5 ms·

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 frequ

by 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."
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  I love them. They vastly improve team members ability to work together imo. Personally, I’ve never met an engineer in real life who complains about them, I’ve only ever seen this on HN or Reddit. I’ve always suspected it had something to do with this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6483953/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6483953/
  - learc83 7y ago
    Did you ever stop to think that maybe it's because people working in open offices are self selecting to work in open offices?
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      No, because non-open-plan offices pretty much don’t exist anymore.
      - learc83 7y ago
        There are plenty of companies without open layouts, add remote workers to that and self selection is a big factor. Add to that the possibility that people aren't comfortable complaining to someone who is very obviously pro open layout. Also every survey I can find says that employees don't want open office layouts by a large margin. There's clearly something else going on beyond autistic programmers complaining.
        magduf 7y ago
        I don't know why AmericanChopper keeps getting modded down; his points are absolutely valid. I'm not a fan of open offices either, but I've worked in a bunch of different places over the years, and he's right on many points. There aren't many places left that don't have open offices of some kind, and I have not met many people who complained about them. Usually, I'm the biggest complainer. I would take surveys with a grain of salt; of course complainers like me are going to be happy to voice their opinions in surveys like this, while other people probably don't bother taking the survey. I also find that my younger coworkers seem to really enjoy the open layouts. At my current workplace where I work in a closed lab, the complaint is about the lack of windows, not the noise or the lack of privacy. Some people will make comments about certain teams having meetings that are extremely loud, or about how quiet the lab is when those teams are in their meeting, so there does seem to be some desire for a little more quietness, but these same people have no trouble having a fairly noisy conversation while people are trying to work. In my view, Americans are just loud and extroverted in general, and this extends to the current workers in this field.
steve1977 7y ago
The question is if these communicator types actually get stuff done or if they just freeload on the work done by the introverted people but are more visible then those.

by magduf 7y ago

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."

AmericanChopper 7y ago
I love them. They vastly improve team members ability to work together imo. Personally, I’ve never met an engineer in real life who complains about them, I’ve only ever seen this on HN or Reddit. I’ve always suspected it had something to do with this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6483953/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6483953/
- learc83 7y ago
  Did you ever stop to think that maybe it's because people working in open offices are self selecting to work in open offices?
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    No, because non-open-plan offices pretty much don’t exist anymore.
    - learc83 7y ago
      There are plenty of companies without open layouts, add remote workers to that and self selection is a big factor. Add to that the possibility that people aren't comfortable complaining to someone who is very obviously pro open layout. Also every survey I can find says that employees don't want open office layouts by a large margin. There's clearly something else going on beyond autistic programmers complaining.
      - magduf 7y ago
        I don't know why AmericanChopper keeps getting modded down; his points are absolutely valid. I'm not a fan of open offices either, but I've worked in a bunch of different places over the years, and he's right on many points. There aren't many places left that don't have open offices of some kind, and I have not met many people who complained about them. Usually, I'm the biggest complainer. I would take surveys with a grain of salt; of course complainers like me are going to be happy to voice their opinions in surveys like this, while other people probably don't bother taking the survey. I also find that my younger coworkers seem to really enjoy the open layouts. At my current workplace where I work in a closed lab, the complaint is about the lack of windows, not the noise or the lack of privacy. Some people will make comments about certain teams having meetings that are extremely loud, or about how quiet the lab is when those teams are in their meeting, so there does seem to be some desire for a little more quietness, but these same people have no trouble having a fairly noisy conversation while people are trying to work. In my view, Americans are just loud and extroverted in general, and this extends to the current workers in this field.

steve1977 7y ago

The question is if these communicator types actually get stuff done or if they just freeload on the work done by the introverted people but are more visible then those.