(Disclosure: FB employee) Most of the problems about overhearing conversations, etc, can be dealt with by a nice pair of headphones. Here, it's universally accepted as the 'do not disturb' signal.
What kind of headphones do you recommend?
Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
131–140 of 483 posts
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#132(Disclosure: FB employee) Most of the problems about overhearing conversations, etc, can be dealt with by a nice pair of headphones. Here, it's universally accepted as the 'do not disturb' signal.
and the company pays for them (former FB employee)
Since you're a former employee - did your departure have anything to do with the office space?
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I prefer open offices. You get a pretty significant echo chamber effect on articles like this because people who don't like it turn out to comment. Personally, I have no difficulty with noise (I prefer working in coffee shops to at home), and being able to easily start a design discussion with 4 or 5 engineers when necessary is extremely valuable. I totally get why some people don't like it though.
> easily start a design discussion with 4 or 5 engineers or, rephrased, the ability to destroy 3 man-hours of productivity on a whim.
That depends on the person. I like when other people come to my desk and ask me for help on a whim, even when I'm in the middle of something. It doesn't destroy my productivity, and often it even gives me ideas how to make my work more useful. I do respect when other people don't want to be interrupted, though.
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#134(Disclosure: FB employee) Most of the problems about overhearing conversations, etc, can be dealt with by a nice pair of headphones. Here, it's universally accepted as the 'do not disturb' signal.
If the employer provides super comfortable noise-cancelling headphones I would agree. Personally, listening to music all day gives me a headache and podcasts are too distracting. And I don't need these headphones for anything else (otherwise, I'd already have a pair!) I wonder what would come of it if I requested some.
I have over-the-ear comfy headphones that I wear. Lots of time I don't have music playing.
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#135I worked for a year at IBM's RTP campus. Everyone had their own dimly lit cube with 5-foot walls, no natural daylight, and white noise playing over speakers to drown out conversation. The depressing undertone of the office was part of what pushed me to quit. My team at my present job works in an open setting with 8 people in the room and windows with natural daylight. It's quiet enough to focus but gives us the oppor…
Team sized rooms sound good but what happens with a few more people are added and there is no room to easily expand?
That's a problem for planning of both headcount and space. A company should know its growth profile and plan accordingly. Having slack space (meeting cubes, shared space) which can be converted helps. Short answer: plan ahead.
Rotating employees through different workgroups helps build stronger overall team cohesion. Gives people a chance to mix and match.
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always thought open offices became popular because it was literally the cheapest set up for facilities. For startups it worked because all you had to buy was desks. Somehow that got spun in to 'open offices are so sexy!' Open offices are horrible for productivity imo. Moved to a job with an office and it is so. much. better.
When my company moved to open offices we were straight out told that we were doing this so that more people could be squeezed in.
At least your company was honest with you.
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#137Open offices were developed by people who don't have to really concentrate for their job. They're awful for developers.
People go to cafes to work. It is not closed cubicles there. And I think they are able to concentrate more. I know for one that I can.
Someone told me Cafes are for Output Works, Not Input Works.
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
People go to cafes to work. It is not closed cubicles there. And I think they are able to concentrate more. I know for one that I can.
Cafes offer an odd sort of privacy since none of the conversations mean anything to you - effectively white noise - so they're easy to filter out. In an open office, every conversation may apply to you at any point during the conversation, requiring conscious effort to monitor and filter the conversation.
This. It's the otheredness of the conversations which happen at a cafe that makes it work. If you found yourself at a cafe sitting next to, say, the co-worker you can't stand, the director you've heard is trying to kill your project, an ex-partner and their new partner, I suspect the scene could get quite distracting rather quickly.
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#139(Disclosure: FB employee) Most of the problems about overhearing conversations, etc, can be dealt with by a nice pair of headphones. Here, it's universally accepted as the 'do not disturb' signal.
What about all of the visual distractions? People walking by, mingling, etc. Headphones don't solve that.
Re: Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
#140I worked for a year at IBM's RTP campus. Everyone had their own dimly lit cube with 5-foot walls, no natural daylight, and white noise playing over speakers to drown out conversation. The depressing undertone of the office was part of what pushed me to quit. My team at my present job works in an open setting with 8 people in the room and windows with natural daylight. It's quiet enough to focus but gives us the oppor…
Team sized rooms are definitely the way to go. You can avoid conversation from other teams that you don't care about. When there is a conversation in the room, it's probably related to what you're doing so it's not necessarily distracting you. I worked in a room with just my team and it worked out great. We were able to have discussions and draw stuff on white boards on the wall without distracting anyone else. It al…
That seems like a way to exacerbate Conway's law problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law . Most of the technical debt I try to fight off is based on my team doing something that makes sense for us based on what we're good at / what we think other teams want, but doesn't line up with what other teams want / what they think we can deliver; we end up essentially building abstraction layers around other teams, and they build abstraction layers around us.
If you put everyone in a private office and default conversations to email lists / group chat (which is the model that basically the entire open source community uses), that's fine. If you have an open floor plan where it's easy to wander over to another team's area, that's also fine. But making it super easy for your own team to talk without other people hearing seems the worst of both worlds; you have all the distraction problems of open floor plans (every conversation concerns you), and you don't get the organic conversations that open floor plans are supposed to promote.