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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?

#211

Post by omnicognate »

As I read some of the aggressive, cynical and unpleasant responses here to any suggestion there might be some benefits to an open plan arrangement, it's dawning on me that one possible benefit is that it tends to filter out people with attitudes like these.

I prefer open plan setups and am glad that working in trading environments has ensured my career has been spent in them, so my natural reaction to the title here is "erm, not all of them do". I actively enjoy being interrupted to discuss something unrelated to my current task, and often return to that task with a fresh insight afterwards. I enjoy helping my colleagues with things, and doing so helps me build a positive reputation in a way that has helped my career. I enjoy camaraderie and conversations about my colleagues' lives outside work. I would refuse a job in an enclosed office or cubicle unless there were very strong compensating factors.

I don't require others to feel the same way, and I don't think people are wrong or bad if they prefer greater separation from colleagues. Humans are diverse. However, someone who views their colleages, their work-related questions and their attempts at broader conversation with active disdain is unlikely to be someone I want to work with.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#212

Post by funcDropShadow »

robertlagrant wrote: post #208
funcDropShadow wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, you bring up sales, I am assuming that is your area of expertise. If a big sale can be unblocked by asking some specific employee an important question now, do it. If that happens five times a day, those sales are neither big nor are these very specific questions. Developers are most productive when in deep working mode. A simple question like "What time is it?" can be answered in 5 s, but it may cost a deve…

> Because, you bring up sales, I am assuming that is your area of expertise I'm not in sales at all. Having an overview of the different bits of the business isn't a sales attribute. It's just an example of "what your job is" - which might range from weeks of uninterrupted detailed technical work at Microsoft Research, to presenting to clients, to running teams, to making technical decisions and getting agreement, to…

> I'm not in sales at all.

My fault.

> Thinking every engineer's job is "writing code" and anyone who thinks wider is wrong is what the pushback in this thread is all about.

Writing code is not the only activity of an engineer that requires focus and concentration. Most of my activities require that.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#213

Post by robertlagrant »

funcDropShadow wrote: post #180
robertlagrant wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Why send an email when they're thinking for themselves? Because, the act of writing down a question --- with the necessary details to state the question precisely --- is often enough to find the answer yourself. Unless it is simple matter of a missing fact. But that is rarely the case in my line of work.

I think assuming everyone's situation is the same as yours, or your imagined stereotype of what people must be like if they don't agree with you, constitutes a lot of the content that's being pushed back on.

Some businesses have huge depths of technical content to understand that can't all the memorised in a training session. Nothing difficult can. Even knowing who to talk to about an issue is going to be found out via a question.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#214

Post by otteromkram »

ddol wrote: post #169
zeristor wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

[flagged]

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#215

Post by scbrg »

theshrike79 wrote: post #197
scbrg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some of my colleagues just put noise-suppression headphones Great. Now the rest of us have to put up with even more noise. People wearing headphones make a lot more noise themselves. Presumably because they don't hear the noise they make. Suddenly there's heavy breathing, sighs, grunts, moans, inaudible and sometimes disturbingly audible mumbling, humming &c.

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.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#216

Post by robertlagrant »

cevn wrote: post #203
robertlagrant wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

If I am a doctor in this situation, then you can create a JIRA ticket and I will see it .. eventually. Do you have instant access to all of your doctors?

But why would you see it if we have access to the same information? That's the point you made that I'm disagreeing with. Are you now saying that yes, even though I and my doctor might have access to the same information, that doesn't mean I should never ask my doctor things?

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#217

Post by cevn »

marcus0x62 wrote: post #143
Buttons840 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Alice wants to focus on her work uninterrupted, but Bob wants to interrupt and ask a question, what should happen?

If I was Alice's employer and valued her (and other employees) being able to do deep work, I'd have a policy whereby employees could schedule do-not-disturb time (large blocks of it, depending on their needs) where they could shut their doors and turn off IM. Have a red light on the outside of the door, like a film production booth. Book end the day. First 1-2 hours are disturb time. Middle of the day is DND time. La…

Email

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#218

Post by ath3nd »

orangepurple wrote: post #190
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:…

> A bunch of extroverts who just can't wait to tell you what they did over the weekend and a bunch of C-level dudes who can't believe work can be done if they PERSONALLY can't see you at your desk working. The sight of people in an open office plan is merely an expensive therapy session for these guys

Nothing more therapeutic than the sight of your worker bees, stuffed together in the noisy hive, making you dough.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#219

Post by macNchz »

gorgoiler wrote: post #163
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 t…

I’ve seen this work tolerably well in an open space that’s entirely engineers or similar roles, assuming there are enough conference rooms for people to peel off to for meetings and calls, and you can establish the culture of the main room having a library-esque hush.

As soon as people start having multi party conversations in the main space because the conference rooms are booked 100% of the time, or people whose jobs involve talking all day are seated there, it’s game over. Noise cancelling headphones are no match for the 25th “Hey Bob, this is Jason at Intertrode, do you have 5 minutes?” of the day.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#220

Post by robertlagrant »

beeboobaa wrote: post #206
theshrike79 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are clearly not a team player. The goal is to make the team succeed, not to be individual rockstars.

Sure, and if you can't keep up then you should reflect on that. Meetings and discussions are great. Constantly nagging your coworkers because you can't figure out how to do your job on your own is not.

> Constantly nagging your coworkers because you can't figure out how to do your job on your own is not.

This is the problem: you've invented this scenario. There is a gaping middle ground between what people are describing and your stereotype of what they "must really mean"?

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