Why do programmers need private offices with doors? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#451

Post by _rs » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 5:31 PM UTC

manishsharan wrote: post #397

IKantRead wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recent experience at a fairly young startup has shown me that open office culture has also started to breed a very different type of programmer. People will often be pairing nearly all day long, any claim that you need a moment to focus and think about a problem is met with perplexity, every idea should be shipped to prod asap, while tests exist the idea of performing basic QA/manual testing on your own work is only…

Not just startups. I was once hired as a contractor for a major bank in Toronto who were desperate to ship a product, which was way past its promised delivery date. The AVP got an idea to put all of us in a conference room huddled around a conference table , because obviously us lazy programmers were slacking off in our cubicles and the crappy almost daily changing requirements were not to blame. The entire team bega…

I once had a manager consistently try to pressure me and a few other developers to work in a "war room" setting to complete a project that was slipping past the deadline. He wanted to be part of it too, despite being non-technical and consistently slowing us down with impossible prescriptive solutions. It took a non-trivial amount pushback from all of us that that was the least productive way to get the project completed. He was later laid off.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#452

Post by manishsharan » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 5:31 PM UTC

wildzzz wrote: post #372

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…

If you can't give me my own office with a door, at minimum I want a cube with 6ft walls that have excellent noise dampening (I don't want to be able to clearly hear a normal conversation next door), a large enough work space such that I can stand up and walk over to my own whiteboard, a pair of ultra comfortable noise cancelling headphones, and being able to have some natural daylight coming into the space (but not n…

The best we can get is horse blinders and noise cancelling headphones.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#453

Post by yieldcrv » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 5:32 PM UTC

IKantRead wrote: post #316

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…

Recent experience at a fairly young startup has shown me that open office culture has also started to breed a very different type of programmer. People will often be pairing nearly all day long, any claim that you need a moment to focus and think about a problem is met with perplexity, every idea should be shipped to prod asap, while tests exist the idea of performing basic QA/manual testing on your own work is only…

last time I worked in an open office I had big over the ear noise cancelling headphones on the entire time, it was fine

I felt both afraid and privileged when most of my day was waiting for the IDE or CI/CD to compile because it was quite idle

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#454

Post by mgkimsal » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

IKantRead wrote: post #316

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…

Recent experience at a fairly young startup has shown me that open office culture has also started to breed a very different type of programmer. People will often be pairing nearly all day long, any claim that you need a moment to focus and think about a problem is met with perplexity, every idea should be shipped to prod asap, while tests exist the idea of performing basic QA/manual testing on your own work is only…

> .... a fairly large amount of that "productivity" is fixing mistakes a more focused programmer would have avoided

Holy cow this hits home. I've been on a number of teams like this going back years (decades) and ... I just don't get it. Had I been 'allowed' another 30 minutes, or an hour, or a day, on problem X... we'd have avoided weeks of unraveling problems later. But... no - gotta keep pressing on, hitting those pre-defined deadlines at all costs.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#455

Post by oopsthrowpass » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

For me if I get into a topic (like 2-3 hours focus time) then interruptions are OK, I won't drop context until end of the day.

If the interruptions happen early in the morning so I never have the 2-3 hours boot up time, then that day is pretty much a zero from lines of code produced perspective.

Note: if it's some trivial boilerplate code then I can even be productive without booting up and with constant interruptions, this only applies to things I don't know how to do and need to research/think

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#456

Post by stainablesteel » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

oopsthrowpass wrote: post #455

For me if I get into a topic (like 2-3 hours focus time) then interruptions are OK, I won't drop context until end of the day. If the interruptions happen early in the morning so I never have the 2-3 hours boot up time, then that day is pretty much a zero from lines of code produced perspective. Note: if it's some trivial boilerplate code then I can even be productive without booting up and with constant interruption…

i'm the same, the morning is the most important time and i hate when people initiate small talk when i want to focus

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#457

Post by makeitdouble » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 5:42 PM UTC

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…

＞ how a new grad excited about writing code could find a mentor and really up their game in the remote world

Everyone's different, you wanted a mentor next to you, many don't enjoy that relationship. To answer your question, looking at the fresh graduates we take, extremely detailed code reviews, a lot of chat and some pair coding on the overly difficult parts seems to be working good enough for them to reach a decent level within about half a year.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#458

Post by phone8675309 » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 5:42 PM UTC

no_wizard wrote: post #417

ike2792 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former programmer and now EM, I agree with this. Open offices definitely felt a lot more productive since everyone was always frantically working and communicating. I think people actually have gotten more done since WFH started, though.

>felt a lot more productive This is the crux. There are people who want this feeling, at all costs seemingly, despite no data backing up the assumption that returning to the office makes a materially positive difference and produces positive outcomes.

The fact that working from home means I avoid wanting to put a rifle round through my skull during a commute to the office is pretty strong data that return to office doesn’t work for me

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#459

Post by ath3nd » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #333

Zelphyr wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a guy (who is actually a great guy) who, while excitedly showing me the floor plan for the proposed open plan for our team, exclaimed, "I want to create a vibrant, energetic atmosphere." and asked me what I thought. All I could think was, "What you see as vibrant is really your employees shooting the shit and not getting any actual work done." He went with the plan and I found myself staying until 7pm an…

> "What you see as vibrant is really your employees shooting the shit and not getting any actual work done." That is better than getting work on the wrong thing done. People who sit in their office and never interact with others tend to work on projects the company thought was canceled months ago.

You are saying it's normal to use "water cooler" talk to find what you should be working on?

The sad thing is that probably for some organizations, that's the norm. Management is incapable of creating clear vision and clear communication channels, and you end up with a bunch of people gathering like a crowd in front of the town hall, trying to figure out what's going on. Hard pass on that!

The West is doomed.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#460

Post by ath3nd » Tue, Dec 19, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

falcor84 wrote: post #310

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…

> quite litterally the worst possible working environment you could be providing Just for fun, let me try to one-up that: working outside, in a scorching desert, hung upside down, just barely reaching your laptop on the sand, with scorpions crawling over the keyboard. But thinking about it, even in that situation, I guess I would still prefer not to have to deal with people having unrelated conversations around me.

At least the scorpions don't have the unreasonable expectation for you to not freak out when they interrupt you.