4 ms·

I cannot believe that still in this day and age, there is still a belief that open offices are better for developers?? Joel Spolsky tried to set the record stra

I cannot believe that still in this day and age, there is still a belief that open offices are better for developers?? Joel Spolsky tried to set the record straight, what, about 15 years ago? For the record, I don't normally listen to music when programming - I like a quiet environment. Interruptions are a bane. I have a private office, but as soon as anyone enters - even quietly, my flow state is broken. Plus on the flipside, while waiting for a long compile or download, I will grab one of the guitars sitting in my office and randomly jam away. I am sure in an open office environment, my co-workers would not appreciate that either.

pionar 10y ago
I have a private office (I work from home), but there's a difference between open offices where EVERYONE in the company is out in one big area and a separate space for each team. That's how a team I used to be on was arranged. There was the outside office, then what was termed the "developer cave", which was a large section of the office (closed off, with a door!) that housed 5 developers and 3 QA people all working on the same product. That's better than private offices (it encourages collaboration), but, doesn't have most of the downsides of a traditional "open office" (having to overhear the sales guy making calls all day, and people don't just pop in to ask a question. A room full of working developers is intimidating. Best to send an email instead.). On top of that, we had separate booths (with doors) that were kind of like phone booths, just enough space for two people, that developers would snag if they needed to focus.
- bryondowd 10y ago
  My last job had a similar setup, with a developer cave (complete with dim lighting to disorient visitors) with 5 devs working on the same system. There were long stretches of quiet time to focus, and a little bit of idle bullshitting with the opportunity to shoot questions across the room when it would be faster than looking things up yourself or going through email. Now I'm sitting in a cube farm, sharing a cube, and listening to administrative assistants chatter about their children and their health issues and what they had for lunch all day long. I started coming in hours late and leaving hours late just so I have a few hours of peace at the end of the day to get some focused work done. And that's on an 'easier to ask forgiveness than permission' basis. I'd kill for a setup like the top comment by shostack, but just getting back to a cave would be lovely.
  - BillAtHRST 10y ago
    >>with the opportunity to shoot questions across the room when it would be faster than looking things up yourself or going through email Faster for you, not for the poor slob who has to answer your questions.
    - bryondowd 10y ago
      True, but I meant that in context with the idling. In other words, when we're in a lull in the BSing, it was a good time to toss around a few questions. A quick "hey, do you happen to know where xyz happens?" can save you ten minutes and cost someone ten seconds. With a small group of just 5 programmers, it was easy enough to know when was an appropriate time for speaking and when it would be best not to disrupt the others.
- yawz 10y ago
  After 20 years in software development, I've come to believe that's the best set up for a balanced creativity and communication.
jasode 10y ago
>Joel Spolsky tried to set the record straight, Joel Spolsky may have tried but his companies (Fog Creek, Stackexchange) are not big enough nor influential enough to convince the industry. Microsoft in 1990s was one of the few companies that deliberately provided private offices with a door for every programmer. However, that ideology later morphed into putting 2 or more developers to share one room and then relocating a large group onto open floor plans[1]. It shows that even a company that originally prided itself on private offices eventually deviated towards open offices. (They still have lots of private offices.) As a counterpoint to offices with doors, there was billionaire Gordon Moore (CEO Intel) in 1996 without a private office.[2] The issue is that the touted benefits of private offices are not obvious slam dunks to observers. For example, if open floor plans with their distractions kill productivity, Google (open cubicles) should have lost to Microsoft Bing. Amazon and their AWS programmers distracted by open offices should be losing to Microsoft's Azure programmers. (Of course, there are multiple other factors at play besides office layout but that may also prove that open-vs-private doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things -- i.e. it's statistical noise.) There are no slam dunk business case studies that definitively proves that private offices produce superior business results. The narrative for private offices needs spectacular headlines of success in Harvard Business Review or Techcrunch articles about YC companies with private offices defeating every competitor. So far, the proponents like Spolsky (not big enough) and Microsoft (not considered a trendsetter in the tech world) is not enough. [1]http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-developer-division/ http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-developer-division/ [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX5g0kidk3Y&feature=youtu.be&t=13m46s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX5g0kidk3Y&feature=youtu.be...
- lj3 10y ago
  > Microsoft in 1990s was one of the few companies that deliberately provided private offices with a door for every programmer. However, that ideology later morphed into putting 2 or more developers to share one room and then relocating a large group onto open floor plans[1]. It shows that even a company that originally prided itself on private offices eventually deviated towards open offices. (They still have lots of private offices.) It's worth noting that when Microsoft was at its peak was when they had private offices. Correlation is not causation, but it's hardly a glowing recommendation for open offices. > As a counterpoint to offices with doors, there was billionaire Gordon Moore (CEO Intel) in 1996 without a private office.[2] That's not a serious counterpoint. We're talking about private offices for engineers who are on the maker schedule, where interruptions are harmful. CEOs run on a manager's schedule where interruptions are less harmful.
dasmoth 10y ago
The argument has shifted to "worse for individual productivity but what actually matters is teamwork." Plus a lot of claims, some of them coming from practising software developers, that you shouldn't trust the output of the lone hacker holed up in her own office. No, I don't buy it either.
- cyberferret 10y ago
  Well, Joel advocated private space for developers, but with an emphasis on 'paired coders' working together from time to time to mitigate the risk of 'lone wolf' programmers going off on a tangent, and to ensure code quality and consistency. This was all before the dot com boom IIRC. At one stage, a few years ago there seemed to be a movement towards private developer offices, but it seems to have been overturned somewhat of late.
  - dasmoth 10y ago
    I don't recall Joel being much of a pairing advocate. Actually, more the opposite [1]. Are you sure you aren't thinking of someone else? [1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html
    - cyberferret 10y ago
      Hmm... you could be right. I am trying to remember a more than decade old blog post, so I may have conflated Joel with someone else. I thought perhaps his business partner Jeff Atwood, but a quick Google search shows that he is not an advocate of paired programming either. I definitely know about Joel's insistence on private offices for his developers at the (then) new FogBugz offices, but stand corrected on my other statements.
manarth 10y ago
I don't think many organisations have a genuine belief that open offices are better…but it's more palatable justification than the fact that they're cheaper.
- dethswatch 10y ago
  They could just be honest with employees...

