26 ms·

Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

• axpy906 3y ago
  If I had an office with a door that I could shut, I would go to it. No offices are like that, unless you are some big wig that, doesn’t code, and hence I am not going to any office any time soon.
• ggm 3y ago
  Although I am sympathetic overall, it really isn't about programmers, it's about anyone doing mental-flow work with focus. Open plan is for a different state of mind and product. It can be condusive to some good outcomes, but the cost is the loss of flow. Writers need flow. People studying need flow. I could imagine techs looking at breast cancer scans need flow. It isn't only programmers who need this.
  • Terr_ 3y ago
    In the same vein, an office with a door won't help at all if you have higher-ups who expects instant responses to any messaging/e-mail query every five minutes.
    • Tor3 3y ago
      Agreed. Even back when I had my own single office I got interrupts all the time. And I need flow when programming. Every interrupt cleared the cache and I had to spend time building it up again. I used to work from another time zone for a few years. That was highly efficient. The first half of the working day there were no interrupts and I could go into the flow and be productive. The second half, or more like the last three hours I would have video meetings and back-and-forth emails etc. and just doing "normal" slow programming - not the type needing concentration and flow. People emailing me about stuff would do so when I was sleeping, and when I started working I could start by going through that, plan, start working, and have it ready for them when they got up and began working. It was ideal, in many ways (except that I couldn't physically drop by the office whenever I wanted).
    • cauch 3y ago
      Well, if you don't answer instantly, then you are stopping them in their flow. I've noticed this some times ago and now I cannot unsee it: this all discussion is too often about "what is best for me and my flow even if it ruins other people's flow" rather than discussing a proper solution.
      • tzs 3y ago
        I'm not sure you are talking about the same thing when you say "flow" that I think most of the other people are talking about when they say "flow". Flow as most are using it here, also known as being "in the zone", is when you achieve a deep state of focus on one particular task, and everything else seems to melt away. You reach maximal energy and enthusiasm for the work. It is where you reach peak productivity and creativity. Most people cannot just enter this state at will, and when they do achieve it cannot maintain it for more than an hour or two. Getting into this state takes 20 to 30 minutes or more. When you are in this state it takes very little to knock you out of it. A ringing phone, someone talking to you even if you just tell them to come back in a couple hours, a beep from a messaging app...all of those can knock you out of the zone. Getting back in after being knocked out takes another 20 to 30 minutes. This means that if you are getting one interruption or distraction every 30 minutes throughout your time at your desk it is unlikely that you will get any time in the zone. >> In the same vein, an office with a door won't help at all if you have higher-ups who expects instant responses to any messaging/e-mail query every five minutes > Well, if you don't answer instantly, then you are stopping them in their flow In the case of a manager interrupting you they probably weren't in the zone. But even if it is someone who was in the zone that is interrupting you them having to stop and message you was probably enough to knock them out of it. It will almost certainly be more productive for the organization overall for them to work on something else until you naturally exit the zone.
        • cauch 3y ago
          Hm, I think I have the same definition of flow. For example, you can be "in the zone", and then suddenly realise you need answer X than only John can provide. In the office, you can look at John and he does not look busy, so you quickly ask. Sometimes, people don't even realise they are asking, they are still in the zone, checking if John is available is done by another part of the brain. After the answer, you continue, you are still "in the zone", you still have everything you need in your head, you are still juggling with different variables, they are still there. Now, if you cannot ask directly, you have to send a message on Slack. And then what? Well, you cannot continue to work on the part you were working on. So you have to switch task, drop all of the variables you juggle with in your head, get out of the context you were in. Then John answers you on Slack 10 minutes later, you have to recollect everything in your mind. So, yes, that's my point, not being able to ask a quick question will destroy your flow. The effects are the same as being distracted by a question when you are "in the zone". I don't think that asking someone about something is enough to get out of the zone, as in practice, developers "ask" their computer or internet things continuously. A simple "ls" or "ctrl-f" is as disturbing as asking the colleague sitting next to you. Of course, it may depend on people, but I think it's just not a smart way to approach the problem as if everyone is always working exactly the same way you do. I also think that some people will think stuffs will break them out of the zone when it does not always really do, just because they don't even notice the thing happened when it does not. It is a bit like those people who say "I always wake up when the cat pass next to my window" just because the 5 times they woke up, the cat was indeed passing next to their window, but the cat passed there 50 times without waking them up.
• k__ 3y ago
  I worked in an office with 10 other people once. It worked well, as long as the other people were devs or admins who didn't phone all the time.
  • karmakurtisaani 3y ago
    The shittiest thing about going back to the office after the long WFH period has absolutely been the normalization of taking calls at your desk in the open office environment. At least before we had the mutual understanding that it's loud as it is and calls are to be taken in meeting rooms or anywhere else really.
• pocketarc 3y ago
  I like to think that providing a team with private offices and all the old-school perks would help create a working environment where they'd feel more appreciated, and thus end up working better. If I ever hire a team that isn't remote, that'd be something I'd want to explore. That and giving them assistants. I want to find out what an experienced dev team that doesn't have to bother with any admin or other distractions can do. Freeing people up as much as possible to just think and build in peace. I like to think that it would make a difference.
  • abathur 3y ago
    This strikes me as very thoughtful, though I imagine I'd end up concerned about whether I was feeding said assistant sufficiently meaningful work... I would love to have someone else sit in on meetings, but i suspect I'm there in the hope that I'll ask an incisive question to shake a hidden requirement loose.
  • mschuster91 3y ago
    > That and giving them assistants. I want to find out what an experienced dev team that doesn't have to bother with any admin or other distractions can do. You can already do that with remote staff. Stuff like planning travels or dealing with reimbursement of expenses is almost always extremely annoying for those who only have to interface with the arcane systems twice a year.
• rzz3 3y ago
  But, why offices at all? All my productivity problems are solved by just working from home.
  • Tor3 3y ago
    Well, yes. I used to have my own office, for most of my career. Then when we had to move offices there wasn't enough room for that, so now we have smaller or larger rooms with from a few to many people. In general I'm much less efficient when working like that (the only exception is when I, for specific purposes, join up with another person to do work in tandem with something. That can be highly efficient, but it's limited to just those specific cases). So that's one reason I use my home office most of the time. But it is useful to meet up with the others once in a while (and not just by Teams), so after this morning working from home I'm heading to the office for a few hours.
  • marcus_holmes 3y ago
    This. I'm about to build a dev team next year, and my co-founder is kinda disappointed that I want them all completely remote. He's the old-school "let's have a big office where we can all get together" and I'm "let's not and say we did". I can see way down the line there'll be a problem with Engineering vs The Rest because we'll be remote and they'll be in an office. But tbh there is always a problem with Engineering vs The Rest regardless. I want my devs to be able to switch Slack off, not answer emails, go for a walk in the park, and stare at the ceiling for hours while properly thinking about what they're building. Too much code is written in haste.
