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I'm a career changer from actuary to software developer. The most shocking part of the career change was open office arrangements. Both careers are technical a
by thedevil 10y ago
I'm a career changer from actuary to software developer. The most shocking part of the career change was open office arrangements.
Both careers are technical and require both concentration and collaboration. Actuaries tend to have their own cubicles (offices for mid-level and higher).
Software developers require much more concentration. So I just assumed that the virtually all software developers would have their own offices because a solo cubicle seemed inadequate for most developer jobs. And of course, who would be dumb enough to use open office for developers? ... well, I got a little surprise.
Everyone tries to undo the damage of a bad floor design with expensive headphones, but it's just not adequate.
- kaishiro 10y agoI'm clearly the outlier here - reading through the rest of the comments - but I actually hate working by myself. Given the choice between a private office and a shared table at a coffee shop I'd take the coffee shop every time. The thing is, for me it's not about social interaction. I just enjoy working amongst other people who are also amongst others working. Something about the energy I guess. Sounds silly when I write it out.
- johnmaguire2013 10y agoI think this may largely depend on facts like whether you are naturally introverted/extroverted, and how you grew up, or learned to program. For me, I learned to program as a hobby, from ages 10-18, for fun at home. I mostly worked alone. Learning to work on a team took some time, but even now I often times wish I could work remote. I don't mind getting pinged about things people need, but the constant noise and movement of the office makes me far less productive than I would otherwise be. However, sometimes it offers me the focus I need to actually work, if I'm in a procrastinating mood. And I think some people probably struggle with this more often than I do.
- nalllar 10y agoI'm in almost the same situation as you, of learning to program alone at home and introverted in general. I feel much more productive working in an open-plan office than working alone. :s
- tetrep 10y agodidn't know i got downvotes and i fat fingered one for you, so i guess i'll contribute... I agree with your sentiment. Being nearby passionate workers is empathetically energetic, and adds motivation for me to do even mundane tasks. I develop a sort of weak rivalry around my peers and I'll rise to the "highest" level that I perceive. It's very encouraging to be around intelligent and motivated people, and being exposed to them is nice. Conversation/talking can get out of hand, but that depends on both who's contributing and who's not intervening. I've only had open office conversations go too far when nobody wants to tell those involved to stop/quiet down/etc. I think for a lot of the professions on HN, the solution to "open office bad" is to work remotely, and I think it's very unfortunate when employers disallow/discourage that options, as many people are genuinely more productive at home and/or working odd hours. While there's a pretty decent stigma of "working" from home, there are some people who genuinely are productive and can actually work from home, no quotes needed.
- kaishiro 10y agoYeah, you described it better than I did :) I contract full time as well as working on my own projects. I'm often called in to augment other teams either IRL or remotely and I genuinely do enjoy that, at least in the short term. The other days though - I wake up early, a full queue, clear scope, plenty of energy, coffee, work while the sun's rising. 11am hits and all of a sudden it's just...lonely. Hit's me like a brick some days. That's usually when I head to a coffee shop or into some co-working space. It's a funny thing. Edit - Spelling
- Nav_Panel 10y agoI like working at coffee shops because the hum is relatively constant and comes from all around. At an open office plan, in my experience (which is mostly non-mixed: all developers, no sales people), it'll be relatively quiet until someone's phone rings (and invariably they're not at their desk and it rings for a painful 30 seconds)/someone takes a phone call/a group starts talking or joking around. Since there's only one single point of noise, I find it much more distracting than if the entire area was mildly noisy the entire time.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ryanSrich 10y agoNo one believes me when I tell them this, but open offices are 99% of the reason why I work remotely. I honestly could never understand it.
- mlvljr 10y agoYou are not alone :)
- peejaybee 10y agoIt's easy to understand. Open plan offices have the advantage of being cheaper, and the disadvantage of harming productivity. The cost savings are immediately apparent and easily attributed. Productivity hits (or gains) come later, are harder to assign a utility to, and are harder to attribute.
