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Noisy Coworkers And Other Sounds Are A Distraction In Workplace

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Re: Noisy Coworkers And Other Sounds Are A Distraction In Workplace

#181

Post by realeyes »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #36
wwggggoi wrote: post #3

honestly, that's why I'm hardly ever in the office. there's someone there who's noise profile is utterly unfilterable. they fiddle with things, drop things, fidget, cough, snort phlegm up their nose, subvocalize, and generally emit an air of restlessness. nice person though.

Has anyone ever told them that they're noisy? I suspect that I might be such a person, and explicitly tell anyone to go ahead and let me know if I'm ever annoying. I think I'm approachable enough that they take the offer at face value, and not as a passive-aggressive "don't you dare".

This is a serious issue for me as well I've asked co workers I'm fairly close with and they say they don't notice me etc. I can't tell if they're just trying to be nice though, I think I'm a loud breather but I don't know how to prove it.

Re: Noisy Coworkers And Other Sounds Are A Distraction In Workplace

#182

Post by dasmoth »

douche wrote: post #136
dasmoth wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone tried "free choice"? My suspicion is that it won't irk brillantly because even the loudest open-plan advocates generally perceive private offices as higher-status. Also, once people are in separate offfices you do need to think about information exchange slightly more actively (a good thing IMO -- but potentially a bit of a shift for the folks who find open plan, listen-in-on-everything to work well)

Deliberate communication is, I have experienced, usually a whole lot higher quality than ad-hoc, informal "collaboration". Let people go away and think about it, do their homework, and come back with backed-up, researched, opinions. Or, you know, you can just interrupt everybody for a useless bike-shedding session at the drop of a hat.

> Deliberate communication is, I have experienced, usually a whole lot higher quality than ad-hoc, informal "collaboration".

Definitely.

Re: Noisy Coworkers And Other Sounds Are A Distraction In Workplace

#183

Post by icehawk219 »

belvoran wrote: post #179

I was working in an open space for a couple of years. The phones were ringing happily, including the official corporate ones, which were standing on each desk. People were talking all the time. Talking, walking, looking at my screen, of course with lots of comments to my code. 70 people in the floor. We had all the funny things for the group integration all the time. All the things except for thinking. Yes, I was sit…

Same story here. At my previous job when they rolled out the open office a bunch of us complained and the boss explained how he'd be giving up his office to work out on the floor with us. Not even joking, less than an hour after he moved his stuff out he moved it back into his office saying "it's too distracting, I can't get anything done out here".

Now working from home I make more progress per day then I did on a weekly basis there.

Re: Noisy Coworkers And Other Sounds Are A Distraction In Workplace

#184

Post by dasmoth »

zzalpha wrote: post #94
Swizec wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they do all those studies and decide that the hit in productivity is worth the cheaper open space? Maybe individual performance just doesn't matter that much? I'd bet that the bigger the company, the less it matters how effective individuals are and the more it matters how effective teams are. As much as I love working from home or an office or whatever, team productivity is better when people who work together…

As much as I love working from home or an office or whatever, team productivity is better when people who work together share physical space. Define "team". I fully believe that a co-located 5-9 person team in an open space can be a good thing. I also fully believe that a co-located 20-30 person department composed of 4-6 teams, all in a single open space is a complete disaster. And don't get me started on the traves…

> To me, the perfect solution is neither individual offices nor open plans, but rather 5-9 person team spaces with floor-to-ceiling walls and a door, plus breakout rooms.

This can be a pretty good solution for a well-gelled 5-9 person team. But I don't buy into the mindset that this is always the natural unit of software development. Some problems need larger groups -- that probably don't fit the "gelled team" model as well -- while others are perfectly amenable to one or two people coding away behind closed doors. Why is there so much focus on "teams" at the moment?

