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Reading the comments here I find it interesting how management totally ignores feedback from developers. A lot of devs think open offices and endless meetings a

Reading the comments here I find it interesting how management totally ignores feedback from developers. A lot of devs think open offices and endless meetings are a drain on productivity. So you would think the reasonable response would be to address these issues to get as much productivity out of these often highly paid people but instead the top guys often do exactly the opposite. It's a very curious dynamic.

gk1 9y ago
I agree that managers should very mindful of filling their teams' calendars with meetings. But there's not much a manager can do about open offices. They didn't design the building or the floorplan, and they can't change it now. Those decisions are made way above the typical managers' pay grade.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  Someone up the chain made those decisions based on some input. This stuff doesn't come down from the heavens.
  - sotojuan 9y ago
    They made that decision because it is cheaper, everyone else is doing it, and companies like Facebook "biggest open office plan ever" do it as well.
  - doublescoop 9y ago
    You know how developers feel their managers never listen to their input before making big decisions that have drastic impact on their day to day work? That happens between managers and executives just as often. As a manager, I have never been consulted about work space beyond a general "how do you want to arrange these desks we bought for you?" kind of way.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      Me neither. But I know for sure that someone around VP level or higher could make changes if they actually cared. They shouldn't hide behind facilities policies.
rhizome 9y ago
At a recent interview I could have swore I heard someone stifle a laugh when I asked when the last time they had an uninterrupted 4 hour stretch.
seanhunter 9y ago
This is a constant trope, and every time it's wheeled out a bunch of developers say they would love more uninterrupted time and their own offices vs open spaces. Both of these ignore the obvious - you don't optimise on productivity locally you need to optimise on output of the system as a whole. Productivity of the system as a whole is significantly improved by communication. Devs in offices may burn through a ton of tickets very productively achieving failure by building the wrong thing. Secondly, people who have never been managers often don't understand the externalities. As a manager, I've been asked "Why should the devs get so much better computers/bigger screens etc than us?" Different conditions can create an intense feeling of unfairness among people who don't get those conditions. Those types of things can wreck the culture at a company. Finally, open space is much much more flexible, so easier to change up when you need people to sprint together on a thing, when you need to scale up your team etc. Offices are extremely inflexible and typically anchorpoints for people's perception of their own status. Therefore once someone has an office, it's practically impossible to get them to not have one any more, even if circumstances have significantly changed. It's easy to blame management but it may well be that management have a totally different set of problems to consider than you.
- dasmoth 9y ago
  Therefore once someone has an office, it's practically impossible to get them to not have one any more, even if circumstances have significantly changed. What sort of change are you imagining which means someone should stop having an office?
  - bluedino 9y ago
    Wanting them to be on the floor with others
  - mattnewton 9y ago
    No room?
    - dasmoth 9y ago
      That’s the one kind-of solid reason (albeit one which implies bad planning and/or inflexibility on someone’s part). But if so, you’d damned well better be giving anyone doing desk work flexible options for working remotely.
dahart 9y ago
It's worse to have focused productive time on the wrong thing than it is to have meetings that clarify requirements and goals. I've watched a lot of very highly paid people dive into deeply technical and interesting problems that nobody needed a solution to, and fight to protect their time so they could finish. That wastes more time and money than meetings.
- pdimitar 9y ago
  The original article very clearly states that it discusses managers having to manage makers. Some of the jobs you described definitely don't seem to fit that description, so please don't hijack the discussion. Also, not all teams have poor management. That you worked in the film industry where supposedly people had no idea of the priorities daily says nothing about the software industry in general. My last several jobs involved sync meetings once every 5-10 days. Every meeting took 5 to 15 minutes and we all knew exactly what to do. Intermittent meetings only happened when somebody was blocked.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  Some of us are adult and have a professional attitude and don't need constant management. We know what needs to be done. We don't need to be treated like children.
  - dahart 9y ago
    > Some of us are adult... We don't need to be treated like children. Why do you think planning and management is treating people like children? How do you know what needs to be done? Are you sure you know what needs to be done? I said stuff like this when I was young just starting out writing software in the film industry. There were dailies and rounds, progress updates twice a day, and I fought them. I was wrong, and it took time for me to understand why. In my experience since then as both an engineer and a manager, it's clear that knowing what needs to be done at all times is very difficult, and unless you're a one person shop or in research, it involves talking to other people frequently. If we knew what needed to be done, businesses would never fail, over-engineering wouldn't exist, no deadlines would ever be missed, and no budgets would ever over-run. I've seen a lot of people who think they know what needs to be done. I've never met someone who actually knows what needs to be done most of the time. If you do, you should manage instead of writing code. FWIW, I don't know if this will help you or irritate you, but as a manager, your response sounds to me (ironically) quite immature. if I got this response from someone on my team, it would be a huge red flag.
leggomylibro 9y ago
It seems like ultimately, most senior managers don't care about feedback from developers. They will ignore and steamroll any opinion that does not fit whatever arbitrary metric they need to meet, and when your dire predictions come true they will act like there was no possible way to expect them.
some_account 9y ago
At my place, the people who book the meetings are the ones who are coordinating work done by others, so they need meetings to be productive. We have a product owner that is constantly justifying her existence by talking very much about things that have zero relevance to what we are doing at the moment.
mattmcknight 9y ago
I've had success with an intermediate to a huge open office vs a private office which we called a lab, but might also be called a team room. We had about 6 people in there, all working on the same project, and it wasn't a constant distraction. We did a fair amount of pair programming as well, where a domain expert would sit with me as the computer scientist, and it was a very low bar to engaging in that sort of thing to slide around the corner. Of course we all had our own two person shared offices as well, but our main workstations were in the lab so most time was spent in there.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I like small team rooms too. If you have up to 5 or 6 people the noise is still low and it's possible to have conversations.

