Ask HN: Are there any tech companies in the Bay Area that offer private offices?
I’m wondering if there are any tech companies in the Bay Area that offer private offices to individual non-executive-level employees. I find that I am extremely unproductive in open office workspaces. I can never concentrate due to all the noise and visual distractions. Putting on headphones isn’t an option. Are they any places that offer something like this? Are private offices really such a rarity now? This is my office [1]. Pardon the crappy photo quality. All employees at SmugMug get a space like this with a door. They aren't totally enclosed offices per se...the front wall is a metal mesh covered with giant gorgeous photos on the outside, and they stop about 1' short of the ceiling, so they might not meet your headphone requirement, but in general things are quiet. One of my walls has whiteboard paint covering it. Throughout the day I switch between my chaise and the double monitors on my desk when I need the screen space. But there's nothing quite like kicking back with my shoes off after lunch with a cappuccino and knocking things off my list. I don't think I could ever work in an open floor plan after this. I usually don't close my door, but if I did I'd have zero visual distractions. To the contrary, thanks to a helpful decorating budget all new employees receive, you can make your own zen space (textured wood print wallpaper is both inexpensive and amazing). We have several open spaces of varying sizes with couches and such if that is what you'd prefer. Convertible standing desks are also available for anyone that wants one. This is the first company I've worked at that seems to get that different people have different work environment needs, and that focused, complex work often is best done in a private space you can be comfortable in. Hope it's alright to plug given the nature of the post but...we're hiring [2]. Where are you located? I don't see your address anywhere on your site. Yeah, I can see where people might want to know where they'd actually be working. We're in the middle of overhauling our jobs site to share a lot more info and HR confirmed this info is already in the plan :) Anyway, we're a quick walk from the Mountain View Caltrain stop on Evelyn[1]. We also have a parking lot and bike storage. I believe they’re located in Mountain View. The only way I was able to find this was to look at their Terms of Service, however, so it might not be accurate. I cannot believe that still in this day and age, there is still a belief that open offices are better for developers?? Joel Spolsky tried to set the record straight, what, about 15 years ago? For the record, I don't normally listen to music when programming - I like a quiet environment. Interruptions are a bane. I have a private office, but as soon as anyone enters - even quietly, my flow state is broken. Plus on the flipside, while waiting for a long compile or download, I will grab one of the guitars sitting in my office and randomly jam away. I am sure in an open office environment, my co-workers would not appreciate that either. I have a private office (I work from home), but there's a difference between open offices where EVERYONE in the company is out in one big area and a separate space for each team. That's how a team I used to be on was arranged. There was the outside office, then what was termed the "developer cave", which was a large section of the office (closed off, with a door!) that housed 5 developers and 3 QA people all working on the same product. That's better than private offices (it encourages collaboration), but, doesn't have most of the downsides of a traditional "open office" (having to overhear the sales guy making calls all day, and people don't just pop in to ask a question. A room full of working developers is intimidating. Best to send an email instead.). On top of that, we had separate booths (with doors) that were kind of like phone booths, just enough space for two people, that developers would snag if they needed to focus. My last job had a similar setup, with a developer cave (complete with dim lighting to disorient visitors) with 5 devs working on the same system. There were long stretches of quiet time to focus, and a little bit of idle bullshitting with the opportunity to shoot questions across the room when it would be faster than looking things up yourself or going through email. Now I'm sitting in a cube farm, sharing a cube, and listening to administrative assistants chatter about their children and their health issues and what they had for lunch all day long. I started coming in hours late and leaving hours late just so I have a few hours of peace at the end of the day to get some focused work done. And that's on an 'easier to ask forgiveness than permission' basis. I'd kill for a setup like the top comment by shostack, but just getting back to a cave would be lovely. >>with the opportunity to shoot questions across the room when it would be faster than looking things up yourself or going through email Faster for you, not for the poor slob who has to answer your questions. True, but I meant that in context with the idling. In other words, when we're in a lull in the BSing, it was a good time to toss around a few questions. A quick "hey, do you happen to know where xyz happens?" can save you ten minutes and cost someone ten seconds. With a small group of just 5 programmers, it was easy enough to know when was an appropriate time for speaking and when it would be best not to disrupt the others. After 20 years in software development, I've come to believe that's the best set up for a balanced creativity and communication. I don't think many organisations have a genuine belief that open offices are better…but it's more palatable justification than the fact that they're cheaper. They could just be honest with employees... The argument has shifted to "worse for individual productivity but what actually matters is teamwork." Plus a lot of