4 ms·
That's an interesting point. It reminds me of something Joel Spolsky wrote: Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that if we
by ColinCochrane 12y ago
That's an interesting point. It reminds me of something Joel Spolsky wrote:
Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away 15 minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff and Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal-fattening farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he asks Jeff. Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to save Mutt 15 seconds)."
(From http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html)
- vacri 12y agoConversely, I've been able to save days of employee time by hearing a conversation between two colleagues that had a faulty assumption on our infrastructure setup.
- waterlesscloud 12y agoBut does a plus that happens once or twice a year outweigh minuses that happen multiple times per day?
- VLM 12y agoAnd would the plus have even been necessary if the environment were not highly distracting? The best way to fix a bug is to prevent it from happening.
- lgas 12y agoThere are also other solutions to this problem, such as encouraging discussions like this to take place on something like HipChat. Now all the discussions are archived and searchable and even the people that are home sick that day have the chance to overhear something important, not just the guy that happened to be walking by. And while yes, some discussions will still take place outside of the chat rooms, if this is your default way of working then there should be enough discussion of anything critical that everything makes it's way to chat eventually. Once everyone's comfortable working this way you can encourage a lot more working from home (or working from wherever in the world you want to be, if your employees aren't all married with kids yet), etc. And that will save you even more on office space.
- frostmatthew 12y agoThis type of "chance encounter" is a common rebuttal but instead of planning your office layout on the hope of occasionally catching a mis-communication maybe it would be better to improve how things are communicated so these "faulty assumptions" don't happen (and/or are caught sooner...independent of luck/chance).
- pbreit 12y agoDoes FogCreek still have the "Bionic Offices"? http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html I thought the "light on two sides" was particularly clever. One thing holding back enclosed offices in SF is the very high ceilings in many of the older buildings. would high walled cubes work?
- rayiner 12y agoThe punchline: > The monthly rent for our offices, when fully occupied, will run about $700 per employee. That's $8,400 per year in Manhattan.
- rattray 12y agoThis appears to be their new office space: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/stack-exchange-office-tour-2013-10 http://www.businessinsider.com.au/stack-exchange-office-tour... And these are shots from their new Denver office: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stackexchange/7776308984/in/set-72157631181635072 http://www.flickr.com/photos/stackexchange/7776308984/in/set... http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/09/join-us-for-our-opening-reception-of-stack-exchange-denver/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/09/join-us-for-our-openin... tl;dr there is at least some open-plan stuff. Which, really, just makes the most sense; a healthy mix of options is hard to argue with.