Why do programmers need private offices with doors? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#251

Post by nitely » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 2:22 PM UTC

ath3nd wrote: post #115

esskay wrote: post #106

It has to be said, if you're employing programmers and making them sit in an openplan office you're willingly and knowingly making their job significantly harder, and their day worse. Open plan might work great for some types of work, but for highly technical and mentally taxing work it's quite litterally the worst possible working environment you could be providing. There's a reason that many programmers prefer to w…

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:…

idk who wins, but I'd assume extroverts need a quiet environment to be able to focus as much as anyone else.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#252

Post by wharvle » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 2:22 PM UTC

scbrg wrote: post #215

theshrike79 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have Misophonia. It's not normal to be extremely irritated by sounds other people make. The "normal" state is to be able to tune those out.

I'm not when it's normal noises, made by non headphone wearing people. Normally people are conscious about the sounds they make and restrict them a bit. If you're coughing in a group, you try to do it softly, or you leave the room. Things like that. When people wear head phones this kind of subconscious self control seems to be a lot less effective. I'm certainly not the only one to have made this observation.

I sometimes start audibly breathing with headphones on. Something I never do without them. So I won’t wear them around others when I can avoid it.

That’s aside from tapping I might not realize is making noise with headphones on, or a particular motion in my chair that’s making it squeak and I don’t know it because headphones, et c.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#253

Post by miroljub » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

esskay wrote: post #106

It has to be said, if you're employing programmers and making them sit in an openplan office you're willingly and knowingly making their job significantly harder, and their day worse. Open plan might work great for some types of work, but for highly technical and mentally taxing work it's quite litterally the worst possible working environment you could be providing. There's a reason that many programmers prefer to w…

Let's not pretend that we are something special, and we need to focus so much more than other creative workers.

For the majority of work of an average programmer in an average corporation, deep focus is highly overrated.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#254

Post by mariusor » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 2:25 PM UTC

justinclift wrote: post #223

mariusor wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can unblock someone now so they don't spend 3 hours searching through the local intranet for some information, then that makes your team faster. I'll be blunt here. I have very little interest in how the team I'm part of performs in general. Trying to make one person feel guilty that someone else can't do independent study is very toxic in my opinion, and I usually remove myself from under management that ap…

> I have very little interest in how the team I'm part of performs in general In a lot of situations that would be considered fairly toxic itself. :(

How so? The camaraderie that companies try to enforce on their low lever employees with this kind of manipulation is nothing but a ruse.

Why do you think that a whole team of people should be responsible for the inability of some? I have empathy for individual people that start their careers and struggle, but I also believe that if you apply for a job, you should be qualified to do it independently.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#255

Post by ath3nd » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

beeboobaa wrote: post #165

robertlagrant wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it feels like you don't necessarily realize that some people do need deep work, and prioritize your quick satisfaction to other's focus. This is very one-sided. If you can unblock someone now so they don't spend 3 hours searching through the local intranet for some information, then that makes your team faster. There's a balance to be had, of course, but your team's overall delivery is what's important. > I view it…

> If you can unblock someone now so they don't spend 3 hours Past your training period you are responsible for your own productivity. Don't make it the problem of your peers.

I think if we constantly interrupt each other, we should very critically ask ourselves if that's the proper way forward. Often people physically being there is used as a "crutch" or a "band aid" to bad onboarding practices and big knowledge gaps. I am tired of people seeing their team drowning, distracted, noise, responding to the same question 31040041 times and then simply saying: "well, I need to be there in person to help Josh, he just started". While that's a good team spirit, you gotta look beyond that. There are things you can do to make it easy for yourselves and the new starters.

Of course, people are responsible for their own productivity, but there is also such a thing as a team. And the team itself will benefit if people are less disruptive of each other.

My point is that teams should retrospect aggressively on where they spend their time, and if they find that lots of their time is spent on answering questions to onboarders or big knowledge gaps between one another, they should do something about it.

