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There are two mutually exclusive groups of people: "Concentrators(1)" and "Communicators(2)". Concentrators must have conditions that allow one to form and hold

There are two mutually exclusive groups of people: "Concentrators(1)" and "Communicators(2)". Concentrators must have conditions that allow one to form and hold complex ideas, and act upon them. This is almost always some degree of a quiet environment, without visual or auditory distractions. the opposite of the ideal conditions of Communicators. Communicators must interact with others to do their job. (1) Typical of this group: mathematician, engineer, scientist, writer (2) project managers, C-class executives, sales, support It is as unfair to ask a Concentrator to work in a noisy environment as it is unfair to ask a Communicator to work in silence. However, if one puts both in an environment together (which is often the case) the Ccommunicator always "wins" by suppressing the Concentrator's ability to work through the mere act of performing their duties.

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
You're taxonomy sounds plausible, but it's not obviously true based on my experience. Do you know of any empirical studies that support the generalization?
- jackhack 7y ago
  Thank you. I don't, unfortunately. It was formulated purely on my own experience and instinct. This was part of a presentation I gave in the early 2000s, literally begging my management not to destroy productivity by moving our company from cubicles to an "open floor plan/hot desk" environment. I wanted to boil down the issue to its essence and this dichotomy was the product. As others have pointed out, the real answer is that people work on a continuum, but my point is that if we are going to pursue a change in environments, we should attempt to understand the nature of work and strive for an ideal. Why implement a "solution" that only works for one end of the concentrator/collaborator scale? In my case, implementation of the hot-desk program proceeded anyway, and I left the company soon after. Life is too short to be treated with such lack of consideration. The company has since laid off 10s of thousands of employees and sold off most of their once-glittering R&D campus buildings, bulldozing others. Only a thin shell of what used to be persists. I regret that I did not ask a rhetorical question such as the following: "if you had to re-take a college mathematics exam in eight hours, and your continued employment depends on a passing score, where would you go to study? A quiet room, or a busy place like the food court at the shopping mall or a bus terminal?" but I realize the executive Q&A sessions were merely a show trial, not a true inquiry. The decisions were made well in advance.
Quarrelsome 7y ago
its not a bool, its a scale. I do concentrator work just fine in a distracting environment. Other "concentrators" get more pissed off about it than I do.
- jackhack 7y ago
  Yes, I've seen this, and experienced it myself. It's possible, but hardly preferred. Do you ever wonder how much better could you perform in a non-distracting environment?
  - Quarrelsome 7y ago
    ye but then I'd lose the subconscious background shit. Part of my good is that I'm broad.
chadash 7y ago
Counterpoint: John von Neumann, arguably one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, claimed to do some of his best work in front of the TV. In my personal experience, I know plenty of engineers who don't mind noise. I think it's a personal thing more than anything and it's hard to generalize.
- lowercased 7y ago
  countercounterpoint: he was choosing to sit in front of the television.
  - jackhack 7y ago
    I think this is it -- he had control. Once others are free to intrude into your space, injecting distraction, all is lost.
    - codycraven 7y ago
      Anecdotally, I often (during evening/side projects) work with a TV on in the room. However a TV is entirely different than people being around me. There's noise from various directions, distances, and volumes—not to mention the awareness of people being near which always heightens my awareness of a situation, distracting from what I am trying to focus on.
- fyfy18 7y ago
  I find I can focus pretty well in a noisy coffee shop, but if I'm in an office and someone on the desk next to me starts having a conversation, I lose all focus.
  - dreamling 7y ago
    I think generally it's easy to know you won't be needed by other patrons in a coffee shop, or that their chatter won't require you to weigh in or judge, so your brain just keeps an ear out for normal danger noises. At work, headphones off, my brain is subconsciously trying to keep me informed about the noise around me in the workplace, so that I can respond if needed (generally I'm not) not helpful, brain. :P
mnem 7y ago
It’s not as clear cut as this. I form and hold complex ideas communicating with colleagues when designing and implementing a broad range of software systems (we work on core libraries used across our company) - we bat things around a lot and get to pretty decent solutions rapidly. I’m fortunate to be amongst people who work like this. I’ve also worked in teams where members preferred to concentrate on problems individually. While I can work like that, I much prefer more communicative teams.
JoshTriplett 7y ago
Some people work in both modes; they need quiet for concentration but communication for collaboration. One solution for this is to have many easily accessible conference rooms, including one-person rooms for calls, with sufficient soundproofing that you can't hear such calls from the nearest cube outside them.
magduf 7y ago
This is no longer true. Most younger people in engineering/CS fields are the "communicator" type and like to work in noisy, open-office environments, and frequently side-by-side. It's usually older and/or more introverted people who complain about the open-office craze, but there's absolutely no shortage of programmers who will strongly defend it.
- LameRubberDucky 7y ago
  Citation needed. Otherwise, this is just reads as ageism.
  - magduf 7y ago
    Easy, just look at the reply in this thread from "AmericanChopper". Every single time this topic comes up on an online discussion like this, there's plenty of people like him saying the exact same thing. And I have to partially agree with him: most engineers I work with do not have a problem with these offices. It's only a few.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      AmericanChopper claims that he's never met somebody who disagrees with him but seems to feel comfortable diagnosing those people, whom he's never met, with autism. Not a great comment and I don't think he made it in good faith. Saying that people who disagree with you must be autistic is too common online for me to give any comment like that the benefit of the doubt.
- zepto 7y ago
  No longer true because those are the only people who can succeed in the poor office environment?
- drngdds 7y ago
  I've yet to meet a programmer who strongly defends open offices. They seem to range from "doesn't mind it" to "literally unable to tolerate it."
szatkus 7y ago
I don't know which group suits me. When I'm concentrated I don't care about my surrounding.
- J5892 7y ago
  He said they're mutually exclusive. So, clearly you do not exist.
readme 7y ago
Ah yes, it's so simple when we can describe everything in terms of false dichotomies.
irrational 7y ago
While this is certainly a spectrum, I'm definitely at the extreme end of Concentrator. My productivity is basically zero when there is any background noise. I suspect this is related to my ADHD (which I've never taken medication for ;-). I'm also strange in other ways. Music does nothing at all for me and I have a really hard time remembering things that are spoken to me (but have an almost photographic memory of anything I read). I suspect I have some sort of auditory defect that all of this is wrapped up in.
rozab 7y ago
>There are two mutually exclusive groups of people gonna have to stop you right there mate
- laumars 7y ago
  Indeed. There are as many exceptions to the OPs point as there are examples. In fact I will flit between those two extremes in any given day based purely on the work I'm doing. eg if I'm doing management administration then I tend to be more chatty because it's lots of small jobs that often require coordinating other people vs when I'm solving engineering problems and I just want a quiet controlled environment.
steve1977 7y ago
The problem here is also that it's usually the concentrators who do the actual productive work. The communicators are often just intermediaries for the results of the concentrators.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago

