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The Rise of the New Groupthink

nytimes.com

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Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#11

Post by whamill »

joezydeco wrote: post #10
moocow01 wrote: post #4

Thank you to the writer of this. This is actually the reason I only take work that allows me to mainly work remotely. I used to work in an open layout as described and I would be interrupted for every little thing resulting in not much actual work being achieved. Oddly enough the open layout seems to be'the way' for cool startups - maybe in actuality this driven more by the cost savings of having an open layout offic…

I'm sitting here in one of these "cool startup" offices right now. I absolutely hate it. No place to stack anything, no walls to hang whiteboards, calendars, pictures. No DOOR to close when I just want to get something done. I have noise everywhere that headphones can't drown out. I have people tapping me on the back constantly because, apparently, having headphones on isn't a big enough signal that I'm trying to shu…

No whiteboards? What kind of startup doesn't have loads of whiteboards? You should go buy a load of that paint you can use to turn walls into whiteboards and paint your desk and cupboards and floor - www.ideapaint.com

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#12

Post by joezydeco »

whamill wrote: post #11
joezydeco wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sitting here in one of these "cool startup" offices right now. I absolutely hate it. No place to stack anything, no walls to hang whiteboards, calendars, pictures. No DOOR to close when I just want to get something done. I have noise everywhere that headphones can't drown out. I have people tapping me on the back constantly because, apparently, having headphones on isn't a big enough signal that I'm trying to shu…

No whiteboards? What kind of startup doesn't have loads of whiteboards? You should go buy a load of that paint you can use to turn walls into whiteboards and paint your desk and cupboards and floor - www.ideapaint.com

No, we have whiteboards. They're just across the room on the outer walls where I can't reach them easily. We also went cheap and bought melamine bathroom panels that are impossible to erase.

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#13

Post by johnohara »

jamesbritt wrote: post #2

I have a very comfy and full-featured home-office set-up, but still try to get out at least once a week to (ostensibly) work among other hackers. There are some business advantages to not being cloistered, not the least being people know you exist and may be available for whatever kind of work you do. And it's good to have be around smart geeks who can answer questions or give you a sanity check on ideas. But the big…

Per Steve Johnson's TED Talk:

"Chance favors the connected mind."

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#14

Post by jmduke »

BadassFractal wrote: post #6

This is very interesting, especially in light of certain software development approaches such as XP, where you're told to work in pairs as much as possible. Many people argue that you haven't truly experienced teamwork until you've pair developed for a whole workday together for months at a time. The approach works for several companies, Pivotal Labs comes to mind. I've personally experienced benefits of that work st…

I don't disagree with you, but I think pair programming (at least as how it was explained to me, and how I've approached it in my studies/work) is less a mechanism to foster creativity and more as a 'second set of eyes', a way to alleviate tunnel vision. (I not-so-fondly remember staring at an error-throwing piece of code for at least twenty minutes until a friend pointed out that I had accidentally used a ')' instead of an ']').

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#15

Post by seiji »

jgrant27 wrote: post #9

The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born. That is why many of the earthly miracles have had their genesis in humble surroundings. -Nikola Tesla

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.

I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841)

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#16

Post by moocow01 »

joezydeco wrote: post #10
moocow01 wrote: post #4

Thank you to the writer of this. This is actually the reason I only take work that allows me to mainly work remotely. I used to work in an open layout as described and I would be interrupted for every little thing resulting in not much actual work being achieved. Oddly enough the open layout seems to be'the way' for cool startups - maybe in actuality this driven more by the cost savings of having an open layout offic…

I'm sitting here in one of these "cool startup" offices right now. I absolutely hate it. No place to stack anything, no walls to hang whiteboards, calendars, pictures. No DOOR to close when I just want to get something done. I have noise everywhere that headphones can't drown out. I have people tapping me on the back constantly because, apparently, having headphones on isn't a big enough signal that I'm trying to shu…

You have my sympathy. Was in a similar situation and tried lots of things... hiding myself in a conference room, headphones, being artificially mean, blocking out parts of my calendar as alone time, telling people I preferred to be left alone for the next few hours - unfortunately none of it worked because when people want something from you their impulse is to turn around and ask you when the barrier is so low. I'll admit that it wasn't a one way street, I probably unknowingly did it to people when they were in the zone.

The only thing that really solves it is if you can convince your employer to let you work remotely even a day or 2 - thats when I actually got to do real work. Just my 2 cents.

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#17

Post by ijreilly »

My current company, a startup, has an even split of developers, half under 30 and half over 45. I'm one of the old guys. The development environment and approach, mostly set up by the young guys, is pretty modern -- lots of open source tools, hosting on launchpad, test-driven development, code reviews, all developers in one big open space, everyone does everything (as opposed to developers doing development, testers writing tests, build engineers creating build infrastructure).

The young guys seem to thrive in this setup. It's driving me nuts.

I am most productive when I have a problem to solve and I can immerse myself in it for hours every day, days at a time, without interruption. But now I have to do timely code reviews for others. I also have to respond to reviews of my code. The encouraged way of working is to commit small, reviewable pieces, but then each commit involves several interruptions, and it's difficult to go on to part 2 while addressing everyone's concerns about part 1. The infrastructure is problematic, because no one actually owns it, so there are more interruptions to deal with problems there.

Everyone has an IRC window open, and while there isn't too much social chatter, there is a distraction every time that a message arrives. (I hate IRC. I was forced to it in my last job, when people would IRC my officemate to get hold of me.)

I recognize the benefits of some of these practices. Code reviews do catch problems. (On the other hand, a code review often acts as a substitute for a design review, so we actually end up reviewing and maintaining bad designs.) More people know more of the code, and we avoid problems created by a guy going into a cave for weeks at a time.

But there is no denying that this style of working really makes it difficult to concentrate, at least for me.

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#18

Post by mekoka »

The book "Peopleware" has documented this very concept decades ago (according to wikipedia, first edition was published in 1987), yet here we are in 2012 with still more "cool open" environments for programming teams.

Here's a link to the top positive review in amazon, giving an insight as to its content http://www.amazon.com/review/R1R3N8JI29OPPE/ref=cm_cr_pr_vie...

Lots of startups want to recreate the cafe experience as a workspace, but I'd rather work in a real cafe, with more people and more noise than an open space office. In a cafe, you still have somewhat of an expectation of privacy, there's less the prospect of someone interrupting you just because you're within reach.

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#19

Post by scott_s »

I couldn't make it past the first page of the article because I felt it was veering too much into the territory of "I have an axe to grind, and I'm looking for anecdotes to support it." My two sentence take:

1. In my experience, private space and time is necessary for individuals to get real work done.

2. In my experience, small, focused teams which have as-needed discussions and well-partitioned responsibilities are massively more productive than individuals when it comes to solving large problems.

Re: The Rise of the New Groupthink

#20

Post by troymc »

scott_s wrote: post #19

I couldn't make it past the first page of the article because I felt it was veering too much into the territory of "I have an axe to grind, and I'm looking for anecdotes to support it." My two sentence take: 1. In my experience, private space and time is necessary for individuals to get real work done. 2. In my experience, small, focused teams which have as-needed discussions and well-partitioned responsibilities are…

You should have read the whole article. The author does cite numerous third-party sources of evidence.
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