> Open plan is fine, even for large offices, so long as everyone knows that quiet is the rule.
I don't agree with this.
Bullpens/developer rooms are designed for collaboration and they have been for the last fifteen years. They are for developers to whiteboard or bounce ideas off of each other. If you are in a bullpen the expectation shouldn't be quiet.
With that said you cannot (or should not) have bullpens without open offices that developers can choose to walk in and shut the door. Offices should be some distance away from the bullpen and be unlabeled-first-come-first-serve (they should be designed for quiet focus). You should also be able to work from home whenever it best suits you.
Also, after reading some of the other comments, a bullpen is not a way to stuff the developers, call center team, and the sales team into one cheap room! If any company does this it's a sign of poor management.
I'm a headphones-focus person and I can't stand people talking around me when I focus. However, unless it is excessive (someone doing a conference call on speaker every day) then it's just how offices have been since... well forever. However, in every place that I've worked there has been offices that you can use to focus (or a liberal work from home policy). I typically spend most of my time in a closed door office getting all of the hard think-work done and then the remainder in the bullpen doing CRUD work.
A company that has a bullpen and enforces a quiet rule feels like a company that simply does not know how to build a proper development environment (Oh, developers are supposed to be in, like, big rooms or something, but our developers don't like noise... okay how about we make it a 'quiet only' big room... or something)
I've never heard of a bullpen before, it sounds like a pretty horrific work environment.
A civilised, open plan engineering office should indeed be quiet. Not silent, but fairly quiet.
We did exactly the opposite to your method by the sounds of things - meeting rooms for 4 to 5 people, and one or two much larger rooms, were available around the edges of the floor to go and bounce ideas around or discuss things. The rest of the floor was quiet space but informal conversation was fine. It worked very well for us.
I don't agree with this.
Bullpens/developer rooms are designed for collaboration and they have been for the last fifteen years. They are for developers to whiteboard or bounce ideas off of each other. If you are in a bullpen the expectation shouldn't be quiet.
With that said you cannot (or should not) have bullpens without open offices that developers can choose to walk in and shut the door. Offices should be some distance away from the bullpen and be unlabeled-first-come-first-serve (they should be designed for quiet focus). You should also be able to work from home whenever it best suits you.
Also, after reading some of the other comments, a bullpen is not a way to stuff the developers, call center team, and the sales team into one cheap room! If any company does this it's a sign of poor management.
I'm a headphones-focus person and I can't stand people talking around me when I focus. However, unless it is excessive (someone doing a conference call on speaker every day) then it's just how offices have been since... well forever. However, in every place that I've worked there has been offices that you can use to focus (or a liberal work from home policy). I typically spend most of my time in a closed door office getting all of the hard think-work done and then the remainder in the bullpen doing CRUD work.
A company that has a bullpen and enforces a quiet rule feels like a company that simply does not know how to build a proper development environment (Oh, developers are supposed to be in, like, big rooms or something, but our developers don't like noise... okay how about we make it a 'quiet only' big room... or something)