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CEOs Want Their Offices Back

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Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#221

Post by mindcrime »

softawre wrote: post #53
maxxxxx wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently got one and I admit it's really loud. But this shouldn't be an issue in a decent workplace. I have several guys near me who have loud voices and talk a lot. That's worse than a loud keyboard. Open office plans are the problem, not keyboards or loud people.

This is true. But, if you're in an open office, don't you think the decent thing to do is to not speak loudly (and therefore not use a loud mechanical keyboard)? There are mech keyboards with more quiet switches. At least use one of those.

But, if you're in an open office, don't you think the decent thing to do is to not speak loudly (and therefore not use a loud mechanical keyboard)?

No, that just shows tacit acceptance of the situation and exacerbates the problem over time. If you work in an open plan environment, the best thing to do is use the noisiest keyboard you can find, wear headphones that intentionally leak noise and listen to your music loud, do as many personal phone calls as you can from your desk, etc. And then, when people complain, point out that you didn't ask for an open plan office, and ask them to go to their manager and explain how horrible open plan is.

Worst case, you get fired. Big deal, now you have a chance to look for a place to work that isn't brain dead.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#222

Post by noarchy »

abritinthebay wrote: post #216
noarchy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't been seeing it, either. In fact, I dare say it is nearly impossible to find a software shop in my area that isn't knee-deep in some iteration of "Agile" management - usually some form of Scrum.

That's because it works. There's a reason it's popular. That said: a lot of places don't do it correctly and really do deserve being called cargo cults. Still, some process is better than no process.

>That's because it works. There's a reason it's popular.

Versus:

>That said: a lot of places don't do it correctly and really do deserve being called cargo cults.

That's how it always goes, right? Company after company implements some kind of Scrum process, and when it doesn't work the problem is never Scrum itself.

I'd contend that the reason things like Scrum are popular is that it gives non-technical managers things to play with: things like burndown charts, that gives them metrics to measure and show to their own managers. Devs aren't measured by lines of code generated per day anymore. Now it is all about "velocity" and burndown. Old wine in new bottles.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#223

Post by abritinthebay »

_jal wrote: post #148
d883kd8 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are like Accelerationists, bringing about the end of an undesirable system by increasing the damage it causes until it cannot be ignored.

Drifting rather off-topic here, but why credit the "heighten the contradictions" strategy to a weird modern academic cult? Rebranding Leninist ideas about sabotage, I guess, makes it seem fresh to the rubes. Never mind that attempting to time social and political systems doesn't work much better than timing the market, and if you get it wrong, you're just being a horrible person. (Assuming your underlying goals are g…

Because it's a cute one word term?

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#224

Post by busterarm »

cdegroot wrote: post #114
jcadam wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the open office, not the mechanical keyboards (which are awesome, btw).

I'm a nice guy, I paid the extra $$ for silent mechanical keys ( http://matias.ca/switches/quiet/ ) ;-)

Yeah, but then you have to have those terrible, bastard ALPS switches. Sorry, strong personal preference here.

I use Topre anyway.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#225

Post by throwanem »

abritinthebay wrote: post #219
throwanem wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The noise is from bottoming out. Put spacers on the keycap stems, and it stops being a problem, no matter what kind of switch you use. This is easy to do and only a little time-consuming. It's easier and faster when you take a cheap Bic pen, pull out the tip and ink tube, and use the body tube to press the spacers down on the stems - it's just the right diameter, and makes the job much faster. The spacers are cheap,…

Or people could just type with less force? I'm not sure where the cultural norm of beating up a keyboard comes from but it's a very inefficient way to type.

Beats me, but if it comes down to a choice between reengineering people's behavior or reengineering their tools so they can do the same thing they've always done but not get such a poor result, I know which one I've seen to work and which one I haven't.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#226

Post by ig1 »

varelse wrote: post #51
coffeeski wrote: post #8

Why do CEO's think they're alone in the need for quiet spaces where they can focus? Sure some people can work in the noisy space where interruptions abound. The only thing in my office that works well with interruptions is my CPU. I'd rather have a Cube farm, but better yet, a small tiny phone booth as an office.

Just like the cargo cult Agile pandemic peaked a few years ago, I suspect we're reaching peak open floor plans right now. The overall negative effects of an open floor plan for a significant fraction of engineers (though not all) is self-evident and backed up by reams of data stretching back nearly 40 years: http://iansommerville.com/software-engineering-book/web/work... TLDR: 100 square feet of personal space is opt…

Using a study of programmers in the 1970s (where not punching the wrong hole in punch cards was a critical skill) for programmers in 2017 may not give you the most useful data.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#227

Post by khazhoux »

We have an open floor plan, and it works like this:

* Desk area is for getting work done. Everyone agrees on this.

* We have "phone rooms" for small discussions. But we limit those usually to 1:1s or discussing office politics.

* Try to limit all discussions at the desk area to 5 people or less.

* If someone sighs loudly as they put on their headphones when you're having a discussion right behind them, then that is their signal to you to keep talking loudly, as their noise-canceling headphones will eliminate any trace of your conversation.

* You can usually carry a conversation at your desk at any volume, because other engineers will let you know if you're being too loud. Engineers tend to be extroverted and won't hesitate to let you know if you're bothering them.

* When someone first sits at their desk, it's polite to immediately engage them in a 30-minute conversation about their weekend or what they did last night. It eases their transition into work.

* A person working without headphones on, signifies that it's ok to tap them on the shoulder to ask them a question.

* A person working WITH headphones on, signifies that it's ok to tap them on the shoulder to ask them a question.

* If someone usually works off in quiet parts of the building, one should always remind them "you're never at your desk" with an accusatory tone.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#228

Post by metaphorm »

avemg wrote: post #45
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it is? Idk, I'm no ethicist so I wouldn't be able to justify it. But is it any different than using the web link to get a google redirect when you didn't really come from google? Or using incognito mode? Perhaps the better discussion is about how a community forum handles articles which only a subset of people can access.

It's one thing to find a loophole in their paywall to view their content on their site. It seems to me that it's quite another to scrape their content and serve it up somewhere else in its entirety.

I don't see how a loophole is substantively different than this approach.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#229

Post by Phlarp »

nsxwolf wrote: post #140
maccard wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most cases, it's the keys bottoming out rather the switches. Guy in our office with a membrane keyboard who smashes the keys into oblivion is far louder than the two mechanical keyboards in the same space.

By the way, I cannot type without bottoming out, and I suspect this is something many people simply cannot learn to do. My hands will just not cooperate. I use Topre switches, which are supposedly quite ideal for practicing this magical voodoo typing technique, and when pressing a key enough to activate it but not bottom out, I have about a 50-50 chance of not activating the key at all. It's not something that's ever…

you can get o-rings to dampen the bottoming-out of the keycap.

I use green switches with o-rings in a semi-open office layout and the only people who have ever noticed it are other mech enthusiasts. Browns with o-rings would be even quieter than greens.

Re: CEOs Want Their Offices Back

#230

Post by metaphorm »

yawgmoth wrote: post #109
tlrobinson wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make glass that can be turned opaque electronically. That's probably ideal (albeit more expensive) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_glass

They also make blinds :-)

or as we like to call it these days "smart curtains".
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