claims, some of them coming from practising software developers, that you shouldn't trust the output of the lone hacker holed up in her own office. No, I don't buy it either. Well, Joel advocated private space for developers, but with an emphasis on 'paired coders' working together from time to time to mitigate the risk of 'lone wolf' programmers going off on a tangent, and to ensure code quality and consistency. This was all before the dot com boom IIRC. At one stage, a few years ago there seemed to be a movement towards private developer offices, but it seems to have been overturned somewhat of late. I don't recall Joel being much of a pairing advocate. Actually, more the opposite [1]. Are you sure you aren't thinking of someone else? Hmm... you could be right. I am trying to remember a more than decade old blog post, so I may have conflated Joel with someone else. I thought perhaps his business partner Jeff Atwood, but a quick Google search shows that he is not an advocate of paired programming either. I definitely know about Joel's insistence on private offices for his developers at the (then) new FogBugz offices, but stand corrected on my other statements. >Joel Spolsky tried to set the record straight, Joel Spolsky may have tried but his companies (Fog Creek, Stackexchange) are not big enough nor influential enough to convince the industry. Microsoft in 1990s was one of the few companies that deliberately provided private offices with a door for every programmer. However, that ideology later morphed into putting 2 or more developers to share one room and then relocating a large group onto open floor plans[1]. It shows that even a company that originally prided itself on private offices eventually deviated towards open offices. (They still have lots of private offices.) As a counterpoint to offices with doors, there was billionaire Gordon Moore (CEO Intel) in 1996 without a private office.[2] The issue is that the touted benefits of private offices are not obvious slam dunks to observers. For example, if open floor plans with their distractions kill productivity, Google (open cubicles) should have lost to Microsoft Bing. Amazon and their AWS programmers distracted by open offices should be losing to Microsoft's Azure programmers. (Of course, there are multiple other factors at play besides office layout but that may also prove that open-vs-private doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things -- i.e. it's statistical noise.) There are no slam dunk business case studies that definitively proves that private offices produce superior business results. The narrative for private offices needs spectacular headlines of success in Harvard Business Review or Techcrunch articles about YC companies with private offices defeating every competitor. So far, the proponents like Spolsky (not big enough) and Microsoft (not considered a trendsetter in the tech world) is not enough. [1]http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-developer-division/ [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX5g0kidk3Y&feature=youtu.be... > Microsoft in 1990s was one of the few companies that deliberately provided private offices with a door for every programmer. However, that ideology later morphed into putting 2 or more developers to share one room and then relocating a large group onto open floor plans[1]. It shows that even a company that originally prided itself on private offices eventually deviated towards open offices. (They still have lots of private offices.) It's worth noting that when Microsoft was at its peak was when they had private offices. Correlation is not causation, but it's hardly a glowing recommendation for open offices. > As a counterpoint to offices with doors, there was billionaire Gordon Moore (CEO Intel) in 1996 without a private office.[2] That's not a serious counterpoint. We're talking about private offices for engineers who are on the maker schedule, where interruptions are harmful. CEOs run on a manager's schedule where interruptions are less harmful. >but it's hardly a glowing recommendation for open offices. To be clear, I'm not "recommending" open offices. Microsoft still has private offices and I believe it's still the majority configuration of their Seattle campus (MS employee can chime in to confirm this.) >We're talking about private offices for engineers who are on the maker schedule, where interruptions are harmful. The Intel programmers don't have private offices either. (The ideology was that the CEO's open cubicle was copied down to the engineers as well.) Also, the problem is that "harmful" open layout has not been proven to lead to business failure nor has "beneficial" private offices proven to lead to business success. We need a company with private offices to beat Facebook/Google/Apple/Intel who all have open offices without doors for their engineers. Instead, what we have is a bunch of articles that do surveys and of course the employees will respond "open offices suck!" What influences the industry is concrete business success and not employee satisfaction surveys that preaches to the choir. If people don't understand that distinction, they are being naive about what it takes to sway the industry. > We need a company with private offices to beat Facebook/Google/Apple/Intel who all have open offices without doors for their engineers. I know at least two of those four companies have very liberal working policies. If I want to work on a problem with
