Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

I wonder how many of these remaining 5 people have a take similar to me. WFH is where I'm most productive and most happy to work. Doing the kind of work you describe above "with 6 people on one project" is for 90% of the time an exercise in babying the least up to speed team member at the cost of distracting everyone.

I get it, some people just like being around people and doing stuff "together", and some types of work may even benefit from that when stars align(brainstorming etc). Most types of work I do in software don't. Especially now, post covid when WFH became normalised and people who were opposed to it on various grounds were forced to learn how to use it effectively.

>* asking quick questions and getting an instant answer. vs chat where I may not get an answer for hours.

That's what the phone is for, with additional benefit of status from everyone. If I see someone is busy I don't phone them I look for someone else, If I see they are "green" I do and I get my answer instantly without disturbing anyone.

>running ideas by others. This doesn't happen on chat for me, and VC is too scheduled

Again, same thing. Pick up a phone. If you just want to run something "by everyone". Wait for your daily/weekly team meeting and ask then. Yes, it forces you to write ideas down not to forget them (if they can wait), but it's massively more convenient to everyone else.

> * brainstorming. Same as above

I had many a good brainstorming session online (mostly with voice). What do you need to accomplish it is: - good audio equipment, Internet access and a quiet location for everyone. No calling into a meeting "from my car, while going to the doctor", or "from the office while people are talking in the background", no "crappy headphones etc". All this ruins productivity for everyone. If people are using cameras(which is nice) everyone has to have the bandwidth for it. Also if you have more than 5 people in your meeting, make use of the "raise hand" feature. Then brainstorming can happen very well. Especially while looking at a document/whiteboard together with systems that show you in real time what everyone does.

In fact above a certain number of people (8 maybe) brainstorming sessions seem a lot more effective to me online than in person. Why? Because you have few communication channels. You have the shared whiteboard/document, voice, and chat so while someone is talking you can post a question to the chat without interrupting.

>getting a feeling for what everyone is up to

That's what regular planning meeting is for.

>feeling part of a team, working on the same thing

I suppose that's a personal thing, but I always felt that including during my 7 years of WFH 100%.

Edit: there is only one real disadvantage to WFH, and it's for junior people wanting to learn. It's much harder to gather knowledge by osmosis, just by being in the office if most senior people are WFH. But then as a leader one has to decide what is more important.

I've noticed this some times ago and now I cannot unsee it: this all discussion is too often about "what is best for me and my flow even if it ruins other people's flow" rather than discussing a proper solution.

Judging by GP comment, they sound like they are heavily inconvenienced. Am I reading it wrong?

The funny part here is that the companies expect you to help onboard new employees AND do your other work at the same time, while at the same refusing to give you the time to build on a proper onboarding, with documentation to read, what software to install, etc.

In my current company we assign a "buddy" to the new onboarders, we have a handbook + a (supported and tested) onboarding installation toolkit, and pretty good documentation. The buddy does the handholding via scheduled and ad-hoc sessions, the onboarding material does the rest. During the pandemic we got to test this approach out on people who haven't even visited the office, and we improved it iteratively on every new onboardee. It's surprising how just improving such a small thing makes onboarding so much more pleasant for everybody, and how this, when done well, works both for office AND remote new employees.