- smikhanov 10y agoMy theory is that productivity hits are much smaller than we developers tend to think (as awful as it sounds). I elaborate more on that in http://www.mikhanov.com/2015/06/08/open-plan-offices-creativity-and-programming-429 http://www.mikhanov.com/2015/06/08/open-plan-offices-creativ...
- blub 10y agoYour theory is, to put it bluntly, wrong. Maybe it applies to people slapping together node.js libraries, but otherwise developers need a working environment in which they can focus. Creativity is not only about innovating at the bleeding edge, but also coming up with effective solutions, optimisation, designing software, organising code, etc. A lot of software development is creative work. Besides, not being able to focus will also lead to increased stress levels, overlooking bugs and decreased productivity.
- a3n 10y agoI think these kinds of decisions, including recognized reduction of productivity, has to do with how desks and offices are taxed and depreciated, what has to be written into accounts, and the fact that death marches are free.
- efes 10y agoAny thoughts on leaving Actuarial work? I was thinking of going the other way.. a consistent education/testing seems like it fixes the eternal new wheels and pop experts problem of software as a career.
- thedevil 10y agoActuary is a great cozy career (less exciting in both good and bad ways). I recommend it if you like it. The only downside is limited geographic range. But for me, software is a calling.
- lj3 10y agoIs there such a thing as developing software for the actuarial industry?
- pjc50 10y agoYes. It's demanding, well-paid and hard to break into.
- CSMastermind 10y agoI work at a life insurance company in NYC. Feel free to ping me if you're interested
- eru 10y agoYes. I had a talk about this in Hacker News a while back, when I was deciding on whether to go into software or become an actuary. You can do both.
- totalrobe 10y agoWell the majority of good software jobs are going to be geographically limited as well, unless you have the skillset and experience to break into remote work.
- dijit 10y agoI wish I had the freedom to work from home, I've done it a few times and I'm not just marginally more productive, I'm exponentially more productive and more communicative because I'm aware that people can't see what I'm working on and so we don't end up fixing similar things. (although that could change if I got used to it). I wish wish wish! I had some modicum of privacy and sanctuary at work so I could just sit down with only the problems in my screen unless intentionally interrupted.
- r00fus 10y agoPerhaps you need to find the appropriate employer? I work remotely as often as I'm in the office and our office has many devs who are permanent remote (does require more coming into HQ regularly for sync ups - less for frequent travelers like consultants or salespeople).
- dijit 10y agoI'm a systems administrator, our roles typically are less free in movement/time than developers unfortunately. I've been looking for an employer who will let me work from home for a good 5 years.
- parasubvert 10y agoI have a couple of work-from-home sysadmins - look for tech contracts based out of SV or other hubs where they might not care where you work. Unfortunately these do tend to be contracts rather than employment oppties, but that can sometimes be good (higher rates, though you need to buy your own benefits).
- dboreham 10y agoSoftware is supposed to be done "with a door". Somewhere in the past 20 years (e.g. at Microsoft 20 years ago everyone had a door -- lots of studies published showing clearly doors produce a meaningful productivity benefit), we lost the battle and so we have the open office and headphones. Obviously open offices are cheaper.
- parasubvert 10y agoAs a counterpoint, I'm not sure I would want to work/program in a non-open environment anymore. Software is a collaborative act to me, these days.
- rimantas 10y agoWhat makes you think it was not those days?
- n72 10y ago<thought bubble>Please don't sit next to me. Please don't sit next to me. Please don't sit next to me.</thought bubble>
- thedevil 10y agoWhat type of work do you do?
- lj3 10y agoDifferent learning styles. I once worked with a programmer who needed to externalize thoughts before he could make sense of them. He needed a sounding board and was constantly talking to anyone who would listen and respond. That was his thought process. I, on the other hand, need to internalize thoughts before I can make sense of them. I need silence to process and chew on a problem for at least a couple of minutes before I can talk about them to others. That is my thought process. We worked together on exactly one feature. He would get frustrated because when he talked to me, he got nothing in return. I was too busy listening to respond and as a result he kept talking, which frustrated me to no end because he gave me no time to process what he was saying. Neither of us got what we needed, so he finished the feature by himself and I moved on to a different one. My co-worker loved open office plans. I hate them.
