211–220 of 256 posts
The open office revolution needs to die. I don't like wearing headphones all day, but I also don't like hearing 30 people's conversations either. I had a (old) guy that used to sit in my area who would argue with his manager in person and argue (loudly) with everyone he was on the phone with (including his wife). He got moved a couple of months ago and there were no tears shed.
If so, you have your strategy.
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I'm curious... could you explain what you specifically meant by ear-buds being damaging to your hearing? Were you blasting the volume to drown out environment noise or were you talking about noise-canceling earphones? (I personally use noise-canceling earphones a lot, and the only bad thing I've heard is that they may cause vertigo in some people...)
A different person, but hopefully my answer is also helpful: I used to wear etymotic research headphones with really good isolation for the same reasons. A few hours a day would cause redness/itching/wounds/bleeding on the skin of my ear canals.
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…
Different strokes for different folks. I'm probably the only person on HN that prefers open office workspaces. I currently have an office to myself and it's so lonely and isolating. I think I'd go crazy working all day without human interaction, so I hardly ever use it. And, no, chat isn't an adequate substitute. I'll generally charge up my laptop and go out and work in a break room or some other common area with act…
Seriously: swap with someone who desperately needs some quiet - perhaps make the availability of your office known to a small network of people.
> "In general, if it's coming from another person, it's much more disturbing than when it's coming from a machine," he says Huh. My most pet peeve in the open office floorplan was always the coworkers whose phone — not on vibrate — would start ringing. They'd look at it, decide not to answer it, and proceed to just let it ring out loud until it hits voicemail. Just… why? And attempts to educate the owner on how to si…
Microwave oven? (Faraday cage approach)
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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…
Isn't that Google's model with their little developer sheds? Or do they not do that anymore?
I saw something a lot like this in a coworking space in Santa Monica once but of course the goal was very different.
It's very strange that HN seems to sway so heavily against open offices. I genuinely think the reality is that opinions are split squarely down the middle, otherwise hacking/working in coffee shops wouldn't be a thing for example (people seek out that specific experience) It also implies that the likes of Google/Facebook aren't being as productive as they can be, which is hogwash in my opinion.
More likely the people who choose to hack in coffee shops are people who are good at shutting out distractions. Or maybe the alternative is worse, e.g. working at home with wife and kids who can't seem to fully comprehend what it means to be working.
Maybe they are working on some "light" tasks that don't require deep concentration?
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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…
I have similar observations about their UI. Maybe a consequence of Conway's law, that the office plan is implicitily reflected in the software?
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I have ADHD, meaning that open office is great to distract me... But also, one of the symptons of ADHD, with the "H" there, is that people must move, in my particular case one of the things I tend to do is tap my nails on the desk, use tupperware as drums, or if a actual musical instrument is nearby, even if I dunno how to play it, I play it. So, ADHD person in open office not only has terrible productivity due to ot…
Came here to say this. The fidgets are known to help with focus and thought, so if I can't fidget, I work noticeably more poorly. It's very difficult to notice them already. Oddly enough, I can be very helpful to others in an open space, but I've never managed to get my own work done.