a team member we can take over a meeting room for a few days. If I want to work from home for a couple of days that's ok as well. Sometimes I'll go work from a cafe. Hell, sometimes I'll have an intense meeting then play a couple of hours of table tennis to relax. Basically if I want quiet time I can easily get it. It's not really like that for most software development jobs at normal companies. I left Microsoft in 2015 and at that time my team was in private offices. Some had their own office, some shared with one other person. It was based solely on number of years at the company. Private offices are common, but not in the Bay - It is a form of compensation. Cash/stock is preferred form here. To get other benefits (private office, remote) look at different place. - Office space is at premium, private offices are expensive. Again look somewhere else. - Startup culture is associated with open office. Large corporations are better with this :-( - 'Extremely unproductive' is not an argument. Managers believe that programmers are equivalent/interchangeable cogs. There is no such thing as 10x ;-) I would recommend: - Block visual distractions as much as possible, 3x30" screen in pivot mode should do. - Move into corner. - Invest into big closed studio headphones with amplifier. Not active noise cancellation, but passive which covers entire ear. I got DT 770 PRO, best investment I ever did. - Get ready for starting your own business and working remotely. I am afraid it is the only way :-( >Startup culture is associated with open office. Large corporations are better with this In 2011 the company I was working for (not in the Bay Area) moved to its new building. Most of the offices were tailor made for the teams, with plenty of space left to expand. It was my favourite place to work by far. Then a few years later some of the managers became obsessed with startup culture and decided to break down the walls to implement an open plan. It was a massive step back (which cost a lot to boot) which caused quite a bit of tension with the engineers and eventually only set back the company. Any reason why you recommend against active noise cancellation? My Bose QC25s are still my favorite purchase, combining both over-ear passive cancellation & active noise cancellation. I even use them when working solo, and was so freaked out when one pair broke that I bought a second backup pair - Bose replaced the broken pair free of charge though. [I realize the OP mentioned that headphones were not an option though.] active noise cancellation is extremely effective for ambient noise but not conversations, which are the main cause of distraction in an open plan office. I personally find active headphones uncomfortable. Large studio headphones are designed for long term use. The reference was not to 'active headphones' (e.g. for running), but to 'active noise cancellation' where an "inverse wave" (inverse to incoming noise) is played to cancel out sounds. These can be in both in-ear or over-the-ear form. Worked 5 jobs in Chicago. No devs had private offices at any of them. This is why I work from home. Amazing private office that my dog can be in. Ah, the ultimate luxury... There is a long discussion on the benefits of private offices in Peopleware, which says that Microsoft has them (although this was 1999): http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/67825.Peopleware Recently, I heard of the "cave and commons" approach, which sounds more like it could be adopted by hip startups: https://hbr.org/2013/03/give-workers-the-power-to-choose-cav... i think i've heard of the ideal of commons + private/quiet space too, if i recall that option is mentioned in peopleware too. (anecdote: i am currently sitting in low cubicles in the middle of a huge open plan space, with a couple of neighbouring developers, we're surrounded by about two rings of people whose jobs involve talking all day. this is okay for days that descend into endless meetings / firefighting, but pretty nightmarish for work that involves thinking hard about anything) My company has pretty much everyone in "pods". It's a suite per team with a conference room off the hallway, surrounded by offices with doors around the room. There's a TV in each pod with an HDMI cable in conference table for presentations, meetings, or pair/group hack sessions. The doors unfortunately aren't the best at blocking loud conversations, but it's still better than trying to concentrate in a loud cubicle farm. I love this idea the most. I've worked in places where teams have created "war rooms", basically a commandeered conference room where everyone hunkers down around the table and gets the project done (this was when I worked on a mechanical device and we needed to mess with parts and tools). The benefit of the pod to me is that you can make the closable offices way smaller (desk, small table, couple of chairs) when the doors are open the offices become part of the larger project room. The entire project room can also be closed off for noise, privacy, meetings, stealth, etc. Some teams in Microsoft still had private offices at least in 2015, although many teams had moved to an open office. Mentor Graphics has private offices. When our company was acquired by them, I thought I would really love them. But to my surprise I didn't like how it changed the culture at all. Private offices really do make developers more insular. It discourages communication to a degree I wouldn't have thought it would. Another aspect which might not be obvious at first is that offices come in difference sizes, so when somebody comes to your office--or you go to theirs--you both immediately know your relative positions on the pecking order. This induces an unwelcome power dynamic. Good ideas come from everywhere, but its human nature to buy into these symbols of status. "You know how I know I'm right and you are wrong? My office (and salary) is bigger than yours." Not necessarily said in as explicit terms as those, but the effect is real and pervasive. Offices-with-doors power dynamics may be unwelcome in some company cultures. But power dynamics are unavoidable. If a company has an open plan work space or bullpen, the dynamic will be expressed in some other way that might be even more unwelcome. In open plan offices, it would be the person with the nicest window, or furthest from the door. This is an interesting statement. At my job over the summer, I noticed management had the window seats. Those are the best seats because you can see the sun and because you