61–70 of 74 posts
What I find is that the people that work for me are much more distracted by FB and the plethora of other web distractions than other developers.
When I work from home I don't waste time on these distractions like I do when I'm in the office.
Here's what we wrote when we were looking: http://blog.circleci.com/silence-is-for-the-weak/
TLDR: The benefit is to the team, not the individual. When executing open concept, ensure communication is relevant to the team by not including unrelated teams in the same space. We have had private and open offices; we're much happier with the results of open offices. Overview: First, we believe the benefit of the open office space is derived at the organization/team level by an increase in communication and ambien…
1. What's the ratio of junior to senior level developers?
2. When you were in private offices did the company set aside work time each day to socialise with your coworkers (e.g. Board games for an hour each day)?
3. How many of the developers use headphones during the day?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your productivity to potentially go down a lot.
I wish I could upvote this 10 times. I've worked in both environments and my productivity (not to mention my morale, overall happiness, etc, which are likely related) were much, much higher in a non-open seating environment. Even shared offices (2 people to an office) were far better -- still much easier to avoid distractions because you don't get cafeteria-style escalation of volumes from different conversations and…
Also why I could never work remotely/from home, I guess.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This a million times. For me visual distractions (even if it is just people walking) are a lot worse than noise. I can tune out the chatter but whenever I feel or see movement around me, my head snaps to attention to find out what it is. Some evolutionary thing most likely
Maybe we could invent sight-cancelling glasses to go with the headphones?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bose QC-15. Pricey, but worth it.
Does anyone have any thoughts on the comfort (for extended use in an office) and effectiveness of the QC-20 vs the QC-15. It seems the QC-20 is better on both counts, despite its in ear design. One downside to the QC-20 is that he battery isn't replaceable, but I plan to use them plugged in, so they should still work even when the battery can't hold much charge.
My choice is Bose Quiet Comfort 15.
The guy behind me talks whole day explaining low level network connectivity issues to half of the world. The guy in front of me talks spanish to someone he loves non-stop for a few hours daily.
Bose allows to handle it gracefully :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
^This. Note that we're all commenting on HN right now complaining about how open offices destroy our productivity.
I get to choose when I go to HN. I just closed a bug I'd spent the better part of the week on, I'm fine with relaxing. In an open office I lacked the ability to choose interruptions. I still remember Dipesh coming over, slamming his hands down on my shoulders, to ask "what's up buddy". You could hear the stack falling out of my brain. He just wanted to chat.
TLDR: The benefit is to the team, not the individual. When executing open concept, ensure communication is relevant to the team by not including unrelated teams in the same space. We have had private and open offices; we're much happier with the results of open offices. Overview: First, we believe the benefit of the open office space is derived at the organization/team level by an increase in communication and ambien…
Thanks for the insights! I've just got a couple of questions: 1. What's the ratio of junior to senior level developers? 2. When you were in private offices did the company set aside work time each day to socialise with your coworkers (e.g. Board games for an hour each day)? 3. How many of the developers use headphones during the day?
If you're interested: We have 4 pods of 4, plus conference and lounge separating the room into 2 sets of 2. Each desk in a pod has roughly about 49 square feet of space, all desks are L shaped (ikea galant with extensions), facing out towards the corners. We have half-height cubicle-style walls between pods, otherwise no walls between desks (other than dual 27-30in displays). It seems to be just the right amount of privacy/openness/sound dampening. We're currently building out another identical one of these open offices in our extra warehouse (did I mention space in Texas is cheap?) to house a few more engineers who are still in private offices and in anticipation of hiring.
A somewhat related question: I'm about to start a job at a company with "open office" structure, after having my own office for the last 4 years. Anything I should be prepared for? EDIT: Any headphones suggestions?
Marco Arment recently posted this "mega review" of closed headphones http://www.marco.org/headphones-closed-portable I use the HF5 IEM which isolates perfectly with music/noise playing, but there is a problem: people talk to me as if I could listen to them :( I think that wouldn't happen if I had a big ass headphone.