Re: Noisy Coworkers And Other Sounds Are A Distraction In Workplace

#185

Post by Tenhundfeld »

icehawk219 wrote: post #183
belvoran wrote: post #179

I was working in an open space for a couple of years. The phones were ringing happily, including the official corporate ones, which were standing on each desk. People were talking all the time. Talking, walking, looking at my screen, of course with lots of comments to my code. 70 people in the floor. We had all the funny things for the group integration all the time. All the things except for thinking. Yes, I was sit…

Same story here. At my previous job when they rolled out the open office a bunch of us complained and the boss explained how he'd be giving up his office to work out on the floor with us. Not even joking, less than an hour after he moved his stuff out he moved it back into his office saying "it's too distracting, I can't get anything done out here". Now working from home I make more progress per day then I did on a w…

I agree with all of this. I worked in open offices and Agile "team rooms" for many years, and I've been working from home for the last few. There's definitely a huge increase in the amount of quality code I'm able to crank out working from home.

However, I do think some intangibles are lost. They're hard, maybe impossible, to quantify. Instead, I'll just link to a post from PG that's a transcription of a speech by Richard Hamming. http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html And to save you a click, this is the paragraph that stuck with me:

"Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important."

Obviously there are ways to mitigate that, e.g., involvement in the developer community or establishing habits to replace "water cooler" chatter, but they take deliberate effort.

Re: Noisy Coworkers And Other Sounds Are A Distraction In Workplace

#186

Post by biztos »

mgkimsal wrote: post #39
Futurebot wrote: post #34

I've worked in a private office, small shared-office, cube farms, open plan, and remote. What I've always thought was a good mix was: - Developers (and sometimes others that need quietude, like art/graphics people) get either a private office each or a shared, developer-only office - Marketing and sales that need constant communication / thrive on motion and energy get open plans - A mix of full-on conference rooms a…

And yet, most places I've seen inside, it's the opposite on those top two points. Dev/creative folks are in bullpen/open areas Marketing/sales get private offices Justification I got a couple times was the sales people need to talk numbers, and that needs to be private. Cynically, I think they don't want anyone else (like devs) overhearing the (over)promising that's done, or hear/witness some of the desperation when…

I'm late to this thread, and just kind of thinking out loud, but I wonder if this would work:

Give programmers tiny private offices -- enough to physically do the computer-interaction part of programming in comfort -- and have a big central open space with big tables and some of the normal lounge stuff.

Ergo: you can "go off to code" and have privacy; but you would have a physical as well as social incentive to also spend time with your colleagues.

Re: Noisy Coworkers And Other Sounds Are A Distraction In Workplace

#187

Post by riskneural »

mgkimsal wrote: post #39
Futurebot wrote: post #34

I've worked in a private office, small shared-office, cube farms, open plan, and remote. What I've always thought was a good mix was: - Developers (and sometimes others that need quietude, like art/graphics people) get either a private office each or a shared, developer-only office - Marketing and sales that need constant communication / thrive on motion and energy get open plans - A mix of full-on conference rooms a…

And yet, most places I've seen inside, it's the opposite on those top two points. Dev/creative folks are in bullpen/open areas Marketing/sales get private offices Justification I got a couple times was the sales people need to talk numbers, and that needs to be private. Cynically, I think they don't want anyone else (like devs) overhearing the (over)promising that's done, or hear/witness some of the desperation when…

I find it very hard to make sales calls when somebody non-sales is in the room. The rejection is enough for me without adding judgment :)

Re: Noisy Coworkers And Other Sounds Are A Distraction In Workplace

#189

Post by wruza »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #117
pklausler wrote: post #10

The problem with open office plans is that it takes just one noisy person to spoil it for everybody. If managed carefully and actively, they can work -- it just takes an manager willing to correct bad behavior or send sick people home. Where I work, I have a budding tupperware percussionist, three imminent victims of whooping cough, some parents managing high-maintenance offspring over cell phones, and one guy who co…

If you have to outlaw default human behavior for a system to 'work' then it doesn't work

Default human behavior is mating, dominating and searching for food.

Re: Noisy Coworkers And Other Sounds Are A Distraction In Workplace

#190

Post by alexellisuk »

I can relate to a lot in the article having worked in open plan for 10 years. I always get a lot more done working from home - ambient distraction level is really low. The worst thing is sick people contaminating and rowdy loud people especially when we are expected to take regular video conferences at our desks.

It would be interesting given a poll who would opt for:

- open plan, no separators

- hot-desking

- individual offices

- individual offices + open areas

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