8 ms·

Is Agile Stifling Introverts?

128 points by nickmain 15y ago

dustineichler 15y ago
I've been saying this for a while, but the "inmates have taken over the asylum". Not only that, but "Agile" is subject to really loose interpretations and it suffers as a result, both in implementation and practice.
sek 15y ago
http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce...
- bdgilroy 15y ago
  Your comment here is a bit terse, but I'm going to read it as promoting having options and agree with you based on that. I think that it is quite possible that Agile doesn't serve the best interests of introverted programmers, but I disagree that this is a bad thing for programming as a whole. There are plenty of introverted programmers. If the dominant office/workflow structure of the day makes them less productive than they would be on their own, that creates a huge opportunity for an office/workflow structure that makes introverted programmers more productive than they would be on their own. On the other hand, I think that some percentage of introverted programmers who don't take a shine to Agile could search forever for an office/workflow structure that they like and never find one, because their issue is mainly with collaboration and exposing their work to criticism while it is still in mid-process. This group of malcontents can be subdivided still further into those who can make it on their own and those who really would benefit from the sort of collaboration and criticism that they resist. It is this last group that aren't merely introverted, they are also faint of heart. I spend about 40-50% of my time in this category and it's real bad. I take solace in my relative youth and inexperience, I need to know that I won't be this sort of introvert for long.
  - sek 15y ago
    My point was that there is not one perfect solution that fits for everything, this approach is negative as a whole. This video is just from another industry where they tried it in another area. It shows the corporate mentality in tackling problems. The reality is much more complex especially when it comes to people with different needs. This makes it probably more difficult for companies, but when they produce software they have to invest in finding the best "solutions".
kijin 15y ago
I don't think agile is necessarily anti-introverts. Pair programming isn't the beginning and end of agile. You can have agile while giving each programmer a private office and encouraging them to interact as needed in a common space. You can just as easily have waterfall where everyone is crammed into an open-plan office. But of course, in practice, buzzwords tend to get abused by extraverts to describe whatever they want.
slantyyz 15y ago
I don't think you can blame Agile for this. Lone wolves don't belong in packs.
- alextgordon 15y ago
  Sure you can. Introverts make up a large fraction of the population (just have a look at this poll[1]). If Agile is reduces the quality of their work, then the "pack" may well be better off without it. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722
  - slantyyz 15y ago
    What collaborative face-to-face environment doesn't reduce the quality of introverts' work? Most work environments today are open, regardless of industry. Strong personalities and herd thinking exist outside of the tech world too. Pointing the finger at agile might get eyeballs, but you have to keep in mind that open office plans have been popular long before Agile became a mainstream buzzword, probably because they're cheaper than putting up walls. I tend to think the Japanese management fad of the 80s probably had a little to do with it too. And not every group practising agile is pair programming. I am no fan of Agile, and as a former introvert, I can say that the only thing that stifled me in my introverted days was my own introversion.
amcintyre 15y ago
"Is it time to go back to the cubicles?" Personally, I think cubicles are just about as bad as open-plan offices. I want an office and a door I can close to keep people out when I need quiet.
- spamizbad 15y ago
  For me, it depends on the cubicle and the layout. I didn't mind working in a cube environment where our team was "clustered" together. We all had our private work areas, our personal space, but the entire team was a stones-throw away if we needed to collaborate or hold an impromptu meeting. Prior to this reorganizations however, it was miserable. My cube was between a sales guy and a customer support manager who would take support calls on speaker phone, in his cube, with members of his team all crammed in.
- zanny 15y ago
  Offices linked with a common meeting area for group work. Per team. I'd love that.
- ux_designer 15y ago
  Where are you going to find a office that has 50-something private offices? I've worked in places with 30+ programmers - what building exists that a company could afford to have 30 private offices??
  - nknight 15y ago
    The Symantec (formerly Central Point) offices in Beaverton, Oregon, for one. It's been years since I've seen the inside of it, but at least into the early 00s, even low-seniority QA guys had private offices. Things are relatively cheap when you don't try to locate them right in the middle of an overcrowded city.
  - amcintyre 15y ago
    Every building I've seen at Microsoft is big enough, although some are (or are being switched to) open-plan. Now that I think about it, everywhere I've worked there was enough space so that everybody working there at the time could have had an office. As to where I'm going to find them: I'm probably going to filter out employers that can't make enough money with programmers to afford an office for each of them. I know this removes a non-trivial number of employers from my potential field of employment options.
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
I refuse to work anywhere there is an open office. Every time I've been forced into that, my productivity drops through the floor and my misery sky rockets. Employers need to understand different people work differently. Want a truly efficient knowledge worker staff? Do try to cookie-cutter their environment. Give people the environment they need to succeed, which for some may be open collaboration and others quiet reserve. When the brain is really the only limiter on productivity, optimize for that.
- kfcm 15y ago
  I agree with you (generally) on principal. However, employers don't like individuality. Individuality costs money and makes more work. Just conform to the cookie-cutter employment contract/workspace/toolsets, and don't rock the boat.
  - mrweasel 15y ago
    I see your point in "Individuality costs money.... ", but I doubt it does. Open source projects find an fix bugs quickly, if there's enough developers, because people are different, work different and think different. I would argue that individuality saves time, money and work. That being said, businesses could just cookie-cut smaller offices and more people would get more work done.
    - Silhouette 15y ago