I won't waste space here outlining what can be done, but there ARE things that can be done. Do those things, and then the argument that you:

A) "must" be in the office to do good collaborative work

B) and you "have" to ask 5 min questions all the time

loses any validity and becomes just corporate laziness and bad management.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#256

Post by danaris » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

otteromkram wrote: post #188

dmatech wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't necessarily need to be big offices. It's just that corporations generally do seating based on seniority and status, not need. They have tiny cubes for worker bees and giant private offices for the queens. Even small offices require more costly building materials than large cubicles. So even a high density might still be somewhat expensive. Fortunately, there are opportunities for cheaper commercial real es…

> They have tiny cubes for worker bees [...] Not sure if you're on the same page as this conversation. Open offices don't really have cubicles.

Cube farms aren't really much better for programming work than true open-plan offices.

The article is about the split between "office with door" and "not that", not specifically open-plan offices, so talking about cube farms is absolutely valid.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#257

Post by Apocryphon » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

rmbyrro wrote: post #57

Apocryphon wrote: post #33

Not to create too much of a political tangent, but the lack of private offices, or rather the ubiquitous mandatory nature of open offices , and its universal unpopularity with non-managers, is evidence imo that tech could use a union or professional association or guild or something . Oh sure you can talk about high comp and career mobility. But where does all of the vaunted labor power of software engineers go when…

In my opinion, you might have an overly optimistic view of unions. And you might also be ignoring the downsides of unions. I get that unions were/are necessary for things like mining workers or so, but SWE is quite different. I'd expect a union to be net-negative in our sector.

Systemic problems require systemic solutions. For over a decade now we’ve seen a steady supply of blog articles, studies (e.g. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-work...), and choruses of comment threads all agreeing that coders do not like open offices. Yet all of this is empty sentiment because managements don’t seem to care; they might not even notice. Now, a union might not be the solution to this. I already mentioned alternatives. Maybe there should just be more general participation in the ACM/IEEE and give it lobbying power. But the principle is that some sort of collective action seems to be in order, because there’s collective disgruntlement, yet the issue is still unaddressed.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#258

Post by whitej125 » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

Favorite office setup as a programmer - was early 2000's.

First key feature - 50% of the exterior building walls was windows, the other 50% had offices.

Second key feature - cubicle design. It was staggered duets of cubes. Great for privacy... and at best made it easy to turn around and talk to 2 other people if needed. Best of all... each cube had a full window instead of your classic wall. And these windows would all allign so that you could see straight out to the outside if you wanted. You had privacy - but still daylight.

Most "cube farms" I see are a sea of interior cubes completely surrounded by wall of exterior offices. That's depressing. Or we see an open office concept where everyone has light but 0 privacy which is hard for concentration.

This particular design that I got to work in circa 2002-2005 was delightful at least for me (and then we moved offices and that design sadly didn't carry over).

I miss well designed cubes.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#259

Post by danaris » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 2:29 PM UTC

mratsim wrote: post #149

sokoloff wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

When the execs of tech companies are still able to make several orders of magnitude more money than any of the programmers they employ, and their companies are able to make profits in the trillions, with a t, no; programmers' time is not priced appropriately for the amount of productivity we enable.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#260

Post by silverlake » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 2:30 PM UTC

eadmund wrote: post #231

otteromkram wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but terrible for collaborative whiteboard design work. Not at all. If you think so, maybe try switching jobs to non-remote and let someone fine with virtual whiteboarding take your role on.

In my experience, there is nothing like being in a room with a team. There is something about the physicality of presence, the way the communication has both lower latency (because it is not intermediated by electronics) and higher bandwidth (because in person even things like the way someone shifts in his shoes or his eyelid quivers is information). I have worked remotely for a significant portion of the past few de…

I agree communication is better when everyone is present. If a remote team was required to be available that would solve most of the problems. It’s about the culture of WFH which currently assumes slow async responses.