- overgard 10y agoIt's insane. Not to mention how much friction it causes for no good reason. How do you even have this conversation with your neighbor without seeming high strung: "I don't dislike you as a person but your loud typing, constant sniffling and loud chewing habits make me want to put a pillow over your face when you're asleep."
- jsmeaton 10y agoSee hotdesking. An agile work environment lets you avoid this confrontation by picking up and going to sit between two of the sales team.
- mattmanser 10y agoIs this a joke or are you being serious? If your sales people do any work, they're incredibly noisy by being on the phone all the time.
- parasubvert 10y agoWe (Pivotal) have an open office layout everywhere because all coding is done in pairs, the concentration still happens this way, except you're vocalizing your inside voice with your pair. And they're providing active feedback. Two screens, two keyboards, two mice, but one computer/desktop. It's not for everyone, but in tandem with mandatory-no-meetings beyond a 5 minute daily standup and couple of set hour-long meetings every week, this can lead to very productive working days.
- pseudalopex 10y agoHow is an open layout better for pairing than a shared office?
- dredmorbius 10y agoIt's not.
- huac 10y agotheoretically less friction in 'switching pairs': finding a new desk when you start a new task with a different person should be easier than giving up an office
- parasubvert 10y agoPairs switch up every day or two and people switch teams every 12-16 weeks or so. Also there's a strong belief in "open door" policy for impromptu conversations with the product managers or other devs, and in having build/test/CD pipeline status screens visible by the team at all times.
- douche 10y agoSo the status quot is one of constant churn and never settling into any kind of groove, ever. Sounds extremely stressful
- parasubvert 10y ago
- meritt 10y agoThe open-office movement is actually a decade-long strategy backed by Sennheiser and Sony.
- Natsu 10y agoSigh... yet another entry for the "why I don't do business with Sony" list.
- valvar 10y agoI'm not sure if you missed the joke, or if I missed a joke that you just made.
- voltagex_ 10y agoI know this was a joke, but I swear by the Audiotechnica ANC33is IEMs - http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/headphones/11871cf05c62c838/index.html http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/headphones/11871cf05c62c83.... I get 15-20 hours of the noise cancelling feature out of a single AAA battery. They'll still work pretty well without the noise cancelling turned on due to their shape.
- zo1 10y agoIt doesn't matter if you could perfectly cancel-out noise, hand-waving and shoulder-taps will interrupt whatever flow you were having.
- voltagex_ 10y agoI try to make the best of a bad situation - the ambient noise was a far bigger problem for me in my current location.
- zo1 10y agoLucky you, I'm the exact opposite. It's mostly quiet here, and relatively normal/plain/cheap ear phones remove the speaking around me. In that case ear phones are actually a distraction/nuisance; having to constantly take them in/out, people speaking to you having to constantly say "Sorry to interrupt", "just a quick question", because they're more aware of bothering you, etc.
- BurningFrog 10y agoAn open office is essential if you're pair programming. If not, I agree it makes no sense. I guess it can cut down on frivolous browsing.
- zeemonkee3 10y agoAn closed office/cubicle is fine for pair programming. You need room for just 2 people, not 20.
- BurningFrog 10y agoBut I want to talk to the rest of the team fairly frequently.
- a3n 10y agoI mean this in the nicest possible way ... Are you sure they want to talk to you ... frequently?
- BurningFrog 10y agoI've worked this way for several years, in a few different teams. I guess it sounds weird if you've never done it, but it works really well. Now and then, someone will ask "Hey, does anyone know X?" or something else, and issues will be resolved quickly. One counter intuitive thing that makes this possible is that since you're already engaged in a conversation with your pair, this turns out to not be disruptive.
- home_boi 10y agoi think that type of conversation is better suited for a Slack chat
- prodigal_erik 10y agoTo me, that suggests pairing would prevent me from ever starting to deeply concentrate on a problem.
