Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

I've often run into the "just wear headphones" argument and never been a fan of it. Do you code with noise cancellation in a sort of sensory deprivation mode? Or do you listen to music?

Listening to music while coding severely reduces my concentration, and I find it in no way to be a substitute for silence.

> WE ALL HAVE THESE KIND OF PEOPLE IN OUR LIFE, you are not special enough that the human condition should not apply to you.

And I (and most other people in this thread) am fed up with them and trying to actively remove them from my life. Hence, when people suggest I should deal with it, I tell them that I will most certainly not deal with it. That there are things that can be done to make their and mine life easier.

There are people who put their soda cans on the ground, there are people who talk loudly in the train, there are people who park their cars wrongly. Yes, it's a mild inconvenience. But I won't be dealing with it and accept it, I will actively shame them for the spoiled babies that they are, making a spectacle of their needs and accepting everybody to cater to them. Follow.Societal.Rules or get out of society!

> Just be a grown-up and accept that, no, people have no reason to cater to your little comfort

Me putting out all possible social clues that I don't want to be asked questions at the moment is not people catering for my comfort. It's people going through my boundaries so they can get their little comforts themselves.

> Are you really arguing that these people are the problem when you are the one not able to deal with that.

Yes, because they are breaking established social norms and work etiquette. I have clearly indicated by wearing headphones that it's not the time to be asked questions and I have indicated what's the best possible way for me to be asked questions: email, slack, a scheduled meeting, and many questions in bulk.

I most certainly will not cater to how somebody prefers to ask ME questions just because it's more convenient for them to do it ad-hoc. The same way developers of open source want you to use THEIR issue tracker, and fill THEIR code of conduct, and follow THEIR coding guidelines, and not you doing whatever the heck you want.

If you want something from somebody (like information), better follow their preferred approach of how to be asked, and not act like a spoiled little baby when you are told NO.

I worked for a Japanese corporation.

The Tokyo offices had enormous rooms, with long rows of desks, arranged by section/department. The section manager's desk was at the end of each row. VPs, with billion-dollar budgets, had small, schoolteacher-style desks, in the corner of the room.

These enormous rooms, with hundreds of engineers, were quiet as a library. They had carpeting, people wore "office slippers," and there was very little chit-chat.

American open-plan offices, on the other hand, resemble flea markets. Loud, somewhat chaotic, and distracting as hell.

But the Japanese also have a culture that is attuned to open-plan offices. When we would bring them to the US, they would be uncomfortable with cubicles and offices.

I have found that "one-size-fits-all" solutions, don't really work, across cultural boundaries.

I'd say two people like that shouldn't be on the same team, at least not on their own. If it is possible to find some sort of compromise, that's great, but it might not be. You are going to make each other extremely unhappy, and why would anyone want to put up with that?

Senior programmer on management side. Personally when I'm coding, yeah, isolated, distraction free environment is my demand. I'm knocking stuff out, achieving flow state. Anything else I feel frustrated that I'm not performing at my peak. I liken it to brain surgery. You wouldn't expect to be well received if you just pop into the OR to discuss getting new scalpels in the middle of an operation.

That being said, it's really the crux of the issue with work from home that the trajectory of the company doesn't really depend on individual workers hitting their maximum output. An individual having the best coding experience is rarely the ideal option for the company. It is far more important that the team moves in a cohesive formation. If the distractions truly cut productivity in half we can double the number of seats. Going too far and too fast without focused guidance results in deadtime and technical debt. It's a tortoise and the hare situation. Would we rather have 10 rabbits moving one brick at a time or 20 turtles strapped together towing a trailer with a full stack of bricks.

It's also not like we haven't tried to make remote work and other options be successful. The reality is that it's something we can pretty effectively A/B test. The results have been fairly consistent across fields and even companies. Physically collaborative environments yield better and faster results.