pionar 10y ago

I have a private office (I work from home), but there's a difference between open offices where EVERYONE in the company is out in one big area and a separate space for each team. That's how a team I used to be on was arranged. There was the outside office, then what was termed the "developer cave", which was a large section of the office (closed off, with a door!) that housed 5 developers and 3 QA people all working on the same product. That's better than private offices (it encourages collaboration), but, doesn't have most of the downsides of a traditional "open office" (having to overhear the sales guy making calls all day, and people don't just pop in to ask a question. A room full of working developers is intimidating. Best to send an email instead.). On top of that, we had separate booths (with doors) that were kind of like phone booths, just enough space for two people, that developers would snag if they needed to focus.

bryondowd 10y ago
My last job had a similar setup, with a developer cave (complete with dim lighting to disorient visitors) with 5 devs working on the same system. There were long stretches of quiet time to focus, and a little bit of idle bullshitting with the opportunity to shoot questions across the room when it would be faster than looking things up yourself or going through email. Now I'm sitting in a cube farm, sharing a cube, and listening to administrative assistants chatter about their children and their health issues and what they had for lunch all day long. I started coming in hours late and leaving hours late just so I have a few hours of peace at the end of the day to get some focused work done. And that's on an 'easier to ask forgiveness than permission' basis. I'd kill for a setup like the top comment by shostack, but just getting back to a cave would be lovely.
- BillAtHRST 10y ago
  >>with the opportunity to shoot questions across the room when it would be faster than looking things up yourself or going through email Faster for you, not for the poor slob who has to answer your questions.
  - bryondowd 10y ago
    True, but I meant that in context with the idling. In other words, when we're in a lull in the BSing, it was a good time to toss around a few questions. A quick "hey, do you happen to know where xyz happens?" can save you ten minutes and cost someone ten seconds. With a small group of just 5 programmers, it was easy enough to know when was an appropriate time for speaking and when it would be best not to disrupt the others.
yawz 10y ago
After 20 years in software development, I've come to believe that's the best set up for a balanced creativity and communication.

