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I found it interesting that, unlike Microsoft (and Joel's own company), Google does not give their developers their own private offices. Are developers at Goog
by rayvega 17y ago
I found it interesting that, unlike Microsoft (and Joel's own company), Google does not give their developers their own private offices.
Are developers at Google as productive as they can be even sharing an office with 3 other people? Does it not matter if you are a certain caliber of programmer that shares an office with others of the same or similar caliber and level?
Perhaps those who work at Google have greater self-discipline and awareness to know when collaborating starts to cross the line into interrupting someone so the need for private offices is not as necessary as with other companies.
- michael_dorfman 17y agoThe "need" for private offices for developers is based on an evaluation: the cost of interruptions vs the benefit of improved communication among the staff. I doubt there's a "slam-dunk" case to be made for either side.
- DenisM 17y agoIn PeopleWare authors pose that productivity is the best when people working on the same project sit together, is average when people sit alone and is the worst when people with unrelated tasks sit together. Ergo, if you are willing to move your "location" as often as you change tasks it's best to sit together.
- michael_dorfman 17y agoOr, you make sure that tasks assigned to a group of people stay "related"-- which shouldn't be hard to do, it most large organizations.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- snprbob86 17y agoAnd Google makes this pretty easy because your home directory and all of your work lives in the cloud.
- enneff 17y agoCan we please say "on their intranet" instead of the misleading "cloud" buzzword? (FWIW Googlers call it the "intranet" too.)
- prodigal_erik 17y agoCan we please say "on their network" instead? That's a perfectly good word that already means "not the whole internet", and we don't need another.
- enneff 17y ago"Intranet" is a pretty standard and inoffensive term for a company-wide network, isn't it?
- snprbob86 17y agoI was a Google intern...
- chollida1 17y ago> sit together Does "sit together" mean in an open environment or just in the same hallway within their own offices. I didn't think they specified here.
- jhawk28 17y agoGoogle has a different perspective on collaboration. You can see some of it in this Google IO talk: http://code.google.com/events/io/sessions/MythGeniusProgrammer.html http://code.google.com/events/io/sessions/MythGeniusProgramm...
- ken 17y agoI don't think they speak for Google there. They're advocating things which are the exact opposite of Google's practices, like doing open-source projects out in the open so people can see your mistakes (compare: Chrome, Wave, Android, GWT).
- andreyf 17y agoCan you clarify - what is not open source about Chrome or Android?