    • skor 3y ago
      may your project prosper. You sound like my current employer. Working for them the only worrying thing I ever think about is that I don’t want this gig to end, ever.
  • overflyer 3y ago
    Have you guys ever thought about the fact that there are nerds that like so socialize and hate working from home, because it gets f'ing lonely after a while? I want to see people. The corona pandamic where I worked almost 2 years from home drove me into a severe depression.
• simmschi 3y ago
  In my whole professional life (last 15y) there was not a single time where I had anything resembling a private space where I could just close the door and work in peace. The norm here in German startup world seem to be open floors. And if you do have rooms they get crammed full of people. It's not the end of the world though. A room full of engineers is tolerable, and if they're on your team this is even desirable. The trouble only comes when the CEO wants to see everyone sweating, so you get stuffed together with Sales or Ops. Working from home made things a lot easier though. And if the company is big enough it's usually also possible to just book a meeting room if you need to work in silence for a while :-)
  • brailsafe 3y ago
    > A room full of engineers is tolerable, and if they're on your team this is even desirable. Until one of the engineers who has no social awareness decides to eat at their desk instead of taking lunch elsewhere, or you just need some silent time and there's just no option for it. I'm very reluctantly pursuing on-site or hybrid positions as a last ditch (desperate) effort to find some work, and I'm not the slightest bit optimistic about being in a room full of anybody. I used to think an open room full of people was the better choice, but that was when I was young and naive. Serious focus demands control over your senses, and there's a difference between setting up at a bustling cafe and going in every day to sit directly adjacent to the same people with no concept of real private space.
    • shiroiuma 3y ago
      >Until one of the engineers who has no social awareness decides to eat at their desk instead of taking lunch elsewhere Maybe he's aware, and just doesn't care because the company has already made him miserable by 1) not having an "elsewhere" to take that lunch, and 2) putting his desk right next to the sales team.
      • brailsafe 3y ago
        Could very well be, in which case that would be even worse.
• lawgimenez 3y ago
  When I graduated from college, never have I envisioned once that my optimal workspace is just a laptop, working from home, while spending time with fam, and get some hobbies done at the same time.
  • throwaway64787 3y ago
    >while spending time with fam, and get some hobbies done at the same time Getting paid to waste time not doing your job is considered work now?
    • disambiguation 3y ago
      Ever notice how the free range chicken tastes better?
    • globular-toast 3y ago
      We're always doing our jobs, even while we sleep! You can't switch off your brain (well I suppose you could try meditation).
    • Quimoniz 3y ago
      > Getting paid to waste time not doing your job Pretty much the definition of 90 % of all the meetings. Just putting on bluetooth earpieces and doing the laundry doesn't deduct the value of me hearing another round of very efficient 'cost savings' that they thought about somewhere up the chain or other administrative ideas.
    • nightfly 3y ago
      Instead of wasting time browsing news sites playing on your phone or just zoning out during downtime, actually being able to take a break and do something you care about instead is _awesome_
    • lawgimenez 3y ago
      I should mention that listening to heavy metal music very loud is my hobby. This is impossible in a work setting.
• charcircuit 3y ago
  "Team" does not appear once in the article. I find open plans to be superior as it makes the team go faster. People can unblock others, people can stop others from wasting time, people can immediately work together to think about a problem. And for times where you want to just pump out code you can put some earbuds / headphones on and use body language to signal that you are in deep focus.
  • willvarfar 3y ago
    There's no one-size-fits all for people nor problems. I had great results working in 'team rooms' where people wheeled their cabinets in and out as they joined or left project-oriented teams. But I was young. The staffies all had separate offices then. And today, I find myself most productive for the company when able to shut myself away and think.
  • globular-toast 3y ago
    Use of the phrase "pump out code" tells me you don't understand the problem and makes me wonder if you've ever programmed anything nontrivial yourself.
  • drewcoo 3y ago
    > people can stop others from wasting time Workers policing other workers . . . the ideal office of the pre-COVID 21st century!
    • charcircuit 3y ago
      I am referring to stopping someone from investing time into an approach that will not work or is not a good idea. If someone spends a couple days working on something that just gets thrown away, that person wasted that time.
  • xkbarkar 3y ago
    I smell troll
• devn0ll 3y ago
  Working from the office ONLY works when everyone else is working from home and I'm the only one there. At which point I might as well work from home, and sell the extraneous office space.
• nox100 3y ago
  Some do, not all do. I do much better in a room with ~6 people that are working on the same project. Much better than working at home. Much better than a private office (which I've had). Having people around me working on the same project is invaluable for me for * asking quick questions and getting an instant answer. vs chat where I may not get an answer for hours. * running ideas by others. This doesn't happen on chat for me, and VC is too scheduled. * brainstorming. Same as above * getting a feeling for what everyone is up to Sure I can go read their notes but it's not the same. One happens by osmosis so zero effort, it just happens. The other requires scheduling time * feeling part of a team, working on the same thing. I don't feel connected to me team at all working from home. I feel no more connection to them then when I call my bank and talk to a banker. Nor do I feel any connection to sit at a coffee shop and work around others who are not on the same team. I get that others have different opinions and/or want to work from home. Me, I was lucky to work on things I wanted to work on with people who wanted to work on them (video games) for most of my career. It was super fun. It would not been even 5% as fun at home by myself.
