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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?

#161

Post by Broken_Hippo »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #123
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you don't necessarily realize that some people do need deep work, and prioritize your quick satisfaction to other's focus Surely there must be ways to balance these things? When you want to ask someone a question it shouldn’t be too hard to infer whether it’s a good time to do that now or you should wait (if it is, well it’s exactly a very hard skill to learn if you put in some effort)

You need it to be a good time for all 6 people

No, you don't. You need to communicate it effectively to 6 people and be open enough so they aren't waiting for the 15 minutes you claim to have free. IN general, if folks have a question and can easily see that you don't want to be interrupted right then, they'll wait a bit.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#162

Post by funcDropShadow »

robertlagrant wrote: post #131
ath3nd wrote: post #37

People like you are the reason I personally don't want to be in an office. > asking quick questions and getting an instant answer. vs chat where I may not get an answer for hours. Basically like having a toddler around. Sorry for the negative take here but how it's written it feels like you don't necessarily realize that some people do need deep work, and prioritize your quick satisfaction to other's focus. Or I migh…

> 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…

Of course there is a balance needed. But spending once 3 hours to search something might increase familiarity with the resources the intranet provides. So the next question could be answered way faster. Or it could be the occasion to improve the local intranet with some missing cross reference or some comment.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#163

Post by gorgoiler »

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 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 the shop floor that “headphones on” meant do not disturb, just as much as a closed office door. Violations were not tolerated but it was a social norm thing not an HR write up thing. Maybe people were getting the latter behind the scenes though?

In return you end up with an office architecture that’s considerably easier to manage at the expense of turning the physical challenge of giving everyone an office into a — potentially intractable for some teams — people management challenge.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#164

Post by networkchad »

cevn wrote: post #124
ath3nd wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let me guess: that 1 person will of course not be you, right? Because if it is you, I bet you will complain even more. I don't mind it being me, as a matter of fact, it's often me, as I am in a more senior position and have a lot of historic context. However, a lot of time has been spent on documenting most things, so often I am just going over the docs with the new onboarder, which is okay, as long as it's done in…

Everybody thinks their question is simple and quick, then it takes 30 minutes of time at minimum. I dunno why you are getting so much push back, must be a bunch of managers. Developers need to be left alone.

[dead]

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#165

Post by beeboobaa »

robertlagrant wrote: post #131
ath3nd wrote: post #37

People like you are the reason I personally don't want to be in an office. > asking quick questions and getting an instant answer. vs chat where I may not get an answer for hours. Basically like having a toddler around. Sorry for the negative take here but how it's written it feels like you don't necessarily realize that some people do need deep work, and prioritize your quick satisfaction to other's focus. Or I migh…

> 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.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#166

Post by coev »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #160
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…

Private rooms are not cheap and it would be hard to justify for junior programmers. And having private space just for middle level folks is bad for morale and learning of junior folks. But yeah for companies which just employs senior folks this should be the norm.

One private room per team works very well for programmers without the expense justification. The two most productive jobs I've ever had in an office were with that arrangement, not cubicles or open offices.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#167

Post by nprateem »

Towaway69 wrote: post #134
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was junior I shared an office with a senior. I was constantly asking him questions. He pretty much knew everything, I'm not kidding, this guy was amazing. So this arrangement worked out really well for me, but not sure how much he liked having his work interrupted so much. Could be that between the two of us, the benefits averaged out to zero.

This is where headphones can help. Headphones on, don't bother the person or only chat. That was an unwritten rule the last time I worked in an open space.

This is the way

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#168

Post by peteradio »

jwrallie wrote: post #133

I read maybe two or three of these articles here on HN, and I am totally convinced that this is true, but my boss is not reading HN and has a different opinion. A shared office is also cheaper for him, so I need more than forwarding a link to an article to convince him. I would love to hear more about how people actually changed their situation, other than the obvious way of looking for another job.

You can't you vote with your feet unfortunately.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#169

Post by ddol »

zeristor wrote: post #100
shiroiuma wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about when they put the software team right next to the sales team? This is exactly the problem with open-plan offices: they always do really stupid stuff like this, putting mostly-quiet teams very close to very talkative and noisy teams, with no barrier between them. Then everyone wants to work from home where at least they won't be tormented by listening to the obnoxious sales guy yap on the phone all day and c…

Did you have the head of sales ringing a bell for a sale every few hours too?

Airbnb was open plan (it still is, I’m just not there anymore). They also have an amazing Food team who would occasionally, randomly, bake treats for us (this is relevant, I promise).

There was no sales bell, but there was an outage gong. Any time we had an outage affecting the “Book It” flow and revenue stopped flowing that gong rang out. Hearing the gong meant engineers would abruptly leave meetings or lunch to come help fix the issue.

As we scaled and hit the limits of various systems we had periods where the gong rang out semi-regularly (a few times per month). These were hard times for engineers.

Soon, engineering started to push back on Product requests, took the time to re-architect and build better systems, and calm was achieved. Months went by without hearing the gong ring out, then years passed. People joined the company and got promoted, never having heard it ring. Until one day in 2018.

I was working near a pod of project managers, and I hear the gong. Like Pavlov’s dog, it triggers an immediate wave of anxiety in me: something is very wrong. But my blissfully unaware PM colleagues have no idea, it’s the first time they’ve ever heard the gong.

One lady looks up from her laptop and asks: “oooh, did the Food team make cookies?”

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#170

Post by auggierose »

cauch wrote: post #88
ath3nd wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let me guess: that 1 person will of course not be you, right? Because if it is you, I bet you will complain even more. I don't mind it being me, as a matter of fact, it's often me, as I am in a more senior position and have a lot of historic context. However, a lot of time has been spent on documenting most things, so often I am just going over the docs with the new onboarder, which is okay, as long as it's done in…

> I don't mind it being me, as a matter of fact, it's often me, as I am in a more senior position and have a lot of historic context. However, a lot of time has been spent on documenting most things, so often I am just going over the docs with the new onboarder, which is okay, as long as it's done in a structural manner. So, according to you, no one would ever need to ask you a question. So, obviously, GP will never…

You sound extremely self-centered yourself. Its fine if you thrive in a collaborative open office environment, and noise-cancelling headphones are all you need. But that's not true for everybody else.

Your argument that you need to maintain your flow by actively interrupting other people is incredibly selfish and frankly just ridiculous. Also, flow is overrated. If you are in flow-mode, you are probably not doing the hard parts of your job. Not having to context-switch is different from flow, but more important, I would say, but you are forcing that on your fellow developers. If they don't mind, that's fine! If they do, you should respect that.

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