I know opinions differ. My best experiences have been when sharing a office with one developer, both working on the same project. That way, if we had to discuss something, we would not disturb anyone else, and if not, we both could work in peace. It was easy to see how busy and "deep" the other guy was, and not to interrupt him at the wrong time.
Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
141–150 of 593 posts
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#142I have to pass gas all of the time due to my gut so if you insist on me being in an office setting of any kind... prepare yourself for the worst.
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If one requires interrupting 6 other people to maintain flow Where is this "6" coming from? Again: 1) You may be incapable of doing work when someone walks next to you, but this is not the case of a lot of people. It's like driving and then going like: 'Gee, when these cars are putting their blinking lights on and it is distracting me, they should all quickly park before I arrive'. 2) My flow is fine, thank you ver…
If Alice wants to focus on her work uninterrupted, but Bob wants to interrupt and ask a question, what should happen?
If I was Alice's employer and valued her (and other employees) being able to do deep work, I'd have a policy whereby employees could schedule do-not-disturb time (large blocks of it, depending on their needs) where they could shut their doors and turn off IM. Have a red light on the outside of the door, like a film production booth. Book end the day. First 1-2 hours are disturb time. Middle of the day is DND time. Last part of the day is disturb time.
All scheduled meetings have to happen in disturb time.
Now, that doesn't really work for a customer-facing role, at least not without the cooperation of your customers, but having managed a customer-facing team before, I'll say I encouraged my people to schedule office-hour time with their customers to try to channel the interactions in a more predictable period of time.
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#144I work at a 30 person company in a partitioned office designed for four people, including the CEO, a graphic designer, and a secretary. My role involves focused programming tasks, which are frequently disrupted by the office dynamics. When the CEO is away, the graphic designer and secretary frequently engage in loud, casual conversations, discussing everything from personal matters to home decor, like curtain colors.…
>This concern about appearances adds another layer to the already challenging office environment.
This sentence sums up the biggest headache of my professional career.
I have never worried about appearances, but instead focused on doing good work.
To my detriment. I know I've missed out on key assignments and at least one promotion at my current employer because I don't sell myself or focus on perception management.
I guess what I'm saying is, this exists everywhere, in every field of work.
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#145Can we be done deriding cubicles now? And how about we put saloon doors on them that enable occupants to communicate "not right now"? And if they're left open it means: "come on in and interru me!"
?
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#146In my whole professional life (last 15y) there was not a single time where I had anything resembling a private space where I could just close the door and work in peace. The norm here in German startup world seem to be open floors. And if you do have rooms they get crammed full of people. It's not the end of the world though. A room full of engineers is tolerable, and if they're on your team this is even desirable. T…
> A room full of engineers is tolerable, and if they're on your team this is even desirable. Until one of the engineers who has no social awareness decides to eat at their desk instead of taking lunch elsewhere, or you just need some silent time and there's just no option for it. I'm very reluctantly pursuing on-site or hybrid positions as a last ditch (desperate) effort to find some work, and I'm not the slightest b…
>no social awareness decides to eat at their desk instead of taking lunch elsewhere
What? How is eating your lunch at your desk a social awareness thing? If it doesn't smell and isn't loud, what's the problem?
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair take. I am not trying to be condescending here, but it's hard to view this behavior as anything but overly disruptive. https://www.businessdit.com/distraction-work-statistics/ Instead of "just a quick question", the OP could prepare a list of their questions, and ask them all at the allocated time. A scheduled deep dive into the questions the OP has might even be more productive than multiple unscheduled disrupt…
So what you are asking is that OP destroy their own "deep work" a lot just that you don't get a mild distraction in yours. > And in an open office, even if you ask only a single person something, others might hear it too, despite the question not being intended to them. I guess I'm special, because when I'm in a "deep work", I just don't hear people around me. I know it's not the case of everyone, some of my colleagu…
Propensity for distraction varies a lot between people.
For me it varies on a day to day basis. Some days I could focus through a hurricane while others people buzzing around me is enough to make it difficult to think at all, let alone deeply. It averages out to normal productivity but I’d rather have fewer low productivity days, if I had the choice.
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#148My first job out of college (~2007) had an open office plan. The development team sat right next to all of the sales people making phone calls during the day. When someone made a sale, they would scream loud and then ring a bell (loud cheers then proceeded from the rest of their team).
This happened at least a dozen times/day. We were allowed to wear headphones, but could not listen to anything streaming online. I would record 8 hours of streaming radio the night before and then transfer it to my Ipod nano in the morning. I was usually so sleep-deprived that I didn't have any time to check the recording before work. Once/month, my Internet connection would go down and I would have 8 hours of white noise (those days were a nightmare).
I eventually figured out that I could RDP into my server at home and stream audio from there, and listen to it through the RDP connection. The Internet filters they were using couldn't detect it.
I think what finally made me quit was when I found out management had screen-monitoring software installed on all of our computers and would review it every hour.
A co-worker discovered it by accident and due to my inquisitive nature (which sometimes gets me in trouble), I tried to telnet into the listening port we found on his computer (to see what it was) and it completely crashed their monitoring software (must have been really shitty software). I was hauled in the next day and questioned to see if I did this with malicious intent and he was fired )I guess they were watching him for awhile and were gathering evidence. He had worked with the company for 5 years).
I got out at a good time. The company in question was in the loan industry and it melted down a year later in 2008 and the whole development team was laid off.
I hated this office experience so much, that since the job I had after this, I've only worked remote jobs (and still do) in my home office or office space I personally rent. I don't think I could ever go back.
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who would win: - literally 100s of publications showing how disruptive and destructive to focus it is to be working in an open office work and how much distractions it brings: https://theconversation.com/returning-to-the-workplace-heres... https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices https://www.businessdit.com/distraction-work-statistics/ https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/eve... https:…
Who wins? The CFO and corp real estate people (correctly) saying how much more expensive (and less flexible to changing team size) a building with enough private offices is.
So you're saying programmers' time is not expensive enough?
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Open plan might work great for some types of work […] I'm curious to know: why types are, or people consider to be, good for open plan? Generally, office type jobs tends to be one where people need to use their brains to concentrate on something, and open plans tend to be able to create / not block distractions, they would be antithetical to being able to concentrate.
Mostly everything that is not creative: creativity needs focus. Take any job that isn't creating something, anything related to customer, operations, support, ... and one can do it in almost any conditions.
MacGyver-style support needs very creative solutions because no budget.