can see the city. Agree with the impossibility of working in an open office. There have been a couple days where I've had to work with everybody else in our conference room because of renovations to the portion of the office where our offices are. It's no good, I gave up and went home and worked from there; just too much distraction and having to be constantly on, since, whether it is rational or not, it feels like somebody is always watching you. The panopticon was a design developed to ensure constant surveillance of prisoners. It doesn't say good things about the status of employees when you make their workplace functionally equivalent. I also have the same predicament as you, I simply _cannot_ focus in open office environments and I'm not even sure why so I can't curb the problem. I'm not sure if it's a feeling of being watched, or a feeling of uncertainty in my surroundings... or even if it's the possibility of being surprised/interrupted from behind. Eitherway, I'm trying to push the idea of working from home- people aren't very receptive but after I've shown them I'm a good worker they'll be surprised when I finally get my wish and suddenly become significantly more productive. the alternative of course is smaller offices for 3-6 people, I've only seen that in one place in my professional life and that was Nokia R&D in Helsinki where isolating teams was necessary for security reasons. That was actually really nice. > the alternative of course is smaller offices for 3-6 people (...) That was actually really nice. Really? In my experience a small office with more than 1 person is worse than a complete open space (while an office for 1, with a door, is the best). To be productive I need to not see and not be seen; I feel more anonymous in a big loud crowd than in a small office with 2 other people who can still speak to one another or to me, or on the phone, etc. It can depend on the situation. There have been a few small offices where I've felt moderately productive, but looking back they've tended to be filled with people from across the organisation, working on different things. The "team office" which I know is the ideal for some is a recipe for high visibility and unhelpful pressure. I work in an office of 12 and it's a reasonable number. Looks like this was voted down so I upvoted. It's a germane datapoint. IBM still has private offices for many (I hesitate to say most) employees working in the US. San Jose for a fact has private offices. Occasionally you'll see two people sharing an office, but even that is fine for the noise and distraction-free environment you're looking for. I've been working as a web developer for the past 5 or so years and am yet to see one that wasn't taken by senior management and even then it's only 2-4 of them. I don't think real estate companies have many available anymore. I'm sure it's better for them to say "this is a 100 person open-office" than "this fits 50 private offices". This is Australia so YMMV in the states. Surely it's up to the business leasing the premises to do the fit out? Almost always the tenant At my current company we had just added 5-10 new private offices, and before they were even done being built "Senior" level employees were already sitting in them...even if they were going to someone else. Cost wise, seems feasible on a sqft basis (assuming a small office - cubicle equivalent). And I don't imagine the fit-out would be significant on a long lease. Average for bay area is $40/sqft/yr
https://42floors.com/office-space/us/ca/san-francisco-bay-ar... Office size data (small office ~100 sqft)
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-square-footage-of-... CBRE will have more details with registration:
https://researchgateway.cbre.com/PublicationListing.aspx?PUB... Pretty rare these days I would say. I remember having them early in my career, 2004-2006 or so. Now I guess we're all Agile, or something. It makes the Agileness more better if you can hear your coworkers eating and talking about the game, I guess. Most places I've worked since, even the CEO didn't have an office so it was more of an egalitarian thing. (By that I mean the false egalitarianism that's prevalent nowadays where your boss is your friend, not just your boss.) When they don't do that, and it's a situation where execs get one and peons don't, that's pretty tacky and indicative of a company that will be shitty in other ways IMO. I haven't sat at my desk in probably three or more weeks. I have great headphones but I prefer to work in silence if I can. Our workplace has plenty of offices and couchspaces and I just move around (sometimes because I get kicked out if rooms). Usually I'm with one or sometimes two or three other engineers. I enjoy that. I had an office once at a small place but it had no windows. It eventually drove me a bit crazy, as did working from home one summer where I had windows but no AC and I'd stick to my chair half the time. It's tough to find perfection but a mixture of commons plus private works well for me and may be what you need. I have worked from home for 5 years and now work in an open plan office and enjoy it more honestly. I don't really feel less productive and i certianly feel less alone when i can chat to coworkers from time to time or discuss development question with my coworkers. I have good headphones when i need to focus or can also go to one of the meeting rooms or work from home if i really want to work uninterrupted for a longer stretch. I would definetly consider myself an introvert but i still enjoy being around other people from time to time. I think the long time working from home alone really hurt me in some ways in retrospect. Moving around is good Being kicked out of a room just as something is about to click is... not so good. i'd be happy with a compromise: an office with just my immediate team members/people I work with regularly. If there are conversations, they will most likely be relevant. It'll also probably help with bonding. The