jasode 10y ago

>Joel Spolsky tried to set the record straight, Joel Spolsky may have tried but his companies (Fog Creek, Stackexchange) are not big enough nor influential enough to convince the industry. Microsoft in 1990s was one of the few companies that deliberately provided private offices with a door for every programmer. However, that ideology later morphed into putting 2 or more developers to share one room and then relocating a large group onto open floor plans[1]. It shows that even a company that originally prided itself on private offices eventually deviated towards open offices. (They still have lots of private offices.) As a counterpoint to offices with doors, there was billionaire Gordon Moore (CEO Intel) in 1996 without a private office.[2] The issue is that the touted benefits of private offices are not obvious slam dunks to observers. For example, if open floor plans with their distractions kill productivity, Google (open cubicles) should have lost to Microsoft Bing. Amazon and their AWS programmers distracted by open offices should be losing to Microsoft's Azure programmers. (Of course, there are multiple other factors at play besides office layout but that may also prove that open-vs-private doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things -- i.e. it's statistical noise.) There are no slam dunk business case studies that definitively proves that private offices produce superior business results. The narrative for private offices needs spectacular headlines of success in Harvard Business Review or Techcrunch articles about YC companies with private offices defeating every competitor. So far, the proponents like Spolsky (not big enough) and Microsoft (not considered a trendsetter in the tech world) is not enough. [1]http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-developer-division/ http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-developer-division/ [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX5g0kidk3Y&feature=youtu.be&t=13m46s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX5g0kidk3Y&feature=youtu.be...

lj3 10y ago
> Microsoft in 1990s was one of the few companies that deliberately provided private offices with a door for every programmer. However, that ideology later morphed into putting 2 or more developers to share one room and then relocating a large group onto open floor plans[1]. It shows that even a company that originally prided itself on private offices eventually deviated towards open offices. (They still have lots of private offices.) It's worth noting that when Microsoft was at its peak was when they had private offices. Correlation is not causation, but it's hardly a glowing recommendation for open offices. > As a counterpoint to offices with doors, there was billionaire Gordon Moore (CEO Intel) in 1996 without a private office.[2] That's not a serious counterpoint. We're talking about private offices for engineers who are on the maker schedule, where interruptions are harmful. CEOs run on a manager's schedule where interruptions are less harmful.

dasmoth 10y ago

The argument has shifted to "worse for individual productivity but what actually matters is teamwork." Plus a lot of claims, some of them coming from practising software developers, that you shouldn't trust the output of the lone hacker holed up in her own office. No, I don't buy it either.

cyberferret 10y ago
Well, Joel advocated private space for developers, but with an emphasis on 'paired coders' working together from time to time to mitigate the risk of 'lone wolf' programmers going off on a tangent, and to ensure code quality and consistency. This was all before the dot com boom IIRC. At one stage, a few years ago there seemed to be a movement towards private developer offices, but it seems to have been overturned somewhat of late.
- dasmoth 10y ago
  I don't recall Joel being much of a pairing advocate. Actually, more the opposite [1]. Are you sure you aren't thinking of someone else? [1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html
  - cyberferret 10y ago
    Hmm... you could be right. I am trying to remember a more than decade old blog post, so I may have conflated Joel with someone else. I thought perhaps his business partner Jeff Atwood, but a quick Google search shows that he is not an advocate of paired programming either. I definitely know about Joel's insistence on private offices for his developers at the (then) new FogBugz offices, but stand corrected on my other statements.

manarth 10y ago

I don't think many organisations have a genuine belief that open offices are better…but it's more palatable justification than the fact that they're cheaper.

dethswatch 10y ago
They could just be honest with employees...