  • Roark66 3y ago
    >Some do, not all do. I do much better in a room with ~6 people that are working on the same project. Much better than working at home. Much better than a private office (which I've had). I wonder how many of these remaining 5 people have a take similar to me. WFH is where I'm most productive and most happy to work. Doing the kind of work you describe above "with 6 people on one project" is for 90% of the time an exercise in babying the least up to speed team member at the cost of distracting everyone. I get it, some people just like being around people and doing stuff "together", and some types of work may even benefit from that when stars align(brainstorming etc). Most types of work I do in software don't. Especially now, post covid when WFH became normalised and people who were opposed to it on various grounds were forced to learn how to use it effectively. >* asking quick questions and getting an instant answer. vs chat where I may not get an answer for hours. That's what the phone is for, with additional benefit of status from everyone. If I see someone is busy I don't phone them I look for someone else, If I see they are "green" I do and I get my answer instantly without disturbing anyone. >running ideas by others. This doesn't happen on chat for me, and VC is too scheduled Again, same thing. Pick up a phone. If you just want to run something "by everyone". Wait for your daily/weekly team meeting and ask then. Yes, it forces you to write ideas down not to forget them (if they can wait), but it's massively more convenient to everyone else. > * brainstorming. Same as above I had many a good brainstorming session online (mostly with voice). What do you need to accomplish it is: - good audio equipment, Internet access and a quiet location for everyone. No calling into a meeting "from my car, while going to the doctor", or "from the office while people are talking in the background", no "crappy headphones etc". All this ruins productivity for everyone. If people are using cameras(which is nice) everyone has to have the bandwidth for it. Also if you have more than 5 people in your meeting, make use of the "raise hand" feature. Then brainstorming can happen very well. Especially while looking at a document/whiteboard together with systems that show you in real time what everyone does. In fact above a certain number of people (8 maybe) brainstorming sessions seem a lot more effective to me online than in person. Why? Because you have few communication channels. You have the shared whiteboard/document, voice, and chat so while someone is talking you can post a question to the chat without interrupting. >getting a feeling for what everyone is up to That's what regular planning meeting is for. >feeling part of a team, working on the same thing I suppose that's a personal thing, but I always felt that including during my 7 years of WFH 100%. Edit: there is only one real disadvantage to WFH, and it's for junior people wanting to learn. It's much harder to gather knowledge by osmosis, just by being in the office if most senior people are WFH. But then as a leader one has to decide what is more important.
• junon 3y ago
  > Why do <demographic> need/want <subjective thing>? I'm starting to consider these sorts of low-effort, divisive titles as click bait these days.
  • ImaCake 3y ago
    The internet repeats itself a lot. If you want truly novel and thoughtful content you will want to turn to books. Audiobooks are fine, so are obscure technical corners of the web, what you want is the deep and expert content that is not surfaced in the short feedback loops of the internet.
• qayxc 3y ago
  The article oversimplifies things a little, IMHO. It's not the open floor plan office that's the main cause of the problem for DnD type work, nor are offices with doors a general solution. It's all about policy. A separate office with a door doesn't do you any good if every ten minutes someone drops by to knock on it. A private office also doesn't help if you're constantly bombarded with "urgent" messages from various people and are expected to instantly reply. Most of the issues can be solved by simply implementing reasonable policies. Can't deal with the noise of an open plan office? Provide ANC headphones. Need time to focus? Define binding "focus hours" each day during which no meetings are scheduled, no messages are sent, and people are left alone. Keep the inevitable exceptions to an absolute minimum. In addition to that, it also helps to have separated spaces (e.g. meeting rooms) available that can be booked for DnD sessions if the need arises.
  • goodcanadian 3y ago
    I always see noise cancelling headphones put forward as a solution to noisy office environments . . . I don't want to wear headphones. I don't want to be cut off in my own bubble. I want to be connected to my environment, and I want it to be a nice place to get my work done.
    • cauch 3y ago
      And some people don't want to stop interacting just to cater to you, and some people want you to answer their question immediately so they don't break their flow. And I have sometimes seen people saying things similar to you, and then being loud or distracting when it was more convenient for them. I understand your position, but as usual with these discussion, everything seems to always centered about "what I would prefer" rather than trying to understand everyone's needs.
    • qayxc 3y ago
      It's not the solution (plus they have an "aware"-mode that doesn't shut you off completely), it's a possible solution and a rather simple and cheap one at that. Depending on the circumstances it isn't always possible to provide a work environment that everyone considers to be a "nice place to get work done". Some people don't mind background chatter, others can't concentrate if someone as much as coughs somewhere. It's also a bit hard to not being being cut off in your own bubble as you put it, while simultaneously wanting to be connected to everyone else. Being in a separate, single desk office is no different from being in a bubble in that sense.
• Apocryphon 3y ago
  Not to create too much of a political tangent, but the lack of private offices, or rather the ubiquitous mandatory nature of open offices, and its universal unpopularity with non-managers, is evidence imo that tech could use a union or professional association or guild or something. Oh sure you can talk about high comp and career mobility. But where does all of the vaunted labor power of software engineers go when they ask for something as simple as a cubicle?
  • rmbyrro 3y ago
    In my opinion, you might have an overly optimistic view of unions. And you might also be ignoring the downsides of unions. I get that unions were/are necessary for things like mining workers or so, but SWE is quite different. I'd expect a union to be net-negative in our sector.
    • Apocryphon 3y ago
      Systemic problems require systemic solutions. For over a decade now we’ve seen a steady supply of blog articles, studies (e.g. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-workers-chat-70-less-are-less-productive-and-email-more/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-work...), and choruses of comment threads all agreeing that coders do not like open offices. Yet all of this is empty sentiment because managements don’t seem to care; they might not even notice. Now, a union might not be the solution to this. I already mentioned alternatives. Maybe there should just be more general participation in the ACM/IEEE and give it lobbying power. But the principle is that some sort of collective action seems to be in order, because there’s collective disgruntlement, yet the issue is still unaddressed.
      • dlivingston 3y ago
        Who makes the decision on office layout? Like specifically, what is the name of the role in a company that does this? Further, has anyone talked to one of these persons before on changing the office layout to a developer-friendly design? I've really wanted to do this but I'm not sure who in my company I would talk to about it.
• azangru 3y ago
  Judging by the comments here, nobody is doing pair programming / mob programming?
  • BossingAround 3y ago
    Nobody is doing pair programming / mob programming. At best, some people are talking that it might be interesting to do.
    • globular-toast 3y ago
      There are people who dream that programming looks like "team working programming" stock images[0]. I've no idea why they want this to be true but it wouldn't be the first time people have tried to force others into their bizarre dreams. [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=team+working+programming&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=team+working+programming&iar=image...
  • spike021 3y ago
    My team is fully remote and we definitely do pair programming from time to time. Not so much mob programming as much as mob code review on occasion to understand significant code changes and their related decisions. But not nearly to the degree as my old job pre-pandemic that was roughly 3 days a week all in the office and 2 days a week whatever you wanted.
  • baz00 3y ago
    I don't think pair programming exists in reality. It is talked about a lot. Pair debugging does exist but only when stuff goes wrong. This is the vain hope that perhaps two people can make up one competent person when the shit has hit the fan.
    • Ekaros 3y ago
      And quite often pair programming could be done by single programmer and inanimate object. Still. It does often work, specially if the other person has better knowledge of technology or code in question.
