5 ms·

I worked as a contractor for a while at a company that was pretty much entirely great developers, but they had one guy who had more experience than nearly every

I worked as a contractor for a while at a company that was pretty much entirely great developers, but they had one guy who had more experience than nearly everybody else put together (he was in his 50s, and had worked on all sorts of cool things in his career), who was also more productive than anyone else. The founders of the company knew he was their top producer, and so they gave him whatever he wanted (within the bounds of budget, etc.). What he wanted most was a private office, and he got it, despite no one else in the company having one (it was kind of smallish and closet like, but he had a door that closed, and that made him happy). I always suspected that was a big part of why he was so productive compared to everyone else; though the huge amount of experience and his seeming disinterest in anything but churning out code (all of his hobbies also involved code to some degree, and he was always way out front on various trends in software development) were also big contributors. It's also worth nothing that he didn't put in long hours. When it was crunch time in the office, he wouldn't be one of the people there on the weekend. Paradoxically, I think that's another contributing factor to his high productivity. So, yeah, I've often wondered whether Google/Microsoft/Facebook/etc. has internal metrics about this. Google is infamously an open plan office, Microsoft has offices, facebook is mixed (I think?). Surely, these companies who keep gigabytes of data about everybody on the planet has some idea about the relative productivity of offices vs. open plans.

unkown-unknowns 9y ago
> [...] were also bug contributors. It's also worth nothing [...] I think you have a couple of typos here. Probably you meant to say "big contributors" and "worth noting".
- schrodinger 9y ago
  Swipe keyboard perhaps?
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  Typos happen. I fixed /bug/big/ (I guess at the same time you responded), but didn't see "nothing" until after my edit link went away. You are correct in your interpretation.
npsimons 9y ago
> It's also worth nothing that he didn't put in long hours. When it was crunch time in the office, he wouldn't be one of the people there on the weekend. Paradoxically, I think that's another contributing factor to his high productivity. I don't see how this is paradoxical. It makes just as much sense that better focused time, not "crunches", will increase productivity as the fact that offices will increase productivity. Same thing goes for telecommuting. The worship of overtime and 60, even 80 hour weeks is one of the big reasons I'm not in industry.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  It is paradoxical in the sense that "more time working" should equal "more output", but most of us know that past a certain point the result of "more time working" is worse code that has to be fixed, leading to overall less productivity. I'm not saying "more time working" equals more output. I'm saying there is a belief that it does, even among some people who should know better. The office I was working in did have occasional crunch times, and they'd put in extra hours; sometimes maybe it was necessary. But, old-timer I was talking about didn't really participate. His part of the job would have already been done earlier in the week.
throwme211345 9y ago
As an almost 50 year old who has worked on many cool things I'll weigh in. I get very tired of seeing the same mistakes in different guise. I don't get the youth culture of today and don't like it: including PC oriented culture and other media specific ideas designed to focus perception. I recognize patterns rather than specifics. I look at big picture and am careful about introducing paradigm shifts. I care about efficiency and ease of use, scalability and other ideas at inception of a project. If I am not respected for my approach and ideas I leave.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  I'm older now myself (closer to 40 than 50, but well past "young"), and I don't think I meant what you think I meant. "I don't get the youth culture of today and don't like it: including PC oriented culture and other media specific ideas designed to focus perception." "PC oriented culture" just seems like expecting people to treat everyone with respect, and I think that's an improvement. Our industry hasn't always been good at that, but it has nothing to do with productivity. The old-timer I talked about wasn't racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise an asshole...he just liked to be able to close his office door and think really hard about things. He worked well with others; treating the women and brown folks in the office just like anyone else. Why would that be a source of contention? And, I have no idea what "other media specific ideas designed to focus perception" could possibly mean. I know all the words, but they don't add up to anything, as far as I can tell.
  - throwme211345 9y ago
    These were my comments alone as a 50 year old in addition to your narrative; not in correlation but in comparison. PC in this context meaning behaviors for the sake of change willy-nilly (think about the injection of feminine instead of masculine pronoun that was|is fashionable). I see the mercurial aspect of PC culture as reactive and dismissive and dislike it intensely. Everyone these days seem to have some form of progressive agenda and most change is packaged in some media that makes it seem innocuous and correct in an engaging and entertaining way that would have been nearly impossible when I was a young man. In fact(as McLuhan might say) the media is the message. Chomsky is quite insightful in my opinion as to how the medium and vocabulary restrict available concepts.
dmoy 9y ago
I heard (in Seattle area) that MS office are on the way out, depending on the team you're on :/ Maybe someone can confirm...
- PretzelPirate 9y ago
  Yes, our buildings at MS are transitioning to open space. We now have a large room for each team. Everyone has a height-adjustable desk that can be moved around within the room and a pair of good quality headphones. Each room has its own small meeting room for devs to have long design discussions, and a larger conference room that is shared with the room next door. For making phone calls, there are really nice phone booths in the hallways.
  - alien_at_work 9y ago
    That's discouraging. MS did a study to determine offices improved productivity, so what happened?
    - 0xJRS 9y ago
      Open office = more dense work areas = profit
      - alien_at_work 9y ago
        That is certainly the idea in general but it will depend on how badly it affects worker productivity. It's just strange to see a company do a study, prove that offices produce the best results and still go with a measure that presumably isn't cost effective (else the initial study should have concluded that the difference was well within tolerable loss).
mayank 9y ago
I think you've got Facebook and Google reversed. Facebook is famously all open-plan. Google has a mix of open plan areas and mini 4-person offices with doors, along with other configurations.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  I don't consider a 4-person office to be an "office"; that's "open", to me. Google does have lots of meeting rooms and the like, so as I understand it, most developers can find a private workspace most of the times when they might need it. So, it's probably not awful to work at Google. If facebook is even more "open" than Google, I'm amazed anybody ever gets any work done, but obviously they do, so I may just be more reclusive than most tech people when I work.

