I've found open plan works well when it's a quiet environment. but putting programmers together with the sales folks.. probably not a good idea.
Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
321–330 of 593 posts
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#322I 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 ther…
I worked for a Japanese corporation where each floor had different rules.
One floor had an open-plan layout where people were open to chitchat, another open-plan floor that expected everyone to be quiet, and there was a floor with reservable cubicles or sound-proofed rooms. In general though, I do agree that the culture is on the quieter side.
I really enjoyed working there because the level of isolation was entirely up to you, depending on your mood.
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
camaraderie in a team is a job requirement for me. without it i'll be out of there in no time. i simply do not want to work with people who can't be bothered to be nice and helpful to each other. i do not want to be just a cog in a machine that grinds out work without any consideration for the project as a whole. it is also needed to allow new team members to get onboarded faster. as a hiring manager i find your atti…
That's perfectly fine. I think the world is large enough so we can coexist in peace.
Also I don't dismiss camaraderie that appears spontaneously between coworkers, I was complaining about the company enforced fake camaraderie that gets pushed down everyone's throats with trite team building exercises, company parties, team goals and other methods of hammering people into conformity.
> it is also needed to allow new team members to get onboarded faster.
Of course, it's fine to have team members absorb domain knowledge through interactions with their peers, but if that's the only way to on-board them, I most definitely don't want to work for you, but again, that's fine, I'll just look elsewhere.
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Open plan worked for me when there was a very clear contract between every stakeholder. Firstly, everyone had free, good quality, sound blocking headphones. Not just free as in standard equipment on your first day free. There were buckets of the things lying around and if you needed a new set you just grabbed some, no questions asked. VC funded opulence, yay! Secondly, there was an understanding amongst everyone on t…
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.
Truly we are all unique snowflakes. I can't exist in complete silence (even while coding) it drives me nuts. I always have some sort of noise. Usually music without lyrics for coding.
that said... I don't like wearing headphones and certainly not for extended periods of time. So, "just wear headphones" doesn't work for me for an entirely different reason.
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#325It 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…
I worked for a guy (who is actually a great guy) who, while excitedly showing me the floor plan for the proposed open plan for our team, exclaimed, "I want to create a vibrant, energetic atmosphere." and asked me what I thought.
All I could think was, "What you see as vibrant is really your employees shooting the shit and not getting any actual work done."
He went with the plan and I found myself staying until 7pm and 8pm most days because I got more work done in those 2-3 hours at the end of the day than I did the other eight because of all the interruptions.
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
Open plan worked for me when there was a very clear contract between every stakeholder. Firstly, everyone had free, good quality, sound blocking headphones. Not just free as in standard equipment on your first day free. There were buckets of the things lying around and if you needed a new set you just grabbed some, no questions asked. VC funded opulence, yay! Secondly, there was an understanding amongst everyone on t…
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.
> Listening to music while coding severely reduces my concentration, and I find it in no way to be a substitute for silence.
Me too. I can't work with music in headphones as I inevitably start listening to it. It's weird that many people don't even consider this a possibility when recommending headphones. Well, I guess it's not weird as they just aren't affected by it the same way, but still.
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#327Some 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…
I always find it surprising that so many people struggle to make effective human connections over chat. I think it must be generational, as I believe these are the connections I and other young people prefer.
You'll need a new theory. I've worked with two late millenial/gen-z developers who couldn't hold up a slack conversation to save their lives, so we went to zoom very quickly when they needed anything.
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#328It 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…
Recent experience at a fairly young startup has shown me that open office culture has also started to breed a very different type of programmer. People will often be pairing nearly all day long, any claim that you need a moment to focus and think about a problem is met with perplexity, every idea should be shipped to prod asap, while tests exist the idea of performing basic QA/manual testing on your own work is only…
I was raised by the focused type of programmer, and modern startup culture is horrifying to me (and him). I have left that world and now am solo engineer in a non-profit where I'm responsible for a list of results, not a pile of Jira tickets someone made up to look busy.
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#329Earlier 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.
Last time I checked, the data on offices vs cubes came down as offices being the same price or even slightly cheaper.
Cubes and open offices enable communication with people which companies value more than absolute productivity. Sure your best people get less done, but they often enable someone else to get more work down - or that is their claim.
Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 n…
> Again, we are talking about tapping someone on the shoulder _once_, and not doing it again if you explain you don't like it.
I don't think I should be touched in the first place. I have put a clear signal that I am deeply working: headphones. The accepted social norm is NOT to bother somebody when they have indicated they don't want to be bothered. I am, of course, going to answer the questions, but can't you simply wait until I indicate I am ready to accept your questions?
The benefit of remote here is palpable: you simply don't have the option to tap me on the shoulder, and you can only call me (in which case it's important enough to call), write me an email (which forces you to have a coherent point, and I can respond to it later) or slack me (which, again, I can postpone for later).
> You are just a grumpy baby, the existence of other babies will not change that.
I don't know about babies, but do you know who doesn't like being said "NO" to and who throws a fit ever time when somebody expresses a boundary? Bullies! People who gets upset when you express a boundary and expect that you should just submit to THEIR way of answering, those are the real babies!
Occasionally asking questions (for which it doesn't matter whether it's office or remote) is okay, especially when starting your job. On the other hand, expecting others to be readily available for your ad hoc queries repeatedly, day in and out, trying to actively persuade them that it's okay, and guilt trip them to continue doing so because it's "their work duty", and throwing a fit when people express a boundary to you, that's what real babies are made from!
Learn to ask questions like a decent worker, batch them, write them down, and with as little disruption as possible, and don't bother people who are deeply focused. Your question can wait, the world doesn't revolve around you, and value your coworkers time! I won't back down from this!