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Today, I finally moved into my own office at work. And by “office” I actually mean a small, narrow room that used to serve as a coatroom for the previous occupants of our offices. It has no real windows, no doors, and the walls are still covered in coat hooks.

Why would anyone want to leave a spacious office with a view of the city and work in a room like this?

It’s simple…

You see, the startup I’m working at is experiencing major growth right now. A growing company means an influx of new people. And new people mean a whole new level of noise in the workspace.

Moving into that tiny office is just my way of keeping my sanity until we find more space we can expand our offices into.

Somewhere today, a group of intelligent people isn’t getting anything done.

So just how fast do working conditions deteriorate as the number of people that work in close proximity increases? I’m afraid things get worse much faster than what you may think.

People working on problems don’t usually generate noise on their own. Sure, there might be some restless people who constantly fidget with something and an occasional individual who likes to hum and drum on the desk to the music he’s listening to through his headphones, but these are more of an exception than the norm. What usually generates noise is communication between people which can range from short verbal exchanges to full-blown conversations or even heated arguments. Because of this the amount of generated noise does not depend directly on the number of people in the same office; it depends on the number of possible connections between them. And the number of connections increases much faster than the number of people does. The formula for calculating this number is (n^2 - n) / 2 where “n” equals the number of people.

The following table illustrates this relationship:

# of people	2	3	4	5	6
# of connections	1	3	6	10	15

The same data one more time, on a chart:

As you can see, the number of connections between people increases at a much faster rate than the number of people does. Increasing the number of occupants of an office from 3 to 6 means that there are now twice as many people in the office, but the number of connections between them raises to five times the original number. That’s five times as many potential sources of interruptions!

This is why you can’t get anything done in a crowded office. This is why anyone can’t get anything done.

But wait, it gets worse…

It doesn’t end here, though. As the number of interruption-generating connections increases, so does the number of people being interrupted. The total cost of such interruptions grows at an even faster rate than the number of connections between people. To find out the total impact of interruptions we need to multiply the number of interruptions with the number of people being interrupted. Let’s call this number the total interruption factor, or TIF for short. The formula for calculating TIF is (n - 2) * (n^2 - n) / 2 where “n” once again represents the number of people in the office.

Let’s add these numbers to the table and the chart we created earlier:

# of people	2	3	4	5	6
# of connections	1	3	6	10	15
# of interrupted	0	1	2	3	4
TIF	0	3	12	30	60

We can now observe 2 things:

1. As soon as the number of people increases beyond 2, there is always someone getting needlessly interrupted. This is why I’ve been saying for years that every office, no matter how large, is a two-person office.
2. The same change as we used for illustration above, from 3 to 6 people, which doubles the number of people and increases the number of distractions to five times the original number, increases the total cost of these interruption to TWENTY times the original number! That’s right – doubling the number of people can increase total time loss twenty times. How about that?

Now imagine: if 3 people lose 15 minutes per day due to interruptions (that’s 5 minutes per person), how much does it cost you when 6 people lose 20 times as much time? Are you saving money by putting more people in the same room, or would getting another office be more cost-efficient? Unless your offices are located in an extremely expensive location and your developers are all severely underpaid, it’s probably the latter.

Because of all of this I’d say that by trying to save money on office space you’re actually shoveling money out the window – and annoying everyone in the process.

Related reading & viewing:

• Peopleware: You should read the whole book. Twice. Every year. But the most important part in regard to this writeup is “Part II – WORKING ENVIRONMENT”. Make sure you read this book carefully, though: in many places it adopts a humorous, even sarcastic tone, often listing examples of bad practices. Simply skimming over it and skipping parts could easily give you some very wrong ideas.
• A Pattern Language: some of the workspace-related patterns are already covered briefly in Peopleware, but you might be interested in the following ones: 82: Office connections; 146: Flexible office space; 148: Small work groups; 151: Small meeting rooms; 152: Half-private office; 183: Workspace enclosure.
• Jason Fried: Why work doesn’t happen at work.

Tags: a pattern language, interruptions, office, peopleware, productivity, workspace