unkown-unknowns 9y ago

> [...] were also bug contributors. It's also worth nothing [...] I think you have a couple of typos here. Probably you meant to say "big contributors" and "worth noting".

schrodinger 9y ago
Swipe keyboard perhaps?
SwellJoe 9y ago
Typos happen. I fixed /bug/big/ (I guess at the same time you responded), but didn't see "nothing" until after my edit link went away. You are correct in your interpretation.

npsimons 9y ago

> It's also worth nothing that he didn't put in long hours. When it was crunch time in the office, he wouldn't be one of the people there on the weekend. Paradoxically, I think that's another contributing factor to his high productivity. I don't see how this is paradoxical. It makes just as much sense that better focused time, not "crunches", will increase productivity as the fact that offices will increase productivity. Same thing goes for telecommuting. The worship of overtime and 60, even 80 hour weeks is one of the big reasons I'm not in industry.

SwellJoe 9y ago
It is paradoxical in the sense that "more time working" should equal "more output", but most of us know that past a certain point the result of "more time working" is worse code that has to be fixed, leading to overall less productivity. I'm not saying "more time working" equals more output. I'm saying there is a belief that it does, even among some people who should know better. The office I was working in did have occasional crunch times, and they'd put in extra hours; sometimes maybe it was necessary. But, old-timer I was talking about didn't really participate. His part of the job would have already been done earlier in the week.

throwme211345 9y ago

As an almost 50 year old who has worked on many cool things I'll weigh in. I get very tired of seeing the same mistakes in different guise. I don't get the youth culture of today and don't like it: including PC oriented culture and other media specific ideas designed to focus perception. I recognize patterns rather than specifics. I look at big picture and am careful about introducing paradigm shifts. I care about efficiency and ease of use, scalability and other ideas at inception of a project. If I am not respected for my approach and ideas I leave.

SwellJoe 9y ago
I'm older now myself (closer to 40 than 50, but well past "young"), and I don't think I meant what you think I meant. "I don't get the youth culture of today and don't like it: including PC oriented culture and other media specific ideas designed to focus perception." "PC oriented culture" just seems like expecting people to treat everyone with respect, and I think that's an improvement. Our industry hasn't always been good at that, but it has nothing to do with productivity. The old-timer I talked about wasn't racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise an asshole...he just liked to be able to close his office door and think really hard about things. He worked well with others; treating the women and brown folks in the office just like anyone else. Why would that be a source of contention? And, I have no idea what "other media specific ideas designed to focus perception" could possibly mean. I know all the words, but they don't add up to anything, as far as I can tell.
- throwme211345 9y ago
  These were my comments alone as a 50 year old in addition to your narrative; not in correlation but in comparison. PC in this context meaning behaviors for the sake of change willy-nilly (think about the injection of feminine instead of masculine pronoun that was|is fashionable). I see the mercurial aspect of PC culture as reactive and dismissive and dislike it intensely. Everyone these days seem to have some form of progressive agenda and most change is packaged in some media that makes it seem innocuous and correct in an engaging and entertaining way that would have been nearly impossible when I was a young man. In fact(as McLuhan might say) the media is the message. Chomsky is quite insightful in my opinion as to how the medium and vocabulary restrict available concepts.

dmoy 9y ago

I heard (in Seattle area) that MS office are on the way out, depending on the team you're on :/ Maybe someone can confirm...

PretzelPirate 9y ago
Yes, our buildings at MS are transitioning to open space. We now have a large room for each team. Everyone has a height-adjustable desk that can be moved around within the room and a pair of good quality headphones. Each room has its own small meeting room for devs to have long design discussions, and a larger conference room that is shared with the room next door. For making phone calls, there are really nice phone booths in the hallways.
- alien_at_work 9y ago
  That's discouraging. MS did a study to determine offices improved productivity, so what happened?
  - 0xJRS 9y ago
    Open office = more dense work areas = profit
    - alien_at_work 9y ago
      That is certainly the idea in general but it will depend on how badly it affects worker productivity. It's just strange to see a company do a study, prove that offices produce the best results and still go with a measure that presumably isn't cost effective (else the initial study should have concluded that the difference was well within tolerable loss).

mayank 9y ago

I think you've got Facebook and Google reversed. Facebook is famously all open-plan. Google has a mix of open plan areas and mini 4-person offices with doors, along with other configurations.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
SwellJoe 9y ago
I don't consider a 4-person office to be an "office"; that's "open", to me. Google does have lots of meeting rooms and the like, so as I understand it, most developers can find a private workspace most of the times when they might need it. So, it's probably not awful to work at Google. If facebook is even more "open" than Google, I'm amazed anybody ever gets any work done, but obviously they do, so I may just be more reclusive than most tech people when I work.