You're taxonomy sounds plausible, but it's not obviously true based on my experience. Do you know of any empirical studies that support the generalization?

jackhack 7y ago
Thank you. I don't, unfortunately. It was formulated purely on my own experience and instinct. This was part of a presentation I gave in the early 2000s, literally begging my management not to destroy productivity by moving our company from cubicles to an "open floor plan/hot desk" environment. I wanted to boil down the issue to its essence and this dichotomy was the product. As others have pointed out, the real answer is that people work on a continuum, but my point is that if we are going to pursue a change in environments, we should attempt to understand the nature of work and strive for an ideal. Why implement a "solution" that only works for one end of the concentrator/collaborator scale? In my case, implementation of the hot-desk program proceeded anyway, and I left the company soon after. Life is too short to be treated with such lack of consideration. The company has since laid off 10s of thousands of employees and sold off most of their once-glittering R&D campus buildings, bulldozing others. Only a thin shell of what used to be persists. I regret that I did not ask a rhetorical question such as the following: "if you had to re-take a college mathematics exam in eight hours, and your continued employment depends on a passing score, where would you go to study? A quiet room, or a busy place like the food court at the shopping mall or a bus terminal?" but I realize the executive Q&A sessions were merely a show trial, not a true inquiry. The decisions were made well in advance.