• ath3nd 3y ago
  People like you are the reason I personally don't want to be in an office. > asking quick questions and getting an instant answer. vs chat where I may not get an answer for hours. Basically like having a toddler around. Sorry for the negative take here but how it's written it feels like you don't necessarily realize that some people do need deep work, and prioritize your quick satisfaction to other's focus. Or I might be projecting, but I simply can't stand incessantly being asked questions, I view it as a type of interruption. > running ideas by others. This doesn't happen on chat for me, and VC is too scheduled. Yes, because who needs order in their time when somebody just wants to ask the group from their opinion, without even bothering to write it down. Also, whoever is sick that day and missing from the office, that's on them, whatever discussion happened, no evidence of it, so sucks to be them I guess. > I don't feel connected to me team at all working from home I...am sorry.
  • spike021 3y ago
    >Basically like having a toddler around. Unnecessarily condescending response to the OP, to be honest.
    • ath3nd 3y ago
      Fair take. I am not trying to be condescending here, but it's hard to view this behavior as anything but overly disruptive. https://www.businessdit.com/distraction-work-statistics/ https://www.businessdit.com/distraction-work-statistics/ Instead of "just a quick question", the OP could prepare a list of their questions, and ask them all at the allocated time. A scheduled deep dive into the questions the OP has might even be more productive than multiple unscheduled disruptions of others' time. And in an open office, even if you ask only a single person something, others might hear it too, despite the question not being intended to them. We are talking about multiple people's brain cycles being dragged out their focus space, we are talking multiple conversations happening next to you, we are talking about click clack of people's keyboards next to you, and people moving going to take a coffee in your peripheral vision. It's a nightmare. https://theconversation.com/returning-to-the-workplace-heres-how-to-stay-focused-in-a-noisy-office-158186 https://theconversation.com/returning-to-the-workplace-heres... https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices
• hmaxwell 3y ago
  I work at a 30 person company in a partitioned office designed for four people, including the CEO, a graphic designer, and a secretary. My role involves focused programming tasks, which are frequently disrupted by the office dynamics. When the CEO is away, the graphic designer and secretary frequently engage in loud, casual conversations, discussing everything from personal matters to home decor, like curtain colors. They also have a habit of yelling over the office partitions, adding to the disruption. Despite using noise-cancelling headphones, these distractions, including both the conversations and the yelling, consistently hinder my concentration. Interestingly, the secretary has expressed concern about the perceived level of activity in the office, especially when the CEO is present. The secretary has mentioned to both me and the graphic designer that there might not be enough typing noises, suggesting a worry that the CEO might not think everyone is working hard. This concern about appearances adds another layer to the already challenging office environment.
  • serf 3y ago
    >This concern about appearances adds another layer to the already challenging office environment. I sympathize, but I haven't yet had the pleasure of working with other people without the existence of those kind of friction layers. At my age I just assume now that it's just part of the human condition -- but maybe it's just me.
  • Loughla 3y ago
    >This concern about appearances adds another layer to the already challenging office environment. This sentence sums up the biggest headache of my professional career. I have never worried about appearances, but instead focused on doing good work. To my detriment. I know I've missed out on key assignments and at least one promotion at my current employer because I don't sell myself or focus on perception management. I guess what I'm saying is, this exists everywhere, in every field of work.
    • joshjje 3y ago
      Thats one reason I prefer small companies. Less bureaucratic BS, more accountability, etc. Sure there isn't as much room for career growth and other downsides, but much simpler.
• eesmith 3y ago
  > These two types of work were first identified, to my knowledge, by the programmer and essayist Paul Graham. The identification of flow state in programming was known well before Graham. Steve McConnell's Rapid Development (1996), https://archive.org/details/rapiddevelopment00mcco/page/506/mode/2up?q=interrupt https://archive.org/details/rapiddevelopment00mcco/page/506/... , has "Flow time. During the analysis and design stages, software development is an ephemeral, conceptual activity. Like any conceptual activity, the quality of the work is dependent on the worker's ability to sustain a "flow state" — a relaxed state of total immersion in a problem that facilitates understanding of it and the generation of solutions for it (DeMarco and Lister 1987). Converting brain waves to computer software is a delicate process, and developers work best during the hours they spend in this state of effortless concentration. Developers require 15 minutes or more to enter a state of flow, which can then last many hours, until fatigue or interruption terminates it. If developers are interrupted every 11 minutes, they will likely never enter a flow state and will therefore be unlikely to ever reach their highest levels of productivity." DeMarco and Lister 1987 is "Peopleware: Productive projects and teams". I can't find a first edition but you can read the relevant part of the second edition at https://archive.org/details/peoplewareproduc00dema_0/page/62/mode/2up?q=flow https://archive.org/details/peoplewareproduc00dema_0/page/62... . As I recall, in one of McConnell's books was a chart showing relative performance effectiveness of closed offices vs cubicles vs open floor plans, which got progressively worse. I can't now find that chart though.
• TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
  It really depends on individual. Some, especially juniors, needs to have a sentry behind their back because the moment you will look away, they will start doing something else, like watching YouTube videos
  • 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
    Those ones need to be fired, not babysat. Well... If they're hourly anyway. If they're salary and want to take breaks but they get their shit done, they can do what they want.
• ImaCake 3y ago
  In defense of the distracting open plan office, I find that I can only really be productive when I am being disrupted semi-regularly. My talkative boss or my noisy coworker are distracting and theoretically take me out of flow, but ai wouldn’t even reach that flow if they weren’t there to make me want to get there (or just provide enough stimulation to sate my hungry brain).
• twelve40 3y ago
  so many screens of text and not one mention of slack, which is the real productivity killer. Something that no amount of doors or offices can protect against.
  • TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
    Slack can be closed or at least crippled by muting every channel.
    • twelve40 3y ago
      unfortunately that's not all, my coworkers in all of the last N places have been conditioned to treat you as an evasive hostile psychopath if you don't respond to their DMs within minutes.
• esskay 3y ago
  It has to be said, if you're employing programmers and making them sit in an openplan office you're willingly and knowingly making their job significantly harder, and their day worse. Open plan might work great for some types of work, but for highly technical and mentally taxing work it's quite litterally the worst possible working environment you could be providing. There's a reason that many programmers prefer to work from home. Working in a busy office (and that includes open plan offices with even light chatter) is extremely counter productive.
  • ath3nd 3y ago
    Who would win: - literally 100s of publications showing how disruptive and destructive to focus it is to be working in an open office work and how much distractions it brings: https://theconversation.com/returning-to-the-workplace-heres-how-to-stay-focused-in-a-noisy-office-158186 https://theconversation.com/returning-to-the-workplace-heres... https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices https://www.businessdit.com/distraction-work-statistics/ https://www.businessdit.com/distraction-work-statistics/ https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/even-small-distractions-derail-productivity.html https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/eve... https://juliety.com/effects-of-distractions-at-work https://juliety.com/effects-of-distractions-at-work https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/11/why-open-offices-hurt-collaboration-and-what-can-be-done-about-it/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/11/why-open-offi... - A bunch of extroverts who just can't wait to tell you what they did over the weekend. Backed, of course, by C-level dudes who simply can't bring themselves to believe work can be done if they PERSONALLY can't see you at your desk working.