- adrianggg 10y agoHas anyone done a study on the long term effects on hearing and bacteria growth from long term headphone wearing. It makes me mad that people think fixing the problem is wearing headphones.
- pessimizer 10y agoThe only thing an open office is for is walking potential investors through, waving your arm grandly.
- zeckalpha 10y ago"Our engineers per square foot is higher than any of our competitors, as you can see."
- qaq 10y ago... and we have started work on vertical stacking to solidify our lead.
- bitwize 10y agoIt also: a) saves money on furniture and real estate costs (visible on the bottom line; productivity losses aren't) b) provides for free a panopticon under which your boss knows where you are and what you are doing, or can at least ask your coworkers and expect them to point you out to him
- nutball 10y agoYup, open offices primary benefit is surveillance and control. Management is happy to sacrifice individual productivity for more control over workers. Surveillance is a useful tool for sucking surplus value from our minds. Open offices make ordinary workers (slackers) uncomfortable because of constant surveillance by management, but work isn't about making workers content. Work is about dominating workers so they produce. An added benefit of the panopticon pen is that it's harder for devs to slack, sabotage, and organize. A watched worker is an easily controlled worker.
- lewisl9029 10y agoI'd honestly prefer cubicles to an open office layout... At least the former offers some degree of privacy and protection from visual distractions.
- maxxxxx 10y agoPlease don't promote cubicles. I hate sitting in a little box the whole day. It feels like prison.
- abecedarius 10y agoI've worked in both, and the open office was far worse for me.
- maxxxxx 10y agoOn a scale from 1 to 10, open office is 2 and cubicle 3, an office is 10. Maybe it's a little better but it still sucks.
- stock_toaster 10y agoAnd an office with a nice plant (rubber, snake, spider, palm, etc) in it really turns things up to 11.
- lewisl9029 10y agoYeah, I'm not exactly a huge fan of cubicles either, but I definitely consider it the lesser of two evils if I had to choose between cubicles and open offices. Private offices would be amazing, of course, but it's not realistic to expect most startups to be able to provide one for every developer given the real estate market in SF.
- maxxxxx 10y agoIf they cared they could provide smaller offices, maybe one for 4 people or so. This works pretty well too.
- rdl 10y agoIs there a list of tech employers who do open plan, low cube, high cube, shared office, private office, private big office (to have people work together temporarily), remote-only?
- pdkl95 10y agoAfter a decade or two in open offices, many software developers probably end up conditioned against privacy enough that they no longer see how offensive spyware/tracking is to most people.
- nabla9 10y agoI think it's a status issue. Actuary is respected profession. There is lots of responsibility and they have higher median salary than programmers. Programmers are dime a dozen. Only top level architects have status. If programmer is highly valued, he usually has some other title than programmer/developer.
- eru 10y agoAlas, even people at Google and Facebook etc, who can (probably?) hold their own against actuaries in terms of salary don't get offices. Of course, most companies need only a few actuaries, so giving them a handful of offices is easy. If you have a company that's mostly engineers, that's gonna look different to the beancounters.
- Baghard 10y agohttp://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame. -- Richard Hamming
- stock_toaster 10y agoI think doored offices have the nice property of supporting both modes (open and closed). Closed-door mode is for getting work done, deep thought, or reflection. Open-door mode for allowing/encouraging communication with others, encouraging collaboration, yet comes with an understanding that you may be interrupted. Open office plans force the open-door mode, and make the closed-door mode quite hard (if not impossible for some people) -- not everyone is comfortable wearing headphones all day, people will interrupt you anyway with headphones on, etc.
- thedevil 10y agoIn addition to the ability to shut the door, the office limits noise and sights to one direction - in front of you. And it limits it to when people actually have something to say to you specifically. Open office has you surrounded, including people behind you and in your peripheral vision. It's much less comfortable and causes a little anxiety. And your attention constantly gets ripped around in every direction.