      I don't think there's much doubt, from a management/accounting perspective, that supporting diverse requirements for a workforce of individuals costs more than supporting uniform requirements for a workforce of enforced clones. The thing is, the cost isn't what really matters, the cost/benefit ratio is. You want to put your people in an environment that optimises the productivity of your organisation as whole, by getting the balance right between supporting both individual performance and effective collaboration. If detailed customisation of the environment for every single member of your staff to hit that balance will increase your costs by 100%, but doing so increases productivity of your overall organisation by 200%, then it's a very beneficial action.
DanielRibeiro 15y ago
On this[1] recent podcast[2] fogus had some amazing insights on Pair Programming, as Relevance also has a pairing policy. [1] http://thinkrelevance.com/blog/2012/03/28/thinkrelevance-the-podcast-episode-008-michael-fogus http://thinkrelevance.com/blog/2012/03/28/thinkrelevance-the... [2] http://blog.fogus.me/2012/03/29/fogus-on-think-relevance-podcast/ http://blog.fogus.me/2012/03/29/fogus-on-think-relevance-pod...
angstrom 15y ago
Currently working in an open plan office and I hate it. The open plan office seeks to solve the problem of knowledge silos where people hole up and wait for people to come to them. Unfortunately, once that knowledge is distributed the constant interruptions leads to an environment where no one can focus and formulate new ideas during the 9-6 time frame. So work starts to seep into personal time which leads to a far larger problem where people become resentful on a regular basis and burnout. Meanwhile, the CTOs and VPs who also sit in the open plan floor can be seen leaving on a regular basis at 6:00 sharp. I have not achieved a state of mental flow in over a year. If a place I'm interviewing at has adopted the open floor plan, it's a deal breaker. I've worked in cubicle farms, private rooms, shared rooms, and clustered team cubicle rooms. Cubicle farms are equally abhorred to open plan. I think the best mixture is shared rooms with private meeting rooms on a reservation basis, preferably with the private rooms along the windows and meeting rooms in the middle of the building.
- ken 15y ago
  Yes, I've heard the 'collaboration' justification, too. In my experience, a lot of programmers hate the open-floorplan noise, to which they're told "just take a laptop into a spare conference room, or work from home". The upshot is that half the team is now taking up conference rooms or working from home. It's the worst of both worlds: we're paying for both cubicles that nobody uses and big conference rooms being used as single offices, and people are even more isolated than if they'd just been given normal offices to begin with. It reminds me of situations like Prohibition (and I'm sure you can think of others): we don't like X, therefore we'll legislate against X, and ignore the fact that people are going to do X anyway, and so our legislation actually makes things worse.
  - amcintyre 15y ago
    I'm surprised people that push the open-floorplan idea would allow devs to work from home. I would expect them to view that as "ultimate productivity-killing isolation." I mean, "how can we know you're actually working. You're at home, we can't see you producing."
hsmyers 15y ago
In a very long work career, I've spent time in just about every office configuration you can imagine. As I read this article and the comments here I thought back over where I was most productive and most comfortable. And surprised myself! As it turns out I find that a sort of compromise between open office and cubical space seems to work best for me---large cubical with 4 work spaces, each placed in a corner. They are far enough away so that I can ignore them as need be, yet near enough for conversations/questions about the current project. In the two instances where that was the situation, I was both productive and comfortable---hard to argue with that. It never occured to me to ask whose idea the setup was, but it was a good one in my estimation.
- matwood 15y ago
  I was also thinking about the question over my working career. My best work has been done in a closed office shared with 1 or 2 other people also working on the same project. I worked at home for 2 years and while I had great spurts of productivity when the task was well defined, getting questions answered or bouncing ideas off others hurt some types of work. Cubes never did work well for me because they rarely get any natural light. I'm a sun driven person and try my best to insist on a window in my office.
tnash 15y ago
I agree with the points in the article that brainstorming is unhelpful and pair programming can be useful. I have yet to attend a meeting at work with more than one person that has yielded anything useful. In those meetings the extroverts take over and the introverts are left in the corner twiddling their thumbs. If we were given access to the meeting agenda beforehand, and were given time to work on the points individually beforehand, the meeting may actually be productive.
schadr 15y ago
As most of the comments pointed out the problem is not with agile but rather with the tendency to only have one way to solve a problem and mostly ignore that we are individuals with rather different needs. With respect to brainstorming I had session that worked fantastically and others that don't, and in my opinion in session that don't work there is someone that has power over the majority of the group and is simply dictating what happens in the brainstorming session.
jdlshore 15y ago
I'm an introvert, and I've done a lot of pair programming. I've done a lot of solo programming, too. The InfoQ essay makes a fundamental mistake: Being an introvert isn't the same as needing to work alone. Introverts gain energy from focusing on the "internal world" of thoughts and ideas. Extroverts gain energy from focusing on the "external world" of socializing and interactions. So, as an introvert, I can do just fine as a public speaker, consultant, and yes, pair programmer and Agile team member, because those activities are focused on thoughts and ideas. (I don't do so well at parties or conference ice-breakers, and that's fine.) The other error I see in the InfoQ essay is that it conflates "Agile" with "decision by committee." It's true that Agile teams work in, well, teams, but that's not the same as everybody being involved in every decision. Team members on a high-functioning team know who on the team is best at what, and they automatically delegate everyday decisions to the people most qualified to make those decisions. It does take a while for a team to reach this level of capability, and the early stages of team growth can be uncomfortable and difficult, often with too many meetings, but that doesn't mean that "Agile" == "decision by committee." It just means that smooth-running work takes time and practice. No surprise there.
- mrweasel 15y ago