    • Muromec 3y ago
      “I can’t back it up with data, I just know I’m right “ of course
    • isoprophlex 3y ago
      The asshats holding the bags of money, obviously
• loloquwowndueo 3y ago
  Surprised not to see a link to Joel Spolsky’s (20 year old!) on the bionic office with private space for all programmers : https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/09/24/bionic-office/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/09/24/bionic-office/ this has been known for decades.
• jwrallie 3y ago
  I read maybe two or three of these articles here on HN, and I am totally convinced that this is true, but my boss is not reading HN and has a different opinion. A shared office is also cheaper for him, so I need more than forwarding a link to an article to convince him. I would love to hear more about how people actually changed their situation, other than the obvious way of looking for another job.
  • peteradio 3y ago
    You can't you vote with your feet unfortunately.
  • lagniappe 3y ago
    In my case, eat heavily seasoned high fiber foods. 6 weeks tops.
• OfficeChad 3y ago
  [flagged]
• heikkilevanto 3y ago
  I know opinions differ. My best experiences have been when sharing a office with one developer, both working on the same project. That way, if we had to discuss something, we would not disturb anyone else, and if not, we both could work in peace. It was easy to see how busy and "deep" the other guy was, and not to interrupt him at the wrong time.
• imetatroll 3y ago
  I have to pass gas all of the time due to my gut so if you insist on me being in an office setting of any kind... prepare yourself for the worst.
• getlawgdon 3y ago
  Can we be done deriding cubicles now? And how about we put saloon doors on them that enable occupants to communicate "not right now"? And if they're left open it means: "come on in and interru me!" ?
• billy99k 3y ago
  My first job out of college (~2007) had an open office plan. The development team sat right next to all of the sales people making phone calls during the day. When someone made a sale, they would scream loud and then ring a bell (loud cheers then proceeded from the rest of their team). This happened at least a dozen times/day. We were allowed to wear headphones, but could not listen to anything streaming online. I would record 8 hours of streaming radio the night before and then transfer it to my Ipod nano in the morning. I was usually so sleep-deprived that I didn't have any time to check the recording before work. Once/month, my Internet connection would go down and I would have 8 hours of white noise (those days were a nightmare). I eventually figured out that I could RDP into my server at home and stream audio from there, and listen to it through the RDP connection. The Internet filters they were using couldn't detect it. I think what finally made me quit was when I found out management had screen-monitoring software installed on all of our computers and would review it every hour. A co-worker discovered it by accident and due to my inquisitive nature (which sometimes gets me in trouble), I tried to telnet into the listening port we found on his computer (to see what it was) and it completely crashed their monitoring software (must have been really shitty software). I was hauled in the next day and questioned to see if I did this with malicious intent and he was fired )I guess they were watching him for awhile and were gathering evidence. He had worked with the company for 5 years). I got out at a good time. The company in question was in the loan industry and it melted down a year later in 2008 and the whole development team was laid off. I hated this office experience so much, that since the job I had after this, I've only worked remote jobs (and still do) in my home office or office space I personally rent. I don't think I could ever go back.
• gorgoiler 3y ago
  The arch keystone got me thinking. What is a keystone and what makes it different to any other stone in the arch? Surely all the stones in the arch are needed to hold the structure in place. If any stone were to be removed the structure would collapse after all. Most arch stones are precisely cut. Or at least we pretend they are precise. The keystone is different because it’s an oversized wedge that you slide in at the end to pick up the slack. You can’t cut it precisely because you don’t know how big it needs to be until it’s doing its job. Once in place though, you can trim it down to make it look like you knew what you were doing all along. There’s a metaphor here, I think, for the style of “engineering” we see in software. It’s not a value judgement other than to acknowledge that, with software, it’s ok to be good enough and to iterate. Lots of real world engineering is like that, but keystones may be an exception.
• picadores 3y ago
  The older i get the more i think, the project management paragdigm should be one of protecting the productive core at all costs from external disruptions. This includes deriving the actual wanted goals early in the project, planning properly and the violently shield the engineers by keeping external factors like the management microcosm, stakeholders and non-developers busy with busywork, placated with blatant lies and overall away from doing damage. Regarding the engineer team organiziation - they will work something out. They don't need that car-production-belt whistle and whip.
• Joel_Mckay 3y ago
  Some prefer chaotic backgrounds, while others consider the Monastic silence of a monastery truly divine. For hard problems (months/years), I think it requires cycling through both context states for a time. This is something nootropics proponents often tend not to recognize. Some hard problems will persist, no matter the amount of resources thrown at the issue. At some point a Plan B becomes C though Z, and its time to prune the project scope to ever hit a launch date. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus Quickly recognizing when a team has lost is important. =)
• throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  I work remote, so I control who interrupts me. I can turn off Slack notifications, I can close my email, I can put up a calendar entry for 4 hours. But I still have to do something to control my time. A door isn't enough, because someone will just knock or open it. You have to put in effort and plan ahead to control your workflow. A lot of people seem to believe that work should be easy. It's actually difficult and complex to work really efficiently. It requires knowledge of how to work efficiently, and then it requires a lot of people to stick to a process, someone to measure it and keep people on track, and continuously changing it to improve. That's a lot more than just "don't interrupt me".
• netbioserror 3y ago
  Similar issue: My small-ish company used to hand out the emails and phone numbers of its programmers. After enough of them threatened to leave because our customer-facing offices were constantly distracting them from projects, their policy changed entirely. Now there is a Jira firewall, managed by a liaison, and we get to things when we get to them. A distraction-free environment is the only way to get your money's worth from a good programmer.
• hackernoteng 3y ago
  Open floor plan is why I am way more productive working from home. Because of that I go into office about once every three months, just so we have in person white-boarding sessions (no actual coding work is possible). Hard wood floors, sales guys talking loud on phones, people buzzing around the office. It's impossible to focus on any non-trivial coding. And no, I'm not going to wear noise cancelling headphones all day.
• akasakahakada 3y ago
  Current writing something like BLAS from scratch for 2 years. I admit that my house is a better work place than my lab. Writing loops and let compiler to optimize that for you is easy. But thinking in terms of vector, tensor, broadcasting, parallel and then convert everything into bit operations is hard. Seriously I can't do any low level implementation in office environment. For high level stuff like architecture design and writing application functions, I appreciate pair programming. I think that is more effective and creative than working alone. But still everyone doing their own stuff in a big room is not my kind in this situation.