- eru 10y ago
- mojoe 10y agoI'm part of a development team that resides in an 'open office.' One member of my team has told me that he likes the open plan so much that he'd quit if forced into an office/cube situation. Most others at my office have expressed a mild preference for the open arrangement. I certainly don't think it has negatively impacted the productivity of anyone on my team. It seems to me like the real questions here is "what is the percentage of people who are more productive with offices than with an open arrangement?" Based on the comments here on HN, it's skewing toward offices, but I think that might be a self-selection thing. I certainly don't think it's a forgone conclusion that offices are better for everyone. Incidentally, I have a marginal preference for offices, and I have gone the expensive headphone route. I guess I'm in line with the "HN commenters" sub-population :)
- cookiecaper 10y agoThe employees often prefer open office layouts because they get less done. There is a lot more distraction and a lot more hob-nobbing. Little things that someone would've solved on their own after a few minutes of troubleshooting become a group troubleshooting session, etc. People who are not actually interested in their work but just like to hang out with the people they work with (probably at least 85% of employees) tend to like open plan offices because they make it "more fun". Productivity does decline because any work that requires concentration is substantially more difficult to perform.
- mojoe 10y agoWhen you say categorically that "Productivity DOES decline because any work that requires concentration is substantially more difficult to perform," you're assuming that the majority of people have a harder time concentrating in an open office environment. Based on my own observations, I don't think that's true of every sub-population. It would be interesting if a researcher tried to quantify this with volunteers from different companies with differing floor plans.
- blub 10y agoThere are multiple studies which confirmed that background noise impairs concentration, increases stress levels and disrupts clear thinking. Interestingly, even if one consciously ignores the noise, its effects are still visible in the body through blood pressure spikes, increased stress level hormones, etc.
- draw_down 10y agoThis is the only career I've ever had, but so much about it is nonsensical to me. We are smart individually, but at a team or organizational level we are real idiots.
- Avalaxy 10y agoAs a European there's absolutely no way I would EVER work in a cubicle. It looks horrible to me, like I'm a chicken in a battery cage. Aside from not wanting to work in a horrible environment like that, I communicate a lot (about work) and it's so much harder to do that when you're physically separated.
- khedoros 10y agoI'm in a cube at my current employer. I like that I don't constantly see people walk by my desk, and that the three developers I work closest with are right next to me for easy collaboration, but with enough separation between us to allow us to easily work on separate tasks without minor movements jostling a desk, etc. I also like that we each have a whiteboard, plus whiteboards in the "hallways". Anything important tends to go to text, one way or another. I'm apprehensive about working in an open-plan office, or some arrangement with a shared desk. One concern is constant movement in my peripheral vision. Another is degradation of communication. I like my text. Having something written means that I don't have to ask someone to repeat themselves again. Add to it: Half my team is remote, so no office layout will change how I communicate with them (IM+email). Then again, I've never worked in an open plan office. Maybe I'd like it, and the things that I see as potential issues would dissolve away...but it seems like a panopticon-distraction fest, looking at it from the outside.
- home_boi 10y agoOpen office plans wouldn't be so bad if companies implemented a "quiet zone". It would be cheap and efficient to have a quiet room with college library style desks like: http://www.wiregrass.edu/images/library/benhillLibrary.jpg http://www.wiregrass.edu/images/library/benhillLibrary.jpg The people who thrive in open office plans can thrive while the people who need some space can have their space.
- studentrob 10y ago> The most shocking part of the career change was open office arrangements. Does any company give new software developers offices? Software developers grow up with more screen time than others. They need forced interaction in order to communicate enough in person. Otherwise it's all by text and can easily degrade to passive aggression. Offended? Cool. When software engineers demonstrate they will come out of the office to speak in the open when needed, then they deserve the office. But, I imagine if you gave everyone one, many would hide in there and only exit for the bathroom and food. An A/B test of workplace environments might be a cool experiment. Targeting the same product with equally skilled developers, which is more successful?
- wrong_variable 10y ago'hey! look at these introverted developers' meme As an extremely vocal individual, being vocal actually is a loss in productivity. When I am trying to communicate what I am doing to my co-workers - it leads the project from slowing down - and me unable to meet my deadlines. This is why I do not like to waste my time explaining others what I am doing. Its more productive for them to specify the Inputs and Outputs and me doing my thing.
