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Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

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Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#281
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…

The work was done by IBM in 1975. You need lots of space to keep the noise down and you need offices with doors that close. Why are we still having this discussion fifty years later?

Because in the short term it's cheaper to do other stuff.

And ain't nobody going in between this year's bonus and executives.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#282
post #35

Judging by the comments here, nobody is doing pair programming / mob programming?

Mob programming is so easier in a call with shared desktops that at the beginning of the pandemics when we were wondering how we would work after people returned I was pushing for we never do it in a conference room again.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#283

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.

cubes have all the disadvantages of open plan offices and none of the advantages of private rooms. i prefer open-plan offices over cubes.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#284
post #18

Some do, not all do. I do much better in a room with ~6 people that are working on the same project. Much better than working at home. Much better than a private office (which I've had). Having people around me working on the same project is invaluable for me for * asking quick questions and getting an instant answer. vs chat where I may not get an answer for hours. * running ideas by others. This doesn't happen on c…

Demanding an instant answer is often a burden to teammates. If they have spare time to answer they will answer in chat. Be patience and be respectful to working routines of other people.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#285
post #251
post #115

Earlier 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:…

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

Blaming extroverts/introverts is a red herring - it’s down to the nature of the work.

Whether they’re introverts or extroverts a programmer’s job tends to require a lot of solo focus. There’s collaborative aspects of course but it always requires windows of deep work that are deeply frustrated by distraction, introvert or not.

Many other areas of work (including much work in upper management) don’t require that focus. The work is often deeply collaborative and communicative, and it‘s work that can be dropped and picked up on a dime and iterated on without much loss of productivity. In a way it’s work that actively benefits from a “distracting” environment, because it’s often full of rapid-fire blockers best resolved by grabbing someone nearby.

The friction comes from the fact that the people who do either type of work don’t understand the other type if their whole career has only involved one type.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#286
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all have access to the exact same information. Sure, for a first time on boarder, I'll point them the right way. But 90% of the time someone taps on my shoulder, they want me to think for them. You can do that by yourself. Just send an email.

> We all have access to the exact same information. We might have the same access, but rather than dig through 20 medical textbooks, I'll go ask a doctor. Access is a really poor way of thinking about things. > But 90% of the time someone taps on my shoulder, they want me to think for them. You can do that by yourself. Just send an email. Why send an email when they're thinking for themselves?

Because an email allows me to field it when I am not working on high-focus tasks.

It also

1) forces (or at least encourages) laying the whole thing out in a coherent order

2) leaves a record of both the question and the answer, so that the asker can refer back to it if they forget

3) leaves a record so that if the asker is asking obvious questions, or repeatedly asking the same questions, or failing to formulate their questions in a sane and coherent manner, there is documentation to take to their supervisor, not only to prove it, but to show exactly the shape of the problem, and have a possibility of getting them the kind of help they need

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#287

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.

Not sure why this is down voted. A decent virtual whiteboard can be better than physical. No more chicken-scratch text labels, plenty of pre-drawn widgets to drop in, easily shuffle things around, sticky arrows, everyone can have a different color pointer, etc. The learning curve is a bit higher than physical, yet worth the pain. Also, no judgement about attire, eye contact, stance, or demands to stay during a fire a…

When people are in a room you can have multiple voice conversations at once. When you are remote, you cannot. I know you can replace voice side channels with text, but this is a lossy proposition.

Turn-taking in general is better in person due to high bandwidth channels for nonverbal communication.

I say all of that as an autistic person who has trouble with all kinds of tacit communication (it may be that I have studied it so much in order to fit in that I really notice it), so yes there are downsides to being in person (I can pretend to make eye contact on a video), but I'm talking here about why the average developer or product person might have good reason to prefer in-person for a two pizza meeting.

Nice whiteboarding app affordances are great, but the low effort of onboarding to a physical whiteboard also encourages broader participation.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#288
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “6” is coming from the original comment in the thread.

there are 6 people in the room, but as I said, it does not mean that the 6 persons are all distracted. (by the way, the initial comment was implying that the question is coming from one of the 6 persons in the room, so at worst, it's 5 persons distracted) the question can also be useful for one other person in the room, so instead of being distracted, the person has been helped.

No worries. Was just answering your question.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#289
At has been echoed in the article and in the comments, so many people are different. I write and run software in my head long before it gets into a text file. This is very mental work but I could do it at the Super Bowl successfully. I zone out like a pro and can get completely lost in my head with no fear of distractions.

Conversely when I am debugging or doing more creative stuff like systems design work, I love distractions. For some reason the momentary interruptions really help me reapproach the problem from a new angle.

When all else fails a crack open a beer, my very best work has always been done while sipping a cold one.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#290
post #234
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... as it's acceptable to do some research on yourself before asking somebody, or try to keep your voice down in shared rooms, or to not tap people on the shoulder when they have indicated deep work (headphones). Again, nobody is pretending that they want to do that. > I am upset from people who ... And I'm upset from them too. In fact, I'm upset from people who have childish behavior and ask other people to adapt…

> 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.…

> And I (and most other people in this thread) am fed up with them and trying to actively remove them from my life.

And OP does that too, but suddenly, when OP does that, they are a toddler, but when you do it, it's fine.

> There are people who put their soda cans on the ground, there are people who ...

and there are people who will call "toddler" people who have just a different way of working and are not imposing nothing bad to anybody else.

> 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.

Again, the person YOU called a "toddler" has done nothing wrong. YOU are the toxic person who jumped on the conclusion that just because they have a different way of working, they will "ask you incessant questions even after I've said it's not how I work".

It is very very difficult to believe that you are not a little baby just after you acted like a little baby when no one proposed anything that has any negative impact on you.

> because they are breaking established social norms and work etiquette.

Breaking established social norms and work etiquette is one thing. Throwing a tantrum because someone has broken established social norms and work etiquette is something else.

Personally, I would say that the socially handicap person that get upset because someone tap them on their shoulder is the one who is breaking the established social norms and work etiquette: socially, the etiquette at work is to try our best to get along, even when the person in front does not deserve it (I dislike this norm, but it exists).

> 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.

Let me use an as stupid and as caricatural view as you here:

I most certainly will not cater to how ath3nd prefers to be communicated to just because they are incapable to provide proper onboarding and proper documentation. If someone tap you on your shoulder, it is because you are not able to do your job. Why someone will have to adapt to your failure?

End of the caricature view, now something more meaningful: you deserve to be communicated with in a way that is respectful of your needs and ways of working. BUT you need to respect others people needs and ways of working too and accept that sometimes they will not read your mind.

You keep coming back to the caricatural picture of someone asking incessant questions after you explain them your way of working. As I've said, these people are disturbing and we should not cater for their childish behavior. The problem is that you are treating EVERYONE that way (as proof is you treating OP as a "toddler" when OP did not show at all any behavior you complain about here), and it makes you a child also.

As already said, 2 things can be true at the same time: 1) people asking incessant questions are toddler, 2) ath3nd is a toddler.

> 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.

You are talking about people who will say "NO" because they have been tapped on the shoulder. Who is the baby here?

Again, we are talking about tapping someone on the shoulder _once_, and not doing it again if you explain you don't like it. You are just a grumpy baby, the existence of other babies will not change that.

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