• omnicognate 3y ago
  As I read some of the aggressive, cynical and unpleasant responses here to any suggestion there might be some benefits to an open plan arrangement, it's dawning on me that one possible benefit is that it tends to filter out people with attitudes like these. I prefer open plan setups and am glad that working in trading environments has ensured my career has been spent in them, so my natural reaction to the title here is "erm, not all of them do". I actively enjoy being interrupted to discuss something unrelated to my current task, and often return to that task with a fresh insight afterwards. I enjoy helping my colleagues with things, and doing so helps me build a positive reputation in a way that has helped my career. I enjoy camaraderie and conversations about my colleagues' lives outside work. I would refuse a job in an enclosed office or cubicle unless there were very strong compensating factors. I don't require others to feel the same way, and I don't think people are wrong or bad if they prefer greater separation from colleagues. Humans are diverse. However, someone who views their colleages, their work-related questions and their attempts at broader conversation with active disdain is unlikely to be someone I want to work with.
  • throwaway_fjmr 3y ago
    > I actively enjoy being interrupted to discuss something unrelated to my current task wat
    • omnicognate 3y ago
      > Humans are diverse.
      • onetom 3y ago
        it just sounds like you might have ADHD. how many browser windows and tabs do you have open usually?
  • awelxtr 3y ago
    So you're an active participant to the company's office politics instead of economic output. At least you openly admit it.
• aczerepinski 3y ago
  For me it’s because my cat won’t stop trying to step on my keyboard.
• ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  I worked for a Japanese corporation. The Tokyo offices had enormous rooms, with long rows of desks, arranged by section/department. The section manager's desk was at the end of each row. VPs, with billion-dollar budgets, had small, schoolteacher-style desks, in the corner of the room. These enormous rooms, with hundreds of engineers, were quiet as a library. They had carpeting, people wore "office slippers," and there was very little chit-chat. American open-plan offices, on the other hand, resemble flea markets. Loud, somewhat chaotic, and distracting as hell. But the Japanese also have a culture that is attuned to open-plan offices. When we would bring them to the US, they would be uncomfortable with cubicles and offices. I have found that "one-size-fits-all" solutions, don't really work, across cultural boundaries.
  • phendrenad2 3y ago
    "one-size-fits-all" solutions are the prevailing business strategy of investment bankers: Make every company run exactly the same, and save on cost by commoditizing the materials and people.
  • musicale 3y ago
    I would hate that due to the visual distractions and lack of privacy, but "quiet as a library" is absolutely essential. It does sound like that office layout (as with most US office layouts) is designed to clearly reinforce the status hierarchy.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
      > clearly reinforce the status hierarchy Oh, yeah. Hierarchy is very important, in Japanese business culture.
      • fomine3 3y ago
        To emphasize hierarchy, it's common to give cheap office chairs without wrist rest for who aren't at high hierarchy in traditional companies . It's one of the worst way, it harms health.
  • 3y ago
• hattmall 3y ago
  Senior programmer on management side. Personally when I'm coding, yeah, isolated, distraction free environment is my demand. I'm knocking stuff out, achieving flow state. Anything else I feel frustrated that I'm not performing at my peak. I liken it to brain surgery. You wouldn't expect to be well received if you just pop into the OR to discuss getting new scalpels in the middle of an operation. That being said, it's really the crux of the issue with work from home that the trajectory of the company doesn't really depend on individual workers hitting their maximum output. An individual having the best coding experience is rarely the ideal option for the company. It is far more important that the team moves in a cohesive formation. If the distractions truly cut productivity in half we can double the number of seats. Going too far and too fast without focused guidance results in deadtime and technical debt. It's a tortoise and the hare situation. Would we rather have 10 rabbits moving one brick at a time or 20 turtles strapped together towing a trailer with a full stack of bricks. It's also not like we haven't tried to make remote work and other options be successful. The reality is that it's something we can pretty effectively A/B test. The results have been fairly consistent across fields and even companies. Physically collaborative environments yield better and faster results.
  • pseudalopex 3y ago
    > If the distractions truly cut productivity in half we can double the number of seats. Usually salaries cost more than offices. > Going too far and too fast without focused guidance results in deadtime and technical debt. Focused guidance requires intentional communication. Not hoping people will overhear the right conversations. > It's also not like we haven't tried to make remote work and other options be successful. The reality is that it's something we can pretty effectively A/B test. The results have been fairly consistent across fields and even companies. Physically collaborative environments yield better and faster results. Show the data.
    • JAlexoid 3y ago
      > Usually salaries cost more than offices. Yes, they do. But productivity is not linear. > Show the data. I don't have the data, but the reasons behind agile are exactly that - extremely collaborative environment.
• _lvbh 3y ago
  I often go in so that if necessary, I can pop in and code on their computers a bit if my teammates get stuck somewhere. Yes it’s like babysitting but it takes so much longer to walk them through & explaining how to fix it over chat
• whitej125 3y ago
  Favorite office setup as a programmer - was early 2000's. First key feature - 50% of the exterior building walls was windows, the other 50% had offices. Second key feature - cubicle design. It was staggered duets of cubes. Great for privacy... and at best made it easy to turn around and talk to 2 other people if needed. Best of all... each cube had a full window instead of your classic wall. And these windows would all allign so that you could see straight out to the outside if you wanted. You had privacy - but still daylight. Most "cube farms" I see are a sea of interior cubes completely surrounded by wall of exterior offices. That's depressing. Or we see an open office concept where everyone has light but 0 privacy which is hard for concentration. This particular design that I got to work in circa 2002-2005 was delightful at least for me (and then we moved offices and that design sadly didn't carry over). I miss well designed cubes.
• chadash 3y ago
  My ideal is somewhere in the middle. I don't necessarily need a private office, but a shared space with a small team. This way, I'm privy to all conversations relevant to me. Knowing what's going on often trumps the productivity gains of a quiet work environment. The issue is large open offices where I'm also privy to all the other distractions from other teams that aren't relevant to me.
• pard68 3y ago
  At has been echoed in the article and in the comments, so many people are different. I write and run software in my head long before it gets into a text file. This is very mental work but I could do it at the Super Bowl successfully. I zone out like a pro and can get completely lost in my head with no fear of distractions. Conversely when I am debugging or doing more creative stuff like systems design work, I love distractions. For some reason the momentary interruptions really help me reapproach the problem from a new angle. When all else fails a crack open a beer, my very best work has always been done while sipping a cold one.
• i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
  I find working in shared office of up to 2-3 people to be doable. 2-3 people can learn and agree to be quiet most of the time. If you have a meeting, do it in a meeting room, respect each other's privacy, etc. But it highly depends on who you're getting as an office mate. I've had mostly good experiences, but I've had one very bad experience too.
