301–310 of 316 posts
This sounds a bit like 42 floors. Whatever happened to them? Did they implode into a black hole with the weight of their own hype?
I thought 42floors was just a slightly prettier Craigslist for office space to rent.
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Every company offering "friday beer" I've worked at also offered the beer for free and up to an hour of extra paid break. Drinking the beer was never an obligation and there's always non-alcoholic alternatives. This gave us an opportunity to meet with all the other teams / departments. Sure, I would rather be at my local microbrewery drinking stout with my friends rather than drink cheap pilsner at work but it has it…
There is no way I would have been as close to those people if not for this paid social time. One of the worst aspects IMHO of the US working culture is the blurring of the working/personal divide. Because the consequence is the semi-permanent working state of mind. Don't get me wrong, I like to get along with my colleagues. But they're that, colleagues, not friends. These events only perpetuate the working vibe and m…
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I'm also interested in what you learned, and curious as to why you decided to pull the plug.
I just posted some details below. I think my main mistake was trying to be an accelerator as opposed to simple shared space for rent. We couldn't find a way to make it work financially, considering the amount of time and energy it was demanding. I also underestimated the lack of interest in innovation and startups here in CT.
Sounds like some shady circumstances around the state-sponsored incubator, on the other hand...
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Yes! Men and women actually work better together than groups composed of just men or just women [1] [2] The thinking is, men prefer taking risks, while women prefer to limit risks. In cooperation, men can push women to see the benefit of a risk (and in turn she gains more experience of risk), and women can push men to hold off of risks that might be detrimental. Women are good at synchronizing group thought, in that…
Fully agree. Narcissistic men are annoying - I don't get how they seem to lack self-awareness, and they are toxic for teamwork. Not that women don't have their downsides, too - some can be neurotic, but at least the bitchy ones tend not to work in IT. I'm really glad we have a few female developers.
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I've worked as a software engineer for over a decade and most of that time was spent in open office spaces. I am most productive in that environment. I don't doubt that you are more productive in a different environment, but it's a pretty big leap to assume that every engineer is going to be productive in the same environment. Different people work different ways, and the answer is to find a workspace that suits you,…
Can you explain how you find it possible to think deeply about complex algorithms and data structures, or to debug code? When I do this I find that I'm essentially running programs in my head and keep a "mental stack" of what's going on. A distraction can easily break this mental stack. How do you deal with this?
There is a slight increase in interruptions just because it's slightly easier for someone to speak to you directly in an open workspace. But the flipside, which I gain a lot more from than I lose, is that I can address other people who might know something immediately that would take me a 15 minutes to figure out--that kind of stuff is a big time-saver. I tend to figure out what other people on my team are amenable to this sort of interaction quickly, and respectfully don't interrupt people who aren't.
Of course, there are still times when I need to concentrate deeply, and then headphones go in. If that doesn't cause people to weighing the value of my time versus what they'd gain from talking to me, setting polite verbal boundaries usually does.
And finally, there are always going to be distractions even if you're working in a private workspace, and all the strategies that work for those distractions work for the distractions of a shared workspace.
Is this some kind of coastal culture thing, to add all kinds of stupid, non-productive crap to your work environment? Here in flyover country, you can rent an entire suite of multiple private offices in a strip of class B office-park units, including utilities, for less than what WeWork is apparently asking for just one private office. And that's without the insane brand-connected features like having beer kegs at wo…
Here's my way of explaining to managers why software developers need to be left undisturbed. Software developers on average write only about ten lines a day. The reason the process is so slow is that for each new line of code, you are trying to accomplish a task, and their are a great many different specific ways to do it. However, you can't pick just any way of doing it. That's because any line of code will impact o…
> That's because any line of code will impact on dozens of different things in the program I'd say that's something to avoid whenever possible. But that's just pushing the metaphor back a level: in order to know how to design your codebase so that it's well-organized and extensible, you have to have a pretty good understanding of what it does, what it needs to do, and how it does it. For me... once I get into the zon…
This is definitely the most common response I hear to shared/open offices ... but dang it, I love them (part time)! I go into a co-working space once or twice a week, and wfh the rest of the time. When I'm there, I enjoy being around people who can relate to what I'm doing (even if it's just as simple as a knowing nod when I comment on a tough bug I'm troubleshooting). And if I need to focus, headphones easily place…
Yeah, that used to work for me until I started getting ringing in my ears from headphone use.
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> No one talks to anyone from other companies, to the point of awkwardness. I often see two people in the kitchen area from different companies and it can be a bit like a comedy sketch as they try to get their kitchening done without acknowledging the other person exists. Absurd, why don't people talk to each other. Especially people you see every day! Having worked in a number of shared workspaces: while this does s…
Hey, any recommendations for a conversation starter in a coworking kitchen?
Followed by:
"So what are you working on?"
And so on...
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I covet a law library style heads down quiet work zone. I’m not crazy about shared office, cafe tables. They have to be library style heavy, solid to dampen heavy typing, pencl tapping, regular jostling.
Have you tried working in an actual library? Most public libraries have WiFi these days.