241–250 of 593 posts
When I graduated from college, never have I envisioned once that my optimal workspace is just a laptop, working from home, while spending time with fam, and get some hobbies done at the same time.
>while spending time with fam, and get some hobbies done at the same time Getting paid to waste time not doing your job is considered work now?
You mean commuting? Getting commuting hours back each day allows you do to hobbies.
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…
> I actively enjoy being interrupted to discuss something unrelated to my current task wat
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> Open plan might work great for some types of work […] I'm curious to know: why types are, or people consider to be, good for open plan? Generally, office type jobs tends to be one where people need to use their brains to concentrate on something, and open plans tend to be able to create / not block distractions, they would be antithetical to being able to concentrate.
Marketing? Where ideas and concepts need a lot of input and discussion. Basically anything that is very human and not zero or one. Customer support via telephone support where not one agent knows everything. I.e., you tell customer to hold the line and then ask some other agent for a solution.
Judging by the comments here, nobody is doing pair programming / mob programming?
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> but terrible for collaborative whiteboard design work. Not at all. If you think so, maybe try switching jobs to non-remote and let someone fine with virtual whiteboarding take your role on.
Not sure why this is down voted. A decent virtual whiteboard can be better than physical. No more chicken-scratch text labels, plenty of pre-drawn widgets to drop in, easily shuffle things around, sticky arrows, everyone can have a different color pointer, etc. The learning curve is a bit higher than physical, yet worth the pain. Also, no judgement about attire, eye contact, stance, or demands to stay during a fire a…
Though I disagree with them and with you--I downvoted that post for its writer being a jerk, not for being subjectively wrong. "If you think virtual whiteboards maybe aren't very good you should give somebody else your remote job" is "man, shut up" territory.
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It's probably closer to the outputs (and differences in output) not being measurable enough. I had a private office setup in one place. It was phenomenal and by far the best work environment (physical and otherwise) I've ever had. The biggest problem was: we couldn't double the size of the team without it being a half-year leasing and construction project. So, we'd sawtooth among "far too much space and lots of pent-…
> but terrible for collaborative whiteboard design work. Not at all. If you think so, maybe try switching jobs to non-remote and let someone fine with virtual whiteboarding take your role on.
The arrogance required to tell someone that their experience is false is something I have trouble wrapping my head around.
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Cubicles are OK as long as there isn't a lot of chatter, people being on the phone all the time, talking loud, etc. Though of course id rather be in my own room no doubt.
Cancelling sound distractions with NC headsets isn't that bad. Cubicles will most likely help with visual distraction i have in an open floor plan.
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…
Why are we still having this discussion fifty years later?
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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.