• shadowtree 3y ago
  Has office with door - but 15 Slack channels with notifications on. Plus a twitch stream for some game plus a endless youtube of a "relax/study" channel. You think nobody sees what's on engineers desktops? Of course they're all Carmack-level geniuses... Literally sandwiched between breathless "How Github CoPilot produces 80% of our code" articles from the likes of Shopify and "How laying off a thousand more fixed my stock" from the Spotifys.
• Slava_Propanei 3y ago
  [dead]
• Stokley 3y ago
  I think there's something to be said about the benefits of a collaborative environment. Junior Devs may be discouraged to approach senior devs with questions if it feels like they're walled off from one another
• talkingtab 3y ago
  My analogy for some kinds of programming is mental juggling. Good programmers, juggle lots of balls at one time: the problem components, constraints, other problem elements, production issues, reliability issues, all the possible solutions. A programmer starts with a couple of these, gets them in the air, then adds more and more concepts. When I am good I can juggle lots of them and see how they interoperate. Once all the balls in the air, whirling around like some sort of planetary system orbiting a sun, they can coalesce into -- an idea, a solution, or something. If this gets disturbed, all those balls come tumbling down. This is not a 30 second thing, this can be an hours thing. Or more. Non programmers do not understand this process. I believe.
  • ssd532 3y ago
    Wow, this is the best way to describe the flow state to my non technical manager. Thanks. However, I don’t think she will still able to understand and empathise.
• englishspot 3y ago
  I've found open plan works well when it's a quiet environment. but putting programmers together with the sales folks.. probably not a good idea.
• zxcvbn4038 3y ago
  Private office with doors? I don't need an office at all, I WFH!
• bluGill 3y ago
  Nobody should have an open office policy. Anyone who says they have that is either lieing. Either they don't believe in such a policy and hope you don't interrupt, or they really do believe in it - except they are never in the office anyway.
• cocodill 3y ago
  I ctrl + f the article for porn, that didn't satisfy me
  • ChoHag 3y ago
    [dead]
• hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
  God. That website literally has one ads for every few paragraphs.
• incomingpain 3y ago
  We don't, we can work from home instead. I'll talk personally. I'm autistic(like what 75% of programmers?). Interruptions can potentially ruin my day. If I'm working in an open concept or cube office, there needs to be perfect silence the entire day. If not, I basically can't work.
• tamimio 3y ago
  Open office layouts might work for some jobs like sales or similar, but I always argued that even the desk placement has an impact. For example, I personally prefer to have a wall behind me instead of others walking or standing or chatting behind me. It’s just a big distraction, plus the usual interruptions that you get because you are sitting next to them. Additionally, if you are sensitive to noises and sounds like me, it’s even worse. In one of my jobs, it was like that and - since it was in engineering - the workshop was next to the office and you can imagine all kinds of noises. The worst part is I tried to explain that this environment is the worst for anything beyond just filling forms or doing presentations, but they never changed anything and even remote work was discouraged. I had to leave that eventually
• m3kw9 3y ago
  I e actually never seen an office with that setup from startup, to mid and multi nat corps.
• kristjank 3y ago
  I think it's also important to recognize that companies tend to accumulate people with very little respect for other people's time. Sometimes you need to Pavlov your coworker into writing things down to discuss at a later time, and that you're not mad at them, just busy. Pomodoro technique also helped me shape my focus state into smaller, less efficient, but more predictable portions. By scheduling interruptions, I figured out it's a lot easier to handle breaking out and into flow stat when you're training that every 25 minutes.
• yousif_123123 3y ago
  Just want to add that I only became (at least in my opinion) a good programmer by sitting next to a very good and passionate one that I was able to question from time to time and may have interrupted his work some days. I also probably helped him brainstorm ideas with me and debugging, since he would just say what's on his mind while doing it, and I'd do the same, and sometimes this kind of ping pong debugging/brainstorming together yields way better results than solo work. I really like one time he was trying to see how to open the chrome debugger to debug the chrome debugger, and I just knew how to do it (same shortcut while focussed on open debugger) since I had done it by mistake :D I am convinced that you get more in a collaborative environment having a few devs sitting next to each other in pairs/small groups that they enjoy being with than anything else. IMO with remote work you get hidden inefficiencies that the company can attempt to fix by just hiring more people in the team (and a culture of let's do less meeting, less face to face, more work) takes over and that 1+1=more than 2 environment I was very excited about is gone.. Can someone who is a fan of remote work tell me how a new grad excited about writing code could find a mentor and really up their game in the remote world with what's becoming "standard" way of doing meetings etc? A counterargument to what I describe is how successful open source projects have always been remote with passionate people working on them
  • contrarian1234 3y ago
    I think the interruptions in a group setting have huge disastrous effects as nobody really ever gets into a good flow state. I'm sure it's useful for training and mentorship, but that's frankly not your employer's problem these days. People switch jobs every year, and if you train up staff only their next company is really going to reap the benefits. If learning on the job raises retention then it's only marginal. If anything it makes people "worth more" and they more easily find the next gig that comes with a pay bump You can easily skill up by: - watching conference videos on YouTube - during code review - go on your lang subreddit or forums and read about how other people skin their cats What you want is basically unstructured interruption based code review ~ which is nice for the junior but horrible for productivity over all
    • mablopoule 3y ago
• nevinera 3y ago
  While I don't really _disagree_ with any of this, I want to raise a point from the other direction - it's possible (and for some of us, absolutely necessary) to build software such that holding a large "structure of thoughts and possibilities" in your head is not required. I find myself largely incapable of doing so, open-plan office or not, and have compensated by adopting development approaches that break problems down in consistent enough ways (into small enough pieces) that the structures I have to pick up and put down are never all that complex. Which is good, because they fall out of my head just all the time. ADHD, a very poor memory for detail, and a role that has me responsible for juggling many tasks concurrently would _destroy_ my productivity if this article were universal truth. Don't get me wrong, I _hate_ working in an open-plan office. But the impact it has on my output is not because the interruptions affect my flow, it's because the constant social contact stresses the heck out of me >.<
• skadamat 3y ago
  Stack Overflow / Fog Creek famously embraced private offices: https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-in-private-offices/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/01/16/why-we-still-believe-i...
• racl101 3y ago
  Open plan is great for juniors, but not so much for seniors with a ton of responsibilities already, and who now, the juniors look to for mentoring.