  I was going to point out something similar. I know people who are extroverts, but are completely incapable of working in an open office. The few people I know, how claim that an open office plan helps still needs headphones and music in order to close out the noise. Personally I "just" need complete silence, but that's not related to being introvert or extrovert. Semi-related: I'm starting to be a bit ticked of about the whole introvert/extrovert. Some forums, HN, include seems to be celebrating the whole introvert thing, like it's somehow "better". Much in the same way as some thinks that NoSQL is just better than RDBMS, regardless of the application. People are just different, but we're still struggling to deal with it, businesses even more so. I have no idea if I'm an introvert or not, nor do I care to know, I'm just me.
  - dwc 15y ago
    Celebrating introversion is a reaction to the cultural notion that extroversion is the ideal. It's unfortunate that you (and presumably others) get getting the impression that it's being put forward as better. I don't think the likes of Susan Cain are saying that. Let's recognize instead that not everyone is the same, and that a Procrustean approach is stifling and counterproductive. I'm sure that there are some people who want the pendulum to swing their way. That can serve a purpose of raising awareness, but should never come at the expense of stifling extroverts.
willvarfar 15y ago
> "Is it time to go back to the cubicles?" No! Offices with doors! http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html
msluyter 15y ago
I think the article is possibly conflating a couple of different things: a) Open office plans -- for a lot of reasons I'd agree that these suck, but b) Brainstorming -- Recent studies suggesting that it's ineffective are intruiging, but I wonder to what extent group cohesion matters? Cohesive groups where we're less worried about looking bad might be more effective. c) Pair programming -- even though I'd definitely consider myself an introvert, pair programming doesn't rise to the level of social invasiveness that I would find problematic. In other words, most introverts dislike being around large groups, strangers, trying to chit-chat/schmooze, etc... but are often find around smaller groups of people they know and get along with. So I'd be hesitant to group pair programming with the others. OTOH, I've never had to do it all day long, so I'm not sure how that feels. Can anyone speak to that?
- tubbo 15y ago
  I've done it all day. It's really great when you want to, and really shitty when you don't want to. I'd say it's all about whether your devs want to naturally pair, and you shouldn't force them to work any which way. My biggest problem with Agile is that it touts itself as THE way you should work. When you're constantly working with all different kinds of minds, it's hard to say conclusively that ONE SYSTEM will work for EVERYONE. I will say that as a pseudo-introvert (can function in large groups but prefers small, intimate conversations most of the time), I do enjoy pair programming because I learn so much. It's best to pair an unexperienced but knowledgable dev up with a veteran to either the current project or the current problem. The combination of naive creativity with tried-and-true procedure is the best of both worlds, and truly impossible with a single person, in my opinion.
- ams6110 15y ago
  I quit a good job I otherwise enjoyed because of pair programming.
  - nydev 15y ago
    Interesting. Was it the pairing per se or the people you were paired up with that didn't work for you?
nickcassimatis 15y ago
On the one hand, many of the smartest people need significant amounts of time alone to think through their work. On the other, so many decisions an individual in a team makes are constrained by the requirements of the rest of the team. To find these out, you need to coordinate with the team, and that's much easier when everyone is physically together. In our startup, we deal with this tradeoff with two spatial configurations. We spend part of our time together in an open space where interruptions are common and expected. We spend the rest of our time miles apart, occasionally coordinating over email and IM whenever needed. Perhaps one way to achieve this in larger teams is to block off large chunks of the week during which it is understood no one interrupts anyone else. Weekends already play this role for many people I know. They often work for a good chunk of the weekend, but are not expected to take calls or return emails. It's when they do some of their deepest thinking and best writing.
- jonstjohn 15y ago
  I'm assuming 'miles apart' is working from home or cafe? I really like the idea of two spatial configurations. Personally, I work remote for a small company that is mostly local - I visit the office a couple times a year and love the personal time for face-to-face discussion, etc. If I could have that a couple times a week, or a hour a day, I would love it.
- X-Istence 15y ago
  I'm sorry, but I have started putting my foot down with my work and saying that the weekend is mine. I have come to the conclusion that working hard 24/7 is starting to wear me out and is starting to make me resentful. I'm available throughout the week, if you can't provide and environment for me where I can be productive because of for example an open floor plan then I am not going to spend my time for you. I have been very fortunate though in that I have a very understanding boss that lets me work whatever hours I please (I generally get to the office by around 1000/1030 and leave at around 1800/1900) and that has helped my productivity quite a bit as well because I am sleeping on my own sleep schedule that works for me, and at the tail end of the day when I am most productive the office is empty and quiet and I can get my work done.
paulhauggis 15y ago
Why are we bending over backwards for Introverts? If you can't work on a team and socialize to the degree that you will be a functional team member, you probably should think about getting some kind of therapy before getting a job as a developer. Any project that gets bigger than a few thousand lines of code can't be maintained by a lone developer. It also requires some sort of socialization. Every placed I've ever worked required me to talk to other developers because my code would most likely be touching theirs to some degree or I would need to get info on something I would be working on.
- ivix 15y ago
  Unfortunately, you've completely missed the point of the article.
  - paulhauggis 15y ago
    and you have completely missed the point of my post. (I downvoted you)
    - anthonyb 15y ago
      I downvoted you, multiple times, because you're being an ass.
- tbrownaw 15y ago
  Because some social interaction is necessary, allowing anything less than constant total social immersion is "bending over backwards for Introverts" and anyone who desires such is useless dead weight. Anyone who thinks that it might be useful to have even ten minutes of peace and quiet to be able to type or think without interruption is clearly delusional, because all thinking is done as part of a conversation.
  - paulhauggis 15y ago
    so, brainstorming is useless? Sitting around and talking about an idea is useless? The entire point of the article is not to discount these things because they are useless, but to discount them because a small percentage of the population find them uncomfortable.
