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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?

#441

Post by richardwhiuk »

diyftw wrote: post #393
2devnull wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we work in different ways now than we did in 1975? The work people do is also different. And, the people themselves have also changed. A person born in 1980s may be more used to 24/7 noise from tv and devices. A 30 year old worker in 1975 grew up in a quieter home.

That generalization certainly doesn't fit with this 1977 edition human. The loudest 24/7 thing in my house is the compressor on my fridge. Silence (and office doors) are priceless.

Aren't you just reinforcing the point?

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#443

Post by ozim »

sokoloff wrote: post #136
ath3nd wrote: 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:…

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.

AI does not need real estate, I wonder how hard they will battle it.

Well it needs server rooms but it is not office space in the city centers, maybe office space in city centers will be turned all out into server rooms.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#444

Post by ac26 »

It feels like there's a lot of productivity theory associated with private offices versus open office but I think the issue is rooted deeper than that. This is an organizational decision and it's one where it needs to be made with the organization's core objectives.

However, what it sometimes sounds to me is that there is this hope of a magic combination to crack productivity effectiveness through open offices or closed offices (or any other low level leveraged idea, like return to office vs remote office). The reality is that any configuration can work if the leaders of the organization are cognizant of the ramifications on the different employed individuals and address them accordingly -- but I believe most skip this chapter in leadership training.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#445

Post by dasil003 »

danaris wrote: post #259
mratsim wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

This doesn’t follow, at least not without a lot more analysis. The biggest tech companies have tens of thousands of engineers make anything from low 6-figures to low 7-figures. That’s a huge salary burden that dwarfs exec compensation. Systematically paying more could easily outstrip revenues if leadership is wrong about predicting the future, which would lead to either salary cuts or layoffs, neither of which is well received. And are you saying engineers deserve most of the value because they wrote the code? What about other functions, what do they deserve? These aren’t easy questions to answer. But the reality is we don’t have to because hiring is a market. You get paid what you negotiate. This is the same for execs as it is for worker bees, the only difference is the value of your skills according to whoever is holding the purse strings.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#446

Post by aswanson »

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…

I liken open offices to a situation where I'm balancing a pile of plates in both hands and hundreds of other people are in the kitchen and can trip me or shove me at will, causing a mental stack crash.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#447

Post by Aerbil313 »

ducharmdev wrote: post #416
rpmisms wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That sounds like my ideal job. The longer I've been a developer, the more I've come to dislike work that doesn't address problems faced by end-users/the org.

Yeah, humans have a major need of purpose.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#448

Post by anonuser123456 »

Having worked in both open floor plan and private offices (9 vs 8 years respectively) I’ve come to the conclusion it just doesn’t matter.

What matters is the culture. A culture of “I’m working, only interrupt me only when necessary and keep the chit chat to a minimum, and retreat to a private space for long conversations” is basically the key. That and noise cancelling headphones.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#449

Post by JoshTriplett »

yousif_123123 wrote: post #407

Just want to add that I only became (at least in my opinion) a good programmer by sitting next to a very good and passionate one that I was able to question from time to time and may have interrupted his work some days. I also probably helped him brainstorm ideas with me and debugging, since he would just say what's on his mind while doing it, and I'd do the same, and sometimes this kind of ping pong debugging/brains…

I am a huge fan of mentorship; I benefited from it early in my career, and I strive to offer it to others now. I don't think that requires an open office at all, though. I think mentorship works even better if you're in a quiet environment where you can talk comfortably and not worry about bothering the people around you.

That said, I can attribute one positive effect in my career to having worked in an open office. Early in my career, I happened to overhear someone on the phone dealing with an Open Source licensing issue (and I genuinely do find Open Source licensing interesting), went over to chat with them afterwards, ended up finding out about the company's Open Source review process, one thing led to another, and not long afterwards I co-ran that process company-wide (for a 100k+ person company), which I really enjoyed and which provided a great deal of visibility into all the work happening in the company.

I don't think "happened to overhear one side of someone's phonecall and strike up a good conversation about it" is a "benefit" I'd say is worth the pain of an open office, but I still want to acknowledge it.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#450

Post by y1426i »

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…

Open offices exist for the same reason WFH doesn't work, at least where it won't work.

I have worked in older organizations, and the culture there is that the most productive workers spend relatively more time on their work chairs. That is the only way managers have traditionally known to get work done from their teams.

An open office is a natural way to ensure everyone is working, at least in how those organizations measure productivity.

If these companies move to a closed office, they will have to change how they measure productivity, and their culture may not allow that.

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