• lbriner 3y ago
  And so the can of worms opens again! No. Not everyone wants or needs a private office with a door. It doesn't always make us more productive. It is not always better to work from home. Open plan offices are not always bad. Most of my day is not spent working on something so complicated or advanced that interuption will screw me over. I am spending most of my day building block towers because I can split most of my work into small pieces. On the other hand, if distraction is a problem, as someone else said, it isn't the open plan office which is at fault. It is planning your time; setting DnD when you are actually doing something difficult; it is making sure that people don't randomnly call your best engineers on the phone whenever they have problem but they instead use chat or email as an async method instead.
  • ozim 3y ago
    Everyone wants to be in some control of their space and thoughts. I don't have to work on some advanced grand vision to not like being available all the time. I am also not claiming that I am going to be super productive when I close the door. It is not my fault not setting DnD it - this is what triggers me - no I don't have to set DnD if someone wants something from me they should make sure it actually IS important, they should make sure they got their stuff right by trying out things and thinking about what they have to do and what tried and what they really want to ask. Then they can also send me an email, send me IM so I can reply as soon as I get to it. Coming to me 9:00 when I am still taking my coat off and opening laptop - asking questions well that is not my problem not setting DnD.
• nexus6 3y ago
  Headphones are my virtual room with door.
• ac26 3y ago
  It feels like there's a lot of productivity theory associated with private offices versus open office but I think the issue is rooted deeper than that. This is an organizational decision and it's one where it needs to be made with the organization's core objectives. However, what it sometimes sounds to me is that there is this hope of a magic combination to crack productivity effectiveness through open offices or closed offices (or any other low level leveraged idea, like return to office vs remote office). The reality is that any configuration can work if the leaders of the organization are cognizant of the ramifications on the different employed individuals and address them accordingly -- but I believe most skip this chapter in leadership training.
• anonuser123456 3y ago
  Having worked in both open floor plan and private offices (9 vs 8 years respectively) I’ve come to the conclusion it just doesn’t matter. What matters is the culture. A culture of “I’m working, only interrupt me only when necessary and keep the chit chat to a minimum, and retreat to a private space for long conversations” is basically the key. That and noise cancelling headphones.
• oopsthrowpass 3y ago
  For me if I get into a topic (like 2-3 hours focus time) then interruptions are OK, I won't drop context until end of the day. If the interruptions happen early in the morning so I never have the 2-3 hours boot up time, then that day is pretty much a zero from lines of code produced perspective. Note: if it's some trivial boilerplate code then I can even be productive without booting up and with constant interruptions, this only applies to things I don't know how to do and need to research/think
  • stainablesteel 3y ago
    i'm the same, the morning is the most important time and i hate when people initiate small talk when i want to focus
• bcrosby95 3y ago
  My favorite work environment is being in a team-sized conference room (3-6 people). Conversations tend to be relevant and I can tune out any that aren't.
• nyc111 3y ago
  Not directly related but I noticed that I can be most productive and focus best in a cafe where there is a continuous white noise. Why doesn't this happen in an open office? Also as I see in 40's movies, the newsroom of newspapers were open offices and I can imagine concentrating there. That must be an interesting collection of noises, typwriters, telephone conversations, joking around etc. etc...
• BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 3y ago
  À previous employer decided to switch from single to two person cubes with announced objective of enhanced collaboration. This intense developer got mated with a non technical social butterfly. Interruptions verging on harassment. I called the environment: one developer for the price of two.
• gwnywg 3y ago
  Doors, kind of furniture I'm missing lately... With kids at home doors need to be equipped with a lock. And it helps to have ensuite too...
• vGPU 3y ago
  Because my ADHD means that if I don’t have a closed door I will literally never get anything done.
• zubairq 3y ago
  Very good article, and well explained I thought
• javier_e06 3y ago
  Silence among silence is emptiness. Silence among noise is true silence.
• da39a3ee 3y ago
  The fact is that there are different sorts of people. Some people know what it's like to do deep, sometimes difficult, independent work on their own. These people have all been ICs in some field. There are also people who have been ICs who have never known such a feeling. And then there are people who have only ever been managers, who also have never known such a feeling.
• effnorwood 3y ago
  [dead]
• midtake 3y ago
  To me, it's not so much offices with doors, but rather some sort of barrier between work and distraction. I don't want to hear about TikToks or food if I'm actually trying to work. An open office layout would work if everyone spoke in hushed tones about work-related stuff, but when it's about stupid shit it's impossible, and "putting on headphones" to ignore everyone is cuck tier and emasculating when other people are giggling and having a great time. Naturally what tends to happen is that no work gets done. Over time what happens is that I stop caring about work entirely and enjoy the office environment exclusively for the shit talk aspect. Whenever I need to get anything done I work from home.
• RagnarD 3y ago
  I think it was Fred Brooks, in the classic The Mythical Man Month (all the back in 1975), who noted the importance of not interrupting programmers' trains of thought. One of the general recommendations was to turn off phone ringers, for example. If it takes 15 minutes to get back into a concentration groove, being bothered 4 times an hour is a guarantee of destroyed productiveness or quality or both.
• mnd999 3y ago
  I've definitely seem benefits from working in open plan. Sometimes it's helpful to overhear what others are doing because maybe they're lacking some information or maybe that thing has already been done elsewhere. Does a fresh graduate with no experience really want to be in an environment where everyone is shut in an office? Equally, sometimes it's better to be quiet. Sometimes, quiet can be at home but sometimes homes are not quiet or uninterrupted. Flexibility would be great, but I think a private office will always be seen as more prestigious, so those with that facility are unlikely go give it up so sit in a cube / open plan with the team, even where that would actually be beneficial.
• lasereyes136 3y ago
  This ignores that in many organizations private offices with doors are status symbols and programmers aren't of the right status to get those. Office politics play an overweight role in way to many places for something like individual preferences to see the light of day. That said, I have enjoyed the offices where I had an office with a door I could shut the best, as long as there were enough common areas so people could meet without a lot of hassle. I have found office arranged like that a lot less frequently because office space is a cost to be minimized so any space that isn't over used immediately is a waste.
• adultSwim 3y ago
  Undiagnosed autism and adhd
• ponsfrilus 3y ago
  This monkey user comic illustrate it very well: https://www.monkeyuser.com/2018/focus/ https://www.monkeyuser.com/2018/focus/
• fagrobot 3y ago
  [flagged]
• gershy 3y ago
  Honestly I've heard this idea rephrased by many different people, but I think it's unexamined. If someone interrupts me from a complex train of thought, after, it only takes a few seconds of minor confusion before I can get back to where I was - and I doubt I'm unique this way. I think we may mistake the annoying feeling of plummeting, from the lofty domain of engineering complex software into the banal, as a major loss of productivity. The feeling is very annoying. But does it take so long to get back into your dreams of that perfect ci/cd pipeline, or high throughput system? I'm not sure.