darkxanthos 15y ago
There is so much irony around "agilistas" applying practices like these carte blanche. Let's create a new buzzword: POPS People over process, stupid.
maximilianburke 15y ago
At my current place of work I have the choice of working in a 2-person office or on the (semi-)open floor. Working on the open floor can be frustrating with the distraction, but it has natural light. Working in an office is productive but without the light it's depressing. My current compromise is to enjoy the natural light on the floor and use earplugs when I really need to concentrate.
- gte910h 15y ago
  You can buy lights from costco that simulate natural light for about $100 bucks. All depression will vanish.
leoedin 15y ago
Generally I find with programming and problem solving problems I work well with a mix of time alone to implement and try ideas followed by some time discussing the problem with others. Often just talking through a problem leads to a solution you hadn't considered, or someone else's input forces you to think about other aspects of the problem. However, trying to actually implement the solution with someone looking over your shoulder definitely doesn't help.
sirclueless 15y ago
I had an internship last summer where the interns were all in an open-air room. It worked pretty well even though I am 95% introvert, because I naturally tend to zone out everything I'm not focused on anyways. I think it's possible to simulate that, even if you aren't naturally oblivious so your surroundings, by putting on a comfy pair of over-the-ear noise cancelling headphones and listening to some ambient music. In addition to providing insulation from audible distractions, it's also a good cue to your co-workers that if they try to attract your attention, they will be interrupting you. If you are distracted easily in your peripheral vision by people walking by, then this won't help you much, but otherwise it's a pretty good approximation of being alone. My point is that as a programmer there are things you can do even in an open-air environment to provide creative isolation, without losing the benefits of having easy access to the people around you when you want to talk.
hkarthik 15y ago
I've commented on this before, but I'll reiterate that in my experience, 3-5 person team rooms work best. Smaller teams tend to be the most successful at breaking large problems up into smaller, shippable chunks. Also, they can minimize the distractions by controlling their own space. If an individual needs private time, I think a generous work-from-home policy can do wonders. Give a person 2 days of the week to work from home and let the team self manage time in/out of the office. Letting the team work out scheduling helps them maximize productivity with both group-think and individual contributions.
kevinpet 15y ago
I think this is about disorganization masquerading as agile. I'm a big believer in Scrum. Scrum, with bi-weekly sprints and daily standups is less overhead of talking to coworkers than I've experienced at places that are not as formally agile (either not claiming to be agile, or not following a specific methodology). I'm not a fan of open plan, but I can deal with it. It works fine when people have the sense to take meetings into, you know, the meeting rooms.
zeroonetwothree 15y ago
The most interesting thing in my mind is not which type of office plan is best for which type of person, but that no one can ever agree on the answer. Maybe the right solution is to allow a mix of plans? Let people have private offices that want them, and an open plan for those that want that too. True, it won't be perfect and there might be some issues with teams mixing up different types too much, but overall it might be better than only having one type of floorplan.
adrianhoward 15y ago
If you believe the whole introvert/extrovert Jungian/Myers-Briggs thing I classify as an introvert and I love agile. So do lots of other folk I know - including some of the people who actually started the whole agile thing (there was a long and tedious thread on the XP list on the topic if anybody cares to read up - see http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/extremeprogramming/msearch?query=+Introverts%2C+Agile+and+Creativity http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/extremeprogramming/msearc...) As others have pointed out, no agile process that I am aware of recommends open plan offices. Open plan offices suck. What many in the agile community do recommend is having team rooms - where everybody working on a particular sits together. In fact the only agile process I'm aware of that makes any explicit statement on working environment is XP - which has having per-project team rooms as one of it's practices (the primary practice of "Sit together" In XP2E) And there's a lot of actual evidence that the team-room way of working is very, very effective. See this quora answer of mine for some references http://www.quora.com/Is-having-all-the-startup-engineers-work-at-the-same-room-a-good-thing-or-not/answer/Adrian-Howard http://www.quora.com/Is-having-all-the-startup-engineers-wor..., and the agile alliance guide has some references too http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/teamroom.html http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/teamroom.html. Especially the "Offices That Work" paper that has some nice info on the relative trade-offs. I find it curious that so many folk focus on individual performance - when most development is a team sport. I don't care if I'm a little less productive as an individual by a few project-related interruptions if the overall productivity of the team I'm working on improves.
sassafras 15y ago
The New York Times article the post initially links to is a lot more interesting. Besides debunking formal brainstorming processes, it also points out the increasing necessity of creative group work, as well as strategies that are quite effective. Examples include MIT's chaotic Building 20, and the sweet spot of "familiar but not too familiar" in hit Broadway musical teams. Perhaps Agile with a capital A does hold something in common with the formal technique of brainstorming. The key point of the Lehrer piece is that in order for group creativity to flourish you need to foster debate and disagreement, not just uncritical free association in a conference room. And even then, it's good not to put too much formal process in place, because the best interactions are unscripted. But this in turn solidifies the need for work spaces that maximize the chance for these encounters.
recursive 15y ago
I work in an open office floor plan, and I enjoy it. So that sometimes happens.
codereview 15y ago
My biggest problem is this equates Agile to Scrum, pair programming, and open floor plans. Agile is also dev practices: refactoring, TDD, unit testing, continuous build, etc. Agile = faster development and accelerated deliverability. Sure, cooperation and breaking down silos is part of it but introverts can unit test. (Learn more: http://j.mp/Hex2Uy http://j.mp/Hex2Uy)

