Ideal office space layout - open or offices?

Clearly this is a personal issue, as evidenced by the diverse opinions, and I'm going to weigh in with yet another.

So really, I think the answer is: Whatever matches the culture of your company!

For us at Smart Bear, shared offices with just two people were perfect.

• We started with everyone in one room. Information flowed nicely and it was fun, but it's true that every conversation involved 5 people unnecessarily, and it was hard to make the space "your own."
• Some people (now) have their own offices, and then you have to make an effort to stay in touch with everyone else. Walls are major barriers.
• Sharing space means you don't feel alone, you can ask for a quick check of something, and it's easier to train new people that way. But you can still make the space completely your own.
• Anyone on the phone needs their own office. It bothers them and it bothers others otherwise.

I prefer the Fully Open Layout with plenty of conference rooms. It does take some getting used to and there are distractions, but I have found that it's the best way to innovate with a team.

The arguments about quite time and distractions are all valid in a Fully Open Layout. The upside comes when you couple the open environment, which fosters team creativity and collaboration, with the ability to work from home and flexible hours. These three things provide the right balance that, for me, makes it all work. People can also use headphones to block out the noise but what I have found is that once the team settles, it's pretty quiet.

I also apply the Fully Open Layout to everyone, including executives. People that are constantly on the phone just need to be moved away from the development team and put in their own open environment. For me, it's each functional unit should have an open layout so that they can collaborate and then have plenty of conference rooms for private meetings.

I think quiet is the key. You need to designate quiet areas and/or times for development work to get done. Offices with thin walls and loud people on speaker phone aren't much better than a group of cubes with people who need and respect privacy.

I used to be an interior designer in a past life and thus created many offices for large corporations.

Generally how open you want your office plan to be, depends on how creative the work is going to be. If it will be linear cerebral coding, then you want a closed plan, this will give you deep but narrow work. If it has to be non-linear creative shallower coding, then you want an open office. Facebook uses an open plan as far as I know. This may be because they will gain much more at this point from inputs and interactions between coders, than they would by someone working on uninterrupted. I am sure going forward, they will find it better to isolate parts of their business. For the same reason, most ad agencies and architects offices are open plan. There is value of course to having people share their projects/ideas in common spaces or corridors.

For generic technology offices where we did not know who would occupy them and where often the companies went huge or bust within two years so planning too much was not possible, we had a 1:4:16:64 rule:

One CEO cabin, 4 conference rooms, 16 isolated cabins/cubicles, 64 (4 x 16) workstations that would be shared four a piece. For each workstation that was shared between 4 people there was a small meeting table between them, so they could brainstorm. That would obviously be for a 85 person office, now if it was a 20 person office it would be 1:1:4:14 or 1:1:2:8 (for 12).

The other thumb rule we used for planning and space allocation purposes is 100-120 sft per person - this may be tight by US standards, but is perfectly ok for a startup.

Having experienced all of these I would say the best is private office and sadly cubicles.

Shared offices are terrible in my experience, personal space, privacy, etc is all compromised.

Open floor plans can be okay, but noise does tend to travel a lot, interruptions are more constant, even if not directed at you. (Much easier to get distracted by something else happening next to you.) Finally communication while can be boosted, often in my experience isn't, as at least the software developers I have been around typically reach for the IPOD and headphones and block out all your verbal communication, which means getting up and walking over, and distracting them much like if they were in a private office anyways.

Private community offices aren't bad if everyone is laptop based, and they are equipped nicely. (As in dual or triple monitor setup, with docking station, nice keyboard, mouse, etc.) Though even plain empty office space can be nice for developers that don't mind working on a laptop directly and don't want to cart around a ton of items. Of course this can lead to a shortage issue, and what do you do with other items or classified materials, etc.

Private offices are self explanatory I think, and cubicles while not great do offer some of the same benefits such as reducing noise, providing space for items, and a generally decent degree of privacy. (This is assuming high wall cubicles, low wall ones are entirely worthless.)

There is no right or wrong answer. I have many software clients. Some prefer open layouts while others prefer their employees to partner up with 2-3 people per office. Some like their employees to work as teams so they pair them up 2-3 per office so they can collaborate on projects. Sometimes they use a combination of space layouts: Open space for admin or support specialists, offices for software developers and account managers, offices for executives, small rooms for making private phone calls or meetings. This is one example of a software company layout....http://www.austintenantadvisors.com/files/Arboretum.pdf

If you are interested I can send you others for ideas.

A quite and with some privacy would be a lot appreciated. It enables one to work with pleasure and with love. No destructions, no whisperings... An ideal office means a lot in order to have a good work after working hours. All task accomplished just right after working hours.