Quarrelsome 7y ago

its not a bool, its a scale. I do concentrator work just fine in a distracting environment. Other "concentrators" get more pissed off about it than I do.

jackhack 7y ago
Yes, I've seen this, and experienced it myself. It's possible, but hardly preferred. Do you ever wonder how much better could you perform in a non-distracting environment?
- Quarrelsome 7y ago
  ye but then I'd lose the subconscious background shit. Part of my good is that I'm broad.

chadash 7y ago

Counterpoint: John von Neumann, arguably one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, claimed to do some of his best work in front of the TV. In my personal experience, I know plenty of engineers who don't mind noise. I think it's a personal thing more than anything and it's hard to generalize.

lowercased 7y ago
countercounterpoint: he was choosing to sit in front of the television.
- jackhack 7y ago
  I think this is it -- he had control. Once others are free to intrude into your space, injecting distraction, all is lost.
  - codycraven 7y ago
    Anecdotally, I often (during evening/side projects) work with a TV on in the room. However a TV is entirely different than people being around me. There's noise from various directions, distances, and volumes—not to mention the awareness of people being near which always heightens my awareness of a situation, distracting from what I am trying to focus on.
fyfy18 7y ago
I find I can focus pretty well in a noisy coffee shop, but if I'm in an office and someone on the desk next to me starts having a conversation, I lose all focus.
- dreamling 7y ago
  I think generally it's easy to know you won't be needed by other patrons in a coffee shop, or that their chatter won't require you to weigh in or judge, so your brain just keeps an ear out for normal danger noises. At work, headphones off, my brain is subconsciously trying to keep me informed about the noise around me in the workplace, so that I can respond if needed (generally I'm not) not helpful, brain. :P

mnem 7y ago

It’s not as clear cut as this. I form and hold complex ideas communicating with colleagues when designing and implementing a broad range of software systems (we work on core libraries used across our company) - we bat things around a lot and get to pretty decent solutions rapidly. I’m fortunate to be amongst people who work like this. I’ve also worked in teams where members preferred to concentrate on problems individually. While I can work like that, I much prefer more communicative teams.

JoshTriplett 7y ago

Some people work in both modes; they need quiet for concentration but communication for collaboration. One solution for this is to have many easily accessible conference rooms, including one-person rooms for calls, with sufficient soundproofing that you can't hear such calls from the nearest cube outside them.

magduf 7y ago

This is no longer true. Most younger people in engineering/CS fields are the "communicator" type and like to work in noisy, open-office environments, and frequently side-by-side. It's usually older and/or more introverted people who complain about the open-office craze, but there's absolutely no shortage of programmers who will strongly defend it.

LameRubberDucky 7y ago
Citation needed. Otherwise, this is just reads as ageism.
- magduf 7y ago
  Easy, just look at the reply in this thread from "AmericanChopper". Every single time this topic comes up on an online discussion like this, there's plenty of people like him saying the exact same thing. And I have to partially agree with him: most engineers I work with do not have a problem with these offices. It's only a few.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    AmericanChopper claims that he's never met somebody who disagrees with him but seems to feel comfortable diagnosing those people, whom he's never met, with autism. Not a great comment and I don't think he made it in good faith. Saying that people who disagree with you must be autistic is too common online for me to give any comment like that the benefit of the doubt.
zepto 7y ago
No longer true because those are the only people who can succeed in the poor office environment?
drngdds 7y ago
I've yet to meet a programmer who strongly defends open offices. They seem to range from "doesn't mind it" to "literally unable to tolerate it."

szatkus 7y ago

I don't know which group suits me. When I'm concentrated I don't care about my surrounding.

J5892 7y ago
He said they're mutually exclusive. So, clearly you do not exist.

readme 7y ago

Ah yes, it's so simple when we can describe everything in terms of false dichotomies.

irrational 7y ago

While this is certainly a spectrum, I'm definitely at the extreme end of Concentrator. My productivity is basically zero when there is any background noise. I suspect this is related to my ADHD (which I've never taken medication for ;-). I'm also strange in other ways. Music does nothing at all for me and I have a really hard time remembering things that are spoken to me (but have an almost photographic memory of anything I read). I suspect I have some sort of auditory defect that all of this is wrapped up in.

rozab 7y ago

>There are two mutually exclusive groups of people gonna have to stop you right there mate

laumars 7y ago
Indeed. There are as many exceptions to the OPs point as there are examples. In fact I will flit between those two extremes in any given day based purely on the work I'm doing. eg if I'm doing management administration then I tend to be more chatty because it's lots of small jobs that often require coordinating other people vs when I'm solving engineering problems and I just want a quiet controlled environment.

steve1977 7y ago

The problem here is also that it's usually the concentrators who do the actual productive work. The communicators are often just intermediaries for the results of the concentrators.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]