The Open Office

I cannot express enough how much I disliked working in open offices for most of my career. For an introvert like myself, it's absolutely draining to feel like you need to be "on" for the time you're sitting at your desk. At one company I worked for this pain was compounded by a rule forbidding eating lunch (a time of day you might expect fewer people surrounding your desk) outside of the cafeteria, so I would resort to eating in my car; even in the depths of a Vermont winter!

Putting aside my own introversion, the other part of the open office that always struck me as inexplicable was how companies would place those in roles that required absolute focus -- like mine, as a software engineer -- in a room where others often needed to speak to one another. How can anyone be expected to do their best work like this? We all intuitively understand this is a terrible idea. This is why students take exams in silence and librarians are said to "shush". This is why if I was stuck on a problem I would simply try to leave a little earlier than 5pm so I could continue to work on it at home.

Why is this the dominant form of office space organization then? I think David Brooks rattles off a solid list of possible reasons at the end of his most recent column. And I expect more than one of them at a time tends to play a part.

In any event, I long ago vowed to never subject myself to the open office again and have happily been working full time remote for about two and a half years. I'd rather switch careers at this point than ever work in an open office again. For those who can't make the switch to remote work for one reason or another but despair of working in an open office, keep fighting the good fight!