128 points by nickmain 15y ago

I've been saying this for a while, but the "inmates have taken over the asylum". Not only that, but "Agile" is subject to really loose interpretations and it suffers as a result, both in implementation and practice.

sek 15y ago

http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce...

bdgilroy 15y ago
Your comment here is a bit terse, but I'm going to read it as promoting having options and agree with you based on that. I think that it is quite possible that Agile doesn't serve the best interests of introverted programmers, but I disagree that this is a bad thing for programming as a whole. There are plenty of introverted programmers. If the dominant office/workflow structure of the day makes them less productive than they would be on their own, that creates a huge opportunity for an office/workflow structure that makes introverted programmers more productive than they would be on their own. On the other hand, I think that some percentage of introverted programmers who don't take a shine to Agile could search forever for an office/workflow structure that they like and never find one, because their issue is mainly with collaboration and exposing their work to criticism while it is still in mid-process. This group of malcontents can be subdivided still further into those who can make it on their own and those who really would benefit from the sort of collaboration and criticism that they resist. It is this last group that aren't merely introverted, they are also faint of heart. I spend about 40-50% of my time in this category and it's real bad. I take solace in my relative youth and inexperience, I need to know that I won't be this sort of introvert for long.
- sek 15y ago
  My point was that there is not one perfect solution that fits for everything, this approach is negative as a whole. This video is just from another industry where they tried it in another area. It shows the corporate mentality in tackling problems. The reality is much more complex especially when it comes to people with different needs. This makes it probably more difficult for companies, but when they produce software they have to invest in finding the best "solutions".

kijin 15y ago

I don't think agile is necessarily anti-introverts. Pair programming isn't the beginning and end of agile. You can have agile while giving each programmer a private office and encouraging them to interact as needed in a common space. You can just as easily have waterfall where everyone is crammed into an open-plan office. But of course, in practice, buzzwords tend to get abused by extraverts to describe whatever they want.

slantyyz 15y ago

I don't think you can blame Agile for this. Lone wolves don't belong in packs.

alextgordon 15y ago
Sure you can. Introverts make up a large fraction of the population (just have a look at this poll[1]). If Agile is reduces the quality of their work, then the "pack" may well be better off without it. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722
- slantyyz 15y ago
  What collaborative face-to-face environment doesn't reduce the quality of introverts' work? Most work environments today are open, regardless of industry. Strong personalities and herd thinking exist outside of the tech world too. Pointing the finger at agile might get eyeballs, but you have to keep in mind that open office plans have been popular long before Agile became a mainstream buzzword, probably because they're cheaper than putting up walls. I tend to think the Japanese management fad of the 80s probably had a little to do with it too. And not every group practising agile is pair programming. I am no fan of Agile, and as a former introvert, I can say that the only thing that stifled me in my introverted days was my own introversion.

amcintyre 15y ago

"Is it time to go back to the cubicles?" Personally, I think cubicles are just about as bad as open-plan offices. I want an office and a door I can close to keep people out when I need quiet.

spamizbad 15y ago
For me, it depends on the cubicle and the layout. I didn't mind working in a cube environment where our team was "clustered" together. We all had our private work areas, our personal space, but the entire team was a stones-throw away if we needed to collaborate or hold an impromptu meeting. Prior to this reorganizations however, it was miserable. My cube was between a sales guy and a customer support manager who would take support calls on speaker phone, in his cube, with members of his team all crammed in.
zanny 15y ago
Offices linked with a common meeting area for group work. Per team. I'd love that.
ux_designer 15y ago
Where are you going to find a office that has 50-something private offices? I've worked in places with 30+ programmers - what building exists that a company could afford to have 30 private offices??
- nknight 15y ago
  The Symantec (formerly Central Point) offices in Beaverton, Oregon, for one. It's been years since I've seen the inside of it, but at least into the early 00s, even low-seniority QA guys had private offices. Things are relatively cheap when you don't try to locate them right in the middle of an overcrowded city.
- amcintyre 15y ago
  Every building I've seen at Microsoft is big enough, although some are (or are being switched to) open-plan. Now that I think about it, everywhere I've worked there was enough space so that everybody working there at the time could have had an office. As to where I'm going to find them: I'm probably going to filter out employers that can't make enough money with programmers to afford an office for each of them. I know this removes a non-trivial number of employers from my potential field of employment options.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

I refuse to work anywhere there is an open office. Every time I've been forced into that, my productivity drops through the floor and my misery sky rockets. Employers need to understand different people work differently. Want a truly efficient knowledge worker staff? Do try to cookie-cutter their environment. Give people the environment they need to succeed, which for some may be open collaboration and others quiet reserve. When the brain is really the only limiter on productivity, optimize for that.

kfcm 15y ago
I agree with you (generally) on principal. However, employers don't like individuality. Individuality costs money and makes more work. Just conform to the cookie-cutter employment contract/workspace/toolsets, and don't rock the boat.
- mrweasel 15y ago
  I see your point in "Individuality costs money.... ", but I doubt it does. Open source projects find an fix bugs quickly, if there's enough developers, because people are different, work different and think different. I would argue that individuality saves time, money and work. That being said, businesses could just cookie-cut smaller offices and more people would get more work done.
  - Silhouette 15y ago
    I don't think there's much doubt, from a management/accounting perspective, that supporting diverse requirements for a workforce of individuals costs more than supporting uniform requirements for a workforce of enforced clones. The thing is, the cost isn't what really matters, the cost/benefit ratio is. You want to put your people in an environment that optimises the productivity of your organisation as whole, by getting the balance right between supporting both individual performance and effective collaboration. If detailed customisation of the environment for every single member of your staff to hit that balance will increase your costs by 100%, but doing so increases productivity of your overall organisation by 200%, then it's a very beneficial action.