worst part about open office: meeting rooms next to desks. I used to sit in an area with lots of meeting rooms and people talking on their way in/out of these meetings constantly was killer. I work at a very large company F50 not in the Bay area and the only people with offices are managers of various kinds. Our building has cubes of various quality (mine is closet sized) but our other buildings are mostly open plan with desk height walls. As a programmer the last time I had an office to myself was during the dotcom era. Sadly it's not just in the Bay. Maybe I am just imaging it, but for me, background music interferes with deep sustained thinking. I don't understand how people think playing music in the background at home or at work does anything positive for intellectual activity. Open offices have a similar effect on me, and not infrequently I've been exposed to both at the same time. A fun fact is that Jon von Neumann felt otherwise. From Wikipedia: Von Neumann did some of his best work in noisy, chaotic environments, and once admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. He never used it, preferring the couple's living room with its television playing loudly. Yeah, but what did he know about intellectual activity! :) Different strokes for different folks Interesting to see so many different opinions, and experiences. Apparently it is to a large extent a personal matter. My experience is that I seem to prefer a mix of available options. For example, my current office is about 30 miles away from home, and I sometimes work form home and like it, but then I go to the office and like it too. After several days of working in the same environment I welcome the change of scenery. Also, for the first time in many years, I got a private office, having moved there from a cubicle. It may be a status symbol more than a convenience, but it is a convenience for sure. No problem mixing private and public space as long as I have a choice of both. At a previous company, we had an office where they built little rooms for phone calls. Some had desks with chairs, and there was one with beanbags. I ended up spending some time in those, unless someone needed to make a call (not too often). I did get tired of the open plan office after a while, but mostly it was just nice to have some variety and move around. I spent most of my career in offices with doors, and was excited about being in an open office. It is definitely more social but it is ridiculously disruptive. When someone is happy or sad (e.g. when someone leaves, even from a different group), there is a pretty big disruption that kills productivity for 30 mins or more. Doors win I think. Try one of the national labs :) Why is wearing headphones not an option? Just curious. Having some of the noise diminished by putting things on your ears != being alone. I'm just slightly physically uncomfortable in a large room filled with people, especially when I'm trying to focus on something. Especially when that's how I'd spend 2/3 of my waking life on work days. It's not to the level anywhere near some sort of phobia, it's just that when I'm in a big room with a lot of activity a portion of my brain is dedicated to concern for what's happening in the room. In an office, it's a space that I own and control. That level of comfort leads to more productivity and happiness. I don't want to be alone in an office all the time or even necessarily most of the time, but without that cave to return to when I need to focus, life is just plain worse. There is also a subset of coworkers that do not understand the (headphones == leave me alone) signal. They'll come up behind you and tap you on the shoulder or, even worse, stand quietly just outside your visual focus until you break concentration and acknowledge them. Short of police tape across your cubicle door, nothing will send them the message. Does anyone else remember WKRP in Cincinnati? Headphones and earbuds are very painful for me after like 10 minutes. This is at a very low volume - there's just something about putting sound that close to my ear that hurts. Similar here. After 10 minutes of headphone use, my tinnitus flares up, after a few hours, it hurts. I'm not 30 yet and my headphone use in open plan offices has contributed to tinnitus. To be effective, the music has to completely drown out conversations. It's unhealthy. Yes, this is exactly why headphones are not an option. No headphone I’ve ever tried is completely able to block outside noise. Some do a decent job but then my tinnitus kicks in and is maddening. Same here. The first time I heard my tinnitus was when I had my headphones on in the open office trying to drown out conversations. Open plan introduces visual as well as audible distractions. Headphones don't help there. I'm glad we have lots of small meeting rooms around. When the vibe is energetic or distracting (e.g. Party/large gathering) and I need to focus I grab a room. Sometimes the rooms are booked but often that means the open-plan area is less noisy. Also I wfh 1-2 days a week as needed. Hearing damage? A better question would be - why aren't "library rules" an option? The default should be quiet, headphones cannot recreate that, only different noise. If people wish to introduce noise, they may of course do this with headphones! Yes I think Oracle Labs in the bay area has private offices for all developers. I even had one as an intern - with a view of Mount Diablo. Oracle Santa Clara and HQ all have private offices. It was really hard to leave my office. :( Why is wearing headphones not an option? One possible reason: long-term exposure, even at low volumes, damages hearing. Hearing damage. In order to drown out conversation, you have to play at too loud a volume. >"... headphones isn't an option." Based on my experience in a very similar situation I'd recommend finding a way to overcome any barriers to using headphones, then using a pair w/ good noise-cancelling, and listening to brain.fm. It's remarkably effective.