what Unicode is doing. You might even end up with a tag that begins with an open angle bracket that looks like > and ends with a closing angle bracket that also looks like >.)

I ask this not as someone who knows any Arabic, but someone who has to deal with the _results_ of complexities of text such as RTL formatting. To make mixed-direction text editing "perfect", someone would have to put a lot of task-specific design into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, this really shows off how pretty Arabic looks. I can't read a word of it but I really appreciate the aesthetics of the language and it's unfortunate it always gets mucked up in digital format.

</comment><comment><USER12> There is a shortage in monospace fonts for Arabic script. Thank you so much for this! It's beautiful. Under what license this is published?

<comment><USER13> It appears to be under the SIL Open Font License: [http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=...](http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=OFL)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This would be great for قلب! It's an Arabic programming language: [http://nas.sr/%D9%82%D9%84%D8%A8/](http://nas.sr/%D9%82%D9%84%D8%A8/)

(repl here: [http://qlb-repl.herokuapp.com/](http://qlb-repl.herokuapp.com/))

If you don't speak Arabic (like me, for now :<), you might have to look at the source code to figure out how to use it. :)

<comment><USER15> It's a Lisp dialect it seems :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are there more basic string operations that need to be available for Arabic, a quick play with copy and paste produces all sorts of unusual effects I assume because of combining marks not being copied or being suitable in their new contexts.

I'd assume that the text is modified in units more complex than substrings and whitespace splitting?

<comment><USER17> Letters in Arabic have different rendering depending on where they lie in the word; at the start, middle, end, or following/preceding certain characters.

This is the main problem you see sometimes in movies where they try to show something in Arabic and they get the rendering wrong. They probably get each letter on its own and try to construct the words like that, where the letters do not join and the whole thing looks like a mess.

<comment><USER18> Fwiw, Greek also has one letter (sigma) that differs in rendering depending on where in the word it appears. It's the same letter, it's just that when it appears word-final, it looks different. But Unicode decided to split it into two codepoints, rather than treat it as a rendering issue. Therefore rendering of Greek codepoints never depends on position within the word, even though rendering of Greek _letters_ can. Instead it's up to the user to make sure that whenever a lowercase sigma appears word-final, it should be encoded with a different codepoint, GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA (U+03C2), 'ς', rather than the usual codepoint, GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA (U+03C3), 'σ'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't read Arabic, but it's great that the internationalization of modern programming languages and editors allows for this.

Sure, statements are still in English in most languages, but it must feel great to be able to write comments in your own language!

<comment><USER20> >but it's great that the internationalization of modern programming languages and editors allows for this.

Having to juggle languages inside of my head while also deciphering code just creates unnecessary problems (don't know about you but I always need to "switch context" because I'm thinking in some language) - also there's the problem you have to learn double terminology and in reality few actually use the localized terms, they just mix in English ones - this makes talking about programming awkward because English terms sounds weird when you apply contextual rules for words, and (thankfully) nobody actually uses the translated terminology.

I don't believe you can be a good programmer without knowing English - <USER2> existing code/resources are in English and it's the language in which new developments are created and this is an industry with very fast innovation cycle.

Also we live in a global economy with multinational teams - why make things more complicated for everyone by using non-standard languages ? Sure the choice of English is arbitrary and it might not be a perfect choice but it's what we have and there's no good reason to change it.

I've seen some places (government related) mandate which language must be used but I would not call this "great".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is very nice; and easy to read... one of my main qualms with Arabic fonts has been their jaggedness. The evenness of this font will not only make code and comments look beautiful; but also the web!

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't know Arabic but I'm very glad work like this is being done.

</comment><comment><USER23> Good job ِAbdullah.

The font looks amazing and easy and comfortable on the eyes. Let us know when you will publish it on GitHub so we could contribute more to this seed project and expand it even further.

Congrats to you again

</comment><comment><USER24> So pretty!

IMO, the variable connector width in Arabic script seems to make letterforms less distorted compared to the variable-width letterforms than in Western scripts.

</comment><comment><USER25> Awesome font, will try it in Arabic Adobe CS6 inDesign, but for webpages, I think the browser will fall back to default fonts (in Chrome/Firefox) regardless of the actual webpage fonts.</comment>


Show HN: DropZap World: A falling block game with lasers. [video, beta] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsPtRPDAvwI <comment><AUTHOR> You can try out the DropZap World beta via TestFlight:

[https://testflight.apple.com/join/CdEXgjst](https://testflight.apple.com/join/CdEXgjst) [iOS13, iPadOS13, or tvOS13]

The game has over 100 levels with three modes each.

Any feedback would be appreciated!

P.S. If the TestFlight link doesn't work, try opening it in Safari.</comment>


Bootstrapping by going serverless? - <AUTHOR> https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/293668 <comment><AUTHOR> I see the attraction to this. But, frankly, I think this article downplays the risks. In particular, the fundamental dependency on 3rd-party services/applications I expect to be concerning to outside investment - assuming that's what they'll eventually need down the road.</comment>


Every touch-based Apple product targeted by apparent patent troll - Suraj-Sun http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/04/every-touch-based-apple-product-targeted-by-apparent-patent-troll.ars

<comment><AUTHOR> A bit harsh to call a company/inventor who is producing touch panel displays / screens since more than 15 years a "patent troll".

Their solutions are in use and new ones created all the years since then (see [http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2008/03/10/s...](http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2008/03/10/story4.html)).

Key question is if Apple with their technology have infringed these patents.

Apple does reference the patent themselves for 3 of their own applications.

If you have a look at the drawings they (together with the text) do describe the use of gestures including pressure on haptic touch devices to manipulate elements on the screen. Again this patent does not have priority from 2005 but from 1997 when it was originally filed.

A more extensive overview on the patent at: [http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/04/apple- su...](http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/04/apple-sued-for- their-entire-line-up-of-touch-related-products.html) (submitted yesterday as <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3875325>)

</comment><comment><USER2> It's a tiring endless war. I am not going to say the usual "patent is broken" or other clichés because I am not a lawyer and I have no real clue of the proportion of the problem and if some reasonable solutions exists but I am really afraid for small companies in hardware business. Apple can handle such claims, they have so much cash that they can probably simply the company that makes the claim. Some companies would just get crushed and surrender in a matters of months.

The only satisfying part is that everybody takes a good taste of their own medicine, Apple included.</comment>