DanielRibeiro 15y ago

On this[1] recent podcast[2] fogus had some amazing insights on Pair Programming, as Relevance also has a pairing policy. [1] http://thinkrelevance.com/blog/2012/03/28/thinkrelevance-the-podcast-episode-008-michael-fogus http://thinkrelevance.com/blog/2012/03/28/thinkrelevance-the... [2] http://blog.fogus.me/2012/03/29/fogus-on-think-relevance-podcast/ http://blog.fogus.me/2012/03/29/fogus-on-think-relevance-pod...

angstrom 15y ago

Currently working in an open plan office and I hate it. The open plan office seeks to solve the problem of knowledge silos where people hole up and wait for people to come to them. Unfortunately, once that knowledge is distributed the constant interruptions leads to an environment where no one can focus and formulate new ideas during the 9-6 time frame. So work starts to seep into personal time which leads to a far larger problem where people become resentful on a regular basis and burnout. Meanwhile, the CTOs and VPs who also sit in the open plan floor can be seen leaving on a regular basis at 6:00 sharp. I have not achieved a state of mental flow in over a year. If a place I'm interviewing at has adopted the open floor plan, it's a deal breaker. I've worked in cubicle farms, private rooms, shared rooms, and clustered team cubicle rooms. Cubicle farms are equally abhorred to open plan. I think the best mixture is shared rooms with private meeting rooms on a reservation basis, preferably with the private rooms along the windows and meeting rooms in the middle of the building.

ken 15y ago
Yes, I've heard the 'collaboration' justification, too. In my experience, a lot of programmers hate the open-floorplan noise, to which they're told "just take a laptop into a spare conference room, or work from home". The upshot is that half the team is now taking up conference rooms or working from home. It's the worst of both worlds: we're paying for both cubicles that nobody uses and big conference rooms being used as single offices, and people are even more isolated than if they'd just been given normal offices to begin with. It reminds me of situations like Prohibition (and I'm sure you can think of others): we don't like X, therefore we'll legislate against X, and ignore the fact that people are going to do X anyway, and so our legislation actually makes things worse.
- amcintyre 15y ago
  I'm surprised people that push the open-floorplan idea would allow devs to work from home. I would expect them to view that as "ultimate productivity-killing isolation." I mean, "how can we know you're actually working. You're at home, we can't see you producing."

hsmyers 15y ago

In a very long work career, I've spent time in just about every office configuration you can imagine. As I read this article and the comments here I thought back over where I was most productive and most comfortable. And surprised myself! As it turns out I find that a sort of compromise between open office and cubical space seems to work best for me---large cubical with 4 work spaces, each placed in a corner. They are far enough away so that I can ignore them as need be, yet near enough for conversations/questions about the current project. In the two instances where that was the situation, I was both productive and comfortable---hard to argue with that. It never occured to me to ask whose idea the setup was, but it was a good one in my estimation.

matwood 15y ago
I was also thinking about the question over my working career. My best work has been done in a closed office shared with 1 or 2 other people also working on the same project. I worked at home for 2 years and while I had great spurts of productivity when the task was well defined, getting questions answered or bouncing ideas off others hurt some types of work. Cubes never did work well for me because they rarely get any natural light. I'm a sun driven person and try my best to insist on a window in my office.

tnash 15y ago

I agree with the points in the article that brainstorming is unhelpful and pair programming can be useful. I have yet to attend a meeting at work with more than one person that has yielded anything useful. In those meetings the extroverts take over and the introverts are left in the corner twiddling their thumbs. If we were given access to the meeting agenda beforehand, and were given time to work on the points individually beforehand, the meeting may actually be productive.

schadr 15y ago

As most of the comments pointed out the problem is not with agile but rather with the tendency to only have one way to solve a problem and mostly ignore that we are individuals with rather different needs. With respect to brainstorming I had session that worked fantastically and others that don't, and in my opinion in session that don't work there is someone that has power over the majority of the group and is simply dictating what happens in the brainstorming session.

jdlshore 15y ago

I'm an introvert, and I've done a lot of pair programming. I've done a lot of solo programming, too. The InfoQ essay makes a fundamental mistake: Being an introvert isn't the same as needing to work alone. Introverts gain energy from focusing on the "internal world" of thoughts and ideas. Extroverts gain energy from focusing on the "external world" of socializing and interactions. So, as an introvert, I can do just fine as a public speaker, consultant, and yes, pair programmer and Agile team member, because those activities are focused on thoughts and ideas. (I don't do so well at parties or conference ice-breakers, and that's fine.) The other error I see in the InfoQ essay is that it conflates "Agile" with "decision by committee." It's true that Agile teams work in, well, teams, but that's not the same as everybody being involved in every decision. Team members on a high-functioning team know who on the team is best at what, and they automatically delegate everyday decisions to the people most qualified to make those decisions. It does take a while for a team to reach this level of capability, and the early stages of team growth can be uncomfortable and difficult, often with too many meetings, but that doesn't mean that "Agile" == "decision by committee." It just means that smooth-running work takes time and practice. No surprise there.