gk1 9y ago

I agree that managers should very mindful of filling their teams' calendars with meetings. But there's not much a manager can do about open offices. They didn't design the building or the floorplan, and they can't change it now. Those decisions are made way above the typical managers' pay grade.

maxxxxx 9y ago
Someone up the chain made those decisions based on some input. This stuff doesn't come down from the heavens.
- sotojuan 9y ago
  They made that decision because it is cheaper, everyone else is doing it, and companies like Facebook "biggest open office plan ever" do it as well.
- doublescoop 9y ago
  You know how developers feel their managers never listen to their input before making big decisions that have drastic impact on their day to day work? That happens between managers and executives just as often. As a manager, I have never been consulted about work space beyond a general "how do you want to arrange these desks we bought for you?" kind of way.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    Me neither. But I know for sure that someone around VP level or higher could make changes if they actually cared. They shouldn't hide behind facilities policies.

rhizome 9y ago

At a recent interview I could have swore I heard someone stifle a laugh when I asked when the last time they had an uninterrupted 4 hour stretch.

seanhunter 9y ago

This is a constant trope, and every time it's wheeled out a bunch of developers say they would love more uninterrupted time and their own offices vs open spaces. Both of these ignore the obvious - you don't optimise on productivity locally you need to optimise on output of the system as a whole. Productivity of the system as a whole is significantly improved by communication. Devs in offices may burn through a ton of tickets very productively achieving failure by building the wrong thing. Secondly, people who have never been managers often don't understand the externalities. As a manager, I've been asked "Why should the devs get so much better computers/bigger screens etc than us?" Different conditions can create an intense feeling of unfairness among people who don't get those conditions. Those types of things can wreck the culture at a company. Finally, open space is much much more flexible, so easier to change up when you need people to sprint together on a thing, when you need to scale up your team etc. Offices are extremely inflexible and typically anchorpoints for people's perception of their own status. Therefore once someone has an office, it's practically impossible to get them to not have one any more, even if circumstances have significantly changed. It's easy to blame management but it may well be that management have a totally different set of problems to consider than you.

dasmoth 9y ago
Therefore once someone has an office, it's practically impossible to get them to not have one any more, even if circumstances have significantly changed. What sort of change are you imagining which means someone should stop having an office?
- bluedino 9y ago
  Wanting them to be on the floor with others
- mattnewton 9y ago
  No room?
  - dasmoth 9y ago
    That’s the one kind-of solid reason (albeit one which implies bad planning and/or inflexibility on someone’s part). But if so, you’d damned well better be giving anyone doing desk work flexible options for working remotely.

dahart 9y ago

It's worse to have focused productive time on the wrong thing than it is to have meetings that clarify requirements and goals. I've watched a lot of very highly paid people dive into deeply technical and interesting problems that nobody needed a solution to, and fight to protect their time so they could finish. That wastes more time and money than meetings.

pdimitar 9y ago
The original article very clearly states that it discusses managers having to manage makers. Some of the jobs you described definitely don't seem to fit that description, so please don't hijack the discussion. Also, not all teams have poor management. That you worked in the film industry where supposedly people had no idea of the priorities daily says nothing about the software industry in general. My last several jobs involved sync meetings once every 5-10 days. Every meeting took 5 to 15 minutes and we all knew exactly what to do. Intermittent meetings only happened when somebody was blocked.
maxxxxx 9y ago
Some of us are adult and have a professional attitude and don't need constant management. We know what needs to be done. We don't need to be treated like children.
- dahart 9y ago
  > Some of us are adult... We don't need to be treated like children. Why do you think planning and management is treating people like children? How do you know what needs to be done? Are you sure you know what needs to be done? I said stuff like this when I was young just starting out writing software in the film industry. There were dailies and rounds, progress updates twice a day, and I fought them. I was wrong, and it took time for me to understand why. In my experience since then as both an engineer and a manager, it's clear that knowing what needs to be done at all times is very difficult, and unless you're a one person shop or in research, it involves talking to other people frequently. If we knew what needed to be done, businesses would never fail, over-engineering wouldn't exist, no deadlines would ever be missed, and no budgets would ever over-run. I've seen a lot of people who think they know what needs to be done. I've never met someone who actually knows what needs to be done most of the time. If you do, you should manage instead of writing code. FWIW, I don't know if this will help you or irritate you, but as a manager, your response sounds to me (ironically) quite immature. if I got this response from someone on my team, it would be a huge red flag.

leggomylibro 9y ago

It seems like ultimately, most senior managers don't care about feedback from developers. They will ignore and steamroll any opinion that does not fit whatever arbitrary metric they need to meet, and when your dire predictions come true they will act like there was no possible way to expect them.

some_account 9y ago

At my place, the people who book the meetings are the ones who are coordinating work done by others, so they need meetings to be productive. We have a product owner that is constantly justifying her existence by talking very much about things that have zero relevance to what we are doing at the moment.

mattmcknight 9y ago

I've had success with an intermediate to a huge open office vs a private office which we called a lab, but might also be called a team room. We had about 6 people in there, all working on the same project, and it wasn't a constant distraction. We did a fair amount of pair programming as well, where a domain expert would sit with me as the computer scientist, and it was a very low bar to engaging in that sort of thing to slide around the corner. Of course we all had our own two person shared offices as well, but our main workstations were in the lab so most time was spent in there.

maxxxxx 9y ago
I like small team rooms too. If you have up to 5 or 6 people the noise is still low and it's possible to have conversations.