- studentrob 10y ago> being vocal actually is a loss in productivity You're talking about someone who is too noisy. This kind of person probably benefits from an open environment with instant feedback. Even though the group may suffer a bit short term, in the long term, that person will be a better team member when they learn when and how to speak. People who are too quiet can also benefit from being among a respectful group. Safety in numbers, and you can learn from your peers. These are not hard and fast rules. I'm just discussing times when open environments can help teams. The parent of this thread did not mention any of the benefits of open offices.
- chris_wot 10y agoYou made a pretty sweeping assertion about software developers. Is this an anecdotal observation or do you have any empirical data to back it up? Genuinely curious...
- deanCommie 10y agoIt's popular to hate on open floor layouts, but I personally find myself more productive in that environment than with a private office. I think little moments where a quick chat with another developer, a manager, a project/product manager/business analyst clears things up or unblocks me are more frequent than times when I need intense deep quiet uninterrupted concentration. And it's easier to indicate to the rest of the team that you need to be not disturbed with stuff like those expensive headphones than to go wander the hallways to other people's offices, or have to organize meetings whenever you want to have more than 2 people in a quick huddle. If you're working from specs on a multi-month timeline, sure, lock me away into an office and I'll come back with what you asked for. But if you want to work quickly, build MVPs, iterate with customer feedback, and change direction quickly, an open floor layout is infinitely better even if it makes a couple antisocial engineers grumble about it on their blog.
- Joeri 10y agoAs a counterpoint, I'm usually the guy that people ask questions to, so for me it is an obvious productivity drain. Working from home however isn't a solution either, because somehow I cannot make the mental switch to "work mode" as easily. I would love a separate office with a door that closes so I could control interruptions more effectively. The irony is that at one point for a two month crunch period they did give me exactly that (repurposed a meeting room for me and a team mate who was not very talkative). Most productive two months in my entire career. So, management clearly knows the open plan is detrimental to productivity. And yet...
- dandare 10y agoI for one prefer open plans for developers - and everyone else. A) The headphones are just a dime in the wider context. B) Sure, if you are working on the next video compression algorithm then concentration is golden and you rightly deserve a hut in the middle of endless flowerfield by the lake high in the mountains (Howl's Moving Castle style). Otherwise the ability to constantly share information with your colleagues and management (both ways) is way more important. The proverbial 9 out of 10 startups fail not because their developers could not achieve deep concentration and if you can not write JavaScript with your headphones on (on a train, while the kids watch TV, in a buzzing open plan office) maybe you lack important work skill.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- loco5niner 10y agoMy problem in the open office plan is that I can't wear headphones for extended (or even short) periods without my tinnitus getting set off.
- dandare 10y agoI am sorry to hear that and I totally agree that the open plan is not better for everyone, all I am saying that it is not inherently bad for everyone.
- prodigal_erik 10y agoCode that doesn't require deep concentration is boilerplate that should be machine-generated if it's needed at all.
- dandare 10y agoSure and trucks should not need a driver but they still do. 99% of the work mankind does does not really require deep concentration, including most of what the IT departments do.
- Fiahil 10y agoI'm a developer and I like open offices. Sure, you have to be careful of your neighbors and don't interrupt them consistently. But, unless your coworkers are complete douches, this is pretty much easy to do. I like to answer questions, technical or not, and it's really nice to be able to exchange ideas with someone (who was lurking on slack, anyway), from times to times.
- lordnacho 10y agoMy experience is that open office productivity depends an awful lot on who is in the office. When it's just people coding, normally interruptions are things that make sense. How should I build this or that thing? Where can I get help with X? However, for many years I had a guy in the office who was a pontificator. He would read some news article and start a debate about (inevitably) politics. People would get drawn into it due to his particular style (very opinionated, uninformed) and the debate could easily eat up the entire morning or afternoon. He would literally stand up and announce some funny point he'd come across, loudly. Ate up enormous amounts of time.