3 ms·
"Suppose that in addition to your present duties, you were made responsible for space and services for your people. You would have to decide on the kind of work
by neilwilson 5y ago
"Suppose that in addition to your present duties, you were made responsible for space and services for your people. You would have to decide on the kind of workplace for each person, and the amount of space and expense to be allocated. How would you go about it? You'd probably want to study the ways in which people use their space, the amount of table space required, and the number of hours in a day spent working alone, working with one other person, and so forth. You'd also investigate the impact of noise on people's effectiveness. After all, your folks are intellect workers - they need to have their brains in gear to do their work, and noise does affect their ability to concentrate.
For each of the observed kinds of disturbance, you'd look for an easy, mechanical way to protect your workers. Given a reasonably free hand, you would investigate the advantages of closed space vs opens space. This would allow you to make a sensible trade-off of cost against privacy and quiet. Finally, you would take int account people's social needs and provide some areas where a conversation could take place without disturbing others.
It should come as no surprise to you that the people who do control space and services for your company (particularly if it is a large company) don't spend much time thinking about any of the concerns listed above."
Peopleware[0], DeMarco and Lister, First Published in 1987
[0] https://amzn.to/3d9uHPO https://amzn.to/3d9uHPO
- cassianoleal 5y agoIt's amazing how, 34 years later, that book is at least as relevant now as it was then. One would have expected some improvement in that area but sometimes it feels to me like the opposite is true.
- drewcoo 5y agoWhat? Are you saying that devs in bullpens like livestock wasn't part of the Peopleware vision? Maybe I should give the book a closer reading next time . . .
- leetrout 5y agoI can’t tell if you are being serious or not. The book advocates for treating people as adults. Trusting them to do their work. Creating and environment and process for doing that work. And it definitely does not defend bullpen working environments.
- olau 5y agoIndeed! The shared office building we're renting offices in was visited by the furniture police not too long ago. Fortunately, they didn't enter the offices, if they did, we'd have thrown them out, but they did put up gigantic signs in the hallways with slogans like "together we achieve more" and "coworking can be contagious". First we laughed in disgust, then we simply became banner blind. Then covid hit.
- macNchz 5y agoI read Peopleware a long time ago (from an HN recommendation) and found it super valuable, but if I have any takeaway from this past year it is how right they were about office layout for knowledge workers. At this point I've worked as a programmer in many open office configurations, and this past year has been somewhat of a revelation in my ability to focus and think through things. With each passing month the status quo of pre-2020 has become more absurd to me: hiring a team of highly paid software engineers to do focused thinking and plopping them in the middle of big room with multiple conversations, phone calls, people moving around, only for all of them to wear headphones and communicate with each other via Slack.