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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?

#581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... is precisely the sort of aggressive, cynical and unpleasant response I'm talking about.

It's because they make up a minority whose needs have gone uncared for during their entire working life. Not everyone is like you. Some just want to go to work and finish their own tickets because the company's culture actively disincentivizes collaboration. Some have ADHD and lose their focus to every little movement in the room. Some are introverts who become much more mentally exhausted from such an environment th…

I don't think "they" are the minority, but rather the GP who you're responding to. That may be one of the very, very few times there's been a comment that's been stridently pro-open plan. I suspect most people are at best, indifferent towards open plans, though would probably prefer individual or at least team-only offices, or even cubicles. Very few individual contributors actually prefer open plans.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#582
post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is funny. The bad: it's a little too cutesy, a little too "gamer" targeted. It's a little tiresome. The fantastic: In a call, you get individual volume sliders (and mute buttons) for every single participant. I cannot use Zoom after experiencing this, it's simply intolerable to be at the mercy of the person with the loudest and most obnoxious mike/background noise

I mean if you set aside the mere theming, Discord is everything Slack should be

Yup.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#583
Honestly I've heard this idea rephrased by many different people, but I think it's unexamined. If someone interrupts me from a complex train of thought, after, it only takes a few seconds of minor confusion before I can get back to where I was - and I doubt I'm unique this way.

I think we may mistake the annoying feeling of plummeting, from the lofty domain of engineering complex software into the banal, as a major loss of productivity. The feeling is very annoying. But does it take so long to get back into your dreams of that perfect ci/cd pipeline, or high throughput system? I'm not sure.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actively enjoy being interrupted to discuss something unrelated to my current task wat

> Humans are diverse.

it just sounds like you might have ADHD.

how many browser windows and tabs do you have open usually?

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#585
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, you might have an overly optimistic view of unions. And you might also be ignoring the downsides of unions. I get that unions were/are necessary for things like mining workers or so, but SWE is quite different. I'd expect a union to be net-negative in our sector.

Systemic problems require systemic solutions. For over a decade now we’ve seen a steady supply of blog articles, studies (e.g. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-work... ), and choruses of comment threads all agreeing that coders do not like open offices. Yet all of this is empty sentiment because managements don’t seem to care; they might not even notice. Now, a union might not be the solution t…

From my personal point of view, expecting a union to force large corporations into modifying their office layout is irrational.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systemic problems require systemic solutions. For over a decade now we’ve seen a steady supply of blog articles, studies (e.g. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-work... ), and choruses of comment threads all agreeing that coders do not like open offices. Yet all of this is empty sentiment because managements don’t seem to care; they might not even notice. Now, a union might not be the solution t…

From my personal point of view, expecting a union to force large corporations into modifying their office layout is irrational.

So is complaining on blogs uselessly for over a decade while expecting things to change.

And the overall point isn’t simply that unions will fix open offices so much as some sort of solution rooted in collective action is required.

It’s also an illustration that as a professional class, software engineers and tech workers in general really don’t have as much power in their industry as their comp and perks would illustrate. Especially in times of economic pullback.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#587
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…

[flagged]

Please don't post in the flamewar style, and please edit out swipes. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... is precisely the sort of aggressive, cynical and unpleasant response I'm talking about.

It's because they make up a minority whose needs have gone uncared for during their entire working life. Not everyone is like you. Some just want to go to work and finish their own tickets because the company's culture actively disincentivizes collaboration. Some have ADHD and lose their focus to every little movement in the room. Some are introverts who become much more mentally exhausted from such an environment th…

Yes, I do want people who "misdirect their frustration at colleagues or use toxic language" filtered out of my working environment, and I make no apologies for that. I haven't criticised people who prefer greater separation from their colleagues. I've explicitly said I have no problem with that at all. I've only criticised those who hold their colleagues in "active disdain", and I only criticised them in about the mildest possible way: saying I don't want to work with then.

I don't want to work with people like the one in this post that likened their colleagues to toddlers for asking questions, or the one that said people who try to have conversations with them should "get a life". I certainly don't want to work with the one that thought the fact that I enjoy interacting with my colleagues was evidence I engage in office politics and don't contribute economically.

I work in a field that requires many people with different skills and personalities to collaborate in realtime to do something an individual simply cannot do alone. That's why open plan offices are near universal in this job, and if it also discourages people with the attitudes described in the previous paragraph that's a plus for me, personally. I hope those people find a place they can "contribute economically" without being bothered by "toddlers" and "office politics" but it's not my job to provide it.

The most amusing thing is the assumption in these responses that I'm an extravert, which couldn't be further from the truth. I find solitude restful and company hard work, the characteristics of an introvert (look it up). But being an introvert doesn't imply being a misanthrope or being unable to enjoy company. Collaboration is an essential part of my job, i.e. literally work, which I enjoy, just as much as I enjoy restful solitude away from it.

I'm not a manager, either, or any other sort of professional "people person", and I'm certainly not somebody who will ever be in a position to force anyone into any working arrangement they're not comfortable with. I'm a programmer who has made a point over a >20yr career never to move away from coal-face programming and never to have line management responsibilities. I've had the good fortune to work with many excellent managers over that time, though, and contrary to the cynicism you frequently read on HN (presumably in some cases from people stuck in incredibly toxic working environments and in others from people who maybe, just maybe, are themselves assholes) I recognise that they do something real, needed and highly skilled. Something I know I would be extremely bad at, hence my career choices.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#589

I worked for a Japanese corporation. The Tokyo offices had enormous rooms, with long rows of desks, arranged by section/department. The section manager's desk was at the end of each row. VPs, with billion-dollar budgets, had small, schoolteacher-style desks, in the corner of the room. These enormous rooms, with hundreds of engineers, were quiet as a library. They had carpeting, people wore "office slippers," and ther…

Japanese business culture is a standard that I hope we never follow. It results in extreme stress for their workers and one of their leading times for suicide is the yearly hiring/firing/moving people around cycle; Japanese industry is an extremely well oiled machine, but in order to achieve that, people are treated like machine parts.

I think there's a good balance to be struck, but I prefer Western work culture by far.

Re: Why do programmers need private offices with doors?

#590

I worked for a Japanese corporation. The Tokyo offices had enormous rooms, with long rows of desks, arranged by section/department. The section manager's desk was at the end of each row. VPs, with billion-dollar budgets, had small, schoolteacher-style desks, in the corner of the room. These enormous rooms, with hundreds of engineers, were quiet as a library. They had carpeting, people wore "office slippers," and ther…

May I ask what you think of life in Japan as a foreigner? I’ve heard it can be very isolating.
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