mrweasel 15y ago
I was going to point out something similar. I know people who are extroverts, but are completely incapable of working in an open office. The few people I know, how claim that an open office plan helps still needs headphones and music in order to close out the noise. Personally I "just" need complete silence, but that's not related to being introvert or extrovert. Semi-related: I'm starting to be a bit ticked of about the whole introvert/extrovert. Some forums, HN, include seems to be celebrating the whole introvert thing, like it's somehow "better". Much in the same way as some thinks that NoSQL is just better than RDBMS, regardless of the application. People are just different, but we're still struggling to deal with it, businesses even more so. I have no idea if I'm an introvert or not, nor do I care to know, I'm just me.
- dwc 15y ago
  Celebrating introversion is a reaction to the cultural notion that extroversion is the ideal. It's unfortunate that you (and presumably others) get getting the impression that it's being put forward as better. I don't think the likes of Susan Cain are saying that. Let's recognize instead that not everyone is the same, and that a Procrustean approach is stifling and counterproductive. I'm sure that there are some people who want the pendulum to swing their way. That can serve a purpose of raising awareness, but should never come at the expense of stifling extroverts.

willvarfar 15y ago

> "Is it time to go back to the cubicles?" No! Offices with doors! http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/29.html

msluyter 15y ago

I think the article is possibly conflating a couple of different things: a) Open office plans -- for a lot of reasons I'd agree that these suck, but b) Brainstorming -- Recent studies suggesting that it's ineffective are intruiging, but I wonder to what extent group cohesion matters? Cohesive groups where we're less worried about looking bad might be more effective. c) Pair programming -- even though I'd definitely consider myself an introvert, pair programming doesn't rise to the level of social invasiveness that I would find problematic. In other words, most introverts dislike being around large groups, strangers, trying to chit-chat/schmooze, etc... but are often find around smaller groups of people they know and get along with. So I'd be hesitant to group pair programming with the others. OTOH, I've never had to do it all day long, so I'm not sure how that feels. Can anyone speak to that?

tubbo 15y ago
I've done it all day. It's really great when you want to, and really shitty when you don't want to. I'd say it's all about whether your devs want to naturally pair, and you shouldn't force them to work any which way. My biggest problem with Agile is that it touts itself as THE way you should work. When you're constantly working with all different kinds of minds, it's hard to say conclusively that ONE SYSTEM will work for EVERYONE. I will say that as a pseudo-introvert (can function in large groups but prefers small, intimate conversations most of the time), I do enjoy pair programming because I learn so much. It's best to pair an unexperienced but knowledgable dev up with a veteran to either the current project or the current problem. The combination of naive creativity with tried-and-true procedure is the best of both worlds, and truly impossible with a single person, in my opinion.
ams6110 15y ago
I quit a good job I otherwise enjoyed because of pair programming.
- nydev 15y ago
  Interesting. Was it the pairing per se or the people you were paired up with that didn't work for you?

nickcassimatis 15y ago

On the one hand, many of the smartest people need significant amounts of time alone to think through their work. On the other, so many decisions an individual in a team makes are constrained by the requirements of the rest of the team. To find these out, you need to coordinate with the team, and that's much easier when everyone is physically together. In our startup, we deal with this tradeoff with two spatial configurations. We spend part of our time together in an open space where interruptions are common and expected. We spend the rest of our time miles apart, occasionally coordinating over email and IM whenever needed. Perhaps one way to achieve this in larger teams is to block off large chunks of the week during which it is understood no one interrupts anyone else. Weekends already play this role for many people I know. They often work for a good chunk of the weekend, but are not expected to take calls or return emails. It's when they do some of their deepest thinking and best writing.

jonstjohn 15y ago
I'm assuming 'miles apart' is working from home or cafe? I really like the idea of two spatial configurations. Personally, I work remote for a small company that is mostly local - I visit the office a couple times a year and love the personal time for face-to-face discussion, etc. If I could have that a couple times a week, or a hour a day, I would love it.
X-Istence 15y ago
I'm sorry, but I have started putting my foot down with my work and saying that the weekend is mine. I have come to the conclusion that working hard 24/7 is starting to wear me out and is starting to make me resentful. I'm available throughout the week, if you can't provide and environment for me where I can be productive because of for example an open floor plan then I am not going to spend my time for you. I have been very fortunate though in that I have a very understanding boss that lets me work whatever hours I please (I generally get to the office by around 1000/1030 and leave at around 1800/1900) and that has helped my productivity quite a bit as well because I am sleeping on my own sleep schedule that works for me, and at the tail end of the day when I am most productive the office is empty and quiet and I can get my work done.

paulhauggis 15y ago

Why are we bending over backwards for Introverts? If you can't work on a team and socialize to the degree that you will be a functional team member, you probably should think about getting some kind of therapy before getting a job as a developer. Any project that gets bigger than a few thousand lines of code can't be maintained by a lone developer. It also requires some sort of socialization. Every placed I've ever worked required me to talk to other developers because my code would most likely be touching theirs to some degree or I would need to get info on something I would be working on.

ivix 15y ago
Unfortunately, you've completely missed the point of the article.
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  and you have completely missed the point of my post. (I downvoted you)
  - anthonyb 15y ago
    I downvoted you, multiple times, because you're being an ass.
tbrownaw 15y ago
Because some social interaction is necessary, allowing anything less than constant total social immersion is "bending over backwards for Introverts" and anyone who desires such is useless dead weight. Anyone who thinks that it might be useful to have even ten minutes of peace and quiet to be able to type or think without interruption is clearly delusional, because all thinking is done as part of a conversation.
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  so, brainstorming is useless? Sitting around and talking about an idea is useless? The entire point of the article is not to discount these things because they are useless, but to discount them because a small percentage of the population find them uncomfortable.

