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Sometimes my day is wasted if I am working on a hard problem and I am at 75% mentally. Sometimes I am net negative (committing major bugs) and I would have been

Sometimes my day is wasted if I am working on a hard problem and I am at 75% mentally. Sometimes I am net negative (committing major bugs) and I would have been wiser to do something else entirely. If every day I am not at full capacity, there are entire problems I would therefore be wiser to leave alone. Productivity, at the detail level, is not a smooth curve. I'll also point out that the folks advocating for "collaborative" offices generally make "bold claims" with little evidence (or even argument, at times) to substantiate.

jchw 7y ago
I do not think open-plan offices are good, I hate them. But, they have such an economical advantage that I'm not really surprised the trend continues despite the fact that everyone hates them. I think the real answer is that even a pretty enormous productivity drop will end up being worth it if you only care about the economics.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  > ...they have such an economical advantage... The point is that this is not a well substantiated position. Even if it is clearly demonstrated in some anecdotal cases (sales, marketing, tech support), there is a wide variation in what the day-to-day looks like within software development organizations. Keeping in mind, especially, that an open workspace for a small shop of 10 engineers is completely different than an open workspace for a floor of 200 engineers. And even moreso if there is a mixture of engineering and non-engineering (management, client relations, sales, etc.) on the same floor. There are enough ins and outs in how work actually gets done that I'm skeptical that we can categorically say much about open floor plans. I'm sure they are more efficient in many cases. I'm certainly not granting the implied "always" or "often enough to be granted" in "they have such an economical advantage". My default take for such things is that companies should be hiring experts and then trusting their expert opinions. Otherwise, I'm not sure what's the purpose of spending millions on presumably wise and intelligent engineers.

jchw 7y ago

I do not think open-plan offices are good, I hate them. But, they have such an economical advantage that I'm not really surprised the trend continues despite the fact that everyone hates them. I think the real answer is that even a pretty enormous productivity drop will end up being worth it if you only care about the economics.

humanrebar 7y ago
> ...they have such an economical advantage... The point is that this is not a well substantiated position. Even if it is clearly demonstrated in some anecdotal cases (sales, marketing, tech support), there is a wide variation in what the day-to-day looks like within software development organizations. Keeping in mind, especially, that an open workspace for a small shop of 10 engineers is completely different than an open workspace for a floor of 200 engineers. And even moreso if there is a mixture of engineering and non-engineering (management, client relations, sales, etc.) on the same floor. There are enough ins and outs in how work actually gets done that I'm skeptical that we can categorically say much about open floor plans. I'm sure they are more efficient in many cases. I'm certainly not granting the implied "always" or "often enough to be granted" in "they have such an economical advantage". My default take for such things is that companies should be hiring experts and then trusting their expert opinions. Otherwise, I'm not sure what's the purpose of spending millions on presumably wise and intelligent engineers.