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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?

#481

Post by ath3nd »

em-bee wrote: post #319
mariusor wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what exactly you're reading in my words, but I don't really understand why you think it's my "effing job" to provide training for inexperienced developers. My contract stipulates no such thing, and despite what you seem to assume, I have been in fact hired to find solutions, and write code. It's a little disconcerting to see someone make such self assured inferences about me, based on a single comment.

when i hire someone, their job is to do whatever it takes that is in their capacity to move the project forward. if it takes a larger team, then getting new team members up to speed is part of that. and if that new team member is unfamiliar with the frameworks the team is using then training them on that is part of the job too.

Aka "hands off management", "or absentee boss" or "sink or swim". Love it! Let me float an idea though, I might be dreaming here, but what if there was a better way than just dumping people and resources and hoping for it to work?

How about you encourage the team to actively monitor where onboarding takes time, year by year, learn from that, make onboarding materials which encompass institutional knowledge, and make the process as much self serve as possible?

Or assigning a "buddy/mentor" like persona that is responsible for this specific onboarding, so the rest of the team don't get distracted + the expectations on delivery are lowered for the "buddy"?

> it takes that is in their capacity to move the project forward

It takes quiet and uninterrupted work and focus time, and spending effort on making onboarding as smooth as possible. Just hoping your devs will do all the work of onboarding + their own work, and you doing nothing, that's just...what I expected I guess.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#482

Post by isodev »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #474
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.

The sweet spot is don't force people to work a certain way. I was in an open office place before 2020, was remote friendly, we mostly would come in except when we needed personal time or whatever, but if I wanted to focus, I'd pop in headphones and crank out code, as would anyone else. If I wanted to peer program I could, and if anyone wanted a quick laugh, we'd just talk for about five minutes, because sitting stari…

I love WFH for this. It’s so much easier to plan my day according what best works for me like focus moments and current environment. We still do all the meetings and pair programming is so immensely better over a call with screen sharing.

All the energy I’d normally expend on “shielding” myself from the office environment can now go into focus and actual creativity.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#483

Post by giancarlostoro »

isodev wrote: post #482
giancarlostoro wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sweet spot is don't force people to work a certain way. I was in an open office place before 2020, was remote friendly, we mostly would come in except when we needed personal time or whatever, but if I wanted to focus, I'd pop in headphones and crank out code, as would anyone else. If I wanted to peer program I could, and if anyone wanted a quick laugh, we'd just talk for about five minutes, because sitting stari…

I love WFH for this. It’s so much easier to plan my day according what best works for me like focus moments and current environment. We still do all the meetings and pair programming is so immensely better over a call with screen sharing. All the energy I’d normally expend on “shielding” myself from the office environment can now go into focus and actual creativity.

I think the sweet spot is, let teams decide how often to meet if you're going that route. For example, last place I worked at we were mostly from various parts of the states, so we were considered remote, whilst others lived nearby and had to commute. I think managers should decide wholly how their teams work. If managers need to be onsite, that's reasonable too, though I would assume not always especially if their teams are remote.

I feel like the less technical teams might benefit more from face to face, but developers, a lot of us do our coding at home before our careers even start. It is a hacker's career path.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#484

Post by closeparen »

tzs wrote: post #222
nox100 wrote: post #18

Some do, not all do. I do much better in a room with ~6 people that are working on the same project. Much better than working at home. Much better than a private office (which I've had). Having people around me working on the same project is invaluable for me for * asking quick questions and getting an instant answer. vs chat where I may not get an answer for hours. * running ideas by others. This doesn't happen on c…

I worked at a place with a great office layout. A group of a few people working on the same or related things could all have private offices with doors, but it was also easy for people to call out questions to others or gather together to discuss ideas and see what others are up to. There would be a large room off of a hallway, divided into 8 offices, arranged like this: +---------+---------+ | | | | | | +-----+ -+-…

This layout seems common for graduate student offices in academic buildings. I was jealous.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#485

Post by BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 »

À previous employer decided to switch from single to two person cubes with announced objective of enhanced collaboration. This intense developer got mated with a non technical social butterfly. Interruptions verging on harassment.

I called the environment: one developer for the price of two.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#487

Post by epylar »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #471
bunderbunder wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The awesome thing about modern programming culture is that rework due to the initial thing you shipped being rushed and shoddy actually looks really good on Tableau. Because you can assign more story points to fixing all the mistakes you made during the last 1-2 days of every sprint.

Bugs and unintentional design deficiencies get zero story points at my job. It's actually something I fought for because it's faux-progress - it's work that's actually a part of the original (likely underestimated) story someone already earned points for.

Everyone has a different take on story points, but the original idea was for them to record _effort_, not value.. more story points are actually worse. Delivered value is better. So digging a ditch and filling it in would get a bunch of story points but have zero value.

But managers want to look at the numbers they have, which is story points.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#488

Post by danesparza »

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…

I love that so many people answer this with "well, just get headphones" ... which just seems like an admission of a design mistake to me.

I think the real reason open floorplans are popular is money. It's MUCH cheaper to cram 20 people into 200 square feet than to let 3 people sit in offices (in the same square footage).

Now you know why 50% haven't returned to office spaces like corporate america (and specifically corporate real-estate owners) would have hoped.

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