darkxanthos 15y ago

There is so much irony around "agilistas" applying practices like these carte blanche. Let's create a new buzzword: POPS People over process, stupid.

maximilianburke 15y ago

At my current place of work I have the choice of working in a 2-person office or on the (semi-)open floor. Working on the open floor can be frustrating with the distraction, but it has natural light. Working in an office is productive but without the light it's depressing. My current compromise is to enjoy the natural light on the floor and use earplugs when I really need to concentrate.

gte910h 15y ago
You can buy lights from costco that simulate natural light for about $100 bucks. All depression will vanish.

leoedin 15y ago

Generally I find with programming and problem solving problems I work well with a mix of time alone to implement and try ideas followed by some time discussing the problem with others. Often just talking through a problem leads to a solution you hadn't considered, or someone else's input forces you to think about other aspects of the problem. However, trying to actually implement the solution with someone looking over your shoulder definitely doesn't help.

sirclueless 15y ago

I had an internship last summer where the interns were all in an open-air room. It worked pretty well even though I am 95% introvert, because I naturally tend to zone out everything I'm not focused on anyways. I think it's possible to simulate that, even if you aren't naturally oblivious so your surroundings, by putting on a comfy pair of over-the-ear noise cancelling headphones and listening to some ambient music. In addition to providing insulation from audible distractions, it's also a good cue to your co-workers that if they try to attract your attention, they will be interrupting you. If you are distracted easily in your peripheral vision by people walking by, then this won't help you much, but otherwise it's a pretty good approximation of being alone. My point is that as a programmer there are things you can do even in an open-air environment to provide creative isolation, without losing the benefits of having easy access to the people around you when you want to talk.

hkarthik 15y ago

I've commented on this before, but I'll reiterate that in my experience, 3-5 person team rooms work best. Smaller teams tend to be the most successful at breaking large problems up into smaller, shippable chunks. Also, they can minimize the distractions by controlling their own space. If an individual needs private time, I think a generous work-from-home policy can do wonders. Give a person 2 days of the week to work from home and let the team self manage time in/out of the office. Letting the team work out scheduling helps them maximize productivity with both group-think and individual contributions.

kevinpet 15y ago

I think this is about disorganization masquerading as agile. I'm a big believer in Scrum. Scrum, with bi-weekly sprints and daily standups is less overhead of talking to coworkers than I've experienced at places that are not as formally agile (either not claiming to be agile, or not following a specific methodology). I'm not a fan of open plan, but I can deal with it. It works fine when people have the sense to take meetings into, you know, the meeting rooms.

zeroonetwothree 15y ago

The most interesting thing in my mind is not which type of office plan is best for which type of person, but that no one can ever agree on the answer. Maybe the right solution is to allow a mix of plans? Let people have private offices that want them, and an open plan for those that want that too. True, it won't be perfect and there might be some issues with teams mixing up different types too much, but overall it might be better than only having one type of floorplan.

adrianhoward 15y ago

If you believe the whole introvert/extrovert Jungian/Myers-Briggs thing I classify as an introvert and I love agile. So do lots of other folk I know - including some of the people who actually started the whole agile thing (there was a long and tedious thread on the XP list on the topic if anybody cares to read up - see http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/extremeprogramming/msearch?query=+Introverts%2C+Agile+and+Creativity http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/extremeprogramming/msearc...) As others have pointed out, no agile process that I am aware of recommends open plan offices. Open plan offices suck. What many in the agile community do recommend is having team rooms - where everybody working on a particular sits together. In fact the only agile process I'm aware of that makes any explicit statement on working environment is XP - which has having per-project team rooms as one of it's practices (the primary practice of "Sit together" In XP2E) And there's a lot of actual evidence that the team-room way of working is very, very effective. See this quora answer of mine for some references http://www.quora.com/Is-having-all-the-startup-engineers-work-at-the-same-room-a-good-thing-or-not/answer/Adrian-Howard http://www.quora.com/Is-having-all-the-startup-engineers-wor..., and the agile alliance guide has some references too http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/teamroom.html http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/teamroom.html. Especially the "Offices That Work" paper that has some nice info on the relative trade-offs. I find it curious that so many folk focus on individual performance - when most development is a team sport. I don't care if I'm a little less productive as an individual by a few project-related interruptions if the overall productivity of the team I'm working on improves.

sassafras 15y ago

The New York Times article the post initially links to is a lot more interesting. Besides debunking formal brainstorming processes, it also points out the increasing necessity of creative group work, as well as strategies that are quite effective. Examples include MIT's chaotic Building 20, and the sweet spot of "familiar but not too familiar" in hit Broadway musical teams. Perhaps Agile with a capital A does hold something in common with the formal technique of brainstorming. The key point of the Lehrer piece is that in order for group creativity to flourish you need to foster debate and disagreement, not just uncritical free association in a conference room. And even then, it's good not to put too much formal process in place, because the best interactions are unscripted. But this in turn solidifies the need for work spaces that maximize the chance for these encounters.

recursive 15y ago

I work in an open office floor plan, and I enjoy it. So that sometimes happens.

codereview 15y ago

My biggest problem is this equates Agile to Scrum, pair programming, and open floor plans. Agile is also dev practices: refactoring, TDD, unit testing, continuous build, etc. Agile = faster development and accelerated deliverability. Sure, cooperation and breaking down silos is part of it but introverts can unit test. (Learn more: http://j.mp/Hex2Uy http://j.mp/Hex2Uy)